The making : Aurora's Rainbow Cake

This is the cake that I made for my daughter's first birthday. Her birthday theme was a colourful one because that's all a one year old can really understand and enjoy right? The cake was a simple and cute design with a delightful surprise inside!

I took the recipe from Sweetapolita Rainbow Doodle cake and once mixed I divided the batch into 6 bowls to get the same amount in each layer.I didn't quite understand why the recipe only called for 6 colours. Aren't rainbows supposed to have 7 colours? Oh well...

This is how the batch looked like after colouring it with food gel paste..recipe called for gel colouring in order to guarantee a bright tint on the cake with minimum addition of colouring. The use of liquid colouring would not produce the same effect.

Now, the challenging part.The Lemon Swiss Meringue buttercream. I was a bit hesitant at first because it was my first time making it and from what I read there was a possibilty that it might fail. In this pic I had reached the curdled stage and was sweating profusely even with a hand mixer.I didn't want to use a stand mixer just in case I over did it. Fortunately I presevered and ...

it actually came about quite well! Tasted light, fluffy and silky smooth and most importantly LESS sweet. Just how I like it.

I then layered on the cake one on top of the other and smothered it with that beautiful lemon swiss meringue buttercream.

This is how it looked like fully frosted.

Ok this is another thing I did for her birthday..sugar cookies with royal icing..here I am flooding the cookies with royal icing.

This is how they looked like after I wrote on each one with edible marker pens.Cute eh?

Anyway back to the cake..I then covered the cake with fondant and smoothed it over.

My daughter loves animals and particularly kitties so I made this fondant figurine especially for her.

A multicoloured cat!

I cut out the wordings out of fondant and added some side accents..little cute flowers and a twisted string border..poked in a candle and I was done! I can tell you it was a lot of work despite the simplicity!

Time to cut the cake! I got a lot of oohs and ahhs at this point. I think the colours bring out the kid in everyone. Perhaps some might think all that colouring must not be good for ya..I say..hey..it's a birthday party and you don't get to eat this often..live a little! :D By the way, it tasted heavenly!

 Even my daughter enjoyed it and that's all that matters :) 

The making of : Chelsea Soccer cake

Today I'm gonna write about the soccer cake I made for my friend Jeff's birthday.I was commisioned by girlfriend Yoyie to bake and decorate a cake that depicted his favourite team The Chelsea Football Club.

The chocolate guinness cake was baked and crumbcoated and then soccer part covered with fondant. I used the Wilton soccer pan to bake the cake.

This is how I traced the logo. I used the pin method in which I meticulously poked the fondant with a small pin through the logo that I copied.

This is how the fondant template looked like after poking.

Then comes my favourite part. The painting. I mixed the gel paste colours with a little bit of clear vanilla essence and painted on the colours unto the fondant.

I realised the blue was a bit dark so I lightened it with some white color to create a lighter blue.

I finished off the shading and the finer details

I added some buttercream grass and the football field look was coming to life!

I painted on the birthday boy's name and age on a cute blue shirt I cut out on fondant..hehe

Tadaaa!!! Chelsea soccer cake done and ready to serve! Hope you enjoyed this. If you wanna see more, you can read about the rainbow cake I made for my daughter's first birthday in my next post!

Wilton Cake Decorating Course 3 : Gum Paste and Fondant Class 3 and Completion!

 Hello again! Well I finally have a bit of time to post about my final two classes on this Wilton cake decorating journey and this is my graduation cake. Truly the pinkest cake I've ever decorated!

 In these last two sessions we learned so many things, like how to cover the board with fondant...

Aaaanddd....How to cover the CAKE with fondant..

 Look at all my hardworking fellow course mates kneading away...my neighbour Sabrina refuses to look at the camera cos she's so into her kneading...lol! Some say it's good exercise for the arms..some even say can 'enhance' their 'bosoms' shall we say...haha!

As I said in my previous post, the bows that I had already assembled got all floppy and some of the loops broke so I had to make a new one.Me likey the polkadots on the new one :)

Aaand this is how it looked like once put on the cake.. 

 This is just a showcase of the gum paste flowers that we learned in this course. The daisy, roses, mums or chrysanthemums, carnation and the calla lily. Pretty ain't it?

We also learned many types of borders. Ball borders, ruffles and plenty of other techniques such as inlays and outlays as shown on these other beautiful masterpieces by my coursemates.

 I'd say they are such a creative bunch of people!

 A nice pic of me receiving my final cert from our lovely and patient instructor Ms. Angeline Stanley.

 A slightly tired looking me holding up my cake proudly!

 Sigh..it looked even nicer when airbrushed with some pearl shimmer..I have to invest in one of those one day..awesome stuff!

I didn't actually take a group photo but this was the one taken by Angeline. I'm actually going to miss all the fun and laughter from this group.Truly a wonderful memory that I can share with my kids one day. It's only just the beginning but at least it's a start. Actually there are plenty more to learn and I hope I can share more of my journey as I intend to go and learn different techniques perhaps from individuals who are experienced in cake decorating. As for now, I am content and happily taking orders. This will give me the chance to hone my skills and gain more experience first before moving up to the next level. All in all, besides sewing (which I still love!) cake decorating gave me an outlet to show my creative side and eat my cake too! Next post? The making of my Chelsea soccer cake and my daughter's one year old rainbow birthday cake!..coming soon!

Wilton Cake Decorating Course 3 : Gum Paste and Fondant Class 1 and 2

 Hello everyone, I'm back for Course Three in the Wilton Cake Decorating series at the International Centre of Cake Artistry. This time classes are more intensive as we did Class 1 and Class 2 in one day so it took four hours to complete. Next week we are doing the same too for Class 3 and Class 4 but that will be in my next blog. This is what I received in the new syllabus !

 This board basically explained all that we did on that day..pretty intensive but nothing too stressful.

 I totally love the silpat mat on which I rolled my fondant on..a bit pricey but sooo worth it...wonder why I didn't get it earlier?

 So these were my rose bases and mum bases..all ready for the next classes.

 This is the base for the carnation

 The finished carnation!

At the end of the class this is what I managed to finish..the calla lily, rose, carnation that were all made from gumpaste and the bow which was 50% fondant and 50% gumpaste. Unfortunately my bow kinda broke after I got home so I probably need to cut and assemble it again :P Well that was basically what we did for this session, class 3 and graduation will be on the next blog..kinda sad that the classes are gonna end soon but it's okay. Now time to plan my final graduation cake! Till then folks!