Having fun with Easter Cookies!

I love Easter. Its a time to celebrate that lent is over. Pretty pastel colors, pink, purple, yellow, green, and much more....

Hippity.. . hoppity! Easter bunny in different pastel color... 

 Yellow chicks...

Colorful eggs

To make it more festive, add your guest name on to the egg!

Happy early Easter from all of us at Polkadots!

Another Twins Affairs

I wish I could have two cute little twin girls like Taylor and Leighton! These two girls are just too adorable. They turned one this past Sunday. Happy Birthday Girls!! 

We prepared two matching cake, green and pink theme accent with cherry blossom flowers and ribbon. We also made matching mini smash cakes.One cake was banana cake with cream cheese, and the other one was black bottom cake, a chocolate cake with baked in cream cheese and chocolate chip.

Their mom worked so hard on the party details "Cherry-Blossom Princess," here are the details:

Candy bar buffet, pink and white theme, and of course the matching flower sugar cookies:

 Closed up of the cake:

My favorite details is the butterflies:

At least but last the birthday girls:

Too cute!

"Twin"kle "Twin"kle double happiness!

This week I got an opportunity to work on twin's party. First was Dr. Suess baby shower theme. I didn't grow up in the States, so I am not familiar with Dr. Suess story book. I did an online research on google, flickr, wiki, and much more!This was the inspiration from our customers. Her is what we come up for the twin baby shower. The cake was a strawberry shortcake. A vanilla sponge cake with macerated strawberries and strawberry buttercream. I covered it with blue turquoise vanilla buttercream. Decorated them with baby onesie, rattle, and silver socks. Congratulations for Melissa and Chris! They are expecting a little girl and a little boy.

Spring Birthday Party at Polkadots

Birthday is the best holiday! Hangout with your closed friends, chit chat, play, and the best part is lots of presents. Last week, Avery turned 10. Her mom decided to bring 10 girlfriends, laid out picnic blanket, brought her rabbit, goodies bags, games, and color pencil. They hung out in front of our porch for few hrs, of course I have to snap a few pics!
 
Here is the birthday girl with her furry friend:

Matching party favor bags in pink, blue, green, and brown colors:

Comfy picnic blanket, nice weather, coloring activities with girlfriends,  and lots of presents:

I hope you had an awesome birthday celebration at Polkadots Avery! The "damage" for Avery's party last Saturday (cupcakes and drinks) for 10 girls and 5 adults less than $60!

Of course the best part, I got to keep all their drawings. I was teary.. happy tear.

Can't wait till the next birthday party! Oh, I wish I can be 10 forever yeah! Sometime growing up isn't as fun.

Simple elegant cake 101

Most of you ask when I am going to teach cake classes. I would love too... Hopefully I will launch the 1st class in the summer.

I will share a few tips on doing simple cake with big bow from chocolate fondant.  I love love... doing custom cakes. Something modern, clean, elegant and clean look.... mmm whimsical too! Of course, I am always up to what my customers' request.   Simple rule - less is always more. One of the most request cake is the bow cake. I like to share on on how to make the bow decoration from chocolate fondant.  I know fondant sounds scary!! yikes!! A lot of people is afraid of the word fondant because of the taste. Fondant is usually made from gelatin, sugar, water, corn syrup, and powdered sugar.  I am using chocolate fondant for this bow tutorial. Chocolate fondant tastes just like tootsie roll. I promise its yummy.

When I was growing up,  Fisher Price Kitchen Set was on my wish list. I never had one, but my mom got me Playdoh kitchen set instead.  I think that was the first time I made little figurines, dolls, fake fruits, and hamburgers...Fondant's texture remind me of play dough, elastic yet temperamental.

First knead your chocolate fondant (about 9 oz), getting out all the air and make them more appliable for rolling. 

If it gets too sticky you can use a little corn starch. Next, roll the chocolate fondant into a "sausage" shape.

Using rolling pin, rolled the fondant into a rectangular shape 8" x 10":

Trim each side using pairing knife:

Slice the chocolate fondant into 1/4" in width:

Begin assembling the ribbon parts, you can cut the excess part with paring knife or siccor. My favorite brand knife is Global. I am petite in person, I like something small and light. It's just a personal preference. Any paring knife will do!

Assemble all chocolate fondant as the following, and be patient let them rest and relax for at least an hr. If it's too humid, you can add Tylose to your chocolate fondant (while you knead in the firs step) to help the firmness and fight the humidity.

Don't forget to save some chocolate fondant for the "excess" ribbon:

I like to line up all the different size of the ribbon "petal":

After one hr, into the fun part! Just like assembling rose petal, seven pieces on the bottom, five, and three petals in the middle. Use room temperature as your glue. Here is the final product:

What do you think? Very simple and pretty! Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions, just leave a comment. I promised I will get back to you.

Husband of the week!

A lot of you ask me how do I like working with my husband? mmmm on a scale 1-10, on one day it can go from 1 to 10! Why? I have been asking him to get a new microwave for 1 year - at least. The door is broken, I always have to slam hard the door to be able to function. Perhaps 200 watt microwave? Even my hair dryer has 1300 watt! For some reason, last Monday (my weekly day off) the plate inside the microwave is missing. Yes, its gone. You think it will be easy to keep everything in place when you have a tiny kitchen.  No, we lost things all the time, X-Acto knife, tiny brush, pastry brush, knife...etc.  Some of you might think... really microwave? Yeah, we used it every day. Finally, this past Monday I have a brand new microwave. It's fast, even, heating up from center to outside. It took only 1.5 min to melt 1lbs of chocolate!! I dance happy dance happy dance. Honey,  you are a 10!
 

Alright... enough bragging about Ben and the microwave, this past week we started our Spring wedding season. First, it's a simple two tier brush stroke wedding cake that we delivered to Lanai:

Next, we went to Villa Antonia in Jonestown, TX for Leslie and Matt's wedding. I ran into Andrew from Table4weddings photography. I can't wait to see his snapshots! 

Instead of traditional groom's cake, Matt has mini and regular cupcakes - red velvet, carrot cake, lemon and cream, and blackbottom cake.

Then we went to the Caswell House for Lauren and Chase's wedding. Their theme are black and red, simple and elegant.

Fun cakes and cupcakes of the week:

Yeahhh... the best part was we have 0 complaints!!! for the week.  Yeah yeah..Have a good week everyone!!! SXSW week is on the fly....

March already?

Hope everyone had a fun weekend! After a busy week at the shop, I escaped Saturday morning. I got a chance to go to cake show this past weekend and watch some demonstration from Celebrity Chefs! Mike McCarey, Nicholas Lodge, John Kraus, Katy Scott, Geraldine Randlesome, and Lauren Kitchens. Mike McCarey and Lauren Kitchen have been in several cake challange on Food TV. They were all so talented and share some good tips on how to decorate structure cakes, what to use, what not to use, what product, what's the new trend... and etc. It reminds me when I was in culinary school 7 years ago! Time sure flew away! Here are few shot from the event:

Mike McCarey(brown) owns "Mike Amazing Cakes, " Nicholas Lodge (green) from International Sugar Art Collection is a gum paste guru, and Lauren Kitchens own "Fancy Cakes by Lauren" in Dallas.

Now back to cake business, here are few celebration cakes that we made at the shop:

 

Monkey theme baby shower, of course it's a "monkey" flavor cake, banana cake with nutella chocolate buttercream.

A special birthday party for  a mom that loves shoes and purses:

Twenty first birthday cake:

 

A simple two tiers wedding cakes:

Children birthday cakes:

More baby shower cake:

Have a good week everyone! This week  we are starting our Spring Wedding season.  Excited!!