Kristen Kieffer Cake Stands

When it comes to cake stands, I’m a real sucker. There’s nothing like a cute pedestal to add some extra fun and sass to your cake presentation and these cake stands by potter Kristen Kieffer will definitely do the trick! Created by Kristen in her workshop in Massachusetts, the stands manage to be simultaneously vintage and modern. I love the deco elements and the red and white carnival like stripes on the cherry piece. So fun!

From Kristen: All of my pottery is one-of-a-kind, and designed and handmade by me alone in my studio. I threw this form in two parts on the potter’s wheel, and later carved the foot and “skirt” to create a playful undulation. I decorate the surface with sponged and trailed slip (the clay version of, well actually, cake-decorating) in shallow textures of swirls, dots, and patterns. My influences vary from Art Nouveau to Haute Couture and furniture to fondant, and these stands bring it all together!

You can find the cake stands and more of Kristin’s work in her Etsy shop. ~Erin

The Mixing Bowl: Blueberry and Dark Chocolate Buns by Mountain Bakery

One of the best things about having a website, is that it gives you the opportunity to interact with all different types of people, from all over the world, that you would have otherwise never know. For me, Rose Kemmy is one of those people. A couple of years ago, Rose sent me a very kind email about how much she enjoyed and was inspired by this site. It was such a sweet note and I never forgot it! Then, just last week, I heard from her again, and guess what Rose has been doing over the past two years?? She's opened her very own home-run, micro bakery! Based in Norwich, England, Mountain Bakery is all about homemade baking, using only high quality ingredients and free range eggs. How cool is that?

Chipotle, parmesan and rock salt biscuits

Raspberry & vanilla butterfly cupcakes

Sourdough bread

Poppy and sesame seed buns

So, as you might expect, this is an extra special Mixing Bowl post. Not only because we're celebrating Rose's new bakery, but because this is the very first Mixing Bowl video!!! Hooray!!! I'm been longing for someone to do a video for years now and I couldn't be more thrilled with the one that Rose has produced! Not only is the video super cute, but the recipe, for Blueberry and Dark Chocolate Buns, is a great winter treat! Perfect for lazy Sunday mornings when it's just too cold to leave the house! I can just imagine myself snuggled up in a comfy chair with a cup of tea, a good book, and one of these buns. Heaven! Thanks, Rose! (The recipe video featured in this post was produced in collaboration with MakeMeMakeMe and Spindle Productions.)

For more info on Mountain Bakery, visit their website, right here. You can find the complete recipe for Blueberry and Dark Chocolate Buns after the jump.

Isabelle Chapuis Photography

I recently came across these quirky fashion photographs by French artist Isabelle Chapuis and instantly fell in love with them. Now, after seeing this new series by Chapuis, titled Barbapapa, I can officially call myself a fan.  The collection, which features a young model wearing cotton candy in all sorts of fashionable ways, is at once dark and humorous. The clothes, lighting, and expressions of the model are tough and moody, but the sugary pink confections brings with it the sense of silly fun. It is the juxtaposition of the hard and the soft that really makes these images special.

The Barbapapa photographs are currently on display at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris until February 17th, 2013. Personally,  I can’t wait to see more of Isabelle’s work in the future, but, until then, I’ll be enjoying these beautiful images, and the playfulness they inspire. You can check out more of Isabelle’s photographs via her website, right here. ~Erin

Sweet Testing: Whiskey Tart with Whiskey Whipped Cream

I know that I’ve mentioned before on this site that I love Baked, the New York—based bakery that has spawned a series of amazing dessert cookbooks, but I don’t know if I ever talked about my love of whiskey. Yep, that’s right, whiskey. I’m not a big drinker and, honestly, I didn’t even start consuming alcohol until a few years ago, but it was whiskey, friend of the Irish for centuries, that ended up converting me. I think it tastes a bit like ginger ale, but, really, I’m still pretty much a lightweight, so what do I know? I just like it. And whiskey and chocolate…even better! To further entice you into my whiskey world, I will add that this tart is not only delicious, but a cinch to make, so you can impress your friends and family with very little time and effort. Always a good thing! ~Erin

You can find the complete recipe after the jump.

