Fondant fun

Hidey ho! I'm Henrietta the Hippo!

My niece Amelie specifically requested for a pink hippo for her 3rd birthday! I didn't have time to make her a whole cake because her birthday was the day after my huge wedding cake project. It was also her sister, Amanda's birthday!


So I just made her a pink hippo to put on top of her bought cake and let Amanda make her own fondant teddy bear. The other kids also joined in the fun and helped create this one of a kind masterpiece!


We also celebrated Father's Day a week earlier since Big Sis. was home. I made a simple fondant cake from the extra orange madeira cake I had leftover from the wedding cake project. We then topped it with an octopus Annie made and jammed on some gumpaste decorations leftover from previous projects.


Happy Falker Satherhood everyone! :)

(If that didn't make sense... go here!)

My First Wedding Cake!!

Phew! I'm so proud to have completed my very first wedding cake last Saturday!

I must thank my friend Michelle for having such confidence in me that she let me make her wedding cake! I mean it's not like a birthday cake, which one has annually... it's a once-in-a-lifetime wedding cake!!

Fortunately this was her second wedding dinner, which was held at our hometown. The main dinner was the more lavish affair and was held in KL. So that took a bit of pressure off me; at least she already had a nice professionally-made cake in the first event, so if mine didn't turn out too good, it wouldn't matter as much! Well, that was my reasoning anyway...

When Hubby and I came back from our diving holiday to Sipadan, I had only one week left to complete the huge (on my scale; mammoth!) project.

Over the week, I baked many cakes and made plenty of chocolate buttercream. The cake baking was the most time consuming, because I only have one wee oven, and had to bake them one at a time. The 12" cake tray almost couldn't fit into my oven!


So anyway, the bottom tier was two 12" round American chocolate cakes. The second tier was a 10" round American chocolate cake. The third, extra-wide tier, was three 8" round orange madeira cakes. The final top tier was made of styrofoam because I did not want my nightmares of the wedding cake crashing down to come true! I seriously doubted my engineering skills, so even though I always prefer my whole creation to be edible, I had to compromise this time. There was too much at stake!

The two separators were also made from styrofoam and covered in yellow gumpaste. I cut all the styrofoam used by hand, with the aid of a craft knife. It was a lot of hard, messy work, and if I ever do this professionally, I am definitely getting a styrofoam cutter machine thingy!!

So over the week, I cut the styrofoam parts and covered them in gumpaste first, then baked the cakes whenever I had some free time and lastly covered the cakes in fondant. I was doing the fondant decorating right up to a couple of hours before the wedding dinner. Then Hubby and I went early to set up the tiers and to put the finishing touches, i.e.: the real orchids.


I did try making a gumpaste orchid, but it was so much work and too time-consuming that I decided to use real ones. I figured mother nature was a better artist and since we have orchids in abundance here, it would actually be a shame to use fake ones!

During the dinner that night, I was still struggling to push thoughts of wedding cake avalanches out of my mind. Boy was I so totally relieved when the couple finally cut the cake without any untoward incidents!! The cake was then safely disassembled and served to guests.

I must also say here that I couldn't have done it without Hubby's help! He came back one night after a World Cup session to find me frantically fussing over the extra-wide tier! I had covered it in fondant and it cracked and tore at the edges! I was in despair! I did not have the energy nor the extra fondant to redo it and neither could I leave it as it was! Thank goodness Hubby came up with a solution which saved the cake and did not use up too much more fondant!

He also helped me lug the pieces to the car and to the banquet hall. They were quite big and surprisingly heavy! Also not forgetting the words of encouragement which helped prevent me from going insane! :)

*muaks* Thanks Darling!

This design was inspired by one done by The Pink Cake Box. I love the colours and the extra-wide tiers and the floating tiers effect caused by the styrofoam separators. I went through so many designs and in the end, even though this one was tougher to make due to the wide tier, I knew it was extra special. I checked with Michelle and sure enough, she loved it too.

So here it is, my very first (and also very likely my last!) wedding cake!!

In the end I don't think a lot of people even noticed the cake, because it was sitting on the side of the stage in the dim romantic lighting.

But I don't mind. I loved it and the bride loved it, so, "Mission accomplished!!"

Lollipop cake

I made this cake for my niece Allyson's 9th birthday. It looks pretty okay here, but after transporting it to my Dad's house where the party was held, it started melting in the crazily hot and humid weather!

The fondant went all wet and soft and started sliding down the sides! It was awful. I had no choice but to pop it into the refrigerator and took it out just minutes before it was time to cut it. Once you put a fondant cake into the fridge, it's destroyed, because when you take it out, the sudden temperature change will cause condensation on the fondant surface. The fondant will then absorb this moisture and turn into gunk!

So anyway, luckily it was still reasonably presentable when it was candle-blowing time.


