Dreaming Of Cakes: Instagram Lately

Drips and drops and glazes and buttercream. Cakes, ice cream and donuts!

I'm so in love with Instagram - are you? Follow me for all the behind the scenes cakey-ness at Coco Cake Land!

Rose To The Occasion: How To Pipe Buttercream Roses

It's tough to deny how pretty a rose topped cupcake is, especially a buttercream rose that you cram-jam into your mouth... mmmm!

Find the whole DIY over at my How To Pipe Buttercream Roses post for Craftsy!

xo Lyndsay

Winter Roses Wedding Cupcakes

There's something so sweet, cozy and romantic about a winter wedding. Quietly lit candles, boughs of fresh green cedar and gorgeously dark, berry hued florals. I made a small but beautiful collection of early grey tea rosette buttercream topped cupcakes and a simple cutting cake topped with fresh peonies, ranunculus and dark velvety red roses for Holly and Ben's December wedding. Pretty, simple and perfect, with a beautiful bride, handsome groom and memories of a heartfelt day to last a lifetime. Happy wedding, Holly and Ben! Thank you for having me as a part of your very special day!

xo Lyndsay 

Dashing Grey and Flamingo Pink

I have flamingo pink bath towels. We got them as wedding presents and I remember when we were choosing towels to put on our registry, it was the only thing that fired up my husband and I ... arguing over the colour of our future towels together. He wanted something mellower, maybe a grey blue or a chocolate brown. I saw these lush and bright Ralph Lauren flamingo pink towels and felt the need to aim the little beepbeep gift gun thingie at the tags.

Beebeep! Pink towels.

But we also got chocolate brown ones, too. Everyone wins!

It's been six years of flamingo pink and they're looking pretty raggedy these days. Towely threads coming off and just a well-worn look about them. And a new friend, dove grey bath towel, has moved into the bathroom.

An ode to the bathroom towels in cake form:

hot pink rosette cupcake and lovely grey linen placemat.

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!)

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...

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! :)

Pretty Pistachio Rosewater Cupcakes!

For my BFF Amy's birthday, she dropped a hint a few months ago that she was dying to try these pistachio rosewater vegan cupcakes from the great book Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. My hubby was a vegan for four years... until he met meeeee, of course! He always tells this story of how when we first started dating, he came out to a family birthday event and I forced him to eat cake because I said it would be rude not to eat it!! I was the rudie! Sorry honey!! I have a better understanding of people's personal food choices now! Haha...

No worries now, because now my hubby eats cheese like there's no tomorrow. Haha. And even fish. Tough to be married into my family without being lured into Chinese We Eat Everything Land!!

Okay back to these cute cupcakes! It was my first time using rosewater. Hoooo boy that is STRONG stuff! The recipe called for 1-2 TABLESPOONS of the stuff for 1 dozen cupcakes. Since I was making 1 dozen cupcakes and a small cake, I was like... OKEY DOKEY I'll just plop in 4 tablespoons. WOW! For those who love the taste of flowers in their food, (I think a sophisticated or complex palette!) go with lots of rosewater. Thankfully at Amy's party the crowd loved the cupcakes. I thought my rosewater addition may have overpowered the smokey toasted pistachio and fragrant cardamom. Next time I will double the cardamom, and halve the rosewater! And maybe even add a little honey somehow to finish it.

I must say, the texture and fluffiness of this vegan recipe was totally tops. Would definitely make these again, and am excited to try other recipes from this book!

Happy Birthday Burgertime!! :)

Everything's Coming Up Roses

Vancouver people: do you know Sunrise Pizza? It's on Commercial Drive, close to Venables? It's one of those ancient Vancouver establishments that was maybe renovated in the 1980s, has strings of old Christmas lights and weird knick knacks up on the wall (two giant red boiled lobsters anyone?) and has AWESOME deepish-dish pizza loaded rather heavily with salty, melted cheese, an extensive cocktail menu of hilarious and refreshing ice-cubed drinks served in glass CARAFES, Greek salad with kalamata olives that comes with buttery and crunchy garlic toast on the side in a little basket, and glasses of soda on the menu for $1.25. Pretty sure I saw a Chinese man working the pizza oven. Big-ups, my brother!

Meghan and Sarah, the beautiful twins, had their birthday party at Sunrise last evening, and Meghan's cool dude BF Jason secretly ordered two dozen super special Coco Cake cupcakes for the occasion!

So I've been taking this super fun cake decorating class to try and kick up my skills sky-high at the Pacific Institute of Culinary Arts and I recently FINALLY learned the technique of buttercream roses! For like an entire year I tried studying youtube videos and decorating books to try and figure out this elusive petal-ed creature of decorative beauty. Now that I learned... I was so thrilled to finally put the skill to the cupcake!

Meghan and Sarah's excitement over the cupcakes made me soooo happy! Happy Birthday Meghan and Sarah, you cuties you! Hope you both have an amazing super special year!

Additional pics by Jason!