I Heart Cake! I Heart You!

Happy Friday everyone! and happy weekend of Valentine's Day-ish love. Love comes in many forms... relationships, friends, family... so treasure those who are close to you. I'm sending posi-love-rays through the internet to you all right now... and with this cake!

I love this cake! Elle Girl Korea contacted little old Coco Cake to make a super cute cake for their 8th anniversary issue, along with a little mini spread on Coco Cake's cake work. Kinda crazy and kinda cool right! Will be the first time I'll see my cakes in a glossy magazine. Ooooh I can't wait to get it in the mail! I'll be monitoring the mailbox come March! And of course I also have my doubts that it will even make it into the magazine?? The cruel hard world of publishing... ^__^ Even if it doesn't make the cut, I still have these ADORABLE pictures to show you!

Since I was making this cake for a photoshoot, I had to give it away ... and what better place to give it away to than my other place of work, Arts Umbrella... where I teach art to crazy little kiddies! Fun! Let's just say surprise cake in the afternoon was received rather well... !

The cake was vanilla with raspberry syrup, and vanilla buttercream. I felt compelled to make the layers different shades of pink... I love the surprise of a white cake, and inside a gorgeous colour spectrum! Going to experiment with some natural colouring ideas. My fellow cakers/readers out there, anyone have any suggestions? Beet juice? Raspberry puree? Anyone had any luck with these?

Happy Weekend to you all! And to local Vancouverites, there's still time to order a special little party box of cupcake delights for your loved ones -- email lyndsay@cococake.com!

xo Lyndsay

Lovepup & Dog Cake - Nuts About Pups

Haha... Some dog themes going down at Coco Cake HQ lately. First, an invitation from Chatelaine.com to create a "Valentine's themed" cupcake for their 14 Days of Valentines Cupcakes feature. Forgoing the usual hearts and flowers route, I made a funny little dog-faced lovepup cupcake. Say that five times! Pretty darn fun feature idea, over 14 days they reveal a new "cupcake" as created by one of 14 bakers across Canada. Fun to see all the other creations! Coco Cake's lovepup was revealed on Day 2!

Along with the lovepup, I also recently made a dark chocolate mocha woofer cake for the lovely Nishidha, wife of Sandeep, to celebrate her birthday! Sandeep told me she wants a dog so this was his way of appeasing her wishes... ! Rich dark chocolate ganache filling and chocolate mocha buttercream piped hairy-style all over!

And on a final doggish/ridiculous note, as my family and some friends will remember, Coco Cake sole proprietor and boss hog LKS has a real thing for Pound Puppies. This video makes me laugh so hard... I'm ridiculous. I think it's the extra funky bassline and the dog panting sounds. But I do remember watching this cartoon on Saturday mornings surrounded by my Pound Puppies!!!

Cake A Doodle Doo... Recent Coco Cakeing!

Coco Cake at Indie I Do!

Make a statement without saying a word! Did anyone out there love Sassy magazine like I did as a teen? I remember my older sister buying them when she started high school, and me getting to take a peak at them, along with poring through her high school annuals and dreaming about my own high school experience that was yet to come...

Sassy magazine was like an early teen bible for my friends and I... it was feminist without being outrightly so, it taught young women about self-esteem and being strong and following their dreams. It had amazing fashion and true life stories (It Happened To Me) and real advice for real problems that young women faced. It didn't candycoat readers with a typified tween existence of boys and prom and weight loss. It gave young women confidence and the power to think for themselves. Of course as a teenaged girl you still want to feel pretty and be liked and have crushes and dream about boys (or girls) and so on. Sassy was a perfect balance for that - allowing girls to be teens but empowering them at the same time.

So yes, I was a proud reader of Sassy!! And within the pages of Sassy there were always ads for Exclamation! perfume... with the tagline "Make a statement without saying a word!" The colour scheme was always black and white stripes or polkadots, with a splash of pink! Very late 1980s/early 1990s... so this was my visual inspiration for this year's Indie I Do wedding fair!

I've been wanting to make one of these adorable cupcake wrapper garlands ever since I saw it online here! So with the colour inspiration in mind, I sat at my table with This American Life playing in the background and strung together a lovely, fluffy, crinkly garland of black, white and pink. I also made a super cute new Coco Cake sign in pink and grey (two colours that are so pretty together, and, let's face it, 1980s!) and then made oodles of flags to go with it all. My favourite thing is to make things matchy and designy - I had lots of fun doing this!

For the cupcakes, I made light pink rosette buttercream topped vanilla cupcakes in silver wrappers, dark chocolate cupcakes in pink gingham wrappers and dark chocolate cupcakes with white vanilla creamcheese frosting blobettes. Pink carnations rounded out the late 1980s vibe for my Coco Cake wedding display table!!

I had a blast and a half at the wedding fair, partying it up with my amazing friend Sharon. We met lots of great brides and grooms, chuckled it up with some fellow wedding vendors and met lots of new friends too. All in all a great event!

(last photograph of my table by the amazing Jeanie Ow!)

Wedding Wonderful!

2011 is here and I've been inundated with many wonderful emails from many lovely sounding brides and grooms... here are some of my favourite wedding cupcake and cake pics from the last year... !

Speaking of weddings... I will be in the one and only Indie I Do wedding fair this Saturday, January 22nd at Heritage Hall here in Vancouver! (Incidentally the Hall where Rich and I got married four years ago! -- I've attached a picture here for sentimental value... hee!) Indie I Do is a superfun wedding fair, with a great underlying energy, for artsy and artful, vintage-look, alternative and crafty brides and grooms! So come on out this Saturday and meet me, Lyndsay, and my lovely assistant Sharon! I will also have cupcakes for sale!

Also, look for a month's worth of guest posts by little old me, Auntie Coco Cake, over at the AMAZING design blog Poppytalk, starting tomorrow! So cool! I'm excited since I've followed her blog for years and think it's so inspirational!

Bye for now Coco Cakers!

xo Lyndsay

(Rich and I on our wedding day, January 13 2007! Pics by Jonetsu. Cake by Ganache Patisserie!)