Skyline in Full Bloom - Top of the Garden Event

I had the pleasure of being apart of the Skyline in Full Bloom Wedding Event that was hosted and designed by Roey Mizarhi Events.  It was held at Top of the Garden which is wonderful space on the 16th floor of the Historic Rehearsal Recording Arts building that connects to a beautiful rooftop! Roey put together an incredibly fun evening and a wonderful group of wedding vendors which are listed below. Thanks to Allan Zepeda for the amazing pictures!  

Roey Mizrahi Events • Elan Artists • MirrorMirror Designs • Hushed Commotion • RCANO Events Catering • Amber Gress Photography • The Booth • Blade Floral and Event Design • Sugar Flower Cake Shop • SB Beauty • Nectar Imports • Extensions by Jill • The Chocolate Nation • Dynamic Drape and Decor • Robert Stark Lighting • Bonobos • Sarah Jassir Bridal • The Cocktail Guru/Wedding Cocktail Design 
Ruth Fischl High End Event Rentals• Hitch Switch • Kreated by K• Mustard Lane•Weditors Video & Photography•Grande Harvest Wines•Van Gogh Vodka

A Pumpkin Weekend!

Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend (some a 3 day weekend :)).  We did some baby organizing; the nursery is just about done and my bags are packed!  With the chilly fall weather arriving I was craving pumpkin all weekend!  I made some yummy pumpkin oatmeal topped with dried cranberries and walnuts for breakfast. I shared my recipe below!  

In honor of Columbus day I made a large pot of sauce and meatballs on Sunday and we had some friends over to catch up.  I made these pumpkin cookies for dessert that were a huge hit!  They are fluffy and more cake like than cookie.  I made half the batch with chocolate chips and half without, guess which ones went first :)  

Note: I did not use a mixer and did everything in one bowl (mix all dry ingredients and add wet in and they came out great).   I also used half brown sugar and half white sugar and used almost a cup of chips for half the batch so I would advice using 1 1/2 - 2 cups of chocolate chips if you are a chocolate lover!

Pumpkin Oatmeal - Serves 2

1 cup Oats

1 3/4 cup of Water

2 tbs Wheat Germ

1/2 cup Pumpkin

1/4 cup Brown Sugar

1 tsp Cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 tbs dried cranberries and chopped walnuts to top (optional)

1. Measure all ingredients into a small saucepan

2. Make sure they are mixed well

3. Cook 5-6 minutes, occasionally stirring

4. Divide the portions and top with cranberries and walnuts

5. Enjoy!

KbyK Fall & Holiday Update!

We cannot believe its already October! As many of you know, we are expecting our first baby, a girl:), later this month.  Don't you worry though! KbyK has some talented helpers so we will be open all fall.  Kristan will still be taking and designing all orders, with two very well trained bakers helping in the kitchen to Kreate yummy fall treats.  Please get all November orders in 48-72 hours before your desired pickup.  See below for fun pics from recent events:)  As always, THANK YOU for all your continued support. We look forward to serving all your holiday needs at the same high level you have come to expect.
Happy Fall!

Wedding Towers

I have been honored to be apart of numerous weddings over the last two months.  I wanted to share some pictures of dessert towers I did for two of them.  Both brides wanted to have a cake for the ceremonial cutting of the cake, but did want a 4 tier cake.  I helped them design a tower that allowed them to have a cake (small) and have some fun cake pops and cupcakes along with it.  

I will share some more fun and unique weddings next week!

 

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 :)

A Weekend of Weddings!

Happy Monday everyone! I hope everyone had a great weekend, with this lovely weather I do not know how you could not :) It was a perfect weekend for weddings!  One of my best friends got married in Westerly, RI and it was an absolutely perfect and incredibly fun wedding!  I was so honored to be the Matron of Honor (same friend as the garden party shower) and stand up for Caitlin! Unfortunately, my husband was in one of our best friends weddings this weekend as well (a lovely spring bridal shower) that I was very sad to miss.  My lovely photographer Raquel also got married this weekend!  I was also honored to do two of the grooms cakes which I shared below (sorry I did not get the best pictures of these).  

Congrats to all of the newlyweds!

Caitlin's Wedding in Westerly, RI

The Grooms Cake - The Groom has his pilot's license and this is the plane he flies!

Carol and Joe's Wedding in Manhasset, NY

The Grooms Cake - His Golf Bag (I included a cartoon drawing of them on a "head cover".  He played lacrosse at Hopkins and she played lacrosse at UVA).

My Baby Shower

I hope everyone had as wonderful of a weekend as I did!  The Grandma's to be and my sister threw me a truly amazing shower this past Sunday at Bottino, I could of not asked for anything better!  The weather was perfect since they have a garden attached to their party room.  I have also been to a bridal shower at Bottino and both times they did an incredible job.  I highly recommend them if you are looking for a shower venue in NYC.  I was so blessed to have so many of my friends and family there and I cannot thank everyone enough for their generosity.  

