Bear Reese

Tum tum tum tee tum too teeeeeee tum... Grin* 

I am fairly (More like VERYLY! But... I am not going to get too over excited, it spoils my calm image.) pleased with my berries (Forgot what they are called, saw them in one of Alan Dunn's books but they look lie mulberries so I shall just call them that, even though they are a little too round.. So you shall call them mulberries all because I am too lazy to walk to my cakery, flip open the book, search like crazy through the pages and tell you, aren't I evil?)

This is my very first time making berries (Now I am getting addicted to making seed pods as well! Both berries and seed pods are SUPER easy to make and they give a nice "Fun" look to a err... Bundle of flowers!), never wanted to try them before because they looked a little tough but after reading (I don't really like Alan Dunn's instructions in his books, it's somewhat hard to read. So I usually flip through unless one really catches my eye.) through the whole thing it seemed quite simple.

Roll a ball of gumpaste, stick a wire through, roll a few billion tiny balls (A simple task but rather time consuming, nearly died of boredom..), stick them on to the bigger blob of wired gum paste, cut loads of stamens up into small bits, stick them into random small blobs, once dried DUSTDUSTDUST (I LOVEEE dusting sugar flowers, I have no idea why.. It's just SUPER fun!) and GLAZE (Anyone want a tutorial on this paticular berry?).. Ooh ahh..

Speaking about the awesome word called GLAZE..

Here's a short story by Karen Cuppy Cake:

One fine afternoon a girl was making some berries and weird-can't-remember-the-name seed pods, there was something bothering her it was the fact that she couldn't complete the entire berry and seedpod because she didn't have any edible glaze to make the berries and seedpods err... SHINE!

And also that the fact that her other foliage won't look "realistic" as well. (Note* I know that girl very well and she want's to win the competition and go to UK, full stop.)

So she got her father to get a bottle of it for her and she started "painting" (She couldn't find a spray one.) her gum paste foliage the next day and when she opened the cap the smell nearly killed her because it smelt like... Note* It took her about 5 brain cracking minutes to realize what it smelt like because she hadn't smelt that smell in YEARS!

Note* Found this photo on the net, I don't own it. I was pretty surprised it even came up!

Anyways, yes THAT was what it smelt like! 

Anyone else remember playing with these? I remember blowing them when I was like, 5 or something and it smelt SOOO chemically, bleackh.

Imagine having to endure that smell for err... SOME time, it makes we somewhat faintish as well, yeesh.

AND! I have a question, I hope it is a good one. 

IS EDIBLE glaze even EDIBLE?! It smells full of chemical and the "Ingredient label" says it's made of (Runs to cakery and back*): Food grade refined bleached lacquer, whatever liqueur.. Err, I mean lacquer is, it doesn't smell good that's for sure.

Now it makes me think.

My all time favorite almond coated milk chocolate is coated with glaze.. YUCK! Let's pray it isn't the the same edible glaze that I used on my berries today because I will still be eating them no matter what, HAH.   

    But ever since I started caking I have "weaned" myself of a couple of my favorite foods, mainly those that contain VEGETABLE SHORTENING, I just find food that contain vegetable shortening.. Yucky.

I get eggstreamilee happy when I see a cupcake boutique anymore because.. Mine are the best, no really.

A couple I have been to after I started baking, their cupcakes make my teeth feel funny, like, squeaky... I wonder what's in them... 

Signing off from another one of my random cakecomp updates!

-Karen Cuppy Cake

How to: DIY Gumpaste rose veiner

Omsk to you and you and you! Didn't expect to be back so soon but I guess you followers must be praying hard, eh?

ANYWAYS (I hereby swear that I will use this word in every post I post this blog of mine.), I was in my caking room one fine afternoon after lunch wanting to start on some gum paste roses since my hands were rather tired from all that RI piping, even though I hadn't started piping yet that day I already was, mentally, I suppose.

Not long after gathering most of my tools I realized my "paint brush veiner" (It was an old wooden paintbrush which I turned into a veiner by using my craft knife to kinda cut very slightly all around the paintbrush handle vertically.) was missing so... I decided to make another and also decided to make it into a short tutorial since I haven't made one in some time and I missed making one (You get hooked onto it, somehow.)!

