It's a Wrap!

As 2012 comes to a close, I look back on the year in complete wonder and fulfilment. I never expected to be a stay home baker, but the cakes, cupcakes and cookies found me. With Christmas approaching, I took up 2 of my biggest orders yet... 20 Chirstmas loaves for Dogtech and 300 Snowman cookies for DDB!

Originally, the request was for log cakes but I could not roll a sheet cake to save my life so I conjured up my own version of a Christmas fruit cake - a hearty Banana Cranberry Walnut loaf. In truth, I wanted to make something easy to pack that will keep nicely without refrigeration as it needed time for delivery to be done. The biggest plus is how the wonderful aroma of cinnamon loaves baking made my home instantly festive!

One of the fun things about baking for Christmas is the packaging! I snowed on icing sugar for the loaves and had it gift-wrapped Martha Stewart style. I love her bake tray packaging but it's not available in Singapore so I adapted it and made my own!

Tin trays wrapped in parchment

Sealed with a red scallop cutout

Ribbon it up

It's a wrap!

For the snowman, the task was somewhat daunting. I've never made 300 of anything. I prepared the cookie dough a week before baking and realised one dough ball only produced about 20 cookies, which means I had to make 15 portions and find the fridge space for it! The baking alone took a week.

This was how intense the baking got, my neighbours came asking what was cooking in my kitchen... they could smell the cinnamon butter cookies from their homes ; )

After baking the snowman, the next step was making them Mr Frosty. Now, I would usually pipe an outline then fill the cookie icing in but when you have 300 cookies to frost, you ned to find an efficient way to do this. I went online and loved the method this lady used, check out her spoon-on technique.

Mr Frosty taking shape

I underestimated how big a production 300 snowman is, well it's huge, so I actually had to borrow space to do this. I shipped them off to my sister's and had her kind help in housing and decorating them.

Long line of Frostys

Frosty everywhere

The dress up

Frosted and packed

It's a wrap!

All Christmas goodies shipped, and I was told enjoyed by the recipients. Yay! That's all folks for 2012.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year ; )
Stay tuned for more in the new year...

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.

Last Minute Requests

Sometimes you just can't say "No", especially when the request is fun one. I received two last minute orders this weekend that I found very hard to reject.

I was contacted by a mummy who was preparing her little girl's 3rd birthday and the theme was Dora the Explorer! She had already gotten a Dora cake but wanted to offer some themed snacks as well. Remember those cookies I made for Eve's Stripes and Spots party, well I was asked to customise cookies for the Dora party. While I've made some decent character cakes, I haven't really tried them on cookies. Plus cookie icing is also something relatively new to me, but I'm always game to learn something.

I made a batch of Cinnamon Raisin Cookies and a good amount of white poured cookie icing, using the Wilton recipe (I love Wilton). The icing dries to a shiny, hard finish, and the best part, it was so simple to make:

Poured Cookie Icing
- Mix 1 cup icing sugar with 1 tablespoon milk and 1 tablespoon clear syrup
- Tint the icing with colours as required

I used this for Dora's hair and face.

Dora's hair colouring

I used a piping gel transfer to get Dora's outline for the first few cookies, then I got a bit ahead of myself and thought I could do it freehand. It wasn't half bad, but let's just say I'm no freehand artist.

Dora on cookies

I was quite pleased with how it was turning out till I realised the face icing may have been a bit too thin as it started to look a tad translucent upon drying. The surface area also posed a challenge as it was a tad too small to pipe the features clearly with icing. So I called on the Americolor gourmet pen and decided to draw in the features instead.

Dora the Explorer cookies

She's a star

I made stars with the extra cookie dough and piped the No.3 for the birthday girl. I was going to individually pack these cookies but my environmentally-conscious client rather I didn't. So I had to rethink how I was going to transport these cookies. In the end, I had them lined up on a cake board that usually comes packaged in a plastic wrap. These plastic wraps sadly get thrown out most of the time, but in the spirit of recycling, I reused it to bag the cookie on the board. Thanks Shir for making me rethink the packaging ; )


Request No. 2

I received an email from a lady hoping to get hold of a rainbow cake for the weekend. She had probably seen my earlier post on it and it's definitely been a while since I made this happy cake. The good thing is that she didn't require any special decoration, but then again, all the delight is within the cake itself already. What made me finally take up the order is that it's for her birthday! You can't say no to a birthday girl ;p

Here's the cake before frosting...

Colourful Delight

She had very kindly sent me images of the cake after cutting into it so I'm able to share the joy of slicing up a rainbow cake with you, check it out...

Tada!