Long Hiatus...

This blog has been dormant for over a year now, since my last entry was as far back as Oct 2010, but quite on the contrary, life in 2011 had been full of ups and downs, both on the work and personal fronts!

For one, Ah Mak had not been cooking quite as much as she would have liked, but rather, her oven and endurance had been put to the test as baking went on overdrive last year! From cakes, cupcakes and a bit of both! I was amazed how many orders i received just by posting photos of my finished works on facebook.

Thankyou to all my lovely friends and new found friends for their support and the many opportunities to put my creativity to the test!!

For 2012, my resolution is to be much more active in sharing my love for cooking and baking, and also try to set up a proper website so that it is easier to take orders and properly showcase Frostings (that is the name i have in mind for now... Happy to hear any feedback!)

Will definitely blog again soon, since its chinese new year once more and i would love to share some healthy home cooking recipes!

Till then, gong xi fa cai!!!

I'm the Bakezilla!

It's been a long time since I last blogged - mainly because almost all weekends over the past couple of months had been fully occupied with baking and cake decorating.

Aside from fulfilling orders for a few friends, Cor & I have also recently completed the PME Professional Diploma - Sugar Paste Module @ Bake-it-Yourself, which helped to improve our sugar crafting skills given that I've really been self-taught so far, and saved lots of time and heartache spent to trial and error on my own. The course itself was rather intense, because it takes up a significant amount of time for each class, but we all took away some valuable knowledge, and made a few great friends!

So here are some of my creations during the course:

Fruit/ Picnic Basket Cake

This cake was decorated with Frannie in mind as I brought this to her farewell party that evening. The theme was ER (Emergency Room) so I thought the "Fruit basket" may be apt. She is originally from the Philippines, and hence the smiley mango!

In this class we learnet more about patchwork cutters, embossers as well as how to create a fabric effect. Had some time to spare so decided to play with lustre dusts and butterflies

For our final project we were asked to create a tiered wedding cake. My theme was a little more Art Deco but didn't have enough time to finish up (because I encountered problems on the baking stage which took up way too much time!) 

I'm not totally happy with the outcome but I've definitely learnt lots from this project!

So after taking a week off at the end of the course, it was back to baking for friends again! First up was Cupcakes for Tiff's boys as Teacher's Day gifts:

Vanilla Butter Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream

And my most challenging project to date was for little Ian's 3rd Birthday - a 3D Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Cake! It took lots of planning especially around the architectural setup, some physics as well as making sure that from a design angle it actually resembled the MM Clubhouse!

This is what the real toy looks like:

And my finished product (Mickey, Pluto and Goofy figurines were provided by the birthday boy's parents):

Ah Mak's Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Cake

I was so glad that things turned out alright in the end, because there was some major cake drama in the morning where the weight of the head and hand couldn't hold due to the overnight humidity change! I had to redo some parts on the spot under lots of time pressure.

It felt amazing though, to see little Ian playing with the cake thinking that it's the real clubhouse! hehe...

I can feel that with each project, I'm "levelling up" like in RPG games (sorry the geek in me is speaking)! More coming up this month, so watch this space!

Photos from Jevan's Birthday Party

Just wanted to share the photos that Pin took for little Jevan's party in school! Happy to hear that the kids loved the cupcakes! I was worried that the kids maybe too young to know who Iron Man was, but much to my surprise Iron Man was most popular amongst the girls on that day! (I wonder why...)

The chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting were a hit and Pin did a great job arranging them on the DIY cupcake stand that I provided! It was lots of effort producing these cupcakes, but seeing these pictures (Jevan and baby sister Kylie are such sweeties!) makes it all worth it!

Jevan looking shy at his birthday celebration

Pin setting up earlier on

Big brother Jevan & baby sis Kylie (check out that fashionable beanie!)

Jevan with the girls~

...and the boys

Time to pick their cupcakes!

Another one going for the Iron Man

I'm researching new cupcake recipes and also design ideas. Will post them as I go along!

Superhero Cupcakes for Little Jevan's Birthday Party

I have not been very good at posting recipes lately, because of work and also this latest project which pretty much kept me busy all weekend. After the cupcake decoration party @ Hazen's a couple of weeks ago, Pin has requested for 48 superhero-themed cupcakes for Little Jevan's birthday party in school. Baking the cupcakes itself was not a problem since I've done it several times, but what's rather daunting was the cupcake toppers, given that I've not really had much experience modelling with rolled fondant and I had very limited tools to help me. Nonetheless, I told the packets of white fondant sitting in my fridge: "Bring it ON!!"

So I went on a rampage on the net, researching everything I possibly could from tinting, moulding and storing fondant, to which types of icing and tools to use for which purpose. I also got myself some basic tools that really made everything lots more efficient and much easier to do! I had the most fun coming up with the design for spiderman & iron man, while the superman logo was the most challenging one as I had to hand paint every one and they had to look the same without the icing colour mixing with the yellow base!

To challenge myself further I also attempted to produce a DIY 3-tiered cupcake stand, which I must say, whilst it's not perfect (I ran out of ribbon, silly me miscalculated...so I had to improvise), did the job pretty well!

Sorry I only managed to take photos of the finished product, and not the process because I was too busy trying to figure out what to do! I will be sharing my research findings shortly in another post, so that beginners (like myself) who wish to give rolled fondant a shot needn't feel too intimidated!

Chocolate cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting

...complete with a DIY cupcake stand!

close up of superman, spiderman, iron man cupcakes

into the boxes and all ready to go!

Cupcake Decorating Birthday Party for little Zelia

It's little Zelia's 3rd birthday and I'd offered to Hazen a batch of cupcakes from me as a birthday gift. After some brainstorming we'd decided to turn it into something fun for the kids to do instead - where they got to decorate their own tiny cupcakes!

After I went to the stores to get my supplies this morning, I got cracking and baked 24 chocolate cupcakes + prepared 2 sets of cream cheese frosting in pink and blue (for the boys). Given that the age of these kids ranged from 1-6, I had to keep things relatively simple and basically just let them have some hands-on fun. I was initially pretty stressed out that I wouldn't be able to manage with 6 tiny tots, but with the mummies' assisting, it all went pretty well!

It was fun to have these active kids stop and listen attentively while I did the demo of how to pipe a frosting swirl, flat frost, and just sprinkle! They each decorated 3 cupcakes, one for themselves and their parents. They held on to their finished works and took lots of pride when they tasted them. I'm happy that everyone loved the cupcakes and little SuperNat even came over to thank me on his own initiative! Aw... Little Jevan now wants to share these cupcakes with his classmates for his birthday party, but since there's limited time to decorate during school, I'd deliver finished cupcakes instead!

Works of art by the mummy + kiddy master chefs

Little Phoelia & Birthday Girl Zelia

The kids: Super-Nathaniel, Jevan, Phoelia, Zelia, Wei Wei, XuanXuan & Abigail