Inspired to Taste

11/27/2024

It’s about time for another round of fantasy holiday-inspired KitchenAid mixers! These designs are just for fun, so no need to point out how impractical they might be. Sure, a Christmas tree mixer would be a cleaning disaster. But you know what? I’d still be over-the-moon to find one under the tree on Christmas morning.

Which design would you pick for your festive holiday baking? 🎄☃️

11/15/2024

Lord of the Rings cupcakes! These were actually apricot-honey muffins. I topped them with pistachio cream cheese frosting, cookie rings, chocolate rocks, fondant flowers, and royal icing butterflies. 💚

11/06/2024

Another look at this pumpkin spice couture dress cake, perfect for celebrating the autumn season in high style 🍂🍁

10/11/2024

Spellbinding style (and flavor!). These witchy fashion cookies are magically made with COOKIE LACE 😱. The hats are filled with blackberry buttercream and the shoes are filled with dark chocolate ganache. Check the comments for a full tutorial (including free downloads!)

09/19/2024

My nephew requested a ‘Totoro in the Rain’ tart for his birthday, and I wanted to create a treat as magical as a Studio Ghibli forest itself. This tart features a homemade Oreo cookie crust, perfect for Totoro’s stomping grounds, and playful cookie decorations. Inside, it’s layered with salted caramel, chocolate chips, and a rich chocolate ganache (made with Valrhona chocolate). The totoro-ly irresistible toppings are painted with Poppy Paints and decorated with a buttery soft-bite royal icing, with sparkling isomalt raindrops as a final magical touch.

It was so much fun to surprise my nephew with this sweet treat! 🤗🍄

09/09/2024

Spooky season is creeping up on us, so I thought it was the perfect time to unveil a ghoulish new set of fantasy mixers I conjured with AI magic. Which one would you pick to haunt your kitchen?

Side note: Quirky designed like these are meant to get the creative juices bubbling. I’m aware that they’re not particularly practical and might be frightening to keep clean.

1. Beetlejuice
2. Jack-o-lantern
3. Zombie
4. Spider
5. Witch / haunted forest
6. Werewolf
7. Skeleton
8. Wizard
9. Frankenstein
10. Vampire

09/04/2024

Heres another look at my newest chocolate high heel shoe design — a special request from my 8 year old niece 💕. The shell is chocolate and the platform and heel are filled with blueberry/strawberry ganache. The tail is a sandwich cookie filled with strawberry ganache and decorated with vanilla royal icing. The wings are strawberry-flavored isomalt. The bow, horn, ears, and filigree are modeling chocolate. The flowers are royal icing. She had a LOT of requests for this thing and I was SO relieved (and thrilled!) with how it turned out.

07/27/2024

Here’s a closer look at the birthday dessert I created for my dad this year, as well as the story that inspired it 🥰:

Several years ago, I began creating edible illustrations to celebrate my dad's birthday, each depicting a dessert version of one of his childhood stories. He...

07/24/2024

It's been a while since I worked with AI to dream up some fantasy Kitchenaid mixers, and I thought we might be due for a new collection.

This lineup is inspired by Disney Princesses. Which would you choose for yourself? (I'm pretty in love with the Tiana and Jasmine models)

07/16/2024

07/10/2024

Fuzzy little hornet cookies with 3D isomalt wings. 🐝

07/09/2024

Jay convinced me to make a shoebox cake for my chocolate shoe. It’s three layers of dragon fruit sponge soaked with dragon fruit syrup, filled with dragon fruit Italian meringue buttercream, all wrapped in chocolate ganache. 🐉💕🍫

My niece selected the design direction for the next shoe in my Fyre Footwear collection (all inspired by mythical creatures). Any ideas what I’ll be whipping up next? 🤔

07/03/2024

A peek at the edible illustration I made for my dad’s birthday this year: a celebration of citrus and stories (inspiration story coming soon!).

