Chocolate Bars

If you've never tried bacon and chocolate together, you're missing out. I know it sounds weird at first but the saltiness and slight smokiness from the bacon really goes well with the chocolate! Here I tempered a mixture of dark chocolate and milk chocolate, and mixed in some crispy, chopped bacon.

Vancouver Weather

So it's almost the end of June and yet just yesterday morning, it was pouring rain. Today was also rainy for a bit but thankfully cleared up. What's going on with the weather? Where's my summer? I'm still waiting for all day sun and hot weather with just a slight breeze. Sigh.

I'm glad it stopped raining today so that the delivery of this wedding cake went quite smoothly. Champagne background with darker curlicues and accents highlighted with gold dust. The topper was made with white and pink peonies, orchids, and roses. Fresh flowers are so beautiful.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches

It finally feels like summer so I've been craving barbeque lately. After watching Top Chef Canada last week, I was really craving pulled pork. I've never made it before and the only times I had it were at Memphis Blues, and at a friend's who made it in her slow cooker. I have neither a slow cooker nor a barbeque so I had to go with the oven route. I used the recipe here from Top Chef but ended up swapping the vinegars since I didn't have sherry vinegar (I had sherry wine though). Mine also seemed to have a very large liquid to meat ratio so I cooked it some more after I took it out of the oven on the stove to reduce it. I added brown sugar as well as it was quite acidic. Overall though, it was delicious! I have some sitting in my freezer for future use too!

Ruffles

Another mango mousse cake. All I can say is, the mandoline is a wondrous tool!

Nemo Cake

A "Finding Nemo" cake for a friend. It only needed to be a small cake so I decided to make it a jellyfish and have it on a pedestal. The tentacles are made with ruffled fondant and pulled sugar to give it more texture and interest. I was really happy at how these turned out. Inside is a devil's food cake with hazelnut feuilletine and buttercream. For the Nemo, it was my second attempt as the first one looked a little wonky. I guess fish isn't really my forte. The mini birthday cake was my sister's favorite.

More Roses

Inside this rose covered cake is mango mousse with fresh mangoes and vanilla chiffon.