So when we were asked if we could make a cake to match the birthday boys invitation we were thrilled. The invitation and party were full of colors! Bright, happy and fun colors that were perfect for a little boys birthday party. Of course we had to be sure to include  Curious George’s signature yellow from his shirt, and thus began the basis for our cake.

Erin drew an exact (and I mean EXACT) replica of Curious George from the birthday invitation and then hand painted the little guy to look like he had real fur. Seriously, Erin just amazes me every time.

We hand cut a balloons from sugar that went along with the theme of the party to place on the cake and cupcakes (better believe there were matching cupcakes too).

The cake was vanilla, the birthday boys favorite (have to admit, I didn’t see that coming) and the cupcakes were our signature chocolate recipe.

We really liked how it looked as if the balloon cupcakes were floating around on the dessert table.

 And this is Robbie. He doesn’t really like to “pose” for pictures and was far to busy with the bounce house for the likes of us. I didn’t blame him, we kind of wanted to jump in there as well…

These miniature stuffed Curious George dolls were an amazing favor and just the right touch. The kids went crazy over them!

We stayed and watched Robbie blow out his candles. It was so much fun to see! It’s very rare that Erin and I get to see a cake of ours once we drop it off at the party, so it really was a treat to see how excited all the kids were when we arrived with the cake. Robbie had put full force gale winds into that birthday wish and went to town on those candles! I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard in such a long time! Do you remember any of your birthday wishes?

Happy birthday Robbie! Wishing you a lifetime of bounce houses and birthday cake.

Erin helps me out with most cake orders and adds amazing details to each cake we work on. Whether it’s from the kindness of her heart or from what she calls being “volun-told,” Erin is an amazing cake partner and little sister (it’s at this point she’ll probably say, “Casey, I’m your only little sister” and though this is true it changes nothing…)

Since the baby was turning a full quarter of a century I wanted to celebrate her in our traditional way, with a bit of sugar.

For those of you who don’t know south Florida, US-1 is a long and sometimes bumpy stretch of road filled with lots and LOTS of traffic lights and drivers who fear the use of turn signals, a perfect environment for transporting a cake. Yeah, right. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the best idea to transport the cake on a solid diet of coffee/ caffeine; my nerves were not built for such things.

As a result, the little balloon detached itself from the elephant. In all honestly, I’m a bit surprised the cake survived the car ride at all. Miami drivers make NASCAR look like a round of bumper cars at the fair. And being a fellow Miami driver, I can tell you from experience, WE WILL RUN YOU OFF THE ROAD and blame you for getting in the way (I’ve even seen someone knitting while driving!).

Our mother joined us and we surprised Erin with lunch, cake, cupcakes and a heavy dose of embarrassment. Everything was chocolate, from the cake to the cupcakes; it’s Erin’s favorite.

These are the cupcakes we made to match the cake…

(Sorry for the low-res cell phone pic. I was too busy embarrassing my little sister to remember to take one with the actual camera)

Everything was meant to be girly and young, I wanted her to know, that no matter how old she is, she will always be my baby sister.

Happy birthday little one.

What started out as a simple idea morphed into 4 different cake sketches, a mish mosh of emails between cake suppliers and a garage full of sweet props and accents. I did brooch the idea of chandeliers but was unfortunately shot down before I could even finish saying the word chan-

When we were setting up the backdrop for the dessert table, Erin noted that we would defiantly be needing a staple gun, hammer and nails to assemble everything. I yelled out “SURE! no problem,” and immediately ran to find the staple gun. To my surprise, no one would let me use the staple gun, hammer or nails. Not sure what that was about. My brief dreams of playing around with power tools were crushed.

We left the table empty throughout the baby shower just until after lunch was served. However, we had received compliments throughout the shower saying “oh, we love the dessert table” and we would say, “thank you but there’s no dessert there yet?” and everyone would break out laughing at the colorful but empty table.

You’ve got to love family and friends, they validate and boost your ego like no chocolate bar ever could. Once we brought out the cake, our oldest and dearest friends, gave us a round of applause. The kind that goes from a few claps to ten (but definitely seemed larger in my head). Too embarrassed to even look up, we focused on simply not dropping the cake and cupcakes as we walked the 20 feet or so to the desert table. But seriously, family and friends, you were our first fans and our biggest supporters. Thank you for your continued support and willingness to taste test everything that comes out of our kitchen (and I mean everything. Need I remind everyone of the Guinness cupcake incident??? I think not).

