Oh Toodles!

A mummy I knew from childhood got in touch with me when she saw I was baking children's cakes. It's always so nice to hear from old acquaintances who are now mothers, all looking for cakes for their little ones. Mummy A's little boy was going to celebrate his 1st birthday with not one but two Mickey Mouse cakes!

The two cakes were going to be for two separate parties as celebration was spread out over a day - a.m. session and p.m. session. I totally get that; I did that with my boys' birthdays too because we wanted to group our guests such that we can entertain them adequately.

We discussed the design options for Mickey. As you can imagine, there are loads to choose from and every single one looked wonderful - that's the thing with Mickey Mouse, it's a design that always works; it's timeless!

In the end, Mummy A got a very cute plush and some great Mickey character toppers for the two cakes. For one, we had the Mickey plush hugging a cake. Simple enough but when you get the colours right, it's such a very happy cake!

Mickey hugs a cake

Emmanuel's First

Mickey hugs a rich and moist chocolate cake layered with chunky Oreo cream cheese frosting. I love how the red fondant cover complements the plush toy, which admittedly did all the work. All that was needed were some stars, Mickey's emblems and the No.1.

For the second cake, I borrowed from some designs Mummy A sent me - the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse design. Again, the toppers did all the work and I just set the scene for it.

Happy Birthday Emmanuel

Dinosaur Rocks!

(Ryuu's Birthday Cakes - Part II)

Besides the Hungry Caterpillar, the birthday boy also loves dinosaurs! I heard he got into them because his mummy liked exposing him to factually correct content (as oppose to mindless cartoon, I guess). I think that's the way to go. 

For the party at home, my friend wanted her son to have a round cake to cut plus some cupcakes for easy takeaways. She sent me some ideas and I quickly fell in love with a cute looking dino stringing a red balloon along.

Cute-saurus

I'm not sure what 'saurus' I made but I did check against the list and it looks like the fearsome Ceratosaurus - for those of you who are interested, it's a large predatory theropod from the late Jurassic period. This one just happens to look damn adorable! It also contains a rich dark chocolate cake with Oreo cream cheese filling!

I was thinking how best to decorate the sides of the cake when inspiration hit me while shopping for Chinese New Year goodies. I love those crispy wafer sticks with chocolate cream in them and I thought they also look like tree trunks or wooden twigs. So I bought a box, had the sticks cut to varying lengths and lined them all around the sides. It looks a bit like a wood forest.

Jurassic Cake

Then I spotted a bottle of chocolate rocks and it was a no-brainer. I had it scattered all around to cover the board. It was all the decoration you'd love to eat ; )

That was not the end of my dinosaur discovery. I felt a bit like a Palaeontologist as I scoured for dinosaur toppers that can go onto the cupcakes. This took me to the Party City shop at Raffles City where they carried a whole range of dinosaur party ware. They had the cutest dinosaur toy ring and it comes in a pack of 12. What a find!

To mount them, I used those yummy wafers again so I could get them to prop up nicely on top of the cupcake. It sat handsomely on the Oreo cream cheese swirl.

Topper-saurus

Look ma... there's a dinosaur on my cupcake!

Did you know that Johnny Cash had a song called the "Dinosaur Song"? I know I'm digressing but when I was googling for all of this, I came across the song and it's fascinating. Check it out - Johnny Cash Children's Album

It's BATTER @ Home

My sister was having a tea party this weekend at her place and she was hoping to serve up some freshly baked chocolate cupcakes for her guests. Short of having her own personal baker (yours truly) at the party, the next best thing was to have a ready batter where she could stick it in the oven half an hour before serving it!

Since I could not be there, I whipped up a portion of moist chocolate cake batter and provided her the cupcake tray with cupcake liners. All she needed to do was fill the cups (two-thirds full) and stick them in the oven at 175 degrees for 20 minutes and there you have it... freshly baked chocolate cupcakes that make Betty Crocker look like hard work!

She was so pleased with how it all turned out and her friends loved the cupcakes served piping hot with ice cream. She felt like almost a baker.