Saw some florist wires laying around on my table I cut out the day before to make the wired petals and then the idea just hit me. BLONK*

Stuff you need:

30 Gauge wire (Actually it doesn't really matter it's up to you how "big" you want the veins to be but 30 gauge seems to be the best.)

Any type of tape

A wire cutter and scissors to cut the wire and tape.

I am pretty sure every cake decorator has these right? Proves how easy (And inexpensive compared to store  bought ones!) it is to make a rose veiner!

 Step 1:

Take about 4 "strands" of wire.

Step 2;

Chop each wire into three, you should end up with this white wire-y mess.

Step 3:

Cut some tape and wrap it around the middle, make sure all the wires are at different lengths and........... You are DONE! I hope you didn't expect it to be extremely long! 

Mmm... This post seems a little too short to end so lets test the veiner, eh?

1. Lalala... Roll out some gum paste to the usual transparent-ish, chomp out some petals with a cutter.

2. Deep breath* Place your veiner on the petal, use your index finger to roll it with a tinge of pressure from one corner to the other.

3. Roll your ball tool all round the edges of the petal (My thin foam pad kinda disintegrated and not long after I realized my palm was better than the foam pad! I also like the fact that the back of my petal doesn't get that "spongy texture" which I have always hated seeing in my roses from day one! One of the reasons why I like making freehand roses better!) and WALAH! I hope you can see the veins properly, I am a lousy photographer, I think I have mentioned that before. 

4. Add a few more rounds of petals (Continue making your rose here, you may want to skip the petal making part though.) and TADAH! (Excuse mess.)

Eeee... Feeling so slippery sleepy now and I have riding tomorrow, good night me lovelay followers! Huge sleepy smile*

-Karen Cuppy Cake

Chan Tee Lee

Omsk (I don't know what it means but it seems like a pretty interesting word, that I made up one fine day and I think it means "Hi", I think I should use "Omsk" instead of "Hi" to greet people from now one, it would make life a whole lot more interesting, eh?) A thousand apologies for not blogging for a dozen days, hopefully the picture above would make up for my absence, it's a peek of what I'm up to (Not 100% done with it yet, maybe around 80%-ish.), it's one of my favorite tires so far for this particular wedding cake.

Love the edelweiss (I feel like being fancy/showoff-y with color names since I learnt SO many fancy names of colors ever since I got that suit case full of Squire kitchen food colors! Had to open 90% to know what color it was since almost all of them appear black/brown-ish!) royal icing against the.. The... Whazza blue color called again? Runs to cakery and back, puff, pant, puff, pant* Ahh! It's Gentian, I knew it sounded something like gelatin but I just couldn't recall it! A tiny tinge of gentian to be exact!

I have always liked blue fondant as a background but not the "primary color" blue, that blue is an eyesore, yuck.

 Above:
(After browsing through my cake inspiration file for a billion hours, trust me you won't want to open that folder, a mountain of SUPERB cakes will fall on you and you would probably drown from all that fondant...)This was the blue cake that started it all (Now that I look at it again... It doesn't impress me as much as it did when I first saved it, I think that was about a year ago, oh wells.), I LOVE the flawless (Used to think fondant/gum paste drapes were SUPER hard, that's until I tried it, drapes are WONDERFUL mistake cover-uppers! Note* Look at my wedding cake competition's cake topper and try guessing what's under those drapes, I... dare... you.) gold drapes against the I-am-not-sure-what-the-exact-color-is-called blue fondant, it makes the cake look classy, elegant and EXPENSIVE, my kinda cake (Speaking about my cake, I just scrolled up to look at it. My photography is horrible, compared to beautiful goldyblue cake here, sob.).   


Below:
Ahh... Isn't this simple GRAND? I have a weakness for tall (And big, my clumsiness doesn't let me handle big cake very much, let alone tall. Speaking about clumsiness, today would be the third time I stabbed myself accidentally with a corsage pin for this cake competition entry not my entire caking life but just THIS entry, I wonder how many times I have stabbed myself with it in this 2 3/4 years? Gosh... I can't believe I have been caking for such a long time. Anyways the first and third time was when I was "poking" away the dried RI from the tip, I kinda jabbed my finger instead of the tip, oh which reminds me... I am horrible with needles, did you know how many holes I poked in my fingers when I sewed that cupcake tshirt?! And the second time I am not exactly sure how that happened but I usually always have about 2-5 corsage pins lying around my caking table, I use one and it disappears so I have to take another out and another and another, I think you get the point. So I was doing some piping I think for that gelatin blue cake of mine and I kinda wanted to rest my elbow on the table and I wanted to put it down quite quickly since it was getting tired and the next thing I knew something sharp hit my elbow bone, pulled the pin out and it was rather bloody... My elbow was painful then numb then painful then numb for about 3 days! I was pretty glad that I didn't have to saw it off, whew! Omm... I need to keep. Omm.. my corsage pins. Omm... properly. Omm...) cakes, they somehow always "wow" me, heh.

