Sweet Treats - Bella Christie's Sweet Boutique

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Bella Christie's Sweet Boutique > Blog > Sweet Treats

Halloween is here!

All Hallow’s Eve – the kick-off of the holiday season! We’re still enjoying the crisp, cool fall weather, looking forward to a night of dressing up and trick or treating with our children, family or friends. It’s a fun time of year! Which means it’s even more FUN for us in the bakery!

Custom Halloween Cupcakes/Cakes/Creations couldn’t be more fun to bake and make. We’ve featured a few ‘fall related’ wedding cakes these past blog posts – but now, we’re really shifting into the Halloween spirit!

Have you ever visited us in Aspinwall? (Our first of 2! locations) After walking through the big pink doors, to your left you see a display table – full of our latest creations. And these next weeks, all we are seeing is custom Ghost & Boo cookies, pumpkin-shaped rice krispie treats & candy corn, and chocolate bar goodie bags.

We also just did a Halloween #SweetTable for a party. Frankenstein & Pumpkins were amongst the sugar cookie portion of the display. Ghosts, scary – hairy purple & green monsters lined the cupcake part of the table… and our most note worthy piece to finish off this B.C. S.T. was he 3-tier Frankenstein + Skeleton + Pumpkin Cake! From the bottom up, each layer custom iced-fit to its character.

Adding zest to this Halloween season – we have carmel apple, apple chai, and salted carmel flavored options! And even though we aren’t quite to Thanksgiving, just yet! …we are starting to make our famous pies! Blueberry, triple berry, pumpkin, apple and pecan. Did we forget to mention? Those pie-flavors come in pie-pop devours, too!

Before we go – stay tuned to our Social feeds next week – we’ll be featuring our Halloween-themed favorites!

There are more pictures, below*

Sweetly Yours,
The Bella Christiez Team

Donut Station, Best in the Nation

Oh yes – you read us right, we have a Donut Station! …fully equipped, open for travel and popping out hot & ready donuts, right there – in front of your eyes. She’s quite the site to see, we can assure you. And this amazing invention can be yours, anywhere – Weddings, Mitzvahs, Anniversary Parties, Baby Showers, Bridal Showers, Birthday Parties, Graduation Parties, Corporate Parties, Holiday Parties… whatever type of gathering you can dream of, we can create delicious fresh donuts!

The flavors we come up with are just marvelous, too… pretty much anything your #sweettreat heart can desire – glazed, cinnamon sugar, peanut butter cup, oreo, almond torte, sprinkles, coffee cake crumble, and a ton more!

The Donut Station is actually so popular that here at Bella Christie’s… we’ve had to recently add another Donut Station to our inventory! During Wedding Season, both stations are completely booked (so reserve them early, folks!).

Q: How did the inception of such a fabulous portable Sweet Station arise?
A: When the owners first started getting into this business they noticed that at Weddings and Events people were more inclined to eat mini desserts. So they started researching everything mini …and found mini donuts. Then, they promptly found a cart to use for easy, on-location manufacture and also had travel capabilities.

It takes two #BellaChristiez Sugar Fairies to run this sweet station. They’ll be behind the bar, smiling with their pink uniforms on and all sugared up and ready to create!

Q: What’s a cool, fun-fact about our beloved, Donut Station – that’s Best in the Nation?
A: The donut station needs to be setup a couple hours in advance… our Sugar Fairies need to allow some time for the station to fully heat it up in order for the donuts to fried into perfection and ready as soon as it’s dessert time!

Would you like to reserve our Donut Station for your next big event? Give Amanda a call at 412-772-1283 =)

Sweetly Yours,
The Bella Christiez Team

Summer Sweets!

Good morning, Bella Christiez’s readers – and thanks for stopping by!

We don’t know about you, but summer is one of our favorite seasons. We love sitting poolside, sunning our faces, and cooling off with refreshing seasonally themed #sweettreats! Have you ever wondered how we go about selecting summer flavors or making a batch of fruit compote? Well, here in this post, you’re about to find out.

What’s the first thing we ask ourselves when selecting the seasons #sweettreats menus? Well, as a matter a fact, we question “what’s trending?”. We have to think about the season in question. Summer is a season filled with picnics, outdoor get togethers, and July 4th celebrations.

Since this post centers around summer – and summer = tropical… right now, we’re using a lot of fresh fruits in our daily recipes. We have pina coloda and pink lemonade cupcakes to go with the tropical theme we just mentioned. To represent those fun picnic adventures – we’ve created watermelon and peach cobbler flavors, and to be quite patriotic, we’ve crafted red, white & blue cheesecakes for Forth of July and Memorial Day.

We also serve buttercream cookies based upon the season or whatever maybe happening – for instance, right now – we have ocean animal cookie cutouts for summer, and a few weeks ago we had ties for Fathers Day; plus Graduation Caps for our most recent grads. Take a look at our Summer Menu, here.

Before we go… we have one specialty summer recipe technique we’d like to share with you – Fresh Fruit Compote. Mmm doesn’t that sound amazing? Here at the Sweet Boutique, we create compote recipes, each and everyday during the summer to include into our sweet treats… parfaits and crostatas get dressed in it, all the time 😉

Follow the recipe here:

Head to a local farmers market or grocer, pick up a few of your favorite summer fruit flavors – for example, blueberries and raspberries. Add a pint of raspberries, 1 cup of blueberries; factor in 2 TSBP of sugar, 1 zest of lemon (can you say summer is here?!), 1 tsp of lemon juice, and 1 tsp of vanilla …and if you’re feeling sweet – 1 tsp of maple syrup.

