Chemistry cake, in our element!

 I hope you can tell we had a lot of fun with this cake!  As a former chemist, it was a great pleasure to make a cake for a couple of chemists!

They actually work in KC Nicolaou's group, which is fun, as the Scripps Institute was over the road from my old work, and we always worked closely with the scripps scientists!

We added an edible image in 2D and in 3D rendering of the molecule that they synthesized in the lab, Viridicatumtoxin.

We then put images of the texas flag and a map of texas as that was where they were moving with the group, and a depiction of them driving off in their car with their grey cat, muffy!

What a fun cake to make!

Rustic rural wedding-Linda and Dom

I recently had the great pleasure of watching two dear friends joined in marriage.  It was a truly special day with so many quirky details, and a real dream team of vendors and friends organizing everything.

The wedding took place at Hidden valley retreat and spa  a magical place tucked away in the back country just a little way north east of Escondido, CA.

There was a gorgeous ceremony area with a small stage.  Linda and Dom added their own special touches by building an arch, and having it decorated with gorgeous florals from Sweet Pea.  You can see more gorgeous flowers from her, the bouquets were amazing too!

Kim Rongley did an incredible job on the invites, placecards, menus and countless other paper projects, all accented with the couples love of cycling!

One of Dom's childhood friends married them, this added a nice personal touch, with stories from their childhood.  Not a dry eye in the house!

 The reception area was set up with long tables for people to sit at, the food was just incredible.  The entire feast was vegetarian, but even the most ardent meat eaters found something to enjoy.  There were delicious passed hors-d'ouvres during the cocktail hour, then for dinner we enjoyed a delicious butternut squash ravioli, amazing vegetable wellington, salads and bread.  Toast catering did a great job of keeping everyone very well fed!

 It was the perfect setting for mason jars and burlap, the florals also added to the effect, and the tables were decorated with wine bottles decorated with bicycles.

 It was great to catch up with the boys at West Bean coffee, they were making delicious drip coffee for everyone.

The newlyweds made their entrance on a tandem bike, of course!  It was so fun to see them on the pimped out bike, really adorable!

We were encouraged to put our thumb print on a collage guest book, lovely idea to remember all the guests at the wedding!

We were honored to be a part of the day, baking 200 cupcakes.  They chose the ever popular chocolate with caramel filling and a delicious chocolate buttercream, we also made strawberry cupcakes topped with local Suzie's farm strawberries.  The third flavor was our hummingbird, pineapple, pecan, banana and coconut with cream cheese frosting.

We created a different display using a mixture of sections of varnished tree trunks, and boxes to elevate the cupcakes, what a lovely change to the normal display!


Something else that really helped smooth things out was that linda decided to hire a day-of wedding planner.  I was so happy that she decided to do that at the last minute.  Her friends were all more than happy to step in and help with anything, but this ensured that the day ran smoothly and everyone was able to enjoy themselves!  I highly recommend Melissa Johnson (give me a shout if you'd like her details!)

I'll end the post with more pictures of the gorgeous venue, so pretty!  One thing I would mention is that some of the ground is a little uneven, so it is good to remind your guests to make a careful choice of footwear, stillettos wouldnt really work well here!  Also keep any guests in mind with mobility issues, there were some tricky steps to get up to the dining tables.

I really hope that we'll be visiting again soon, it was a magical place!

Florals: Sweet Pea Florals
Paper items: Kim Rongley designs
Catering: Toast catering
Venue: Hidden valley resort and spa
Coffee: West bean
Planner:  Melissa Johnson

Francis Parker Centennial

We were recently invited to participate in the Francis Parker School's Centennial Celebration event.  It was really fun to see that we were situated next to the science building so we could see some of the fun stuff the students were up to including an amazing robotics lab!

There was a tasting event, so we brought some of our favorites, our chocolate mud mini cupcakes, macarons and some lemon and chocolate strawberry trifles.  They all went down really well and were gone well before the event was over!

The florals were just gorgeous, along with the furniture rentals, they were provided by Pacific Event Productions.  It transformed the space into a swanky event instead of a school campus, although it was a truly amazing school!

The highlight of the evening was the birthday presentation of 600 cupcakes!  Unfortunately the guests were quite tipsy by the time we were setting them up, and we actually were forced to ask the security guards to help us stop them eating the cupcakes until the big presentation!

Its the first time we have had to guard our cakes!  We served simple chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting and we replicated the logo of the school onto tiles to decorate the cupcakes.

Sex in the city with the Urban Style Network

We were recently invited to the Urban Style Network's Spring get-together at the Bailiwick in the Gaslamp area of Downtown San Diego.  I was pleasantly surprised by a gorgeous, airy space with lovely marble bar.  

The theme was sex in the city, and cupcakes are so passé these days that I thought about some yummy treats that those amazing girls would like, I figured macarons would be a definite, plus the new 'little gems' cookies I've been playing around with, a meyer lemon sugar cookie with a little kiss of royal icing, the perfect size to feel a little less guilty!

