guava

I always recommend Extraordinary Desserts to any dessert fans who are visiting San Diego, and I love comparing notes afterwards about each person’s decadent experience. My friend Patricia is one such dessert fan, and for her birthday earlier this month, she knew she wanted to replicate her Extraordinary Desserts experience. She has a couple favorite cakes from the restaurant, but knowing that she intended to celebrate with a Brazilian BBQ birthday dinner, she requested the fruity and light Shangri-La cake as a nice contrast to the meat-heavy meal. I’m not sure I’ve ever had this cake at Extraordinary Desserts, but when I saw the description on the restaurant’s website, I was game to give it a try.

I made this cake with a basic white cake, cut into three layers. (I think the restaurant probably uses an almond sponge cake, but I realized that after the fact.) Each layer was soaked with a Kirschwasser simple syrup, then topped with guava mousse (made with guava puree to ensure a distinctive and fresh guava flavor), chopped strawberries and white chocolate mousse.

After letting the stacked layers set in the freezer in a ring mold, I then crumb coated the layered cake with a plain Swiss meringue buttercream. For the sides of the cake, I pressed on white and pink chocolate curls, as I loved that look on the website. For the top of the cake, I piped buttercream rosettes and other patterns over sliced strawberries, and used additional chocolate curls as filler.

The individual flavors in this cake are unusual, but when paired together, they go surprisingly well together. On their own, I’m not a fan of white chocolate, or Kirshwasser, or even guava. But I’ll admit to enjoying the combination!

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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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Birthday | Guava White Chocolate Mousse Cake

Wedding | Kyte & Sherry in Downtown LA