Ladybird, ladybird

I made a ladybird cake for Eva to bring to school for her birthday. I baked a plain madeira cake in my stainless steel mixing bowl to get a dome shape. The dome turned out a bit too flat though, so I will be keeping my eyes out for a smaller mixing bowl, to produce more defined dome shaped cakes for future ladybirds!

I leveled and torted the cake and filled and crumb coated it with strawberry jam. Then I covered a third in black fondant, and another two thirds in red. I used pre-dyed fondant, because black and red are the hardest colours to tint. Then I added the spots and the eyes. I think I should have added a mouth, but had no idea how a ladybird's mouth is supposed to look like!

I covered the board with green fondant and used two balls of black fondant and curled wires for the antennae. Since I couldn't decide where to write Eva's name, I used some cupcakes instead for writing her name and also for sticking in the candles.

Ben 10 again

I forgot to add in this post. It was my nephew Ethan's birthday in June and he is another fan of Ben 10! :)

We bought the cake, a yummy chocolate cheesecake and I added gumpaste decorations. I made a 'Four arms', which was supposed to be standing on the centre of the cake. However, his many arms kept dropping off when I stood him up! So in the end I had no choice but to place him lying down.

*sigh*

I think I need to make some glue from Gum tex and water, or at least make royal icing to adhere body parts next time. I've been too lazy and only use water so far.

I hope Ethan liked the cake despite the floored Four Arms! :)

Care Bears and Safari cake

On Sunday we celebrated 3 out of my 4 kids' birthdays together! This meant that there was to be 3 cakes! I didn't think I would have enough time to make all the cakes because on the day itself I was going to have to cook as well.

So, I bought one of them, a Barbie doll one which Eva wanted. Barbie doll cakes are much better iced with buttercream, which is not my forte, so I got my cousin's wife to make one for me. She makes really pretty doll cakes and I asked for purple, which is Eva's favourite colour. All that buttercream piping is amazing! Look closely at the icing 'necklace', it says "Eva"!


For the other two kids, I made a Care Bear cake for Claire, and a safari cake for Solomon. The bottom tier for both cakes are fake (polystyrene), because mainly I was worried that there would be way too much cake for everyone eat and it would end up going to waste. Also, since the base was polystyrene, I was able to work on them way ahead of time. Unlike real cake, you have to decorate it as close to the actual day as possible, to keep it fresh. For these dummy cakes, I was able to complete the bottom tiers days ahead and then work on the top tiers the day before the party. This meant better time management and more sleep!! :)


The Care Bear cake has a gumpaste Sunshine bear on top and also a gumpaste rainbow. I had to make them a week ahead to make sure the rainbow would harden enough to stand. Even then, when I stuck the rainbow into the cake, with some satay sticks for support, it cracked a bit and was threatening to break in half and collapse! Luckily it was okay for the cake-cutting 'ceremony'.

There were also three gumpaste stars which I inserted into the cake with wires. I realise now that wires are more stable if you bend them into spirals (which I didn't, so they were leaning all over the place!). I also drew on the stars' faces when the gumpaste was still wet, so the ink became blotchy. That's another lesson, be patient and wait till it dries first!


As for Solomon's cake, I was initially planning to have more animals, like an elephant, a giraffe and a monkey. However, I prefer cakes which are not too 'busy'; I think there is better effect when there is only one main centrepiece for one to focus on. (Okay.. I was also lazy...)


The lion and the green bushes are made from gumpaste and were also made a week ahead so that they could dry up nice and hard. I really love the lion; he's such a cutie pie isn't he? I'm so proud that he's my very own original design.

I also love these gumpaste bushes...

So there you have it; three cute cakes for three cute kids! :)