The lollies are not real lollies. I made them from gumpaste a few days ahead. I just twisted ropes of coloured gumpaste with ropes of white gumpaste and rolled the rope up into spirals. Then I stuck in disposable chopsticks. These were left to harden for a few days.


The cake was a plain madeira cake with custard filling. I think that was another mistake, to have a water based filling like custard instead of an oil based one like butter cream. The fondant must have also absorbed the water from the custard. Thus, the resulting gloppy glue.

The birthday girl is one of those rare kids who is not fond of chocolate!! That's why I came up with the madeira cake with custard filling. I think I'll just stick to good ol' chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream in the future!

Annie's 9th Birthday

Thursday was my eldest daughter Annie's birthday. She has always wanted to help me in decorating cakes, but I never allowed her to. So, I promised that she could decorated her own birthday cake when the time came.


I made a simple, plain, two-tiered cake. It was chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling. The top tier I covered in pale green fondant and the bottom tier was light pink. Then, I made a border of white gumpaste daisies.


Annie decided to add a few gumpaste butterflies which I had made earlier. Then she piped her name and some patterns using a tube of blue sparkling gel icing.


I do believe she enjoys cake decorating as much as her Mummy! :)

Pika... Pika... Pikachu!

My nephew Timothy celebrated his 11th birthday yesterday. He has a huge collection of Pokemon cards, so I thought he would appreciate a Pokemon cake!


I chose to make Pikachu, because he is the most well-loved one and more importantly because he is blob-shaped!! Hehehe, that meant he would be easy to make!


I didn't have a very good experience using Rice Krispies to make models, so this time I tried using cake instead. I find that cake is much easier to work with, and the only disadvantage would be it's weight. Therefore I made sure to use lots of support in the bottom base cake, lest the whole thing caved in!

The inside of Pikachu is carrot cake which I bought because I was too lazy to make so much cake! I first made a cylindrical shape by layering small circles of cake and then gradually carved out a rough shape of Pikachu. I then covered him in yellow fondant and used tinted fondant to make his facial features and stripes.

His appendages, i.e: tail, ears and limbs, were all made from gumpaste ahead of time. They were left to dry and harden for a couple of days. I stuck them on with the help of toothpicks. I had trouble with the tail which was heavy and sticking out at an angle. In the end, I resorted to using an external bamboo skewer. It didn't look too good, but at least Pikachu had a tail!


The tips of his ears I painted black, using food colouring diluted with a bit of alcohol based vanilla essence. The bottom of his tail was painted the same way, with brown. The base cake, I covered with red and white, which is the colour of the ball thingie from which these cute monsters emerge!

The base cake was banana cake which I did bake, and frost with bittersweet chocolate buttercream. It wasn't very popular with the kids, so I suppose I'll just stick to boring old chocolate cake next time.

Flower cake

My daughter Annie volunteered me (without asking me first!) to make a cake for her teacher's birthday! It has been quite a while since I made a decorated cake, so I agreed anyway.

I used the Wilton gumpaste I had made previously, to create some flowers. I just cut a simple five petal flower and veined the petals and stuck on some pretty-coloured non pareils which I had just bought. Then I wired them and stuck them into the cake which I covered in white fondant and green and yellow stripes.


The cake is two layers of 6" round "Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake", only I used Van Houten cocoa powder as opposed to Hershey's cocoa powder, because you just can't find that in my part of the world.

I decided to make chocolate cake because it's usually safest with kids. I chose the Hershey's recipe because it uses cooking oil instead of butter. I realized, last minute, that I was all out of butter! (I only had half a stick left which was just enough for the buttercream).

For the frosting, I just dumped together butter, icing sugar and cocoa powder. Just adjust the quantities until you get the taste and texture which you like.

Voila! A cake for teacher!

Wilton Gumpaste

I tried making gumpaste using the Wilton gumpaste recipe. Previously, I have just been using store bought soft fondant, and adding gum tragacanth to make it more pliable and to dry hard. The recipe looked simple enough, and I wanted to try and save some money by making my own because ready-made fondant is quite pricey here. I've been spending way too much money on this hobby of mine! :)

*Sigh*, how I wish we could get affordable soft fondant and even better, pre-dyed fondant here! Man, it would make my life soooo much easier!

So anyway, I used Wilton's gum tragacanth, called Gum Tex. The resulting gumpaste is indeed pliable and dries hard. It is similar to adding gum tragacanth to store bought fondant. I think it can be better though. If I were to make delicate flowers which require the gumpaste to be rolled out very thinly, I think I would need even softer, more pliable gumpaste. This batch would do for my modelling needs. However, I do intend to try gumpaste flowers soon, so I'll be looking around for more gumpaste recipes.

