Train cake

I thought I would have more than 17 hours of rest before I started caking again!
Oh well... Another day, another order, another CAKE!

This cake would be another one of my firsts! Wait... Almost every cake I do is a first to me before I have NEVER repeated any before!

My customer wanted a VERY chocolate-y cake! Rich chocolate cake with chocolate frosting as a filling! Yum yum for all those who like chocolate! (Like mee! I was in chocolate heaven today! Thanks to the batter that insists on sticking to my mixing bowl and the scraps that I got from leveling the cake!) And a 2D train design on the top of the cake for a little boy.

Fairly simple for me... Until I thought about 'editing' it to make it more interesting!

The chocolate cake would be torted, filled and leveled, crumb coated and iced with light blue butter cream.

Somehow it just came to me that instead of a nice neat square butter cream cake I wanted one with lots of texture. Swirls, spikes etc...
Then it reminded me of Vincent Van Gogh's art work! So I went ahead to do some research on how he did them and I transferred his 'type' of art into my train cake!

The sky and hills would be Van Gogh-ish and the train, sun and smoke from the train would be made out of Royal icing.

I made the sky and hills with this method of painting.
I used 3 different colors of buttercream (Example light blue, medium-ish blue and just plain food coloring), plopped them onto the top of the cake and used a small metal spatula to swirl the together! It look SO van Gogh-y! Hoorah!



I made the sun look swirly-ish too.
I took plain yellow Royal icing and a piping bag.
Took a toothpick/cocktail stick and drew some vertical lines (Not too many! 4 would be perfect!) inside the piping bag.
Plopped the yellow Royal icing inside it and just piped it out into a spiral!
Easy peasy!
I am pretty sure you could do it directly onto the cake with butter cream...
But it will look a little messy if the colors got mixed together, so I did it separately!

I will post the picture of the cake right HERE tomorrow when the cake is done!
Please wait!
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Ok! Thanks for waiting a couple of hours for my Royal icing flooded train to dry!
Here is my finished train cake!



~K

Cupcake Booth @ Shangri-La

Another day at my cupcake booth @ Shangri-La has gone by...
I am just sitting back FBing, Blogging and listening to my favorite Pop songs on YouTube.. I love these type of moments of the day :)

Well... It wasn't perfect. I still have much more to learn from PaPa about marketing out my cupcakes to customers!
I am defiantly gonna want to sign up for a booth the next time they have their Rotary district stuff because (Jeez! I didn't know it was so hard to focus on typing when a rap song comes on, hmm. Weird.) it is amazing how much I learn from that 3 days at my cupcake booth!
I hope to improve MUCH more the next time!

Nothing exciting happened on the first day, it was rather DULL actually!
There wasn't much sales, I don't know why!
It was REALLY disappointing!

You (Oh this song is catchy! I have got to sing and dance along to it! 5 minutes!) could say today was quiet innnterrresttinggg!
I stayed up till 2 AM baking this time for the booth because I made a vow to myself that I would always bake my cupcakes on the day it self!
And I had to wake up at 6 AM which is totally and utterly CRAZY!
Sigh..! But at least I made it to the end of today!
The morning went by slooooowly and really paaaaiiiinfully!
Half of the time I felt like dozing off and my head landing on the boxes of cakes/cupcakes! Haha!

PaPa called me and Caryn (She was helping me out today.) to have a look at the opening ceremony in one of the ballrooms.
I found one special performance I REALLY enjoyed!
It was the Chinese drum one.
It was a group (20-30-ish) of kids (Around my age I suppose) playing them!
Not only were they drumming REALLY well but they had AWESOME choreography!
For one moment I actually thought of try it out but then another thought overcame that one and it was: I am NEVER gonna want to do such a performance like that!
Unless... It is a cake decorating demonstration or something... Wait! Maybe I wouldn't even have the guts to do THAT!
I hate myself being like THIS! Grr
I went back to my booth after this thought and filled myself with more... Not so positive ones..

I suppose why the rest of the day went so well and I was happy was because I met this International Youth Exchange AKA IYE student from Tokyo, Japan!

PaPa invited me into his 'Conversation' and introduced Machika (Yess! Finally! I actually remembered her name!) to me and Caryn.
We 'Clicked' from that moment on.
We talked like long lost friends and like there was NO tomorrow!
It was pure AWESOME! =)

Bla bla blaaa... She talk about her life back in Tokyo and I talk about mine.. She tells me what her interests are and I SHOW her what my passion for life will be.. Bla bla blaa....

She takes out her IPod and asked me what was my favorite 'Singer'.
Me: Lady Gaga of course!
Her jaw dropped.*
Then she was like WOOOOW!*
Her: You don't look like the 'type' that 'like' listening to Lady Gaga! (Oh and she speaks with SO much expression on her face and I found out that 'Japanese' ladies speak much softer and 'girly-er' (Felt SO loud!), I felt like I was acting in an anime! Hahaa!)
Me: Yeah...

