Romantic

What is your favourite romantic comedy? I'm a sucker for romantic comedy. My favourites are usually played by Sandra Bullock; like While You Were Sleeping or/and Two Weeks Notice. Yes, it's more exciting to watch action movies but I wil never get sick of watching romantic comedies and some chick flicks. I love A Walk to Remember alot. Never fails to make me cry. I like A Cinderella Story just because I like Hillary Duff and that tall guy.. He's so hot! Ok, I like tall guys. hahaha.. But don't ever ever give me Twilight! I HATE that pale guy and that expressionless girl. BLeargh~

Lately, I've been receiving quite a number of anniversary cake orders. Okay, maybe just 3 anniversary orders so far.. And it just brought back all the feel good romance movies.. Weird rite.

I've been hooked to Pinterest and I keep seeing all the great cakes other bakers are making and I'm really inspired by them. You should join Pinterest and you'll enter a whole new world, seriously.

The first anniversary cake I made was a rainbow cake with chocolate buttercream as requested by the customer. I decided to make a Ruffles cake. I really love this design. It's so sweet yet has a vintage touch to it. Perfect for an anniversary! I used Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I love the silky smooth look of smbc and the not overly sweet taste of it AND it goes very well with this Ruffles Design.

The good thing about doing this design is that I don't have to be so stress about how to make the cake look so smooth. Another advantage is that I love to pipe. The top reason is I LOVE the design! The cons is that it uses quite an amount of frosting but it's not that much actually but more than what you will use if you were to smooth the smbc over the cake. 

Coincidentally, the next anniversary cake is also a 3rd year. Since I was given a freedom to decide on the decoration, I really wanted to the rose swirls cake. I didn't want any wordings to spoil the cake and there would be no space for wordings anyway because the swirls will be all over.. I custom made a tag to write the words.. And here is it is.. 

 

I'm glad that the customer chose to stick with white because it looked so pure and elegant. Again, perfect for an anniversary! She wanted a red tag.. I really love it. Maybe I'll do a smaller swirls next time so that I can make 3 layers of swirls and in ombre. That would be so cool!! 

 

 Till the next anniversary! :) 

Cake, Jar and Sprinkles

A number of people often asked me "How do you learn to bake?" or "When did you started baking?" I always fumble on that question because I always try to think what is the most humble way to answer. I guess I'm just a person who thinks too much about what I say to others. 

I learn baking on my own. I remembered how I helped my sisters baked during Hari Raya. I was always made to do the 'dirty' job like sifting the flour, releasing the cupcake liners from the stack. It was those pesky little jobs that most bakers hate.. I should say some.. HAhaha.. And I still remembered how my 3rd sister and I used to bake through the night. We had those flour sifter where it looks like a big metal cup and there is this pusher thingy at the handle where you have to push to sift the flour inside. I guess my description is bad eh.. It was the most tiring thing we had to do but I had a blast and enjoyable time with my sister. 

Back to the question, I learn to bake on my own. By trying out recipes. I was really inspired by one blog. Her pictures and recipes were so fascinating. I was in love and I just knew I had to bake. You can visit her blog. Her blog led to other awe inspiring blogs where they are so committed to take nice pictures and bake such good stuffs. 

I started in 2009 if I'm not wrong. I bake for fun. To try out recipes and I really wanted to decorate those cupcakes. Some bakes went really bad and awry and some turn out good. My decorations started really simple. Then, I went for Wilton courses to learn more decoration. It was all trial and error. 

Through time, I realised that baking was therapeutic. It makes me happy and de-stress. And best of all, the happiest moment is watching someone eat my goodies and seeing their reaction and telling me from the bottom of their heart that it's really good. I bake in hopes that people can appreciate flavours and the goodness inside the cakes. 

It's been 3 years now since I first started baking. Being able to sell my cakes and goodies is a great feeling but I really want to ensure that I'm selling quality cakes. Flavour-some cakes. I hope people can appreciate it one day. 

I was asked to make wedding favours for a friend last week. It was really a cool idea of cake in a jar. It was Red Velvet in a Jar. It's really something new and unique in Singapore. However, there is a shop that sells cake in a jar. They are called Grin Affair. I have yet to try it. Hope I can try it one day. I rarely have enough time for myself these days. 

It was really an enjoyable experience. Something new for me. Inventive. I really love it. And I knew I had to give my best for this. I made 2 kinds of cream cheese frosting for the red velvet. The ones in the middle is cream cheese mixed with mascarpone to give it more creamier and tangy flavour. The top cream cheese frosting is basic cream cheese frosting which taste really good but not so sweet and has a good consistency to be piped. The minor details inside that jar were mini chocolate chips in the middle layer which was purely experiment-ational. It was actually for aesthetic reasons BUT it goes really great with the red velvet. It adds texture while you're eating it which increases your enjoyment, honestly. And I managed to get some cute sprinkles from Artistiq Sugarcraft. I bought quite some time ago and was saving it for this special occasion. I knew this special sprinkles had to make its debut with something unique.

We went to the venue and tied the spoons to the jar with the help of the bride and groom's friends. The completed work looked really good!! I totally love it. I wished it could have been my wedding favour. Haha.. 

I love the spoons. It was imported from USA, I think..The bride and groom bought it. It's compostable. How cool and green is that? I love any ideas that are environmental friendly. At the end of the day, it was all worth it when people came to me and tell me that it was "the bomb"! hahahaha.. A lot of people complimented the red velvet, even the groom.. I was really relieve and happy. 

I would really like to thank the bride and groom for giving me the honour of helping them and my husband and friends for being so supportive to me and that keeps me going. 

I love Ruffles and Anything Sweet.. on Cakes

I chanced upon this blog while I was surfing the net quite a while ago.. She had a very interesting blog where she will teach you different techniques to decorate cakes and cupcakes. It was really interactive. You could even pay to watch video tutorials. But there was one cake I fell in love with.. which is the petal effect cake.. You can see it by clicking here..I knew I had to do it one day. 


When someone wanted to order a rainbow cake and it was the birthday of a pretty lady.. I decided to make a pretty cake.. :) I was quite nervous about it because it should be done with a stiff/frosting buttercream. I was never a fan of the very very sweet buttercream. I always like my cakes with swiss meringue buttercream. The only thing bad about SMBC is that is gets kinda melt-y very fast especially in SIngapore's weather. SMBC doesn't melt on the cake but it melts in the piping bag when I am piping it. Maybe because of the warmth from my palms. So, fridge is my best friend and I had to do everything very fast. 


This is how it looks like:

I found out that it is possible to do this design with SMBC but you got to be patient and not fuss about some messy parts. I have a lot more to improve on it though. I couldn't get the joining end to blend that well. So, I covered with some pearl dragees. It looks kinda empty on top but I think a nice big flower would look good! 

Oh, if you're wondering how the insides look like.. Hmm.. 

Well, this was the layers before I manage to put the SMBC filling in between. But the cake makes you smile doesn't it? :)


~Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high..~