A Vintage Winter Wedding

With Christmas around the corner, the decor for this wedding couldn’t have been more appropriate.  Beautiful old books with lace and gold accents adorned the room.  The florals consisted of winter white ranunculus, roses, pine needles, and pinecones.

Rachael and David had a classic white cake with gold piping at the base of each tier.  Rachael found a beautiful hand-painted cake stand that matched everything perfectly.  We finished it off with a single white ranunculus with pine accents.

Top tier: chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling, Bottom tier: Vanilla white cake with strawberry buttercream filling, Outside: Classic vanilla buttercream

Isn’t this adorable? Rachael is from California and David is from Australia!

Small Tarts for a Sweet Cause

This year was the 2nd annual Dinner for Good charity to raise money for camp for orphans in Ukraine. Our dear friend Annie ministers in Ukraine as part of Open Arms Ukraine. Many of the orphans in Ukraine end up in prison, prostitution, homelessness, or death. Open Arms Ukraine gives these young people the tools they need to prepare for life outside the orphanage by helping provide for them physically, educationally, emotionally, and spiritually.

We had the privilege of partnering with our talented friends to create a wonderful evening of food and fellowship. Please check our Open Arms Ukraine and follow this amazing ministry!

 

*All photos from Breslow Imaging

We had a delicious dinner provided by Salt House Pop Up!

Left to Right: Paul (Smalltown Society), Cathy (Petal and Posie Cakes), Annie (Open Arms Ukraine), me, Kensey, and Spencer (Salt House Pop Up)

Peachy Pink Peony

It was my goal to make a peony sugar flower during my time off while I’m in between jobs.  After finally getting all the supplies (cutters, veiners, celboard, floral wires, floral tape, etc.!), I finally made my first peony!  The center of it isn’t exactly “anatomically” correct, but once I get the right stamens, I’ll definitely try it again.  The next step will also be to add some leaves.  This flower took me about 3 hours per day over a period of 3 days to complete, and it was SO fun!  I can’t wait to make more!

Peonies are one of my absolute favorite flowers along with dahlias, gerbera daisies, orchids, and ranunculus!  Hopefully I can learn how to make my other favorite flowers someday! :)

-Cortney

Peach and pink petal dust was added to make the flower look more lifelike.

Floral Heart Cake 2.0

One of our most favorite designs is the floral heart cake inspired by Rifle Paper Co.‘s floral heart print.  We first came up with the design copying the Rifle Paper colors in a previous post, but got a request to do the same cake to match the beautiful color palette of a wedding.

 

When Kristy sent me the color palette (navy, light pink, dark pink, and gold), I got so excited!  It reminded me of something you’d find on a Kate Spade print.  Plus, anything with a touch of gold automatically makes it awesome.

I loved the gold scallop cake board with it!

 

Detail shot. My favorite were the little gold flowers. :)

Pink and Lace

It’s been another long stretch of time since we’ve posted, but admittedly, we’ve been quite busy with kids – Cathy’s full time job of being a wonderful mother and my full time job of working with kids for my day job!  We’ve had the opportunity to squeeze some cake time in there, so we’ll be updated the blog slowly but surely. :)

We had the pleasure of doing a wedding cake for two dear friends of ours.  The bride, Sarah, is the sweetest person you’ll ever meet.  She is a girly girl to the max, and had such a beautiful shabby chic-inspired wedding complete with mason jars, succulent favors, and flowers in beautiful shades of pink.

When Sarah came to us, she had different visions for her cake, so after lots of sketching and discussing, we nailed it down to a simple lace design (to coordinate with her beautiful wedding dress) complete with bold pink flowers to add some pops of color.  We also made vanilla cupcakes, some decorated with blush pink nonpareils and others decorated with a fondant medallion with a subtle lace imprint.

During the cake-making process, we were a little stumped of how we could achieve the lace look effectively without using special lace cutters or molds.  Thankfully, we had the help of a friend (Dani!) to help us create the lace look.  We couldn’t have done it without her!

Sarah and Austin, thank you SO much for picking us to do your wedding cake!  We love you guys!  Also, photo credit goes to the wonderful and amazing Cathy Breslow!

detail

If you look closely, you can see the lace imprint in the fondant medallions. It added a small touch of sophistication to the cupcakes.

