Pug Love

One of my oldest and dearest friends Marc asked me to make cupcakes for his sister's birthday as he wanted to do something extra special for her this year.  After discovering my side hobby of decorated bake goods, he challenged me with the idea of making pug cupcakes.  Maestro is their family pug who has stolen their hearts.  Below is a picture of Rina (holding the pug cupcake) and Maestro.

As always, I went onto Pinterest and found these cute guys.  These are wedding cake toppers made by Bonjour Poupette.  In addition to pugs she make a lot of other animals so check out her Etsy store. 

Source: etsy.com via Katelyn on Pinterest

Modifying Bonjour Poupette's design, I decided to just utilize the pug faces for my cupcakes.  To make the eyes shiny, water was added to the fondant by taking a paint brush and just glazing over the eyes.

This was going to be a small custom order of 9 cupcakes.  To add variety, I like to alternate cupcake designs so I added some flowers to keep the theme more feminine.

And finally here is a close up of the pug on the cupcake.

Do you have the fever? Bieber Fever?

So I knew that Kate's birthday was around the corner AND we all know she loves Justin Bieber.  She recently also finally was able to get tickets to his concert this summer at the staples center. Apparently these tickets are ridiculously hard to get as they usually sell out in like 14 seconds.

So I went onto Pinterest to so some research on ideas to use. I came across this iconic cupcake. Genius right?

Source: ultrainteresting.com via annissa on Pinterest

If you were paying attention during Bieber Fever you would recall the hair obsession and how he used to do a little shake to flip his hair. So to tie it in for Kate's birthday . . what other way but to do Kate's hair. Note Kate is a red head, but her hair is not extremely red . . I found this really cute site that does an amazing job showing how to cut faces and hair check it out!

Source: bakehappy.blogspot.com via Cari on Pinterest

Also the recipe for this cupcake is from "canyoustayfordinner.com." In the second picture you will see how white her white cupcake recipe really is.

Source: canyoustayfordinner.com via Cari on Pinterest

And now . . . here is the final product.  Kate hearts Justin Bieber!

I decided to not do faces, partly because I didn't quite now what color Kate's eyes were.  Given that Justin Bieber's hair is so icon and Kate is a red head, I think the hair was enough.

Happy Birthday Kate!! I hope you loved these cupcakes.

My Mother's First and Favorite

My mother loves mahjong and gambling.  Growing up every weekend we would drive to my aunt's house in Oakland so my mom could play.  It was pretty fun as us kids would always get to stay up late and the adults would not pay any attention to us.  I got away with sooo many things because of this (washing my cousins hair with soda, pouring boxes of mix cereal on the floor and stomping on it)

Anyways, my mother's birthday was coming up and it was close to a big one.  So I thought, why not surprise her?  Since her big birthday was next year she probably wouldn't suspect anything.  My brother and I decided to have her surprise dinner at PPQ Dungeness Island.  My mother also LOVES crab and I had been trying to take her here for months.


The Cake:
I was inspired by the following cake, but knew I didn't want to use orchids or make the cake this tall.  So I took this idea and appropriated it a little by changing the character and flowers.

                                          Source: kakestudio.blogspot.com via Cari on Pinterest

I'm an ABC and know very little Chinese, so I reached out to my amazing cousin to ask her what should be written on her cake.  My cousin sent me pictures, examples of how to write the characters and the order of each brush stroke.  Here's a series of diagrams that she sent me.  Thanks so much Karen!

This is the traditional character for "Long Life" (after Karen realized I was going to put mahjong blocks on the cake, she said she should have told me to use "Wealth" instead)

I went online and started looking up what flowers would best be used based on chinese beliefs/symbolism.  I wanted a balance between a pretty flower and something symbolic.  I really like what the Citron represented (luck and happiness), but have you seen what they look like?. . not so pretty.  So I went with peonies as they are a symbol of nobility and value.

1. Peonies

2. Character Topper

3. Mahjong Blocks
(To poke fun at my mom . . she has a GREAT sense of humor)

4. Gold Trim
(I ran out of time and only did the top layer)

Surprisingly, this was actually my mom's first birthday cake (so she said).  When she told me this on the way home, I was in disbelieve and then I thought about it more.  My mom had never wanted a cake before saying she didn't eat cake and always told us to just save our money.  I felt a little bad, knowing that she had to wait so long for something so simple.  At least her first cake was a pretty one!

