Octopusberries

Oh yes, I'm alive, half alive to be exact.
October.. I mean, Octopusberries has been a... Fairly crazy month, feel pretty drained (Drained as I just feel like hibernating kind of drained only I can't seem to fall asleep... Oh gushes! Am I suffering from insomnia, Doctor?!) right now.


It feels pretty strange to be blogging again, haven't blogged in a month (Excuse me, this post is picture less.).. And a couple of days, I don't know why but I just feel as though I have too many thoughts (Both good and bad I suppose, funny.. Had this strange feeling that writing down a happy thought about some people may well make them rather unhappy. Shrug*) clogged up in my head because I am too afraid to write down down just in case they hurt anyone, the last thing I would want to do is hurt someone just because of MY thoughts, so yeah.. Am on this blog or not to blog about kinda "thang" (Sorry, new favorite word.) so maybe I should start writing in a diary or something again and usually when I do, I abandon my blog, like I did with my previous one, and the one before that and the one before that, hahaha! And if I blog I abandon my diary, I'm such a horrible multi-tasker!

October (As in after the wedding cake competition, October.) at a glace-

1. Baked mint and basil chicken pie.

A so called invention of mine I suppose, just plucked mint and basil from our herb garden and threw it into the pie filling!
Somehow managed to lose my pie recipe (Haven't baked pie in a long time because I kinda put too much sugar in the filling the last time I made it! So that's why I didn't bother looking for the recipe all this while!), both the filling and the pastry, HEY! That rhymes!
And apparently a huge chuck off the middle of my recipe book as well, I don't recall doing any ripping... I think the poor batter splattered, gravy dripped, torn book is trying to say it needs replacing some time soon!
So I found a new pastry and filling recipe, decided to give it a go and of course, do what I do best..
NEVER FOLLOW THE RECIPE!
I just somehow enjoy seeing what turns out if I use white pepper instead of black, water instead of white wine, refrigerating the dough an hour less or just freezing it, adding strange ingredients (At least now you get how it became mint and basil pie!) into it instead of being a slave to the recipe...

Planned to make it a tutorial but I only got pictures till the end of making the filling, the putting-the-pastry-into-the-pie part was the part I was supposed to make a tutorial off, not the filling part because.. How WRONG can you get with chicken pie filling?!

Well until I make a proper tutorial (Found a picture of this typa pie somewhere and decided to give it a go!)- Roll out pastry, cut into 3 1/2"x 3 1/2" squares or however big you want your pies to be, I like mine small and cute!, scoop and put a blob of filling into the center, take all corners, one at a time and fold it into the center, you may need to pinch them together a bit to keep the pastry from flooping out or letting the filling ooze out while baking so absolutely NO holes, please!, roll out more dough, Cut out four leafs with some random leaf cutter, (This is pretty darn optional...) use a cocktail stick and make an indentation from one tip of the leaf to the other, use some pie glaze AKA egg yolk to stick them down on the lines, roll and cut out a flower, place in the middle, TADAH.

That was pretty much the funnest pie I ever made! ... Even though I still preferred my "old" (Funny.. Whenever I use ", I see little bunnies.. Must.be.seeing.things.) filling better but the new crust was better, Papa says at least the pastry is EDIBLE (I omitted the yogurt this time, I guess it made the pastry.. Crunchier?) this time... Well, I don't remember it being all THAT bad, sobas (KCC language for, sob! And I absolutarlee LOVE soba! Okay, moving on..).
Hmm, I think they are pretty perfect for Christmas! Nice, square little edible presents!
Too bad they were all munched up (Or the boys stole all the flowers and left the plain-usglyish pie alone..) by the time I whipped out the camera which was after I had ONE, yes just ONE pie!
Funny how when you get too little you always want it again... IWANTMOREPIES, too bad I'm too lazy. Hah.

Umm... What happened after that again? Karen Cuppy Cake = Person with a short term memory. Takes an hour to recall and goes AH-HAH!*

2. Cuppy cake camp-

Oh pooh, that went by with a blink of an eye... And all that's left in my head is a blur memory of..
Scratches head, pouts and thinks extra hard*

A huge, when I mean huge, I actually mean HUGE, crowd of human beings (We are a bunch of aliens, trust me.. You may not want to invade our house.) entered our house, a crowd so huge I could barely move around the house!
Thank goodness for cakeries. Cakeries = My own perfect world away from the chaotic house.. Which was soon packed with human beings too, NOOO!

