Pastry Chef... Student - It's Official!

Hello everyone! This is Amelia typing. I have left everyone hanging about my career choice for so long. I am happily to announce within next month... in about 30 days, I will become a student pastry chef!

I have to admit I am slightly nervous. It is a completely change of career path that I was pursuing for many, many, many years. Virtually every member of our extended family has been born and bred to become scientists of some kind (except Clarissa, she is unique and maybe a bit of rebel?). It was natural to follow my family's footstep in this area of profession. After seven years educated in human science, logged in hundreds hours of internships, took a biggest exam of my life, and became a licensed physical therapist assistant, it is time to exchange a lab coat, flask, grnometer, for an apron, whisk, spatula, and pan. I did made such an ambititious move to give up my career in science to pursue my true passion.

I have visited three culinary schools in Portland: Western Culinary Institute, Art Institute, and Oregon Culinary Institute. My decision to choose Oregon Culinary Institute is based on their flexible schedule and cost. The school allows me to maintain a full time position at my current job and attend school. It will be challenging, although, on a positive note, at the end I will and hope to find a job in something I have so much passion for.

In meantime, I hope to share weekly blogging of my water-mouthing projects to keep improving my skills with a sweet career in baking and pastry arts. Wish me luck!

Rustic Peacock Wedding Cake

One of the brides, Lindsay asked us to make her a wedding cake. She informed us her ceremony and reception venue will be outdoor, surrounding with live peacocks. We brainstormed ideas of what her cake will look like and came up with the following: a three-tier, cream cheese frosting with vertical textured stripes, two little peacocks (we found a pair from Michael's) on top tier, and a couple of peacock feathers.

Lindsay's fiance, Marilena, doesn't like buttercream frosting and requested a cream cheese frosting that could withstand the Oregon heat. Originally, we weren't keen with the idea of cream cheese frosting for an outdoor summer wedding. But apparently, we are having a late summer here in Oregon, which reassured us that the cream cheese will not melt under heat. We had to come up with cake flavors that would go along with cream cheese: hazelnut, devil food, and of course, red velvet.

We simply thought of adding natural hazelnut flavor into a white cake recipe, however, the search for hazelnut flavor was a struggle, so we came up with a back-up recipe: hazelnut liquor! Several of the top hazelnut cake recipes recommended Frangelico Hazelnut liqueur. But who wants to spend more than $20 for a bottle when everyone is just going to eat cake, not drink booze? Dekuyper liqueur hazelnut was the most affordable one we could find in our local liquor shop. Should we sizzle this recipe up? Absolutely!

In our trial run of making the hazelnut cake, we added ground fresh baked hazelnut (thumbs up to the Winco bulk section!) and the result... DELICIOUS! Sadly, Linds remembered a couple of her guests had nuts allergy, so we ended up not using this recipe. Hazelnut liquor alone gave a weak taste. We still needed something that would bring out the hazelnut flavor, without using real hazelnuts. While shopping for cake supplies, we spotted Lorann hazelnut oil. Thank you, thank you!!! It highlighted the true nutty flavor of grounded hazelnut, without the nut risk.

At the end of the day, the most important thing to us is that the guests, especially the brides, liked the cake.

The reception was filled with a lot of sugar goodies: Voodoo donuts and Cookies from Portland Cookie Co:

Congratulations Lindsay and Marilena!

Fourth of July Sparkle & Cupcakes

Congrats Angela and Matt (i.e. Mr. and Mrs. Bryant)! We wish you the best of luck in your new life together. Thank you for letting us be a part of your special day.

Wilton Towering Tiers Cake Stand

Amelia spotted one of Wilton's latest innovations that she desperately wanted: the towering tiers cake stand!

The MSRP is $99.99. But as a perferred customer of Jo-Ann's, Amelia receives a monthly newsletter (join their mailing list here!), which often includes coupon(s). She took advantage of using her 50% off coupon to purchase the stand...at $49.95!

The stand was easy to assemble and lightweight, versus the custom one we made for Dan and Michelle's wedding. With this lightweight material, we hope it can hold a large number of cupcakes and heavy cakes for future orders.

See, cake stands can be affordable!

1st Birthday Cake - Out of the Doghouse!

What did little Sylvie accomplished lately? She turned 1! The proud mom of this girl asked for a custom made birthday cake that incorporates her favorite animal - dogs. We made her a 12-inch vanilla cake with strawberry frosting, covered with green marshmallow fondant to mimic the color of grass. We topped the cake with a dog house (after attempting to make the house out of cake itself, which failed, we opted for rice krispie treats), four variety of dogs (we weren't sure what kind of dogs they are, but they sure were cute!), and some accessories.

Sylvie got a piece of cake for herself to munch in her mouth. Happy 1st birthday girl!

