Kate and Co. is taking an unofficial hiatus for the time being, and I’d like to sincerely apologize to those I’ve had to cancel events with. For more information please contact me directly or leave a comment below and I will reply to your inquiries. I’ve sincerely appreciated and loved your business and support — thank you all for everything.

Love –

Katie

The official cake photos! This was a 30th Birthday celebration cake — a white cake with fresh strawberry filling and vanilla buttercream, decorated with fondant and black ribbon (the ribbon being the only inedible part). The stars were made with a combination of fondant and gumpaste (to hold their shape) and then covered in disco dust for the sparkle. At the last minute we wanted to make the black sparkle, but I couldn’t get any black disco-dust in time — but I could find hot pink! Lucky. 

The inspiration for the middle tier was a corset, using two different widths of black satin ribbon to “squeeze” together the pink ruffle layers. The zebra look was a favorite of the birthday girl’s, and so I made that the focus of the other two layers.

Each tier was secured with dowels, placed on a plastic plate cut just smaller than the layer, to keep the layers stable and secure.  I used floral wire (22 gauge) for the stars. Each cake was covered in a crumb-coat of buttercream and chilled slightly before applying the fondant. The plaque was already created out of a mixture of gumpaste and fondant, and allowed to set 24 hrs to harden.

(2 8-inch round, 2 6-inch round, and 2 4-inch round tiers; serves 1″ portions for 42 people).

Introducing the latest cake, sneak-peak…

… more to come later in the week… stay tuned.

And as promised — purple and teal cake pops! And actually, these were glitter purple and teal cake pops — yes, fancy, I know! I like using sanding sugar best when trying to give some sparkle to my cake pops, but nothing sparkles like disco-dust glitter (and yes, it’s edible). I’ve done the super-sparkle pops before (entirely covered in disco dust) but to me the mouth-full of glitter (although edible) is distracting. But just adding the sparkle to the detail like with these, worked great! A great compromise, the sparkle look without too much glitter damage (yes, you will be covered in sparkles).

The sparkle in person is just stunning (and my photography skills are not quite).

So for now you’ll just have to trust me. Stunning, and delicious.

Here’s the mini-cake I promised I’d share — this was a 4-inch, 3 layered round white cake, with funfetti sprinkles and vanilla buttercream. We decorated in the same colors to match the purple and teal cake pops (which will come next!). The photos don’t do this cake any justice, in showing exactly how tiny a 4-inch cake looks like — and especially when you have a 5-inch cake box for your cake to fit in. It was super adorable. (In fact, the birthday girl, who was turning 6, said it was “fricken’ awesome!” — about 20 times. It was probably the coolest reaction I’ve had to a cake yet.)

And if you’re wondering how to make your own at-home funfetti cake:

1. Take your favorite white cake recipe,
2. Add sprinkles! Ta-da! 

I used confetti-style sprinkles, but jimmies would work great too. And that’s it! The bright color of the confetti sprinkles didn’t fade during baking at all, which is what gave it that great color. I used those same sprinkles to decorate the outside of the cake, giving it that birthday-confetti look. The cake was in addition to the other birthday party treats, so the birthday girl would have something to blow out the candles (not really enough cake to share, maybe just a bite for Mom and Dad!). It’s a little hard to put candles on a cake pop — so adding a tiny cake was perfect!

And just in case you were curious — yes, funfetti always makes everything taste better. It’s Fun-fetti!

And the official reason we had too much (err– no such thing, but you know what I mean) mascarpone cream for the last post — this dessert. This was for a great dinner party my fantastic chef-friend threw a couple weekends ago, and this was our contribution. Our contribution, let me clarify, but his creation; specifically requested. And I will keep this in mind, for any other desserts that need to be designed. Because the combinations of flavors and textures worked perfectly.

Officially, this is a Tiramisu-style banana trifle — 4 layers of mascarpone cream, fresh banana bread brushed with a bourbon simple syrup, and flambéed bananas in a brown-sugar-butter bourbon and walnut sauce. Just like with traditional Tiramisu, it’s best to make this dish with plenty of time to spare, and let the flavors soak into one another before serving.

And yes — it is fun to flambé.