This gave us a brilliant idea especially for those of you who have ovens at home and always wanted to bake something yummy in it – bring batter home for the freshest baked goodies. I can prepare your cake batter packed into a convenient container, provide you with basic necessities like cupcake liners, disposable pans, temperature instructions, etc and all you have to do is bake it yourself at home.

* Just one caveat, I'm aware that the chemical reaction in leavening takes place once the ingredients are mixed and therefore should be baked soon after. The batter should be used within a few hours. Having said that, my sister stuck some batter in the fridge and baked it the next day. Result: still as good :) 

One portion of chocolate cake batter

Ready to go

My dear sister has very kindly documented her baking step by step... if she can do it, err, anyone can (sorry sis) ;p

Step 1: Fill your cupcake tray, pop it into preheated oven (175 degrees) set for 20 minutes.

Fresh cupcakes in 20 minutes

Step 2: While the cupcakes bake, chat to your guests till they smell the warm sweet wafts of baked chocolate 

Nicely done

Step 3: Serve your guests and wow them with your presentation

Chocolate cupcake with Vanilla ice cream

Let me know if you're interested to do this, I'll be more than happy to prepare the batter for home parties and I can supply everything you'll need to do this at home.

It's batter at home!

Another year older

My son turned 3 last week... where did the time go!? I remember last year this time, I was making one of my very first novelty cakes – an Elmo cake for Jake's 2nd birthday! Then 8 months later, my younger son James got a two-tier fondant Thomas the Train cake. And all the cakes made between then and now for good friends and new friends have been such an amazing experience! I'm constantly thankful for being able to stay home with my boys while pursuing my passion for baking.

So what did Jake get this year... well, he didn't get just one cake, he got three!

Cake No.1 

Here comes the rainbow train...

I made a simple round cake and covered it in baby blue fondant. Inside is Jake's favourite rainbow cake; multi-coloured layers of vanilla butter cake with cream cheese frosting! I found an amazing train candle holder that I know Jake would love to have on his cake. It's a great toy too since you can chain link all the trains - it comes in 5 colours! Then M&Ms for the border and a happy face on his cake. It was simple enough but oh so fun to look at and play with after.

Happiness in a cake

Cake No.2

Thomas and friends

Trains and tunnels

There is no running away from a Thomas the Train cake. Jake's love for Thomas is still as fervent as ever so it would be unthinkable to not make a Thomas cake for his birthday. I opted for an easy way to do this cake. I found some cupcake toppers of Thomas, James and Percy (all his favourite trains) and so I decided to just set the scene with the cake. Now if you recall a recent post on gum paste where I made a standing rainbow, you'd know why I chose to make a brick wall. However, I have to say I'm quite disappointed with the Satin Ice brand of gum paste, it didn't dry out hard even after a whole night of air-conditioning! Sadly the brick wall was not as sturdy as I would have liked it but some toothpick foundations did the trick. I'm sticking with Wilton from now on.

I also love my brick wall embossing pattern, it turned out very nicely. Then I made three little tunnels from which the trains look like they are emerging. The tracks are made of chocolate Kit Kat pieces - many of which ended up in the mouth as I chugged along. The cake was simple enough, not my best effort but it made the boy's day nonetheless ; )


Cake No.3

I actually forgot to take a proper pic of this third cake. It was a rainbow cake of course. Here's one of the boy and his cake at school. 

Happy Birthday Jake

Rainbow Week

I'm having another great week of baking as most of my orders are calling for the Rainbow cake, one of my most favourite cakes to make (and eat).

My friend had organised a farewell school party for her daughter who is graduating from kindergarten. It's a great gesture as these children who have been fellow playmates for years will now say goodbye as they embark on Primary 1 next year. 

The cake to mark the occasion is a pastel coloured rainbow cake, with happy cloud decorations. It's a wonderful choice as the rainbow cake never fails to bring on cheers and smiles ; ) And it also symbolises good things to come!

