Cakes and Cupcakes

I cannot believe Christmas is in less than a week!  I had a few events that I never shared and wanted to show you :)

A first birthday for a little boy who loves dogs!

A baby shower for a soon to be baby girl.  The mom to be picked out this adorbale bedding that I used as inspiration for the cake. 

Thomas the Train cupcakes for a 3rd birthday!

Savanna's First 1st Birthday Party!

As I previously mentioned we decided to split up friends and family for Savanna's 1st Birthday since we could not fit everyone inside.  We decided to have the friends party early so we could attempt to have it outside.  Luckily the weather cooperated for us and we had a nice day, it wasn't crazy sunny but it was a great temperature.  We had the party at an outdoor picnic area near one of the town parks.  It worked out great and we were very happy we did it there.  I ordered a full printable paper package from Little Birdie Prints on Etsy and was super happy with them. Kim was very responsive and easy to work with.  I used most of the package, the only things I did not use were the hats (Savanna hates anything on her head) and the thank yous (I already had personalized stationary for her and didn't think it was worth printing and buying envelopes).  I printed everything myself at home and it was super easy and I did not go through a crazy amount of ink.  I highly recommend if you want to add some fun custom detail to your party!

It was a late afternoon party so we decided to keep the food fairly simple.  We ordered sandwiches from a local deli and I made a pasta salad with broccoli and pine nuts and a mixed green salad with roasted butternut squash, walnuts, craisins and pumpkin seeds.  

Pumpkin Breads were the favors :)

Savanna had a blast playing in the ice and any water that had fallen....

For dessert, I of course had to go all out :)

I made chocolate chip ganache cookies, pumpkin cookies, chocolate cupcakes, pumpkin patch cake pops, and sour watermelons and pumpkins.  

Savanna had a personalized soy and dairy free pumpkin cake.  I took the fondant off before she dove in!

We cannot wait to celebrate again!

Zoe's Birthday Party!

Savanna's friend Zoe turn 1 a few weeks ago!  Unfortunately, my good friend Kristen's wedding was the same weekend so we had to miss the party.  Since we were unable to go to the party, I was excited that I could at least do the desserts.  Zoe's party was a farm animal theme and they even had a petting zoo there! Zoe's Mom and Dad went to HS with Chris.  They were a different year in school but last year we discovered that they live around the block from us which has been a lot of fun.  A girl from their HS has a beautiful photography company. She took all of the wonderful shots below.  You should check out the rest of the party here, along with with all of the other amazing work she does.  

Cow, Pig and Duck Fondant Cookies

Mini Animal Mixed Berry Pies

Zoe & 1 Cake Pops with mini cupcakes

I love this one of Zoe digging into her cake!

This is such a cute shot of all the other kids "helping" her :)

This is my favorite!

Memorial Day Recap and Drum Cakes

Hi!  As per usual, I am trying to catch up! I just realized I never wrote a 6 month update for Savanna so I will do a 6 and 7 month one next week :)  I know I keep saying this, but where does the time go??  After Kristen's shower the following weekend we had a lovely Mother's Day Weekend and the weekend following that I had Kristen's Bachelorette in Fort Lauderdale and then it was Memorial Day and we got back on Tuesday and I had to do a 1st birthday dessert table and the dessert table for Kristen's wedding in 3 1/2 days so now I am finally sitting down :)  

I wanted to start with sharing two Drum cakes I did in April and May. The first was a cake for a Fresh Beat Band theme party so I included the instruments from the other characters as well.  The second was for a little boys 1st birthday, I thought it was a unique and cute theme for a first birthday.  

I also wanted to share some pictures and details from our Memorial Day Trip.  For the last 4 years, Chris has spent Memorial Day studying for the CFA so we have not been able to really enjoy it.  I was really excited for this year, so we decided to spend some time down in Bethany Beach, Delaware where Chris's parents have a beach condo.  We were hoping since it was further south it would be nicer, but it ended up not really being a beach weekend.  His parents condo is in Sea Colony which is almost like a resort so we were saved with the indoor pool!  Savanna absolutely LOVED the indoor pool.  We have been doing swimming lessons for about 2 months now and I knew she enjoyed the water, but I think between her being older and spending even more time in the pool she just had a blast.  Chris's mom also got her a little pool that we filled with some water that she enjoyed.  Despite the bad weather it ended up being a good few days.  Although I will say babies are such creatures of habit, Savanna was a little cranky by the end and was so excited when she got home :) 

Fall Girls Parties!