Later in the day, the mom said, "The CAKE is AMAZING!! We love it so much!!" Thanks Amy!

Dan and Michelle's Wedding Cake

The gorgeous bride, Michelle, asked us to make a vegan wedding cake and cupcakes to celebrate her and Dan's special day. It was our first vegan request. We searched for a few recipes for both chocolate and vanilla cakes and frostings, modified the recipes to taste and ran multiple kitchen tests to finally get the best combination. We were a tad skeptical on how vegan baking would work, but to our pleasant surprise, everything came out perfectly! Of course, the wedding consultation would not be complete without a complimentary cake tasting for the bride and the groom...and a few of our co-workers (we had to taste them, too)! Alas, we settled on the recipes that we will forever keep in our secret baking book.

This was also the largest order we've had to date. Besides hours of baking and hours of decorating, we also spent hours on building a cupcake stand out of scratch! We were able to find different size pre-cut round wood pieces at a local cake decorating shop and bought a long board of MDF from Home Depot, which we cut into pieces.

(This is Amelia cutting with a kiddo saw attached to a stabilization board. She sure knows how to use a power saw!)

When all the cutting and drilling was complete, we painted all pieces white with Sherwin-Williams Duration Home Interior Acrylic Latex environmentally-preferred paint (It's GreenSure designation - low VOC and low odor formula).

We pre-made all the edible decorations that matched their wedding colors (black, white, green, and purple) and themes (calla lilies, orchids, roses, and lucky bamboo) a week in advance and had them completed by the morning of the wedding. Are we procrastinators? No, we both hold full-time job, so please forgive us :-)

On Thursday evening, we baked a 8-inch cake for the topper. The next day, we baked 100 cupcakes and covered the cake with fondant. Then we loaded all the delicious cakes/cupcakes and all he supplies we needed to complete the centerpiece at the venue in a car and drove to Albany, Ore. for a night. On a bright and early Saturday morning, we drove to The Inn at Diamond Woods in Monroe, Ore. for the Bowden's wedding ceremony and reception.

When we arrived there, we anticipated working in a kitchen or least a large countertop space to make the fresh frosting for the cupcakes. The event coordinators directed us to a small corner in the reception area where the cake would actually be set on a display table. There wasn't a lot of working space, so Amelia took a chair from the reception space outside to place her vibrant red Kitchen Aid stand mixer to make all the frosting (a bit of flour, powdered sugar and cocoa all spilled onto the floor to eventually get cleaned), while Clarissa struggled to assemble the cake stand (the holes on boards didn't align properly - blame Amelia's bad drilling skills!)

We glued all the ribbon bows onto the cupcake liners, placed a decoration on each of them and arranged them on the stand. The centerpiece turned out perfectly, despite our race against the clock (3.5 hours! It was completed 20 minutes before the wedding ceremony started). We felt like we were on Food Network's Cupcake Wars, sans the camera and judges.

Amelia is such a sweet-tooth person. Naturally, she isn't a huge fan of specialty desserts, but she was proven wrong in this case! The couple said earlier, nobody would notice the difference, it was indeed true! We were able to trick their guests into thinking these were regular cupcakes, the carb-loaded ones, and for us, that was a great sense of relief and success!

Thank you Dan and Michelle for having us to be a part of your wedding! We were absolutely honored to make an important centerpiece for your special day.

Papa Haydn, Third Time Charm?

Not much excitement for the third time around this year, but still yummy nonetheless! This time, we brought a friend, Maraia, to celebrate her belated birthday. After the waiter handed her a dessert menu, Maraia's eyes googled all over the menu as her mind filled with thoughts of wanting ALL these desserts. But her eyebrows were on the rise when we told it was $8 per piece. Ultimately, she chose the chocolate peanut butter cake. She devoured it so quickly that we didn't get a chance to take a picture! Amelia finally got what she wanted last time: champagne cake.

Clarissa didn't remember the chocolate mint mousse cake and ordered it again.

Looks familar, eh? Still just as delicious as last time, don't worry!

Return of the Papa Haydn

We returned to Papa Haydn's for Clarissa's birthday. Our goal is to taste all the desserts on their menu. Unfortunately, every time we go there, we never remember what we ordered on our last visit or recognize the items in the case. Apparently, they also change their dessert specials monthly. We will never catch up!

Last time we had five plates. This time we downsized to two plates (this was a struggle for us). This time, we chose the Passion (chocolate butter cake topped with passion fruit mousse with a center of raspberry mousse, wrapped in a band of white chocolate and finished with passion fruit curd)...

... and the Marjolaine (chocolate mousse and hazelnut-praline cream piped between layers of hazelnut meringue, topped with whipped creme fraiche and french vanilla chocolate).