Alright, I guessed I lied when I said this post was going to be picture less, I guess it's pretty hard telling a  "story" with out pictures...

ANYWAYS (Oh what can I do without that wonderful word?), early that morning I was up preparing for my tiny cupcake decorating session with a group of little kiddies and.. Ahem. I had some elves helping me, THANK GOODNESS!

Funny, after the ICCA competition I was planning to stay away from my cakery for about a month before I step foot in again but that month turned into 1/3 a month... Oh well, better than nothing! 

Was pretty excited since it was going to be my first time teaching KIDS!
It was pretty funny because they (Well most of them at least!) kept daydreaming and going "Mooooooommmmmiieeee..?", I guess I'm not too good with little kids, huh? Grr.
I taught them the first two figurines I well, self taught myself, a teddy bear and a bumble bee!

While I was teaching the "older" kids the "little-er" ones were busy making oat cookies which I then let them play with some fondant and cutters once they were baked and cooled!

Above:

Not my very first (Speaking about firsts... Look at my FIRST turntable! Yeah, that pink thing right there! Points and jumps around*) teddy (Can't find a picture of my very first one and I am too lazy to re-save it again from my FaceBook album so pooh, unlucky you.) but they all look about the same-ish anyways, the only different thing is probably the color of the bear.. And the clothes!

Made this cake just for fun (I think.. Can't really remember. Completely utter random memory that just popped up out of nowhere= Baked a "chocolate cake" one day with our well, used to be over and it turned out rather dry and crumbly and I made some very icing sugar grainy chocolate butter cream and iced the cake while it was still warm, took it to the dojo and called it a "chocolate brownie"! To my surprise it was all gone in barely 5 minutes! I make fabulous brownies, doncha think?!) and took it to my aikido dojo.

Below:

Bumble bees (Ahem, did I just lie again? Learnt how to make these from Mayen, one of my very favorite caking YouTube gurus! I was pretty fond of them since they were so easy to make, SUPER CUTE and I could basically paint any face I wanted on them! My favorite was the bumble bee with a pirate eye-patch!)! I just realize the cake had polka dots as well! I guess I really liked "piping tip" (I cut them out with the back of the piping tip!) polka dots then...

Above: The "After mess", didn't manage to take any pictures while teaching! If I did my camera would probably be coated with cornflour and fondant by the end of the session! 


Hmm... What happened after this remains blurry...
I remember being err, very hungry? Okay, I'm always hungry but I was actually REALLY hungry, smelling disgusting (I personally can't stand the smell of fondant, gum paste, polymer clay, play-doh and cold porcelain but I DO enjoy playing with it so I have to put up with the smell I suppose..) fondant makes me... Hungry, hmm... That sounded strange indeed, oh well.. You are reading a strange person's blog, if you didn't already know.


Anyhoo (New favorite made up-ish word! I was getting a bit sick of "anyways" so I made up a new word for it!), I went back into the extremely bustling house, full of chitterchatter and SPAGHETTI!
Everyone brought a single ingredient for the spaghetti, so it was basically.. Stone soup (I'm sure you've heard the story, right?) spaghetti! And it tasted.. Pretty good!
It was indeed strange to see a HUMONGOUS pot of bolognese (Wow! Apparently bolognese isn't a "proper" word..) sauce and spaghetti and what was even stranger was that I couldn't even have a second helping!


After some slouching on my favorite couch it was time to hit the.. No, not hay (I wish!)! BEACH.

And.. Doing some tents-a-pitching for tonight's a-camping.

Okay, I feel kinda mean not being able to continue because I can't exactly remember, ahem.. *Excusesexcuses*
Anyhoo, another camp, actually another two, I mean 1 and a half (In the middle of one right now.) just passed.. And my brain didn't have much memory left so I had to start deleting!

Okie, a quickie about the "one" camp not the "half" one, I wonder if anyone who reads this got that..
It was our 2nd camping trip and this time instead of the beach we went to the highlands, Genting highlands, I mean "Gunung Ulu Kali" to be exact.
If I were to describe it in a SUPER quickie, all I would write down would probably be.. "COLD!", Or shiveringish or... Something like that!

I give up with this post, it's horrible not being able to mention any names (Because I don't want to.) and it's getting hard recalling things since I have been dragging this post for such a long time.. And not to mention it's already December!

- Karen Kannot blog Kake
But I shall post it anyway since I wrote a jumble lot of words!

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

Just...

