Dessert: Tangled Dessert Table - Cake pops & cupcakes

Event: Natalie’s 2nd Birthday

Flavors:  Purple velvet cupcakes, Lemon cake pops and Chocolate cake pops

My beautiful god-daughter, Natalie, turned 2 years old this December.  We held her birthday party at mi casa and had a few people over to celebrate her special day.  Of course, I wanted to make a couple of desserts for her.  The theme of the party was the movie “Tangled.”  I think I love that movie just as much as Natalie does.  I could watch it multiple times in one day.  I thought it would be cute to do some cake pops and arrange them as if they were the floating lanterns from the movie.  I did a few different shapes and colors and had to arrange them on an upside-down styrofoam cone.  My problem was—“how the heck do I stand this thing up and support the weight of all the pops?”  My brilliant boyfriend thought of sticking the cone onto my paper towel holder stand and it worked amazingly! Thank you smart boyfriend! I also made some “purple velvet cupcakes” to keep with the purple and yellow Tangled theme.  Same red velvet recipe but made them purple.  I decorated these with some flags that spell out “Happy Birthday Natalie” and they also had the sun image from the movie on the back of each flag.  I think Natalie enjoyed her day and all her gifts from her family!

Dessert: Chocolate Hello Kitty Cake

Event: Jackie’s Birthday

Flavors:  Chocolate cake w/ chocolate ganache filling

Ange asked me for a similar chocolate cake for her friend, Jackie, the same weekend that I made the penguin cake.  This time, she wanted a simple Hello Kitty face on top to decorate the cake.  It was a small cake for a little get together that Ange was having with her college BFFs.  Didn’t get a chance to take many pictures, but Ange sent over these for me.  

Dessert: Chocolate Penguin Cake

Event: Holly’s Birthday

Flavors:  Chocolate cake w/ chopped hazelnuts and chocolate ganache filling

Repeat customer and darling friend, Angela, requested a cake for her sister’s birthday.  Ange asked if I could do something with penguins and the fact that Holly is a new mom.  I decided to do a mama, papa, and baby penguin with a couple of little extra decorations.  I loved the way these came out =).

 Dessert: Berry Charlotte, Cranberry Opal, Whisky Dome, Naranjita, Ruby Slipper, Burnished Apple, Lemon-Blackbery Mousse

Event: Workshop 3 - Modern cake methods, mousse cakes, entremets

My final workshop consisted of mostly mousse cakes.  These cakes require a lot of finesse and are extremely delicate.  They are built in phases and frozen between each step.  These cakes are definitely “ooh-la-la” worthy because they have a lot of surprises inside and the exterior decorations are much more refined.  We were able to use chocolate sprays, glazes, frozen inserts, fruit chips, isomalt decorations, molds, and tempered chocolate.  Much of the technique that we learned was pretty repetitive but it was nice knowing that you could use the same techniques in so many different ways.  It helps to have a bunch of different molds to give the cakes character.  I’m excited to recreate these cakes again in the near future =). 

 Dessert: Carrot cake, Black Forest cake, Chocolate Peanut Butter layer cake, Inakati (pineapple) roll, Fraisier cake, Sacher torte, Opera cake, Princess cake, & cupcakes.

Event: Workshop 2 - Cake Bases, Creams & Composition @ the San Francisco Baking Institute

Remember the first workshop I took at the beginning of October?  Well here’s a little info about my second workshop.  This week-long course focused on fat-based and foam-based cakes and different ways to structure them.  We also experimented with different types of frostings and coatings.  I liked this course because it really provided a lot of hands-on experience with different types of cakes. Learned a lot of new things and was able to practice the things that I taught myself as well.  =)  Check out more pics on the Freakin Sweet Bakery FB fan page.

Dessert: Bridal Shower Dessert Table

Event: Susan’s Bridal Shower

Flavors:  Angel food cupcakes w/ mango whipped cream, Ube mochi, Blueberry macarons w/ ginger filling, and Green tea macarons w/ green tea filling.

My mom has a tight-knit group of tennis gal pals.  One of them was getting married so they decided throw her a bridal shower.  Of course mi madre asks for any kind of desserts that I can throw together so I decided on some cupcakes, mochi and macarons in flavors that I felt like they would appreciate.  (This event was this past June but my dad had the pictures so I am only able to post them now).  I saw a DIY tutorial on some decorative poms and thought it’d be cute to try [http://www.6bittersweets.com/2011/05/diy-pom-pom-cupcake-topper-tutorial-and.html]

Dessert: A whole lotta stuff! Cookies, brownies, pound cake, meringues, angel food cake, cheesecake, lemon tarts, madelines, financiers, fruit tarts, muffins, scones, rustic tarts, and more.

