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! :)

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'!

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...

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse

So a fellow pharmacist's son was celebrating his very  first birthday and Mummy wanted me to make a cake. Baby Joel (love that name) apparently likes Mickey Mouse, so we decided on a Mickey mouse Clubhouse cake plus cuppies.

The top tier of the cake is the ever popular dark chocolate cake with a Belgian chocolate ganache filling and covering. The bottom tier is a polystyrene dummy, just to add height and 'grandeur' to the cake! Real cake for the bottom tier would have been way too much cake.

The cake was covered in soft fondant and 2D decor also done with soft fondant. The top of the cake was adorned with candles which Mummy passed to me. It was a little crowded but still great anyway.

The cupcakes were also the same flavour and covered with soft fondant. I got to try out my Mickey cutters which I've had for a while now, but never had the chance to use yet. But I'm not worried that my cutter will get outdated, cause Mickey Mouse is timeless, and my guess is; my grand kids will still  be watching some form or another of Mickey Mouse!! :)

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;

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!

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!!

Alexis & Lana's wedding

Hubby's close friend Alexis, who is also my childhood friend (neighbour) got married last month and I had the honour of making their wedding cake! Since the wedding was out of town and we had to fly in, I suggested that they have a cupcake tower instead of the traditional tiered wedding cake which would be near impossible to transport!!

So I ended up making a 6" cutting cake to go on top of the cupcake tower and 27 large cupcakes (the exact number that I could squeeze into a 12" square box!) as well as 80 mini cupcakes.

The cake was a chocolate cake covered in chocolate ganache and decorated in fondant. The penguin toppers were made from gumpaste and credit for the design goes to Esther (also known as Fliepsiebiep in Flickr). Visit her Flickr page and see her amazingly adorable creations!

The cupcakes were also chocolate cake frosted with a mound of chocolate ganache each! Then I covered them in white textured fondant (I used my floral texture mat) and topped them off with red ribbon roses and black leaves. I also hot glued black ribbon and tiny black bows onto the cupcakes cases. That was too much work for such little effect that next time I think I'll be skipping that part! :)

As for the mini cupcakes, those were red velvet cake with a swirl of cream cheese frosting. This is the first time I have made and eaten red velvet cakes and they blew my mind!! They're my favouritest cake right now!

So from making, to transporting, to assembling this cupcake tower, there was a lot of work involved. But it was all worth it when the bride and groom showed their pleasure at the end product!

Weddings are kinda scary, but now that I am more experienced, I have more courage to take on extra challenges! In December, another one of our friends are getting married and I have agreed to do a wedding cake and a dessert table!! I've been ogling at dessert tables ala Amy Atlas or My Sweet and Saucy, for ages and now I really want to try one myself!! This is gonna be interesting....

Pooh and Piglet

Here are some 2D cupcakes of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. I got an order for Pooh cupcakes and was very happy to finally be able to use my Pooh cutters.

The cupcakes are chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting. They're all topped with fondant.

They were quite simple and straight forward to make so there's not much I have to say about them! :)

Oh yes, in case you were wondering, one of the cupcakes was purposely left blank for a candle, as per customer's request.

Barney and Friends

Sorry for the headache-inducing, neon colours... I got carried away with Picasa!! :)

I've taken ages to get around to blogging about my cakes that I've pretty much forgotten who I made these for! :)

The big boss

Anyway, they're chocolate cupcakes with chocolate ganache frosting and the Barney and friends figures are all made from gumpaste. I used some Barney pictures which I Googled as a reference when creating the figures. That's all I can remember and I'm too lazy to refer to my notebook! heh...

So I'll leave you with the pictures! ;)

A little bit of everything

So I had this customer from out of town who wanted some cuppies for her husband's birthday. She could not decide what to ask for and wanted something for everyone in her family and so she came up with a list of 3D figures. I usually do a whole set with a single theme, but seeing as she was from out of town and was going to pick up the order while in transit from her hometown to Kuala Lumpur, I did not have the heart to turn down her request.

Anyway, here are the photos. I've done most of them before...