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!! :)

Howdy, Pumpkin!

You didn't think old Coco Cake had forgotten about Halloween, did you? Lookit these cute little orange sugar sprinkle-dipped pumpkin cupcakes! Delightful, rich dark chocolate cupcakes with generous blobs of orange tinted vanilla buttercream dipped in orange sparkly sprinkles and topped with Lindt chocolate stems or funny chocolate faces and green sugar fondant leaves. Michael ordered these for an afternoon TGIF office party! Cute!!!

And... look at my adorable nephew Brody in his fishie costume!! Dyin' of cuteness here... !

Happy Halloween everyone!

Owl & The Pussycat Wedding Cake!

Morgan and Brittany had their wedding reception at the Planetarium here in Vancouver. How cool is that?? Live space synthesizer music by the one and only Jeremy Schmidt, and a lovely spread of Indian food-- a super wedding. Brittany had this great book she loved while growing up, The Owl & The Pussycat-- and wanted their little wedding cake to be inspired by this book! Owl and pussycat-- love it!! Against all odds these two creatures from different species fall in love... the whole book is a romantic, whimsical freedom-love poem with lovely illustrations from 1971.

The Coco Cake cupcakes were Coconut Dream, and the cake was coconut cake with a creamcheese frosting. I made the owl with his stripey shirt and little red tie, and the white cat with her pink dress and white polka dots, cascading along flowery waves in their pea green love boat... !

Hooray for love! Congratulations Morgan and Brittany! Here's to a wonderful life together!