 Above and below:
(The one above doesn't have a blue background but it's too beautiful to leave out!)
Since a mountain of cake photos/avalanche already fell on me, I might as well drag a few more of my "fine specimens" out. 
 Next to "grand" cakes I have always liked neat and modern-ish cakes, there are always something very eye catching about them.

 Above and below (I am feeling in a lazy to type mood, I think.):
Mosaic cakes, no one knows how much I am in love with them, I suppose it's because it's different/unique and eye catching again. 

I can't remember where I got these images from but all credit goes to the cake's artist, your cakes have inspired me very, VERY much, thank you.
I just realized that all the pictures I posted have ALL somehow inspired me for this very wedding cake, I am rather shocked, huh.

ANYWAYS (I still love that word.), you are probably scratching your head about the title or maybe you guys are already immune to my weird titles and words, I hope not.
This tier was Chantilly lace inspired, was hanging up the curtains for our house when we just moved into PD, the curtains were lacey ones some I made a note to make one of the tiers lacey and not long after that I some a post in one of CakeCentral's forums about "Chantilly lace", I was pretty curious since I have never heard of something called "Chantilly lace" (I was about to type down all the names of the laces I knew but my mind is very blacko right now, too bad.) before so I opened it up and TADAH!
Beautiful "real" lace specimens appeared before my eyes and boy, were they STUNNING!
The only thing different about them to me is probably the circles and of course the flowers.

And as usual... Things I want to recreate never looks like the original (Unless it's sugar flowers, hahaha!), mine clearly became some sort of "Rojak" piping work!
I just piped out whatever came to my mind and did some of that "circles", more like semi circles though.

Alrightyeo! Now that you know I am still alive and haven't abandoned my blog I shall be off.

~Karen

Bothers

I mean bRothers, my brothers who are bothers. Weak smile*
Oh and some other ACTUAL bothers...

I just realized I haven't posted ANYTHING in about a week... Oopsies?
Anyways, half way through that very silent week... There was this day when it was raining horses and ponies the ENTIRE day and the next morning after (Didn't want to enter and cake since it was wet and I was positive that working with gum paste was going to be hard so I kinda "ignored" the room that whole day.) I went in to find that...

1. My humongous white 22" cake board (I only use such HUGE cake boards for competitions, they somehow scare me that's why I enjoy making mini cakes and mini wedding cakes! But of course what's the point of entering a competition and not err... I mean staying in your comfort zone. Like last year, I used square cake dummies instead of the usual round because I wanted to get over my square sharp corner phobia...) that I was in the middle of completing a gothic lace on top was the color of yeast (And sticky to the touch, all the fondant cover dummy cakes were too! And it felt more like some sort of icing instead of fondant!), obviously it was some sort of yeast colored fungus... (And the 3 mini bottom tiers that were a "continuation" of the gothic table cloth like thing were fungused up too! I took a day for EACH mini bottom tier things with such a small tip that made my right palm almost disabled!)

2. My black gothic (This years entry is very goth/vampire inspired, I think you realized that already..) necklace inspired,  #0 tip was... was... A black puddle of muck around the round grey cake dummy, with the runny, melted black royal icing running down, all round the cake like messed up eye liner!

3.
My (I think I need to stop saying my but that was my SUPER hard aching hands work that was a cake wreck in a DAY! No one would ever know how frustrated I felt at that moment, EVER.) multi colored, hand painted (And piped.) stained glass window inspired tier separator was another eye liner running down mess with a brown not black pool of VERY watery royal icing at the bottom!
I spent about... 3 Days in total on that tier, all ruined, sigh...

