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Wedding | Kyte & Sherry in Downtown LA

September 14, 2015| Featured, Weddings

Congratulations to Kyte and Sherry! These newlyweds found Milo’s Bonbons through Mike and Sandy, and I had a blast working with them to design and create their wedding dessert table at the 1920s inspired Cicada Restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. For their wedding, we decided on mini cupcakes, macarons and panna cotta desserts, with a 3-tiered cake for cutting and display. The cupcakes came in 4 interesting flavors — purple yam (with purple yam custard filling and mango buttercream), matcha (with matcha custard filling and vanilla buttercream), Calpico (white cupcake with Calpico pudding filling and vanilla buttercream), and strawberry lemon (yellow cupcake with lemon curd filling and strawberry buttercream).

Each cupcake was frosted with a floral pattern in a different color for variety.

The cake itself was a fun flavor combination — white cake with lime curd and guava mousse filling.

After the cake was frosted with buttercream, it was covered in white fondant and then decorated. The bottom layer was covered with gumpaste rose petals, the middle hexagon layer was airbrushed in gold, and the top layer was kept simple in order to contrast with the white gumpaste roses and gold leaves. For the middle layer, I also added a wafer paper ribbon for design and contrast. It took a little while to make all of the florals, but it was a lot of fun to see the cake come together!

The panna cottas were mango jelly and coconut panna cotta.

And while I don’t have a close-up photo of the macarons, we had three varieties: lavendar with blackberry jam, plain shells with lychee jam, and rose with rose-raspberry white chocolate ganache. A floral theme throughout the dessert table!

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Baby Shower | Congrats Roxana & Al!

June 29, 2015| Baby Showers, Featured

You can’t help but smile when you see this two-tiered baby shower cake. Although the design is based on photos of cakes from a New York bakery (provided by the sister of the expectant mom), I was still offered creative license, and there is something fun and challenging about figuring out “how they did it.” Sometimes customers give me basic directions and entrust me to make something interesting, and other times, they have a very specific image or idea in mind. I’m happy to make it happen, either way!

The bottom tier is a 12″ citrus poppyseed pound cake, with lemon curd and pastry cream custard filling. I say “citrus” because I used primarily grapefruit juice, with some lemon juice, to flavor the cake itself. The pound cake made for a hefty cake. We sure got our workout moving this piece around.

The top tier is an 8″ chocolate layer cake with alternating layers of dark chocolate mousse and milk chocolate mousse with chopped milk chocolate bits. The expectant parents told me this reminded them of their favorite “Bibi’s cake” from their hometown of Iran, that they’ve searched for but haven’t found in the past 12 years in the US. Lucky coincidence perhaps, but what a compliment!

The cake is covered in fondant, with fondant-gumpaste decorations. This was my first time using tappits for lettering, and it was easier to use than expected.

As for the cake topper, the baby bath was made first by molding gumpaste in a bowl, letting it dry, and then covering with a thin green fondant-gumpaste layer. I placed a concave disc of gumpaste inside the bath to take up volume (without adding weight) and prop up the baby’s head, feet and arms (yup, there was no body or legs . . .). Then, I individually glued white and blue “bubbles” with royal icing to fill in the bath. Finally, I dusted a few bubbles with pearl luster dust to add dimension.

As you can see, the baby’s head was a bit heavy. Once placed on the cake, the bath depressed into the cake on one end. I was a little stressed about whether it would keep sinking, but I hear it held up just fine. Also, depending on who you asked, it might have ended up looking better that way!

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Wedding | Sandy & Mike in Malibu

May 29, 2015| Featured, Weddings

I previewed, but never got a chance to feature, the event that premiered the new Milo’s Bonbons logo. At Sandy & Mike’s wedding in Malibu earlier this year, we set up a dessert table with a wedding cake centerpiece. It was colorful and fun, and a real smorgasbord of sweets.

I had a lot of fun collaborating with the bride and groom on interesting flavor ideas and presentation. They were excited to present unique desserts that featured some of their favorite flavors like Earl Grey tea, bourbon and peach. I was also inspired by their wedding colors, which were along the lines of coral and slate blue. What made the experience really special for me was the abundance of support and enthusiasm the couple had for Milo’s Bonbons. It was amazing seeing the tent card signs they printed for the desserts, especially the “Desserts by Milo’s Bonbons” sign. Thank you Sandy & Mike!

The dessert table featured mini cupcakes, macarons, tarts, mini cakes and parfait cups. For the cupcakes, I made two types: a chocolate bourbon ganache cupcake with bourbon buttercream, and an orange cupcake with champagne buttercream.

For the macarons, I made two types as well: an Earl Grey chocolate ganache macaron, and a passion fruit pastry cream macaron.

The mini tarts had a layer of baked almond cream and was topped with mascarpone mousse and little gumpaste flowers.

To add variety in height and shape, I also had parfait cups filled with layers of granola, peach custard and raspberry puree. The photo I took of them was unfortunately a bit dark.

The wedding couple’s wedding cake was three tiers, but only the top tier was actual cake for cutting purposes. The bottom two tiers were dummy cakes. The cake was a strawberry layered cake with Chambord buttercream and in order to share this with guests, I also created mini cakes with golden heart skewers added by the bride. That was actually the most challenging item of the event, as I was exploring different cake textures and cutting techniques and learning as I went. I certainly learned a lot for future events!

Photo below by onelove photography:

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