Cake Challenge Accepted

Before November comes to an end, I had better update my much-neglected blog. Last year this time, I had well over 40 entries, this year's been a bit slow with too many distractions. Having said that, the baking hasn't stop and I've had the lovely opportunity to work on some amazing cakes. The last two months in particular posed some cake challenges that I was more than happy to accept.

The Lego Cake
This is a special request from my boy who turned 5. He made the leap from Duplo to big boy Lego some months back under the enthusiastic tutelage of his father. Once he got the hang of it, his appetite for Lego building became insatiable. He was eagerly fixing up sets that were for well beyond his years. Papa B has competition now and the house has become Legoland.

So Mama was summoned to make a Lego cake for his birthday and he wanted this specific one he saw online. I was nervous that if I didn't construct it right, I'll have a house of Lego junkies on my case.

Happy Birthday Jake

Still Can't Let It Go
Apparently the fascination with Elsa, Anna, Olaf and all things Frozen has yet to thaw. I still get a good number of request for Frozen cakes. This one in particular really pushed me to extend my construction skill. The castle is the piece de resistance on this two-tier cake. Made from foam core, cardboard and sugar gum paste, I managed to save the day when the Frozen cake toppers were all out of stock!

Happy Birthday Tricia

The 80th Birthday Cake
I was asked to design a cake for a sweet dame turning 80. Usually for older ladies, I would play it safe and go with flowers or simple piping designs. This time, I was given a picture of the celebrant in her most favourite spot - in a recliner in front of the telly. Life is good at 80.

Happy 80th Birthday

Christmas is round the corner and 2014 will soon be a wrap. I started out the year so strong with so many plans, but with only a month to go, I'm sad to say I've yet to achieve what I set out to do. Ah well, I can plan and hope again in 2015. Stay tuned won't you.

Building Castles in a Cake

In the beginning of the year, I made a boy castle cake and met with some construction challenges. So when another request for a castle came along, I was ready to roll my sleeves up and try again!

Mummy E got in touch with a very straight forward brief - a castle cake with turrets, and cobblestone-textured walls for the castle exterior. Her boy is a big fan of dragon-slaying knights and they have an awesome collection of toys that could be used for a birthday cake, now all that's needed is a castle.

There are many places to draw inspiration from. Mummy E sent me some examples of what she envisioned for the cake. I also looked to my boys' toy corner and actually found this Melissa & Doug castle that had just the right turret design.

Melissa & Doug Castle

I was going to make a square base and stack it up 3 times, with turret towers. I usually turn to ice cream cones when it comes to building castles but Mummy E didn't want the conical type castle so she suggested using paper towel rolls to construct the height of the turret - excellent idea!

The one important tool in this cake project is the embossing mat for the cobblestone texture. I wanted to buy it online as I was out of town while planning this cake with Mummy E. In the end, it was available at Kitchen Capers in Singapore, they have a good one because it comes in a large sheet. For those of you interested here's the link. Mummy E very kindly bought it and left it with me.

I made the turrets 2 days in advance so it would dry out nicely. It was a bit tricky to make fondant adhere to cardboard but with some careful moulding it was doable.

A lot of grey fondant was used, there was little need for any other colour. But having said that, I applied a technique I learnt at a fondant figurine class - shading!

Here's the castle before I applied shading...

Castle Grey

Closer look at the embossed texture

And here's the castle after shading...

Shady Castle

Elijah's Castle

Now with Elijah's knights and dragon characters, it all comes to live!

Happy Birthday Elijah!

Join the Quest

Betty Boop mummy was certain she wanted me to bake her son's birthday cake, so she gave me many weeks of notice for a Camp Lazlo cake. Camp what? I asked. It was another lesson in Cartoon Network characters. Camp Lazlo is a quirky boy scout-like anthropomorphic bunch that play out adventures at a summer camp. Wow, where do I even start? After much consideration, I decided it was a cake project out of my depth. So sadly, I referred her to more capable hands.

Then the birthday boy had a change of mind for the cake and due to the timing, the project was still mine to undertake!

The new cake request: a Deltora Quest cake! Both his mummy and I were stumped. What is Deltora Quest? Well, it's a fantasy cartoon series that follows the characters across the land of Deltora to recover the magical 'Belt of Deltora' and defeat evil forces (think Lord of the Rings  or belt in this case). We discussed over Youtube links of Deltora Quest and figured a boy castle featuring the magical belt was in order. I was all ready for adventure.

Immediately, my previous experience with the princess castle came in handy. I used wafer cones and sugar cones to create the castle. This time everything was grey scale. I wrapped the wafer cones in fondant and used my brickwork pattern to press out the castle wall. The monochrome outside worked well since the main cake is a round rainbow stack sitting on a chocolate base.

The other important element is the 'belt' of Deltora. I used hard candies to create the gems - it's amazing what candies and some colouring can do (emeralds and opals anyone?). FYI. Deltora is spelt using the first letter of each of the gems in the belt: Diamond, Emerald, Lapis Lazuli, Topaz, Opal, Ruby, Amethyst.

Belt of Deltora

I also attempted a figurine of Lief, the main character in the story.

Lief in fondant

As I was building up the castle, I ran into some foundation problem so I called upon my 'structural engineer' (aka the hubby) and he provided the pillar support. To hold the two wafer cones together, a long satay stick was driven into the middle and into the cake.

Building castles in the cake

After toiling many many hours, here's my first boy castle cake...

Happy Birthday Darren

To be honest, I'm not completely happy with it. I know the problematic areas and wish I had done  some things differently - like a bigger base cake and better torting for a flatter surface (I need a cake leveller!) But in all of this, I thank you Mummy E for always being so supportive. 

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.