Romantic Ruffles and Flowers

This is just too pretty to not share! Romantic ruffles and a garden assortment of peonies, roses and hydrangeas are a lovely way to start the summer season. My assistants Lexi and Sara did an amazing job with the ruffles! We all chipped on on the flower production, handmaking all those lovely flowers. Here's a close up of some of the flowers.

I think I'm finally happy with my roses. When I first started out, I thought roses would be the easiest of the flowers to make, but I soon learned it's easy to make but not easy to make look natural.
Have a safe and fun Memorial Day weekend!

More Cakes for Kids: Fancy Nancy and Angry Birds

We always have fun making kids cakes here at the shop! It gives us the opportunity to get really creative and crafty. These 2 cakes are relatively recent - I just haven't been so good about blogging lately. The Fancy Nancy cake was for 2 sisters with close birthdays. My daughters love the Fancy Nancy books, so I was eager to make this cake and bring the character to life.
The Angry Birds cake could really be for anyone. It seems like people of all ages play the game. This particular cake was for a 4 yr old girl, but it could easily be for a 40 yr old guy. My youngest daughter wants it for her wedding cake. We'll see what she thinks in 25 years.

Macaron Wedding Cake

We had the opportunity to collaborate with one of my favorite bakeries in Austin - the adorable La Patisserie. The bride wanted an elegant wedding cake with a macaron tower, but she wasn't sure how else to incorporate the macarons to add character to the cake. La Patisserie made the macarons, and we designed, made, and assembled the cake. After I sent her a couple of sketches, she decided on the tower with additional macarons skirting the perimeter of the cake.
The flavors of the macarons and cake were also complementary. The cake was our popular almond amaretto strawberry while the macarons were a variety of berry, vanilla and white chocolate flavors.
The color isn't great on the photo, but it looked perfect against the dark gray wall of the W Hotel ballroom. I've never been able to get a good photo there, though. Maybe there's too much gray. In any case, the bride was thrilled when she saw the cake. I'm sure as the popularity of macarons takes off, we'll be making more cakes in different colors and styles.

Sweet Valentine's Day Cookies for Your Sweetie

We have these adorable and tasty Valentine's Day cookies for a limited time. To satisfy all tastes, we have a modern chevron design in dark brown and dark pink or a light pink lace-inspired design. They are huge, which makes them perfect for sharing (or saving a piece for later!). 
Each cookie is $5. Please call or email at info@cocopalomadesserts(dot)com us to place your order. We'll have them available for pick up at the bakery on Saturday, February 11 and Tuesday, February 14.

More than just cakes!

In addition to our fun and delicious cakes, we will be offering dessert bar options. As pastry chefs, we felt like non-cake desserts were missing in our otherwise sweet and charmed lives. Little did I know that dessert tables are all the rage now. These would be a wonderful addition to a wedding or the centerpiece of a bar/bat mitzvah or shower. For every occasion, I'm sure there is a way to fit a dessert table into the mix.

The above pictures are from a French-inspired dessert display. Strawberry mousse parfaits with lemon curd and strawberry gelee add a touch of bright flavor to the traditional French pastries set up of eclairs and madeleines.

Here we have a more rustic set up with whoopie pies, lemon meringue mini tartlets and mini bourbon pecan tartlets. The 3oz dessert glasses are filled with coconut cream cake.

A few other dessert cups we are offering are a green tea mousse with apricot gelee and a chocolate pudding s'mores. Everything is lovingly made from scratch here in the bakery! We've had tremendous fun in testing and sampling the recipes. I hope to have the menu finalized soon. Although we're not designing the tables, we can consult with you on ideas for themes and flavors. 
Some of the photos here were taken by GinnyB Photography. 

Modern Christmas Cake

I know I'm a day late for this, but I wanted to feature this simple modern Christmas cake for an almost-Christmas wedding (Dec 22). Since the bride was pretty open to ideas, I proposed a modern take on holly leaves. I wanted to create a traditional motif with a clean and graphic look. I think this may be an idea for Christmas cakes for 2012!
Have a happy new year and best wishes for 2012!

Dogwood Flower Cake

I thought it would be nice to show how an element from the wedding reception is incorporated into the cake design. We made this lovely dogwood cake in September for a bride who happens to be an interior designer. After talking with her about ideas, she brought up the fact that she was going to have a variety of vintage china sets for the seated dinner. That sounded like a good starting point for the design process since it was more personal to her and unique to the wedding.
After sending me about a dozen photos, she narrowed the patterns down to hers and her mom's favorites. Her mom's happened to be the dogwood pattern. Here you can see the plate and a detail from the cake.

Although the dishes were on the traditional side, the bride actually wanted a modern look for the cake. I took some photos of the tables with the different china patterns to show how she created an updated look with the vintage china.  You can see the dogwood plate on the right. The china tea pot centerpieces were a mix of succulents and flowers.