In years past, I've been known to make a wedding cake each Valentine's Day. February 14th is, in fact, my favorite and most anticipated day of the year. But this year I thought about how to optimize my enjoyment of this most wonderful holiday. Did I really want to spend weeks leading up to the Big Day with my neck craned over the careful work of sculpting roses out of gum paste? Did I want my fingers to cramp up at each knuckle from holding those tiny paintbrushes meticulously dusting edible glitter onto the edges of sugar flower petals? Did I want to stay up, alone in my kitchen, on the 13th of February shuttling pans of batter in and plumped up cakes out of my single oven all night?
This cake was so satisfying. Three tiers of pure, milky white, smooth, fondant-covered cake balanced like a yogi comfortable and confident in her standing tree pose. I felt content shaping my hands gently around the curves of the round cake forms over and over until the fondant surfaces were so smooth they started to glow like well-moisturized skin around taut muscles. I placed the cake out on my patio and just let it sit and breathe outside in the garden.
When the director of a pinker-than-pink children's ballet school decides to have her 2-year-old son's birthday party at the studio, some pretty major construction is required to transform the space into a "boy-friendly" zone for a birthday bash. Luckily, the director/mom was up for the challenge! Yellow plastic hard hats were hung over the pointe shoes mounted on the wall, train track decals were temporarily stuck on to the dance floor, and giant colorful paper lanterns were taped up and over the life-size tutus that usually dress the walls, dutifully covering all the glitter, rhinestones and frills. Instead of magic-wand-making crafts, there were wooden trains to paint -- In place of the usual pitter patter of ballet slippers, plastic trucks with 2-year-old drivers barreled and collided into one another. To top it all off -- a chocolate with butter cream frosting cake and fondant trains choo-chooing around the top tier. Happy Birthday, Sullivan!
Blanca comes to clean the house I live in every other Thursday. She has been in training since she moved to the United States a few years ago under the tutelage of her mother-in-law, Margarita (who used to clean this house until her business grew too large to handle alone). Despite the fact that I speak no Spanish and Blanca is still learning English, we have built a friendship based primarily on warm, happy smiles and enthusiastic nods. We don't know much about each other but we seem to be equally impressed by the other's work. I work from home, so Blanca sees and compliments my cakes and culinary creations; I am always in awe of how she makes the kitchen sink seem to actually glitter and sparkle. When we see each other, we don't really share stories or jokes. We jump right to the unspoken punch-line and spend our time laughing together.
My dear friend, Holly, is unlike anyone else I know. She's sweet, generous and smart -- like most of my friends. But she seems to genuinely like most things -- she's always finding some beauty in everything. This is a special ability (one I certainly have not been able to cultivate) and it flows so naturally out of her. Even though I know she's such a lover and would appreciate any simple cake I wanted to give her on her birthday, I found myself wanting to make her something special. She's not one for globs of frosting and flowers made of sugar. I went to my local produce market, bought as many berries as I could, and focused on the fruit instead of the cake. I piled golden raspberries, red raspberries, blackberries and currants on top of just a single layer of cake and a thin spread of passion fruit frosting (Holly's favorite). Shockingly, Holly loved it!
When I ask brides to describe the kind of decoration they want on their cakes, I hear a lot of the same key words: "something floral," "Martha Stewart-like," "simple and elegant." At this wedding tasting, I had the pleasure of sitting down with both the bride and the groom. I asked Will, the young man getting married, what he would like the cake to look like. He said, "Oh, you know, maybe something in the Jackson Pollock style." The response was so smooth and witty... or so I thought. The bride and I both started laughing, but he was serious. The three of us all decided to commit to this idea. I got my paintbrushes out and dripped and squiggled red chocolate over this fondant-covered white wedding cake. Edible abstract art? Why not?
After an hour spent meticulously molding the letters of her name out of dark chocolate a friend watching me work asked, "So how do you know Kimberley again?" It was a funny moment when I told him, "Well, I don't." I've never met her, don't know how old she is turning and know little else about her than these three key facts: Kimberley likes the color orange, loves the taste of chocolate and has a sister who ordered a cake for her from Sweet Peony. We never did meet. Cake-Maker and Birthday Girl remain strangers connected only by this double-decker Devil's Food cake.