We made what seemed like a thousand of these little blossoms for this three tiered baby shower cake. I had Erin working overtime with me to pump extra out, scared that we would be short when it came time to decorate the cake. We even enlisted her boyfriend for a night of flower making. Pretty sure I wasn’t ever supposed to mention that… In the end we had an entire sheet tray of blossoms left over… ha ha ha

We topped the salted caramel cupcakes with butterfly’s and pink teddy bears. The theme of the party after all was Baby Girl (genius I know).

Then there were the miniature white chocolate cupcakes with our signature buttercream…

Chocolate covered strawberries for good measure…

Don’t you just love packaged favors? I know I do! I love to have things packaged up for people to take with them. But I think it’s more than that, I secretly enjoy watching women stuff their purses with the treats, it makes me laugh. Sometimes what starts out as one item in their purse ends up as 23. So we made white chocolate button lollipops for the Winona Ryder’s in the crowd.

and sugar cookies that we stenciled on with a little decorative design.

By the way, we are really loving this rustic wooden toolbox. As soon as we saw it in the store, swoon.

Lastly and what seemed to be the biggest hit of the day were Erin’s white chocolate chip cookies. People were eating Erin’s cookies like there was no tomorrow. Although I have suspected the use of illicit drugs during the baking process, I have yet been able to prove it.

All in all, we had a great time planing our sisters baby shower and seriously, I just can’t wait to make Isabella Sofia’s first cake. And by first cake I mean, I’ll most likely be showing up at the hospital with an actual cake. Nothing too crazy, maybe just a one tier cake that lights up and sings Happy Birthday?

Congratulations Shannon, you are going to make an amazing mother!

And if you haven’t seen the video of our desserts from the baby shower on our Facebook fan page yet, here it is again.

The party was going to be decorated with ornaments and poinsettias already and had the traditional red coloring for table clothes. So our idea was to of course go in the complete opposite direction and do a winter white themed idea for the treats. We decided on three cakes and four different flavors of cake. Yeah baby, you heard read right, four different flavors of cake; seemed simple enough in theory.

All of the cakes would be decorated with snowflakes but like in real life, no two snowflakes are alike on any of these cakes.

Our first cake was a rum cake .

The second cake was a rich chocolate cake.

The third cake, with it’s delicate and signature ruffles was red velvet.

Is anyone else noticing the red velvet trend? It feels like the only cake I get request’s for lately is red velvet. Please let me know what it is about this cake that’s driving everyone mad. We sell red velvet cake like hot cakes around here, though I’ve never been quite sure what that expression meant. Inquiring minds want to know…

There were coconut cupcakes, which I personally think I love more than life itself. God, that is not code for smite me with lightning bolts.

We also topped some miniature red velvet cupcakes (I’m telling you people, like HOT CAKES) with Christmas tree toppers. I love how it almost looks like the little Christmas trees are sitting in a blanket of snow. A blanket of buttercream works just as well too.

Then there were the chocolate cupcakes with the snowflake toppers. My favorite detail is that no two snowflakes are alike. Though Erin came up with the idea on how to decorate these snowflakes, I’m sure she wasn’t happy when I asked her to replicate it 30 more times.

We wouldn’t dare forget about the snowflake cookies that were hand cut into a variety of sizes.

Do you know what it’s like trying to keep half a dozen sugar deprived children from jumping the dessert table while you are setting it up? All bets are off when you bring out the iced cookies. Just close your eyes and pray that they pass you by.

For the favors we kept them within the same theme and we packaged peppermint bark from Williams-Sonoma. Have you ever tried their peppermint bark? YUM.

After all the cakes were cut and everyone had their cake and eaten it too (…) all that was left was one miniature cupcake, a few chocolate covered pretzels and a small crumble of chocolate cake that looked like enough to feed a single baby elf. If I have learned anything from this, it’s that women love their sweets.

And in case you didn’t catch our Winter Wonderland video on Facebook  you can view it again below. Happy Holiday’s everyone. Thank you for an amazing year!

It was really important for us balance this collection between fondanted cakes and buttercream cakes. We wanted to show that even buttercream cakes can have a huge impact at your party.

It was bound to happen… I love the ruffle design so much that once we saw it was possible online to stack a ruffled cake, we started to stack away.I doubt anyone can really tell here but the sugar figurine of our baby girl has thunder thighs and that’s just the way we like her. I guess cake really does go straight to the thighs…

We had been wanting to do a rosette cake for a long time now and I am so glad we did one. This cake is coming so close to replacing my love for our ruffled cakes.