Shades of Pink

If there’s one cake trend we’ve absolutely fallen in love with, it’s the ombré cake trend!  In French, it literally means “shaded”!  Beautiful gradients of color can be both whimsical and sophisticated.  We’ve had the pleasure of being able to create two ombré cakes recently: one for a gender reveal, and one for a wedding.

For the wedding cake, we made both the inside AND the outside ombré.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to see the inside of the wedding cake, but hopefully we can get a picture of what it looked like once it was sliced into.  The bride and groom picked out these beautiful rice paper butterflies from Etsy which added movement to the cake.

The flavors of this cake was pink velvet (gradients of pink inside) with a cream cheese filling, and vanilla buttercream on the outside.

For the gender reveal cake, the outside was frosted plain white and revealed a ombré of coral and peach inside to tell their party guests that they were having a girl!

Getting just the right colors was admittedly harder than we thought, but the payoff was so worth it!  The gender reveal cake was made with a simple white cake and vanilla buttercream.

We had SO much fun making these cakes!  Thank you to the expecting couple and the newlyweds for letting us bring out our girly pink side to creating these lovely desserts!

Cupcakes for a Rockstar

Our dear friend’s son was celebrating his 8th birthday, and Cathy was asked to make the cupcakes!  I (Cortney) had the pleasure of being able to see the final product and simply eat the cupcakes (clearly, the hardest part, right?).

No stamp? No problem! Cathy had the brilliant idea of using a potato!

The gumpaste guitar was made especially for the birthday boy!

Happy birthday, Elijah!

Gender Reveal Cupcakes

Lots of people have used cakes to share the gender of their baby, but Steffie and Joe wanted to do it using cupcakes, so that each individual person can experience the surprise!

Steffie opted for a classic chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream.  She wanted rainbow sprinkles on the top.  After receiving the exciting news of the gender of the baby, I filled the cupcakes with a colored buttercream.  Blue for boy, pink for girl.

Take a bite and discover…that it’s a BOY!

It’s a boy!

I wasn’t sure which liners to use, because I didn’t want to hint toward one gender…so I just chose plain white. =)

All packed and ready to go! I tied the box with some blue AND pink baker’s twine so that the guests didn’t have a hint as to what gender the baby could be!

Congratulations, Steffie and Joe!  Can’t wait to meet your baby boy!

Un bébé

It’s been a while!  Both Cathy and I have been quite busy with various things, so P&P has been taking a break for a while…

…but now we’re back!  I started a new job working with kids with Autism, and it’s awesome.  Getting used to a new schedule was a little tough at first, but I think I’m now getting the hang of it.  As much work as cakes can be, it’s also quite therapeutic for me.  Plus, I love hanging out with my baking partner, Cathy!  She’s the best. =)

Back in June (yes, June!), we got to make a baby shower cake for a friend, but never had the opportunity to post it.  The theme was a pink/white/black French type of theme, so we made a small cake to celebrate the arrival of this little one.

Cheers!

Cortney

Summer Tropics

It’s summer here in the Bay Area, and we’ve been getting beautiful weather!  Although the weather here can be a little finicky, the week that I worked on this cake was HOT!  I did a fun 1st Birthday cake for a friend’s daughter.

The theme was Hawaiian, which made me super excited!  I absolutely love Hawaii, and I can’t wait for the day I get to go back.  I remember warm breezes, bright flowers, Hawaiian music (which I streamed to get me in the mood), and of course…the food.  Oh, the food.

My friend Kiyoko requested that her daughter’s cake have colorful flowers on it.  I had an idea of what to do, but not really a concrete idea.  I Googled tropical color palette, and found a beautiful palette to work with.  I went back and forth between making it really “kiddie” or keeping it more simple.  I decided to do the latter.  Even for kids’ birthdays, I like simple, clean designs.  I wholeheartedly agree with the old adage that less is indeed more.

This cake was made with moist yellow butter cake and filled with a rich dark chocolate truffle filling.

Close-up

She also requested a dozen matching cupcakes for the kids at the party.  I added mini flowers and two-toned leaves to the cupcakes to make it a perfect set of sweets!

Yellow butter cake topped with chocolate truffle frosting

Happy 1st birthday, little Ava!

<3, Cortney