Having a baby

I've had plans to make these since I've learnt about MC's pregnancy. She would have to order her baby full moon gift away from me right? Haha... So happened LGM got me a lead, an inquiry for baby full moon cupcakes. I've done something for baby shower before but I wanted to introduce something special. So since I finally had time today, I made a few of these.

The mittens need to be perfected, they are not round enough so you might not be able to figure out what they are. The bibs, they need to be in brighter colour since icing is yellowish. And bigger bibs allow more details to be included.

I was actually very tired last week. Went to dinner with PiC last night and I was almost falling asleep when we said farewell. We had a great gossip session but dinner was so so because the blur PiC got her request of restaurant wrong. Haha...

My immediate boss is leaving, his last day is next Tuesday. Sigh... work will never be the same anymore without him.

Apples?

Fruit Seller,

Glad here's an occasion for you to make appearance LOL. And yes I do have apples.

Durian,... hmm... I'm still trying to think of a way... Will see. Hehe...

My new chocolate cake design

Got the idea from this...




The original look, with fresh raspberries on a white cream frosted cake.

I've got these soft candies that looks like raspberries (don't they?). Not only they are not as expensive as the real berries, they are also easier to handle, no need to glaze or preserve.

If you want to pipe a few different designs from a same colour icing, the best is the use the coupler, that allows you to interchange nozzles.

Pipe a bed of "leaves" and "stick" the candies on them.

Pipe some veins and more leaves randomly. I tried not to overdo the cake. Haha... Trust me, piping leaves can be quite addictive.

Drop some veins and leaves to the side if you want to decorate the cake more. I couldn't stick the candies on the side of the cake because my icing will not hold anything. Besides, the candies are too heavy.

So I had the candies resting on the base of the cake board.

There! The final look, complete with birthday tag - There's no more space to write birthday message anyways.

"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!

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.

Yay!!! It's Monday!

This was the cake I made for my Saturday class. The wordings were a request from MC since she will be taking in this cake to her office.

The clouds - I find them really cute and this good idea is just on time for an up-coming order. You will get to see on Thursday or so.

The rainbow made out of star piping - 3 small rows of stars per rainbow colour really required a lot of time and patience! But enjoyed making them nonetheless.

Have a colourful Monday everyone!!

Cake Decoration Method

I've enrolled for Course 1 of the Wilton Method for cake decorating and went for my first class yesterday. Hmm... It's very basic and quite slow for me in terms of the techniques for basic cake decoration. The benefit of attending that particular class was more of discovering new method in terms of tools and equipment of cake decoration.

This were what we got together with the first class. Not everything will be inclusive with the course fee. There are quite many things we need to buy, or should buy IF we want the cake decoration to be perfect.

If you do a lot of piping designs with nozzles, you will definitely want to have one of these! This is a great solution. I've been spending quite a lot of time cleaning up my nozzles after using. Imagine if butter icing got stuck in the nozzle for many days (weeks). So they must be cleaned up thoroughly and cleaning the really small area of these very small nozzles are really tough.

Spent a lot of money on the course and I was hoping to stop spending (spending big money I mean) for a while. But, there is this tool box which is really useful and more convenient and economical if I get them in one full package instead of loose items. I think lah, it's always like that when we go shopping - should we buy all in one go for the bulk purchase discount, or get them over time...

More cool stuff coming up!