This is the first time I'm adjusting the colour intensity to try and achieve a pastel-coloured rainbow. Usually, I would use enough Wilton food colour to produce an intense hue for each layer. By doing so, it also helps overcome the fact that the cake batter is originally yellow, so you'd need to add quite a bit of blue colouring anyway to make sure that the batter is really blue and not green (blue + yellow). So in the case of a pastel rainbow, a bit more colour mixology is required. For the blue, I used cornflower blue plus a drop of turquoise to make it a muted blue, even the violet requires a bit of tweaking. The result was not bad, but upon some reading up, I could have made a super white cake batter by leaving the egg yolks out. The only thing I don't like about that is, what am I to do with 12 egg yolks? 

So anyway, I stacked the layers starting with the lavender (violet), then blue, green, yellow and pink. It's all held together with cream cheese frosting and then crumb coated with a layer of buttercream for where the fondant meets the cake. 

Frosted cake layers

I like how it looks like a snow white cylinder. After this, I applied a layer of white fondant. While it's a regular 9" round cake, the height stacked up to about 5.5cm, this means a sheet of fondant about 20cm wide is required. I always have trouble rolling a large piece of fondant, which means I'll always have problems with the edges when covering the cake.

Sweetheart Coulds 

Here's the completed cake. One thing about rough edges is knowing how to cover it. In this case, I plastered pink fondant hearts in different sizes for the border and added marshmallows for the cloud effect, though I wished the marshmallows were round instead.

Soft colours make a sweet cake

For the Class of 2012... good luck kids!

I'm definitely more confident now with sculpting pieces especially since I've learnt to use gum paste. For the rainbow featured here, I made it with gum paste as it would dry hard enough to stand on the cake. I can't wait to try other 'upright' designs soon.

Somewhere over the rainbow...

And there were cupcakes too!

Rainbow revealed

I was told the kids went "Wah" when the cake was cut into... and I can imagine the smiles on their faces too.

Epic Cake!

I took on an ambitious order and think I may have made 'The Cake' to date.

It was so nice to hear from an old school mate - she found out that I had this cake venture so she contacted me for a series of cakes for her daughters. Doesn't seem that long ago we were a couple of blue-uniformed schoolgirls running around CHIJ ; )

My friend's daughter celebrates her 5th birthday this month and I had the pleasure of baking her a My Little Pony cake! I remember the pastel-coloured ponies from my own childhood and I absolutely love the flowers, rainbows and hearts that surrounded the ponies. I went on to plan a cake that I would have loved for myself when I was 5 years old.

The birthday girl wanted Pinke Pie, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash on the cake. She also wanted flowers, hearts and ribbons. I don't' have daughters, my two sons want trains, trains and trains. So you can imagine my excitement at making this cake.

I quickly got to work on the embellishments.
First the flowers...

Little pansies in colours of the rainbow

Then the rainbow, hearts and bow...

Hearts are fun to make

Next comes the main feature... Pinkie Pie! In the days leading up to Pinkie Pie, I had actually gone to a party supply shop and found My Little Pony cake toppers! They were beautiful so I bought them and looked at them long and hard. There was no way I could have done a 3D pony with fondant or gum paste that would come close to the toppers. So I relented and decided to use toppers (my friends all say - "There's no shame in it!"). Still I could not accept not making a pony with fondant. So I decided to make Pinkie Pie myself. To differentiate from the toy toppers, I decided to make her 2D but work on her mane so it looks like it's blowing in the wind.

Pinkie Pie

I had her set on the top tier as the main feature...

Riding on a chocolate cake

Looking at this picture now, I kinda like the simplicity of Pinkie Pie on a plain fondant covered cake. But this was going to be my epic cake, so this is really just the start of putting it all together.

Rainbow delight 

The bottom tier is set on a plush buttercream green grass field dotted with flowers where Little Ponies run free. A pretty fondant rainbow brightens the design and adds extra sweetness.

Here's the complete stack. Notice the hearts on the cake, they stand out instead of lie flat on the cake. I got around to using gum paste and managed to make these hearts. They are great coz they harden up much better than fondant and could be used without losing its shape.