That day was another one of those days where I absolutely HATE the country I live in, WHY did I have to be born in such a HUMID country?!
WHY couldn't I have been placed um... A bit... Higher up?
Not long after, the flood gates couldn't stand it.
And not long after that my whole shirt was soaked with tears and I was curled up in a fetal position on my favorite couch trying to concentrate on reading a horseback riding book I borrowed from the Science center library but... My eyes didn't seem to be able to focus on anything.

Now that I recall... I cried last year too, working on my entry.
In the end my entry only had 3 tiers and a cake topper when it was supposed to have five, I am PRAYING that wouldn't happen this year.
And hopefully they won't ask me to go on stage to speak again and if they do I hope I don't start crying.

Conclusion= I think I cry too much... It's amazing how I did not die of dehydration.

So anyways, the only thing that could make me happy was...

You guessed it (Or maybe not...)! K-pop/Kapoop.
So after a couple of days of full time kapooping I think.. I am finally mentally, alright to start over again.
And this time... Armed with those dehumidifiers!
I have my fingers, toes and any other part of my body that I can cross, crossed now and I am also praying that it would make the 1 1/2 hours rather pot holey (Believe me, I tried counting the amount of portholes/bumps on the way to KL! But somehow lost count!) journey to Sunway giza at some very scary time in the morning and I would be 3/4 asleep so... Errh. I think I should think too much about it right now.

Anyways (I LOVE this word! It's my "change subject" word, I think.), my laptop was being hogged by some people/person so I was getting a bit restless this morning...
I can't start my day with out my "coffee" (That's what Mommy calls err... it.), it used to mean just Facebooking but now I think... My SHINee is more important.

(I was supposed to complete this post last night but my Dad managed to grab it from me to do his Rotary work so since I had to wake up early the next morning, today, for horseback riding, I went up to sleep.
ANYWAYS I am "half leasing" KC now, can't remember if I said that already in my previous post and "half leasing" give me the ABILITY to ride him 3 times a week, chose Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, if you must know, 3 hours a day! Before leaving I mummified myself with... Looks at tape dispenser*, apparently it is surgical tape but it is just expensive masking tape to me... Let's see I had to tape both my ring fingers at the "middle joint", my left finger had a bubbly blister burst, skin peeled out, healed slightly, cut, healed, peeled off and now it looks fine I think, hopefully I won't cut it again and my right finger is fine but I will be "mummyfrying" them forever because even my right alright finger seems rather painful after riding WITH the "surgical tape"! And... Patching up some random parts of my body. For the record I ACTUALLY ran out of plasters! KCC never runs out of plasters, EVER. So I had to use some nail polish remover cotton and surgical tape to make my own plaster and "patch up" my body..
ANYWAYS, I am going to purposely overuse this word in my post today. Since I was "half leasing", full leasing is 6 times a week I think, I would DIE if I full leased a horse... KC, I OFFICIALLY know what it stands for! KC= Karen Cuppycake's horse, HAH! Okay wait, let me start again, Since I was "half leasing" Karen Cuppycake's horse there of course, were no "instructors" and I could... Go clockwise and anti a billion times so I could sploosh in the big fat puddle that the little bit of rain created at dawn! Disadvantage= No people yelling at me. Kinda miss that...
ANYWAYS after the usual 6 rounds of "fast" walking, not the usual "sleep" walking I do with Key, I mean King, I keep mentally calling Key, King today, I mean King, Key, sigh... Started on the sitting trot, it was getting easier but I think I was getting used to the bumps so I decided to try what Zarina and the riding book I have been reading's technique but somehow I... Bounced around even more!
So I somehow tried err... Different ways to sit in the saddle?
After a couple/handful of minutes I had ACTUALLY got it! I was supposed to "relax" my waist and follow the flow but it was somehow rather tough so instead of concentrating on keeping your waist stuck to saddle your stomach! And kinda push it down and forward-ish, kinda hard to explain so when you concentrate on your stomach your waist is free to do what ever it pleased so whatever it pleases = relaxing!
YESH! I felt as though as I had crack the Da Vinci code or something.. Humongous grin*
So instead of my behind being painful it was my stomach but I guess after 1 1/2 months horseback riding... You are used to pain!
The rest of the 1 1/2 hours on Karen Cuppycake's horse was bliss...
So I had a VERY enjoyable "leasing" today, yippee! Can't wait to ride again in the evening!
Okay! Back to the story!)  

