Green Tea Roll?

Sushi restaurants have the weirdest names for their sushi rolls. Dragon Roll, Ninja Roll, Dynamite Roll, Spicy Surf Rider, etc...  I can't think of one just yet for this so I'm going with Green Tea Roll for now.

I made this for my family's Christmas dinner.  We decided to go pot luck this year and every member is bringing what they want to eat.  Naturally, for my dad, this means sushi and sashimi.  This inspired me to make these desserts to go with that theme. 

It's a rolled up green tea sponge cake, filled with a white chocolate buttercream.  It's topped off in orange nonpareils to emulate roe.  Complete with a dark chocolate dipping sauce, taking place of the traditional soy sauce and wasabi. 

Merry Christmas!

-The Whisk

Baby Shower Order

Couple weeks ago, we had an order for mini desserts for a baby shower. 

Here are some pictures from that event.

Imaginate only provided the desserts.  The layout was done by Jane: An Event Design & Coordination Co.

We'd like to thank Jane: An Event Design & Coordination Co. for the opportunity and for providing us with these pictures.


-The Whisk

Triple Salted Caramel Mini Cupcakes

Did a test bake on a salted caramel mini cupcakes today for a baby shower later in the week.
It came out good.  The buttercream has a nice balance of sweet caramel and salt.  The cupcake is filled with a caramel syrup in the middle.  Therefore, a Triple Salted Caramel Mini Cupcake.

-The Whisk

Happy Halloween

Our focus is normally on mini desserts. However, for this event, we were asked to make regular sized cupcakes for an office Halloween party at Guthy Renker.

My photography skills are fledgling at best so this picture didn't come out as great as it could have.  Just use your imagination when looking at the photo.  We are all about imagination here at Imaginate.

Happy Halloween!  Be safe.

-The Whisk.

Imaginte Dessert Menu

Our menu is finally here.

This is, by no means, the limit of our capabilities.  We felt that this menu would serve as a good starting point for our customers.  They can take a look at it to get a feel for what we do here at Imaginate.  We would be more than happy to discuss other dessert ideas with our customers and custom make it for them.  It's all in the name. 

-The Whisk

Mini New York Cheesecake

With this, I'm finally done with our mini dessert menu.  It's been a long time of testing not only recipes but bakeware.  A lot of buying and returning bakeware in order to find some that would work for our desserts.  I'll have our official menu up in a couple of days after The Pen takes my Word document menu and transforms it into a masterpiece. 

In the meantime, here are my Mini New York Cheesecakes.  They are perfect for one or two bites.   You can share them if you want but I'm going to bet that you won't want to. 
These little cheesecakes are good.  In fact, I'm eating one as I write this.  Of course, I just shove it all in my mouth in one big bite and let all the creamy goodness just swirl all over my tasetbuds. 

I'm going to need another.

-The Whisk.

Audrey's First Birthday

Imaginate is very close to fully launching.  When the three of us first sat down and came up with the idea for Imaginate, we were shooting to fully launch our company on Audrey's first birthday because we'd be able to fully showcase all the services we were capable of providing.  Audrey's birthday party was last Saturday.  Although, we aren't exactly ready to launch just yet, we are very close to it.  Meanwhile, here are some pictures from the birthday. 

Invitation by The Pen.

Mini desserts by The Whisk. 
Mini white picket fence and mini cake cone stands by The Hammer.

We had a great time at the event.  I made mini vanilla bean cupcakes with a light pink buttercream frosting, mini cake donuts dunked in both a white and pink icing and sprinkled with rainbow sprinkles, mini cake cones, and mini fruit tarts.  Everything turned out great.  People seemed to really enjoy the desserts as well as the picket fences, which we are making available for rental if you'd like to use them in your event.

Just want to thank Mimi and Andrew Ahn for letting us use their firstborn's birthday to showcase our products.

Also, photos by Andrew Ahn.

-The Whisk

Our First Dessert Order

So we got our first dessert order from Trini for her father's birthday.  I hope her family enjoys it. 

I made some Mini Cheesecake Brownie Bites as well as some Mini Red Velvet Cupcakes with a cream cheese frosting. 