A random post about what I have been up to today and the day before, well not MUCH as in nothing that would really interest you (I think.) but it does to me and what I did was.. Lazing around, one of the things I am most well known for since I am un-schooled.

You know... Reading (The books I recently re-borrowed (I think I have read all of them, at least twice or trice or maybe fifce (If that's a word.) already but yet they remain interesting, shrugs* The authors are Ellen Schrieber, Darren Shan, Cathy Hopkins and  Jacqueline Wilson if you were wondering.) from the PJ library.), listening to more K-pop (SHINee in particular, Girl's Generation is drifting further and further away. Lucifer, Ring Ding Dong and Amigo are my listen-to-every-morning-to-wake-and-energize-me songs and Hello and the Japanese version (I just prefer it more than the Korean one, at least I understand more than "Sarang hae"! That means I love you in Korean if you are were wondering, it appears all the time in the comments so it is rather hard not being able to notice it.) , I am getting more addicted every day, sigh, blogging some of those posts I never, EVER plan to publish because they got WAY too personal, sometimes I just type too much of what I think out I suppose and finally some biology today because Mommy left me a note on the laptop (One place where I will always be, I have a rather smart-where-to-leave-note Mommy.) with Khan Academy open saying: FAI & JY Do one topic everyday! *Start Fai on algebra.


Pshhhhh* Fine. Browses website* Scrolls down the list of videos* Finds "Biology"* (I have always been found of this very subject and science if you didn't know, history as well.) Clicks* Clicks the first topic that pops up* Goes "oooh" evolution, interesting...* Clicks play*

Yeah, that's basically how I went I suppose.
The first few lines of speech weren't too boring so I kept my head phones on, with SHINee music in the background it was even better even though I had to click on the "music" tab (There were a hundred open so yeah, took some time to find out which one it came from too.) every 2 minutes because no song is complete without the music video right? Well especially not THEIRS.

Starts talking about how evolution works* I liked this example on the common flu virus: Okay, so you are down with a very bad cold/ flu (Don't worry I am not voo doo-ing you even though that's my other thing I am most well known for if you have looked in my clay toolbox but never mind if you don't! You are much better off that way not knowing anyway!) and obviously you have a rather large amount of virus that say look like a blue spot with 3 red dots and like 1 in every million may be "Abnormal", say it only has 1 dot instead of three. So since you have such a BAAAD cold and you rush the the clinic closest to you, too bad on that day it has a newbie doctor that doesn't know much so he gives you a bottle antibiotics, so you go home take that amount you are supposed to take and Vou-la! You recover the next day! But... The antibiotics or medication is only designed to kill the blue virus with 3 red spots not the one with 1 spot so now the few or one "Abnormal" one has the whole "place" to itself and it starts breeding a new flu virus that starts the new "Flu season". Goes on talking some more*

Whips out her big fat Biology book and goes to Evolution.* Reads and finishes the whole topic*

But but... I already learnt all of that from X-men!
Like Papa says, there isn't any point watching a movie if you didn't learn anything from it but I learnt this rather un-knowingly, I suppose that's how un-schooling works huh?

Very soon I covered the whole "Evolution" part of biology and DNA was next!
But since I was tired and DNA had lots of long names (I am horrible with long scientific names, expect dinosaur ones but my 4 year old self was much better, trust me!), I decided to leave that topic for tomorrow (Today.).

After that I was just lazing around (Again, I know. Told you I liked doing that a lot.) and thinking about the year so far, did I manage to became as good as Margaret Bruan? I guess not.. The year just zoomed past too quickly (It's not really a stupid excuse, it really did! If you haven't noticed...! I remember celebrating new years and my birthday not a very long time ago...) Ugh! To tell you the truth, I didn't cake and "learn" (I went for like 5 courses or maybe 6 last year! And completely zero this year! I feel as though as I am getting dumber...) as much as I did last year... I thought I would be able to do that and that and that this year.. but nope.

I thought this year would be all about caking but I guess I was pretty wrong, it was more on.. Knowing who I am more besides caking, I think I did a good job at it but I seriously think I should be working more on caking or maybe pastry next year because I am growing old WAAAY faster than I planned so I guess since this year was a "rest" year, I would have to work extra hard the next year or at least the other half of this year to make up for it!

Time for more SHINee, Sarang you awesome people who actually listen to my posts!

Parrot Gummy Bake

Ratatouille

I know! I know! I am a few years late of posting this post! Haha!