The Tarzan tart is composed of layers of lemon almond cream and lemon curd in an almond cookie crust. The thought bubbles are mini lemon meringue tartlets. The stacked dessert is composed of: a crunchy base layer made with candied lemon, feuilletine, and yuzu-infused chocolate; lemon Italian meringue buttercream; lemon almond cream; lemon meringue, and an almond cookie decorated with lemon-flavored toppings.

Can you guess what my dad’s favorite flavor is? 😁

06/22/2024

I made Gengar Pokémon cookie pops as a gift for my nephew (along with a matching Squishmallows). These little guys are filled with creamy milk chocolate ganache and gooey caramel. You can find a tutorial on my YT channel (link in the comment) 😈

06/21/2024

Not sure I feel swimsuit-ready. Luckily, my cookies do, and that’s what really matters here.

06/17/2024

Another of the narrative birthday pies I’ve made for my dad, along with the story that inspired its design. This pie had a lemon-blueberry filling in a cinnamon-almond cookie crust.
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For a while, my grandpa raised longhorn cattle in Honduras (among many other undertakings and ventures). One time when my dad was a teenager, my Grandpa Antonio's longhorn calves began disappearing from the ranch. About once per week, a calf a would just *p**f* vanish into seemingly thin air. At first, he thought perhaps cattle thieves were to blame, and geared up for a fight (my grandpa was a brawler). Then, because the disappearances were accompanied by strange markings, he decided the culprit must be a wildcat instead. He put together a crew, including several indigenous ranch hands, a couple of vaquero friends, and my dad, sending them out to find the "thieving gato" (or whatever man or creature dared rob him of his property).

My dad dutifully grabbed his rifle and began exploring the nearby terrain for signs of the gato and missing calves. His search eventually brought him to Laguna Ticamaya, a marshy lake surrounded by thick vegetation. He trotted down an embankment towards the lagoon, bursting through the foliage right as he reached the water's edge.

There, coiled in the shallows directly in front of him, lay in wait an ENORMOUS anaconda. The monstrous snake lifted its head and locked eyes with my dad, who had been approaching the lagoon with some momentum. My dad swears he levitated to avoid tumbling directly on top of the serpent. Straight into the air he went and, not even taking time to properly aim, instinctively pulled the trigger. By the time he had plummeted down the rest of the embankment and into the water, the snake was a goner.

Hearing the commotion, the rest of the search party came running and were stunned to lay eyes on the giant, lifeless anaconda. The indigenous ranch hands offered to skin it for my dad if he'd allow them to keep the rest of the snake, which they used for medicinal purposes. It took several grown men to load the carcass into a wagon and haul it back to camp, where they measured it at 27 feet long and found a calf carcass in its belly...

When my dad came to the U.S. several years later, he brought his prized collection of skins and pelts with him, including the anaconda skin.

A little while after settling into his new home country, he began dating my mom (a sheltered and shy girlie-girl). One evening he thought he'd surprise (and impress!) her and, with an eager pep to his step, tucked the giant, rolled-up snake skin under one arm and headed to pick her up for their date. *Knock, knock, knock* and my mom appeared, all dressed up and ready for a night on the town. But before she could step out the door, my dad bent and, with a flourish, sent the anaconda skin unfurling across the floor. The skin bounced and rolled until it had fully unraveled, hitting the back wall and stretching the full length of her studio apartment.

My mom went BERZERK.

Her jaw dropped and she began SCREAMING her head off. Then she started yelling at him to get rid of the thing. Get rid of it now now NOW!

GET. IT. OUT!!

Sheepishly, my dad scrambled to roll up the skin and shove it out the door. After he'd peeled my mom off the ceiling (his words), he promised he'd get rid of the snakeskin and the rest of his pelts. He made good on his promise and handed off his collection to his younger brother (who we all suspect eventually lost them, but I'll let my Uncle Roberto chime in here if he'd like 😁).

To this day my mom still hates snakes with a passionate fury and my dad has remained vigilant about keeping them away from her.

Happy birthday dad! I hope you enjoy this much friendlier and more palatable take on “The Anaconda” story.

P.S. My mom refused to touch the snake portion of this pie, and instead resigned herself to snacking on the flowers