Congratulations Jamie and Bill! This lovely bride and groom had a gorgeous wedding this weekend in Healdsburg -- complete with a Sweet Peony (that's my wedding-cake company!) 5-tiered Pumpkin Spice Cake with Vanilla Buttercream and topped with some Shortbread Crumbles, Rose Hips and Huckleberry Sprigs. This "bruiser" of a cake stood over 2 feet tall on the reception table and weighed just about too much for me to lift on my own. That's a lot of cake! Happy October, everyone and get ready for a month full of wine-country weddings...
Baking with kids might be the greatest thing ever! Add on top of that -- the chance to make a cake with my adorable nephew, Chef Sam. In fact, Sam graduated from Jr. Chef to Chef this summer when he not only made the cake (maybe he had a little help from Aunt Katie) but he also designed the decoration!
Oops! Sorry to disappear like that! I heard my roses and zinnias whispering to me and I had to fly 3,000 miles to heed the call. This happens every year. Though happy and busy cooking the days away in California, when summer comes, I know there is only one place I can be: down a long dirt road - in a barn - next to a garden - overlooking a meadow. So up, up and away, over the country I went to that little Island where my family and my garden live. But Fall is here. And I'm back in the kitchen... That means more desserts are on their way!
This cake has 45 hand-cut black fondant polka dots spotting its vanilla buttercream skin. One of the polka dots represents this birthday boy's age... and he got 44 others for good luck! When "mom" asked me about making this cake for her son, she made me swear to never divulge how much design work, thought, baking, assembling and decorating went into this project for the baby. So, Mum's the word.
... Especially when the diamonds are edible, sweet and pink. I found incredible candy molds from a catalog that enable you to make chocolate in the shape of diamonds, saphires, and rubies, oh my! Like real jewels, I could not wait to get my hands on them. I dyed my chocolate different shades of pinks and reds and eagerly poured it -- warm, melted and silky-- into the tiny jewel forms, waiting impatiently for the chocolate to harden up into its new gem identity. There's something intoxicating about sparkly jewels. Something totally captivating. And why? They are useless, really. But oh so beautiful. And at least these... you can eat!
The Sugar Plum Fairy made an appearance. 100 little girls in tutus tip-toed around the floor. An entire corner of the room was dedicated to making foam tiaras. It may have been the most entertaining party I have been to this year. Tutu School celebrated its Grand Opening of the Marin studio this past weekend in style. And, since one should always take advantage of having an in-house pastry chef/ballet teacher, I was the lucky caterer selected for the event. The director of the ballet studio, my boss, scanned my "holiday bite-sized dessert menu" and selected some truly tutu-terrific items for the pink polka-dotted dessert display. We re-created The Nutcracker's Land of Sweets pretty seamlessly... Even young Clara would have to agree.
Trifle: A traditional English dessert created to use up stale left-over cake. That's right -- when a cake has been sitting around for many days, has lost all of its moisture, and has basically become inedible, that's when trifle gets made. To mask the unfortunate state of the cake, you soak it in Sherry, pile berries on top, and cover everything up with a thick layer of custard. Packed with booze, fruit, and creamy pudding, what doesn't taste good? Since it has always been the dessert equivalent of the dreaded "kitchen sink casserole" in my mind, I was caught a little off guard when a client ordered four large bowls of trifle for her glamorous holiday party this year. I eagerly agreed to cater the party, but then had a moment of hesitation: Am I really going to make old cake? I decided that sometimes it's best to make a small break from tradition. These trifles were made from freshly-baked genoise cake, strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries from Berkeley's best produce market, the better part of a bottle of Cream Sherry, and a homemade vanilla moussaline. Sorry, Brits.
Oooh lolli, lollipop! There's something about lollipops that just reminds me of having fun... maybe because I associate them with childhood, or maybe it's the adorable jingle referenced in the title of this blog entry that always makes a smile spread across my lips. People eat all sorts of foods off of sticks... frozen bananas at street festivals, meat in most Middle Eastern countries, cotton candy at the amusement park. It's just fun! And the treats pictured here are pretty sophisticated too: 70% creamy dark chocolate ganache truffles enrobed in a hard chocolate shell and then rolled in a mixture of cacao nibs and crushed, candied pecans. And you don't even get your fingers dirty.