I wanted to share some fun girl's cake's/parties that we did this past fall!

For Emily's birthday she had a 50's theme which I thought was so fun!  For their dessert table I made the cake, "ice-cream soda" cupcakes, record and poodle skirt cookies!

For Avery's birthday, I made a pinwheel cake!  I cannot take the credit for the idea though, her mom found the idea on pinterest and I loved it!

For Chloe's Birthday we made a ballet and flower themed cake for the little ballerina who turned 3 :)

This was for a little girl who wanted a "Fairy Princess Unicorn Cake"

This one was for a little girl who had her birthday in December!

Catching up!

Hope everyone is having a great week!  We celebrated our one year anniversary on Monday, I cannot believe it has been a year - time really does fly! I had saved the wedding cake topper I made for our cake pop tower and we had some on Monday night, it actually held up pretty good! 

Now that fall is officially here, I wanted to share the remainder of the summer projects I have not shown you!

This cake was for our good friend Jason's 30th Birthday Party!

An Animal Themed Baby Shower Cake

Alice in Wonderland Themed Cookies and Cupcakes

I Love NY Cupcakes!

A Pig Themed Birthday Cake :)

A Simple Bridal Shower Cake that was for one of my dear friends :)

Back to School!

I hope everyone had a fabulous Labor Day weekend!  It was a quiet one over here, so nothing too exciting to report.  I did some organzing for the baby and tested out some pumpkin recipes for the fall menu :)

School officially started this week and fall is here (altough it still feels like summer out there in the gross humidity), so I made a fun Back to School Basket that I wanted to share with you.  Good luck to my youngest niece, Monica starts her first say of pre-school today!

 

Barn Animals!

I recently had the pleasure of doing two fun barn animal parties that I wanted to show you :)

I was lucky that one of my customers sent me fabulous pictures of the dessert table they put together with the desserts I made.  Look how cute it was!

The sunflowers and chocolate pigs were from Jaques Torres

 

The Cupcakes!

The Cake close-up 

The second was a barn cake and cake pop barn animals :)

Fun Children's Cakes!

I have been terrible about updating you all with my most recent kreations!  Once the summer hits it always amazes me how fast time flies and how it is over before you know it!  I cannot believe it is almost August.  Over the next few weeks I am going to catch you up on some of my favorites from June and July (and even some from May that I never shared).  A lot of my photos are from Instagram which is the easiest way for me to capture my cakes before they are delivered (you can always follow me on Instagram as well @kristanwatson).  I am also thankful for those of you that send me fabulous pictures :) 

I have had a lot of creative request for tons of different children's cakes that I wanted to share with you today :)

The first is a cake based on the movie Where the Wild Things Are - I did cookies as favors for the party as well

The next was a fun Pirate Cake I did for a little boy who turned 2

The next was a fun LA Lakers Jersey Cake for a little boy who chose the design of the cake himself - his last name is Poses and he turned 8 which is the meaning behind the name and number on the back

This cake was definitely a fun challenge for me! This was for a little girl who just came back from India and loved the Taj Mahal so much she wanted that for her birthday cake! I cannot take credit for the design though as the mother sent me a picture she liked, but I was happy I could come close to what she wanted.  

The last are actually cupcakes that were for a Build a Bear Birthday Party 

Pippa's Dohl

One of my friends from JCrew threw her daugher an amazing Dohl, which is a Korean first birthday.  In regards to the scale and importance of the event, Korean first birthdays can be compared to a Bar/Bat Mitzvah or a Sweet Sixteen.  A large dessert table is one of the traditions in which I was excited to be apart of!  One of the other traditions is to lay items of signficance out and whichever one they pick is what determines their future.

The colors of the party were grey, pink and white and it was a bunny themed birthday since Pippa was born in the year of the Rabbit :)

This wonderful party was held at Bann Restaurant and all of the fabulous pictures below were captured by Mike Ngo Photography.

This is my favorite photo of the birthday girl!

Here she is determining her future!

A Bunny Cake Pop and Cupcake Tower

My Bunny Birthday Cake!

April and May Favorites!

I have been super behind in keeping you up to date with my projects so wanted to get you caught up!  I have been doing a lot more custom cakes which has been a lot of fun!  Hope you enjoy!  

A Zebra Cake with a Hot Pink Princess Crown

This was one of my favorites!  The birthday party was an Under the Sea theme at an Aquarium in Riverhead Long Island

A Simple and Pretty Cake for a Bridal Shower with Bow Cookies as Favors!

