Cherry Blossom Cake

With Cherry Blossoms in full bloom (peak blooming season this year is April 1 - April 4), I thought now would be a good time to show you a cake we made recently. This square light lavender cake is covered in small white Cherry Blossoms. We designed this cake for a recent baby shower. Our client wanted the lavender cake to match the color they painted the baby's room.... so sweet!

The Cherry Blossoms come to life when given movement and tiny details like
light lavender "stamens" that match the fondant covering.

Almost too sweet to eat. I said almost....

Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches

We make a lot of buttercream in the kitchen of Cocoa & Fig. Lots and lots of lovely, just-sweet-enough, fluffy Italian Meringue Buttercream to be precise. Italian Meringue Buttercream begins with a traditional Italian Meringue: hot sugar syrup is added to whipping egg whites to produce the most amazingly creamy marshmellowy meringue. Then we slowly add fresh butter until a beautiful buttercream is born. This is by far my favorite type of icing. We use it on all our cakes and cupcakes. Just one problem: what is one to do with the lonely egg yolks that are left behind from separating all the egg whites for buttercream? Well, we do all kinds of things with them. But this week I decided to make vanilla bean ice cream. And chocolate chip cookies.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Plus:

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Equals:

Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich Goodness

Individual Cupcakes

We packaged each cupcake for this order in its own cute little box. The boxes were then tied with pink and brown ribbons to finish the look. I think they are absolutely adorable!

More Website Pics

Here are a few more teaser shots from our soon-to-launch website. These photos remind me of summer. And I'm just sure that summer is right around the corner.

Grilled Flank Steak Skewers with Chimichurri Aioli

Smoked Salmon and Red Onion Cream on Pumpernickel Rounds

Roasted Vegetable Skewers

Floral Applique

The cake I posted yesterday was decorated in a floral applique design. According to Wikipedia (don't you just love their site??), applique, in its broadest sense, "is a smaller ornament or device applied to another surface." This is a popular technique used in sewing and quilting. Various fabric shapes are sewn onto a larger surface to create a design or pattern.
In the case of our cake, the layering of various flower shapes and colors creates the applique look. Piping tiny royal icing dots really makes the effect pop.

Floral Cake

Spring is finally here! Well, according to the calendar anyway, although it hardly felt like it today... brr. But this cake will put you in a springtime mood. We created this bright and lovely floral cake for a birthday party. The cutout fondant flowers are layered for an applique look and then piped with royal icing for even greater effect. I'll show you the step-by-step tomorrow with some before and after shots.

St. Patrick's Day

Ok, so I'm a day late. But life as a caterer is hectic. And sometimes, we celebrate holidays a day late. Joe has a nice chocolate oatmeal stout waiting for him. Is it 5:00 yet?

Twitter!

Everyone is doing it and now we are too. Cocoa & Fig is now on Twitter!

A lot of people are asking me.... what is Twitter anyway? Well, here's a great explanation straight from the Twitter website:

"Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question:
What are you doing?"

We use it as a tool to keep you updated on the happenings around Cocoa & Fig. Sometimes I tweet about little things that happen throughout my day. We do hope you'll join us in the fun, here's a link to the Cocoa & Fig twitter page. Happy tweeting!

Cupcakes as far as the eye can see!

We made cupcakes today, lots and lots of cupcakes. It was fun. You see, cupcakes are probably one of my favorite things to make. There is weighing and measuring and mixing and portioning and baking and decorating. Lots of steps. And I like steps.

We kept the flavors pretty simple as these were for kids. This is Vanilla Cake with White Chocolate Buttercream Icing.

This is Vanilla Cake with Milk Chocolate Buttercream Icing.

And then there was Chocolate Cake with Dark Chocolate Buttercream Icing.

Cupcakes Galore!

Mini Buffalo Sliders

Continuing with our sneak peak of website photos, here's a shot of our Mini Buffalo Sliders. Seared to perfection and placed on freshly baked buns, then topped with lettuce, tomato, spicy mustard and baby cornichons. These are sure to be a hit at any party! We also offer a ground turkey version. Or you can get the buffalo with caramelized onions and blue cheese. How's that for having it your way?

Photography by Shelly Mossman.

First Birthday Cake and Cupcakes

We had the honor of creating the cutest cake and cupcakes for a little boy, Ryder's, first birthday. Ryder's mom sent us pictures of the invitations and decorations she had ordered for the festivities. The cute numbers below were made into "flags" for the cupcakes by attaching them to wooden skewers.

We covered the cake and cupcakes in tinted blue and green buttercreams to match the party's color scheme. The little 6" cake is for the birthday boy to smash!

Flavors included 1 dozen each of vanilla-vanilla, chocolate-chocolate,
vanilla-chocolate, and chocolate-vanilla.

We sprinkled the tinted buttercreams with colored sanding sugar to resemble sparkly glitter. Happy 1st Birthday Ryder!

artistic crudite display

As we get ready to launch our new website (yippy!), we wanted to give you a sneak peak of some of our favorite photos. This Artistic Cruidite Display was shot by Shelly Mosman of Shelly Mosman Photography. A vibrant, delicious and healthy way to feed your guests some fresh vegetables. Who says vegetables have to be boring? We beg to differ!

flourless chocolate cake

We get a lot of questions about our photography. Everyone wants to know who takes the shots. All the photos posted on this blog were taken by Cocoa & Fig. Actually, the resident photographer is Joe himself.



We have no formal training nor do we know what we are doing half the time. We just want to take photos that represent what we do. We use a Canon SD800 IS, but other than that there is no fancy equipment.



We try to set up our shoots when there is good natural lighting. And we do think ahead in terms of styling. We don't use photoshop or any other editing software. I probably should, but just don't have the time between cooking, party planning and overall business running.



We just take a lot of shots and hope that sometimes we get the shot we were hoping for. After 4 flourless chocolate cakes and 200+ pictures, I got a few that tell a story. And I'm happy with that!