I found this on one on my "Follower's" blog a couple of minutes ago and I was just thinking about how I LOVE food as well, I mean we all can't live without food but I don't eat just to be full/contented (Most of the time.). I eat to be HAPPY it doesn't really matter if it filled my tummy up because no matter what I eat I go hungry in the next 5 minutes!

So anyways Ratatouille (I had to Google on how to spell it!) has always been one of my favorite Disney movies, because it's food related?

Nah not really... I love the "Anyone can cook" part because in my brain it's translated to "Anyone can cake" in my mind and how far he went for his passion of cooking! (That's how far I plan to go with mine, hopefully I become as successful as a rat in the future!)   

Or I might just become a critic... Testing out all the best food in the world, yum yum yum! What a nice daydream*

~K 

Day off Cakin'

Whew! What an exhausting month April was! (And not to mention the end of March! Everything was basically lumped together!) I have never made that many cakes in a Month (And a half!) before!

It's a sign that says I should NOT be moving to Port Dickson yet!
Speaking of moving... My house is in a mess, boxes of things here and there and everywhere!
I got a chance to look at some of my caking books I haven't touched in a LONG time!
They were put away because I couldn't really understand the techniques and such THEN, everything makes more sense now! I can't wait to dig them out and read them properly once we move.

So anyways, I completed my very last order this month and it was a WEDDING CAKE, my very first! I was super dee duper excited!
Things didn't go very smoothly for me in the process of it because the bride and groom figurines were too heavy and I put them sitting on the edge of a tiny 6" cake!
Yep! You guessed it!
Half of the cakes ripped of overnight in the humid weather! I cried bitterly (I usually do that when my cakes don't turn out the way I want it to be so I shed tons of tears when I first started! I am glad it is starting to subside now!) then started to patch everything back together.
After 2 whole years I finally got a fondant covered cake with perfectly straight sides with butter cream (I heard it was much easier with ganache, will try that one day when I don't feel quite that nervous to melt chocolate!) and after the disaster my mini 2 tiered wedding cake was patched up but it looked like it was covered by a beginner!
Oh well, lesson learnt the very VERY hard way.

I am asking you to NOT laugh at my cake! Here it is... But first I shall take you on a tour to show you the pretty deco before you see the actual cake!

Above:

So there was the bride (She is a vet that's why she has the coat and "heart beat checker" on!)  and groom and their pets all dressed in pretty clothes on my messy table, I didn't have a chance to take a proper photograph of them since I was too busy patching things up on the day of the delivery!

Below:

Love the doggy! Arf arf*

I took about 5 hours (Or 6) to complete her since I had to roll every strand of fur!

Above: 

My signature rainbow roses and whimsical leaves. (I got to edit them! The photo I mean..)

Below:

I am super addicted to free hand food coloring painting!

So these are their names on gum paste doggy bones!

Above:

The night before the disaster!

See? I told you I had perfectly straight sides!

Loved the monochrome board! (I learnt it from one of the Junior Master Chef contestant's plating but with royal icing instead of sauce!)

Below:

PLEASE.DON'T.LAUGH

The finished cake...

(I put the figurines on top when we reached the venue! It would be crazy if they fell during delivery!)

(The brown stuff on the top tier are paw prints, my Dad couldn't figure out what they were so I am telling you now if you are figuring out what they are as well!)  

So once we reached The Amoda building (That's where my Dad goes for his Rotary meetings so that place was pretty familiar!) and loaded everything upstairs in the ballroom.. (Oh and we met the Groom's family in the elevator! They pointed at my groom figurine and asked if it was her son, I nodded and they said some pretty lovely comments. I was quite relieved that at least SOME people liked it!)

Fixing the cake together in front of that huge crowd of people in the ballroom made me pretty nervous, my hands shook like crazy!
That ALWAYS happens when all the eyes are on ME! (That exact same feeling I always have during public speaking, ughness.)
But carrying the cake up to the stage and watching the wedding paparazzi snap photos of my cake felt good!
Had the usual "You are how old again?!" comments!
Someone also asked me why I am so skinny if I bake and asked me to eat more of my own cake and another person asked me if I was from Junior Master chef! I said "Oh I WISH" in my head!

While I was collecting my (Ehem*) payment (I ALWAYS feel guilty when I collect it! Weird.), I leaned on the side table that was next to me and knocked down a glass of whiskey? or something like that on my brand new skinny khakis which then socked my purple pumps as well. hooooraaaaayyy. But I somehow managed to catch the glass with my super ninja skills!