Here's the Wilton gumpaste recipe:


INGREDIENTS

1 lb icing sugar
1 tbsp Gum Tex
4 tbsp water
1 tbsp glucose water


METHOD

Sift the 3/4 of the sugar into mixing bowl.
Add Gum Tex and mix well.
Put water and glucose water into saucepan and warm until dissolved and well mixed.

Make a well in the centre of mixing bowl and pour in liquid.
Mix well.


Scrape mixture into plastic bag, seal and place in airtight container.
Leave for 8 hours or more.
The dough will be hard.
Knead dough and add remaining sugar gradually.
The dough will become white, soft and pliable.


Gumpaste can be kept for 2 weeks. If keeping for longer, place in refrigerator.

Brownie Muffins

Here are the brownie muffins, as I promised in my last post. The recipe also comes from the book "Brownies" by Linda Collister. I thought muffins would be easier for the kids to bring to school, and also not having any nuts in them might score extra points with the kids.

These muffins are dreamy! They're rich and dense and packed with chocolate chips! I personally prefer brownie bars with nuts in them, but as far as muffins and cupcakes go, you can't get them 'brownie'er/ 'fudgy'er than these!!

The original recipe calls for 25g of plain chocolate chips and 25g of white chocolate chips. Since I didn't have any white chocolate chips at hand, I used all plain chocolate chips instead and also decided to double the amount required, cos I figured a little more chocolate never killed anyone! :) I'm a chocoholic, if you don't already know...

So anyway, here's the recipe:


Brownie Muffins

2 large eggs
125g light brown sugar
125g unsalted butter, melted
230ml milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
225g plain flour
50g cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
100g plain chocolate chips,
plus extra to decorate
a 12-cup muffin tray, lined with 12 papar cases

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C (350 degrees F).
Break the eggs into a mixing bowl, add the sugar and beat with a wooden spoon until thoroughly combined.
Beat in the melted butter, followed by the milk and the vanilla.

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder onto the mixture and mix in.
Finally, stir in the chocolate chips.
Divide the mixture equally between the paper cases and sprinkle a few extra chocolate chips on the top of each muffin to decorate.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 to 25 minutes until just firm to the touch.
The brownies will only rise slightly and won't resemble peaked muffins.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire cooling tray.
Store in an airtight container and eat within 5 days. (not a problem)

Pecan Brownies

I haven't baked for weeks, so last night, to get rid of the baking bug(and also because I didn't have anything for the kids to bring to school in the morning), I baked some pecan brownies as well as batch of brownie cupcakes (I'll put those in the next post).

I love my Linda Collister book, simply entitled, "Brownies". The ingredients and methods used are simple and straight-forward, yet yield glorious results! Besides, yummy, dense, fudgy brownies are a sure hit with just about anybody!


I had a packet of pecans which had been sitting around for a while, so I decided to make the 'Old-fashioned brownies' and replace the walnuts with pecans instead. Unfortunately, when I toasted my pecans in the oven, I managed to burn them (one of the many hazards of multi-tasking). Luckily I had some extra left, but it was less than the required amount, so my brownies turned out a little too sweet, because there were not enough nuts to balance out the sweetness.

The overall texture however was simply divine. When baking brownies and checking for doneness, it's always better to err on the undercooked side. Under-baked 'fudgy'ness is much preferred to over-baked dryness.

So, anyway, this is the recipe below, with the walnuts being replaced by pecans in the right amount (i.e.: not the amount I used!) :)

Oh yes, they are called old-fashioned because they use only cocoa powder, instead of plain chocolate and cocoa powder. That is how is was done, traditionally; only cocoa powder was used, to balance out the large amount of sugar required to produce the fudgy texture.


Old-fashioned Brownies

100g pecan pieces
4 large free-range eggs
300g castor sugar
140g unsalted butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
140g plain flour
75g cocoa powder
a 20.5cm x 25.5cm brownie tin, greased and base-lined (I just used a 9"x9" shallow tin)

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C (325 degrees F).
Put the pecan pieces in tray and lightly toast in the oven for about 8-10 minutes. (I strongly recommend you keep and eye on them!)
Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
Don't turn off the oven!

Meanwhile, break the eggs into a mixing bowl.
Whisk until frothy, then whisk in the sugar.
Whisk for a minute, then still whisking continuously, add the melted butter in a steady stream.
Whisk for another minute, then whisk in the vanilla.

Sieve the flour and cocoa into the bowl and stir in with a wooden spoon.
When thoroughly combined, stir in the nuts.
Transfer the mixture to the prepared tin and spread evenly.

Bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes until a skewer inserted halfway between the sides and the centre comes out just clean.
Remove the tin from the oven.

Leave to cool completely before removing from the tin and cutting into 16 pieces.
Store in an airtight container and eat within 5 days. (They won't last that long, trust me...)

It's Elmo!