I always get judged by my 'cover', if only people would look at my pages!

More and MORE talk!
We spent the rest of the afternoon talking, eating (Not my cupcakes!), laughing, exploring Shangri-La and nodding our heads to our favorite music!

I can hardly wait for tomorrow!

~K

More about my booth here @ Mommy's blog:

Bake day

Another title that I am not really happy with but I guess it will do...
I wonder why its so hard to name a post these days!

For the past 3 days (If you count today in, I suppose you should because the day is almost over!) I have been baking crazy!
I really regret not starting earlier though...
The first 2 days I was rushing like MAD! But at least I managed to take my time baking today!
I am glad I managed to finished what ever was on my plan/goal today!
I find that if I manage to complete my goal of the day I feel VERY relived!

Hmm... I don't really think there is much to say about baking, except maybe I had to keep count of the number of cups of ingredients going into my big huge mixer with a pencil and a paper!
I must be getting old and forgetful!

Besides baking.. I found my new favorite song artist, the name's is Enrique Iglesias.
(What a weird name! I highly doubt I can pronounce it properly!)
I have heard his songs for some time but didn't know what the title of the song or the artist was.
Until I was at Wendy's a couple of days ago and saw his music video (I like it) on MTV!
I have been addicted to his songs ever since!
I think if there was a record for the person with the most times repeating the same video on YouTube I would have got it!
It is a nice change from LadyGaga I think!

I lurve listening to music when I am tired (Like today!), the more music you listen to the more energy you get!
I usually listen to music till I am all the way to the max!

Since I wasn't all THAT rushy today I danced and sang to (Drat! I need to scroll up to look for his name again! Ugh!) Enrique Iglesias's I like it for the whole day! And a bit of LadyGaga's Telephone too!
Ahh! That was FUN!! Somehow I felt like Cinderella, since she sings when she does her chores!

It was even more fun when Swathy AKA my assitant for the Cupcake booth baking and selling was over in my kitchen! 2 is always better than 1! We sang our self edited (To make them sound extra funny!) version of our favorite songs at the top of our lungs!

When our cakes were in the oven we played a game of Screaming Scrabble.
It is our #1 FAVORITE game!
It was taught to me by my Uncle and I have loved and played it ever since!
You could say we are pretty advanced in the game of Screaming Scrabble!
Our longest word in normal games would be 8 or so... 10 is our max!
Its nice seeing your 'student' beat you in it! It means you have taught them well!
This is one game I will NEVER get bored of!

Its amazing how the words flow out when you decide to blog.
I only wanted to type out a short post but see how long it became!

~K

??

Jeez... I am having trouble naming my posts this days, maybe it is because I really have NO idea or I am I am just having trouble picking out what I want to name this post with at least a hundred titles in my head!
I remember 'Post-naming' didn't use to be so hard when I used to not think twice when I chose a title.

Since I DON'T have a title just let me tell you what this post is about...
Ehem..! You can call it another one of my random thoughts that have been stuck in my head going around and repeating it self when ever I get bored.
My mind starts exploding with thoughts when ever I get bored, I think it is just my own way of keep boredom at bay!
Lately, I must have been really bored because my mind has been exploding with thoughts or am I just getting more problems as the days pass??

**********************************

I was at my cousin's place, we had dinner together and me and Caryn were persuading our parents to let us have a sleep over...
We managed to succeed and we were both holding hands and jumping with joy!
Once my parents had left we went up to Christopher and Caryn's bedroom to 'Play'.
While Christopher was playing with his GameBoy we were talking about our last trip to Karak (My grandparents have a farm there.), our favorite Pokemon, Neopets and all sorts of random things!
When the lights were put off we were still yakking along about the things we had in common and we ALWAYS caught the laughing disease (When you catch it you can't stop laughing until people come and shush you up!)!
The next morning...

Wait, wait WAIT! Stoooopppppp!
It didn't go like that... That was just a good childhood memory!
Hahaha! Gotcha! Just loved how Darren Shan (One of my favorite authors) put that in his 'The saga of Darren Shan' (I think it was the 9th book... Killers of Dawn. AKA The one that Mr Crepsley died...) when Mr Crepsley was falling into a pit of sharp err spikes? and fire....
Oh wait! I am getting too carried away...
On with the story!

Well... My stay was actually... Quite the opposite...

I guess I was still happy when I found out I could stay, but not as happy as I was THEN.
We don't have much or maybe nothing at all in common anymore, unless you count FaceBooking as one of it!
So... Nothing in common = Nothing to talk about. Right? I am pretty sure it is true because we DIDN'T!
The laughing sickness/disease was hard to get too since we didn't talk much..