I think it's a confirmed fact that making a wedding cake is hard. But try making just one slice of 5 different wedding cakes! Turns out, making a slice of cake is much more difficult than making the whole darn thing. I had a lovely bride-and-groom-to-be visit the palatial tasting room "Chez Grant Street" a couple weeks ago. I thought: I'll just make a few base cakes, a bunch of delicious fillings, a handful of different frostings and we'll mix and match to see what they like. Mmhmm. Sounds easy breezy.. that is, if you have never met me. I found myself in my kitchen at the eye of the familiar tornedo that surrounds me whenever I take on pastry projects. Passion fruit curd, mango mousse, milk chocolate ganache, dark chocolate ganache, passion fruit moussaline, strawberry buttercream, raspberry buttercream... they just kept flowing out of my head and into pots while I stirred and strained and stored as if in a trance. When the day of the tasting came, I just sat staring at all the sheets of cake, the miscellaneous containers of fillings and goo, and frosting. What was I thinking? But I put on my butcher persona and started hacking away at the cakes. I split them open, filled them up, stacked layers on top of each other and did my best to create the appearance of a slice of tiered wedding cake. I think it worked. The bride and groom wanted to take one of each. Oh no...
I had to break it to her. Of course, I fussed around with a lengthy pre-amble first: "Slate grey and yellow.. wow, such sophisticated wedding colors. So perfect for the invitation. I can just imagine the gorgeous yellow bridesmaid dresses with classy grey sashes around the waist. And the yellow flower bouquets with slate grey ribbon -- super chic." But after all of this, I had to tell my bride the honest truth: "No one, I promise you, will want to eat a slate grey cupcake." She didn't believe me at first. Though it pained me, I made her some muddy, grey frosting... flinching in my kitchen as I tried to decorate her taster-cupcake as elegantly as possible. One look, and she understood. With your eyes closed, it still tasted like rich, delicious vanilla French buttercream. But with eyes open, no one wanted to even approach the dull, grey specimen. Solution: I custom-dyed some fondant slate grey and cut out hearts to put on top of the (much more appetizing) cream-cheese-frosted cupcakes.
So what would you say if someone asked you to make a cake based on a book you've never read? I guess you could gracefully decline the offer and refer the client to another, more well-read, baker. You could quickly skim through book to try to get the general gist of the story-line and characters. Maybe you could even rent the movie version and watch a few frames to get some images and ideas to transfer into frosting and cake. All three of those options sound feasible. Unfortunately, I am basically incapable of saying "no," I don't read (sorry, Brown University education), and the Harry Potter movie scared the living daylights out of me within the first 5 minutes of sitting down to watch it. So I was in a pickle. I agreed to make a cake for a 6-year-old Harry-Potter-obsessed neighbor of mine here in Berkeley that would make her eyes light up and hopefully evoke the magical spirit of a story, and whole imaginary world, I knew nothing about. I tried to google "Harry Potter" and all the search results seemed to be written in a foreign language... words like "Hogwart" and "Quidditch" kept popping up. So I decided to talk to an expert... a woman who had read every book. She gave me the quick run-down, re-enacting a few scenes for me, and eventually I was able to piece together enough to make a cake.
I always need a project. Something that allows me to research, take notes, and inevitably, forgo sleep for nightly games of mental ping pong as I toss ideas from the left side of my brain to the right side, and back again. I surround myself with cookbooks, scribble down ideas as I read and rifle through the pages of glistening dessert photos. Then, with a bundle of notes and primitive sketches under my arm, I forge into the kitchen like a warrior onto a battle-field. And then the same thing happens every time: I surrender all my plans and diagrams and formulas and make whatever feels right in that moment.
If I knew your were coming, I'd have baked... strawberry shortcake. I know I once swore to be faithful to wedding cakes -- til death do us part, making, baking, decorating, and obsessing over those frosted frilly layers of Bridezilla cakes. But what can I say. I want a divorce. Or at least an open-relationship. I'm just over it. Why spend so much time making the fillings and the cake, just so you can carefully, and painstakingly cover up every inch of it with what is, let's face it, a thick coating of sugar and butter? I want to make a dessert where I can see all of my hard work, and lust over the flavors, textures and smells that I will enjoy when I take my first bite. I want to eat with my eyes and feel satisfied without ever opening my mouth. And that's what makes strawberry shortcake the perfect dessert. You see the lucious whipped cream cascading out of the sliced-open shortbread biscuit while you smell the meyer lemon zest baked into the dough. The strawberries, so red and supple, invite you to take a juicy bite. The rose-infused sauce, pooling around the edge of the dessert just taunts you to dive in with your spoon. That's what I want my desserts to be -- inviting, irresistable. No more hiding the sweet gem inside a chasitity belt of buttercream.
