"Graduation Cake"

Yay! Finally completed my cake decoration class. It has been over 4 Saturdays which means very busy weekends the whole September. Busy not just because I had to go attend the classes, but also due to the preparations and practice required before the classes. i.e. baking cupcakes/ cakes so that we can use them in the class for decorations.

I was rather busy last week. Originally planned to bake the cake for yesterday's class on Thursday, but there was a brownies order. Although last minute, but due to special circumstances, I had to take that order. Quite lucky to have cake orders last week and this week because my pay cheque is going to take some time to clear. Sigh...

So first thing first, the cake. Baked a butter cake and this is one of the "cool tools" for icing the cake without have the cake crumbs "contaminating" the cake. Trust me, icing the cake can be very time consuming and extremely frustrating.

So, the "cake icer". Which is a giant nozzle so you can pipe on the icing instead of spreading the icing with the spatula. It minimizes the chances of us lifting up the cake crumbs when spreading with the spatula.

The cake icer is to be used together with a piping bag.

Just pipe the icing onto the cake. No sweat. (pictures a bit blur due to "multi-tasking") After that, even out the icing with a spatula.

Cake looks perfect enough? (if you don't look at it really up close). To get a really even surface, run a hot spatula over the icing.

Back to the cake deco class... We were suppose to make a cake with roses decoration as our graduation cake. The roses were to be made before the class and to be assembled onto the cake in the class. The cake needs to be covered before the class also. So due to cake orders, I only baked my cake on Friday night, last minute! The roses were badly made on Friday night, most of them lopsided.

Luckily those I made on Saturday morning were ok. You can straight away recognize these as roses can't you?

I cannot show you "the making" of the roses because I had to hold the "flower nail" (the far right needle looking thing) with my left hand while piping the roses with my right. And I need 2 different nozzles to shape the roses - that's why I have no free hand to hold the camera.

The roses were transferred onto the cake with the "flower lifter", ok, no pictures, next time. It's something that looks like a pair of scissors. After transferring the roses, leaves were added - piped with the leave nozzles.

Shen, if you are reading this. Remember we used to get "split ends" when using the other leave nozzle (not the duck beak looking one, the other one)? Apparently we are suppose to open up the nozzles so we can achieve a sharp end.

Here are the other cakes by my classmates.


We also did the "sweet peas" in class and I actually wanted to give the borders a finishing touch by having them on it. But I didn't have time. So I've added these after I've came home.

My idea of the cake is like this. MC said it looks like a wedding cake. Yeah, I actually agree with her. Roses decoration are rather old fashion, I mean classic.

Project Clown

There was a birthday cake order. The request was chocolate moist cake and the design requested originally was 2 stick man, one fat and the other thin. But erm... The Baker is not good in free hand drawing. So at the end settled with random design that look fun.

However, so happened I just got to learn how clowns are created, I've asked if my "customer" would like having clowns on the cake, one thin, one fat perhaps. Haha...

So here are the clowns!

I've also put one of my new tools in use - the cake leveler. It makes spliting cakes evenly a very easy job and we are talking about extremely even, even.

The cake leveler:

Adjust height of the layer (of the cake you want to cut) by changing the location of the catch:

Just "saw" the cake with the leveler, supported by the working surface:

Perfectly even cake:

A piece of cake!

Prayers

I decided to give up the two back-to-back classes today to go visit Tony at the hospital. But I only managed to leave work at 8.30pm. I would have gone to visit him then continue with work if it hadn't involve two other colleagues.

I will visit him tomorrow. Lunch time.

Please... get well soon...

I need a break?

I'm having a headache. Literally. Maybe because of the weather or maybe because I'm too busy.

I don't know why I constantly feel like I'm too busy lately. I once thought that busy is good, but tonight I feel like I can do with a break. A long break not just from work, but from baking, from gym and from being crazy towards anyone.

I am definitely under stress (maybe PMS) otherwise I wouldn't have felt negative. Instead of having hope and working on things I want, I feel like putting everything aside and just drift along.

Mood forecast told me that there is a storm building up, the next few days are going to be gloomy and impatient. There might even be tornado. Definitely cold and unapproachable.

Whoops. Sorry, was suppose to load some pictures of my new decoration tool and the birthday cake order. But I think I better off going to bed early.

The Pro Set

I bought this today! RM590 with a 10% discount. It's a complete cake decorating set with something called the tool caddy. It's so very cool!

There are 101 items in this set (so to speak, one nozzle is considered one item, there are 18 nozzles inside). Will show you the contents during the next few days. As of now, the tool box is still inside my car, keeping it away from my mum's sight. Hehe...

