Clown Fish Power: Finding Nemo Cupcakes

I usually don't like to do Disney or typical cartoon stuff-- there are people who do it much better than I, and I prefer to do more vintage-look or strange or different cute stuff. Cause there's a million Finding Nemo stuffies and tshirts and yadda yadda all that... But I gotta admit, this little dude's face is pretttty cute. And what a bummer story. Poor little clownfish loses his mom and all his siblings, then he thinks he's lost his DAD too? It's almost as sad as An American Tail (one of my top favorite movies from when I was a kid!! -- quick aside: I CRIED at my own birthday sleepover watching this song from this movie, because I got so sad that poor Russian Feivel the mouse thought his whole family was gone forever!!)

Um, just watched that clip that I linked to above. Now, at aged 32, Feivel's voice is just a leeeetle bit grating to me... haha! But I FELT his pain when I was 9.

Back to Nemo. Orange clownfish!! Nice Haynes really really wanted Nemo cupcakes for his girlfriend's birthday, so of course I obliged! Actually, I don't think my cupcakes look too much like Nemo. They kind of look like Nemo's nerdy cousin Meemo from Canada who is 5 years behind clownfish fashion trends. And Haynes ordered Coco Cake Snowball flavour. Now that's a cool dude. Happy Birthday Judy, hope you liked your little Nemos!

Coco Cake's Pizza Party Cake! Fo Real!

Zing!! How cool would it be to work at a great local Vancouver design/marketing/programming firm, and get treated to WICKED AWESOME things for your birthday? Man. That's boosting staff morale. I approve, hard. The amazing Engine Digital in Vancouver ordered a hee-larious cake for one of their staff members... a PIZZA CAKE. You may remember Coco Cake partying it up with the hamburger cake in the past... Now here comes pizza! I made it into a tutorial style thing too so you can make your own!!

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PIZZA CAKE TUTORIAL

This puppy above is a 14 inch round cake. It's a biggie. It can feed a lot of people!! I did a bit of googling to see how many cups of batter I would need. I did a very scientific comparison (NOT!) and found that I would need to basically make enough batter for 48 cupcakes! I doubled my usual 2 dozen vanilla cupcake recipe for this. Worked perfect! I baked it at 325 degrees for about 60 minutes, watching pretty closely.

I bought some fancy Callebaut white chocolate for the "cheese." Then I grated it into a party pile. I made fondant pepperoni, tomatoes, mushrooms, green pepper and olives too, while humming "pizza party!" Did you know white chocolate really IS chocolate? It's made from the cocoa butter of the cacao bean. But, sometimes you'll find some waxy stuff that pretends it is white chocolate but is just made up of oils. Read those ingredients!

"Rich!!!! Can you go get a slice of pizza from 4 Brothers and ask them if they will give you a box???" --"Yes dear..." It cost 50 cents!!! I soaked my big old cake round with simple syrup, then I frosted it with some tomato-sauce-colored vanilla buttercream! A weird color, methinks. I used red food gel, mixed with a bit of brown.

Fromage time! Sprinkle-dee-doo, I sprinkled my white chocolate all over.

Time to arrange my hilarious toppings! A year ago I bought this awesome mushroom cookie cutter with the intention of making smurf-like mushroom sugar cookies. But I got burnt out on the pain of sugar cookies, so I finally got to use it on my "pizzaz" cake!

A close up. Looks pretty good I think! The pepperoni reminds me of my husband's veggie meat slices, heh heh... (he's a vegetarian. Ex-vegan, even!)

Oh yah, I added the words "Shady" to the cake, by request... but I hid them to make it look like the rest of the green peppers.

Ding, dong, your pizza's here!! Man, I am seriously craving real pizza now... eeks... !!!

Happy Birthday Dane! Hope you liked your pizza cake! If you were these guys you totally would be flippin'!!

Octonauts Themed Birthday For Dakota!