No mom, I'm not getting married. But recently my landlady's living room has become the "tasting room" for hip brides and grooms -- potential cupcake clients. The engaged couples, sometimes with parents in tow, navigate their way to the East Bay following my less than exact directions to a blue trimmed house nestled in the quiet residential bliss of North Berkeley. Awaiting them is milk, water, napkins, and at least 5 different kinds of cupcakes for them to taste, each one with its very own "cupcake name tag." The couples taste, compare, and hopefully, order dozens of cupcakes for their wedding receptions. So far, so good.
As I was slicing each apricot and delicately placing one sliver on top of another, making sure that just the right portion of each segment was touching the other, a friend walked into my kitchen and sat down next to me at the table. After a few silent moments of watching, she asked how much I would charge for a tart like this. I thought about it, took a brief fantasy trip to the adorable bakery I own in my dreams, mentally crunched one or two numbers about ingredient food cost... and then returned to reality. "This is a pro bono kind of dessert," I concluded. "The kind I only make for family... or maybe a really good friend. It's not for sale." Between the organic blanched almond flour I biked 4 miles to retrieve for the crust, the homemade creme patisserie and nut butter I made and mixed together for a tasty filling, the slicing and painstaking arrangement of fruit on top of the tart, and the shiny glaze I apply to each piece of fruit with a little brush... there's just no possible way I could charge a price that anyone would pay to buy this tart. I'm sure I could cut some corners, be remarkably more practical (drive to the store instead of bike, perhaps), make the tarts en masse with the same design each time, and assemble the tarts like desserts instead of art projects. But... alas. These are sacrifices I don't want to make right now. So for now, it will remain the Pro-Bono Tart.
A freshly cut stalk of rhubarb is firm and glossy, the color ranging from light pink to crimson red and a secret light green circle may reveal itself once sliced open. If you were to take a bite of the raw stalk, chances are your lips, like mine, would pucker and your eyes would squint holding back tears from the burst of tartness exploding in your mouth. Better this than the even more unpalatable reaction had you eaten the leaves of the rhubarb stalk which are, in fact, toxic due their content of oxalic acid. Why then, knowing these things, am I so in love with rhubarb? My passion for this stalk is so deep that I spent every Wednesday and Saturday morning for an entire summer trying to befriend a grouchy old rhubarb farmer just to feel a little closer to my favorite produce. Despite my overly cheery 9am smiles, zealous "Hello there! How are you?" conversation attempts, and consistent patronage, it took about 2 months to finally get this farmer's eye contact, and another couple weeks to win a wave from him when he saw me coming. My relationship with rhubarb itself, however, has always been solid and loving. I use it in everything... pies, crumbles, tarts, even savory dishes like rhubarb-glazed roast pork. For this summer tart, I candied thinly-sliced rhubarb and fanned it out over a caramel covered frangipane tart.
I don't think theme desserts are my thing. But Independence Day comes but once a year, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Brainstorm with me for a minute... How many blue foods are there out there? There's the obvious -- blueberries. Other than that? I couldn't think of anything, and I had no blueberries. Solution: I dyed some white chocolate blue and then used it to cover almonds. Voila! Tacky, perhaps, but this red cherry, strawberry, blue almond, white chocolate-covered tart did the trick for our 4th of July picnic.
My mother called me in mid-May asking when I was coming home for a visit, and specifically what date I might be available to cater a luncheon at the house. Turns out the Unitarians were anxious to organize their summer calendar of "Women's Group" meetings. They meet twice a month and rotate the host house so every member takes a turn opening up her kitchen table to the group of women to share stories... and snacks. The first time the ladies came to our house, my mom asked if I could throw some refreshments together. I whipped up a quick curry chicken salad, snuck past the ladies tumbling into the house, and headed off to the beach. Apparently, the Sunday following the meeting at our house, the church buzzed with reviews of curry chicken salad instead of the usual religious banter. Each year after that, attendance at our house seemed to grow, and I continued to make more and more elaborate snacks. This year, not only was the group larger then ever, some ladies even brought their own "to go" bags.