Event: Workshop 1 - Exploring the Ingredients @ the San Francisco Baking Institute

A few months ago I had signed up for some baking workshops at the San Francisco Baking Institute in South San Francisco.  Had my first workshop last week and it was CAH-RAZYYY! Every day from 8am - 4pm—baking baking baking!  We did a lot more than I thought we would do.  It a little bit of lecture tied in with a LOT of hands on experience.  SFBI has the most amazing teaching kitchen and they really are not afraid of letting you use every machine, tool and pan laying around…and they have an abundance of everything you can imagine there.  It was like a baker’s playground.  I was able to use all this industrial-grade equipment that I never thought I’d be allowed to touch! haha.  My instructor, Juliette, was seriously the most awesome person ever. I want her to be my bff!  She knew her stuff and seemed really passionate about everything she taught.  She’ll be a great resource for the future in case I have any questions.  Every day we took home an plethora of desserts—it was heaven! But not for the waistline =). I will be taking two more workshops in the next few weeks and I look forward to her being the instructor again.  Here are a few pics from the experience.  I took so darn many that it’s a shame I can’t post them all.  Check out the Freakin Sweet Facebook page for the album of more pictures [http://www.facebook.com/FreakinSweetBakery].  All I can say was this experience was amazing and that I’ve never had so much butter, sugar, flour, and eggs in one week!! Bring on Workshop 2 & 3!!

Dessert: Twilio Mini Cupcakes (again and again)

Event: Twilio DreamForce, Twilio Tech Crunch Disrupt & Twilio Sales Con

Flavors: Red Velvet mini cupcakes w/ cream cheese frosting & gumpaste hand-painted logos

TWILIO TWILIO TWILIO TWILIO.  Been saying and hearing a lot of that name for weeks now.  =)  Back in July I had made an order of 300 mini cupcakes for Twilio.  My friend Gene works for the company and hooked it up big time by getting me that gig.  He tells me a few weeks later that he has 3 big events coming up and needs 350 for the first, 300 for the second, and 500 for the last event.  That’s a whole lotta cupcake and logo making!  I was hesitant because the logos were pretty time consuming since each one was hand painted but I figured that I had time to really plan ahead and so I committed to the orders.  I can now say that all three events are completed and mission accomplished.  However, not only did I have the cupcakes to make but boyfriend Justin was screen printing tshirts for the Twilio Sales Con as well so I was helping him with that.  With these crazy orders we’ve barely been getting any sleep but we were finally able to deliver our products to the Sales conference yesterday and had the biggest sigh of relief (and a pitcher of sangria to congratulate ourselves).  Gene let us in to the conference to get a glimpse of what all our hard work was for which was a nice cherry on top.  BIG HUMUNGO thanks to Gene and Twilio for using Freakin Sweet Bakery and Apparel Canvas Screen Printing =).  The pics are of some of my cupcakes, deliveries to the Twilio office and the Sales Conference and some of Apparel Canvas’ work.  

Dessert: Wedding Dessert Table

Event: Kim & Edward’s Wedding

Flavors:  Red Velvet cupcakes w/ cream cheese frosting, Vanilla cupcakes w/ vanilla frosting, Almond macarons with mocha ganache, Vanilla cake pops, and chocolate cake pops.

Mariel’s cousin Kim was getting married to her longtime boyfriend Edward.  Mariel was asked to be the maid of honor and of course she reached out to me for a dessert table.  She’s the best! Kim & Edward’s color scheme was black and white.  They had such a classic wedding and it was held at the beautiful Kohl Mansion in Burlingame.   MAJOR MAJOR shout out to my wonderful family and friends for helping a sistah out with this large order (hundreds of cupcakes and pops—gah!).  Mom, Dad, Justin, Christina, Marko, and Theresa — each one of them is a super star and I could not have done this without them.  Seriously. =)  Justin, Christina, Marko and I went to deliver the desserts and set up the table and we caught a glimpse of the beautiful couple and also the beautiful maid of honor =).  A very fulfilling finish to a long week of baking.