Tree of Life 60th Birthday Cake!

This week I did a cake for a returning client of mine-Belinda Silber. She was having a big party for her 60th birthday, and wanted a 'tree of life' themed cake for the event. She wanted A LOT of information on this cake, and for good reason! It was really important to her to have something that was very personal.
After skimming through the emails with details of each decade of her life, I picked out some highlights and decided to go with 5 plaques surrounding the bottom tier, each designed after a different decade. The one in the front represented the 70's for example... where she enjoyed the disco generation for a while, I put a disco floor background. She moved to chicago, and had her son Byron, so I put his name in baby blocks. The 60's were very important to her. She was heavily involved in the civil rights movement, loved Motown, and the British invasion, among many other things.
She listed over a dozen AMAZING places that she's gotten the chance to visit. Instead of going crazy with all of them, I decided to just depict an African sunset theme on the top tier--as this was a highlight for her. The topper is the tree with the running vines down the cake, and her two cats--who are returning characters from a previous cake I made for her husband last year. A little arrow sign with 'happy birthday' slapped on and the cake is finito. :o]

It was hard not to make the cake really busy, so i tried to make every detail as simple as possible. I was nervous that this would be a flaw for my client, but I couldn't have asked for a better reaction. She balled for a good five minutes running around the cake and pointing out every little detail. She was so happy, and so naturally-I was ecstatic.


All in all, a really good week. Another fun cake, can't wait for the next one. Happy Birthday, Belinda!


Till next time,
Kim

Big Tasting- MO' Petites

This tasting had a LOT of components. The usual-we needed less than 10 pieces of each pastry, but with so many different options--there's a whole lot of work to get er done!

There we're some plated desserts too.. whoops! No pictures. :o[


On another note- I started doing bread order at work! Control your excitement, please!
What a complete mind-trip. As simple as the daily process of ordering bread may seem, this is so... so very wrong. I am currently dealing with the frightening combination of dozens upon dozens of different types of bread, two different bread companies, needing to know item numbers and quantities they come in, what the bread looks like-and worst of all--knowing WHEN to bring the bread in. But I wont bore you further with the details..
THANKFULLY I have a wonderful teacher, my coworker Keith, who will most likely murder me in the back room sometime soon as I am asking so many questions--but, in the meant time-- thank youuu!
Its simply something you need to just do over and over again till you get the hang out it, but until then--yikes!


Till next time!
Kim

Les Petites!

My favorite thing about my job just happens to be the most nit-picky part: Individualizing desserts.
Creating tons of bite-size portioned sweets, instead of family meal style is so much more fun and detailed. We have an ever-growing assortment of petite sweets; As with everything else, the menu for this little guys are seasonal for the most part, and we have a dozen ways to make each one.

These are just pictures of some recent tastings and parties with petites I see all the time...

For the curious:

*Macaroons (naturally... and Barbie PINK!),
*Phyllo cups (Layers of phyllo dough molded into little cups, they are then filled with both a custard and a compote, then topped with baked kataiffi-or shredded phyllo dough),
*Truffle pops (these happened to be filled with a chambord raspberry ganache),
*Limoncello and raspberry shortcake with a white chocolate mascarpone mousse,
*Pate a fruit pops (Fruit puree cooked a very long time to a very high temperature with a LOT of sugar until it becomes gummy and solidifies at room temperature. The best way to describe it.. would be sort of like a gummy candy or fruit roll-up... except so much better.),
*Nutella roulade (Basically a very thin, flexible sponge cake that is rolled with a nutella butter cream filling, covered in candied hazelnuts, then portioned out into individual rolls and two plaquettes of chocolate are placed on each side),
*Strawberry semifreddo pops (A strawberry flavored meringue based-mousse with added gelatin is piped in to tube molds, stuck with lolli sticks, frozen, and then dipped in white chocolate),
*Baileys creme delice (Milk chocolate baileys mouse pave with a flourless cake base, is portioned in to small cylinder petites and garnished with a dark chocolate plaquette, creme brulee savarin, and a piece of candied orange peel),
*Salted caramel turtles



Till next time!
Kim