Hello All! I apologize for the long hiatus, but unfortunately I have been struggling with a bad bout of migraine headaches (I’ve had migraines all my life). I worked hard these last couple of months to get better control of them, and while they are improving, I am still not 100%. So please hang in there with me, as I know I have horribly neglected the blog. I do, however, vow to be more faithful to my fellow cyberchefs and keep posting!

So now on to the fun stuff.  Here are the new Winter cookies at the store  (The Crown Market.)  While I would love to take full credit, I simply cannot. I created these cookies last year, however, since then, our intern, now-turned assistant pastry chef, Samantha Persaud, has improved upon them and made them her own.  Sam insisted that something in our bakery repertoire be pink, so she introduced a pink mitten alongside my original blue, and added the addition of colored sugar, which I think makes the cookie entirely.  Not only does it add extra color to the cookies, but it gives the great illusion of a fuzzy yarn.  These cute mitten cookies are perfect for the season and are as fun to look at as they are to eat! Glazed in blue or pink icing and decorated with royal icing and accented with blue and purple sanding sugar, they are the perfect winter treat!

Each cookie retails for $1.69.

These are our (The Crown Market’s) fall kids cupcakes…although I continue to say they are appropriate for the kid in all of us.  The pumpkin cupcakes are piped using a large round tip and accented with a pretzel stem, buttercream leaf and vine.  Unfortunately, we can’t take all the credit for the scarecrows; the heads are plastic picks that we place on the cupcake.  We add the straw detail by piping yellow frosting with a grass tip.  However, all together, they look so cute!  What could say fall more than scarecrows sitting in a pumpkin patch?  (Hint hint, a large order of these cupcakes displayed together would make a really impressive spread!) These cupcakes will be available all fall (or at least until Thanksgiving when the Turkey cupcakes arrive).  Each cupcake retails for $1.69.

Here is a fun cake I made last week at work.  A mom came in and requested a Big Bird cake for her daughter.  I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do when I took the order, but I was surprised how easy Big Bird is to draw when you have a leaf tip that pipes perfect yellow feathers!  It came together in surprisely little time.  Most importantly, I had fun making the cake.  I will continue to say it: children’s cakes are my favorite to make.

Here is the latest cake from work.  I was given the invitation below and asked to create a cake to match.  I fell in love with the mermaids (and their little shell bras) and therefore had a blast making the cake.  I think children’s cakes are my favorites; they are always creative and colorful. The decorations were drawn on with colored frosting.

Here are the fruits of today’s labor.  We had an order for 200, yes 200, soccer ball cupcakes.  All were hand decorated and piped with chocolate fudge.  It officially took me 1 hour and 40 minutes to create all the cupcakes and then about an additional hour to recover.  (Hunching over a workbench for hours at a time tends to do a number on your back and neck.)  But here they are nonetheless.  The picture below only shows half of the order.

The cupcakes were ordered for a Bar Mitzvah with, you guessed it, a soccer theme.  Like so many these days, the customer opted to forgo a traditional cake and serve individual cupcakes instead.  While I admit that 200 was a little daunting, I feel as though I conquered something.  A cupcake marathon, if you will?  (Side note – have you ever attempted to draw a soccer ball?  Turns out when you investigate, the pattern is made of up both black pentagons and white hexagons.  Now, try to imagine piping those shapes, with straight lines and crisp angles with chocolate fudge in the middle of the summer!  I promise, it was not the easiest of tasks.)  I hemmed and hawed over their likeness to real soccer balls, but in the end, if you squint, I think they are good enough.  Everyone who came into the bakery kitchen today who could identify the cupcakes as soccer balls got a hug (it was that kind of day).

Chocolate Wedding Cake with White Scrolls

I made this three-tiered cake at work a couple of weeks ago.  Chocolate through and through, this simple cake was chocolate, layered with chocolate mousse, then iced with chocolate buttercream.   Classic white scrolls were piped on the sides of the cake for an elegant design.  Because the cake was made at work (The Crown Market), it is a kosher wedding cake.

It’s finished at last!!!  (The bakery has been 90% completed for a while now, but our finishing touches just went in.)  And so, I am proud to present the all-new, redesigned, Crown Market Bakery Department. Drum roll please…

And just to show how “new and improved” we really are…

We gutted the bakery and had all new custom cabinetry and woodwork installed along the back wall.  We purchased brand new showcases, as well as new shelving and all kinds of fun things that only I would find exciting (think wrapping stations and self-serve refrigerated cases – yes, I am a pastry dork.)  Warm green paint, chalkboard signs and pendant lighting help to add that warm, fresh-bread-from-the-oven bakery feeling.  The space now appears much larger, more open, and certainly more inviting, even though we actually lost some square footage.  Just goes to show how important it is to use the space you have to its best potential.

A lot of blood, sweat and tears went into this redesign.   Thank you to Erin, Mark and the whole Crown Bakery Team for all their hard work!

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