I designed the cakes, but my trusty assistant made them for me (so the business is in good hands for when I have to take a short break :) ).  

I loved the favors my sister did .  She found this adorable favor idea on pinterest, "It's a Girl OPI nail polish", unfortunately I did not get a good picture of it.  

Now, hopefully she will be born before Halloween (my due date is October 28th), since she has so many adorable outfits to wear for her first Halloween!  She even has a costume, thanks to her cousin that was born 8 years ago in October :)

Hope everyone is enjoying this amazing fall weather!

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!

 

The Northfork and Chocolate Chip Muesli Cookies

Hope everyone is enjoying the last few lazy days of summer before the craziness of the fall kicks in.  Although, as much as I love the beach I must say I do love when everyone returns to the city and not having to pack all the time!  This past weekend we had a lovely day in Southold, which is on the north fork of Long Island.  In the past we have spent a lot of time on the South Fork, but this summer we had two glorious days on the North Fork.  It is a lot quieter and less crowded on the North Fork which is a nice change of pace.  While out there this weekend we visited some of the wineries and farm stands, which I love to do!  For those of you who do not know I am 7 months pregnant so I did not get to enjoy too much of the wine, but I still love the atmosphere and to learn about wine.  I have been to a few wineries on the North Fork before, but this is the first time I visited Croteaux, which is a must if you make it out there, limos and buses are not allowed so it has different feel than the others.  They only sell Rose, which is not always my favorite, but my fellow companions told me it was delightful on a summer afternoon.  They have what they call their tasting Barn and it feels like you walked into the French countryside when you step in.  

Now on to the cookies, we stayed at a friends on Saturday night and for breakfast we had some Muesli.  While eating I noticed a recipe for Chocolate Chip Muesli Cookies.  I immediately wanted to try them, they were whole wheat, heart healthy and had no butter!  What made them even better is they only required one bowl and no mixer (I don't have a mixer at home).  I have been enjoying sweet treats while I am pregnant, but I try to make them healthy for around the house since I am surrounded by butter the rest of the day :)  I was very happy I tried them out, they tasted like a chocolate chip oatmeal cookie and you really did not miss the butter.  I recommend them if you are looking for a sweet, but healthy treat :)

Chocolate Chip Muesli Cookies (from Bob's Red Mill Muesli)

1 cup Bob's Red Mill Muesli

3/4 cup Whole Wheat Flour

2/3 cup Applesauce

3/4 cup Brown Sugar

6 oz Chocolate Chips (I have the dark chunks from whole foods)

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1/2 tsp Salt

1/2 tsp Vanilla

1 Egg

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375.

2. Sift Flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt together.

3. Add in applesauce, vanilla and the egg.

4. Mix until well combined and all of flour is absorbed.

5. Fold in Muesli and Chocolate Chips.

6. Drop teaspoons full on a baking sheet (about 12 per sheet).

7. Bake 10-12 minutes.

Yield - 24 Cookies

Little Miss Party Planner Events

Hope everyone is having a fabulous August week!  I wanted to share some of the treats I made for the wonderful parties that Little Miss Party Planner put together this spring and summer.  I have included the links for each party so you can check out their entire spread and beautiful decorations!

For a 30th birthday party on a boat in April, I made mini lemon meringue tarts, white chocoalte covered oreos, cheesecake pops AND the cake.  The birthday boy loved Kite Surfing :) LMP did a such a great job with the nautical theme.

For a 40th brithday party I made some fun cupcakes with an old photo from when the birthday boy was little as well as some 40 cake pops!  Don't you just love the way LMP displays everything!?!

For Seri's (one of the LMP owners), son's bris she put together an amazing party only a week after she gave birth!  This had a fun "Got Milk" theme and she used some pictures that were captured in the hospital.  I made "Got Milk" cookies, cupcakes, cow cake pops and some white chocolate covered oreos with an L for Luke! 

 For a lovely rustic bridal shower, I made some chocolate espresso cookies, pie pops and purple glitter cake pops!

 

We both share the same wonderful and talented photographer, Raquel, from Raquel Bianca Creative, and Raquel's sisters asked LMP to plan her Bridal Shower.  LMP centered the theme around Long Beach Island, where they are getting married, but added in a lot of cool camera props as well :)  If you check out Raquel's website you can see her cool paper design that she did for her wedding. For the party I had the pleasure of making some mini pie tarts, chocolate espresso cookies and some really cool camera cookies!

  

A Garden Bridal Shower

I am honored to be the Maid (Matron :) ) of Honor in one of my best friend's from college weddings.  Caitlin's family is from Toronto, so I had the pleasure of planning her bridal shower in New York City.  Since most of her family lives in Toronto or other parts of the country it was a small, intimate shower.  I decided to have it at Bobo in their garden room.  Bobo did an amazing job, the food was incredible and the service was impeccable.  Grace, who is the event planner there, was extremely helpful throughout the whole process and our servers were over the top attentive without being over-bearing!  The garden room holds up to 35 people, but they have other rooms that hold more.  

