Autumn inspiration

This is a cake I made for a friend's housewarming last year. I've always been fascinated by autumn leaves and wanted to capture their beautiful color- in cake!


Each of the leaves is done in the same technique as my previously posted butterfly cake.


White chocolate is dyed multiple colors and swirled to give the leaves their "season changing" effect. Unlike the butterflies, where I drew a template before hand, I use real leaves to get the texture and veining that you find in nature.

Halloween Cookies

Cookies and Halloween, two of my favorite things! I recently borrowed a series of vampire books from a colleague of a friend and I wanted to make something as a "thank you" So I baked and decorated the cookies you see here. The skeletons in the coffins and the fangs were my favorite! I use a simple butter cookie recipe from Cook's Illustrated and royal icing.

Train Cake

So I've been busy baking lately. Last weekend I created a cake for a friend's 2 year old son. It met the typical requirements for toddlers: some chocolate cake, some vanilla cake and (of course!) Thomas the Tank Engine!