S'more Please

S'mores Cake

One of the best things about camping are the s'mores you make at the end of the night while sitting around a campfire watching fireflies.  Seeing if you can perfectly toast the marshmallow without letting it catch on fire is always a fun game!  There is the traditional recipe made with graham crackers, marshmallows and chocolate bars, and if you're feeling creative you could try swapping the chocolate with Reese's peanut butter cups or thin mints.  Nothing can really replace the wonderful texture and sweetness of marshmallows, but sandwiching it between sugar cookies or snicker doodles instead of graham crackers will never let you down.

On a Wednesday night in the middle of winter in my sub-urban home without a fire pit in the backyard I decided I was going to recreate this delectable treat.  It is a little more work and not quite as fun as a fire in the middle of the forest, but this S'mores Cake is pretty tasty and will satisfy those longings for outdoor campfire baking.

Made with a graham cracker cake, chocolate ganache filling and marshmallow meringue this confection encompasses all the flavors in every slice.  Again, feel free to get creative with this combo!!

S'more Please!!!

Topsy-Turvy

It's All The Rage

Ombre.  It's all the rage these days.  Whether it be hair, a dress or a wedding cake ombre is the new fun trend sweeping the world.  This meticulous process of color looks harder than it is, at least for frosting a cake.  I can't speak for hair stylists.

Color gradation occurs often throughout nature and it is no wonder why we love to recreate the phenomenon.  Think of sunsets in the desert or a perfectly ripe avocado cut down the center.  The change is so minuscule, so precise that our eyes can't even determine where the change of color happens.  I think it is wonderful, though sometimes daunting, to try and achieve this precision that nature has brought to our attention.

Even though this craft seems rather new many artists have been cultivating this talent of blending colors for centuries.  There are too many throughout history for me to mention, but currently I have one favorite artist who is a master at fading one color into another.  She is Kaori Fukuyama.  A painter who creates visual experiences with color.

"Aperture No.2"
Kaori Fukuyama, 2014

Not only does her work trick the eye with undecipherable graduation of color but also by creating optical illusions using this technique.  Check her work out here.
It. Is. Amazing.

Now if I could only do that with cake!

Tiers of Joy and Happiness

You must be asking, "are those flowers real?"  Yes, they are real handcrafted edible sugar flowers.  Each of the Peonies, Carnations and Green Button flowers were made petal by petal.  This wedding cake brought the opportunity to learn how to sculpt the Peony flower and invent the process for creating Green Buttons.

I must confess that this cake almost outlived all of its nine lives but persevered until the knot was tied.  After a few broken flowers, a frosting slip-and-slide, tropical flooding (I would've walked across the Rio Grande with this cake above my head to make it to the wedding finish line) and humidity that you could drink the cake was still standing.

If these four tiers are an omen of strength and perseverance then the newlyweds are truly blessed.  They say rain is a sign of good luck on your wedding day and by the amount of water that fell from the sky early Saturday morning this couple has many lifetimes of good fortune.

Congratulations to the happy couple!

xo