The Mini Cheesecake Brownies came out a lot better this time thanks to a new mold I purchased. 
I'm a lot happier with the look of them now.

Just wanted to say "Thank you" to Trini for allowing us to provide her family with some desserts and for being our first customer for the dessert portion of our company.

-The Whisk.

Mini Lemon Madeleines

Today, I made some Mini Lemon Madeleines.  Whipping egg yolks by hand until ribbon stage in a hot kitchen was not fun by any stretch of the imagination.  But all that matters is the end result.  I also took about half of them and dipped them in some dark chocolate.  I personally prefer the chocolate dipped madeleines but some like it plain or with just a touch of powdered sugar dusted on top. 

-The Whisk

Mini Donuts

These mini donuts came about because I tried making some black and white cookies earlier but wasn't happy with the presentation of the product.  However, the taste was great so I decided to use the same recipe but in a different format.  Long story short, mini donuts.  They came out great.  I'm really happy with the taste, look and portability of these. 

-The Whisk

Mini Caramel Apples

Took another classic treat and miniaturized it.  They are a perfect bite-sized dessert for when you room for just one more bite.  The crunchy texture of the apple goes well with the rich sweet flavor of the caramel.  The great thing about these is that you can put whatever toppings you want.

Hope you get a chance to taste them.

-The Whisk

Cheesecake Brownies

Back to baking. 
This time, I made some cheesecake brownies which combines two desserts most people love - cheesecakes and brownies!

-The Whisk

Mini Cupcakes

Who can say no to cupcakes?  Mini ones no less!  As my friend, The Hammer, says, "Anything miniature is delicious".  Cupcakes are a simple but essential part of any event.  No dessert bar would be complete without them.  Everybody loves them. 

-The Whisk

Baking

As we continue to put together this company, I am starting to realize that there is a lot of groundwork that we have to take care of.  We are still shooting for a full launch of imaginate by mid-September.

One of the things that we need to finalize is our dessert menu.  To that end, I'll spend the next couple weeks testing recipes and baking desserts that we hope will be part of our final dessert menu.

Here's one of the items - Mini Fruit Tarts.

I think these are perfect for any event.  The crunchy texture of the tart shells, mixed with the richness of the vanilla in the pastry cream and the sweet and tarty flavor of the fruits all come together nicely in a bite-sized package. 

-The Whisk

Hatty Lee and Johnny Lee Wedding

This is the current project that we have been working on for the past couple weekends.

We had been asked to create a photo backdrop for Hatty Lee and Johnny Lee's wedding on July 16th at Orcutt Ranch in West Hills, CA.



With a lot of wood, some hardware, bit of paint and a great choice of wallpaper, we were able to construct a freestanding frame wall which should provide a playful alternative to normal photo backdrops.

We also built jail bars to provide an entirely different set for the photos.
It comes complete with a hand carved heart shaped lock.

The Hammer did a great job of putting all of this together. We hope the soon-to-be newlyweds and all their guests will enjoy them. Hopefully, they will grace us with some photos from the actual event.

As we continue to custom build for our clients, our collection will continue to grow.  We are grateful to the Lees for this opportunity to start off our collection with these pieces.

All of the pieces shown here will be available for rental for your special events.

-The Whisk










Photos by Freezerburrn Photography.

Facebook

Our Facebook is up and running.
Come find us at facebook.com/imaginate.services and 'Like' our page.

The Beginning

What or who is Imaginate?  We are three friends, each with our unique skills and talents, who have merged our resources to create an event services company.  Each of us -- The Whisk, The Pen, and The Hammer, have been individually asked by our friends to bake, design, or build something for them for their special events.  So we got together and created what we feel is a unique amalgamation of talents that can readily produce what people need to give their special events a customized edge.  You imagine it and we'll create it.  Our vision is big but we know that we must take baby steps to get there.  This blog will be a visual and written record of those baby steps. 
We hope that you will come with us in our journey as we try to grow from an idea discussed over many meals together into something we all can be proud of.  We welcome comments, encouragements and constructive criticisms.  This is the beginning.
-The Whisk