My Little Pony Paradise

Happy Birthday Aeriel

Hello Kitty!

I knew it was a matter of time before the famous Japanese bobtail kitty cat finds me and my baking adventures. A friend recommended a mummy to me for a heart-shaped banana cake with Hello Kitty on it. The cake is meant for her little girl's birthday celebration in school, so I made a double layer heart-shaped cake and 12 cupcakes for the kids.

I love heart-shaped cakes and I've got a great silicone pan that consistently produces beautiful heart-shaped cakes. It's not often that I get a request for it, so I was delighted at this order.

This was going to be a fondant / cream cheese challenge again but because it was going to be picked up the night before the party, I was afraid it may have to go into the fridge because of the cream cheese. There is one thing worse than cream cheese for fondant and that is REFRIGERATION. Fondant doesn't do very well in our weather but putting it in the fridge just makes it sweat and weep its colours so don't ever put it in the fridge. And since we will NEVER have Californian weather , I always just recommend air-conditioning.

After frosting the heart with cream cheese (mmmm), I placed the carved Hello Kitty on top and decided to frost it in a whiter shade of sugar icing. Then I outlined Kitty's face with royal icing to give a definitive look. The birthday girl loves the colour yellow so the cream cheese was tinted buttercup yellow for the border piping. The result is not too bad but you can see why fondant is still a favourite when you want to achieve that clean and neat finish.

Hello Kitty

Happy Birthday Joie!

I have another Hello Kitty order coming up soon and will be trying the fondant approach next.
Stay tuned for more!

Little Red Corvette

Ok, not exactly (a red corvette). But it's a little red car nonetheless for a little boy who turns 2.

A friend had referred a mummy to me - she was looking for a healthy treat to be shared in school for her little one's birthday. She was keen on a fruity cake with reduced sugar and fancied the Hummingbird Cake... it couldn't be a better choice! She didn't favour the pineapples in the original recipe, so I had it replaced with mangoes. It was a yummy substitute and because mangoes are naturally so sweet, I easily reduced the sugar in the recipe by 50%. The resulting cake was also very moist - banana and mango is such a great combination, who'd have thought ; ) And in place of sour cream, I added fruity yoghurt, which is way more healthy!

Little Keith must love cars since his cake requirement was simple - a little classic red car on a rectangular cake. That's the best shape cake for school since it makes for easy cutting and serving.

I made a double layer cake measuring 13" by 9" and another smaller layer for carving into the shape of the car. I went with the Volkswagen beetle shape car just because it looks cuter and had it covered in fondant for a neater finish. The rest of the cake was generously frosted in light cream cheese.

Delicious ride

Happy Birthday Keith!

The style of this cake is like the penguin cake I made some months back, though there is one huge challenge to this - fondant and cream cheese do not like each other at all. While I love cream cheese frosting more than any other frosting, it is just not possible to apply fondant to it. Fondant breaks down when it comes into contact with cream cheese and becomes a total mess! Still it is possible to be creative and incorporate the two popular ingredients. The trick is to create a barrier for the fondant - in this case, I used a royal icing-like frosting where the fondant car is sitting on.

This is having your fondant and eating it with cream cheese ; )

November is Birthday Month!

November is a big birthday month! My boy Jake will be turning 3 and a few of my friends are celebrating their little one's birthday as well so it's going to be a busy month with quite a few exciting cakes for me to work on.

First of, I would like to apologise to those of you who tried to contact me for orders in the month of October. As you can tell from the lack of updates in October, I was away on vacation with the family. While we had a great time feasting up a storm in Italy and Shanghai, I did miss my baking and blogging and being in touch with readers who were kind enough to enquire about my cakes. Well, I'm now back and one of the first cakes I made upon returning is for a good friend's daughter.

While preparing to make Lauren's cake, I was introduced to the world of 'Bubble Guppies'. For the unacquainted, Bubble Guppies is a popular preschool comedy musical children's television series by Nickelodeon. We had Sesame Street in the 70s, they have Bubble Guppies in 2012.

