Gingerbread house in April!

Heh.

My apologies. It is April, with Easter fast approaching and I am only now writing about the gingerbread house I made December last year!

Well, as they say, better late than never eh?

 Anyway, this time around, I made the royal icing using meringue powder, and it didn't quite stiffen up very well. It ended up slightly  runny and took ages to dry!! The year before, I used real egg whites and the royal icing turned out really good.

I'm not sure if it's the powder, or whether it's about time I got myself a proper Kitchen Aid or Kenwood standing mixer! Right now I'm still using my trusty ol' hand-held mixer....


Okay, for those who live in tropical climes like me, here are a few tips I learned the hard way!!

1. Do not stick on hard candy. They will melt and drip and make a mess all over! Use gummy sweets and      candy coated chocolates instead, or sweets still wrapped in their wrappers (like plastic wrapped candy canes). Here I used gumpaste to make the candy canes and wreath. That seems to work best.

2. Do not use biscuits either! I used those wafer rolls once as pillars for the house and they just softened and shriveled up in the humidity!

3. Make sure your royal icing is really stiff! Otherwise your gingerbread house will be falling apart and you'll have to support it for ages while it takes it's sweet time hardening!

4. I know a nice sloping roof with a long overhang gives a quaint 'cottage-y' look, but beware! I did that and after a couple of days, the gingerbread softened in the humidity and bits of roof that extended beyond the wall started dropping off!!!! *horror*!!

So, as you can see, I have not yet perfected the art of gingerbread house-making (far from it in fact)... But I will let you know whenever I learn anything new!

Can't wait till next Christmas!! ;)

Patrick the red dog

I get Patrick the red dog and Clifford the BIG red dog confused sometimes! Hahaha... what's with red dogs anyway I wonder!! :)

Anyway, our close friends were celebrating their son Jaeden's very first birthday, so I was asked to make a Patrick cake. Patrick is pretty simple to make, I must say, since he's all floppy like!

So I made a two tiered cake, 8" and 6". The bottom tier was a polystyrene dummy and the top tier was a dark chocolate cake filled and iced with Belgian chocolate ganache. (yummy, trust me...)

 Both tiers were covered in soft fondant and Patrick was made of gumpaste and plopped on top!

Professional photographs

I just had to post these photos! It's amazing how a professional photographer can make your creations look so good!!!

These were taken by Edwin Lay Photography during Jerome and Belle's wedding in my last post. I sure wish I could take photos like these...

The quality isn't so great cause I saved these off Facebook.

The frantic last-minute piping! I seldom get shots of me at work, since I can't photograph myself... So this is nice, even though it just show's my hand! lol

See? This is what I mean; why didn't I think of shooting from this cool angle??

Orange chocolate cake balls coated in Belgium chocolate. Orange and chocolate are one of my favourite flavour combinations!!

Vanilla almond sugar cookies iced with fondant and embossed with "A & J", using a stamp I had made.

Sweet... can't wait till the next dessert table...

Jerome & Belle

A couple of our good friends tied the knot last December. I had the honour of making their wedding cake as well as preparing a dessert table! This was my first try at a full dessert table and I was mega excited! I love ogling at the dessert tables on My Sweet & Saucy and Amy Atlas' blogs. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous....

Well anyway, Belle loves butterflies, and the theme was red and gold. So we came up with a three deep-tiered cake design, incorporating red roses, red ribbons and gold butterflies.

I started making the roses and butterflies a few weeks ahead of the event. The workshop with Alan Dunn helped a lot when it came to making the roses. I tried making them as huge as possible. It was a lot of tedious work, but the resulting roses were beautiful.

I cut the butterflies using my Patchwork cutters. I then let them dry on folded paper and dry brushed them with gold luster  powder.

The top two tiers are polystyrene dummies. I find since I am a one man show, I do not have enough time to use real cakes for huge orders. We want the cakes to be as fresh as possible, yet we need plenty of time to perfect the decoration. So I think that using dummies is a good compromise. I would of course love a wholly edible cake, but until I have a whole team of bakers working for me (and not to mention proper, big ovens) this will have to do! Hahaha...

Anyway, the bottom tier was a lovely, moist orange cake with chocolate ganache frosting. The bride didn't want too much cake anyway, since there was already going to be a dessert table.

So that was the cake.

Here's the dessert table. We arrived a little late, and I was frantically working to finish the setting up before guests arrived. I did not know how to transport so many cupcakes, so I iced them there on site! Luckily Hubby was there to give me a hand! We were still doing the final touches when guests started arriving! That's why I didn't get any decent photos!

I made chocolate and red velvet cupcakes, orange chocolate cake pops and vanilla almond sugar cookies. The cookies were heart shaped and embossed with the letters J & A. I also placed some peppermints in a nice glass stand and red roses in a glass vase.

The display cake on top of the cupcake stand was designed to tie in with the wedding cake decor. This too was made from a polystyrene dummy.

I do love dessert tables and can't wait for the next opportunity to do another one!

My Little Pony

 

I have more confidence now to accept orders which seem trickier. So, when a request came in for a 'My Little Pony' cake, I accepted. An upright pony and a free standing rainbow would have been disastrous a year ago, but now it was a possibility!!

So my friend wanted a Little Pony cake for her daughter. She gave me a picture to work with and specifically wanted a rainbow, a pony and the number 9. I kinda stuck on the number 8 before I realised my mistake and luckily it hadn't stuck on fast yet! Heh...

Well, the rainbow was made from ropes of pastel coloured gumpaste. I threaded the ropes with wire for extra support and bent them into a rainbow and left them to dry for a couple of days.