How to Visit a French Bakery

Ahhh, France. The Louvre, the countryside…the pastries! It’s hard for me to think about France without thinking about the food. I’ve never been to France, but I definitely have this sort of idealized notion of french cuisine, especially french sweets! This video titled How to Visit a French Bakery perfectly captures all of my french bakery fantasies. Created as a collaboration between Ben and Gabrielle Blair (Olive Us) and filmmakers Tiger in a Jar, the video features three of Ben and Gabrielle’s six kids visiting a bakery in France, where they recently moved. Apparently, the Blair clan packed up and moved to France last year and are currently living in a farmhouse in the french countryside (sigh…).The video itself is beautifully shot and reminds me a bit of a Wes Anderson film. It’s fun and cute and the children are lovely and so well-behaved. If you’re like me and you daydream about visiting a charming little french bakery and eating croissants and macarons, you’re bound to like this video. For more Olive Us videos, click here. ~Erin

The Mixing Bowl: Crème brûlée by Marina Ekroos

This is the first ever “proud mama” style post that I ever written here on dessert girl. It concerns the hugely talented photographer Marina Ekroos and her new cookbook, Silmänruokaa (Visual Recipes). You may remember that a couple of years ago Marina contributed a Mixing Bowl recipe for chocolate macarons that was one of our most popular posts! Well, as it turns out, making those macarons really inspired and encouraged Marina to do more recipes and continue working on her concept of single shot recipes. For those of you who are not familiar with Marina’s work, her photographs capture the development of a recipe (ingredients, process, finished product) in a single frame, so that you get a complete recipe in one image. How cool is that? She now has an entire cookbook filled with gorgeous photos, including the macaron recipe that she created for dg, and I couldn’t be prouder! It was such a treat for me to see a dessert girl recipe in a real live book and I’m so happy to hear that Marina’s experience here was a good one. The finished product is really lovely and even though the recipes are in Finnish, I would still recommend checking it out. The photographs alone make it a great coffee table book.

To help celebrate this momentous occasion, Marina is back, sharing with us her delicious recipe for crème brûlée (see image at the top of this post), which is also featured in her book. I'm so excited that someone is finally tackling crème brûlée for this site! There is something so fun about a dessert that you have to crack open. Who doesn’t love the feeling of whacking the hard, caramelized top of a crème brûlée with a spoon? It’s such a satisfying feeling, almost as if you are excavating a cave wall, on a search for buried treasure. It’s also a great dessert for this time of year. Quite wintery and wonderful! And the perfect way to impress your friends this holiday season.

You can find the complete crème brûlée recipe after the jump. For purchasing info on the cookbook, along with information on how to buy limited edition prints from the book, click here. Thanks, Marina! ~Erin

Henteco Cookies

Do the Japanese have cute down to science or what? I can't get over how adorable these cookies are. It's crazy!! They would make great stocking stuffers or party favors for a child's birthday. Unfortunately, for me at least, they're only available in Japan, at a bakery called Henteco, which, as far as I can tell, means "quirky" in Japanese. Please let me know if that's not correct! If you live in Shinagawa in Tokyo, I would recommend heading right over there immediately to see these in person! For the rest of you, you can click here to check out the cookies in more detail. ~Erin

You can find more Henteco pics after the jump.

Emily Eveleth

I’ve always loved donuts. I know that they’re bad for you, but they’re so sugary and delicious that I find them pretty hard to resist. It doesn’t matter the kind, chocolate, fruit filled, crème filled, sprinkles, if I see I donut, I want to eat it. (Well, except for those silly glazed donuts – yawn!) I thought I understood donuts. I thought I knew them well. Then, I saw Emily Eveleth’s paintings and the donuts that I thought I’d known since childhood suddenly grew up! I had never thought of a donut as a sexual object before, but there is something so sensual and visceral about her paintings. The donuts are almost Rubenesque, more like portraits of nude women than ordinary donuts. In person, the painting are quite large in scale, which only intensifies the feeling that you’re looking at something greater than your normal, average breakfast treat. Bridging the chasm between portrait and landscape, Emily’s paintings make you look at donuts in a whole new light and I love that! You can check out more of Emily’s work via her website. ~Erin

