This little gem is a labour of love. It took quite a bit of time to make, wait to dry, then make another lot because it had snapped off at some point – aargh! But in the end, here is the finished product. Whilst I can say that it is edible, I would totally advise against it because of the wires required to hold it all together.
I think I definitely need about 3 weeks notice to do this, if I am to do this again, that’s for sure 
Doused in copious cups of brandy, this fruit cake turned out quite well. I’m not normally a fruit cakey sort of a person, so the challenge to do a fruitcake is too good to pass up.
Unfortunately, the #1 piping nozzle was not going my way today, and I literally had sore wrists. The saviour of the day was my larger nozzle, which made it look quite artistic and not at all dainty. Luckily Pop was quite pleased with the result and everything worked out well.
Mental note to buy myself a bigger nozzle to do the job.
There are quite a number of posts about the tools of trade popping up around bloggosphere. I thought I’d share with you what I use to make your cakes and cupcakes.
You’d be actually surprised that this National mixer belonged to my mother, who lent it to my grandmother, and back again to my mother and now to me. Those with keen eyes would spot the fact that there is a rubber band holding a button in place.
I’m actually proud of the fact that it is an old school mixer – nice and compact, not bulky, and quite simple for someone like me to use. (I had a hard enough time adjusting to the baking times of a fan forced oven coming from a conventional oven). I find that things made in the past are hardier – and this little baby is way over 30 years old now.
So here it is, how your cakes are made one by one.
Old school style – pretty retro, if I do say so myself.
Until my mother mentioned it to me recently, I did not realise that I have never baked her a cake. Granted, I only started baking in the last 4 months and her birthday was not until May, I had a good reason! I don’t know what made me decide to make a sponge cake – but knowing my parents and their huge amounts of food, I did not want the cake to be dense and heavy. Unfortunately, the sponge cake was rather temperamental and there were bits sticking out everywhere.
Knowing my mother’s instruction for “just make something simple”, I translated it to “do not try to make it perfect” and went about working with my munted corners, lumps and bumps. The weather is getting colder, and I wanted to turn it into a bit of a candy-cane cake. It was more of a challenge on how I used the roses I had previously made in a fresh light.
What resulted was a lovely autumn bouquet with some falling leaves. I had some thoughts on what else to put on there, but it was not until I had stepped away, was I saying “yes, that will do”.
Aside from the munted bits, I was quite happy with it. Now I hope it tastes good – new recipe, you see.
Here’s another photo of the cake from another angle. Mum, since you should not be checking Facebook while you are preparing the food etc, I will post this in advance.
Whilst I did not say it in so many words – those of you who know us personally will know that we recently lost a member of our family over Easter. I hadn’t really felt in the mood to do a cake in the last 2 weeks, and I thank you for your patience while I waited to shake this feeling out.
The family had the funeral today, and a wake straight after. We celebrated our uncle’s life as he lived it and how he wanted us to live it. We were asked if we could help out with the food and I offered to make a cake. Now, I have never made a “funeral cake” before, and I don’t like the sound of it, so I will call it a “farewell cake”. One thing is for sure, a gathering after would mean that everyone gets together and celebrate life with food.
I was scratching my head on how to design it – I wanted it to be simple and tasteful. Up at 2am trying to research if someone had done something like this before. Yes, they had, but no, there are not that many pictures. I know that I wanted it to be simple and yet, not too plain, so I opted for white roses, and arum lillies. I love both flowers and they made a lovely topper. It was a tad difficult trying to photograph the end result, as the flash makes it very stark, or the lack of flash would mean all sorts of harsh shadows. A few attempts later, and I finally had 2 shots worthy of posting.
I love roses – the smell, the fragrance and just being able to admire its bold colours and how they just stand out. Thanks to my MIL, I have a beautiful rose garden outside our bedroom window which I just love looking at when I am home.
I’m not actually what made me dust out my notepad while watching TV to make these roses. The orange one is called a dog rose, and the bottom two are obviously the traditional roses that you or I are used to. I love making sugarcraft flowers, as it keeps me occupied for absolutely ages. Of course, not so great if you are making cakes in a hurry, but the tricky thing about these is that it is all manageable if you space the timing right. Because they need to be rolled to such fine consistency to make it look like real flowers, they are very fragile and can shatter (as my butter fingers have learned first hand from time to time).