Anyway... What I have been thinking about for the whole day is:

WHAT HAPPENED?!

~K

My clay day

Whew! I am soOOooOo tired..! Ugh! Was out for 10 full hours today!
Boy I missed HOME!

My day started at 11 AM today. The usual things like breakfast and daily FaceBook check doesn't count!

After dumping my brothers in Ikea's Smailand I headed to Ikano where my clay class is.
Every time I travel from Ikea to Ikano I get this few things: People exchange weird looks at me and my backpack and tool box gets heavier every single time!

When I FINALLY reach my Clay class I get that 'Oh-it-is-THAT-girl-again' look... Ugh.!
I still wonder why..
Is it because I stay for at least 5 hours or that I am really THAT bothersome?
I wish I knew!

Anyway, today I tried VERY hard putting those not-so-positive-or-also-known-as-negative-thoughts-that-I-always-have-when-I-go-to-clay-class thoughts (I guess I just think too much about what people think of me, eh? There isn't one moment when I am not flooding my head with random thoughts so it is going to be REALLY hard.. I suppose it is either random thoughts and/or that same song that is randomly chosen from my 'iBrain' playlist everyday. Today's song was Just the way you are by Bruno Mars!) today because I was REALLY excited about how this figurine project will turn out!

Well here is my finished product!



~K

?

Ooh... I am back to blogging, mainly because of Mommy but nevermind about that.
I guess it is time to get back and blog, I missed blogging... Somehow :)

And I could'ent name this post because I am probly going to write about a lot of random things which cant become ONE proper title so may the title be a mystry!

So... I just got back from Sunway Lagoon, AGAIN! Yawn...
I am getting really.. err... bored? with that place/going there.
We go there lots because we got that all-year-round-excess-to-all-the-parks-over-there card for my whole family...
I pretty glad its going to expire soon! I am NEVER going back there again, It NEVER changes... Much!
It would be nice if they changed the roller-coaster track at least! And add higher drops and at least 2 loop-a-dee-doos to it!
I guess it won't be worth going back there next year unless they do a MAJOR renovation!!

Enough of Sunway Lagoon!

Let me blog about OTHER things that have/about to go on...

Was it yesterday? Or was it the day before..? Oh well! Something like that!
I was at my Clay (Not pottery typ-a clay but clay that if something like gumpaste-ish!) clay @ Ikano.
I quit clay for a while and re-started again, mainly because I didnt like the people teaching there! And you could say I still don't but I feel good over there... It's the closest I have got to my cake decorating courses!
(Yes, I do miss my Wilton cake decorating courses TONS! I wish it was for... ETERNITY! I could'ent be happier if it was!)
The last course I had over there was an Orchid flower thingy and I wanted a change this time so I chose a realistic figurine course.
I enjoyed this course TONS!! I find it SoOoOO much more interesting, mainly because I get to choose what she is, what she wears, what are her accesorries etc..!
You get to let your creativety go freEeEEee! And thats the way I like doing things, MY own way!
Just for your infomation, I chose a doll wearing a kimono and her accesorry is a fan.
But only I dont really like the fan so I might not use it...
Oh well!
I lurrrrve my kimono... I guess it's because it is my favourite color, Purple :)
I should be able to complete it the next time round I suppose, I am around 90% DONE!!
The 10% would be a bit of the hair and the face...
All I have now is a blank face, which is kinda creepy... Well to me it is!
And the rest is done except some hair accesorries :)

And... Another one of my cupcake booths is coming up!
It's from the 10th-13th Dec @ Shangri-La!

I will write more about that later on...
The mosquetoes are drivign me crazzeeeee!!

~K

ICCA Annual Cake Competition 2010-The before story

My apologies for not blogging in such a long time!
You could say I have been rather lazy haha!

Oh well...

You could say from yesterday I have entered a living heaven in a VERY unexpected way...

As you can see from my previous posts and photos on my blog and Face Book, I entered a cake competition organised by ICCA (International Center of Cake Artistry).

If you want to know I took my Wilton 1, 2, 3, 4 and the Squire's Kitchen Diploma from there and I got to know about the competition in I think August this month right after I completed my 3rd Wilton course.

And of course I spent LOTS of time planning on what to do for the competition since it would be my very FIRST one!

I spent lots of time surfing the net, library and of course my favourite caking website Cakecentral.com.

Before I took my Squire's Kitchen diploma I already had tons of sketches on what I wanted!

But oh what an eye opener to SO many different techniques the 5 day diploma was!

So everything had changed again!

I found my new favourite medium to work with, Royal icing.

I LOVE string work and lace, I find them VERY beautiful!

