King Jordan

Gosh! I've neglected my blog for half a year!

Be prepared for a diarrhoea of backlogged posts!! Lol!!

 We shall start off with a cake my friend requested for her son who turned one! She wanted two figurines; one of her son as a king, and another of Baby Bugs Bunny, since he was born in the year of the rabbit. So this is the end product:

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.

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! ;)

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'!

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....

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!

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!!

Kitty Cookies

Once in a while I get tempted to make cookies. What's not to like about fancy, decorated cookies? They're so pretty and delicious to boot! I think Bridget of Bake at 350 is mostly to blame!! Pop over to her blog and you'll see what I mean!! Her cookies are all sooooo extremely gorgeous!!

 Anyway, every time, without fail, after I slave over my cookies, I promise myself never to make cookies ever again!! It's just that cookies are so much work! I have a teensy weensy oven, so I have to bake in many small batches. Making cookies mean an assembly line of rolling, cutting, refrigerating, baking and repeating over and over and  over again...

These Kitty cookies were no exception. I had to make 30 pieces of iced cookies and another 30 un-iced. I don't think I'll be taking orders for cookies again anytime soon! But I don't think this will be the last time I make cookies either! (I'll succumb to the temptation again, just you wait and see!!)

So anyway, Hello Kitty is fortunately quite a simple design. The cookies were baked then cooled, and decorated with fondant. I used red food color mixed with lemon extract to paint the ribbon. Next time I will make sure to use alcohol, as the color took a long time to dry. I was worried that the cookies were going soft  since I left them out to dry for so long. Yet I could  not pack them or put them in an air tight container until the red was dry!

In the end I packed them while they were still a little bit wet and there was some smudging. I had no choice, as that was better than soft, mushy cookies!!

So I packed them into individual bags, sealed them and hot glued ribbons onto the bags. They turned out pretty nice I must say...

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.