Many (400) Mini Cupcakes!

Our church celebrated its 40th Anniversary this Sunday with special services and a wonderful church-wide reception after the evening service. As part of the dessert offerings, I was asked to make 400 Mini Cupcakes. I suggested that we offer three flavors: Key Lime with Coconut Buttercream and Toasted Coconut, Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Icing and Cappuccino with Mocha Buttercream, Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans and Tiramisu Pirouettes. It was a lot of work, but I was very pleased with the end results.

Fall Birthday Cake

This weekend was a busy one! A friend from church ordered a cake to be delivered to her Secret Pal for her birthday on Sunday. The decorations were left up to me and I decided on a fall-themed cake for the Birthday Girl. The cake is Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Icing. The decorations are gumpaste mums, leaves, acorns and birthday plaque, and a few "sprinkles" of fall leaves. The feedback from the Birthday Girl was positive- cake was delicious and beautiful. Music to my ears!!

Tastes of the Season

It's hard to believe that Thanksgiving is a little more than four weeks away - where did 2010 go? It's never too early to start planning for Thanksgiving dessert! This year That Takes the Cake is offering "Tastes of the Season" Dessert Trays, along with other custom cake and cookie offerings. The Thanksgiving "Tastes of the Season" will include Pecan Tarts with cream cheese crust, Sweet Potato Tarts with cream cheese crust and marshmallow meringue, Carrot Cake Truffles, Caramel Apple Cake Truffles and Snickerdoodle Sugar Cookies decorated for the season. (The photo above is last year's tray and does not show all of this year's treats.) Dessert Trays are available in two sizes - the small tray serves 8-10 ($40) and the large tray serves 12-15 ($56). Please order early so that we can plan for your treats. You can order by e-mailing me at lesabyrum@erols.com or calling me at (703) 472-1267. We also plan to offer Christmas "Tastes of the Season" dessert trays with tasty Christmas offerings which we will post in a few weeks.

Zebra Print Birthday

This zebra print birthday cake was for my sister in law, Vickie. I wanted to make a more sophisticated zebra print cake so I added fondant roses and gumpaste hyacinth flowers accented with silver dragees. Vickie loved the cake design and the cake as well - she doesn't usually like cake! The cake was cream cheese pound cake with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream icing. The cream cheese pound cake is not an overly sweet cake and the icing adds just the right amount of sweetness.

September Wedding

These photos are of a wedding cake and groom's cake I made in early September. It was a beautiful outdoor wedding with the reception inside a beautiful old manor house in Alexandria, Virginia. The cake was four tier square - Red Velvet, Cappuccino, Lemon and Red Velvet. The Groom's cake split football helmet was great fun to make with the Colts logo and endzone and the University of Tennessee logo and endzone. Both the Colts and UT were gracious in granting permission to use their logos for this cake. My husband constructed the mirrored-tile cake stand which added just enough bling in the candlelight of the reception.

Recital Cookies

I recently made 150 musical note cookies for an after recital reception. I didn't want to make just plain black musical notes and after contemplating different embellishments came up with contrasting color swirled hearts. I was pleased with how they turned out, as was my customer. I'm looking forward to more sugar cookie ideas and projects!