Hula Girl Birthday Cake

One of Ai Lin's fren's bday was just ystday. She was sweet enuff to let me do her fren's bday cake for her :) Was rather stressed out as i didnt really know how to decorate the cake, & i rarely work wif buttercream as icing.. normally i will use fondant as it's more stable in our malaysian weather. As it was a cheese cake underneath & it needs to be in the fridge, i cant use fondant.. -_- Fondant cannot be kept in the fridge!! It will "sweat" lol meaning it will be wet & sticky la.. :P

First it was decided to be a round 8 inch baked cheese cake with a hula girl ontop, but changed my mind, & told ailin a 2 tiered cake wif the hula girl ontop will look better. & here's the results, & glad that the bday girl liked it :)



The result of the stacked cakes, which i was quite happy wif :) As i couldnt stack the cakes at home, i didnt know how it will look. Cos each cake by itself looked rather plain..... :P i know i complain alot, bear wif me, i like my cakes perfect :P



I really liked how the hula girl turned out! the small flowers r oh-so-cute on her skirt!!! But i think the skirt will look better if each strip of green was thinner, it will look more realistic :P


She even had flowers on her hair!!!! :P This was last minute cos i was worried the flowers wouldnt stick.


Happy Bday Shooks! & it was a challenge since it was my FIRST time writing a birthday msg on the SIDE of a cake... -__- glad it turned out good. Had fun doing the cake, thanx ailin once again :)


I am bloody exausted cos i've been baking pineapple tarts from 2pm til 10pm at nite........... -__-

BUT, tomorrow is the first class of my PME sugarpaste course :D Happy happy joy joy. I'll graduate wif a diploma :) Will post pics on wat i did in class in the next post ;)

Stay tuned!

Pink & Black fondant cake

Like i've said in the earlier post, this week has been rather hectic for me cos i have a number of cake orders to fill. My mum conveniently told me that my cousin will be having a bday party thingy on fri. I automatically offered to make her a cake of course :p LOL I managed to squeeze in some time to prepare the deco for the cake a few days in advance, and to bake my cousin's cakes today when im suppose to bake 2 chiffon cakes that ppl ordered -_- and another 2 cakes on fri. & i'll be dedorating the cake on fri as well.. hectic & tiring.

Rather stressful, but yet i enjoy doing it, cos i am doing wat i like best :) Came up with a design after surfing the net for some inspirations. The colour is set, pink & black.

I love looking at 2-tier cakes or stacked cakes cos they look oh-so-pretty to me :) I then decided to make a stacked cake. This is my first time.. I was worried that the cake below can't take the weight of the cake above. Went surfing the net again, & found out that they have some sticks inserted into the bottom cake to support the weight of the cake above. Imagine if I had just stacked the cake.. disaster, it would sink!!! o_O

How naive of me to think that the cakes were just stacked onto one another without reinforcements... :p

Both of the cakes will chocolate cakes, with strawberry jam filling. Something different la rather than just choc cake wif choc fudge filling.

Wow... i officially hate using black fondant. It is so bloody hard to colour a piece of white fondant to black.... -_- i kneaded and kept adding black colouring on the fondant for a good 15 minutes... not to mention it stains ur hands too *&@^@%#$@$^*

I know there r black fondant available but i dunno where to get it! & even if i can find it, i don't think i can afford to buy since it'll be expensive :p

Anywayz, hope both the deco & the cake will turn out great. I love working with fondant :) Will post pics after i've finished assembling & decorating. Be patient for now :p

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I was reading posts from my old blog & realised how silly & immature i was few years back. Always complaining bout the smallest problem and blogging out all that i felt. Wow, i've grown so much. I no longer like blogging about my deepest thoughts, and about my frustrations and anger. I rather keep things in my head & think to myself & solve problems in there. No point rite writing everything here & accidentally piss ppl off? Or haf ppl say that im such a emo person. Oh well, wat ever it is, problems no longer bother me as much as they do the last time. Im looking at things with an open mind nowdays, no matter wat it is :) maybe it's time for a change, maybe it's not, only time will tell.

