Sunday, March 29, 2009

A Sunday thought

I'm slowly..gradually..going down with flu =( I promised Kim that I'll bake some of those divine Cheese Cuppies as I like to call them tomorrow. They're not on the menu because I don't know whether or not people are prepared to pay about RM3-RM3.50 per cuppy...a VERY DIVINE, full of goodness, cheese cuppy. So I only make them if throw parties/BBQs or simply as presents to family & friends. Since Kim has been craving for it, I'll bake some tomorrow. I might give some away (if Kim lets me!) to friends I'll meet within the next few days. I'll post photos of those beautiful little cuppies soon (decorated if I feel up for it).

Oh, Jay has decided that she wants the App-mel Cheesecake for her sister's birthday this coming 3rd April. I'll get that sorted on Wednesday =) Have a beautiful Sunday my dear readers!


[Cappuccino Cheese Cuppies topped with softly whipped Vanilla cream]

[I took out three cuppies which we had for breakfast!]

[please excuse my over-exposed photo]

[my loyal cake critique]

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Baby Alya's Choc Cheese Wave Birthday Cake

This is a Grand (2kg) Choc Cheese Wave Birthday Cake for a two-year old Alya. I covered it with chocolate buttercream and decorated with lots sugar flowers + Apek the monkey & Miss Elephant. Enjoy!

[Chocolate Buttercream iced Wave]

[Apek the monkey]

[Miss Elephant]





Thursday, March 19, 2009

Cake experiment quest

I'm on a quest to finding the ultimate birthday cake for a good friend Jay's sister, Rin, on the 3rd April. A clue was Alexis' Tiramisu (I have yet to taste their Tiramisu), and sherbet. Today, I shall expeiment on a Tiramisu-like-cake that it shares more or less the main ingredients of making a Tiramisu i.e. coffee and mascarpone, except that I'll put nuts in them + plus other stuff. I'm baking a mini version and shall give Jay a slice to taste to gauge the flavour category.

Anybody who wants to taste/get a free slice of cake (provided that it's still available), just let me know, I'll save a slice for you to pick up =)

[Coffee Macadamia cake - I wanted to give some away, but Kim loved it so much, he insisted that I kept everything!!]

I'm planning to bake a Lemon-y Cheesecake with Lemon custard and lemon sponge layers next week. I'll update on that once it's done.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Dolly's Choc Cheese Wave Wedding 'hantaran' Cake

I've completed my first Wedding-related cake ordered by my former highschool mate, Dolly, as a hantaran for her wedding. She has a Cream & Gold theme for the ceremony/function. So I decided to keep the fondant Cream/Ivory and the pipework Gold. I started covering the grand Choc Cheese Wave with a layer of chocolate buttercream and Ivory tinted fondant yesterday. Today, I did the decoration for about 7 hours since 10am. I'm now feeling very satisfied from what I've achieved for the entire duration =)

I mainly wanted to play around with Royal Icing, hence, the embroidered flowers + brushwork. The sides of the cake are covered in an endless stream of Cornelli Lace (which I found was quite labour intensive to keep that even pressure for a complete circumference!). Anyway, just like any fondant iced cake orders, I did warn Dolly to push the icing aside when eating the cake. The Wave is just too a beautiful cake on its own.

[my sugarpaste flowers]

[the grand (2kg) Choc Cheese Wave frosted with chocolate buttercream]

[a completed 'hantaran' cake]




For some reason, the cake looks very Malay! Not that it's a bad thing =P

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Embroidered flowers

I've already started my preparations on Dolly's wedding hantaran cake for Thursday 19th March. I baked a Grand (2kg) Choc Cheese Wave cake this morning and have left it to perap (a Malay term for soaking/marinating) in the fridge. I'm being more adventurous with the deco this time. Since Dolly specially requested that the cake be iced with rolled fondant, I plan to decorate the cake with embroidered flowers all over. I did a practice session with embroidery techniques this afternoon and it turned out quite well. I can't wait to cover the whole cake with it on Wednesday! I am, however, quite nervous about covering the cake with fondant since I felt quite ill from it the last time. Given ample time to prepare and do my homework on what to do and not to do with fondant iced cakes, I'm keeping a positive mind about the whole thing which I will start on Tuesday.

