Sweet Rewards
A celebrated pastry chef and cake entrepreneur creates perfect party-giving spaces, alfresco-style.
Deck, Patio and Pool
Even though their contemporary home is thoroughly inviting inside, Karen Krasne and Jamie Kiskis love to entertain outdoors. The couple lives in San Diego’s Mission Hills neighborhood with their 8-year-old daughter Sahara, where their parties center around a Moroccan-inspired patio courtyard designed with subtle textures and surprising accents. This in-between space marries the outside world with Karen and Jamie’s private one, says their architect Aaron Anderson of San Diego-based Studio Anderson.
Karen has worked with him on design aspects of both of her restaurants, so she was quite comfortable tapping Anderson to redesign her home’s interior and exterior spaces. “I wanted to transform this space to be more suited to our indoor-outdoor lifestyle and to feel that if you added a ceiling, it would be an extension of our kitchen,” Karen says. Together, the re-imagined home and garden reflect a medley of Mission, Moroccan and modern styles.
To Karen, neutral colors, natural materials and matte finishes create an ideal foil for her fanciful desserts and colorful tabletops. If the furnishings are fussy and the materials are too bright, it can limit a hostess, she says. “I like everything else to be clean, with not a lot of detail, almost monotone. It allows me to dress up the space for every different occasion. You can have any kind of look if your background is neutral.”
Decorated with roses, orchids, hydrangeas, ferns, and succulents, Karen Krasne’s “Amor Chocolat” cake is beautiful and decadent – a highlight of an outdoor party at her San Diego home.
Many of the designs and accessories used here are inspired by Karen’s international travels. “I love to take something that catches my eye and inspires me and transport it home with me,” she says. Karen’s adventurous decorating style appears in her domestic spaces as well as in the recipes she bakes at Extraordinary Desserts, her dessert café with two San Diego locations. She is known for creating flavorful cakes and tortes decorated with flowers, fruit, fine imported ribbons and splashes of edible gold leaf.
When Karen suggested using several pierced-metal Moroccan lanterns in the new patio space, her architect elevated the iconic motif with enchanting results. “I knew we needed a privacy screen, so I took her lantern and essentially flattened it out,” Anderson explains. “We created several panels, perforating them with the same triangular design on the lanterns.”
The 4-by-10 foot panels are fabricated from fiberboard cement resin sheets that were cut with intricate designs using a power-jet technique. Five of the panels, mounted side-by-side on custom metal brackets, create an artful and functional privacy wall along one side of the entry courtyard. When the screens are back-lit, they glow with the same allure as the lanterns that inspired them. In the foreground, a low retaining wall supports a glass-enclosed fire feature and contains a dramatic border of sago palms.
The renovations doubled the width of the entry court to 16 feet wide-by-20 feet long to encompass dedicated cooking, eating and lounging areas. Many of the finishes and plant selections echo details used in Karen and Jamie’s backyard patio, completed a few years earlier. That 1,000-square-foot space was landscaped with an exclusively green foliage palette that Karen selected with the help of designer Michael Bliss of San Diego-based The Urban Seed. A sunken koi pond and water feature stands at its center, surrounded by rough-cut Brazilian stone and smooth black pebbles. These materials are repeated in the entry garden, as is the flooring, an easy-care concrete that has been scored to emulate oversized pavers.
The entry patio gains privacy from unique pierced panels that provide artful screening. Casual seating is arranged around the fire feature that extends outward from the top of the retaining wall.
“The big piece in the back is the koi pond, while the big piece in the front is the screen – and they complement each other,” Anderson explains.
To celebrate the publication of her new cookbook, Extraordinary Cakes (Rizzoli, 2011), Karen made the most of her al fresco settings and invited family and friends of all ages to sample some of her favorite delicacies. “Although I have a serious background from my training in France, the way I design my desserts has a Southern California appeal — fresh and natural, with a lot of color and flowers,” she says. In her cookbook, Karen writes, “I like to create cakes that contain complex textural differences and an element of surprise.” The same could be said for her personal entertaining style, especially when the party takes place outdoors.
Pro Tips for Outdoor Entertaining Success
Karen Krasne is a French-trained chef and baker who worked for years as a pastry chef in kitchens in Europe and Mexico, which developed her taste for using exotic and far-flung flavors and décor in her cake creations. Whether feeding thousands of guests each week at her two restaurants or serving friends who have gathered in her personal environment at home, Karen abides by several rules:
- Have a game plan and patience. Create a plan that is based on which components can be prepared ahead of time and held until ready to serve. “My mom was a great entertainer and she instilled in me the importance of finishing everything before guests arrive,” Karen says. “Then you’re a guest, too.”
- If you don’t have much counter space outdoors, use a cart on wheels. Karen designed her 3-by-6 foot stainless steel roll cart to serve as a cocktail table or serving counter. It even has a recessed serving bowl to hold ice, wine bottles or floating flowers. It’s easy to roll away to store out of sight after use. Look for one like Karen’s at a restaurant supply outlet.
- Don’t limit yourself to conventional serving platters. Karen likes to display her cakes on pedestals or create her own “edible doilies” using layered lemon, galax or ti leaves (available from a florist) attached to a cardboard base.
Shaded by a chocolate-brown awning, the dining table seats up to 10 guests. A horizontal mirror reflects the courtyard’s pierced panels.
–Debra Prinzing