Jimmy and Shumin

Finally after months, my OG mates decided to meet up. With many of them getting married and about to get married, i thought it would be a good time to surprise the couple with a few cupcakes ! After seeing all the pictures on Facebook, i'm sure they would like to try a few.

I asked Jimmy what Shumin's favourite colour was and he told me YELLOW ! so i did some yellow ribbons and tags for the couple. After I completed the decorations, I realised that yellow is not such a good colour. The words aren't showing that well on yellow. Guess should have used a darker yellow or maybe another colour cupcake wrapper aside from White. 

cos its a little bland ? i suppose.

Bow

Flower

Name Tag

Groupie!

Basic Cake Course completion

Finally ! I've completed the Basic Intensive Course by Sharon Wee. It was an eye-opener to many things especially on how completitive the cake decorating and baking world is. Her class was so popular, some of my classmates flew in from overseas just to attend it. I was very impressed. I mean flying in to attend a class just shows how much passion and how determined they were to learn from her.

my classmates and our completed pieces :) 

so pretty !!! 

the third day was more of modelling the fondant characters like the elephant, the lion, clown and ribbon. One thing i realised about modelling fondant characters is that we use really simple shapes to create the characters. You be surprised at how ball shapes and tear drop shaped fondant can become such cute and loveable animals and figurines. 

oops ! forgot the head. 

cute little bear ... 

and finally piecing the final piece together. such a proud moment! 

my work of art.

Longevity Cupcakes

My grandma is turning 88 ! Well turned 88 last week.
And by popular demand, I was requested to bake a couple of cupcakes for the occassion.
I know how people are getting bored of just seeing names and ribbons on cupcakes, so i had to think of something different. Especially when the older folks would like something more traditional.

Googling, i found several designs that I kinda like and inspired me. So i came up with this !

Cuteness aren't they ! I actually love how they look. I mean i would definitely try airbrushing them next time, might make the pink a little more even. Cos mixing both white and light pink fondant kinda mixed it up a bit and they aren't so uniformed.

laying them out

I made the words stand on the buttercream just so everything won't look so flat and that there would be some pop out effect. So this is how it looks like at the restaurant that night.

looking pretty in a plate

i mean it looks quite good on its own and also pretty decent next to a mini cake doesn't it. Cupcakes are such lovely things to work with.

Midsean and Cindy

Rachel introduced me to Cindy who wanted cupcakes on her wedding. We met on an afternoon to discuss the colour and design, i did some sample pieces plus a couple of cupcakes for her to try. We confirmed and about a week before the wedding the cupcake decorating begins.

light blue ribbon cupcakes

cupcakes with names

I love the light blue colour ! As i don't deliver to the venue, Cindy had her friend come pick up the cupcake and Rachel sent me a picture of the cupcakes all set for picture taking and feasting :) 

totally match the cake :) 

close up! 

Cake Decorating 2

After the moulding and carving of the cake on Day 1, we proceed to cover our cake in fondant on the second day. We started off with the round cake, then the cupcake and finally the square cake.

first attempt

Clearly you could see the imperfections right. The tears, the lumps and some folds.. ARGH !! it was so frustrating trying to cover the cake nicely. I mean the fondant just tears at some parts cos i'm not fast enough and it just annoys the hell out of me ! In a class of 12, with majority of your classmates being very proficient at cake decorating is just super stressful. like super ! Everyone is just so good at it!

covering cupcake ! 

Next up ! cover my mega cupcake !! looks pretty good after its been covered up! i mean it really looks like shit before. Now it's just a cupcake with massive buttercream on the top. hur hur.

From the boring white to this !!! so pretty right ! the best part about it is using the strips make things looks so much better and also covers all the flaws ! haha :))) 

We even had time to build up the cake today ! 

Check out all the beautiful cakes !! 

Cake Decorating

i finally understood why people charged so much for tiered wedding cakes.

I mean going to class today made me realised the amount of effort and time needed to make a tiered cake. The class is 3 days long for a relatively simple design. I can only imagine if the design was more elaborate how much more work is needed and the time taken to mould and carve the cake. Not to mention the mess it creates and the amount of clean up needed. 

It really doesn't make sense to charge anything less than $300 only because its really alot of work ! like to much till i didn't find it enjoying, it was kind of pissing me off. Plus to keep the cake in shape, you gotta keep the air con running which adds to the cost of the cake ! 

Just check out the mess it creates !! bleh ~

covering the cake with ganache

finally covered the cake !

carving the cake for shape

its suppose to be shaped like a cupcake

Black and White Wedding Cupcakes ?

Ever thought how they would look like ? PC wanted me to do this for her 2 friends that were getting married at about the same time. As they all belong to the same clique, she thought it will be pretty cool.

So i gave some thought to black and white and this was the end result. Pardon the fuzzy image, my Sony Ericsson does throw tantrums at times.

black and white

Showed her the design for approval and what i got was a ... "i think we shouldn't do black and white doesn't seem very auspicious". Nearly flipped when i heard that cos i asked a couple of times and was only told after i completed everything. -.-"

Given the limited time to redo the designs, i mean i can only be glad she wanted only 12 cupcakes. anything more might have just killed me.

Changed the colours of the flowers and ribbons, got the ok from her and TADAH  !

Practice Makes Perfect

They always say practice makes perfect, don't ask me who are THEY, cos i have no idea too. But given that the fondant ribbons looked so pretty, I just had to make them for some colleagues that were bugging me for weeks on, "why we see on Facebook, you never make for us??! "

So i thought it was the perfect opportunity to test out my skills on making ribbons.

And my cuppies are ready to go ! I tried varying the designs by adding some flowers. Since i was baking, and the time taken to bake 6 and 18 were the same, i made some extras for the Odac peeps !

too lazy to take a nice pic 

Green and Purple

Then my aunt decided I could do some cupcakes for her friend whose favourite colours were Green and Purple. very Mardi Gras i would say and totally the same colour theme i had for my 21st !! 

At first we couldn't decide if green cups were better or white were better. Ended up with green as the white was too plain. (i guess) i quite like the simplicity of it though.

And finally baked the cake, circled the buttercream and the cuppies are ready to leave !

Will never forget how i forgot to collect payment for this. bleh !

Birthday for Boys

Given the big family that i'm in i do have a lot of cousins, following the wedding cupcakes, other more gutsy cousins decide that it was worth giving me the opportunity to test out on their events. Haha. 

So I checked out what was my nephew's favourites and came up with something. Cars ! 

i know how they look like cash registers

 After the completion of the body of my cars, I sent the pictures over to various individuals to make a guess one just what it is and some of the response "cash register ??, shoes ?? what the hell is it ? ? " So i put on the wheels and sent it over again.

TADAH ! with wheels

And for Mr GRumpy, a Happy 3rd Birthday with Car cupcakes : )

the fire engine was just in case my car cupcakes failed. which of course it did not.

First Project

After attending a few cupcake decoration classes, my cousin was confident enough to let me bake for his wedding. So i actually spend weeks thinking of a simple design that would complement his tiered wedding cake. I know how simple this looks to many people, but it being my first project, i was super excited. 

name tags

 First of all, i was a noob. As i was doing the tags, i got a little lazy and thought i could make them in different lengths first and then slowly revised them later. Of course later when they harden, i clearly was not able to make any more changes resulting in the tags being different in length. hur hur.

When i finally completed the tags, i decided we needed a sample piece just to be sure that they liked the design. Once confirmed, the mass production begins a week later!

Cuppies !!!

Finally, only managed a pic after everything was done, of course there were more cupcakes, just that after this shot, i had to bring the rest of them out for arrangement.