Hungry Hungry Caterpillar Cupcakes and Cake Pops!

A Baby Shower Stroller Cake that matched the invitation

I love getting inspiration from the invitations - this Sports Cake for a 2 year old boy also matched the invitation

Another Animal themed Party Cake!

Girly themed Cupcakes

A Girly Elmo Party!

I would say Elmo and Sesame Street are the most popularly requested theme for children's parties.  I had fun doing a girly version for an Elmo Party this past weekend.  They had a fun pizza party and they ordered these adorable centerpieces for the party from which I drew some inspiration from!  

February Fun!

February was an exciting month filled with a lot of small custom projects.  I have become obsessed with instagram! I have really enjoyed capturing all of the projects with it, so I wanted to share them with you here!  

Our wonderful wedding photographer, Maggie Harkov, posted some pictures from our wedding and I wanted to share those with you as well.  You can see them in her most recent blog :)

Minnie Mouse Cake Pops and Mini Cupcakes

"Cute as a Button" Baby Shower Cake

Blackberry Cake

Present Cake Pop

Valentine's Cookie Cake

Custom Valentine's Cake Pop Boxes

Abby Cadabby Cake Pops

Chinese New Year Cupcakes

Simple Football First Birthday Cake

Favors for a Twins Milk and Cookies Baby Shower

Fondant Baby Zoo Animals

I am very excited to show you the cakes I made for a birthday party yesterday! A college friend asked me to do cakes for her twin daughters' and nephew's 2nd birthday. The theme was baby animals and she sent this link over for guidance. I was thrilled to make these, especially since we had just seen all of these animals in person in Africa! I decided to make these extra special by doing them in 3-D as well. They were so much fun to Kreate!

Hanging out before they go on the cake :)

Strawberry Shortcake!

My youngest niece, Monica, celebrated her 3rd Birthday last weekend with a Strawbery Shortcake themed party! After the penguin, I decided I wanted to try a small 3d character.  She wasn't perfect and I learned a lot about making characters.  I was proud with my first try and happy that I can now offer this level of detail to others!  My sister made some fabulous cupcakes and an adorable cake for the Strawberry Shortcake to go on.  I also sent her strawberry cake pops, but she made the rest!  

My fabulous website designer and photographer, Raquel, designed the cupcake flags for the party.  She has started her own business you can see all of her wonderful work on her website Raquel Bianca!

Have a great weekend!

Brown Butter Pecan Cake and the Penguin

  In an earlier blog I told you about a client who requested a butter pecan cake with a caramel buttercream frosting (yummy!) for her daughter’s first birthday. To make things even more fun, she wanted the cake covered in an ice blue fondant with a giant penguin on top! Her daughter LOVES big, stuffed animals and penguins are her favorite so it made the perfect centerpiece. This was one of the most challenging projects I’ve worked on, as it was my first butter pecan cake and I’m just starting to learn how to make 3D characters.

  I began by researching butter pecan cakes in my cookbooks and online, but was very disappointed by the lack of info. Even Southern Living had the same recipe as Allrecipes.com. Reviewers on All Recipes criticized the recipe for creating a cake that was dry and heavy. To fix this problem, some bakers reduced the flour while others added sour cream. I decided to reduce the flour and add cornstarch to make a cake flour (see note below) to create a lighter cake. I also used some sour cream to add moistness.

  The recipe instructed you to toast the pecans with the butter in a pan. I am not sure if my pan was too small but I ended up burning the pecans.  I decided to take a few extra steps and do it all separately.  I toasted the pecans in the oven first and then browned the butter in a pan by itself to give it a nutty flavor. Next, I mixed the butter with the pecans off the heat.  This was a few more steps but it worked perfectly and I think the brown butter added some extra depth in flavor.  The end result was great and I received a happy approval from a real Southerner!  

     This cake would be perfect for a dinner party if it was made into a simple bundt cake and drizzled with caramel (you may see this on the holiday 2012 menu :).  Since this was a birthday party, it was made into a layer cake with a rich caramel buttercream.  I simply added the caramel sauce to my go-to swiss buttercream was thrilled with the fabulous results!  