Lauren actually had a birthday cake for her party made by another very talented baker mum. It was a gorgeous 2-tier Bubble Guppies cake (unfortunately I don't have any pictures) but I had the pleasure of making a similar theme cake for her school party ; )

I decided to make one of the Bubble Guppies characters that wasn't on her party cake - Mr Grouper!

I used tracing paper to capture the shape for the fondant cut-out that was going on the cake. It was easy enough... Mr Grouper sure was good fun to make.

Mr Grouper on tracing paper

Actualising Mr Grouper with fondant

Happy Birthday Lauren

I made little bubbles, seashells, starfishes, and swaying sea plants to embellish the sides of the cake. That blue on the fondant is one of my most favourite colours. Inside is a moist chocolate cake made with Valrhona cocoa and a rich chocolate ganache filling.

I'll gladly make this cake again ; )

Hummingbird Weekend

This weekend's birthday cakes have one thing in common, the Hummingbird cake. I love this cake with a passion, it's got all my favourite ingredients – bananas, cinnamon, juicy pineapples and cream cheese! Most people tell me they've never heard of the Hummingbird cake but once they've had it, it's almost unforgettable.

My friend Eve of thebottomsupblog.com wanted a two-tier cake for her children's combine birthday celebration. She was hoping for something healthy, if there is such a thing at all when it comes to celebration cakes. Well, I think the Hummingbird cake fits the bill if you discount the fondant and Eve was game to try this fruity treat. The theme was spots and stripes and she had put in such an amazing effort for the party, from the invites to the decoration and the dessert table! Read about the party preparation here.

We're going to the party!

When I was doing research on the cake design, I was pleasantly surprise to find that the spots and stripes combination is pretty popular in fondant cakes. Eve had designed a party logo and the cake would reflect the same colours pink and turquoise blue.

The party logo designed by Eve

The stripes and spots cake

She also showed me some cake designs and there was one that had a really neat-looking fondant bow. I love bows and it looked simple enough, so I decided to try my hand at making one. Well ok, it was not as easy as I had imagined but with some perseverance and Youtube as my instructor, I managed to fix a bow that I'm quite proud of. Check out this video for one of the best fondant bow instructions I've come across, there's nothing you can't learn online these days ; )

My first fondant bow

My other contribution to the lovely dessert table was Raisin Cinnamon Cookies iced according to the theme. This is such a great cookie recipe to make for kids and with kids, it's simple – mainly butter, cinnamon and raisins – yet yummy and healthy!

Individually wrapped cookies

All set for the party!

When I got to the party, the dessert table was the show stopper... it didn't matter that Eve had a whole buffet spread outside, everyone had their eyes on the table of striped and spotted goodies ; )

Party time!

It was truly a party that inspired creativity and I am so glad to have been a part of it. Thanks Eve! Love those paper medallions!

Birthday Cake No.2

A friend and ex-colleague who had been following my cake story decided that she had enough browsing and it's time to do some tasting, so she contacted me for a cake for her brother's birthday. When she requested for something fruity as they were getting a bit tired of chocolate cake, I immediately suggested the Hummingbird.

For this Hummingbird cake, I included walnuts, which is part of the original recipe. With Eve's cake, we left out the nuts in case any of the children have nut allergy. But a Hummingbird cake complete with nuts makes for a wholesome, healthful cake that's full of flavours and textures.

Since I made such a large batch of cream cheese, I went a little crazy covering this birthday cake... forgetting it's for a guy ;p 

Looking like vintage lace

Melvin's not so macho cake

I also have a few recipe variations for the Hummingbird cake. I've made it with mangoes and peaches as well. The flavour is intense and the cake is VERY moist! Apart from walnuts, pecans are also commonly used though they are more expensive. Like a hummingbird to a bird feeder, you'll go back for more once you've tried some.

FYI, the Hummingbird makes beautiful cupcakes too!
Contact me for more details.