An Orchid Wedding

So I hinted in my last post that I had a special project that I rushed back from Thanksgiving for: this is it!  A wedding cake!  And quite possibly my favorite one that I've done to date.

Normally, I don't take wedding cake orders in the middle of the school year, much less on the weekend *right* after Thanksgiving (yes--try to cook a Thanksgiving dinner and make a wedding cake in one weekend...!) and *right* before finals/papers season.  But, when J approached me about making her wedding cake and told me that her wedding was an Asian theme, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity, especially since I'd been itching to make sugar orchids for ages now.  J was gracious enough to give me plenty of free reign in designing the cake, which I love, (her one request being that it be TALL) and when I finally sat down with her to show her my sketches, she picked out the one design that I'd sort of sketched as an improbable "fun" drawing, never meaning to make it.  But that's the one she wanted!

And I have to say, I love how it turned out!  The orchid flowers, buds, and leaves were all handmade out of sugar paste and painted with colored flower dust.  I was a bit worried for a while about how I would support the sugar orchids on a tall stem, but a trip to Home Depot totally solved that problem quickly (thanks to Anita of Dessert First and her husband, Mike, for pointing me in that direction), and the drama that the tall orchid stem added to the cake was fantastic.  People kept thinking they were real orchids on the cake, too!--even the bride, who was well-aware that I'd planned to make sugar flowers!

The cake itself was a dense dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganache studded with crystallized ginger slices, mango and fresh ginger curd, and mango and vanilla buttercreams.  J and S really wanted a mango and chocolate cake, and I added the touches of fresh and crystallized ginger to tie into the Chinese theme of the wedding.  The vertical buttercream stripes on the cake were meant to provide an illusion in the height of the cake.  And I particularly liked the white sugar pearls that I added at the last moment for even more texture and detail and to reflect the sparkles in J's wedding dress.

One of the best parts of the whole day was how incredibly well the cake matched the rest of the wedding.  The rooms were all decked out in a ravishing array of beautiful orchids of every type and shape and color imaginable, with tiny orchid plants on every table as party favors for the guests to large orchids scattered about the doors and entry tables.  The orchids on the cake even matched the orchid in J's hair perfectly, though we hadn't planned it that way at all.

Congratulations to J & S for their absolutely gorgeous wedding!  Thank you so much for letting me be a special part of it!

[For dessert and cake order inquires, please write to s {at} dessertsforbreakfast {dot} com.]

A Blue and Gold California Wedding

I've been so mired up in scrambling for a big deadline in my day job this past week that my head is quite literally spinning, and I haven't given a single thought to food at all.  But, now that we finally have a draft of our submission, I can at last take some time to blog about the wedding that I did way back at the beginning of July!

Because of the growing demands of my day job, I haven't been actively seeking out dessert orders this wedding season, but when my friend M. asked me to make the wedding cake and cupcakes for her wedding, I just couldn't say no!  It was even more fitting, too, because M. and her groom, S., went to UCLA for college and planned to have a blue-and-gold, California-themed wedding, which was so. right. down. my. alley.  (Go Bears!)

The wedding was so much fun--so much so that I didn't actually get any pictures of it, save the cake!  It was a morning wedding, and M. had sewn all of these beautiful picnic blankets so that everyone could picnic on the grass under the sun for brunch.  For the cake, I wanted to reflect the California rustic theme of the wedding, with the baby blues, golden yellows, and creams.  M. and S. knew that they absolutely did not want fondant (I concur!), so I went with a rustic buttercream exterior, which complimented the laid-back summertime feel of the wedding.  Then, I made three dahlia sugar flowers because all of the flowers at the wedding were to be in-season, organic, California-grown flowers, and dahlias were indeed in season!  Finally, the cream ribbon wrapping the cake was a bit of inspiration from M.'s wedding dress, which was super cute, with a cream sash around the waist, held by a bright, baby-blue brooch.