We added a delicious trifle, vanilla cake with a sherry soak, mango and lemon cream with a macadamia brittle for crunch.

I can see this being a fun spread for a sweet little wedding, maybe adding a small cake to cut, and putting the trifles in fun glasses!

Thoughts for Mothers Day

Mothers day is coming up, and I thought I'd put together some ideas of what you can surprise your dear Mum with!

How about a pretty cake:

We'd be happy to make a cute design to honor your favorite lady!  A small 6" cake to serve up to 12 is $50

If you'd like a more rustic design, like the chocolate mud cake with rustic ganache, we'd be happy to make that for $40

How about some delicious cupcakes!  We'll have 6 packs of cupcakes decorated with pretty flowers and piping, or decor of your choice for $20

If your mom is partial to other desserts, we could make you up a little pack of trifles, $2 each for teeny ones, $3 for large ones!

Or how about a pack of bakewell tarts?  Our delicious light pastry crust filled with a layer of jam, almond cake and topped with a cherry!  Just $3 each

Most moms love macarons!  So we'll be offering a dozen of these little  gems for $15.

Please let us know asap if you have Mothers Day plans and would like to include us in them!  Email us at jennywennycakes@gmail.com or call 619-356-0536 by Saturday May 4th at the latest!

Taste of Asia for Just Call Us Volunteers!

We recently were invited to the Just Call Us Volunteers fundraiser at the San Diego Public Market.  It was called 'Taste of Asia' and some of the best chefs in San Diego brought their 'A' game.

There were too many amazing chefs to mention, but its always great to see Hanis from Carnitas, I got to catch up with Kevin at Barleymash who is doing great, I finally got to meet Robyn at Cupcakes Squared, and Jennifer Costa from AR Valentien was there along with perfect macarons, and a delicious selection of desserts.

Speciality Produce were also there spinning a wheel to win lots of healthy treats, I was very happy with my tangerine, but Kristen was overjoyed with a Market Bag!  We were celebrating her last day with us as a single lady before she returns after her wedding, so she's looking forward to treating her new hubby with the bounty of fresh fruit and veggies in the bag!

It was such a fun event, so much amazing food, and company, and entertainment.  We were totally captivated by the dragon dancers, just amazing to see the acrobatics, and they made us giggle by rushing right up to people and then spitting lettuce on them, just so fun.  I will be looking out for the Three Treasures Cultural Society more as it was just amazing to see!

There was also Sumo wrestling, and I was surprised to see the pictures afterwards as I realized that Julie Darling had got in the ring and started a fight with the American champion Sumo wrestler!

We decided to bring 3 desserts, our macarons in green tea and mango flavors with white chocolate ganache, a tropical hummingbird mini cupcake (banana, pineapple, pecan and coconut) and our famous trifles, this time with almond cake, passion fruit, papaya, mango, lemon cream and a macadamia brittle.  Everyone was really nice and we ran out before the end of the event!  Don't forget you can always order these treats from us at your next party!

Thanks so much to Just Call Us Volunteers for inviting us.  Please keep an eye on their website, facebook and calendar and consider volunteering or donating.  You will learn so much about cooking, often learning with a top San Diego chef.  I love that they are non-denominational, non-judgemental, and the act of serving a meal to a homeless person is often about more than just food, it is about telling them that they are worth it, they are important and they are still a member of our society.

We'll be looking forward to the next event and hope to support the volunteers and organization in any way we can.

Wedding at 'The Bod'

I'm back from an amazing experience I'll never forget!  I agreed to bake my cousin's wedding cake.  This seems pretty straight forward, until you realize I live 6000 miles away and I would have to find a way to create a vision of amazingness in a country I no longer live in, where I am unfamiliar with the ingredients and equipment available!

As you can see by the pictures, the venue was incredible, the divinity room of the Bodlean Library in Oxford.  Just amazing!  I learned that some of Harry Potter was filmed here, along with many other films, and the place is just dripping with history, having been used as a library for over 400 years.

Oxford is so full of history, it was fun to go for pizza in a building that was built in 1193!

My cousin and his new wife are total science fiction and computer game geeks, so their request was that they didn't want anything normal or 'weddingy'.  They settled upon 3 companion cubes as their cakes from a computer game called Portal, which made it a little easier as I didn't have to stack a huge cake.

I made a large 9" vanilla cake with vanilla cream and raspberry jam, this cake did have some internal support.  There was a 7" carrot cake and a 5" chocolate cake.

It was great to get my cousin involved, he was very helpful in cutting out many of the panels for the cubes, it must be pretty unusual to get roped into creating your own wedding cake!

The caterers did a great job, a new idea that I've not heard of was that each table had a designated 'carver' and they had to dress up in an apron and chef's hat and carve the meat for the table, everyone had a lot of fun with it!