Boboi Boy

So there is this popular cartoon in Malaysia called "Boboi Boy". It is a cute superhero, but quite a complex one, so when a customer ordered it, I was intrigued by the challenge!

Obviously, the one component which I spent the most time on was the Boboi Boy figurine itself. Luckily I started a week earlier on him, because at the last minute, my client moved the date of the party forward by one day!

The decor on the cake itself was kept simple, as I did not have sufficient time to dwell on it for too long. The figurine turned out great! I wanted a more lively pose, instead of the usual standing straight or sitting pose. It was made of gumpaste and had a wire frame inside.

 There were some stress cracks showing by the time of pick-up, but nothing major. I think I will have to plan more carefully next time I use a wire frame for an asymmetrical figurine. There will be places where there is more sagging, so all these have to be taken into account when building up the figurine. Just to be sure the stress cracks did not get worse during transporting, I placed a ball of blue fondant (same colour as the cake covering so it would be less noticable) under the figurine for support.

The cake was an 8" chocolate cake covered in fondant. The Boboi Boy, the no. 3 and the stars are made of gumpaste. Initially I had other ideas for the border round the base of the cake, but since the order was put a day forward, an emergency ribbon did the trick!

The cake had to be driven to Santubong, where the party was held. That's a 45 mins drive away, and I was so relieved to find out that it had survived the journey! Hurray!

I'm very proud of this figurine. It is one of my favourites so far.

Rainbow sprinkles

My little niece Amelie loves drawing and colouring rainbows! So when her birthday rolled around, it only made sense to make her a rainbow cake!

I was inspired by the famous rainbow cake made by The Greedy Baker. Initially I wanted to make the inside a rainbow coloured cake as well, but didn't have the time. So in the end, the cake was a red velvet cake, filled and coated with cream cheese frosting.

It was then covered in sprinkles! This was not as easy as I thought it would be and my kitchen ended up generously sprinkled with hundreds and thousands!

The rainbow was made ahead of time using gumpaste and wires. Then on the day of the party, I just stuck in onto the top. The last bit was to pipe a border of cream cheese frosting round the base of the cake and the rainbow.

The kids loved it and I must say this is an easy yet effective way to cover a cake!

Vintage cupcakes

I love, love, love vintage cupcakes with those muted, classy colours. Check out Cotton and Crumbs' Flickr photos. I could drool over them whole day long!

Anyway, since I usually do children's cakes and cupcakes, I have never had much chance to dabble in the vintage style. So when a client wanted cupcakes  for an engagement and left the design up to me, vintage it was!

The cupcakes were a delicious selection of red velvet, Belgian chocolate and green tea cream cheese.

Okay, now if you'll excuse me, I want to go check out Cotton and Crumbs' Flickr account for more eye candy! ;)

Cheating with plastic

Here is a project which was so easy because the customer requested I use plastic figurines! I didn't mind at all, for if I had to make all these by hand, it would've  taken me forever!

The cake was a square chocolate cake covered and filled with buttercream. For the wooden beams, I used Cadbury chocolate fingers. The angry Birds are plastic and the name "Ryan" is cut from fondant. I used a shell tip to pipe the buttercream border. As usual, my piping skills leave much to be desired.

My client also wanted some cupcakes to go with the cake. For these, she wanted Smurf plastic figurines. These are simple vanilla cupcakes with a really delicious caramel buttercream!

I am not too fond of buttercream, as I find it too greasy for my liking. However, I came a cross a recipe for cooked vanilla icing in my 'Baked' recipe book. They wrote that it was not too oily, and that made me want to test it out.

I actually botched it up, but it turned out to be for the better!! You see, in the initial part of the recipe, you have to cook the frosting. I must have left it for too long, and the sugar caramelized! However, I just went ahead with the rest of the method and guess what? The resulting caramel icing was excellent!

I think I might make this botched icing again! :)

Elmo for Farees

So this was one of those rare orders which I did for a client whom I did not previously know. (Most of my cakes are for family and friends)

She wanted an Elmo cake, like the one I did previously, but a larger, two tier version.It was for her son's first birthday. First birthdays are always more special don't you think??

The last time I made an Elmo using rice krispies treats, I covered him with red royal icing. It was a pain to pipe all the red fur using a star tip. Just colouring the royal icing a deep red was already a headache. So this time I tried a different approach, which I must say turned out very well!

So I moulded Elmo's body, head and arms using rice krispies treats. Then I covered the pieces in red gumpaste and pieced them together using toothpicks and satay sticks. The resulting surface was bumpy, and it replicated fur very well! The eyes and nose were balls of gumpaste stuck on with water and more toothpicks.

It turned out to be quite a sturdy structure and I was very happy indeed!

So both tiers were chocolate cake and were quite heavy in the end. I am also quite happy with the ganaching on this cake. The surfaces were flat and edges sharp.

The no.1 and the ribbon curlicues were made from gumpaste and everything else was fondant. I think I've found the perfect way to make Elmo and don't mind making him again!

Teal and tangerine

I love this colour combination; teal and tangerine. It's so refreshing! I was just waiting for a good opportunity to use these colours! When a buddy of mine wanted cupcakes for a friend who had just given birth to a boy, and basically gave me free reign, I was ecstatic! Ask any artist, when a client says, "design; up to you!" it makes our day!

I heart stamps! They are so easy to use, time-saving, yet very effective! These were made with adorable stamps I acquired on one of my trips to Singapore.

