Sangria and Spanish Lace Wedding

What a beautiful wedding!  Vanessa and David, the gorgeous couple, held their reception at the incredible Rancho Las Lomas, in Silverado Canyon. Lush overgrown trees and greenery, tigers and zebras on the grounds and a beautiful villa with a Rapunzle-type turret off in the distance.  What a fabulous backdrop for our Sangria and Spanish Lace styled dessert table. We used deep bordeauxs, fuschias and a pop of orange contrasted with crisp white goodies on dark chocolate brown table, all set against a gorgeous blue tile background.  What a beautiful day.  Enjoy!

The bride had five cakes.  The large central one was three tiers of red velvet and cream cheese, and the four small ones scattered around the table were all different;  devil's food cake with chocolate and raspberry filling, classic white cake with strawberry and cream cheese filling, chocolate cake with dark chocolate filling, and lemon cake with lemon and raspberry filling.  All covered simple buttercream roses and topped with deep wine colored fresh dahlias.

(Photo by Duane Peck)

Rustic cake stand - the perfect touch.

Six inch mini cakes.

Gorgeous deep dahlia.

This was my gift to the bride and groom: an edible cake topper for them to take home and enjoy on their one year anniversary.  I was in cahoots with one of the bridesmaids for details and pictures of the bride's dress, flowers and hairstyle to resemble the happy couple.

Back view of cake topper.

Nutella filled yellow cupcakes.

The bride had a special request for a treat that incorporated Oreos (the groom and his friends have a special fondness for this classic cookie), so I made a batch of these Oreo truffles.  I'm loving the mini Oreo toppers with tiny roses piped in the bride's colors.

Congratulations Vanessa and David!

First Catering Gig!

Busy, busy, busy! I booked my first professional catering gig recently creating desserts for the crazy talented Jeff Lavia from Dinner MoJo, and was asked to provide one hundred mini cupcakes and one hundred cake pops for a private "winter lodge" themed Christmas party. Having a ton of chocolate ganache left over from our Haute Chocolate fund raiser, I psychotically decided to bust out over a hundred truffles for the party to showcase what I can do, in hopes of booking future jobs.

Adorable mini spice cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Chocolate cake pops with snowflake sprinkles.

Truffle mania!

And the party was gorgeous! Everything was already set up at the dessert table. I just filled in their cake stands with the treats and left them with pan after pan of goodies to be replenished throughout the night. What a great first experience!

All the extra work was totally worth it when I received this text from Jeff: "People are raving about the desserts!! And that was probably the best cake pop I've had. And the truffles - omg - those were the best truffles I've ever had, hands down. Great job!!! I was not expecting the hard shells and the soft chocolate inside." Hooray for rave reviews!