Le ramblings of such and suches

Yeah, I know.. It's been sometime since I've last blogged! Life has been somewhat busy I suppose, well I have this crazy family (Correction, crazy MOMMY.) who enjoys planning for way too many field trips and outside-the-house-days and it kinda drains your energy and at the same time makes you value your at-home-time a whole lot more and since the boys and crazy Mommy are at the pool, I shall use this "Apartment alone" (Yes, we have been staying in an apartment for about.. 4ish or so days now, I can't remember cause time seems to be rather draggy here in this very small space! Ah well, at least I can get online!) time to blog.


Oh right, before I forget I might as well tell you what we are doing living in this tiny apartment that's located somewhere in Damansara..
I signed up for the 3 month City and Guilds patisserie diploma and the start of that three month course/diploma/thang starts on March 1st (Just a day before my fourteenth birthday!) and have I told you how much I love attending courses/diplomas/thangs?!
I mean.. It's always nice being surrounded by people who share your passion and being the youngest in class!
And by being the youngest you are usually-ish in the spot light and who doesn't enjoy getting attention, eh?
Oh yarh, that's basically why we moved down to this tiny apartment and I can hardly wait for March 1st to come! Even though I'm a teeny bit nervous on starting this super long course..
I think I read something about a uniform being included.. I hope a toque (I learnt what that white fluffy hat was called from Ratatouille! That show is AMAZING! My favorite line is probably Anton Ego's "Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from ANYWHERE.")  is included cause I've ALWAYS wanted to wear on and one of those white chef-y uniforms with them big, black and bold buttons and whipping up patisseries everyday for 3 whole months!


ANYWHOO.. Let's start this post of with some cakes!

I am pretty proud of this cake, well not exactly the cake since it's just a regular butter cake (The birthday boy's favorite!) that's wrapped in a layer of butter cream and grey fondant.. So let me rephrase that, I am pretty proud of the CAKE TOPPER/figurine/sugar thang since this is my very first mythical creature and it turned out WAAAAAAAAAY better than I expected it to look!

Oh righty and it's my first time using a 'Wire armature" (A metal skeleton in other words.) for my sugar figurines and definitely sticking to them! How on earth could I not have thought about using them before?! I mean they are SO easy to make and they support the figurine SO well! Mr Infernal (Apparently my brother is quite alright at naming stuff to and I wonder how on earth he knew what an "Infernal" is.. Eh, strange person.) is still sitting in my cakery with all limbs and stuff intact, well the ants are slowly eating it's toes up but it is overall still in good condition! Usually gum paste stuff in my cakery that's left without a dehumidifier (A dehumidifier is a caker-who-lives-in-a-very-humid-part-of-the-world's bestfriend!) would turn into a pile of sludge overnight, it's a wonder how he is still standing on his own four feet.. Maybe I have to thank luster dust a bit too, hmm..       

Oh, speaking of luster dust.. I CAN'T BELIEVE I FINALLY USE THEM AFTER LIKE.. 3 YEARS! 

Long story short-

One day after reading some Alan Dunn book, 11 year old KCC decided to go get some PETAL dust to dust her rather ugly so-called "Gumpaste flowers" and she went to the only cake decorating supply shop she knew and it was called "Cake Connection" ANNND too bad cause they only had LUSTER dust left AAANNNDD she bought the luster dust dust cause she thought it would work only too bad cause the LUSTER dust was quite glittery and she ended up with glittery leafs and flowers.. THE END.

So yeah, I had absolutely NO use for them.. Until NOW! *Insert evil maniac laughter here* 

But before I splashed the "Holly green" luster dust on something told me to use a "Base color" and that base color (Speaking of color.. I asked the birthday boy what color he wanted his dragon to be and he said "Blue and red".. Or something like that, I only recall it as a horrid color combination! So since he has a horrible taste of colors I decided to make it MY favorite color, turquoise! I think I am a horrible sister.) was SK's "Hydrangea", one of my favorite dusting colors next to this deep, dark purple color which sounds a bit like "Aborigine"only it isn't and I can't believe I actually forgot what it is called! And a light pink called Tangerine, only I think CK labeled that dust wrong cause aren't tangerines orange? 

The most tiresome part of this particular figurine (My inspiration for Mr Infernal was from EVERYWHERE! I literally pieced together all my favorite parts of dragons I found on the web into one and he turn out looking quite handsome! Not Frankenstein-ish in anyway!) was probably the skin.. Each scale on that monster's body is HAND-POKED! ..With a Wilton 1L piping tip cause I was WAAY too lazy to actually cut out scales! Thank goodness I didn't do that or the cake would NEVER be done on time! 