UGHHHHH!  
I felt myself go red, bright red.
Omigawdness, kill me now.

I hope my second wedding cake turns out better!

What was this post about again?
Oh right, "Day off Cakin'"!

So today started of quite normally with my usual FaceBook, Email (Oh speaking about emails... I received a REALLY awesome email yesterday! At first I thought it was spam but it didn't really look like it so I opened it, it said:
I know ur cupcakes through blog.Would you mind to meet me for interview?hope to hear from you soon. If you be able to share ur baking story. Sin Chew Daily. 
That knocked me right of my chair!! I felt SUPER! Huge grin*), Cake Central...

Then my Mom reminded me that there was a baking/cake decorating sale @ City Bakers today, so off we went!

Her landlubber's loot:

 Above:

I FINALLY own a clay gun!

Hip hip hooray!

I don't have to roll hair for my figurines strand by strand anymore!

Below:

The rest of my super duper crazily priced loot!

Went crazy over the jewel molds! have been looking ages for it! (And the FMM bead mold too!)

Since I started with tiered cakes I always had a bit of trouble stacking them but now I have a huge spatula to the the job! See left corner*

And gold luster dust to last me a life time!

Stocked up my "Super ice" (Instant royal icing! Just add water! Love the fact that I DON'T have to sieve and i can pipe it through a 00 tip without stuckages!) and gum paste but that's not exactly loot, right? 

We were pretty hungry after all that shopping so we went for pie and frozen yogurt after that!

I was pretty reluctant to go maybe because I am so sick of yogurt! (I used to be a yogurto addict! I could have 4-5 cups a day!)
But that all changed when I saw the CHOCOLATE yogurt and the toppings! YUMMM!

Chocolate yogurt + gummy bears + canned longan + nata de coco = The BEST yogurt ever!
Until... My gummy bears froze! It was pretty hard to chew after that...

Mommy whisked us off to Museum Negara after that!
It turned out more fun then I expected!

There was:

Above:

Wood carving.

Below:

A leaf bird which turned out to be a whole lot more complicated than I though it would be!

The demo lady did 98% of it for me! 

Above:

Funeral music!

Below:

Poison dart target practice!   

~K

Quilled Mini Cake

I saw a quilled gold fish cake on CakeCentral a couple of days ago and it looked SO pretty I HAD to try it and it so happened that we were going to Penang this weekend (And I have a mad hatter tea party appointment with Basil Beauregard! So I already thought of making a tiny cake a while back and I just came across this quilling technique, Perfect!) , so I had the perfect opportunity to try out this quilling technique with gum paste.  

Oh and to make the cake even more fun I colored the yellow cake batter BLUE and once it was baked it came out turquoise! Yippee! (That was supposed to be a surprise but never mind..!)

Once I had the cake covered with fondant I decided the white background was a little too plain and I had TONS of Squire's Kitchen food paint.

I had a rather hard time choosing the colors since they didn't really label the colors as I expected.

For instance, white is edelweiss and there is wisteria, nasturtium (I can't even pronounce this thing!), gentian, cyclamen etc! Scary!

I went with some daffodil, sunflower, rose, pink and lilac.

Then painted the white fondant a bit.

After a while the cake got a bit bumpy (I think you can see that in the photo!), I wonder what happened... 

I did everything free-hand (Without poking holes/ sketching on the cake first.) but I did copy some parts from a very pretty (But I made it prettier with a few personal fantasy bird touches!) quilled dove I found on the net.  

   

Since I have NEVER done quilling with paper before but I did read a book on quilling once so I guess I knew quite a bit of basics.

Everything was different if you used fondant instead of paper so the things I knew was no help!

Oh and at the starting I found rolling it up with out squishing it and sticking it on was tougher than ANY string work I have EVER done, my hands were rather shaky!   

So the first hour or so was full of errors then everything went smoothly for the next 4! (It was a on a 6" cake so I had to make everything extra tiny! Ugh. I can't imagine doing more gum paste quilling!)

Okay that should be about it for the quilled cake, I also completed another cake today:

What a tiring caking day!

~K

Fish net

I know, I know! It has been ages since I posted!
Well I actually have a half done Twitter bird origami tutorial I "filmed" (I mean "pictured" in PD.) but I got rather sick of posting the instructions since it was SUPER long AND no one commented on it so I am guessing you guys don't like origami, huh?

