Romantic Damask

Lately I've been seeing damask styles everywhere! I actually think I might be late to jump on this technique. I've specifically seen them in beautiful cake designs. I decided to try it out recently and was quite pleased with the results.

This cake was quite daunting to me as I hadn't done something like it before. I planned and researched and imagined myself making it for a whole week! I am grateful that I was given the opportunity to make it.

But imaging yourself doing something is TOTALLY different from actually doing it (duh).

For example, I didn't imagine all the dishwashing, cleaning, scrubbing, and back pain but all those things were as real as ever!

That's probably what I hate most about making cakes...the cleaning :(

Back to the cake...I was super excited when I got my order of stencils from Flour Confections. I love that store and spend hours on their website all day errrday! They are so efficient with delivery and answering questions and have a lot of products that you can't find at other baking supply stores. Their prices are also not bad...compared to some other stores *cough* Golda's Kitchen *cough*.

I was so nervous about getting the stencilling right. I watched many Youtube videos that said it was tricky and gets better with practice. It definitely wasn't as bad as I had imagined it to be!!

Mind you, there were still some things I wanted to scrap and fix but all in all, I think the cake turned out beautiful and I'm happy that the people I made it for were also happy. Inside is a yummy rich chocolate cake with coconut swiss meringue buttercream....THE bomb dot com!

I miss my photographer roommate who took such beautiful pictures of my creations. I'm doing my best with my little point and shoot but honestly...apples and oranges. And I don't have the creative angle and eye of a photographer. MUST....LEARN....PHOTOGRAPHY!

Spring Flowers!

I feel like a bear that just came out of hibernation.

The weather has been soooo unpredictable! Back in fall, people were saying that we were going to have one of the hardest winters ever. So obviously I went and bought a really warm (and expensive) coat and a really sturdy (and expensive) pair of waterproof boots.
And then winter didn't come.

But I'm not disappointed. As I might have mentioned before, I wasn't really built for winter. Not one hair on my head likes winter or snow or cold.

And then all of a sudden it became really warm and breezy and sunny and just DELICIOUS!

After a long time, I was able to try something new in terms of baking and decorating to celebrate the good weather.

I baked some chocolate peanut butter cupcakes with a recipe I found in a cupcake book. I have to do a review on this book sometime soon.

I also watched a video on some pretty fondant flowers and was inspired to recreate the look. I gave it a try and it was pretty easy!! It took me a few tries to get the hang of it but the outcome is quite pretty.

If you want to try this and think the video is a little unclear, let me know and I'll do another post with step by step pictures and explanations.

I'm also really happy with how I photographed these. Obvious credits go to the sunlight but I like to think I had something to do with it too :)

Happy Baking!