"5$? Are you sure? Can you weigh it again? There must be some mistake." I tried to reason with the shop-keeper, but apparently it was indeed possible and nonnegotiable -- my one, single peach was going to cost me $5. How can this happen? A confluence of realities with which I am all too familiar: An adorable boutique farm-stand serves the wealthiest clientele of an already famous resort island. Most likely, they could charge $50 for that same peach and most of their shoppers wouldn't blink an eye. How did I fall into this ridiculous scenario? One simple answer: I smelled the peach from across the room. It called to me, and I came running. At least it made a delicious tart.
Who knew that 200 cupcakes is quite a hefty order? I do now. And so does my dining room. I successfully covered every inch of the old mahogany table in our beautifully formal entertaining space. Lined up by flavor -- chocolate (with caramel sauce inside), vanilla (with lemon curd filling), and strawberry -- the 200 cupcake soldiers dominated the house... and my morning. Now frosting all 200 tiny cakes... that took care of my afternoon hours.
Maybe I don't need to be sweating over my oven in this Berkeley summer heat, or constantly finding dabs of crusty frosting on my face at the most awkward times. I've found another totally satisfying and aesthetically pleasing side of the dessert industry: Homemade Cake Stands. I did some savvy shopping and researching on the subject, and I found that on average, a cake stand costs between $30-$60. (!) That's probably more than you are charging for the cake on the stand. So I decided to make my own. Mine are the white porcelain tiered cake stands on the right and the black-stemmed stands on the left. Check the blog soon to see some of my more funky designs I'm working on! If you are a chef, caterer, or just a cake-stand-lover and want to purchase one of my stands, contact me. They're for sale!
I know I should branch out. I know I should experiment with basket-weave, swirls, rosettes, shell borders, fancy icing designs. But I am tragically in love with the simplicity of the polka dot. I take out my Wilton manuals and archaic cake-decorating magazines from decades past, flipping through all the "how-to" decorating lessons. I practice all the standards -- classically elegant and hideously outdated -- I skip none. But then it comes time to dress up my cake, and without even realizing it, I start polka-dotting every frosted surface. Maybe it's "my thing." Can I do that? Claim the polka dot as my trademark? I'll look into it... but I think I better keep practicing my basket-weave... just in case.
Happy Birthday to you... again. This cake is a pretty funny story. Aside from the fact that it looks like I swiped it right from under Barbie's nose, this is actually the second time I am catering Reyna's 4th birthday. Her first party was at the ballet studio where we had vanilla cupcakes with pink frosting and purple sugar roses. Reyna's mom placed another order for the family party today at their home. The girl knows what she likes: Pink frosting again... Purple flowers again. Can't wait to see what 5-year-old Reyna will want!
This weekend was my busiest yet for my under-the-radar cake making business I've been trying to start up. Five orders in one weekend: 50 cupcakes for a party at a bar, 2 sets of pink cupcakes for ballerina birthday parties, 2 elaborate cakes for a 4-year-old birthday girl, and a cake and cupcakes to be used as props in a film being made about a pastry delivery service (!). My hands feel overly moisturized with butter, regardless of how many times I hold them under burning hot water. I just found some frosting on the cuff of my favorite sweat shirt. My red hair has spots of white, not from aging, but from fly-away flour from this morning's baking. Sometimes I just need to take my cupcakes and look at them lovingly. I place them carefully on a cake-stand, cover them with a gorgeous glass dome, and enjoy their company while drinking a cup of tea in the living room. And then... Back to work!
I started decorating this cake for my friend, Scott. No big deal. I just filled a vanilla cake with some strawberry rhubarb preserves (one of my students made this jam for me in class the other night -- yes, rhubarb just might be my favorite stalk). Then I frosted it with vanilla buttercream and thought I'd give it a little chocolate tease with some piped decorations. Originally I was thinking something subtle, sparse, free-form. Then I remembered that I don't really have any of those three words in my vocabulary. I got the icing in my piping bag, sat down over my cake, and started making individual, tiny chocolate dots: One circle around the edge of the cake... then another circle inside that circle... then another.. and another... Damn you, Detail Devil! One hour later I finally plopped my last little chocolate polka dot on Scott's "simple" cake.
