This is not the final version but it’s close enough that this photo can be a placeholder for now. The cake wall will be lavender and white, but it will probably be lavender diamonds against…

This one was finalized (approved by Shaun) and photographed today. The trickiest part was getting it photographed before the chocolate decoration melted. Due to the rather hot weather we are experiencing here in Southern California,…

I finalized the mini Chocolate Chipotle Mousse Cake first. This is a very chocolately mousse with a hint of chipotle. The cake wall is chocolate with a tinted orange relief design. The top is covered…

With only a few weeks left to the wedding… (aargh!) I began working with what I had at hand to translate the cakes flavors into mousse cake creations. I made these with some leftovers from…

Our class picture. The end of another wonderful week at the San Francisco Baking Institute. Life can’t get any tastier than this.

We prebaked pastry shells then put pastry cream on the bottom and glazed fresh fruit on top. A light sprinkling of sucraneige gives them that frosty look (sucraneige is a powdered sugar that doesn’t melt…

This is a Chocolate Whiskey Mousse Cake baked in a dome-shaped mold. A black ganache is poured over the top and flows down the sides as it freezes to the mousse. Then we decorated it…

I love this photo. It totally captures the spirit of our week. Vivien is taking a turn at using the paint sprayer to spray a velvety chocolate coating on the Chocolate Mint Mousse Cake and…

Aging gracefully… the Parisian Macaroon. Here we have an almond meringue, piped into circles and baked. The colors represent the flavors, but there is actually no flavoring in the meringue. The flavor comes from the…

So we had the lecture on chocolate. The secret to tempering chocolate is never do it in a room hotter than 70 degrees or cooler than 60 degrees… unless you are doing it at SFBI…