Though you can’t really tell here, these little booties were given a heavy dusting and a pearl finish. Adding a sparkly pearl finish is like bedazzling; it’s addicting people!

Buttercream ruffled dress with lace points.

Our last cake in the Baby Love series is just as dreamy as the first. We styled three square cakes into baby blocks to add a little movement to any dessert table.  I also have no idea why the chicky is 2x the size of the little lamb? Hostile takeover?

What followed next was utter cake madness, a parade of cupcakes… These teddy bear cupcake toppers are among our most popular design and they are always the first to go. We really love the coloring on these teddy bears, right down to the rosy cheeks and button nose.

Pram cupcake toppers.

Mini raspberry vanilla cupcakes.

Love the color combination of the peanut butter frosting and the chocolate cupcakes. The only thing that makes these even better; that they’re bite size.

The lighting here really doesn’t do these little monogrammed cupcake topper’s justice. They were the softest pink and so girly. 

Chocolate button lollipops.

Cupcake Parfait. Honestly, you had me cupcake parfait. What a fun treat to have on your dessert table or give away to your guest. We are really loving these.

Once we were finished photographing our entire collection, we kind of just threw it all on one table to get an idea of how much sugar and buttercream we were really working with. The answer; A LOT.
You can view the video displaying the entire Baby Love collection below.

Besides my new-found love for coconut cupcakes; I can’t seem to get enough of this cute serving plate. It’s my new favorite serving dish. I just adore the tiny dots that look like they were piped with icing around the border.  Figuring out what I can serve on this cute plate has become my new obsession.

Now back to the cupcakes! The frosting for these little beauties is on a whole new level. It’s a combination of Italian meringue and crème anglaise made from coconut milk.

We actually spent all summer turning out coconut flavored treats and this is my final desperate attempt to hold onto this tropical flavor as we enter into fall. Pass the sun block, please!

In the end, coconut cupcakes are my new favorite flavor. What is your favorite cupcake flavor?

Does this picture remind anyone else of the movie poster ad for the Rocky Horror picture show? I was mesmerized by this group shot of the chocolate lips staring back at us.

I couldn’t resist making our own movie poster. Another thing we couldn’t resist? Sporting these babies around the studio for about an hour. We just couldn’t stop laughing at these lips. Until we ate them, that is. A girl can only take so much temptation, after all.  

So, if we could have that much fun with a bunch of chocolate lollipops in the shape of lips, would it be the same for our next batch of lollipops?

The answer: Yes! and probably the tastiest disguise ever. We should market these to government agencies for covert operations.

 I think I found my Halloween costume. Those lips are perfect.  Call me  Angelina, or Miss Jolie. Now, I just have to find myself a Brad. And tattoos. And kids. Hmm, maybe I’ll just stick to her signature lips for now.

The end result; hours of amusement and sweet treats to snack on. Best afternoon ever.

 The candy apples have turned out to be a surprise favorite. Since we’re all about spreading the love here at Creations by Casey, we thought we’d share a quick how-to and the recipe we used. We modified a recipe we found on  allrecipes.com.

Here is the modified version we used:

Ingredients

• 8 apples (Granny Smith apples work great)
• 3 cups white sugar
• 1/2 cup white corn syrup
• 1/2 cup water
• 1 teaspoon red food coloring (we omitted the red coloring because we wanted that golden color but we bet it looks amazing with it)

Directions

1. Insert a wooden stick into the bottom of each apple. Butter a baking sheet and set aside.

2. Combine sugar, corn syrup and water in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Heat, without stirring, to 270 to 290 degrees F (132 to 143 degrees C), or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms hard but pliable threads. The mixture will come to boil and begin to change into an amber color. Remove from heat. If you want to give your apples a pop of color, stir in red food coloring until just mixed.

3. Holding each apple by its stick, quickly twirl in syrup, tilting pan to cover apple. Lift out of syrup, turning to allow drips to adhere to apple. Place apples on prepared baking sheet to cool completely.

