40th birthday – Mamma wears Prada

Although this picture looks like it was taken in 1973, it was actually from last Sunday when we celebrated Daddy’s 40th birthday!! As promised, I organised a surfing dessert table in memory of his surfing adventures.

I took the Friday off from work and baked baked baked !!! There was a cake, nope actually two cakes, many cupcakes, cake pops and different cookies: sharks, surfers and surfing boards.

We had a very relaxing day. It was beautiful and sunny outside so while I was finishing the last touches for the table, daddy enjoyed the gorgeous weather and played outside with the kids. In the afternoon we had some friends coming over to make a toast (we had a huge bottle of Taittinger – oh yeah!) and plenty of sweets as you can see!

The day before, I organised a piccola surprise. I had two of his best friends flying over from Italy and they surprised him by pretending to be burglars and attempting to steal his beloved motorbike! Imagine his face! I actually made a video which is incredible funny and I might share it with you in the near future…

You cannot imagine how difficult it was to stick those £$*@ waves on the cake! I spent hours and they kept breaking until my genius husband proposed to place them on a parchment paper and transfer them on the cake, brilliant! It saved my night!

On a Friday night I started making these beach ball cake pops. I was up until 1 am and at that point I have to admit, I actually started to enjoy making them and could have carried on all night (sick I know lol).

I had bought two giant balloons to decorate the table but didn’t want to include the full picture as one was bigger than the other.. explanation? They were so big that a full tank of helium wasn’t enough to fill both of them! #fail 🙁

Daddy’s 40th birthday was an amazing one and we celebrated the way my husband wanted, low-key surrounded by good friends and good food!

“Tanti auguri a teeeee, tanti auguri a teeeeee, tanti auguri feliciiii, tanti auguri a teeeeeeee!!”

Buon compleanno Daddy!

Two weeks ago my lovely sister celebrated her 40th birthday!

My sister Barbara is a sophisticated, smart, elegant and beautiful woman and somehow I really wanted this table to represent her. Unfortunately we could not be together as she lives in Italy and she could not make it over here to see what I have planned for her but it was a lovely surprise that we shared through Skype: she was thrilled to see what I made for her! Such a pity she could not taste any of it.

I decided to keep everything black and white and give a touch of color only by adding a bunch of white roses.

The centre piece was a two tiers vanilla cake with a double layer of crème patissiere and forest fruit coulis. The cake was covered in white fondant and decorated with fondant sugar butterflies and edible diamonds.

Bee and I prepared the sugar butterflies well in advance so by the time we had to apply them to the cake, they were dry and took the desired shape. My husband helped me to stick the diamonds to the cake because at one point I got really annoyed as the diamonds kept falling down on the table! See what husbands are for? They remain calm during a baking crisis.

The white rose cupcakes had a vanilla chocolate base and they were covered with simple frosting made of icing sugar and butter.

To make these white chocolate cake pops I actually didn’t use the cakepop maker I recently bought but I followed the instructions from the book “Bake my I’m yours” therefore I baked a cake, crubled it and then added frosting to it. By doing this, the shape of the cake pops is rounder and looks kind of perfect!

To make these flower cake pops I followed the same recipe I used for the butterfly cake pops and I covered them with sugar flowers . Each one was decorated with an edible pearl.

I used Martini glasses to serve these mini Oreo’s cheesecakes. This is a recipe that you can find on my Pinterest.

The taste is pretty sweet but absolutely yummy!

This sugar white rose was my husband’s first attempt at creating a fondant white rose! Pretty good eh?

I ordered some party invitations from the Tiny Prints website. These were a perfect match for this dessert table. The quality of the paper is just amazing and hopefully, through the pictures, you can see that the invitations had a pearlescent finish. Just fab!

I used few apothecary jars which I absolutely love and filled one with meringues, a couple with liquorice and mint candy, one with Oreos and another one with mint candy. I think they look really good on the table.

My husband, who is a graphic designer, was kind enough to create these lovely food cards to place on the table and to hang on the jars. I think they give a classy touch to the table.

I was looking to use a canvas or a print of Audrey Hepburn. Then I decided to use a baroque framed mirror where I stuck an Audrey Hepburn vinyl I bought online. I was quite pleased with the result!