One year ago, I got in my car to go visit a stranger in Vancouver. We baked. We ate crepes. We became friends. (In case you missed any of our collabs: Earl grey lavender cake & macarons // Carnival cake // Orchard adventures)

I'm talking about Amy of Constellation Inspiration of course.

It's hard to believe that we've only known each other for a year, as Amy has become such a dear friend to me! We now get together more often to just eat crepes and catch up instead of baking together, and that's just fine with me. A spring shoot is being planned already, and I can't wait!

Also, we were so so sad that Victor wasn't able to meet us for this shoot! We missed his artistic eye so much...and I'm pretty sure that Amy and I took 3x as long to shoot it ourselves without him there. Ha!

SO. LET'S TALK CAKE.

We went a little crazy....and made 4 cakes. I brought an angel food cake with 7-minute icing (recipe here), as well as my classic chocolate cake (recipe here). Pop over to Amy's blog for her cake recipes! She made a four-layer chamomile cake with bumbleberry jam and vanilla swiss meringue buttercream, and a three-layer coconut cake with coconut white miso buttercream. #dead

So, I baked and decorated my cakes and macarons (WHY? they make me so nervous still!!) the night before, and then drove everything into Vancouver. Talk about STRESS. I'm shocked that the cakes arrived (mostly) intact. Pretty sure that drive took a couple years off my life. Ha! I arrived at Amy's house, we started setting things up, and basically wept when Victor broke the news that he wouldn't be able to come over to shoot!

After a million hours of styling and shooting, Amy and I went out for tacos at a new taco place (where we analyzed each tacos like the food critics we like to pretend to be), and then stuffed our faces with cake for dessert back at her place. Pretty much a perfect day in my opinion!

Also, this dark chocolate swiss meringue buttercream is my new favourite icing recipe, hands down. It's so incredibly velvety, not too sweet, and packed with dark chocolatey goodness. I used this to decorate my chocolate cake, as well as to pipe between the macarons!

Dark Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream

ingredients:

3 egg whites

1 cup white sugar

pinch of salt

1/2 tsp vanilla

3.25 oz of dark chocolate, melted

4 1/2 tablespoons cocoa powder

1 cup butter, cubed

directions:

Place the egg whites and sugar into a double boiler (this could be a metal bowl on top of a saucepan of simmering water), and whisk together continuously. Keep mixing until the sugar is totally dissolved, and the temperature hits 140F for a few minutes.

Remove from heat, and mix in the salt, vanilla, melted chocolate, and cocoa powder.

Slowly add cubes of butter, and mix well after each addition. If your icing starts to look soupy or like it's curdling, just place it in the fridge for 10 minutes and try mixing again. Repeat if necessary.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge if you're not using it right away! Let it sit on the counter to soften up before icing a cake with it. Enjoy