So anyways..

Like my fishnet (You know.. as in those tights/stocking thingies.) royal icing piping?!
I am working on a Polar Express train cake and the train is well.. On a icy mountain and the snow/ice is RI!
And.. I had extras!

Instead of dumping them away in the bin I decided to practice a bit of string work (Not sure if this is considered string work or not..) today and I have ALWAYS wanted to try out this technique (Nope, sadly it isn't an original Karen Cuppy Cake creation, it is a David Cakin' Crazy one! Man, I love the cakin" crazy team! They are pure awesomeness!) and it has been AGES since I last did so called "String work"!

The last string work and actually the first (I just realized!) string work cake was "India's Lace"!
The cake (Or master piece, starts laughing*) I made for the ICCA cake competition last year!
I am glad I didn't loose my RI piping touch!
I guess it is like riding a bicycle, you can never forgot it! (After you torture your hand piping with a #00 tip for 1000000000 hours on a cake I bet you won't forget!)

The fishnet is 13" long and it is piped with a #1 tip.

~K

Tiger lily cake

I finally got my tiger lilies like 90% (I forgot to make a bud to go along with my half opened and 2 fully bloomed tiger lilies! Hope it dries well tonight so I can dust it tomorrow!) ready before I need to assemble my cake tomorrow...

Remember the foliage that I was making yesterday?
Well I am happy they dried 70% bone hard in Malaysian weather by 9 AM today!
I prayed REALLY hard that it would not rain that night (It is monsoon season at it has been raining at least once a day! And gum paste don't like humidity and rain! And it so happens that I live in one of those countries that humidity and rain is the highest?)!
Whew... Thank you rain god! I shall offer you some cake later today! Haha!

This tiny 5" (Diameter?) x7" (Height) cake is not going to be any normal fondant covered mini cake...
It is going to be to be covered with butter cream (NoOoo! I hate washing up after crumb coating and icing a butter cream covered cake because of the buttery grease... Bleah.) and iced like my Train Cake!
But this one is going to be Van Gogh icing style on the top AND around it!
I just finished icing it and it looks FABULOUS!
Imagine yellow, orange and red icing swirls all round the cake!
I made the icing colors like so to match the very berry orange-y tiger lilies!

And my favorite of favorite butter cream (Royal icing works as well.) border, the SNAIL trail all round the bottom of the cake!
I really have no idea why I LOVE the snail trail border so much...
Maybe because piped shells are too common and that I find snail trails (Or a bead border, which ever you like to call it! I like snail trail... Sounds grosser and more interesting, doesn't it?) neater, elegant and pretty..!

Every time I turn around and look at my caking table filled (Yeah, it is a rather small table! But it is good enough for me!) with beautiful, flawless tiger lilies, foliage and butterflies (Oh and that one bud that one stinky bud that I forgot to make yesterday... Dry quicker!!) it just make me feel SO super happy that I completed THIS much within 1 and a half years (I started caking in July last year.)!

And the fact that I am teaching my self how to make flowers like the peony (Whoops! I forgot to blog about THAT flower.) and my latest tiger lilies by looking at images on Google (I LOVE Google! I could never do cakes like these if it wasn't around!) and browsing and borrowing gardening and flower arranging books from the library!
You have NO idea how much I LOVE doing cake research!
Doing cake research is no easy task (Especially when you can't find what you are looking for!) but I just seem to enjoy it.. Somehow!

I always need to have my lap top next to me with a close up shot of the flower that I am doing because I just LOVE details...
Looking at everything from the color of the pollen on the tip of the stamen to the veins on the petal TWICE so I can replicate it EXACTLY.
Replicating nature is AWESOME... I feel like god... Somehow! Haha!!
When I did my tiger lily research I was surprised on how many types of them there were!
It was pretty hard to choose one species of it because they are all so amazingly beautiful!

Since I started making sugar (Mainly out of gum paste.) flowers I seemed to look more closely and pay more attention to the plants, leaves and flowers (More on the flower side I guess..) when ever I get out of my caking room (Which is pretty close to never because all I need to keep me occupied for the whole day, and the next, and the day after THAT is some gum paste, and ALL my tools of course and my lap top with FaceBook on! Oh... I suppose I need food too!)!        

Before I log out, there is one thing I would LOVE to say...

I LOVE SUGAR CRAFT!
You made my life worth living...