Cupcake Deco 101 part 2

Ok, so here is part two to cupcake decoration post. I baked vanilla cupcakes, but I spiced it up by putting chocolate chunks in the cupcakes.



The result was good, since the chocolate is melted and it is in larger amount, the moment u bite the cupcakes, u can feel the chocolate oozing out... :D~~~~~~~

Ok ok.. moving on!

After baking the cupcakes, it is time to let ur creative juices flow, and decorate them so that they look even yummier!! :) One of the most common icing used to decorate cupcakes would be buttercream. Other than buttercream, chocolate fudge, fondant or royal icing can also be used. For my cupcakes, I used buttercream as the icing. It's very versatile, and u can mix and match the colours u want :) Here's a recipe for buttercream.

Buttercream Icing(Recipe from Wilton's website)

Ingredients:
1/2 cup shortening*
1/2 cup margarine, softened
4 cups icing sugar, sieved
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 Tablespoons milk

*Since shortening has trans fat, I would substitute shortening with butter. Never use all butter for this recipe. The buttercream will be less stable (ie melt easily, does not hold its shape). So make sure you use half margarine and half butter.

Methods:
1. Beat butter, margarine and vanilla until very light and fluffy.
2.Gradually add in sugar, one cup at a time, beating well after each addition.
3. Mixture will look dry after adding all the sugar.
4. Add in milk, and beat until light and fluffy.
5. Store in airtight container and put in fridge when not in use.
6. Can be kept for up to 2 weeks.

It is recommended to prepare the buttercream a day ahead as it will be quite hectic and tiring to bake the cupcakes, prepare the icing and decorate all in one day. Spread it out, trust me, I've experienced this before. Not nice at all -_- Tiring betul!

So after all the cupcakes are cooled, the fun part begins!! Time to decorate. First, pick a theme you wan. Of if you r lazy to think of one, you can just pick out a few colours you want to be on your cupcakes. The first batch of my cupcakes I wanted to do a 'doggie theme'. I picked green for the cupcake's background. And brown for the outline of the dog, since dogs don't come in blue, red or yellow -_-

1. Add few drops of food colouring of your choice into a small amount of buttercream and stir well until all colours are well combined. Do the same to other colours of your choice. Prepare all the colours that will be used in decoration now. Will be easier than just preparing one colour, decorate the cupcakes then going back to preparing the buttercream -_-

2. Using the palette knife, apply a thin layer of icing on the cupcakes and spread out evenly.

3. After doing so, fill some buttercream into the paper cones. Cut a tiny hole in the sharp end and test the consistency of the icing by squeezing it out onto some other surface and get the hang of it before you begin decorating. Draw anything u want on the cupcake. I chose to draw a dog on leash and this is how it turned out.

I also drew some teddy bears supposingly holding baloons after i ran out of ideas of what to do for the doggie theme -_-

Other than a dog, i did paw prints with some deco as well. So the cupcakes turned out quite cute, but wasn't really happy, cos the colours were slightly dull.

The next batch of cupcakes were decorated with a 'doraemon theme' for my little nephew since he likes the cartoon alot :) I only decorate 8 cupcakes for him.

I applied the cupakes with buttercream, no colour added. I later outlined doraemon's face. I drew all of them free hand :) Later i just filled in the blue and red, and added a yellow dot on his neck as his bell. Cute eh? ;) I am very proud of the outcome.

The smiling-with-his-mouth-opened doraemon

The 'normal' smiling doraemon LOL

I then decorated the remaing cupcakes using yellow and blue icing. I used the star and leave nozzle for the motives on the cupcakes. As usual, ice the cupcake thinly with buttercream. Then squeeze the yellow icing in alternate rows like below.

After that, fill in the remaining spaces with blue icing. This are the end results. U can leave them as it is, or add pink dots as shown in the below picture.

Here are pics of the doraemon batch of cupcakes :) Love the colours!! Hope my nephew loves them too.

So that's how i spent my weekend :p Any questions, feel free to ask. Any comments feel free to let me know. Til next time, toodles and take carezzz! :)