     Creating the penguin was great fun! The internet is full of instructions for building small penguins but I was on my own building the perfect large penguin. My first try was with all fondant, but the base was too large and the body kept shrinking lower until it looked like a VERY fat penguin:) I decided to next try making her out of Rice Krispies, as I had successfully done for my Thomas the Train topper. I recently learned a trick from a TV cake show suggesting you cover the Rice Krispies with buttercream BEFORE putting the fondant on to make it smoother. It definitely worked! It was slightly harder to handle but came out smoother than the truck had. After I figured out her body, the rest was fairly simple and I loved the way she came out:)

Brown Butter Pecan Cake (adapted from All Recipes)

1 1/4 cups butter

2 cups chopped pecans

2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

1/4 cup corn starch

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups white sugar

4 eggs

1 cup milk

1/4 cup sour cream

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions

1. Grease two 8 or 9 inch round pans and line them with parchment paper.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Spread pecans on a parchment lined baking sheet and toast the pecans for 10 minutes, let cool and chop finely in food processor. 
3. Melt 1/4 cup butter in heavy skillet over medium heat and cook until it starts turning a light brown color and spelling nutty.  Watch closely because the butter can burn fast.  Add the pecans to the butter and fold them together.  Make sure the pecans are fully coated with butter
4. Sift flour with baking powder and salt into a bowl. 
5. Cream the remaining butter (1 cup) with the sugar in your mixer with the paddle attachment.  Beat at medium speed until light and fluffy (3-5 mins).
6. At medium speed blend in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. 
7. At low speed add sifted dry ingredients alternately with milk and vanilla extract.  
8. Stir in the buttered pecans and make sure to fully incorporate.
9. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until cake springs back when lightly touched in center.
10. Let cool 10 minutes and then flip your cakes onto parchment paper to cool
11. To assemble your cake start with leveling your layers.  Place each layer on a cake stand and cut off the domed top of the cake with a serrated knife. (I recently bought these rings and they are my life saver).  
12. Next place the first layer (flat side down) on your cake stand and fill with a layer of buttercream (about 1/4 cup - it is really personal preference).  
13. Next place your second layer on top with the flat side up
14. Cover the entire cake with a thin layer of your buttercream and place in the refrigerator for 20 minutes (this is what is called the crumb coat, it does not have to be perfect it just holds in the crumbs that form from leveling the cake and creates a base to cover the cake.
15. After the 20 minutes are finished you finish frosting your cake with your desired look

Caramel Swiss Buttercream

4 large egg whites

1 cup of sugar

2 1/2 sticks of butter (20 tablespoons)

1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 cup caramel sauce

1. Whisk egg whites and sugar together in a large glass bowl over a pot of simmering water.
2. Whisk occasionally until you cannot feel the sugar granules when you rub the mixture between your fingers.  
3. Transfer the mixture into the your mixer and whip until it turns white and about doubles in size (10 minutes).  Make sure no water gets into the egg whites!
4. Add the vanilla
5. Turn the mixer down slightly and add the butter in small pieces on a medium to high speed, work quickly and continue to whip.  Once all the butter is in turn the speed up to high and continue to whip until it comes together.  THe mixture will curdle first but do not stop, continue to whip and I promise it will come together (could take up to 10 minutes)!
6. Once it is all together, add the caramel and blend until fully incorporated.  

Note:

To make cake flour you can replace two tablespoons of flour with cornstarch for every cup of flour. 

Mikey's First Birthday

In the beggning of December our friend's Mike and Kate celebrated their son Mikey's 1st Birthday!  Kate put together an adorable vintage fire truck party and I was excited to create the desserts!  He loved his cake so much he went in head first :)

Lady bugs!!

Just wanted to share some mini cupcakes and cake pops I did for a little girl's birthday!

Hope you are having a great week!

Rocco's 1st Birthday!

My parent's neighbors son turned 1 this past weekend and I was thrilled to be making the treats.  It was a baseball themed party with hot dogs, popcorn and cotton candy just like when you go to a game!  I made him a cake, baseball cake pops, cupcakes, and chocolate chip ganache cookies.

smores..............

Second to ice-cream smores are favorite summer dessert, but you don't make them as much as an adult (which is why there is a smores cookie on my menu).  Since my nieces were in town I thought it would be a fun activity for them and I could be a child again and enjoy some smores :)They had curlers in their hair since my shower was on Sunday :)

Since the smores were so good, I started to think about other ways I could make a smore since one is not always in front of a fire.  So I made a smores k-pop with marshmallow mixed into a vanilla cake dipped in chocolate and coated in graham cracker crumbs.  

Then I made a smores pie pop filled with marshmallow and chocolate and a little graham crumbs.  Finally I made a smores push pops with crushed graham crackers, chocolate ganache and fluff (note: if I do again I would use my graham cookies).My smores cookie :)