After some time thinking through on what stringworky and/or lacey cake I wanted I began to realise how similar the string work looked like Indian jewelry...

From then on I began surfing the net and looking at ANYTHING that has got to do with Indian fashion and marriage.

So all the information I got was put into a 5 tiered Indian themed wedding cake.

I started preparing the cake 1 month (Plus lots of holidays, so maybe you could say 2 weeks of holidays in that month?) before the date of the competition.

My first and third tier was inspired by the sari's I saw online and in Swathy's house.
(To Swathy: Thank you for digging out all your Mom's and Your sari's for me to look at and draw!)

The Styrofoam cake was covered in royal purple (You would not imagine how much Wilton Violet gel color I used to dye/color the fondant!) colored fondant and the lace and string work was piped with a 1.5 or 1L Wilton tip.
The rest of the RI (Royal icing if you STILL don't know!) decorations we made by other round tips which I cant really remember what number!



The second and fourth tier was inspired by the Indian henna.
Since I was very little I have been very interested by the henna because well... I just think it is AWESOME!
You could say I had a pretty tough time thinking about which henna design to use for the cake!
Since the first and third tier was a paisley themed I decided to use it for the whole cake.
The henna tiers was the MOST fun to do because it was freestyle (Nope I didn't stencil on it first.) and freedom is FUN! Hahaha!
Even with my tilting turntable I had a tough time piping the paisley onto the cake so I piped it out as lace on a piece of parchment paper and transferred it onto the henna tier when it dried.



My fifth tier was just plain yellow string work (PME tip 00. I officially HATE plastic tips! After using a corsage pic a couple of times to prick the tip when the icing dried around it, the hole expended it quite a bit and it became the size of the Wilton 1.5 or 1L! Ugh!) all round the 8" square cake.
This was the most torturous tier of the whole cake :)
By the twentieth string I piped my right hand was already red, swollen and numb!
I had 4 inches of strings to be piped on...
I was nearly done!
Then... I invented a new PAINLESS way to do string work!
What a GREAT invention :)
Too bad it only came after I finished most of the cake!
But I am glad I don't have to suffer so much when I do string work again!




After finishing I thought to myself...
This cake looks too plain!
It needs a cake topper, BADLY!
I was in the library browsing at Colette Peter's (Her cakes are stunningly beautiful! And so are Eddie Spence's. My style is to mix and match both classy, modern and chic...!) Cakes to dream on...
I was on one of the last few pages of her look when I was this magnificent cake topper!
Not at all Indian but I was going to make it look like so...
The next few moments the was a HUGE tsunami, tornado hurricane storm going inside my head!
I pictured in my mind to change everything on it except the structure.
It was going to be this VERY gold type-a kinda mosque-y look but upside down... The dome design was going to be on the bottom and the top was going to be some lace type of things :)
Brilliant!
It was going to be the first cake (Oh wait my first sculpted/carved cake was my brother's pirate ship one.. But I suppose they are both different types of sculptures?)
I spent the rest of the time when I was back from the library sculpting it...
It was a DISASTER!!
The top was bumpy and some parts tore!
Ugh!
But the bottom was fine... I am glad!
I had fun making the so called 'jewels' for the bottom part.
Eu Fai helped me make the balls and stick them into the holes I made with my ball tool.
Time to brainstorm to think on how to cover it up!


When that was done I had to figure out how to cover the gap between the top and the bottom..
So this is what I did to cover it up...


While I was thinking on what to do with the so very VERY ugly top I was on Cakecentral having a look at some forum posts...
The was this 'Sticky' which I found very useful because it had TONS of free online flower tutorials!
Then I stumbled a cross Satin Ice's (A brand of fondant) website and they had some videos on how those celebrity cakers use it...
I scrolled down the list of videos and then I saw a few of Colette Peter's videos and I decided to watch them...
I clicked on Colette Peters-Drapery.
Me thinking to myself: OMG! That's exactly what I can use to cover the ugly stuff up!
And that was what I did!
It was my first time doing drapery so I was kinda nervous :P
I think it turned out good for a first time...
I dusted it gold, added some jewels and tassels!
I think the tassels were a nice touch to it :)
For the top of the topper I poked in a flower pick and added some fondant covered wires that were dusted in gold into it.
I got the wire idea from Alan Dunn's Wedding cake bible.
And the Flower pick was visible and rather ugly so I had to come up with something to cover it up.
I decided on a fantasy lotus like flower...
There will be petals wrapped around the flower pick and then slowly opening...
It was a good idea.


So that was all the preparation I did for my wedding cake!


Hopefully I can post Day 1 tomorrow!

Oh and yes, before I forget... The bottom 2 tiers didnt turn out well and all the lace drooped and fell off so they were not used.
~K