Combine all ingredients in a sizable saucepan, bring it up to a medium heat and then, lower the heat to let simmer for about 10 minutes, wait until the fruit begins to caramelize and break down a bit, then remove and let cool!

With your own, at-home compote, add this delicious concoction to anything! On top of ice cream, for breakfast in yogurt with granola or alongside pancakes; as a singular side dish or include it as a layer in a yummy summer desert.

…and don’t forget to enjoy!

Sweetly Yours,

Bella Christiez

Sweet Treats, Order Specialties!

Good evening, #BellaChristiez fan! Thank you, again, for stopping by to read our blog. We’re on post #3 and love learning how to write the best posts catered to YOU! =) Lately, we’ve come across a lot of questions about processing orders, how far in advance a customer needs to call, and inquires about placing orders ahead of time for Weddings and Special Events.

So! That means this post is all about… best ordering practices! We want to start by saying – each and every one of you are important to us and we strive to make the best #sweettreats for you, above and beyond par. In order to do so, we do have to make sure we distribute orders accordingly. Taking our careful time and spending our baking expertise the right way, is most important.

We’ve put together some general thoughts…

1. Our wedding season runs from the end of May to October. Because we are one of Pittsburgh’s premier dessert table and cake specialists, this is one of our busiest seasons. Brides and clients alike come to us three to eight months ahead of time to reserve a space for their special event. During this season we want to make sure everyone’s order is well taken care of, therefore there are times when we must stop taking orders so that we have the time we need to focus on an existing order.

2. Outside of our busy season, we request a 48 hour notice of an order. There are times we are able to accept orders for the next day, but a general rule of thumb is the sooner-the-better.

3. If you know you are having a large function during any time of the year, you may contact us early on to place a deposit to hold your date. Even if you do not have all of the details confirmed for the event, a deposit will ensure we plan for your order.

Hope this information helps! If you have any further questions, don’t hesitate to call one of our #SweetTreats locations, #Aspinwall 412-772-1283 or #Lawrenceville 412-687-1265 or visit our website, www.asweetboutique.com.

All the #sweetest dreams – for the rest of your evening,

#BellaChristiez

Summer Sweet Treats

Good evening, folks! Thanks for stopping by and clicking to read our second blog post.

This time around we are discussing all things summer sweets! There are two big themes running in and out of our sweet shoppe this 2014. Weddings and Cool Treats!

Let’s run around everyones favorite subject of Weddings to start! After all, it is wedding season – and it’s our busiest time of year. Here at Bella Christiez we love creating the most gorgeous Wedding Cakes for our Brides. Each time we get a call, we sit down and thoroughly go over all the details – big or small, we do it all! Not only are these cakes made to order, they are made to fit your special wedding theme… florals, diamonds, lace or glitter it’s all taken care of. We do have one little tip for all of our future brides – call us and schedule your consultation sooner, rather than later. Once #weddingseason gets underway (which for 2014, it pretty much has!) we need the time to set aside to create your perfect Wedding Cake. Here are some of our favorites from recent weekends…

Now there’s not much of a clever Segway into our final thought for this blog post, haha – so bear with us as we bounceover the to the subject of cool-summer sweet treats! Since opening our doors in Lawrenceville – we’ve created a brand new #madetoorder breakfast and lunch sandwich menu… And added the most coolest sweet treat ever – ice cream sandwiches! I’ve cream sandwiches for summer, ladies and gents! And these sandwiches are unlike any other – we use donuts and brownies on either side of our vanilla ice cream, can you say yum?!

Thanks for stopping by! -Bella Christiez

Bella’s First Blog

Why, hello there, folks! Thank you for stopping by and reading our first ever post on the Bella Christie’s & Lil’ Z’s blog. We’re happy to have you here and even more excited to share with you this week’s features and specialty sweet treats!

Before we dive into what’s happening, here’s the month of May in review. Our #BellaChristiez sweet treats attended Maniac Magazine’s #PartyAtThePoint on the 14th. We made mini cupcakes and cake pops special for the party. We don’t have any pictures to share, because all their guests gobbled those sweets right up =) Baby Shower BBQ, Bella Christiez

Via our Bella Christie’s and Lil’ Z’s Social Feeds (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest) – aweek filled entirely of customized #KidCake pictures and testimonials as well as a week dedicated to Shower Cakes… showers of all kinds, too! Baby and Wedding, just to name a few. Here, to the right is one of our favorite photos…

Bella Christie's, Ice Cream Sandwich Pittsburgh

We also proudly announced our brand-new Ice Cream Sandwiches for Lawrenceville’s SweetBoutique location! These aren’t just any kind of ice-cream sandwich… we’re sandwiching our vanilla ice cream with donuts and brownies! Isn’t this the yummiest collage (to the left) you ever did see?

What’s new for this first week in June? …aside from those Ice Cream Sandwiches the entire summer in Lawrenceville, we’ve also implemented a new made-to-order breakfast and lunch sandwich menu. We’re stocked full with delicious egg-whites, meats, cheeses and veggies to create any sandwich, just how you like!

This Sunday, June 8th Bella Christiez Food-Truck will be on-location at Carnegie Library’s 2014 Reading Extravaganza from 12-5p! (Click the link for event information.)

Don’t forget! We now have TWO locations, our first Sweet Treats home in Aspinwall and now a #SweetBoutique in Lawrenceville. The name is the same, but the sweet-contents do differ a bit! Make sure you visit both locations to experience it all. Lawrenceville’s location not only serves up our traditional cookies, cakes, cupcakes & more – it also offers a cafe atmostphere and room upstairs for wi-fi working and a party space for hosting!

Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for next week’s post, too!

Your Sweet Friends at Bella Christiez