Siblings!! Twin Cupcakes & More

Sorry I'm a bit behind on my bloggin' world this week! I took a relaxing little train trip down to Portland, Oregon to visit my dear friend Helen, who is doing her MFA at Portland State University. I had a mega fun time, eating my way through Portland and doing a little shopping too. I came home with a beautiful vintage purple silk dress for $18, three records from Mississippi Records, a book from Powell's Bookstore, and a lovely felted wool plaid wool scarf for my hubby! Fun!

Two sweet sibling stories this week at old Coco Cake HQ:

First of all, I received an email from Brie, who lives in the Netherlands, with a special request for her sister, who lives in Vancouver! A super secret birthday delivery to Janna's workplace, with Coco Cake Snowball cupcakes to the rescue! Gerry Sung helped me deliver these out to a printshop in Burnaby. An email from Brie a few hours later:

"I wanted to thank you again for making the wonderful cupcakes and helping me give my sister a birthday surprise---she was completely surprised and told me I was a dork."

Ah, sisterly love!! Happy Birthday Janna!

Next: the very pretty and stylish Kim (who works at stellar Vancouver store Jonathan & Olivia) was plotting a birthday surprise for her main man, and his twin brother! She sent me the CUTEST mock up drawing (bottom pic) to base the cupcakes from... and ordered matcha green tea buttercream cupcakes to boot. Very cool!!

Happy Birthday Freddy and Roddy!

Wilder and Wilder! Where The Wild Things Are!

OH CUTENESS!!! Lovely Samantha phoned me at good old Coco Cake HQ with a request: a Where The Wild Things Are cake and matching specialty cupcakes for her son Graydon's 1st birthday party!! I was excited to attempt WTWTA in cupcake form, and to make my cute little pal Moishe into a cake face once again!! This time I also made little Max faces, all in various stages of emotions! Lovely vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream, dark chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and sugar fondant made up this delightful order. Samantha ordered 4 dozen of the specialty cupcakes, so you can imagine how long I spent making those ridiculously cute little faces!! Thanks as usual to my honeybun RT, who helped me cut out the mini Max crowns! :)

Apologies for the photo explosion-- but I just loved doing this order, and thought everything turned out super darn cute!!

Happy 1st Birthday Graydon! :)

Coco Cake Cupcake Round-up: Last Week!

Fondant letter topped vanilla cupcakes for Jenny, for her friend Ken!

I love laying out the lettering and snapping a bird's eye view photo!

A single E... atop a fluffy vanilla buttercream swirl!

A different view of Ken's cupcakes...

Hot pink vanilla buttercream topped dark choco cupcakes!

The ethereal light of the cupcake gods... shinin' like a beacon of cupcake hope!

Cute little matching flag I made for the Dolltopia book launch in Vancouver!

Cute little skull cupcakes for Cannon's Halloween birthday party!

Hand drawn white fondant skulls, horror "bruise" colored buttercream, orange liners!

Marina ordered these for a baby shower: Perfectly pretty light green buttercream topped cupcakes; 5 teddies for the kids!

Teddy Bear Ted!

It was a tizzy of a week, especially the weekend... so many lovely cupcakes being pumped out of the Coco Cake headquarters! Above, a collection of some of my work from the past week!

Phewf. On Halloween day, not only did I have major cupcakes to create, but I also performed with my art duo GUIMAUVES for a kid's Halloween show, plus I worked until 1130pm.. and then went out after to see my dear pal Amber sing in Black Mountain at the Rickshaw in Vancouver!! I'm a maniac!!

STAY TUNED for a post on my latest Where The Wild Things Are cupcakes and cake... EEKS so cute... they turned out awesome!!

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!! :)

Olympics Cupcakes + Quatchi Cupcakes

Andrea emailed me with the request to make some celebratory Olympics themed cupcakes for her dad, who was running a leg of the Olympic torch run on Quadra Island! Very cool! Lookit these cute little things I made: a "brother" of the popular Vancouver Olympics mascot-- let's call him Squatchi!, and a sugar fondant take on the Oly rings. Coco Cake cupcake flavours were dark chocolate with chocolate buttercream, and Lemon Love!

Congratulations Mr.Wong!! :)