The pony was kinda tricky and I just winged it. I especially love how the tail and mane turned out. The curls and colours are really pretty. I used the same technique Lorraine taught us for making hair. The butterfly tattoo on the butt and the heart on the hoof was a failure though. I need to work on my painting techniques. The borders are not well defined and the color ran.

In the end, when everything came together, I was satisfied. The pink of the cake and the purple of the cake board was a little dull though. That's another area I need to work on, colouring my fondant.

60th Birthday

A friend of mine wanted a cake and cupcakes for her dad's 60th birthday. She wanted a simple cake and cupcakes decorated with all his favourite things.

The cake is a coffee cake which I first covered with a dark chocolate ganache. Then I covered it in white fondant and added some gold ribbon round the bottom of the cake. The number 60 was made a week earlier from gumpaste. I was worried that gumpaste alone would not be strong enough to withstand the transportation process, so I used wire as well. I made gumpaste ropes and pushed wire into them. Then I bent the wired gumpaste ropes into the figures 6 and 0. I let them harden for a while, then dry dusted them with gold luster powder. It was quite messy, and I ended up with gold fingers!! :)

The cupcakes were Red Velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. The cream cheese frosting recipe which I use has a high water content, (because I use cream) so the fondant decorations which I placed on top of the cream cheese frosting swirls started to melt!! 

I was horrified when my fondant discs started to melt and droop over the cupcakes!! But luckily they did not disintegrate totally and were still kind of acceptable, as long as I switched off my OCD mode!! lol!

Note to self: fondant on cream cheese frosting is a no no!

So my friend gave me a whole list of stuff  (fondant decor) I could put on the cupcakes. These included his children and grandchildren, and other things like cars and pets. I loaned her my cupcake stand, so the cake went on top and the cupcakes at the bottom. I do not have a photo of the final assembled display, but here are the pics I did take;

Precious moments

Google Precious Moments and you will find these pretty, innocent, sweet characters.

A friend of mine loves Precious Moments characters, so she ordered a Precious Moments cake from me for her own birthday! :)

I started early on the little girl figurine, just in case there were any disasters, I would have time to redo!

My class with Lorraine McKay helped a lot when it came time to do the figurine. It was very time consuming, but the results were good. Since the little girl was so cute, I didn't want to make the cake too 'busy' with too many decorations. The focus would be on the figurine.

Simple cakes with few adornments are harder to make, because that means you must cover your cake flawlessly, as you cannot hide blemishes with decorations. So, I made sure I ganached the cake well, as that is the basis of all neat, flawless, fondant-covered cakes.

My cake turned out quite well, and although it was one of my best coverings, it was still far from perfect! :) I need plenty of ganaching practice if I ever hope to achieve that elusive, perfect, smooth finish!

Cupcakes galore

Here are some cupcakes I made for various potlucks! These are simple, fondant-free cupcakes!

These are mini chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting topped with coloured confetti. This is tthe first time I used the large circle tip, so the frosting doesn't look too great! In fact, they look like mounds of chocolate poop!! Hahahaha...

But they do taste delicious, trust me...  ;)

They were for Annie's first Holy Communion potluck.

These are Red Velvet cupcakes frosted with large 1M swirls of cream cheese frosting and topped with single jumbo heart sprinkles. They were made for the kids' year-end school parties.

I am in love with Red Velvet cupcakes at the moment, have I mentioned that?? :)

Though I find that some batches are nicer than others, and I think it's because of the baking time. Over-baking really makes the cakes drier and tougher, so I have to remember to watch out for that! I still need practice to get consistent results.

Simply gorgeous!

Thomas the Tank Engine

Next up was the Thomas train birthday cake I made for little Tyler who was turning 2. His mummy wanted a two tier cake with Thomas on top.

So the cakes were made of chocolate cake and frosted with chocolate ganache. The bottom tier was made from two 8" square cakes and the top from two 6" round cakes. It was a lot of cake and the whole creation turned out surprisingly heavy!

For the bottom tier, I made a gift box with ribbon design. For the top tier, I created a drippy icing effect round the top of the cake.

Thomas took the most time to complete. He was made from gumpaste and I started work on him a few days ahead of the birthday party. It was quite detailed and I'm happy with the result. It is fully gumpaste and totally edible.

Next time, I might consider using styrofoam as a frame on the inside of Thomas. That would give a better shape and stronger and sharper edges. Though the novelty of it being edible would be gone.... Hmmm... should I?

 Anyway, I don't do many boys' cakes, as most of my kids and sisters' kids are girls!! So it was nice to work with bold colours like dark blue and red for a change instead of the usual pinks and purples! :)

November is missing!

Oh gosh! I let the whole month of November go by without  a single post! I'm so sorry, but life has been a non-stop whirlwind of action for me! (Which is just the way I like it!)

So what have I been up to? Well here are some of the projects I completed:

Here's an army of Buttercups!! :) They're chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting and decorated with fondant.

Only when I looked back at the photos, did I realise that I forgot the little white dots for the reflection in the eyes. It may only be a miniscule dot, but it makes a huge difference. It brings the eyes to life.

My friend also wanted another batch of simple cupcakes and an Angry Bird cake to go with the Power Puff Girl cupcakes. These were chocolate cupcakes with a light cream cheese frosting.

Well, for the Angry Bird cake, I kinda cheated!! :)

Look closely, and you'll see that the figurines are plastic, store-bought ones!! Heh... I didn't have enough time to complete such a large order, so my friend agreed that plastic was fine! Thank goodness!

Anyway, the cake was a yummy red velvet cake and the frosting is the same light cream cheese frosting I used for the chocolate cupcakes. I must say, using plastic figurines saved me an immense amount of time!! I'll be keeping my eyes out for nice plastic figurines to keep at hand in case of last minute emergencies!!