Fondant flower making/moulding will commence tomorrow (Monday) after I've had a good cycling and pilates session in the afternoon =) Oh talking of which, I must not forget to buy myself from MidValley, a brand new sponge for the flowers (since my existing one somehow ended up in the sink!) and also a cream coloured ribbon to wrap around the cake board. Ok, enough cake thoughts for today. I shall continue thinking tomorrow. Good night!

[apologies for my poor out of focus photo taken using my camera phone. Just to show you my first embroidery practice attempt =)]

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Dark Temptation Engagement Cake

Dark Temptation is an absolutely rich and moist chocolate cake made with real good quality chocolate with a generous spread of chocolate ganache filling between cake layers and then covered with more ganache all over! A must-try for those chocolate sinners!

I've just completed a 2kg Dark Temptation Engagement cake between Fara's friend, Suriyani & Ahmad Salleh. The theme was white & purple, so I iced the chocolate ganache covered cake with softly whipped Vanilla cream. As written in my previous blog, I started making/drying the royal icing Violets & Purple Blossoms since Monday. It was definitely enjoyable especially once I was able to successfully remove them from their parchment backing. Here are some photos of the cake and I do hope both bride and groom to be and their families enjoy the cake =)

[Fresh Vanilla Cream frosted Dark Temptation chilling in my fridge]

[the engagement cake decorated with Royal Icing flowers and buttercream leaves]




Caledonia offers the
Dark Temptation at RM80 for a 8" - 1.3kg cake. Please inquire for other sizes.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

All about flowers

I'm in the midst of completing an engagement cake due on Thursday evening. It's the Dark Temptation with additional whipped Vanilla cream frosting to make the cake white. I've just finished piping some Violets and not-quite-there purple blossoms. I think I will re-do the blossoms tomorrow. This is my first floral pipe work using Royal Icing. I think it will be best if the kitchen was air-conditioned so that the icing will remain of the same consistency. Tomorrow I shall 1) bake the cake, 2) make a trip to Bake With Yen to get lots of cream, board, box etc etc, 3) hopefully ice the cake, and 4) make more proper purple blossoms. I have a very understated design for this engagement cake. I always think less is more. We'll see how things go, and I hope that the bride-to-be will like my cake =)

[left: my not-quite-there purple blossoms. I piped them first before doing the Violets.]
[right: my Violets after I realised that I needed to stiffen the Royal icing]




[Violets left to dry]


[bottom left corner: purple blossoms re-piped with stiffer icing]
[top right corner: already dried Violets. I found them VERY fragile compared to the blossoms so ended up having quite a number of breakages]

Monday, March 9, 2009

Double Twilight-Tania-Bites episode

I baked about 2kg (as usual, I forgot to weigh!) worth of Twilight Bites for my gonggok friend Tania. It's basically my Choc Cheese Wave without the 'Cheese Wave'. Yes, it's a chocolate cake Tania style i.e. Twilight Bites as I like to call it (the Twilight-craze was booming the first time I baked this cake, hence the name). See, the last time I baked for my gonggok friend, the whole cake only lasted her a good 3 days!!!!! I cut them up into little molex (petite bite-sizes) and had 2 containers full. So this time, I decided to bake double and lump everything into an 11x11 inch tin. The mistake this time was to use the 11x11 inch tin to bake the T. Bites. When I turned the cake out, the bottom looked slightly soggy. So i knew that water had seeped in through the bottom sides of the tin. So next time, I'll use two 9x9 inch tins (they're better tins compared to the 11") instead of one big one. Plus the smaller tins gave me more molex Twilight Bites =)

[lets see how long this lasts Tania...last time round (3 days) was only 2 of the smaller containers]


[this actually makes a quite yummy chocolate cake especially when frosted with chocolate fudge! I'll experiment when I have less cakes to bake/decorate]

...let the Twilight Bites marathon begin!...

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Dark Temptation Birthday Cake

Dark Temptation is an absolutely rich and moist chocolate cake made with real good quality chocolate with a generous spread of chocolate ganache filling between cake layers and then covered with more ganache all over! A must-try for those chocolate sinners!

A 1.3kg Dark Temptation ordered by Kim for her 2-year old nephew, Cheng-Cheng, and sister, Joanne. I took my time making the clown, being very careful not to let myself feel dizzy. I feel perfectly fine =) Enjoy the photos!







P/s Kim and family, I hope you'll enjoy the cake! Bon apetit!

Caledonia offers the Dark Temptation at RM80 for a 8" - 1.3kg cake. The taste is worth the price, Trust me!