Me, Caitlin and her Mom!

I decided to do the flowers myself (I found the idea on pinterest) and they were really easy and inexpensive DIY project.

I put together a small dessert table.  Caitlin hates chocolate so much I thought she was allergic to it the first few years that I knew her.  One of her favorite things to eat is a peanut butter and banana, sooooo I decided to make a banana cake with peanut butter buttercream for her. She loves candy so I made sure there was plenty of candy and had a few chocolate chip cookies for the other guests :)

As the favors I made mini peach pie jars since we have had such a great peach season!  

Isn't the space just great!

They had fresh fruit, croissants and banana bread on the tables.  We had burgers, a salad and two different egg dishes.  They continued to bring out fresh dishes :)

Shimmer NYC

At the NY Magazine Wedding Event I had the pleasure of meeting the woman behind Shimmer NYC.  It is a new event planning and production company based in NYC.  They can help you with any type of an event and assist with planning from the beginning stages all they way through the end for onsite management.  I recently did a cake for them for a lovely 40th birthday party they put together.  I shared some photos below.  Head to the website, ShimmerNYC or drop her a line at nancy@shimmernyc.com.  

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 :)

Bridal Showers

I wanted to share some pretty bridal showers I have done over the past few months.  I have been expanding and trying to learn some sugar flowers.  These are very basic for now, but glad I can offer them and will hopefully continue to teach myself some more :) 

I really love simple cakes with a pop of design (which here is the flowers)

This was a lovely shower hosted in a home in northern Westchester.  They were great and sent me a lot of pictures :)

The Whole Spread!

I did the desserts for the dessert table and they did a fabulous job putting it together.  There were a variety of mini sandwich cookies, berry pie bars, cupcakes, cakepops and mini peach and berry tarts!

This is not a great picture but I wanted to show you the cute cupcake designs upclose.  The bride to be just got a scooter and the invitation had a scooter and balloons on it so we matched it with the cupcakes.  

Look how beautiful the tables were and such cute favors!

These were cupcakes for a shower that I put their edible logo on

Another simple cake with some edible sunflowers (sorry also not a great picture!)

 Another simple yet elegant bridal shower cake with flowers :)

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 

Graduations!

Hope everyone had a fabulous 4th of July holiday!  I wanted to share some graduation cakes and cupcakes that I made over the month of June.  

This was a cupcake tower for an 8th grade graduation.  THe cupcakes had an S for The Spence School, books and graduation caps.

This was another 8th Grade Graduation - A Cake was in order this time :)

  

My brother in law became a Doctor of Physical Therapy - so I was excited to make him a cake to celebrate!

 

These were just some mini cupcakes with graduation caps :)

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!

Cookie Place Cards

My cousin Christine is getting married this August and her Bridal Shower was this past weekend (Christine is on the left and her sister Jennifer is on the right).  

My Aunt asked if I could create something with cookies for the place cards.  My cousin loves sweets especially chocolate!  So I decided to make chocolate sandwich cookies with a nutella cream filling.  I placed the table number on the cookie and attached a tag with the person's name on it.  I was excited with how they came out!  

My cousin Liz has a baking business as well and my Aunt asked her to do cupcake bouquets for the centerpieces which came out fabulous.  She gave everyone cups and bags to take the cupackes home with them which I thought was very clever.  The cupcake fit perfectly, nice and snug.  I had placed mine in my bag and it didn't budge from the cup, it traveled really well!

Healthy Raisin Bran Cookies

My husband studied his butt off for the CFA for months and his head did not leave the books over memorial day weekend (the last weekend before the test).  I decided to make him some healthy cookies to munch on while he was studying.  I figured the fiber would keep him full and focused!  I saw the recipe on the back of a Post Raisin Bran box.  I changed it up just slightly.  The original recipe called for regular flour, I figured if we were being healthy we should go all the way so I used white whole wheat flour.  I did not have brown sugar at home so I just used regular granulated sugar and it worked great.  I added an extra teaspoon of cinnamon for flavor which I think they needed and dried cherries instead of apricots which is just personal preference :)  The dried fruit is optional, but I think the cookies need it!

Bran Fruit & Nut Cookies (adapted from Post Raisin Bran Box) 

1/2 cup Granulated Sugar

1/4 cup Oil

2 Tbsp Water

2 egg whites

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups Post Raisin Bran Cereal

1 cup white whole wheat flour

1/4 cup chopped walnuts

1/3 cup dried cherries

Preheat oven to 350

1. In a large bowl whisk the egg whites, sugar, oil, and water.

2. Mix in the cinnamon, baking soda, salt, flour and cereal and mix until well blended.

3. Add in the walnuts and dried fruit.

4. Drop tablespoons of the dough about 2 inches apart on a parchment lined cookie sheet.  

5. Bake 10-12 minutes and let cool.

Makes about 15-20 cookies

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