~K
P.S
Sorry that there aren't any pictures of the not really finished cake yet!
I need it to be a hopefully still a surprise (After describing the cake in this post! I hope I didn't describe it too well...) for the birthday girl!
Check back here tomorrow night for the picture of the 100% done cake!


Pictures of the cake ABOVE!!

Caking..

Today was one of those LoOoooOoong caking days...

For the past 3 days or so I have been working (Maybe 40% out of 60% out or on FaceBook! So I guess they weren't very long and hard working days!) on a tiger lily cake (I mean the decoration, haven't reached the cake yet!)... At snails pace... I assume have been rather lazy these days!

Anyways... These are my tiger lilies!
They are on my dresser, I had to keep them away from humidity (The weather has been SO super horrible to me and my gum paste creations lately! It has been raining everyday with no end! Cries*) and my caking room doesn't have an air conditioner so I will have to keep it in my bedroom for a couple of nights until the cake is done! Sob sob..!

I just completed the 3 flowers and most of the leaves (Haven't even made them into a branch yet!) today...

And baked the Christmas order's cakes today too!

More cake-y posts tomorrow!

~K

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!
*******************************************

Ok! Thanks for waiting a couple of hours for my Royal icing flooded train to dry!
Here is my finished train cake!



~K

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

Birthday parties!

Gosh! I am SUPER tired out!

Everything started at 5 p.m or so yesterday...

My cousin's from Ipoh were here (Staying at our house!) in KL to celebrate their 2nd and 4th birthday!

You could say that I was pretty bored that afternoon because I completed the 2nd tier of my wedding cake and couldent start on the 3rd tier yet because I didnt have any fondant to cover it with!

I decided to make 1 mini cake each for my cousin's birthday party that will be held in Sakura restaurant the next evening (Today.).

Since they liked dogs I decided to make them a doggy birthday cake!

I was REALLY new at making dogs because I have never NEVER EVER made a single fondant/gumpaste dog before!

I thought to my self...
Hmm... It wouldent be TOO bad... I mean I can making teddies, elephants, rabbits... Why not dogs?!

So as usual I drew my cake plan out mentally...
(I only draw my cake plan out physically if it is complicated one!)

So this one was just going to be...
A nice simple doggy cake!
Nothing more nothing less...

Somethign that I could complete in a days time!

Mental plan:

Nigel: Blue cake, blue dog, blue kennal...

Katrina: Pink cake, pink dog, pink kennal...

Simple enough!

Lets start workin'!

Everything was going according to plan my timing and speed until...
I started with the legs!

UGH!

The first doggy I made was the pink doggy for Katrina and I wanted it laying down on the ground and playing with a ball...

I needed to crack my head finding out how to make the doggy look as if it was holding the ball with it's paws not as though it is in walking position but holding the ball...

I do a mentally big HUGE dinosuar RAWWWWRRRRR!





Ok found a silution to that and now for the hind legs...

That I not only needed to crack my head but ALSO my brains!!

Now I not only have to do the leg which is rather simple now...
I have to make that hind leg like a drumstick mixed with a paw...

This is one COMPLICATING dog!

After lots of cutting, bending and shaping the fondant I finally got it!

Whew!

I rolled out some brown gumpaste (It is the strongest 'paste' that I can use in my house becasue pastilage actually MELTS in my house! Can you believe that?! But well I am not sure what brand you use but the one I got from my Squire's kitchen diploma course does!!) to make the sides of the dog kennal.




Some blue for Nigel's roof and pink for Katrina's...

I made 2 pink and 2 blue dog food and water bowls after that...

The dog food was little round brown bolls inside the doggy bowl and the water was glucose!

After our dinner I started my baking...

The next morning= Carving the cake+crumb coating+Fondant-ing!

Before going to Sakura for the dinner birthday party we had to go for another birthday party at Melia hotel...

It was a cowboy themed party!

Yee-haw!!

It was one of my Dad's Rotary friend's son's 1st (I know there are LOTS of 's LOL!) birthday...

If I tell you more about this party youwill get too bored so it is not worth mentioning...

I liked the part where me got free cow boy hats, guns and bandanas!

Dressing up me and my brothers was fun!

Ok Sakura time!

It was a rather typical family gathering...

Nothing THAT interesting but meeting up with family was fun :)

I need to get on with today's post!

~K

Royal icing Henna

I started henna-ing on my 2nd tier yesterday night...
I am pretty pleased with my henna.
I guess it is a GOOD first try!

