Buds, Blooms and Beyond

I'm going to blog about cakes I made over Valentine's Day... I'm still behind on my updates as you can see. Anyway, as I was saying...

You may have read my earlier entry about the master class I took with Joyliciouscake for making sugar flowers. Well, I was very fortunate to be able to apply what I learnt as Valentine's Day came round and I was asked by some devoted husbands to create something special for their wives.

Now, we know Valentine's Day is the one day in a year that florists of any grade make all their money. So this baker was going to give them a run for their money, at least with the two lovely gentlemen, who wanted flowers that their wives can eat instead of watch wither.

Hubby No.1 is based in San Francisco, and he asked if I could create a Valentine's Day cake for his wife here in Singapore. At first his idea was for me to make a cake in the shape of a branded handbag, but I told him that it's one thing to make edible flowers, it's another to make edible bags. Some things are best in actual form...and leather bags are one of those things - agree ladies?

So here's the expression of love I made on his behalf - a Tiffany blue heart shaped cake topped with more than a dozen red roses. Each rose was lovingly handmade, petal by petal.

"Our love can traverse any distance"

I delivered the cake first thing on V-day, to catch her before she went to work. I knocked on her door bright and early at 7:30am, after being told she leaves the house about 7:45am only to find that I had woken the household! She had overslept! So she was saved by the (door)bell, and received a total surprise on V-day morning. I only wished her hubby could see the sheer delight on her face. 

Hubby No.2 requested for a cake with flowers as it was his wife's birthday. She enjoys a good carrot cake and I was only too happy to make one with sweet cream cheese filling. Not enough people request for this, it's such a wonderful wholesome cake. 

Again I made roses in varying state of bloom, from rose buds, to small blooms to full petal roses. I also   put my lessons in floral arrangement to good use. It's one thing to be able to handcraft flowers, but being able to put it together in an aesthetic way makes all the difference. I have my amazing instructor Joyce to thank, apart from a master sugar artist, she's also an expert in floral arrangement.

Happy Birthday Darling

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

When you need to say I love you,

Bake a cake. 

                        -- debbie

Furry Furby

I know, I know...I've taken too long to update my blog. I've made quite a few cakes in the last week, entertained many requests for customised cakes and sadly had to turn down quite a few interesting orders. Yes, I'm in the Indonesian capital again, so while I won't be baking, I should definitely catch up on my updates.

One of the cakes, which I made for an acquaintance who had come to enjoy my red velvet fudge cake, is the Furby! I was really happy with how it turned out. Mummy J told me of how her girl loves the owl-eyed furball toy and wanted a birthday cake of her fave Furby.

She sent me a drawing with some modifications to a teal-coloured Furby to give an idea of how the cake should look like. So what Hasbro can't customised, I did just that in cake and cream :)

Furby of her dreams

I baked 9" round red velvet layers with chocolate ganache filling and had it cut out slightly around the sides to get the egg shape look for the Furby. It was simple enough to do. The features like ears, eyes, beak and feet were all made from fondant. Now the challenging part is to recreate the fur. As you can see, this Furby is mainly teal with spots of lime green. It also has these concentric pattern that I was studying on how to pull off.

The best frosting to achieve this is buttercream or the like. As you all know, I'm not a fan of buttercream, largely because of our weather. So a fluffy meringue cream will do the job. I whipped up a batch and had it coloured in teal, light turquoise and lime green. The cake was first treated to a generous ganache covering, then heaped on with teal coloured frosting. After that, the lime green frosting was spotted on and finished with a circular swirl of lighter teal. Here's the result...

Yummy Furby

Happy Birthday Ashley

This technique is the same as what I have done with Elmo and Cookie Monster cakes. I simply love making furry characters, and eating it too. Yums!