As for the flavor of the cake, M. and S. presented me with a bit of a challenge that took me a while of deep thinking to solve.  They wanted chocolate--lots of rich, dark chocolate.  And mint.  Nothing else--no fruit, just chocolate and mint.  Finally, I decided on a black cocoa chocolate cake--as dark as you can get--flavored with Bailey's liqueur and layered with fresh mint-infused dark chocolate ganache and vanilla Italian meringue buttercream.  The fresh mint and dark chocolate went together beautifully and worked wonders for a hot summertime day!  I'm so glad I went with the fresh (home-grown, may I add) mint instead of peppermint!  The cupcake flavors were much simpler: chocolate and vanilla cake bases, with chocolate-cream cheese frosting and vanilla buttercream.

One final congratulations to M. and S. for their marriage!  Thank you so much for letting me make your cake and be a part of your special day!

A Sunflower and Pastry Wedding

So here goes the long-awaited post about Maria and Nicholas's fabulous September wedding! I've already been posting recipes from the various desserts at the wedding for a while now (vegan chocolate pumpkin cupcakes, key lime heart pies, pomegranate-basil-vodka cheesecakes), but I have yet to give you all the big picture, so here goes.

This was most definitely my largest order thus far in the history of my little pastry start-up. I not only made Maria and Nick's wedding cake, but also a whole dessert bar! We'll get to that, though. First--the cake.

Chocolate cake

with cherry filling, dark chocolate ganache,

cream cheese frosting, and sugarpaste flowers

Maria is a huge chocoholic, so she most definitely insisted on a chocolate cake, and they wanted cherry, so I decided to make a chocolate cake with dark cherry filling, dark chocolate ganache, and cream cheese frosting on the outside to balance out the darkness inside! (I don't believe in fondant and try to avoid it whenever possible.) The sunflowers were all made by hand out of sugarpaste.

I have to admit, though, as much as I liked the final result with the sunflowers and ducks (Maria and Nick have an awesome rubber duck collection!), the cake looked even better after they had cut into it and taken the first slice. I'm so glad that I was around for it--it makes me feel so special that a couple is eating a cake that *I* made for their special day.


Anyways, so now on to the good part: the dessert bar! I have to say that I love this new trend at weddings. I did another similar dessert bar set-up in August for another wedding, but that one was far simpler and involved a lot more miniature cupcakes. Maria is also a huge tea connoisseur, so she wanted to have a fabulous, miniature pastry spread for everyone to enjoy with tea post-dinner. *Right* up my alley! So I whipped up the most fantastical menu I could think up for them:


Dark chocolate truffles with crushed cacao nibs

Espresso dark chocolate truffles

Amaretto dark chocolate truffles with almonds

Chocolate cupcake with pumpkin buttercream (vegan)

Fresh fruit tart

Pomegranate-basil-vodka cheesecake

Key lime pie

White and dark chocolate dipped strawberries

Lemon pie meringues

Man, was it a spread! Three different types of handmade truffles (for the chocoholics, of course!), cheesecakes, tarts, pies, cookies, tuxedoed strawberries! Everything turned out to be quite a hit, and the desserts really flew off the tables... Yes, that's tables. Here's just one half of the set-up:


*whew* It was so much fun to do a large mini-pastry order like this, I really have to thank Maria and Nick for the chance!

Oh, and before I'm done, a quick peak at those truffles:


(What you see there off to the sides are the lemon pie meringues--basically, the best parts of a lemon meringue pie, minus the crust--and fruit tarts.)

Congrats on your marriage, Maria and Nick!

Olympics Spoof Cake

Red velvet cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and hand-cut, sugar paste design (no stenciling).

This is a spoof cake that I did for a 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony viewing party. It's based on this banner that was in China during the Stanford Symphony Tour there before the Olympics. Note that the Olympic rings are wrong on purpose: this is how they were done in a concerthall in China.