Peppa the Popular Piggy

You always know what's hot with the kids by the cakes that get requested and the one that is getting keeps popping up is Peppa Pig!

The cute little pink piggy is famous for adventures around her neighbourhood with her little brother George and extended family and friends. There are many other little characters in this British preschool animated series, which includes rabbits, sheep, cats, dogs and elephants. It's truly great fodder for fondant characters.

The most famous image of Peppa and her family is where Mama pig, Papa pig, Peppa and George are enjoying a stomp around in a muddy puddle, typical piggy activity!

I made my first Peppa pig cake in Dec last year and in 2014, it's easily already one of the most requested cakes. Check out all the Peppa cakes I've done so far...

Peppa and friends (extended version)

Peppa and family

Peppa herself

This was a special request to feature the main star herself - Peppa. This cake is carved out, and covered in meringue frosting. Fondant is used only for the outline, so that minimises the sweet stuff. 

Peppa is popular

Always a joy to make, I'm almost eager to see another request for this.

The Princess Project

My baking soul mate is in town! Dawn is back for the summer school holidays and although she's declared that she's on a baking break, it didn't stop her from galavanting with me to Phoon Huat, Bake It Yourself and Art Friend for supplies. And of course, we baked!

We took on an order together - the first official collaboration. It's a princess cake that includes the full works - ruffles, tiara, bows, flowers and it's got to be pink pink pink! We spent 2 full days together planning, baking and decorating while the kids watched copious amount of TV (we had our hands full!) and ate levelled out cake!                  

I baked my trusty moist chocolate for a two-tier cake with ganache filling. Dawn planned the cake design and showed me how to make fondant ruffles - a repetitively therapeutic thing to do on any given afternoon. We moulded fondant in many shades of pink for the ombre ruffles and had to resist introducing some other complementing colours because the recipient insisted on a pink cake. In the end we used some white for contrast, we just had to.

Here are some scenes from the making of...

The ball tool is essential for ruffles

Here's the ombre skirting

Stacking the pinks

Dawn putting in the finer details

Dawn had made the pretty tiara with gum paste and it sat wonderful atop the cake, making it fit for a princess birthday celebration. When we finally added in the final details, I couldn't imagine how anyone could bear cutting into this cake. It is definitely my most professional-looking cake to date.

The Princess

Happy Birthday Kara

Dawn bakes in Shanghai. If you'd like to follow her amazing cakes, check it out here - Cakes from D'Heart

Madison's Giraffe

Remember how in older housing estates you always had a neighbourhood bakery you can count on for cakes for all occasions, or a sweet treat whenever... well, I've become that - the friendly neighbourhood baker.

My neighbour in the opposite block has the easy convenience of ordering and picking cakes up from me. She can literally gesture from her window, across the swimming pool, to me for another red velvet cake please. So when her daughter's 3rd birthday came round, she had yet another excuse for a cake from her neighbourhood baker.

Mummy D is hooked on my red velvet. She's also been meaning to try my rainbow cake but the red velvet always get in the way. So for her daughter's birthday, it's finally the rainbow cake! Her only design requirement - must have M's favourite animal, the giraffe!

While I love colourful children's cake with all sorts of fun trimmings and embellishment, I think there is nothing classier than a minimal design cake that focuses on one or two elements. So here's what I came up with...

Less is More

A rainbow that is neatly covered in soft pink fondant and simple trimming that ends with a fondant bow. I made a little fondant giraffe with blushing cheeks and topped the cake of with a name tag for the birthday girl. You really don't need anything more than a candle to this. Besides, you can let the colours inside do all the wow-ing!

Happy Birthday Maddie

Hello Kitty #2

Adding to my Hello Kitty cakes is a decked high creation featuring Kitty at the top! I bought a special Hello Kitty bakeware for this and was really excited to use it.

Makes cute little Hello Kitty cakes

An ex-colleague from my days at Sony contacted me for a cake for her daughter's birthday celebration at school and I was told it must be a rainbow cake and a Hello Kitty one at that. Since it's hard to make a layered cake that's irregular shaped simply because I usually only have one of such pans (with the exception of round ones),  I suggested a regular round rainbow cake that's topped off with a fondant covered Hello Kitty. 

I made my regular Vanilla Butter batter, divided it into 5 portions for colouring with some left to fill the Hello Kitty pan. The pan is such a perfect size, it's great for mini cakes or a topper for part of a bigger cake and the grooves makes it an easy guide to add on Hello Kitty's features. I only have one complain, it was somewhat difficult to remove the baked cake. I had carefully loosened the sides but the cake was not coming off easily. I was careful not to lose any bits since Hello Kitty's face was at the bottom of the pan but alas, bits of the cake stuck to the base :( And yes, I did oil the pan generously! I hope a few more bakes will season the pan. More Hello Kitty cakes anyone?

So while the shape of Hello Kitty is perfect, the surface was a bit rough. I rectified it with 2 layers of fondant or I could have been more generous with the cream frosting. The result was not too bad.

Hello Kitty on top

Little bow and colourful M&Ms for the border

Happy Birthday Ning!

The birthday girl shared the cake with her classmates and the rainbow cake made the children smile but it was hard work for the adults to cut up and serve. So the next thing on my agenda is coming up with a simple guide on how best to cut and serve a rainbow cake that is 15cm tall. Look out for it!

Hello Kitty #1 (and counting)

How do you love Hello Kitty? Let me count the ways...

I've made a few Hello Kitty cakes last year and I am so sure she will be in my lineup again this year that I invested in some more Hello Kitty bakeware and cutters!

