Mountains + Moon Snowy Cake For Poppytalk: Holiday Cuteness!

I'm in love with this super sweet cake topper DIY I made for Poppytalk - I want to face-plant into that white, billowy whipped cream and make, like, fifteen snow angels. Click here to see the full mountains and moon cake topper DIY.

You can find Coco Cake Land (me!) elsewhere this week over at ye olde Craftsy this week, too - with a helpful Cake Inc blog post on Tips On How To Write A Business Plan For Your Cake Business. 

More beauty on the internet - fave posts of the week: 

The coolest puffy sculptural honeycomb wreath DIY by Chiara over at Oh Happy Day.

Gosh darn it Amelia from The Homebook is such a funny, cool creative mama. Love her book-inspired gift wrap over on You Are My Fave.

Love this simple triangle wreath DIY over at Almost Makes Perfect.

Happy weekend, dear cake pals!

See you soon with more cakey cuteness.

xo Lyndsay

My Dad's 70th Birthday + Pineapple Wearing Sunglasses Cake!

I don't think you'd expect anything less than a pineapple wearing sunglasses cake. For my dad's Hawaiian themed 70th birthday party bash, of course! 

I started off with this guy. Coconut cake with creamcheese frosting. Casual, cool as a cucumber Mr. Pineapple Head cake face duder. 

Sunglasses were really the only choice. It had to be done. Gerry (my dad) is the COOLEST GUY EVER. And cool guys wear shades. James Dean, Magnum P.I., Gerry Sung ... you get the idea. 

And here he is, with my mom - beaming from ear to ear - we had a KILLER party at our house for him! Hawaiian donuts and fresh floral leis flown in from Hawaii via one of my dad's best pals, our awesome caterer Ronnie frying it up and BBQing in three huge woks and a charcoal grill in the backyard, over sixty people partying in our home - by the way, Chinese Canadian seniors know how to party.

And here I am with my dad, a.k.a. The Moustache. Happy happy birthday, dad! I love you so much - thank you for always loving me, supporting me in all of my endeavours, making me laugh, and for being the COOLEST DAD EVER! Here's to many more years of love, fun, health and happiness!

Love Lyndsay

Holiday Party Idea: Pink + Green Cupcakes

Make cupcakes for your holiday party this year! Update the classic Christmas colours with a party blaster of light pink, a fresh raspberry for contrast and green cupcake liners. Totally cute, totally party time and a nice modern feel.Find me elsewhere this week: Check out my post I wrote for Craftsy on how a blog may help your cake business! As you know,I'm a blog lover and fanatic - but along the way it's really helped Coco Cake Land grow! Plus my favourite holiday DIYs of the week: Sparkly sweet DIY geometric pastel garlands from La Maison De Loulou.This adorable and majorly simple gold triangle garland from Almost Makes Perfect!The cutest mini boxwood wreath DIY via Poppytalk. The most gorgeous photos of Linda's soft gingerbread cake with creamcheese frosting over at Call Me Cupcake - these photos will make you cry deep, beautiful Christmas tears, they're so lovely!Happy weekend, everyone!xo Lyndsay 

Melted Snowman Cake DIY

This guy! I love this melted snowman face. I was pretty much chuckling away while I was making this. I've seen this idea on sugar cookies before but hadn't yet seen it on a cake. Poor dude. Get the full tutorial for this DIY melted snowman cake over at Handmade Charlotte.

I would be so stoked if this guy became part of a family's yearly repertoire: "Mom's busting out the melted Frosty cake again this year for Christmas Eve!" I can't wait for my Teddy to have Christmas memories. We put up our Charlie Brown tree this past weekend and he can't stop pointing at the Banquet Atelier letterpress star and owl ornaments shouting "cahhr!" and "owrrrlee!" Makes me so happy.

Do you have any holiday cakes or cookies you make every year?

