Hungry Caterpillar 'Unabridged'

I made many cakes this weekend and they were all for little boys from their doting mothers ; )

A good friend's son was celebrating his 3rd birthday and he got all his favourite characters in a day. On Friday morning, I delivered the Hungry Caterpillar from Eric Carle for the birthday celebration at his preschool. Some time last year, I had actually made the cupcakes of the same theme for my son but this time round, the insatiable critter was presented in it's complete glory - I made the caterpillar head with cupcakes for its body.

The Hungry Caterpillar head

Little fondant toothpicks 

All it took was a round cake covered in red fondant complete with little feelers. It was simple enough. But I couldn't really claim any design credit as I went online to look at the many many versions of the Hungry Caterpillar made by talented bakers around the world! 

Happy Birthday Ryuu

Ryuu went on to receive more cakes that day, made by yours truly. Read on...

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.

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.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

When my elder boy Jake was a wee tot, I introduced Eric Carle's Hungry Caterpillar to him. The book was first published in 1969 and has since become a mainstay in children's libraries and preschools all over the world. Eric Carle, the author and illustrator, has a great artistic style that is immediately recognisable and the stories are fun to repeat! The Very Hungry Caterpillar is definitely one of our favourite books. Jake used to chuckle at the greedy caterpillar as I read the story to him and got amused at all the things the caterpillar munched through in his week-long feast toward becoming a butterfly.

Now my little boy is a little more grown up, Nursery 1 to be exact, and for his year-end concert in school, I was absolutely chuffed to find that his class was putting up a concert on The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Jake was one of three caterpillars and his friends were a variety of yummy fruits and a pretty butterfly!

It was the perfect opportunity to bake something for the children and I decided to make cupcakes with the hungry caterpillar on it!

I whipped up some Hummingbird cupcakes, full of sweet ripe bananas and tangy pineapples that no caterpillar could refuse. Then tinted the cream cheese leaf green and swirled it lightly on the cupcakes. Then I made a darker green buttercream for the caterpillar's body and a little red M&M for the head. The eyes and smiley face was drawn in with my Americolor gourmet pen and rice chocolate stuck in for feelers - easy peasy!

Hummingbird cupcakes featuring a hungry caterpillar

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

My little caterpillar

♥ Hello Kitty ♥

My friend's daughter Aeriel, the recipient of the My Little Pony cake, requested for a Hello Kitty cake for her birthday celebration in school. If you read my earlier post, you'll see I made a cream cheese frosted Hello Kitty cake for another little girl. The feedback I got was that while they enjoyed the cake, it didn't really look like Hello Kitty. Some kitty fans I know even told me it was a poor attempt. Well I thrive on feedback and challenges so I was eager to have the opportunity to give kitty another go.

This time round, I made Kitty with gum paste and fondant. You'll see why it is the preferred ingredient, it looks almost like the toy. You'll never have that smooth and neat finish with cream, hence my first kitty looked a little melty and perhaps my proportions weren't the best. Still I would recommend fondant for Hello Kitty orders from now on, even if it's going to be on a cream cheese cake. 

Hello, Kitty!

I baked a four-layer chocolate cake in a heart shape and had it covered in the softest shade of pink fondant. It's the first time I'm covering an irregular shaped cake and I have to say, it wasn't as difficult as I anticipated, but I did run into a troublesome spot - the tip of the heart. So what's a girl to do? Add on more hearts of course! Something I'm sure the birthday girl would be more than happy to have.

Work in progress

I also had Aeriel's name set on a heart. Instead of piping or stencilling, I decided to roll out a long piece of fondant and try my hand at some font-making. I was glad to hear that Aeriel signs her name with a heart for her 'i' too. 

Aeriel ♥ Hello Kitty

It was pure joy assembling this cake. It's girly, sweet and oh so Sanrio! For this order, I bought a really  pretty Hello Kitty cutter. It produces such a nice Hello Kitty shape that I made two with fondant to embellish the sides of the cake. I'm definitely looking forward to using them again!

No such thing as too many Kitties on one cake

Happy Birthday again!

♥ Hello Kitty ♥

To all Hello Kitty fans reading this post, tell me what you think? And do share any kitty cake ideas that you may have with me. 

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 ; )

Spiderman, Spiderman

I've yet to watch the new Amazing Spiderman starring Andrew Garfield, and already, I've made my first Spiderman cake. Hunny, if you're reading this, I think it's time for date night at the movies soon!

An ex-colleague had asked me to bake a cake for her son's birthday. Her little boy who turns 6 is a Spiderman fan. She provided a design for me to replicate, including cake toppers of Spidey in his famous pose and a large spider web!

To be honest, I was a little relieved to see the cake toppers as modelling these figurines out of fondant will be no small feat. I could try, but I'm no where near the standard of some bakers I know who are at the top of their fondant craft! I'm working on it people... so for now, thank god for toppers ;p

What I do enjoy is the baking - this is a moist chocolate cake that's generously covered in luscious chocolate ganache. I've also cut out the shape of a building using fondant, at the top of which Spiderman could perch. I had quite a bit of fun piping the spiderweb too. There's something about white icing on a dark cake... it really stands out nicely!

This cake measures 12" by 12" (30cm). It's good for 25-36 servings, which is great for school parties! The birthday boy will be sharing this cake with his classmates.

I also made the icing for the borders. I finally tried Wilton's meringue powder and I'm suitably impressed! It produces a fluffy, velvety icing that is so white it makes for easy tinting of colours. With the meringue powder, I no longer have to separate eggs or worry about using raw egg whites :( And not to mention, wonder what to do with all those egg yolks! It taste great too and uses a lot less sugar than traditional buttercream, I'm so happy with this recipe.

*Email me for the price.

I Love School Parties

I love birthday parties and I love preparing parties for school. When Jake's school issued a letter to inform parents of a potluck party for the end of school term and requested for parents to chip in, I have to admit, I was excited!

My assignment... Marcaroni and Cheese.

OK, so I was kinda hoping it would be cupcakes or any baked goods, but I got Mac & Cheese. Still, I was happy to prepare this and I wasn't going to the supermarket to buy any of that instant stuff filled with MSG and artificial colouring and flavouring, I was going to make this from scratch. So I called upon my most favourite American mama blogsite - The Pioneer Woman and got her lovely Mac & Cheese recipe - made from fresh milk, butter, grated cheddar and just the right amount of sea salt.

Then I thought, nobody is going to say no to freshly baked cupcakes, so I asked Jake - "What cupcake would you like to share with your friends?" And I got a resounding Banana!!!

Banana it is! I happily baked a box of Banana Maple Cupcakes, topped with a dollop of cream cheese frosting and drizzled in maple syrup for the kids at school!

These cupcakes are great for school parties! A handy and yummy treat that's healthy too. Order these for your kids' school or birthday parties, minimum box of 12. Packaged in easy to carry away box plus labelling : )