For the love of...cake!

Well, not exactly. My latest customer, Brian, put in two custom cake orders not for the love of cake but out of love for his mom and girlfriend. What an upstanding guy! He wanted a birthday cake for his mom, and chose a pina colada layer cake with a milder rum flavor (a.k.a., one that won't leave you smelling like you spent the last twelve hours at a swim-up bar in Hawaii after just one slice). Not a problem. And because it was a surprise for his mom, I thought that it'd be nice to make the cake something of a surprise as well.

Ta dah!
A pina colada layer cake masquerading as a coconut lime cake: two layers of lightly rum-infused yellow cake filled with a thick layer of crushed pineapple, frosted with a coconutty southern flour frosting (a light, fluffy, not-too-sweet alternative to the cream cheese frosting I would usually use in a pina colada cake) and topped with coconut shavings and lime slices to give it a tropical look and feel. Sweet, tangy, and refreshing like a pina colada...and equally caloric--if not more so--but that's quite all right! Everything in moderation ;)

And for his girlfriend, Winnie, for Valentine's Day, Brian requested something with white cake, strawberries, and white chocolate. And with that, I knew just the thing:

A White Chocolate Strawberry Dream
This may or may not be my favorite non-cocktail cake. (It is). Let me walk you through the layers of this gem.

First, you take one layer of a vanilla cake and top it with french vanilla custard and fresh strawberry slices:
Then, you place the second cake layer on top and drizzle generously with creamy white chocolate ganache before neatly arranging strawberry halves on top:
After that, you create of fence of vanilla cream pirouette cookies to keep those strawberries from slipping and sliding right off the sides of the cake (oh, white chocolate ganache: as delicious and pretty as you are, you sure can be one hell of a slippery pain to work with sometimes. Sheesh!) Top with a crumbled pirouette and a strawberry, and voila! You get this:
and this:
Brian, I hope you and the two very special ladies in your life enjoyed the cakes. A very happy birthday to your mom and a happy Valentine's Day to you and Winnie.
Speaking of valentines, my assistant worked into the wee hours of the morning putting these two together. What dedication! Happy Valentine's Day, sweetheart. I <3 you!