It's graduation time!

June is known for many things: the official start of summer (yea!), Father's Day and a flurry of graduation celebrations. My cousin Zach was one of the many celebrating his big leap from high school to college and, while I refuse to believe that my little cousin known for his suffocating bear hugs is no longer so little, PattyCake jumped at the chance to help him celebrate his big day.

Two early morning plane rides to Wisconsin, 17 hours and 150 assorted cupcakes and cookies later, Zach had his {cup}cake and I was ready for a much deserved nap (didn't you read Jade's former post? Birthdays, weddings and graduations...oh my!).

The assortment:
Cupcakes: vanilla, chocolate and red velvet.
Frostings: vanilla, chocolate, praline and cream cheese.
Cookies: vanilla-sugar, homemade oreos and bourbon pecan.

Busy Little Bees!

So it's been a while since Rebekah or I have posted anything, and we promise it's not because we have forgotten to! We have been extremely busy over the past month and now that we have a little time to rest, it's the perfect time to catch you up.

We have been delivering cupcakes across this great city, and also even all the way out to Wisconsin! (More on that later.) We also had our first cake order, which was probably one of the most challenging and rewarding jobs yet.

We had to recreate a wedding cake.

No small feat, let me tell you. The original cake, served five years ago at the wedding of J.'s boss M., was completely custom-made, from the bright-red fondant with elegant flowered piping, to the filling layered with dark chocolate ganache, vanilla cake, and raspberry mousse. To top it off a handmade, pure white, sugar-paste rose bouquet flourished atop the five tiers. It was a masterpiece of a cake and our task was to recreate it (in miniature!) to serve at their anniversary lunch.

We could have done a lot of this with store-bought parts. However, being the ambitious girls we are, everything was made from scratch. Once the easy parts were out of the way - the cake, raspberry mousse, and ganache – we tackled the hardest part: draping the fondant on the tiers and applying the piping. Finally, the sugar-paste flowers were molded by hand, shaping little white buds and wrapping them with thin petals with our freshly made sugar-paste.

We've heard horror stories of fondant cracking, peeling, and falling apart, but one thing we think more bakers should talk about is sweating. Not the sweating that you do when you realize you have to make fondant from scratch at 11:30 PM because the white store-bought fondant doesn't want to absorb enough red food coloring to get it even close to the color your client wants, but rather the sweating the cake does as it defrosts beneath your, previously perfect, layer of fondant, creating a problematic layer of moisture. This discovering found Jade doing her own form of sweating (and I’m sure grumbling) into the wee-hours of the morning while holding a hand dryer to the otherwise lovely cake.

Despite the unfortunate discovery of “sweating,” the cake was delivered in perfect form to the restaurant and promptly enjoyed (and admired) by the clients. Whew! Next, remind us to tell you about the red velvet mishap!

Bon Bons

How to begin a post on chocolate? Chocolate means something different to everyone - whether it's an addiction that begins with a bar of Toblerone and ends with an empty wrapper, or a begrudgingly strict avoidance of anything to do with cocoa beans and sugar.

Personally, I try to employ Michael Pollan's sensible directive to, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." but it seems to get thrown out of the window when chocolate is around. And lately it seems to be around more often than not because of the recent focus on chocolate in our course at FCI.

We have spent the last couple of classes making chocolate candies, more specifically bon bons. These are products of our collective effort making an assortment of flavors, including espresso, toasted coconut, bourbon pecan, spice, and champagne fillings. Believe me when I say that they're worth putting a temporary hiatus on even the strictest of diets.


While I'm not surprised that these chocolates have turned out to be delicious, I am surprised by how much I've enjoyed creating these little bon bons. I now find myself daydreaming about all of the upcoming special occasions we can make chocolates for, and which ones of our friends would appreciate them the most. Who knows, maybe if you're lucky I'll make some for you!

coconut macarons

chocolate-hazelnut and cranberry-almond scones

Food = Love

... at least in my book. One of the biggest factors that affected my decision to enroll in culinary school was that feeding people with food I have made always makes me so incredibly happy. The best nights hanging out with my friends always begin with a homemade, potluck meal (accompanied by copious amounts of wine, of course).

It was my desire to turn my affection into something tangible, edible, that led me to the French Culinary Institute. And halfway through the program, there I was: faced with an assignment to make a special occasion cake. Any cake my little heart desired.

Okay, we were given some parameters - I had to make a chocolate cake with chocolate glaze. But as for the flavors and decorations, the decisions were left up to us. Being that this is the time of year that J. and I have decided we started dating, I decided to make a cake just for him. (Don't ask, it's a long and complicated story. Let's just say that we celebrate our anniversary somewhere between St. Patrick's Day and before March Madness is over.)


The inspiration for this cake actually stemmed from our first fight, just over three years ago. The cause is negligible; the thing that I remember from that argument was my late-night, teary phone call to my friend A. He comforted me, calmed me down, and told me to be the bigger woman and apologize for the sake of the relationship, telling me, "You guys are great - I mean, you go together like peas and carrots!"

This phrase, cliche as it is, has stuck with us for the past three years. It just feels right - comfortable, familiar, and classic. So for this cake I stuck with flavors that evoked those feelings by layering the chocolate cake with sweet and salty peanut butter buttercream, and added a spike of rum soak for the cake itself for a bit of excitement. The end result? A cake that is simple but delicious, and one that we have been nibbling steadily on for this past week. I think of it as a way of stretching out my anniversary love over more than just one day of celebration.