Happy Baking, cake pals! See you soon.

xo Lyndsay  

Pretty Pink Ruffle Mini Cupcakes

Here in Vancouver, the days are getting colder, the air crisp and the sidewalks slippery with a layer of icy frost. Can you believe December is on its way? Still, my winter pansies are blooming and the oven's on full blast practically every day. Baking, photographing, writing and then chomping away at my cake props.

Flowers in winter seem like such a luxury. It's nice to grow some even in the cold. 

Dark chocolate mini cupcakes with vanilla buttercream tinted the lightest ballerina tulle pink and dusted with teensy rainbow sprinkles. The cupcakes are so little I ate one with a sugar bowl teaspoon.

Happy Monday, cake pals!

xo Lyndsay 

Raindrop and Cloud Cupcake Toppers

File under: easy town. I am in love with the idea of funny, original and possibly silly birthday party themes - how about a weather themed party? Raindrop and cloud garland, a pinata made to look like a big ball of sun, cloud cookies and these simple raindrop and cloud cupcake toppers.

Find the whole raindrop and cloud cupcake topper DIY over on Handmade Charlotte.

What was your most successful party theme? Do tell -and leave me a link to your party - I wanna see! :)

xo Lyndsay

Drawing Is Fun: Handmade Custom Cake Toppers

I've been really loving working on hand drawn cake toppers lately for my cakes - I like it because it's something no one else can recreate, making them original and fun- and boy, colouring really provides me with some stress-relieving joy! I should invest in some colouring books... 

This adorable set of yellow umbrella and raindrop buddies was created for Lauren's baby shower, hosted by her sisters Alissa and Naomi! I loved the yellow umbrella theme - a fresh and fun baby shower theme, don't you think? Alissa provided me with the invite and I created the toppers based around the umbrella theme. How cute are those blue drip drop cake topper buddies? Heehee!






Here's a super cute set of cake toppers to match a custom pirate cake I made for adorable Graydon's 5th birthday party! The neon parrot cake topper made me chuckle. I kind of want to make a parrot cake now. This is nuts, too - I made an awesome Where The Wild Things Are cake for Graydon for his very first birthday party - and now he's five! Where does the time go?

I adore how the custom toppers bring a cake to life. I loved making these cute little vintage-look ice skating buddies for sweet River's birthday cake. I made River a cupcake train cake a few years ago for his 5th birthday! I wanted to go ice skating and was craving hot chocolate with mini marshmallows instantly after drawing them. Gad, I'm impressionable! Doesn't the cake look extra billowy and "snowy" with the addition of the ice skaters? :)

And of course this cutie red fox playing the guitar for my good friend Miko's daughter Saya's birthday, based on an image in one of her favourite books. I can hear the plink and plunk of the acoustic guitar right now... 

Ahh, too much fun! I love being able to offer something unique and cute, and something I really love doing - I've been drawing since I was a little kid. It's nice to be able to sit down and draw again. I forget I can do that after a long day of chasing after Teddy and baking, photographing and blogging in between!

Interested in ordering a set of custom hand drawn cake toppers? I can mail them worldwide. Email me at lyndsay (at) cococake.com for more info. 

Happy Tuesday, cake pals! Chat soon.

xo Lyndsay

Rainbow Cat Birthday Cake!

Happy birthday to meeee! 

Yes, today is my birthday! To celebrate, I wanted a rainbow cake, but I also wanted an animal cake - so thanks to some of my Coco Cake Land Facebook fans, I had the idea to combine the two into my dream birthday cake. So here ya go: RAINBOW CAT CAKE! It maybe also kind of looks like a bunny but when I showed it to Teddy he made a MEOW sound (he's 15 months old) so I think it's legit enough for me! :)

Yep, I'm 37 years old today. A lady isn't supposed to share her age but it's 2013, guys - and we need to stop being so freaked out about women aging. So there you have it. Sounds golden oldie to be 37 but I've got some pretty sweet Asian genes on my side, so I'll keep on trucking and hope for the best. Besides, growing old is a beautiful thing, right? We're slathered and badgered daily by the idea of staying "young." But I've had some amazing times in my 37 years. Rough times, too - but that's what makes us stronger and wiser. And more wrinkly. And prone to ice cream binges. 

