Wedding Bells

We just attended another wedding this past Easter Monday. It was an amazing wedding up at Furry Creek Golf Course. Wow, that is a beautiful location for a wedding. Our friends had a modest sized wedding in the Creekside room. Three of the four of the walls were floor to ceiling windows and with a waterfall view. Here is a picture of the waterfall. Amazing!

And the bride had style! Check out her birdcage veil she snagged on Esty. If you haven't heard of Etsy yet, you really NEED to check it out. A very cool website that can easily become your next addiction. Well, at least it has become mine and I know a few other people who need to check out Etsy few times a week just to get their vintage/craftiness fix.


Okay, on to why you actually showed up on this blog.... to see what I've baked up this time. I made the cutting cake and cupcakes for the wedding. I even bought this great cupcake stand from Cupcaketree. I was able to decorate it and it turned out like this:


And now for the cake. Really! I made an assortment of chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with fuschia chrysanthemums. The cutting cake was a lemon cake with lemon swiss meringue buttercream with a raspberry filling. YUM!

Baby Showers Bring May Flowers

"Baby showers bring May flowers". Isn't that how the saying goes?!? Well that's how it feels around here. I swear....every other day I find out that another friend is having a baby. Within the last 6 months I have done a couple of cakes and cupcakes for some baby showers. Here are a few examples of what I've done to date. Maybe all of my other expecting friends will recruit me to do some baby shower cakes and goodies for them as well.

A onesie cake.




Chocolate cupcakes with blue chrysanthemums and pistachio macaroons.

Baby Cakes

I've been doing a few children's birthday cakes recently. Here are some photos from my latest creations.

Galettes, Galettes, Galettes!

'Tis the season for farmer markets. We were out a couple of weekends ago at the Kitsilano Farmers Market and I spied a little kiosk selling sweet galettes and savoury galettes. They looked so good and I was about to pick one up but then I thought to myself,"Hey, I can make that myself and for a much better price!" I think my new Scottish roots are making me pinch my penny even tighter now. (Who am I kidding, I had those penny pinching tendencies way before I ever met my husband.)

Here is my attempt at making some galettes.

Ginger Mango Galettes
Step 1: You need to chop up some mangoes and add a little sugar and ginger.
Step 2: Then you need to roll out some dough into small round circles.
Step 3: Then you need to add some mango filling to the dough.
Step 4: And then you need to fold those little guys up.Step 5: Pop them right into the oven.
Step 6: Enjoy every little morsel of it! Oh, so delicious!

My First Dorie Recipe

I received this cookbook from Scott as a birthday gift this year. I've had it sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of months now - collecting dust. I thought it was about time I baked something from it. We had just been invited to a BBQ, so I decided to try my hand at the cake on the cover - Devil's Food White Out Cake (doesn't it look delicious?).


One layer of dense chocolate cake with a marshmallowy frosting.

One more layer of dense chocolate cake topped off with more marshmallowy frosting.
And one more layer of dense chocolate cake with more marshmallowy frosting everywhere.And then bits of the cake are crumbled everywhere.
Yummy!

Easter Goodies

I decided to do a little baking while at my sister's place over the Easter weekend. Here are a few things I created with her.

Ginger Chewies


Easter Egg Cake Lollies

Earl Grey Macarons, Anyone?

Being from North America, whenever I heard the word macaron, this image of a pile of dried shredded coconut with some sort of chocolate sauce on it (don't let me get into what I think it looks like) came into my head. The thing is, I have this HUGE dislike for dried shredded coconut. When I say HUGE dislike, I really mean I HATE it. The texture, the taste. UGH! It is just so unappealing to me. Last year while I was in France, I went into quite a few boulangeries and I kept seeing these macarons and I kept thinking how cute they were but OH MY GAWD who wants to eat coconut? ICK!


Recenty, I was browsing through the epicurious website and found this recipe with meringue type of cookies that had a ganache type sandwich filling. Lo and behold, this is a macaron - well the French version of a macaron. If you have never tasted a French type of macaron, you really must try one. I kick myself everyday for not trying a French style macaron while in France.

With the recipe I found on epicurious, I made some earl grey macarons with a Bailey ganache filling. Here are a few photos to document my first macaron baking experience. I gotta say, those were pretty yummy!