Did you guess Elmo? The eyes and nose were a dead giveaway right? :)

Anyway, quite a while back, a friend of mine requested that I make an Elmo cake for her son's 2nd birthday. I was reluctant at first, because I didn't have much confidence and did not want to ruin a little boy's second birthday by producing a lousy cake which looked horrible, or fell apart! It's different if it's your own children or nieces, and nephews... they're family and have to forgive you! hahaha :P

But since I love challenges, and my friend was giving me a lot of freedom to just make what I was comfortable with, I decided to forge ahead! There were some things which did not work out, but it still turned out pretty decent.

I'm happy I attempted this, because I love the resulting creation.

I had to start almost a week before the birthday party, because there are lots of parts which need days to dry out and harden.

First I made Elmo's body parts. I made his torso, head and arms from Rice Krispies and eyes and nose from gumpaste.

To make the Rice Krispies, you need 50g of marshmallows for every cup of Rice Krispies. You're supposed to microwave the mallows, but since I do not own a microwave oven, I melted them over the stove. Then you just stir in the Rice Krispies and when the mixture has cooled down, you mold them into the shapes you want and leave them overnight to dry hard. Mine were still a bit soft after a few days and even a couple of nights under air-conditioning! (might be due to not using a microwave)

I initially wanted Elmo's arms to reach upwards, but when I later tried to secure the arms in place by skewering them with toothpicks, they threatened to fall apart! So in the end I just glued the arms to Elmo's side with royal icing and prayed hard. I had to prop one arm with toothpicks while drying because it was coming apart! On hindsight, I think I will mold Rice Krispies over a wire frame in the future.

Gumpaste is just fondant with gum tragacanth added for extra firmness. It dries hard. I initially made Elmo's eyes and nose from Rice Krispies as well, but when I covered them with fondant, they were still really bumpy no matter how I rolled them. So, I had no choice but to make the whole thing from gumpaste. This made the front of Elmo's face very heavy when I attached them on later and it looked like Elmo's head was about to topple forward!! Horror of horrors!

I remedied this by sticking a long bamboo skewer down his head and right out the bottom. Before that he was only held up by short toothpicks. I think next time I try something like this, the torso or base should be made of something heavier like cake.

'Sigh'... I still have nightmares of Elmo's head rolling off in front of a bunch of kids!! I'm definitely going to use a lot of wires the next time I work with Rice Krispies. (This is the first time)

I also made a lot of other pieces earlier, the ones which needed to be hard and thus had to be made of gumpaste and not fondant. Everytime I had some free time, I would quickly make a few pieces. You really have to plan ahead for a large project such as this.


Anyway, next was to make red royal icing. I chose to use royal icing instead of buttercream because royal icing will survive transportation better. Royal icing, buttercream or even fondant, whatever icing it is, it is sooooo hard to make it super red or super black! Because of this, I am considering buying an airbrush!

I think I used half a small bottle of Wilton Christmas red, half a bottle of darker red and some black before I got an acceptable shade of red. Still not what I wanted initially, but it would do. Because of all this liquid in the form of food colouring, the royal icing was rather thin and took days and days under the air-cond to dry, and even then it was not totally hard and was crumbly.

I first stuck Elmo's head on with toothpicks and then glued on the arms with icing. Then I covered him with a layer of icing in case the lighter coloured Rice Krispies show through the "fur".

After sticking on the eyes and nose with more toothpicks, I began to pipe on the fur using a small star nozzle. Because the icing was a bit runny, the grooves of the star didn't really show, but that was okay. It made quite a natural 'gruffy' look. This fur piping was quite tedious work. It's another thing I've never tried before.

I prayed that Elmo's arm would stick and his fur would harden, and most of all he would not lose any body parts!!

After that, assembling the cake was the usual stuff. I baked two 9" square American chocolate cakes which I levelled, then crumb coated with chocolate buttercream.

During the morning of the party (luckily it was at night), I had to rush out to get a 12" cake board, a large cake box, candles and knife. I had run out and forgot to replenish.

Then I covered the cake in blue fondant and stuck everything else on.


I am a bit of a perfectionist and there are a few things which irritate me;
1. Elmo is slanting a bit, and is also looking slightly to the left.
2. his eyes are too big, making him look like he's suffering from hyperthyroidism.
3. his left arm looks dislocated.
4. he is "shedding fur" because the royal icing is too crumbly. (thus causing irritating red spots on my blue fondant!!)

Well, other than that, I think I did a great job. It was stressful yet fun... I really hope Little Jarod will be delighted! At the end of the day, that's where the most joy and satisfaction comes from when making children's cakes for their special day!

P/S: thanks to the friend who ordered the cake, I have so many photos of the whole process. She requested I capture it on film (can you still say that when it's digital??), which is what I usually intend to do, but always forget when I get too engrossed with the task at hand. (also my hands are usually covered in corn flour or Crisco, so right now my camera is a bit oily and quite fair!)