macaron

Wedding | Sara & Cale in Saratoga

| Weddings

 

This is an incredibly belated post, so let’s call this a #FlashbackFriday remembrance of a beautiful Labor Day Weekend wedding at Villa Montalvo at the Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA. The bride’s aunt made the wedding cake, so the special request here was for an ombre macaron tower to match the black and white theme for the wedding.

From top down, we have vanilla bean, black sesame, Earl Grey ganache, and cookies & cream macarons. I’m thrilled to share these beautiful photos from Jessica Miriam Photography. What an honor for the macaron tower to get its very own dining room feature!

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Birthday | Never Too Old for Funfetti!

| Birthdays

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I have a dear friend, with a bubbly personality and infectious smile, for whom it is very fitting to request a funfetti cake for her 30th birthday. Now, this was a bit tricky — it’s pretty easy to go to the grocery store and buy funfetti cake mix and frosting, and indulge in that childhood-reminiscent deliciousness. But could I come up with a cake just as yummy and whimsical from scratch?

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Why, yes I can, with the help of Momofuku Milk Bar! I used their recipe for birthday cake and birthday cake crumbs, and then modified a Swiss meringue buttercream recipe by substituting in some shortening and cream cheese for the butter to create my version of the birthday cake frosting.

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I put this together for a 3-layered cake with frosting and crumbs in between, and instead of creating a naked cake, I lightly covered the cake with the frosting and used extra crumbs and homemade brightly colored macaron shells (to mimic enlarged funfetti sprinkles) for decoration.

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I don’t typically make very sweet desserts, but this was a worthwhile exception (and actually, not the sugar overload you would expect). I wish I had a slice of this waiting for me in the fridge every day!

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Wedding | Kyte & Sherry in Downtown LA

| Featured, Weddings

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Congratulations to Kyte and Sherry! These newlyweds found Milo’s Bonbons through Mike and Sandy, and I had a blast working with them to design and create their wedding dessert table at the 1920s inspired Cicada Restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. For their wedding, we decided on mini cupcakes, macarons and panna cotta desserts, with a 3-tiered cake for cutting and display. The cupcakes came in 4 interesting flavors — purple yam (with purple yam custard filling and mango buttercream), matcha (with matcha custard filling and vanilla buttercream), Calpico (white cupcake with Calpico pudding filling and vanilla buttercream), and strawberry lemon (yellow cupcake with lemon curd filling and strawberry buttercream).

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Each cupcake was frosted with a floral pattern in a different color for variety.

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The cake itself was a fun flavor combination — white cake with lime curd and guava mousse filling. IMG_2922IMG_2924

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After the cake was frosted with buttercream, it was covered in white fondant and then decorated. The bottom layer was covered with gumpaste rose petals, the middle hexagon layer was airbrushed in gold, and the top layer was kept simple in order to contrast with the white gumpaste roses and gold leaves. For the middle layer, I also added a wafer paper ribbon for design and contrast. It took a little while to make all of the florals, but it was a lot of fun to see the cake come together!

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The panna cottas were mango jelly and coconut panna cotta.

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And while I don’t have a close-up photo of the macarons, we had three varieties: lavendar with blackberry jam, plain shells with lychee jam, and rose with rose-raspberry white chocolate ganache. A floral theme throughout the dessert table!

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