Here comes the bride and groom

Over the weekend, I attended the Bride and Groom figurine making class at Cake Connection. It was a hands on class. The class was conducted by cake guru Mama Min. Min's classes are always fun.

The couple you see above is a sample done by Min.

There was so much to learn and do that four hours was just not enough. I stayed on another hour or two. I had to leave before completing the figurines as there were three hungry kids waiting for dinner. I wish there was more time. Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself. Below are my unfinished bald figurines and the groom is missing an arm. :)

There is definitely a Part 2 to this. So watch this space!

Vegetarian chocolate cake

This is a vegetarian chocolate cake. It was requested by a friend who is in Australia for a friend who celebrated her birthday yesterday.

Moist and it's chocolate

Made this rich moist chocolate cake for a colleague's mom's 83th birthday celebration.

My daughter was eyeing this cake when I was decorating it. She was disappointed when she learned that it was for someone else. Later, I surprised her by baking the same cake for the family. We shared it with the neighbours and some friends.

The wedding cake decorator's bible

During the long weekend, we decided to do some shopping for Deepavali at One Utama. We wanted to beat the crowd, so we went early.

We had two shops in mind. We arrived at 10.30am only to be greeted by a sign that said the store will open at 12pm and the other at 1pm. Sigh, so much for coming early.

It won't go down well with the kids, if we went home. So we decided to kill time at MPH ... one of my favourite places.

Alan Dunn's The Wedding Cake Decorator's Bible: A resource of mix-and-match-designs and embellishments jumped out right at me when I walked in.

I love Dunn's beautiful work but I don't have the patience to make real-looking flowers. I have had two minds about buying his books only because I know it will be left untouched on the book shelves.

But when I saw this book, I immediately decided to buy it. I know I will use this book. This is the Asian edition. This book has been on the market for sometime with a different cover.

It is an all-in-one book with techniques and basic recipes that are fundamental for creating a well-decorated wedding cake. You will find techniques such as embossing, stencilling, piping, gelatine work, brush embroidery, moulds and of course the main sugarflowers.

You will find step by steps for making roses, the arum lily just to name a few. Not too complicated ... I can deal with that.

Part 2: Strawberry cupcakes

Long weekends are never enough. Sigh! Didn't do much.

The only baking I did was for the family. I still had two packets of dried strawberries. I made strawberry and plain vanilla cupcakes. This time I flavoured the Swiss Meringue buttercream with the dried strawberries.

Nice!

Wanna play pool, anyone?

I wish I could have covered these cupcakes with fondant as fondant would have given a more realistic-look to the pool balls.

But the client wanted butter icing as many of her guests are not very fond of fondant. Anyway, this is as real as it can get.

Happy holidays!

I would like to take this opportunity to wish Selamat Hari Raya to all my Muslim readers, clients and friends. And all those who are travelling far, have a good and safe trip back home.

Strawberries and more

We celebrated my mom-in-law's birthday yesterday. If you are a member of my family, no prizes for guessing what cake we had for the do. She loves plain vanilla butter cakes and cheese cakes.

I made my family's all-time favourite, chilled lemon cheesecake. I am not going to post the picture of the cake because I have posted it many times.

But here is a picture of the strawberry cupcakes I made for the do. Actually, my youngest gal has been asking for strawberry cupcakes for some time now.

I must thank a baker friend of mine, Mathi, who bought me a few packets of dried strawberries from Cameron Highlands. The dried strawberries taste sweet and sour. All you need to do is puree them and add the puree into a basic cupcake recipe. The cupcakes were yummy!

Books and more books

When I came home on Wednesday night and there was a package waiting for me. Yes!!!, it has finally arrived. My books!

Like I said before, you can never get enough of books ... my case, cake books. I ordered the Martha Stewart Cupcakes, Spectacular Cakes by Mich Turner and The Cake Book by Tish Boyle. I know what I am going to be doing during the long Raya weekend. :)

Let's play guitar

I made this cake for my friend's niece who turned seven yesterday. She is a Hannah Montana fan who wanted something different for a cake.

So I decided to make Hannah's best friend on stage, her guitar.

According to my friend, all the kids at the party went berserk when they wheeled out the cake. Wish I was there to see their expressions! I am glad the birthday gal loved her cake.

Happy birthday, Sneha dear!

Happy Birthday, Amma!

We celebrated my mom's birthday on Saturday. My family members are my guinea pigs when it comes to cakes. It's the right time to try out cakes from my books. For mom's birthday, I made the carrot cake from one of Peggy Porschen's books.