At the end of the evening, Clarissa ordered two french macaroons (caramel and coffee flavors) to satisfy her cookie craving...and to cap a truly fabulous birthday!

Voodoo Doughnut

Four days before Christmas, we were craving for doughnuts from the original Voodoo Doughnut based in Old Town Portland (22 S.W. Third Ave.). We have lived in this city for two decades and since Voodoo Doughnut opened in 2003, we've lost count the number of times we were in this neighborhood and have never stepped inside its doors. Amelia went there on a previous Saturday and choose not to wait in a line, which stretched a block away in the typical Pacific Northwest weather (rain).



We munched on Marshmallow Matters (plain cake doughnut with vanilla frosting and mini M&M's), blueberry cake doughnut with a glaze, Raspberry Romeo's (doughnut filled with raspberry jelly topped with a glaze), and Texas Challenge (giant doughnut equals size regular glazed doughnuts). They sell more than 45 kinds of doughnut plus a few varieties of vegan doughnuts daily - too long of a list to include here, but we encourage you to check their menu.

Apparently the original shop attracts many locals and tourists as evidenced by the long line outside of their cramped storefront. They opened their second Voodoo shop (Voodoo Doughnut Too) in 2008, in Northeast Portland (1501 N.E. Davis St.). Their third Voodoo shop (Voodoo Doughnut Tres) is located in Eugene and opened in 2010 (20 E. Broadway).

One bonus for those who like late night munchies, all three shops open 24 hours 7 days a week. One downfall is that they accept cash only; however, ATMs are available inside the stores.

Cricut Lite Cupcake Wrappers Cartidge

"Turn plain cupcakes into special treats with this cartridge! Whether your cupcakes are for a birthday party, baby shower, holiday, or other special occasion, you are sure to love all the different wrappers. As a bonus, the cartridge also includes coordinating cupcake toppers to help the treats to stand out even more."

Isn't this product awesome?! We like to make our cupcakes cute by dressing them with wrappers. You can purchase a set of 12 cupcake wrappers at your local or online cake decoration supply store, but they charge you an average of $7. Our goal is to sell our cupcakes at affordable and reasonable prices and adding $7 to the bill when guests often discard the wrappers while devouring the cupcakes did not sound like a fantastic idea. If you do the math, you can actually buy a sheet of 12"x12" decorative cardstock at a craft store for $1 or less and cut three cupcake wrappers per sheet. You can create a dozen cupcake wrappers for less than $4! Also, you can customize the paper pattern and cut design. Fantastic, isn't it?


Cricut Lite Cupcake Wrappers cartridge gives you the choice of more than 50 laser cut wrapper patterns and 50 cupcake toppers that are sure to be compatible to your celebration. Now, you can make the perfect presentation for your cupcakes.

Buy it today at Cricut.com or Wal Mart.

Cricut Cake Mini Machine

courtesy of Cricut

After seeing the Cricut Cake a couple months ago, we decided we didn't need it because, first of all, we already owned a Cricut Expression that we battled over against hundreds of people last year on Black Friday, and second, it is expensive. However, recently we got a Black Friday advertisement from Jo-Ann's, and on page two, there was an image of Cricut Cake Mini. It costs only a penny shy of a cool hundred bucks. What a steal! (Amelia had to go to Jo-Ann, waited in the rain for 15 minutes before the store opened, raced against a hundred of people, asked a nice lady to show her where she could find the machine, and ten minutes later she was at a register and paid for this amazing machine... two hours later, Clarissa thought her older sister didn't get the machine and went to the Jo-Ann's near her work and bought one as well. We didn't keep both, though!)

Ever since we started our little "business," we have been hand cutting all the images, even the super tiny ones (around 1/8 of an inch). Cricut Cake Mini will benefit us tremendously because it cuts small shapes with accuracy and saves us a lot of time. We are excited to experiment with it on future orders!

27th Annual Holiday Cookie Bake

We're trying to make this our new holiday tradition! We got to attend the Annual Safeway Clackmas Bread Plant Holiday Cookie Bake 2010. This event is a fundraiser for Oregon Health & Science University's Doernbecher Children's Hospital Foundation.

If you want to bring joy to children, you can get involved in fundraising or give generous donations to the Doernbecher Children's Hospital here.

Quantaray E-Box Portable Photo Studio

When you see other people's food blogs, you get attracted to their food because their pictures look so beautiful and real. We are not professional photographers, nor food set-up artists; however, we do have some skills in taking pictures of our completed desserts (maybe, we think?) Often we take our pictures during the day when the outdoor light gives a neutral feeling (you definitely don't want to see pictures with blue or yellow tones...It will make you gag). We like to use a black background to make the cakes pop!


