Jennywennycakes Grand Opening!

What a great time we had at our grand opening!  We wanted to celebrate the fact that we finally found a home in Carmel Mountain Ranch.  We have been looking for a year or so, but nowhere came along.

When I found out that Sumi had decided to call it a day, I looked around and it was the perfect space.  Initially it was a bit of a worry to have to commute up to North County San Diego, but I remembered that a lot of my customers come from there to pick up their cakes from Claremont, and it is a lovely community.

There is a nice big kitchen, then a central room where we can do our decorating, a tasting room/office and a lovely reception room which Tara from Twinkle and Toast did her magic with the calligraphy, a quote from my dear grandma.

We served lots of delicious desserts, and drinks with lots of help on the florals and event design from Desiree from Penny Blooms who paired vibrant orange and yellow spring blooms with splashes of gold to complement our logo.

We got quite carried away with the baking, we wanted to showcase some of our favorite cakes, so we had our lemon cake, chocolate cake and our hazelnut in the form of a frangelico trifle with praline and chocolate mousse.

We also had cake pops and macarons with fun sprinkles, hummingbird and guinness mini cupcakes.

Our other table had profiteroles, donut muffins, banoffee pie, to honor pi day, along with our delicious hot cross buns, we did a different spin on those with choc chips, nutella and hazelnuts.

There was a gluten free table showcasing our orange almond cake pops, sparkle cookies and our friend Paula's gluten free coconut mini cupcakes.

It was a really fun day, and we enjoyed seeing new faces and some old friends and now we're ready to bake up a storm.

The new facility gives us lots of flexibility, but we've decided not to include retail in our operation since the office park doesn't have a lot of walk-through trade.  You can still email us to place an order though, and we can usually accommodate a simple order with a weeks notice, with larger complex orders needing a month's notice, especially when we get into the busy wedding season.

Our email is jennywennycakes@gmail.com so give us a shout if you have an order.

Jennywennycakes is located at
12265 World Trade Dr, Suite D, San Diego CA 92128
619-356-0536

Funfetti Cupcake tower at the Ultimate Skybox

I just wanted to share these lovely pictures from Cindi and Dave's wedding at the Ultimate Skybox.  They were such a sweet couple, and its one of my favorite venues, modern and fun, with a fabulous view of the San Diego skyline, and sometimes a view of the ballgame!

They chose to have a cupcake tower, and wanted to match the yellow and grey theme, with some additional flair, so we went with a mixture of edible and fondant garnishes for the cupcakes.

Dave loves funfetti cake, so we made vanilla cupcakes from scratch and added sprinkles to the mixture before baking, and on top of the cupcakes.






Other flavors included:

• Chocolate cupcakes with caramel, chocolate peanut butter and a delicious peanut tuile on top.
• Almond cupcakes with cherry jam, vanilla buttercream and a candied cherry on top
• Red velvet with cream cheese frosting and a yellow fondant plumeria on top

Congratulations, Cindi and Dave, wishing you a long and happy life together.

Staying local with Stehly Farms

I was super excited to hear about a new store opening close to our kitchen, and to my home in the Clairemont/Bay Park area.

Stehly Farms have decided to branch out and showcase their amazing produce in a brick and mortar store!

There were amazing beets, insane tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, cauliflowers and all kind of other amazing produce.

This is particularly good news for my customers too, as we can incorporate the delicious fruits into our cakes.  Their strawberries are amazing and have been a favorite as a filling  in our vanilla cakes all summer!

There are also carefully curated products from other favorite artisans, gourmet salts, delicious jams, yummy popcorn, pasta and some really delicious cheeses.  We've become addicted to the aged gouda with some addictive crackers!










The really fun news for us is that we're partnering to bring some of our products to the store!  When we stopped by, they had our cherry bakewell tarts, but we looked at the current produce and wanted to make use of it, so this week we're bringing some plum crumbles and peach financiers featuring the Stehly organic fruits.  I also sneaked in a favorite of mine, my grandma's millionaires shortbread, making it took me right back to my grandma's kitchen in the south of England!  I hope you enjoy it too.

We'd love to hear about other treats you'd like to see in the store, or favorite products you've seen there.

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.