It turned out very nicely. It was moist, not too oily. Love the cinnamon flavour in it.

I did not use the famous cream cheese frosting that usually goes with carrot cakes. I used butter icing with lemon juice and rind to frost the cake. The combination went very well with the cake.

Am I a supporter? No, I 'm just a baker

I was asked to make this cake with the Liverbird image.I am guessing the recipientof the cake is a Liverpool fan.

My son, a Man U fan, sat in front of me while I was decorating this cake. He sat quietly for awhile before asking, 'Do you support Liverpool?' I told him no. He was very happy with that response.

I knew where he was coming from and told him that this was someone's request to have the Liverbird image and not because I am a Liverpool fan. (Me no football fan!) With that, he said ok and ran out of the kitchen.

Just like playdough

I had leftover fondant which I was going to throw away. Instead, I gave them to my kids and told them to unleash their creativity.

My eldest girl, Trishala, was not too interested in doing so but my younger two were eager to start.

Here are Akshay's masterpieces: A big Smiley, stars, a heart and a face.

This is Reshnu's artwork: Patrick, Spongebob's friend. She didn't complete it as she had to finish her school work. I think she has something going here. Reshnu loves to make figurines with clay and she spends quite some time working on her creations. I like the details on Patrick's face. The teeth, the eyes...

Just wondering how Patrick would look like when he is completed.

Happy belated birthday, Appa!

Made my dad's long overdue birthday cake over the long weekend. His birthday was last month but I was away in Penang on that day and the following weekends were filled with orders... Sorry, dad. It's better late than never, right? :)

This is a peach cream cheese cake with sponge cake at the bottom, middle layer is cream cheese and the top layer is peaches covered in jelly. This is one of the recipes which was on my to do list.

Peggy Porschen is in town

Peggy Porschen is an international cake designer, teacher and author who is well-known for her contemporary and modern designs. She already has two books to her name, Pretty Party Cakes and Romantic Cakes. Her latest book is Cake Chic.

I had the opportunity to meet Peggy yesterday evening at the International Centre of Cake Artistry (ICCA) and got her to autograph my copies of Cake Chic and Pretty Party Cakes.

I got a chance to chat with her before the event and she came across as a very friendly, approachable and down-to-earth person.

Also present were Peggy's husband (sorry, I forgot his name) and Rosalind Chan (founder of ICCA):

Peggy also conducted a demo on how to decorate petit fours; a small cake generally eaten at the end of a meal or served as part of dessert. I have never tried making these before but after this demo I will definitely try it as Peggy made it look so simple to do.

Everyone who attended the signing event left for home with a goodie bag:

Besides promoting her new book, Peggy will be conducting a three day hands on course starting today until Sept 5, 2009. The course is being conducted at ICCA in Kota Damansara .

This is Peggy's first trip to Asia. And I hope this will not be her last.

A simple birthday cake

A regular client of mine ordered this for her dad's 55th birthday celebration yesterday.

Yummy Oreo cupcakes

I found the Oreo cream cheese cupcake recipe while searching for Oreo cupcakes recipe sometime back.

On Monday, I got the chance to try out the recipe. The cakes had to be baked and then chilled for four hours. It has the right sweetness... not too sweet. It was yummy!

My kids already want them made for their birthdays.

I want cake!

My daughter's friend wanted a plain chocolate butter cake.

No frills ... no icing, no deco. My daughter called him after we delivered the cake and her friend said that he had finished eating half the cake and ten minutes later he called to say that his brother had finished the other half.

These boys are speedy gonzales! Thank you, boys.

The Flour Pot Cookie project

Since I took a break during the schools holidays, it was the best time to experiment some recipes. It was also a good time to rope the kids in to do some baking.

This time, we decided to bake and decorate cookies based on The Flour Pot Cookie book. The cookie recipe is quite straightforward. What makes a sugar cookie interesting is how you decorate it.

We got the dough done. The recipe requires the dough to be stored in the refrigerator for at least an hour before use as this will make it firm and not sticky. I just put in the fridge until I made the royal icing as my kids couldn't wait to cut out their cookies.

Since it was sticky, I just added flour to the dough in order to roll it out properly. Then it was my kids' turn to have a go with the cookie cutters.

We baked the coookies for about 15mins and here they are ready for decoration.

We decided to use only two colour: pink and white to decorate the cookies.

Once the royal icing dried rock hard, we put them in the jar. The cookies were yum and I thought we had so many cookies and it was going to last for some time. But boy was I wrong! They were all gone in two days. :)

It was a fun project that we all enjoyed tremendously!