I am still learning more about colours. The names of different shades and how to get just the right shade by mixing colours. I hope to work more on this, because I think the right colours and colour combinations make such a great impact! It elevates a design from 'just good' to 'awesomeness'!

Lollipop Candy Cake

I made this cake for my daughter Annie, who turned 11 in May! It was all chocolate cake filled and covered with a yummy Belgian  chocolate ganache. Then on went another layer of fondant, followed by gumpaste details like the lollipops, stripes and cherry on top!

The lollipops were easy to make and yet turned out oh-so-pretty! For the wordings, I used one of  them FMM tappits.

This cake was inspired by one I spied on Amy Atlas' blog here. The cake was by Cupcake Party in Australia, and it's so much prettier than mine! *sigh*

Oh yes, I also love the pretty cherry and the yummy looking drippy chocolate icing! :)

Pink Dinosaur

So a repeat customer requested a pink dinosaur for her daughter's birthday. It was refreshing to do a pink dinosaur, as opposed to the purple dinosaur every kid loves.

She gave me a few pictures to choose from. They were taken off Google images and were those stock photos which are for sale. i chose the cutest one with the biggest head! :)

She wanted a simple 2D cake and I love the result!! I think this beats many of my 3D cakes, so i hope to do more pretty 2D cakes in the future.

Simple cakes with little details must be done as flawlessly as possible, as there aren't many decorations to stick on and cover blemishes. So it is important to ganache the cake perfectly to produce a smooth fondant covering. I think colours also play such an important role. I have to find me a color chart....

Baby TV Cake

I made a Baby TV cake for my little nephew, Adam who turned one in April! I don't know much about Baby TV characters, but my sis said Adam loves Baby Tulli the most! Baby Tulli is apparently a purple slug, I think...

So I made a two tiered cake, the top tier was a  6" round dark chocolate cake and the bottom was an 8" round red velvet cake. I just covered the two tiers in Belgium chocolate ganache, because I thought the brown was a nice 'boy' colour! :)

The number 1 is also actually a Baby TV character. I had to put wires into the arms to give support.

The orange and yellow blobs are also characters from that channel! :)

I added a rainbow for a splash of colour.

Here's my Baby Tulli compared with the 'real' baby Tulli!

Chuggington

I'm not too familiar with Chuggington the train, so I had to Google some images when a friend requested a Chuggington cake for her son.

This is a simple 6" round dark chocolate cake filled and covered with Belgian chocolate ganache before being covered and decorated with fondant.

Project Cupcake

I wanted to experiment on some cake flavours and also a Swiss meringue buttercream recipe, thus I launched Project Cupcake! Hehehe...

It was just a full day of baking different cupcakes and whipping up different frostings.

Here are the fruits off my labour:

A deep, dark, moist chocolate cake

with

a decadent Belgian chocolate ganache topping.

A fragrant vanilla bean cake

with

a delicately silky Swiss meringue buttercream frosting.

A fun Oreo crumbs cake

with

a yummy cookies and cream frosting.

A deliciously moist, light cocoa cake

with

a rich and fluffy cream cheese frosting.

I have to say, that the Red Velvet is my current favourite! But chocolate has always been an all-time favourite, so it's a tie I guess!!

The kids seemed to gravitate towards the Cookies and Cream ones, so the least popular were the Vanilla cupcakes. To me, vanilla cupcakes just seem boring. I wonder if there's something I'm doing wrong? I'll definitely be looking into more vanilla cake recipes...

Pororo

Oh man, I'm so super behind on my blog postings, so I'll make a few short posts. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them at the comments box and I'll reply when I have the time!

Here's a Pororo and friends cake. It's a Korean cartoon that is actually quite cute!

This cake was inspired by Mama Min's Pororo cake on her Flickr page.

Pretty Castle

My daughter Claire was invited to a birthday party. I didn't know what to get the birthday girl, as usual, so I thought I'd make the cute princess castle which was on the invitation card. It was simple and pretty!


The cake is a small 6" chocolate cake at the bottom and the top tier is an even smaller 4" round chocolate cake. The two towers are purely gumpaste. The flags are made of modelling paste.

Modelling paste is fondant strengthened with CMC (carboxymethylcellulose) powder. I think I prefer CMC to gum tragacanth, as it can be used instantly after mixing, unlike gum, where you have to let it rest for a few hours after mixing before you can use it. Since I am forever lacking enough time, anything that saves time gets a thumbs up from me!

It's funny how when I first learned about CMC, it was for a totally, totally different use! It was our group project in uni (pharmacy degree), we were doing different drug delivery methods and we got ocular inserts! It means we had to explore the fairly un-used method of delivering drug into the eye by using eye inserts! (ie. putting something into the eye like contact lens)

So we dissolved the medicine and added CMC to thicken and bind it together and let it dry into a paper thin piece of medicine which could be put into the eye! Cool eh? Unlike eye drops, it could dissolve slowly, thus delivering drug steadily into the eye, over a longer period of time. A guy from Pfizer came and judged ours the best project and we got free Pfizer t-shirts! lol!

And here I am now using CMC to make cakes!! Which I enjoy so much more by the way!! ;)

Okay, sorry for the detour, back to the cake...

For the name, I used FMM tappits. The tappits can be a pain to use, but if you know these simple secrets, it becomes a breeze!

1. use gumpaste, not fondant
2. roll it out really thin
3. use plenty of cornflour, on the top and bottom of the gumpaste and also flour the FMM mould!

The pretty alphabets you get in the end are definitely worth it!