My first Hello Kitty cake for 2013 is a pink and pretty affair. A friend referred a mummy to me who wanted a Kitty cake she saw online and asked if I could replicate it. Doing a copy is both easy and hard to do... it's simple since you don't really have to think much about the design as it is there for you, but it also means if you do a poor replica, it's easy to make a comparison.

Well, I set out to follow the colours and details as closely as I could but at some point, I made some variations (I just can't help it!) But thank goodness, it's well received ; )

Here's what's involved...

Round cake with a pink bow

Lots of little sparkly flowers

Hello Kitty

And here's the finished product for a birthday girl who shares her birthday with her grandma.

Happy Birthday Tata

And Happy Birthday Grandma

For those of you who may be curious to see the cake that this design is based on, click here for a peek ; )

Castles for Princesses

I've always looked at princess castle cakes and thought to myself - That is just way too difficult! There's simply too many details and construction required to make a home fit for a princess. So you can imagine my trepidation when I was contacted for a princess castle cake.

A mummy who found me online wanted a rainbow cake for her daughter with a princess castle theme. It's a busy week (and month) for me so I told her honestly that I just didn't have the bandwidth to take on the bake job. However, I couldn't bear disappointing anyone especially since she was looking forward to a rainbow cake, so I suggested baking just the round cake with a simple design and she can find her daughter's favourite princess and castle toppers, which I'm sure would look perfect. I was glad she took up the idea coz I knew the toppers would do more justice than my many hours trying to make this work.

As luck would have it, the shops ran out of the castle toppers.

Desperately-seeking-castle mummy contacted me and asked if there was any way at all that I could craft two castles to add to the cake. She managed to get the princess toppers but it wouldn't be the same without the castles. She even sent me resource links and images for ideas on how to craft the castles! I have to admit, my interest was definitely piqued but more importantly, I couldn't possibly leave her stranded! Though it's a crazy period now leading up to Christmas, I found myself looking at youtube  for how to make a castle cake (and there are plenty!)

While looking at how I could do this, I found a website on how to coat the ice cream cones for the castle. The baker had a wonderful description of how she went about building her castle cake, it's a great one - check it out here. I like how she coated the cones with royal icing and rolled it in disco dust! And that's just what I did...

Pink Peaks

The royal icing dried smooth and hard which made it easy to handle for construction. And I love that pink (Americolor Soft Pink). It was a day of just playing with ice cream cones. These inverted cones easily fitted into the fat wafer cones you get with Macdonald's soft-serve ice cream, once that is done, you'll already get the basic idea of a castle tower.

Castle Cones

I made five castles with graduating heights to surround the back of the cake. To do that, I looked around my larder and found some wafer biscuits, had them cut to size and stacked to the height I wanted.

Tall, taller, tallest

I just wish I had more time to embellish the towers, as you can see the cones do look a bit naked at the bottom. I made it up by pipping some 'green grass' and sprinkled some confetti flowers to make it look like flower bushes. Another thing I did was put little flags at the top of the tower cone, it's a small detail that didn't require a lot of work but added to the look visually. Simply cut out some art paper into triangles and stick it down with some fondant.

Tower 1

Latest castle development

I had the cake delivered to the school where little Jmie was going to celebrate her 2nd birthday with her classmates. Her mummy met me to assemble the princesses on the cake for the finishing touch. I was told Aeriel the mermaid princess is her favourite, so naturally she got the main spot on the cake.

Sitting pretty

Happy Birthday Jmie

While I came through for Jmie and mummy with the castles, at the same time, I have them to thank for pushing me to overcome this mental block for castle cakes. I've learnt a lot making this cake and wouldn't mind doing it all over again.

The Pinks and Blues of First Birthdays

I had my hands full of pink and blue fondant over the weekend. I made TWO double-tiered cake, over two days for two cutie pies turning one year old!

My nephew Baby T had a blue cake – his mama had planned a Blue colour theme party and I proposed a layered cake with varying shades of blue!

Happy Birthday Tim

And a good friend's daughter Baby M had a pink cake - her mama planned a Minnie Mouse party and I created a delicate pink cake with Minnie mouse accents.

Happy Birthday Mere

That got me thinking... how did we come to determine gender-specific colours? While I know of some parents who rather give their kids gender-neutral clothes and toys, and I'm personally indifferent about such signifiers, there is quite an interesting background to this pink and blue business for girls and boys.

According to a Smithsonian magazine article, "The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” 

And did you know that around the time of World War I, it was generally accepted that boys wore pink and girls wore blue. Time magazine in 1927 published a sex-appropriate colour chart for boys and girls and it was pink for the boys and blue for the girls! That wasn't so long ago.

Then somewhere along the way, there was a colour swap. Maybe it was the feminist movement in the 60s that rejected any gender-defining norms, or maybe some boy really liked his sister's blue dress? Ok ok, I know all this has nothing to do with baking but it's really interesting to read, if you want to know more, check out this article at Smithsonian.com

Ok, so back to the cakes...

For Baby T's blue cake, I made a Vanilla Butter cake in layers of blue hue with cream cheese frosting in between. Both cakes were covered in fondant and I love how clean it looks.

For decoration, I tried those springy wires and made fondant stars with his name on it. They make really great cake toppers and I love how it bounces around when you move the cake.

Tim's stars

My hubby's precision dotting

A Blue Rainbow Cake

For Baby M's pink cake, I made the perennial favourite Moist Chocolate cake and the mama suggested an oreo cream cheese frosting! What a great combination it turned out to be.

Looks like giant oreo cookies

There were 3 layers at the bottom tier and 3 smaller layers at the top tier. It was covered with fondant again and decorated with Minnie mouse cutouts and pretty pink bows.

Pretty Pink

Minnie Mouse in the house!

Happy 1st