I am quite impatient to learn more flowers, and I have all the time in the world to practice.
I got a bit lazy and coloured my paste, rather than dusting them – I was making these for myself and not really anyone in particular. No doubt these flowers will make their way on a cake at some point later in the month, there is always Mother’s Day coming up …
I can make these to order as well so if anyone was not after the entire cake, you know who to call
Trust me when I say I had no idea what I was doing here. I did not have the right cutters, but luckily I had 2 frangipani trees at home and I was able to pluck some flowers for some inspiration.
I made these for Rachel. I was headed to Melbourne for a few days and thankfully I managed to have them reasonably dry enough so I could put some colour on them. The odds were initially stacked against me – no proper cutters, a very unco-operative fondant, and the air was slightly humid in the house which did not help with the drying time.
Mental note – invest in some proper frangipani cutters. But still proud of my efforts.
No Easter would be complete without little bunny cupcakes. As much as Easter is about the Resurrection, I honoured that by using the blue and the red colours in my cupcake liners & toppers.
I am not sure how the bunnies got involved with the holidays, but it did seem easier to make this time around. Whilst everyone has planned Easter egg hunts for their children, I’ve taken it upon myself to decorate some hot cross bun flavoured cupcakes (which ended up tasting more like gingerbread cookies), and the result was just too cute for words.
Chocolate is a big no-no for my furry child and so the little treats have been hidden away for his own protection. How to hide them from Hubby (and me) …. now that is another story.
I was in the mood to play around with fondant for Easter, and I’m pretty happy at my seemingly 3D carrots
Happy Easter, everyone!
I took a bit of a break from baking cakes and cupcakes to bake some sourdough croissants.
It’s a touch and go thing – I usually get one good batch and one dodgy batch. I’ve been par and par. When I have a good one, and I think I can replicate it, I go and kill it. There are a lot of factors that I have no control of – the outside air temperature / room temperature; the proportions of flour used; the quality of the different flours; how active the starter happens to be .. the list can go on.
Nothing can take away how proud I am of today’s efforts. It does take a lot of effort – quite a couple of days, in fact.
Trust me, very yummy … not at all sour this time.
I’m sure this batch will not last long!
Autumn is here, and what better way than to celebrate it with a fruit cake? Who knew it would take so long to decorate a cake? I would say that I have so far spent 5 hours on this cake. (Please click on this link to see more photos)
A lot of people ask me if I am upset that my work gets destroyed after spending so much time making it, but for me, it is the absolute joy in being able to decorate them. We all have photographs, eating the cake is much, much more fun!
This cake is made with sugarpaste flowers. Everything is edible (except the ribbons, of course).
Easter is around the corner and most of you would think that I am certifiably crazy with this latest cake making venture. In as much as this whole process was fun, it was actually quite a long process because of the number of eggs involved. I went through about 12 eggs over the course of 2 weeks with my baking before I could really start on this venture.
I got the inspiration of this project from The Cupcake Project for the original idea, and Cupcakes take the Cake for the taking this one step further. I did think this idea was completely mad, because I was sure it would work in the oven, but I was pleasantly surprised. Unfortunately, the colours I used for each mixture was slightly darker than I would have liked, but it did have the desired effect. The blue ended up looking like aqua green, but on well .. happy super belated St Patrick’s day…!!??
I brought this around to my family, and they were pleasantly surprised at the contents of the eggs. I think they might have thought I was slightly deranged to be bringing a carton of eggs. I think they’ve come to expect something like this from me now.
“Use what talent you possess:
the woods would be very silent
if no birds sang except those that sang best.”
~Henry Van Dyke (1852 – 1933)
There are times when I think there is a fine lined between creativity and madness, and I have been walking that line very finely this last week. It first started off with mini-cakes. Then somehow the cakes were going to be taken away, so that meant – what do we eat during the day? How about another cake? No, wait – how many people are coming?!!
