Neapolitan celebration cakes part I - fresh strawberry layer cake

There’s no feeling quite like knowing that there is a celebration coming up which requires cake. Part of my overly-enthusiastic love for Christmas is the quantity of dessert it requires me, the resident pastry chef, to make for various gatherings and parties. You should’ve seen the cakes I spammed my Facebook friends with last year.

Or maybe not. Secondary sugar rush is a serious thing.

I am also happy to make desserts for any other occasion conceivable (trust me—there is no low I won’t sink to if it means I get to make cake); I’ve made cakes for neighbors and schoolteachers and the pseudo-“tea parties” my friends and I would have (and given that we are all avid tea drinkers, it is quite fitting).

Fresh strawberry oatmeal cookie cups with lemon buttercream

If there is one universally loveable food trend out there, that would be miniature food. We’ve seen all kinds of hand-held, bite-sized edibles come into fashion in the past decade or so, from cupcakes to burger sliders to cake pops to hand pies. And I know these foods have been in existence for more than a decade, but, you know, with foodie culture and all it’s only recently that these things have become widespread and, in some cases, “elevated”.