Do you know the brilliant illustrators of Meomi? They make the cutest characters, including these soon to be even more famous ones. Monice phoned me a few months ago to request very special themed cupcakes for her daughter Dakota's birthday, Octonauts themed! The Octonauts are a creation of Meomi, and there are storybooks featuring some crazy characters and cool, bonkers undersea adventures. Dakota's fave characters are Tweek the Bunny, Kwazii the Kitten and Barnacles the Bear, so I spent many hours slaving away in creating these adorable little faces out of fondant and edible marker, and also decided to make the pink jellyfish perplexed face too!

The cake was also a labour of love, chocolate with vanilla buttercream, topped with light blue underwater fondant, swaying seaweed, little starfish and mini blue rufflefish, and for a topper, a pink blowfish! I got to meet Dakota, she is so sweet and cute, and absolutely loved the cupcakes... she even said "they smell so good!!" Meeting the recipients of the cakes I work so hard on and seeing their excited reaction really makes me happy.

Apologies for yet again a mega picture explosion... I loved this order so much, and was so grateful that I could add some Meomi-powered sunshine to little Dakota's world.

xo

Collage Collage & Coco Cake Cupcakes!

My super powered gal pal Erin Bonnifero launched her incredible new project this past Saturday, September 12: Collage Collage! A shop, look and learn experience, Erin's lovely, bright and welcoming shop features the best (and most stylish!) educational books and toys, and a lovingly curated selection of work by local artists and crafters. Not only is it a great space to pick up a special present or birthday gift for the little minis (or majors!) in your life, but Erin is also teaching art classes for kids, and hosting crafty birthday parties!

I can't wait for my sisters to take their kids there! (They're not quite old enough yet... !) PS... "Where's Brody?" (my nephew) in the above pictures... wearing the adorable shirt Rich and I bought for him in Amsterdam... Brownie's Chicken colours! (Brownie's was our old fave fried chicken place in Burnaby in the 1980s... I couldn't find one darn image of it online though! Boooo! Brownie's chicken had a really cool bear as their mascot, and their colours were yellow and brown)...

I was honoured to be part of the party times, and I was so stoked for Erin that I went insane in the membrane overboard with hundreds of cupcakes in all shapes, sizes, colours and flavours! I even made a cute little cupcake stand just for the party. Seeing all of those cute kids chomping huge bites out of buttercream topped cupcakes made me totally giggle with glee.

Check out Erin's beautiful new store at 619 Kingsway in Vancouver. Congrats on all your hard work Erin! I just know Collage Collage will be a smashing success!

xo

Blim Art Market, September 20th 11-5!

GOOD EVENING VANCOUVER!!

No, this isn't GM Place... just little old me at Coco Cake cupcake headquarters, just wanting to let you all know that I will once again be at the Blim Art Market, this Sunday, September 20th! 215 E.17th Ave in Vancouver, at Main Street. After a long break over the Summer from this radically awesome art/craft/good times/snack food/music/vintage clothing/records and books market (I was worried about melting buttercream in the hot summer sun!), the market has now moved back indoors to Cambrian Hall.

4-flavour Coco Cake tasting boxes will be available for $12! If you would like to pre-order one, just shoot me an email at lyndsay@cococake.com by Friday at 12 noon. Lovely picture above by the one and only Amy P!

This month's flavours:

Vanilla Buttermilk Raspberry Jam (buttermilk vanilla cake filled with raspberry jam)
Chocolate Caramel (caramel filled chocolate cupcake with chocolate buttercream-- new flavour!)
Coco Cake Toasted Coconut Dream (yummy coconut cake with creamcheese frosting and toasted coconut! One of my faves!! Only if you love coconut like me... are you coconuts?)
Lemon Love (luscious lemon cake topped with lemon creamcheese frosting-- Coco Cake fan fave!))
Chocolate Ganache (vegan chocolate cupcake with chocolate ganache-- go vegans!)

Please come early for the best selection! I will be there at 11am! Hope to see your smilin' faces.. and if you are a blog reader, please say hello! And on that note, I have a small query: who ARE you all? I would love to know... please leave me a comment to say hi, and let me know what you do, who you are...! 'Cause I think it's so cool and awesome that you take the time to come here and read my blog and I totally appreciate it. Let's make it a two way blog!!

xo Lyndsay