Summer remnants

With apologies to all those who have been waiting a looooong time to see their cakes here, I am attempting to get some of this summer's neglected items posted.

First - an anniversary cake to celebrate a very special milestone

Two layers of vanilla cake, filled with chocolate ganache, covered in chocolate buttercream to celebrate 50 years together.

Next, a birthday cake in the stripes and dots motif.

Two layers of chocolate chip cake, filled with chocolate fudge,

then covered in vanilla buttercream and fondant dots and stripes in brown and shades of blue - very striking for a 40th birthday.

And a cake for a birthday girl who loves arts and crafts.

Toppers included tools of the trade, such as gumpaste scissors,

an artist's palette with a brush and watercolor paints, plus a bottle of white glue, also gumpaste.

The sides of the cake, including the number 11, were covered in paint splatters, evidence of lots of creativity and hard work. Happy birthday, Shoshana!

Hope you are having a sweet week!

Dvora

Nitzan's Bat Mitzvah, Shabbat Edition

Returning to where we were several months ago, here is the second half of Nitzan's bat mitzvah - Shabbat. In addition to cookie platters and lemon macarons for dessert for the Shabbat meals, we provided the family and guests with lemon and chocolate mousse cups,

Chocolate cream filled chocolate cupcakes, topped with fondant basketball toppers,

vanilla cream filled vanilla cupcakes topped with buttercream rosettes,

and chocolate cake pops, drizzled with orange tinted white chocolate, to fit the floral/basketball theme.

It was a beautiful Shabbat, filled with family and friends, and wonderful memories for Nitzan and the whole family. We were privileged to be a small part of it! Mazal tov!

Dvora

Happy New Year!

It has been a while. Blogging has not afforded me the outlet it once did. But I am taking the blog back. And maybe, just maybe, I will post more often. But no promises. I very much want to avoid the pitfall that so many people fall into online, whether on social network sites, email groups, or blogs: Never forget that you can not control who does or does not read your work. Too many people seem to forget that their outlet is someone else's light reading.



So let's keep it light!



Yom tov here was great, despite the three day nature of the chag. We were fortunate enough to be invited out for the first four !!! meals. They were all really enjoyable, wonderful company, great food, a terrific way to start the year. Many thanks to our generous and thoughtful hosts. We hosted company for the last two meals (can't count seuda shlishit, because we were too full for anything more than a little challah and salad), and it was also great - we are so fortunate to have found such good friends here and to be able to spend chag with them. Davening was also very moving and meaningful for me, so it was a very good yom tov.

Baking wise, we had a LOT of orders for this Rosh Hashana, so many in fact, that I had no time to take pictures of any of the trays. I try to incorporate some of the simanim in the flavors, so the menu included honey sugar cookies, apple crumble bars, apple blondies, carrot cake sandwiches, and chocolate sandwich cookies filled with a pomegranate-raspberry-chocolate ganache. Not that anyone is going to say the "yehi ratzons" over the cookies, but the thought is there. Larger trays, 36 and 48 piece sizes, also had chewy chocolate chip cookies, because who doesn't like chocolate chip?! Every tray was topped with a decorated apple shaped sugar cookie, with "Shana Tova" written on it. Overall, very festive and fun, and well-received. We also did a bunch of custom sugar cookies, in various holiday designs. The actual cookies for RH were even cuter than the ones below, but for a small idea of what went out, here is a photo of samples from a couple of weeks before the chag.

May we be inscribed for a happy, healthy New Year!

Dvora