Single-serving Tiramisu! Also known as “we-have-extra-mascarpone” and “what-can-I-do-with-these-ladyfingers-in-the-cupboard” — yeah. Super dangerous.

Also, the photos are of the worst quality because 1) it was late at night, and therefore dark, and 2) I wasn’t willing to mess around long enough to take a decent photo. My husband was actually lurking in the background waiting for the perfect moment to strike. And he did. He swiped up his dish about two seconds after this photo.

And oh — we didn’t have any rum (I know — right?!) so I used Frangelico instead. It was a fantastic substitution. The only downside was that with all the espresso, I had a hard time falling asleep that night.. a consequence I’m more than happy to take, any day. Or night.

First let me say quickly — I have many more photos than I have time to write posts, and much less time to write here than I would like! But when it’s a nice day out, and you have a real-world job to perform, you can’t always do everything you want to do. And what I want to do most is go outside. So — just a quick hello, and you can just keep in mind that I promise I have more to share, I promise!

Things like mini-Tiramisu, Swedish pancakes, cream scones, more cake pops, a mini-birthday cake, and grand 30th Birthday Zebra cake, homemade confetti cake, gumpaste sparkly stars, and a Banana Bourbon Tiramisu-style trifle dish. And yes I don’t like bananas, but this was actually delish.

So since I can’t decide what to post next, and I have three events this week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday night events) — and Father’s day next weekend — there will be even more to choose from soon! Yikes. So I better get to it.

In the meantime — an update of the non-baked-goods type: dogs! And look at how big the little girl is now! We’re all hoping to take a walk here in a few minutes, so you’ll have to excuse us for now. Hope everyone is having a great week!

Katie

“Arrgh, matey!”

I love when I get to make things like this – cute!!

These were part of a “Sparkles and Fairies” birthday party, with the pirates being a cute addition for the little boys who would be at the party too. The pirate ships were just an extra thought, I decided we’d try and see how they would look with my pirates — and they couldn’t have been any cuter! I was so pleased with how they turned out. I designed how I wanted the pirate ship flags to look, and Lee put them all together! He’s really my favorite part of the “co.”  — the dogs, really are zero help.

These were a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream cake pop, with pink funfetti sprinkle inside. We made the birthday girl a tiny birthday cake too, which was also funfetti (something to blow out the candles, which you can’t exactly do with cake pops!). Funfetti looks so much cooler when it’s done from scratch; you wouldn’t believe how bright the colors turn out. Luckily with these cake pops, the pink funfetti didn’t make the pirates look too girly.

The sparkle cake pops from this party will be up soon — and I got the word directly from the birthday girl herself that she loved them! So hope you like too!  Until next time,  — “Ahoy Mateys”!

Oh yes. This could be you.

Your face, on a cupcake.

It’s.. the future of cupcakes! Hehe. Ok maybe we aren’t that far evolved quite yet.

While yes, this might seem just a little um, bizarre.. you could surprise that special someone by requesting literally any image on a cupcake (or even a cake, or a cookie) — and give them something very sincere, and original! And trust me, you’ll always get a fantastic reaction. Even if that reaction is shock, when seeing a dozen cupcakes with your face on them.

Now, let me tell you about these cupcakes (which have earned a place on my top-favorite-flavors-ever list) — these were a white cake, filled with passion fruit buttercream, with a macadamia-nut buttercream frosting. Both of which were new flavors for me (special request), but whoa — if you have not tried macadamia-nut butter before, first let me recommend that experience, which is pretty amazing in itself. Dry-roasted macadamias, Vitamix for 60 seconds, that’s it. A heavy-duty food processor could also probably do the job. From there, add the macadamia-nut butter to your buttercream (I used a lot, I love the flavor), blend to perfection.. yes, I ate this with a spoon. The entire flavor combination was just perfect. Very tropical, Hawaiian themed. Which reminds me.. need to think up some names for our cupcake flavors, but for now I’m happy calling it “White Cake with Passionfruit and Macadamia-nut Buttercream” — simple! You don’t have to get fancy with the name when the cupcakes themselves are fancy. This is a fact.

I particularly love the angry-face cupcakes. Because really, if someone is about to eat your face, that’s the kind of reaction you should have – ”grr, don’t eat me.” Pretty fierce.