The reason why Mr Infernal (I think I have got to stop calling it that..) has "Battle wounds" are because the birthday boy wanted him to be like you know those, errh.. Victorious hero from battle thingmajig, umm.. I think I'm ain't a very good explainer but basically Mr-Ahh I mean INFERNAL just won the battle!

One of the things I was MOST worried (Actually I was kinda worried about EVERYTHING since I have never made a dragon head to well, any part of a dragon before!) about was probably the claws and the muscles (I know them muscles are pretty minimal! I'll try to make my next dragon buffer! Hahaha!), only somehow they turned out the easiest to be made and I REALLY enjoyed making the feet! I make TERRIBLE human hands and feet but good dragon ones.. I think it's because the human hand and feet making was TAUGHT to me, I usually do better when I invent the whole thing and not to mention it's funner and free!

Zed Dabaliewee (She's one of my best pals!) came over to our Port Dickson place for the very first time on Fai's birthday and we made this poster together on the day after the party and now it's up on my cakery's wall! 

Okay, MOVING ON!

Equally as proud of my garbage truck! It's my very first pair of gumpaste "Wheels"!

It was rather exciting, getting an order for a gumpaste garbage truck topper (Unfortunately it wasn't a cake!)! Well, aren't all "Firsts" exciting?!

Never made SO many templates for a project before and never appreciated my craft knife this much too!

Again, it was interesting.. Exploring new techniques!

Since it was a garbage truck I decided to go ahead and paint garbage juice all over it and it made Mommy and Papa scream but I think a garbage truck with sludge all over lets the truck have a little more "Character" and after all, it's a garbage (Speaking about garbage.. I think I need to make better garbage bags next time round! These look a little like wontons.. Omnomnom!) truck and I doubt you have seen a squeaky clean one!

Making the maggots (Yes, that's what those mysterious white spots that are on the garbage are!) were fun since I had actual maggots to look at!

The day before making the maggots, Papa and I were plucking some weird fruit thing from our garden because he wanted to try to make wine out of them and MOST of them were crawling with maggots! I think these turn into fruit flies..

And I kept them in a container like I usually do when I find snails/slugs/maggots/other creepy crawlies in the fruits and vegetables! Oh lookie here! I actually found an old post of my no-need-to-look-after-muchie-pets: My arys

So.. Sometime a month back or so, I suddenly fell in love with YouTube again! And this time.. With fashion and beauty videos! Yeah, that's my current secret, I mean not-so-secret-anymore obsession (Speaking about obsessions.. I am officially a scarf freak! No thanks to those "Forgot-how-many ways to wear a scarf video"!) !

I don' know why but I think playing with fashion is fun and I DO feel like I want to go into the fashion industry, it sounds fun!

And along the way I also found some jewelry making and re-vamping/re-using old stuff videos, I guess you could say I was pretty inspired by them and decided to try some stuff out by turning that old t-shirt to an off shoulder half top AND making bows..

Only I don't recall watching a bow making video but one day I just sat down making cloth bows and soon moved to ribbon pinwheel bows! 

As the days passed all my plain hair clips and hairbands has bows stuck on them and soon ran out of stuff to stick them on!

So one evening while we were out we went to a "Pasar Malam" and I stumbled across half a dozen hair starf-y shops and went on a buying frenzy! Who knew it was so fun buying plain hair accessories?! 

Making your own accessories is a pretty fun way to pass time I suppose! And not to mention you can wear what you made out!

Above: My re-vamped ballet flats!

Below: More bows accessories! The white cloth is from a long pant lining!

Above: Made this today after watching a "How to make a bohemian wrap bracelet" (I LOVE bohemian stuff! I mean, I have ALWAYS loved them since they are so "Island/vacation-ish"!) about a week back, only I made it without that troublesome threading!

-Karen Cuppy Cake

Gingerbread man workshop

Well I have to say this workshop (My 2nd workshop that consists of little kiddeos, the first would be the cupcake one from the previous "baking camp".) was rather.. Ill-prepared, well to me since I hadn't even finished clearing up from the last one, as in put the cupcake trays back into the cupboard type of clearing up!