M. Robin Cakes

Where wedding cakes are concerned, the old saying "if you've seen one, you've seen 'em all" generally holds true. There isn't much variety in the wedding cake industry. It's a traditional sweet and most bakeries don't veer too far off course in their wedding cake offerings. It is definitely a business that needs a good kick in the pants and M. Robin Cakes in Portland, Oregon, is just the bakery to do it! Instead of making run-of-the-mill wedding cakes, owner, baker, and designer Marcella Robin makes these amazing and beautiful entrement cakes, which is a European style cake also known as a torte. It is made with sponge cake and layered with a variety of creams, custards, and mousses. The cake designs are created using a jaconde, which is a decorative sponge cake. The design in not applied to the cake like frosting, but actually baked into the sponge, creating a smooth finish. It is a completely fresh approach to wedding cake design and it makes perfect sense that Marcella is not only a graduate of the Northwest Culinary Academy of Vancouver, but that she also has a bachelors degree in sculpture. She treats her cake design in much the same way as any traditional artist.

From Marcella:  I can’t always predict how a design will “read” on a cake, so a big part of what I do is testing to see whether a design is truly spongeworthy. The tests are never eaten. They get wrapped, labeled, and frozen for inspiration and archiving. Instead of a sketchbook, I have a sketch pile — of spongecake.

Needless to say, I am a huge fan. When I first saw their website, I immediately jotted down the link and wrote the words "so awesome" next to it. You can check it out for yourself, right here.

PIE: A Hand Drawn Almanac

I love illustrated recipes. If you read this blog on a regular basis, you probably love them, too! And if you love illustrated recipes as much as I do, you’re also going to adore this new illustrated pie book from artist Elizabeth Graeber and Emily Hilliard, who writes the blog Nothing-in-the-House. The two recently joined forces to produce this fun, almanac-style book that provides different recipes for every month of the year. So, in January, you’ll find a recipe for Dark Chocolate and Vanilla-Bourbon Caramel Pie, which is a perfect dessert for those chilly winter nights, and, in July, summery berry tarts are featured. Each recipe is accompanied by stories and delightful drawings that celebrate the history of this classic dessert. PIE: A Hand Drawn Almanac is available at a discounted preorder rate of $13 via etsy. All preorders come specially packaged in a pastry bag and baker’s twine. After December 1st, the book will be available for $15 online and at various local shops in and around Washington DC. {Thanks, Emily!} ~Erin

Seattle Chocolates: Holiday Collection

In honor of holiday season, which is now officially upon us, I wanted to share these fun new truffle bars from Seattle Chocolates. I’ll admit that it was the cute, retro-inspired wrapper that originally caught my eye, but it was the unusual flavors that really reeled me in! The collection, which is titled Baby It's Cold Outside, was inspired by song titles and lyrics of the 1950’s, and comes in five different flavors: Hot Buttered Rum, Mom’s Hot Cocoa, Candy Cane Crunch, Holiday Cheer Eggnog, and Christmas Cookie.

I shared my bars with my friends and family and they all disappeared fairy quickly, but there were two clear winners: Hot Buttered Rum, which combines toffee and a hint of rum to recreate that warm cozy feeling that you would normally get from the drink, and Candy Cane Crunch, a delightful blend of chocolate and peppermint that also has the distinct advantage of being the only dark chocolate bar in the bunch. These two also happen to be my favorites visually speaking, especially the Hot Buttered Rum, which features an old-school skier against an aqua background. You can check out the full line of holiday truffle bars, and shop online, right here. You can also click here to find a store near you.

The Pancake Button Book

Who doesn’t love a cute illustrated recipe? It’s fun to look at, it’s arty, you can fold it up and put it inside a button when you’re done. Wait? What? Fold it up and put it inside a button? Yep, that’s right. This tiny illustrated recipe by artist Vicki Smith is bookmarked on either side by two 1 ¼ inch buttons. Once it is unfolded it reveals an oatmeal pancake recipe, told in fourteen watercolor illustrations. Fold it back up, take it on a trip, keep it in your pocket, give it as a gift. It’s miniature and therefore delightful. Click here for more info and to purchase online.