But I later recalled, that I did get her a cake circa 1998 or 1999.  I reminded her that I went to the local Lucky and bought her a snickers cake because that was her favorite candy bar at the time.  She then remembered and started laughing.  (That's right . . I'm not an ungrateful child!)

My mother actually used to decorate cakes herself, so some of the techniques I learned were from her.  She told me that she actually made her father's first birthday cake too.  And jokingly said when her father said thank you, she thought "I'm still waiting for my first birthday cake from you!"

Happy Birthday Mom!  Thank you for being an amazing mother and giving me an amazing childhood and a life with limitless possibilites.  I'm truly grateful.

Cupcakes for Diner en Blanc

Diner en Blanc was started by a handful of friends in Paris 24 years ago.  It is a diner by invite, where guests dress in white and meet for a mass "chic picnic" in a public space.  The one catch is that this public space isn't announced until the last minute.  Due to this, this has enabled the Diner en Blanc to take place in some of the most prestigious sites within the French capital.  For more information please check out the official site of Diner en Blanc

Cupcake Dozen #1 - Floral Cupcakes

Cupcake Dozen #2 - Brush Embroidery / Textured Cupcakes

The second dozen of cupcakes were inspired by a video I found that utilized this brush embroidery on cookies.  SweetAmbsCookies videos on YouTube are so amazingly beautiful and inspirational.  Check them out if you have time.

I've never made cookies with royal icing . . but this is definitely something I want to try after watching these videos.

The Royal Treatment

This was our dear old Grandpa's birthday (He's the youngest looking Grandpa you'll ever meet).  Lindsay decided to come up with a theme and thought of giving him the Royal Treatment for his birthday.  As you can see even the royal couple decided to show up.  His birthday also came with his own Drag Bag complete with a wig, earrings, sash and double sided tape

The theme for the cupcakes was to have something pretty with something "unexpected." So cupcakes made were the honey cupcakes but filled with a jalapeño pepper jelly.  To further make it unexpected, not all cupcakes were filled, just ones with the crowns.

Esteban & Jenny's Wedding

I've known Esteban for nearly 10 years.  We used to work together at a movie theatre working the late shifts (5pm-2am!) due to midnight showings.  When I first met him, I thought he looked like a real life Super Mario.  So when his birthday came around, I drew him a birthday card of super mario wearing our movie theatre uniform.  Working together for a little over a year, my DDR partner in crime and I stayed in touch throughout the years.  Esteban is one of kindest and most giving so I'm so glad that he found Jenny as she is such a sweet heart and compliments his so well. 

Making a wedding cake is a big project.  This cake, along with the 3 other sheet cakes that was fed to a wedding of 300 people was baked by Jayson Delos Santos.  He also didn't just make one flavor cake, but made 3 per the request of the couple.  

My only part in this was to help Jayson execute the decorating of this cake based on a photo.  From a decorating standpoint this was a 3 layer cake consisting of an 8 inch, 10 inch and 12 inch rounds. Jayson rolled the fondant and covered each layer.  I piped the design around the cakes starting with the base border then the sides.  

The cake topper was arranged by Jayson.  Yellow and white roses were inserted into a half sphere of flower foam. The cake tiers were tacked onto plastic spacers supported by dowels that locked in place.  This was beneficial for allowing us to arrange the flowers ahead of time.  The remaining flowers were used to decorate the table.

Not only does Jayson bake cakes, but he also took Esteban and Jenny's engagement photos! Congrats Esteban and Jenny

Not So Sweet but Boozy Good-bye

When I got pulled aside on that Friday afternoon, I had a feeling it wasn't going to be good news.  This little piece of sunshine had decided to move on to a new opportunity. 

If you know Ms. Clara, you'd know we had to send her off with love and booze. This woman's drink of choice is an extra dirty martini, which I don't believe translate well into a cupcake.  Looking for an alternative, i was told by a co-worker about Irish Car Bomb cupcakes.  The recipe I used is from Alli-N-Sons. 

Below are some photos, of the cupcakes 

And the final touch was adding her angelic face to each cupcake

Congratulations! You will/are missed in the office!