Since this was my second time round I knew what to err.. Put in front of the kids? Fondant was a bit messy and too much instructions, apparently instructions and kids don't mix to well, heh, how could I have known?!
I used to LOVE instructions when I was err "their" age, maybe that's because I went to school and didn't know how to think for myself..

So ANYHOO (Still love that word, HAH!), preparing for the gingerbread man workshop wasn't as tedious as the fondant cupcake one since all I had to do was prepare the royal icing, both stiff and run-out consistency for outlining and flooding and LOADS of sprinkles!!
In case you were wondering the baking of the gingerbread man cookies were done by a homeschooling Dad, the cupcakes from the previous one were too!

Decided there weren't enough sprinkles so the entire day before the workshop me and Bloo, did quite alot of "plunging" with my tiny stars, flowers, hearts and circle plungers!
Whew, I never want to see those babies again! Something about me being a "Human machine" that I don't exactly enjoy, freehand is more mai thaang!

I am starting to think my oven is a little too small since it can only fit in like, 10 cookies at a time and it takes ages since each kid has about five cookies!

"Dear Santa,
Please upgrade my oven, make it twice as big and three times as chic!"

After my little swinging on my private hammock @ the deck break, I decided it was time to start icing them cookies since there was a horde of VERY eager little girls in my cake studio, looking at their cookies and going "Is it time to put the icing and sprinkles on yet?!".

Okay, I over exaggerated about the "horde" part, there were only three, I mean four little girls that were in my cake studio practically drooling so I had to save them from dehydration.
Since there was another batch of cookies still in the oven, I stared a private mini cookie "master class" with them and unknowingly the room started to fill up and soon I could barely move and the floor was COATED with royal icing, sprinkles and cookie crumbs!

Above: Me (Oh yes, paraded around with my rather wilty Laurel wreath the entire day! Whootwhoot!) and my "cookie master class"! Thanks for taking the photo Bloo!

So after not being able to stand the crowded-ness and the messiness I had to herd all the little lambs outside to the "Cookie-a-making" table and that's probably when the trouble started..

My hands, actually HAND (I should seriously consider being omnihanded, omnivores eat everything so omnihanded is err... Person who can use both hands! After some googling, actually a second of googling a person who can use both hands are called.. Ambidextrous. Hmf, what a long word, I am sticking to omnihanded, HAH!) was starting to get excruciatingly painful from all that outlining of cookies! And.. No one else was able to help since all their lines turned out broken and wiggly.. Oh well, if there's ever another cookie workshop for little kids who bake 5 cookies each I shall omit the outlining or perhaps invent an outlining machine to do the job!

Oh yes, another highlight of the day.. How on earth could I have forgotten this?! The kiddeos called me "Auntie teacher" (Or just plain teacher or... Just plain Auntie Karen...), I nearly fainted. Enough said.

I guess it was a pretty fun class overall, enjoyed it tons except for the part that my right hand was about to fall off and getting called "Wierd names"!

If only I weren't the "Aunty Karen teacher" but one of the participants! I mean... Look at the amount of sprinkles and the bags of colorful icing-a-flooding (And the amount of hyper-on-sugar kiddeos!)! What kind of human would you be if THESSSEEE don't make you happy?!

Lots of pink heart sprinkles,
Auntie Teacher Karen

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

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?

Port Dickson

Sorry about not being to post in ages, we have officially moved a 100 + KM away from Petaling Jaya to Port Dickson!
And... It's pretty messy and busy here so I don't really have much time for blogging, let alone resting!

My cakery is about 90% done, Papa says that he needs to place a few more tiles up on the wall although I can't really see any empty cement spots... All my caking things are scattered around the room in boxes and the room ALREADY smells of cake and sugar, for some reason which I am not exactly sure of...
I CAN'T wait to start putting all my things into it's proper place in there and of course take a couple of pictures for you awesome followers to look at! And... I have a SURPRISE too! (Once the cakery is a 100% complete.) Am VERY excited about the "surprise", I hope you are too! Winky face*

Oh yes, I am also helping Papa with his woodworking! I love woodworking it's FUN and it's also art right?
Varnishing our new/old (We had them for a while but we never actually USED them in our PJ house.) benches and chairs. I have ALWAYS loved painting (Walls and wood but I suppose painting on paper is fine too but not as fun!), carpentry and watching the workers build our Port Dickson house... I just find it... Interesting.

I need to keep this post short so that's basically all the interesting points, the rest are shifting furniture and blarh!

Tioman (For a week.) in TWO days! Stay tuned to THAT blog post!

~K