Amelia found this Quantaray E-Box Portable Photo Studio and thought it would be a great idea to take our photography skills to a next level. Hopefully we can display more professional and yummy looking pictures in our upcoming posts. The package includes two studio quality 50-watt photo lights, light-box, back-drop- table-top tripod, and carry case. It should be set up easily on a table and storable when not in use. Order your own portable photo studio through Ritz Camera.

Little Baby Feet Cupcakes

Mom-to-be Brandy had her fall themed baby shower with an initmate group of co-workers and friends. These gluten-free chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting were topped with fall cut outs of fondant baby feet was perfect for the expectant mother who wanted to keep the sex of her baby a surprise. Congratulations to Brandy and her family!

Cupcake Pops

For Suzzanna's 43rd birthday, we decided to surprise her with something sweet that was different from our traditional birthday cupcakes. As we mentioned in our last post about us meeting Bakerella, we were inspired by her creativity and decided to make our very first cupcake pops.



We followed the instructions in Cake Pops by Bakerella. It wasn't so simple at first. Our chocolate candy coats did not melt as uniformly as we hoped for. The troubleshooting section of the book instructed us to add vegetable oil or shortening to liquify the chocolate. If you are on oil-free diet, don't read this part: we might've have added 1/3 cup of oil into 8 oz of candy coats. Yikes! However, the result was smooth and cute cupcake pops!



The very happy birthday lady with her cupcake pop. The cupcake pop is actually not this big, just an angle of the camera makes it disproportional (although no one would complain about a bigger piece of cake, right?)

Meet Bakerella

We took a short trip to Seattle, Wash. for one of Bakerella's Cake Pops book tours. The book signing occurred in the Williasms-Sonoma. We bought our book in the store, waited in a line, and saw Angie Dudley, aka Bakerella, walking toward us and then taking a picture of us (which she did not choose to upload on her blog...If we were more famous, maybe we will be on it?). All of the fans went into the store for the first 20 minutes of a Q & A session. After a long talk, we went back into line, and waited for our turn to meet the infamous Bakerella! She sounds just like herself like in her blog, and she signed our book with a pink sharpie. Cute!

Like all bloggers, Bakerella has her camera with her everywhere.

Isn't she sweet?

Thank you Bakerella for meeting us!

Sweet Life Patisserie

As University of Oregon alums, we have many reasons to visit Eugene, Ore. as many times as we can get ourselves down the I-5 corridor! We went back to our old stomping ground for a football game against Portland State Vikings (which we won, btw). One of many places we had to return to is Sweet Life Patisserie. After a yummy dinner at Ocean Sky Chinese Resturant (their portions of food is unbelievable), we had a dessert date with our friend, Ashlee, at Sweet Life. They offer a wide variety of desserts: cakes, cupcakes, cheesecakes, tarts, pies, petits sweets, and pastries, with some that are sugar-free, gluten-free, or vegan.


Amelia, who normally prefers white cakes, had citron mousse. Clarissa, a chocolate lover, had a slice of the chocolate orgasm, and Ashlee, an experimental vegan, had the vegan german chocolate (which Amelia tasted and had no idea it was vegan until later...it was THAT good!) We definately will have to visit again and taste more sweets next time!

Bubblebee Car

Our aunt asked us to make a small cake for her son's upcoming birthday. We know he has a passion for cars, so a car cake was perfect for him!

Later in the evening, we got a call from our cousin thanking us for making him an amazing cake. But further into our conversation, he informed us that the today wasn't his birthday! Oh, should we or the mother be embarrassed? Nah! It is never wrong to celebrate a birthday early (or late) as long as there's cake involved!

90th Birthday Cake

Two months ago, our friend Carmin decided she would call Amelia about an upcoming cake for her grandma's big 90th birthday (this is the same gal that was so floored by our pink baby shower theme cake that she had to be a repeat customer!) A week ago, she finally called and asked for a 6-inch white cake with lemon frosting. It had to have grandma-like decorations (a.k.a. plenty of flowers). The flowers were made out of gum paste. We used putty to make a silicone mold of lace, then impressed a piece of fondant into the mold. As the deadline quickly approached, we didn't have time to mold sugar pearls, so instead we added a chain of plastic pearls around the base of the cake to give it a finished look. We added a final touch of lavender shimmer dust to give it a beautiful glow...just like Grandma!

Beaverton Bakery

We went on a trip to Beaverton Bakery in old town Beaverton, Ore. Gotta love the vintage curb appeal of the bakery. Maybe we should copy their idea and get a hot pink and black striped canopy for our shop?!

The shop is filled with everything from cakes to bread at surprisingly affordable prices.

Decorated cookies and tea cookies.

We couldn't be denied by these cute bears with mustaches! How clever!

As a Portland area bakery, they are also a proud sponsor of Portland Trial Blazers (our NBA team, in case you didn't know).