Tips

• We found that the skin on some apple might be too smooth to hold liquid caramel. A few light swipes of sandpaper will score the skin and allow for a better coating surface.
• Make sure you only stir your mixture in the beginning to mix your ingredients and to make sure the sugar has dissolved. If you stir after that point, the caramel will take forever to thicken.
• Keep a careful watch on your caramel: once the color begins to change it can go from a golden amber to burnt and black quick. So take it off the heat as soon as it turns into that light amber (there is nothing worse than trying to clean burnt caramel out of your pan).

That’s it! We hope you all enjoy making your candy apples as much as we did.

Just remember to be careful as you dip your apples; the caramel is quite hot and sugar burns will take the joy out of eating your treats.

In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been surprised when she asked demanded we create a shrine of Halloween sweetness. Of course, I love my sister so I was happy to humor her.

What started out as one spook-tacular cake led to a pre-Halloween party dessert table….

Hello, Inner Child, party of 2.

True to her Halloween induced frenzy, Erin took the lead on this project.

Erin: “Casey, you know what would be really great…”

Casey: “If we just moved on to Thanksgiving?”

Erin: “If we had two (2!) cakes”

Casey: (bangs head against table)

And it just kept growing, like a sugar buffet.

(Does it look like the front ghost is smiling to anyone else? I swear, sometimes I get unnerved with the way the treats stare back at me.)

And we love these little guys…

Introducing the Cookie Army of the Undead. Muahhahahahahhahahahah. Hey, we’ll take minions where we can get em’.

And if all this wasn’t enough, we had the cutest station set up with gift bags and a sign that read, “Gals and Ghouls, No need for tricks, Come pick your treat.”

You can view our entire Halloween collection in the video below.

The Halloween dessert table was so much fun, we decided to post new themed creations and inspirations each week leading up to the big day. Subscribe to our blog to receive updates on our latest Halloween treats and our mid-sugar rush rants.

I came across one site that listed the “10 commandment’s of Macarons,” fearing that if I got it wrong there would be judgment (judgment in the form of decades of past and present French chefs waving their whisks at me in disapproval). However, many, if not all, the articles began the same way, “well you all remember my first attempt at macarons;” with links to pictures of broken macaron shells; a graveyard of sugar and despair.

Great; what made these little suckers so dang scary? And it was then I began strategizing my battle plan. So it might be messy and yes, the macaron had the advantage but I decided I wouldn’t go down without a fight. I even decided that I would grind my own almond flour.

And so it began…

My egg whites had been aged, my flour ground and sifted (x3) and everything had been weighed right down to the gram. I folded my batter to the exact number of strokes directed in the recipe because, well, that’s how I roll. Finally it came to piping the batter. Circles appeared to be a difficult concept for me to grasp. But nevertheless, I baked them. At this point is was 10:30 p.m. and I was not about to admit defeat within the first batch. I was going to bake those little suckers whether they liked it or not.

However, I’m not entirely sure how but at some point I gave birth to twins. I am thinking I should enter these into the state fair.

And then this happened:

Scary looking, I debated even putting the logo on it. Apparently my macarons were having separation anxiety and refused to leave the nest. That’s ok, batch #3 was on its way. Round 1 and 2, macaron. NEXT. Macaron 2, Casey 0

As my last batch was in the oven, I stared at them almost every minute they were baking. I was beyond excited and all my macaron hopes and dreams rested on this last batch.

Beautiful. Win!

When they were finally ready; 12 survivors remained.

Incase you didn’t know (because I sure didn’t until recently) Macarons are characteristically defined by the little sponge like feet that appear at the bottom of their shell. I was over joyed to see that my macaron’s indeed had feet. FEET!

I filled my macarons with  vanilla buttercream and allowed them to sit for 24 hours so the flavors could marinade together. 

While they “rested” I was left to face the clean-up process. Awful. I left a sign on the counter for the next hour that read “Just Nuke It” (I think we just came up with Nike’s next AD campaign). But to my dismay, no one was coming to quarantine or clean up the kitchen for me.

But you see that mixer there? It probably dates back to the early 1900’s but I adore it more than any other piece of kitchen equipment I own. It makes perfect meringue every time. Not even my stand mixer can say that.

The timing couldn’t have been better once the macarons were ready to eat. They were ready just as it had started to rain outside (I love over cast days). I grabbed myself a cup of tea, all reaming survivors and indulged. Sipped some tea and repeated the process as needed.

While I was enjoying the taste of victory I couldn’t help but analyze my first macaron attempt.

Still, I am going to try another recipe for macaron’s again later today. I have a new strategy in mind and can’t wait to see what these babies will look or taste like next.