Happy Holidays From Coco Cake!

Happy holidays everyone! Coco Cake will be closed from Dec 24-Jan 4. Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and an excellent new year. 2010, a new decade! Craziness...

Lots of love...

Lyndsay :)

Perfectly Rosy Garden Party Cupcakes

Sandra had a very specific request for her sweet daughter's second birthday party: garden party themed, with two colour rosette buttercream tops! I loved how these turned out... vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream! I added some pink fondant flower embellishments with white non-pareil candy dots, and green fondant leaves as accents. Sandra sent me a picture of the cupcakes with her daughter who is so cute and beautiful, the cupcakes all stacked up on a lovely cupcake stand! "Thank you for the wonderful job!" Sandra wrote to me!

I thought they turned out perfectly lovely with the two-colour rosette tops! They were fun to make too...

Salmon Nigiri Birthday Cake!

I've come to the realization that, apart from making beautiful little artful cupcakes, making cakes that look like other types of food is one of my favourite Coco Cake things to do. (See: hamburger cake, pizza cake, fish cake...) There is just an inherent sense of comedy and whimsy in this concept that I find really hilarious and satisfying! The "salmon nigiri" cake is no different-- I was chuckling the whole way through while making this, and was excited to take on this new project. I ended up making it monstrously large by accident, thus undercharging for it, but I have learned for next time the amount of time and labour involved in this one! So here goes, for all my Coco Cake friends and fans:

THE MAKING OF THE SALMON NIGIRI CAKE! by Coco Cake!

I baked two rather large dark chocolate sheet cakes! So I began by filling the center, then began carving the edges to even out the layers and to make it more smooth and nigiri-like. I covered a large piece of cardboard in nice green paper for my cake board! I thought the green would be a nice contrast to the final product, the red salmon topped cake...

I did two coatings of vanilla buttercream: First the crumb coat, and then another on top of this one... I tuck wax paper under the cake while frosting it so the buttercream doesn't grease up the nice green-paper-covered cakeboard!

Next: I commissioned my husband to help me roll out this huge piece of white sugar fondant, enough to smooth over this big ol' cake, as my right wrist is still killing me from excessive buttercream-piping and other such cakeworld hazards-what a guy my RT is!! Then I carefully rolled the fondant on top of my cake, patted it down and tucked in all the edges and made it all smooth. I had also cut out 300 pieces of "rice" shaped fondant, so I set to work brick-laying the rice on the sides of the cake!

Finishing up the "rice"...

Ah yes, finally decent enough daylight for some natural light photos! (I started this cake verrry early in the morning)... I moved my cake over closer to the windows... heh heh...

The secret comedy/sight gag inside the nigiri cake-- just a little bit of green buttercream for WASABI underneath the salmon!! This is an unseen detail on the finished product, but my hope was that when the receivers of this cake cut into the nigiri, a little chuckle would be had with the secret "wasabi" ! Heehee!

Et voila! The finished product! I hand tinted a large ball of fondant to make the "salmon" using a mix of red and orange gel colour, rolled it out and cut it to shape... I also made white fondant "strips" for the striations in the salmon... and placed it carefully on top! Next up was to make the extra details: wasabi rose and ginger...

I made a green fondant "wasabi rose" and thin strips of light pink fondant "ginger". I taped down that little piece of plastic grass (I actually had a packet of these grass papers from Fujiya that I had bought for my last year's trompe l'oeil party!)

Close-up of party flag and condiments... !

Detail of the salmon nigiri cake...

So there you have it! One thing that could have been added is of course a soy sauce packet, or little bowl of soy sauce! Which I will make for the next sushi cake... I like the comedy value of the fact that if that was my salmon nigiri piece, there is NO WAY that's enough ginger slices or wasabi for me! But the dainty wasabi rose and ginger was too cute to make a huge pile of it...!

Fun times at Coco Cake HQ! Thanks for tuning in, and Happy Birthday Martin! Hope you flipped out over your nigiri cake! :)

Pretty Baby Shower Cupcakes

My BFF Amy, who incidentally also works at the advertising agency TBWA, ordered a collection of pretty Coco Cake cupcakes for a baby shower for Jules at the office...

Pink rosette topped raspberry jam filled vanilla cupcakes, and vegan dark chocolate raspberry jam filled ganache covered cupcakes with hand-chopped sprinkles of Lindt dark chocolate! So pretty and so yummy! :)

The Holiday Duo

Oh so pretty and oh so delicious: Coco Cake's holiday flavours! White peppermint buttercream topped dark chocolate cupcakes and Chai cupcakes with vanilla creamcheese frosting.

Lovely Milky Black Tea Cupcakes!

A lovely weekend... I experimented with a new flavour creation, milky black tea cupcakes. The result was a subtle, milky tea flavoured cupcake with a milky-tea buttercream. Maybe I should call them Milky Tea cupcakes? I modified a wonderful recipe from the book Sky High Cakes-- I love this book. The photographs and design elements are beautiful and any cake I've made from this book has had the most wonderful, tender crumb.