Today was my third class at ICCA for cake decoration. Next week will be the last class when we had to complete our "graduation cake". I wonder who can help me "settle" (eat) the cake after that. Anyways, these were what we did in today's class:

Roses - need to perfect this. The roses are going onto the "graduation cake"

Bear - erm... must practise.

The clowns - I was so thrilled to find out that, it's actually quite easy! This is going onto the chocolate cake (there is an order for next week).

Did some "faces" too, but won't show you close up. They are quite terrible. We also did some drop flowers, nothing so special.

Timing the Feelings

It's great to still be receiving birthday presents so long after my birthday. And this particular set of present was being referred to by him as the "creme de la creme" set. To me, this is the most "luxury" birthday present I've received so far.

If I had received this present from him say five years ago, I would be at cloud 9. Okay, I'm still extremely delighted when I received the present last night, you should see my expression - grinning from ear to ear. But what I meant is the very special feelings I would have experienced if he were to give me this present five years ago. As a matter of fact, I would be floating even to get a phone call from him five years ago. It used to make my heart rate soar by just calling him.

I used to think that I was extremely crazy for him. I would do anything in order for him to reciprocate my feelings. Once upon a time, I thought I would change myself to fit into his criteria; I would swallow my pride and annoyance just to show him how patience and genuine I was towards making that relationship work. Even though I knew that his character really wouldn't please me and the chemical reaction was just going to be very adverse.

Perhaps he later had better, more special feelings for me, but I don't feel the same anymore now. Oh, how sure I was then that my feelings would never change.

What went wrong?

Realization? That tolerating will not work?

Timing? The right feelings but wrong time?

I consider myself lucky. Because he's still a good friend. Because I am still free and very much entitled to be crazy over MFG.

Working out in Pain

It's no joke. Doing pump with a body full of muscle aches. Last night was my second pump in the week after my very first pump after a two week rest (MIA from gym). I had already been nursing my muscle aches the whole day, and technically speaking, I joined my second pump class in less than 24hours. So, I think I'm entitled to some moaning here. Ouch, ouch...

Haven't done his class for so long but I've always not had any issues towards his classes - sufficient cueing and good song selections. MC seemed to be able quite okay with his class too. So I guess we will be regulars in this class.

The tracks we did last night were all familiar tracks, mostly the older all time favorites. The tracks were also tough enough and the crowd seemed to be quite sporting in responding to the "torture". So MC and me was quite motivated as well.

I could already foresee how I would suffer through the class the moment I lift my bar for overhead presses during warm up. I decided, again, to reduce my chest press weight to only 5kg. MC was doing 3.5kg and that was already a leveled up for her. Yes, we suffered. BUT survived.

I was really hesitated during the transition of chest track to back track. Wanted to only load up 6kgs, but last minutes thought, what the heck, might as well push myself a bit. Geezz... should have known better than to do that!

After burning the triceps fats with many many dips, I told MC (she couldn't remember the sequence of the tracks yet, so I needed to tell her the up coming track to facilitate her choosing of weights to load/ reduce) the next track would be lunges. See, I actually loath the next track so much that I wish for it's non existence. Of course the next track was suppose to be biceps track. Haha... Sorry about that sis.

I think the other track that was really tough was the shoulder track. It was really painful till I had to actually give up a few (more than a few) repetitions. But it was a very satisfying workout indeed.

Lets do this again!

Musical Birthday Cupcakes

I think this is the first time I took order for non relatives, friends or gym members. I've found a new "customer" and a new regular blog reader through TD.

This was what she wanted:

Colour theme: light purple and bright orange. I wouldn't have thought of such combination myself.

Additional decoration: Musical notes. And yes, I've learnt music before - piano. But I dropped out before my first exam. Hated the theory, only like playing (the piano). So I bet my piano teacher would be so glad that I remember my notes. Hehe...

Marshmallow flowers for the 3D effect.

The wordings were in pink instead of black (dark brown) because I didn't want the wordings to "fight" with the musical notes. But they do look a bit plain and didn't stand out in the picture. So I've later added some borders to the letters.

I hope you have had a great celebration!

Must not stop doing pump for too long!

While I have been very good in dessert posts, my gossip posts are lagging behind. What gossips? Okay, I won't call them gossip posts lah, just story telling kind of. So readers for dessert post can take a rest today.

I often feel that time passes too quickly. Apparently I've not joined a pump class for two weeks already. So, you can imagine how I struggled last night when I did a "come back" AND joined Carebear's class whose classes are generally classified as "tough". To add onto my workout "challenge" I had joined a combat class before pump. Wow, last night's class was packed and I got to meet some people I've not met for such a long time! Among them, my PiC who had been at TC last night for classes because she was on leave. When I finally caught up with her at the locker room after the classes, we thought we might just arrange to take leave one of these days just to go to gym together. Haha... that sounds fun and I do have a 8 and a half days of annual leave accumulated to date. Might as well clear the half day. SPK on Thursday sounds like a good idea to me. That reminded me of those days when PiC and me used to do "club hopping" from Maxis to SPK, from SPK to LM... If I remember correctly, our record was 5 classes in the same day, something like that.