So, yesterday my Dad was hogging the laptop from morning till late afternoon from his Rotary work, rolls eyes*
Wait, I think I already said that and the fact that I was half dead without my "coffee".
Somehow... Fai managed to drag me to read a HUGE Pokemon book (I think it was some annual or something we did "Number coloring" too, 1=Pink, 2=Green typa thing. I kinda forgot that he couldn't color very well since he enjoys drawing more I think and he is pretty good at drawing his knights and other mythical stuff, no way I could draw those when I was 7! I think my favorite things to draw then were fat giraffes and butterflies... So I kinda taught him how to color "evenly" and of course teach him colors!) to him, I think need to tell you that I don't read to my brothers very much but I found it kinda fun and tongue drying so I managed to read about... 3 stories and after every two minutes Zed dabaliewee would reply to my text so I would have to run from the hall to the study since the phone was charging!
It was a fun sister-brother bonding time thingy, then me, Han (Fai wanted to play with the uno stacko..), Mommy and Ean cycled (I cycled with Han, Mommy and Ean walked. Han wanted to stand on the "extended back seat" at first but after 10 seconds he slowly started to squat then after 5 seconds he was sitting because... Apparently (I seem to over use this word too..) I am too skinny to hold on too while he is standing.) to buy some Malay kuai (Nice fresh currypuffies, om nom noms.) for tea, Mommy and ean didn't follow us back because Ean wanted to go to the beach and the moment we reached home Papa was done with his hogging and went to the beach as well, unfortunately for me the "remaining" boys got to the laptop before I did to play their Poptropica, couldn't stand my kapoop urge so I asked them to open up a new window and type "Y" in the search bar and press enter (Hah! Auto youtube. Winks*) while I put head phones on.
Then type "R-I-N-G-D-I-N-G-D-O-N-G" in the youtube search bar (It amazing how happy they can get while typing something out..) and press on the first video that comes out, they were pretty pleased with themselves, still have no idea why.
After a couple of seconds Han yelled out: I LOVE this song (I think he remembers listening to it on Machika's iPod..)! It has angels in it right?!
They were supposed to just go back to their Poptropica after pressing "Play" for me but they wanted to watch the angels then Han yanked out my headphones and said: I want to listen too! Fake frowny face*
After rewatching it for the second time he pointed at Onew and said: I like this angel.
And when he came on again he said: THAT'S my angel!
I was pretty shocked that he could recognize him since I could only recognize all off them after like... A couple of days! I think he has better eyes/brains than me.  Laughs*
Showed him Lucifer but he said he liked the "Angels" one better but this one was O.K and Hello but he said he liked the other two better this one is boringgg... Annoyed face*
Not long after the loaf of bread Ean or was it Han or Fai? Baked was done so we had a nice bread and a slab of butter picnic. Smiley face*

When we were half way through (When the "rest" came back and after dinner was cooked.) dinner Han suddenly went "Fantastic Elastic Fantastic Elastic Fantastic Fantastic" (I still don't understand why ALL kapoop songs like putting in random English words in their songs, I suppose that's like their... Trade mark?) and I kinda fell off my chair laughing and choked on some rice! (Got a deathly what did YOU do to Han when we were away glare from Mommy.)
I didn't expect him to remember ANY of the lyrics from the song..!
He sang that awkward verse again when he was brushing his teeth, hahaha! He enjoys singing the awkwark verse at awkward moments...
I hope this doesn't continue...

~K

P.S
I changed my mind about having no pictures in this post, here are the disaster photos I took while clearing out my cake room: Entering crime scene*

 Above:

My "Stained glass window" inspired cake separator, I guess now it REALLY is stained, the grey dummy cake was the gothic necklace inspired one and now the top of it has a photo copy of the stained glass inspired cake's RI piping!

And... Try spotting the pale pink (Un-dusted, whew!) roses.

Below:

My stained glass inspired cake separator working place, notice the black watery pool, it was stiff consistency black RI awhile back... (Ignore piping bags.)   

Above:

My 3 tiers on 3 base (Inspired by the royal wedding cake.) with a half completed cake board. FUNGUSY!  

Below:

At least I managed to save two tiers of work... They are now "drying" in my cake room.

Above and below:

YEAST FUNGUS THINGY

Above:

Managed to save the cake board as well by scrapping off the paper!

Goodbye... My beautiful (Freehand piping in monochrome...), sob.

Below:

More fungus?