Thursday, March 26, 2009

Go Golden Oaks!

Last week I baked and decorated sugar cookies for a parent meeting at Golden Oak Montessori School. These cookies were based on their logo. This is a unique school that was recently started by a group of parents who were passionate about having their children attend a good school that was an alternative to public school. I believe they had a good turn out at the meeting and everyone enjoyed the cookies!




Thursday, March 19, 2009

Robot Cake
























































I'm completely operational and all my circuits are functioning normally--
Hal (2001, A Space Odyssey)

In honor of Steve's (my husband) 30th Birthday, I created the Robot Cake! Lots of fun ingredients involved like fruit loops, oreos and licorice ropes. Steve really likes all those old robot toys so that is where I gathered my inspiration. Here's the image that I modeled this cake after. And believe it or not, this Robot was completely eatable.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Oh Boy!

My friend Lesley and I threw a baby shower for our friend Jamie this past weekend. And of course I was in charge of cupcakes. I can't take credit for the concept as I got the idea from the book "Hello Cupcake" which has tons of unique ideas. But they were just so darn cute that I had to give it a whirl.


Alpine Bakery, Concord

Cupcakes tried: chocolate with fudge frosting, vanilla with vanilla frosting, chocolate with mocha mousse, carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, mango vanilla cake with mango mousse and shredded coconut
Also tried: variety of pastries

Overall reaction: Grocery store upscaled

These cupcakes were courtesy of my friend Lesley who was buying pastries for a baby shower and noticed that they also sold a variety of cupcakes. And, voila, she picked some up for me. Many thanks Lesley!

Their pastries were quite yummy...apple turnovers, cookies with fillings and other such danishes. However, the cupcakes left much to be desired. What a bummer!

Both the vanilla cupcake with vanilla frosting and the chocolate cupcake with fudge frosting were your typical grocery store cupcake. Slightly better but not by much. They were a little dry and the cake was rather bland. The vanilla cupcake was reminiscent of a Twinkie, it tasted almost exactly like one. I think I'd rather have a Twinkie though.

The chocolate mocha mousse cupcake was the same exact cake as the chocolate, so see above for description. The mocha mousse topping was actually quite delightful, light and fluffy.

Everything nice except sugar and spice describes the carrot cake. The cake was bland and it just lacked all those great cinnamon and nutmeg flavors of a really good carrot cake. The cream cheese frosting was decent.

The worst cupcake of the bunch was the poor mango vanilla cake. Same exact cake as the vanilla, so see above for description. The mango curd filling was actually pretty good, but the mango mouse on top with the shredded coconut was awful. For some reason the mango and the coconut turned on each other and created a disaster of a combination.

My words of advice: They are obviously better at making pastries, so stick to that.