But my Wilton #1 tip keeps getting stuck and it casues some swirls to look not THAT nice... Ugh!
I am getting sick of poking and cleaning the #1 tip!

My so very very expensive Wilton tilting turntable (That I bought for the Squire's kitchen diploma!) is coming in handy because of the piping :D

I am glad I have it!

I hope to finish the henna-ing by tonight or tomorrow morning so that I can start on the 3rd tier!

~K

Tier No 1!

Yessss! I just completed the first tier and cake board for my wedding cake competition!!
I am SO glad that i can FINALLY move on!

The second tier will be a henna (The first tier was sari/Indian jewelery inspired.) inspired one :)

I cant wait to start with the second tier tomorrow!

But first...

I need more fondant to cover the caaaaaake!

I hope I can get the fondant soon or i will be slightly behind time...!

~K

Tier No 1 Update!

I took down the mini string work and added the lace...
Looks better?

~K

Decorating tier no 1...

THE CAPTIONS ARE ALL UPSIDE DOWN!! I WILL EDIT THEM LATER BUT JUST MAE DO AT THE MOMENT OK? :)

Starting of with some simple string work.

Some err I guess you can call them mini string work or frills. Whatever you want... (I scarped this off at the end. It was rather ugly. I will be replacing it with the lace. Scroll down....)

LACE!

OK here are some picture of the string work and lace I did...

I started yesterday night after the paint on the cake dried and the icing on the board hardened.

~K

Tier No 1

Caption for photo: It is actually DARK PURPLE! (Not blue!) I don't make cakes with such UGLY colors! LOL!!


Whew! I managed (Yeah, square cakes are NOT my best friends but I LOVE round ones! I wanted a bit of a challenge this time round so I chose square!) to cover a 14" (Biggest cake I have ever covered!) square cake (I am bad at covering squares... The edges always tear!!) ALMOST without tearing!!
Yes I was VERY lucky this time...
It was a perfect cake until...
I was smoothing the cracks on the edges with my palms and then I must have rolled that part a bit too THIN and half of that side came tumbling down!!
UGH!!
So much for my lucky covering square cake day!
I managed to patch it up!! (But on one of the corners you can see the Styrofoam dummy cake but it is OK... I will HOPEFULLY think of something to cover it up!)
Hoorah!
I was trying to be a bit of a 'Dare-devil' (Remember the square cake?!) this time round...
I PAINTED the cake to give it a special effect! (It has this nice streaky effect. Just to tell you if you cant see it on the photo that I uploaded...)
SO far SO good!
it actually turned out pretty well...
I didn't expect it to turn out like that but it turned out OK :)

~K

Busy...

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately!
I have been VERY busy with my wedding cake since I decided to do something TOTALLY different than what i had planned!

Thump! Went the cake into the trash can! Yes, the 2 covered cakes went into the bin! (Well I just scrapped off the icing.. Didn't exactly dump the WHOLE cake in there..)

Well so now my wedding cake theme is...

IT'S GONNA BE SHOCKIN'!
So get READY!!







INDIA! (Or Indian which ever you prefer!)

It is gonna be SUPER fun making it!

Woohoo new cake challenge!!

~K

Wedding cake competition prep

Took my very FIRST step towards my wedding cake just now.. :)

I decided on a around 90% royal iced cake.
So today I covered 2 out of my five tiered cake with royal icing...

While I was icing my 6 inch top tier I made a HUGE mistake!
HUGE as in everything I made before could go down the drain type of HUGE!!

(Sorry I am not telling you WHAT the mistake was because it is a secret... Hush! And how I am icing the cake... Hush-er!!)

So after I finished icing the cake I stopped and was thinking on what I could do with that ^*%!$#* cake!!
Was thinking for quite some time and I was just wondering about my color theme with is Black N white...
Then I got this SUPER DE DUPER idea for my cake! (Mwa ha ha ha ha!!)
Instead of just one color per tier I could make it 2 colors per tier!

WOOHOO!

I love GOOD things that come out of mistakes :D

Hooray for mistakes?

Tee hee!

~K

Goals for today...

Today hopefully after all the moving stuff into my new cakin' room (Which was the play/study room and maybe it 80% still is!) I would still have to to at least cover the 5 dummy cakes with royal icing and hopefully do some string work practice on my Wilton practice board... :)

And if if if if (Yeah thats ALOTTA if's) I have more time after that I will do my clay HOMEWORK -.-"

Hopefully i will be able to complete EVERYTHING!

~K