These cutie little milky black tea buttercream topped tea cupcakes I made partially for a trade with my friend Claire of My Favourite Dress-- go to her etsy for the cutest, finely made things imaginable. She has a lovely sense of craftswomanship to her products too. I got the most beautiful scalloped bunting in shades of blue vintage materials, which I will use to hang up for my husband's upcoming birthday party.

My intention was also to make the cupcakes for my friend Bobbi's champagne engagement party! Hooray! So much mileage out of these delightful little cupcakes... ! :)

Been Around The World Cupcakes...!

A wonderful Coco Cake cupcake and cake-topped tower for my sister's father-in-law! Mr.Cole turned 70 and to celebrate, his family threw him a lovely party! Mr.Cole loves to travel, and his goal is to completely travel the world and visit each continent by air, land and sea. Pretty amazing! I made buttermilk vanilla cupcakes with light blue tinted vanilla buttercream, and Lemon Frill cupcakes-- lemon cupcakes with lemon creamcheese frosting! Everything was matchy matchy in green stripes, blue plaid and bright blue mini cupcake liners! I made flags for each city Mr.Cole has visited and with the help of my geographically inclined husband Rich, created the world globe cake out of fondant! Thanks Richie for your help, as usual! xo

I am an extremely lucky person because I really have gotten to see the world--family trips to China and Hong Kong as a young girl, a trip to Japan to visit my sis and my one of my besties Tara, a trip to Europe touring and playing music in a huge double decker bus that had 15 bunks, touring North America playing music many times with friends... sailing in the British Virgin Islands on our honeymoon...

The world still boggles my fragile little mind. I like the fact that the blogging world has given me internet friends from all over the world! Glimpses into people's lives and tons of inspiration in Australia, the UK, Singapore, Greece, all over the States of course, other cities in Canada including Toronto and Montreal and even people in my own city I have met through my blog and my cupcakeing! If you haven't said hi before in my comments, please do so, and I would love to know who you are and where you are writing from!

and... a Happy Happy 70th birthday to Mr.Cole! He is pictured above with Mrs. Cole and the newest addition to their family, granddaughter baby Kensie!

Berry Good Thank You!

Sweet Kim from Flipside Creative (remember her? She ordered these Toki Doki cupcakes a while back?) ordered two dozen pretty little Berry Good purple and white cupcakes as a thank you gift for a printshop...

Tranformers Cake and Cupcakes for Matthew!

I just love Matthew, Nathan and Ryan! They are the beautiful and hilariously active three little sons of our good family friends Jason and Susan. These days Matthew and Nathan are both obsessed with TRANSFORMERS! And for good reason... Transformers really are pretty cool! Even I was into Transformers when I was a kid!! Yes, I was a tomboy. I was the daughter who would go to car shows with my dad and smash spiders dead with my fist wearing brown corduoroy pants. I had Optimus Prime and I had this awesome one that was like a 1950s rockabilly turquoise Chevy with FLAMES on it. Oh wait, I think that was MASK.

Aren't Matthew and Nathan the CUTEST? Look at how excited they are-- and look at how lucky they are-- their parents decked out their nice living room head to toe in TRANSFORMERS! I love it! I made a dark chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache, frosted in vanilla buttercream and covered and decorated in fondant. The cupcakes were also chocolate, with red and blue "Optimus Prime" colours! I also made it look like the grey Transformers logo guy was saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY. I thought the paper I chose looked very "Max Headroom!"

Happy Birthday dear Matthew! Hope you had a super fun birthday!!

Coco Cake Cupcakes Holiday Special!

"It's the most wonderful time.... of the year!" I love the holidays. Cold weather, warm hats, mittens, scarves, an excuse to make hot chocolate on the stovetop, bake pies, make cookies.. spend time with family and friends, wear sparkly fun cocktail dresses and drink eggnog... I used to get to excited when I saw that there was eggnog in our fridge growing up... sometimes I would fill a tall glass all the way to the top and GLUG GLUG GLUG like a little eggnog piglet! Only once a year did that special milk carton show up... !

So my Coco Cake holiday flavours this year-- the first is pretty holiday-ish, and one that was a real hit last year- dark chocolate cupcakes with white peppermint buttercream topped with candy cane shard! But, my second flavour... is a spicy yummy Chai Masala cupcake with creamcheese frosting! Hooray! Mostly because I want to eat that flavour myself... heehee!!

And now I present...

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COCO CAKE HOLIDAY DUO BOXES! 2 boxes total- 1 dozen of each flavour-for $75. The perfect hostess gift! Show up at your holiday parties with these boxes and they'll be hustling you through the door straight to the mistletoe! Or, choose 1 mixed box of the two holiday flavours for $40!

Pick ups ONLY the following dates: Friday December 11 or Saturday December 12 between 3 and 6pm sharp and Friday Dec 18 or Saturday December 19 between 3 and 7pm sharp.

Dark chocolate cupcake with white peppermint buttercream, finished with candy cane shards in candy cane striped liners, AND... a spicy holiday treat: Chai masala cupcake with delectable creamcheese frosting in dark brown liners and festive flag.

Order must be placed by Wednesday, December 9th or Wednesday, December 16th by emailing lyndsay@cococake.com with HOLIDAY SPECIAL in the subject line.

Coco Cake would like to thank you for all of your support in 2009! Happy Holidays!