Combat class was different to me last night, I've not joined PB's class except for those she'd team teach with Master C. I noticed that she must have had a regular group of combaters since there were faces which normally did not appear in this Monday class conducted by other instructors. Besides the difference in the crowd, I also found some of the tracks unfamiliar to me. Perhaps it's because I've not been doing combat that regularly. At one point, LGM was gesturing me when the music for a particular track started to play. I was wondering why at first but then I quickly realized that it was the "pijak spider" (or I would say pijak "kat zat" - cockroach) track which we were talking about last week - which I was hoping NOT to be one of the selected tracks. It's about the turning around and around, I really get very dizzy doing tracks like that.

After a good sweat out in combat, I continued with my favorite pump class. The class was equally packed. And by the way, before I forget to mention, the mats in the gym is getting very disgusting again. I still remember not long ago we were so delighted with the new mats and now... sigh. I thought this batch of mats are more prone to dirt. Perhaps I should bring my own mat (if I'm not lazy).

Okay, what was worse last night, the Phantom chest track with loads of singles, OR the biceps tracks with loads of singles. Luckily I decided to reduce my weights by 1kg for the chest track. However, with a weight of only 3.5kg, I couldn't possibility reduce weights for biceps could I? Perhaps I should the next time. Humph... Good thing teacher really didn't lie about back track being easy - which I guess was because there is no continuous clean and presses; or sets of 6 clean and presses; or sets of 7 dead rows etc. So I had maintained my 7.5kg weights. But still, after two weeks of no pump, I was already suffering during the first set of my clean and press. Shoulder track, tough. Conditioning track - I couldn't even hold my legs up during the second set. And I thought teacher caught me giving up :p.

I was also very hungry! Actually I was hungry last night even before I joined combat. Was already planning what filling to get for my sandwich dinner. Before I start to complain about the service at O'Briens, I better publish this and start work. But seriously, there were too many new staff at O'Briens and there ought to be a supervisor at least around to advise them. My hot wrappo was NOT hot. Humphhh...

Have you ever felt this way before?

Specially for SSB...

Rum Chocolate Cheesecake

A very muddy and rich dark chocolate cheesecake on chocolate biscuit base. The rum adds to and enhances the flavour of the cream cheese and chocolate. As the recipe had described, this is an "adult cake".

If you don't have a spring form baking tin, this is what you can do also. Line a normal cake tin with aluminium foil before pressing in the base and pouring in the cake mix. When the cake is done, just simply lift up the whole cake by lifting the foil.





Cheesecakes are actually very easy to handle. The imperfections can always be easily "repaired". For example the uneven surfaces can always be smoothed with running a hot metal knife (soak in hot water and wipe dry) on the surface of the cake.

Before

After

There was a crack on my cake and it was rather deep. Instead of filling that up with the chocolate glazing, I had "repaired" it before the glazing. Just need to gently push the surface together. It's quite possible because the texture of the cake is quite soft - do all these after the cake is chilled, just before decorating.

Before

After

Add chocolate cream glazing and decorate with white chocolate flowers. Since I have the moulds, I could simply melt some chocolate and cast them into whichever kinds of shape I want to use for decoration.

MFG's order

Hi... I'm so sleepy. Woke up at 4am this morning to go for a school visit. Wanted to be there during their assembly time. Story later.

Last few days was quite hectic at work, very busy. While cake orders are all welcome (more pocket money for me, why not?) I try to not overwhelm myself with too many orders. I think I should still try to get enough sleep.

One week advance notice will be good but I'm quite blessed so far with orders which came in two weeks in advance. Thanks :).

But when MFG's order comes in last minute, what do (did) I do? (As we speak, there is another "last minute" order too, you know who you are. Hehe...)

It's never too late to deliver a birthday message :)

While jelly beans are great to add colours to the cupcake, they are not a very good combination with the butter cuppies. I personally don't like jelly beans, so I thought the taste doesn't blend in with the cakes. It's ok to take them away if you get them.

One of the best ways to make the cupcakes cute is to use gummy bears. I'm ok with eating gummy bears although I'm not a big fan. But I also think that it's best to eat the candies separately from the cake. Taste combination issue again for me.

I like using "balloons" for simply party theme birthday cupcakes. No, you can't eat these at all. They will do a good job in adding some dramatic 3D effect to the box of cakes and of course adding on to more colours.

Sometimes you will just do anything when it comes to your favorite guy right?