I usually post links for Thursday Sweets to great articles and recipes from around the web. But I also have LOADS of pastries to share with you from the last week. What a week it was! I am so, so lucky to have the best clients there are. I love the creativity and open minds y’all have. Although I’ve been in this bizz for a really long time (read: 12 years), I’ve only recently, in the past year, been making a huge push with Goldenrod. I’ve been blown away by your support and, lemme say – we are definitely just getting started! The love that is being shared through sweets in Lincoln and Omaha is amazing and awesome – and let’s keep it going!
To my friends who wonder if I’ve existed outside of social media lately, I think this post will explain where I’ve been. The following sweets are listed in no particular order, other than from sweetest and cutest, to sweetest and cutest.
Below is one of two birthday cakes for a big birthday bash that was last weekend. What I absolutely love about my clients is that they are so good about recommending me to their friends. This was a great example of that. The top cake is vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. The cake below was the second for this party and was chocolate cake with espresso buttercream – with tiny Swiss chocolate bars on top. Of course!
This lemon dream was for a client’s sweet grandmother’s birthday party. The only requirement was that it be really lemon-y! When I was frosting this cake and lovingly putting on the lemons, I was just so excited. I had to wake up Russell to show it to him (I was working late into the night). I said, “It’s for someone’s grandma! Do you love it?!?” He can tell when I am pretty proud of myself and really excited and said, “You just love grandmas, don’t you?” Literally, I do love grandmas. They are the best. I love my own and love other people’s grandmas. Someone made a comment on Instagram about this photo: “Why do all grandmas LOVE lemon??” I think it’s because they’re so sweet, they need something tart to balance it out.
So, a good friend contacted me a few months ago about making cakes for her dad’s retirement party. He had been teaching for 40+ years – technical work to teenagers. Is this guy a saint? She requested I make electrical transistors for the party. I truly don’t understand the colors and what they mean, so I decided to make these really fun.
I worked with Candace Kalasky of Lovestru.ck Events on a wedding, too. Working with her is always a dream. The bride and groom wanted a late-night breakfast sweets bar, so we delivered. She had Delice cater croissants and muffins, but I was honored to provide pop-tarts, Liege waffles, and French toast cooked on site.
Below: Nutella pop-tarts with a bittersweet chocolate-almond glaze… and Belgian dark chocolate shavings. And sprinkles. That is all.
Two of the three loaves of brioche for the French toast that was cooked on site. It is my Polish grandmother’s recipe – lots of eggs, butter, milk, and loads of love. I always mix this by hand. I can’t trust it with a mixer. You can see a blurry photo of the French toast set-up on Instagram.
Strawberry pop-tarts. Filled with strawberry preserves and fresh slices of strawberries. Topped with a sugary glaze, sprinkles of powdered strawberries. Simply the best. I love how these turned out.
LIEGE WAFFLES. This is not your average waffle. It is a yeasted dough, almost like brioche, that you make over the course of several days. It spends several hours at room temperature to develop a really yeasty, amazing flavor and aroma. You knead in cups and cups of chunky pearl sugar, to the dough’s capacity, let it rise, and press the dough into a waffle iron. The sugar on the outside melts and caramelizes, leaving you with a chewy, crunchy, yeasty, sweet piece of heaven. Once people get a taste of these, they never stop craving them.
My absolute new favorite sweet: vegan coconut cake with a ribbon of pistachio-cardamom streusel, and a coconut-strawberry-rose glaze on top. With salty roasted pistachios. The stuff dreams are made of. Heaven. Pictured along side my mom’s amazing peach dumplings. We hosted a bunch of Brits who buy a ton of Nebraska beef (long story, but this has to do with my dad’s work) for an annual BBQ last week. My mom made her famous red velvet cake and dumplings. I made vegan cake. For a beef BBQ.
This cake was just for fun. It was for friends and for my husband. Chocolate cake with slices of banana, peanut butter buttercream, fresh strawberries, Nutella drizzle, and cashew praline. Once Sunday rolled around, NOT being in the kitchen was weird for me. This was a super fun one for me to make. Super relaxing and energizing.