People often ask me how I got into the cake biz and how I started making cakes. Well let me tell ya - I've had 101 careers, and truly, I'm always thinking of what my next "career" will be. In the past fifteen years, I've worked at a photo developing shop, I was a secretary for a mental health centre, I temped in a lawyer's office, I worked in an art gallery, I toured in bands playing music across North America and even Europe, I taught art to children, when I was 30 I even worked at a snow cone stand and had an 18 year old "manager"! I traded a snowcone for a fake tattoo from the teen who worked across the fairway from me.

Too many jobs to even remember. A couple of years ago I even started taking classes to become an elementary school teacher but then didn't end up following through with that idea (man, Canadian Geography SUCKED!) and now it's been five years since I started making cakes! I've learned and grown and developed a particular design niche with it - and met so many awesome people along the way. So yeah, learning to bake at 31 has been a pretty, pretty good turn of events, I'd say.

For anyone reading this who might be wondering what the hell they're doing with their life - there's been many times I've felt lost and unsure of what I was doing or what I wanted to do next. I guess now I feel like my life is a continual work in progress and that it will continue to ebb and flow. I'll always be wondering and searching and learning, but with a firm base of my belief in the utter importance of family, friendship and love, and love most especially for my little boy, and my husband R.

Oh, and crazy mad love for some RAINBOW CAT CAKES!

RAINBOW CAT CAKE DIY 

A note about this cake: due to the multiple cake layers and a LOT of buttercream, this cake is a heavy block-headed, cat noggin on a plate BEAST! I used 7 inch cake pans and still the cake will feed 20+ guests for sure. (When the cake is this tall you don't need huge slices. Or do you?? :) Also, place your fondant "face" bits on the cake just prior to serving, so the fondant doesn't get too melty. 

You will need: 

A double recipe for a vanilla cake - box mix or from scratch, whatever you like!

Five 7 inch cake pans

Five bowls for mixing your rainbow cake batter colours 

Gel food colouring in your fave rainbow colours - I used pink, yellow, green, blue and purple for my layers!

8 cups (woh!) of vanilla buttercream

An offset spatula for frosting your cake

A piping bag fitted with a multi opening tip (also known as the hair/grass tip)

White fondant and gel colours to mix and create your cat's eyes, ears, nose and whiskers

Make it!

1. Make batter according to recipe instructions. 

2. Divide batter into five bowls - add gel food colours to each and mix to combine. (the amount is up to you - just know that a little goes a long way!)

3. Pour into greased and floured cake pans. Bake according to recipe's instructions. 

4. Let cakes completely cool. 

5. Make buttercream according to recipe instructions. 

6. Level your cake layers with a serrated knife.

6. Place your first coloured cake layer on a cake board or cake stand. Frost the top, and add the next colour. Continue until you reach your last cake layer!

7. Frost the entire exterior of the cake.

8. Pipe the entire exterior cake with buttercream "fur!" 

9. Make your fondant face pieces using piping tips for cutters, or just your hands, and make ears by creating fondant triangles and placing them on wooden BBQ sticks.

10. Place your ears into the top of the cake - pipe "borders" around the edges of the ears if you like!

11. Place your fondant eyes, nose and whiskers on!

12. MEOW - you are ready to party SO hard! 

Gad it is SO exciting cutting into a rainbow layer cake! Eeks! It is pure beautiful magic!

Rainbows and sunshine and kitties - that's not a bad analogy for life, right? I hope you guys are all doing great - and thank you for coming to my blog and having a cakey visit in Coco Cake Land! 

Happy weekend, cake pals!

xo Lyndsay