These cakes have been made for my nephew’s moon-yit or “first moon”. It is a long-standing Chinese tradition to celebrate the first month after the child’s birth. Any occasion is great in a baby’s life, and the first moon is looked upon with great celebration and joy. Today also marks the end of my sister’s confinement period, and her month of rest after the birth.
My assignment was to make something for the day …… (might have gone a bit overboard with my exuberance!)
….. and something for guests to take home.
Here are some behind the scenes look at the bees …
I now know why wedding cakes are so expensive! These little babies take quite a bit of time to do – and planning as well. I’ve managed to break a few things at the pre-assembly stage, and I have the most unsteady hands in the world, but you couldn’t tell with these, could you?
There is a great sense of accomplishment with these. I am not sure I would be keen to replicate this on a cake anytime soon though … I think this weekend’s project has taken up a lot of my spare time, and I could do with a mini-break.
But boy, am I pleased with the result. It does take a lot of patience – which is probably something I need to work on ..
What a great way to celebrate an occasion than by cupcakes!
While cupcakes are more my repertoire than cakes, it was still a treat to decorate some cupcakes this week.
It was a great way to try and combine baking, piping, and modelling. The flowers and the leaves were a great way to practice making these items as thin as possible. The thin-ness allows the cupcakes to look delicate.
Everything is totally edible, of course!
In my quest to lead a more balanced life, I’ve been taking up some extra curricular activities. In addition to decorating cakes, I love soap making. I am obsessed about everything to do with home-made soap. Some say I might be starting my “living simply and cost-effectively” revolution with great gusto. I’m like Madonna. I am 110% behind whatever I happen to be into at the time. I am into organic living, eating well, and living well. I want to understand what goes into my food, and what goes on my skin. In my quest to find out what I happen to put on my skin, I invariably find good products, but they are just so expensive. How on earth did my grandmothers do this? Things back then were home made. There weren’t any shortcuts, but then again, part of the fun process is actually understanding how to live the simple life.
People of my generation is too dependent on computers, mobile phones, radios, and anything that takes the human touch out of things. Very so often I get frustrated because thing are all pre-made and I have had no say in what goes into what I use and consume. For example, I got a couple of very nice bars of soap from my sister for my birthday (you can blame her for my latest obsession!). I particularly like the Honey Soap she gave me, and when I did a bit more research, it had just as many chemicals to extract the essence of honey, but real honey was not used. BAH! I didn’t even recognise half the ingredients listed in the soap. At $7.90/100g – I was sure I would be able to find some cost savings in doing it my way.
I am against the use of palm oil (which is technically hidden under the label “vegetable oils”), and the use of excessive chemicals which unfortunately are a way of life. Palm oil comes from the habitat of the orang utan. By buying palm oil, it inadvertently accelerates the destruction of their natural habitat. They say there now exists sustainable palm oil made in Malaysia, rather than farmed in Indonesia. (Bet they haven’t researched enough and discovered that it was probably from Sabah/Sarawak, which are _right next to_ Indonesia anyway. Jury is still out on the “sustainable palm oil” business.)
I haven’t sat down to do the sums yet, but by my estimation that it would have cost me about $3 – $5 to make a bar of soap, depending on the ingredients. It goes without saying that I use different oils, soap colourings and also some additions with exfoliating qualities. There is a process for making the soap, and you need to run it through the soap calculator – as you need the correct ratio of oils, lye and water. It’s not as simple as just substituting one oil for another just because you run out. You do need to adjust the water and the lye. It is not as complicated as it sounds, but lye is actually quite a dangerous alkali, and we all remember the chemistry reactions. The lye (NaOH) is more reactive than potassium hydroxide (KOH – haha), and you can’t willy nilly dump water on top of it or it will fizzle and burn.
I get treat satisfaction in stockpiling our soaps.
*** WARNING & DISCLAIMER: I want to put the biggest disclaimer on making soap. Lye is totally dangerous to work with. DO NOT do this near pets or children or loose water lying around (in case it sizzles and burns). Make sure that you have the surface lined with newspaper, you have safety goggles and chemical-withstanding rubber gloves. The chemical reaction on mixing causes an exothermic reaction, which heats up the mixture considerably and emits dangerous fumes. ***