Showing posts with label Fondant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fondant. Show all posts

Thursday, February 23, 2012

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

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Snow white and Mickey

For this batch of cupcakes I decided to make the cupcakes toppers 2D and 3D in some parts, I was inspired by  some African animal themed cupcakes I saw on CakeCentral quite some time back and I finally had the chance to do them!

The cupcake toppers would be easy if you had something to copy but as for the snow white ones..
No matter how much research I did there were NO half decent cupcake toppers on the web!
Crazy!
I am so used to relying on things I find on the web so this made a PANIC! A little... I suppose!
 
Above:
My snow white forest woodland blue birdies.
Made some bunnies as well but i didn't get a chance to take a photo of them!
I didn't do it intendedly but it looks like that "See no evil, hear to evil, speak no evil" thing! Hahaha! Doncha think so? 

Below:

Snow white! 
(I wonder who designed Snow White's dress, it is the worst dress I ever saw!)
After a couple of disasters trying to copy "Snow White" from the web and the book I finally gave up and used my own creativity to make her!
That's one thing I can never be, a PHOTO COPIER!  



 Above:

My first Snow White looked something like this but it wasn't plastered on to the cupcake, it looked rather snobbish and grumpy so off into the bin it went! 
Since the cupcake topper was only 1 1/2" it was pretty tedious and it was rather heart brokening to see it go into the bin, oh well!  

Below:

After all that panicking I remembered (Somehow.) that I HAD (I mean I still do but I don't read it anymore, obviously!) a Disney Snow white book, SOMEWHERE in our piles and piles of books!
Finding it wasn't all that tough I suppose... I just looked out for the golden spine and WA-LAH!
Was so glad I found it!
I would be VERY dead if I didn't have it, Thank you My little golden Walt Disney Snow White book for saving me! You may return to your very peaceful spot on the shelf.   



Above:
The "name tags".
Both are written free-hand on gum paste with a #0 paintbrush and food coloring.
It was a pretty last minute thing so I had to do it at 1.00 AM!
Yawn! I am glad I didn't fall asleep on them!
I am pretty proud of them although I might need to work on the color combination a bit but I absolutely love creating my own techniques and writing/piping on cakes because I guess penmanship has always been one of my "Strong points".
(I used to write like printed text you find in a book when I was in Primary school! I guess I was/am a perfectionist, well at certain things!) 


Above:
A few of my lucky Pluto cupcakes!

Below:
My mickey and Minnie ones!
I call this way of frosting them the "Latte way" because it looks like the layers in it!

 
~K

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Swathy's Cupcakes

Ouch... I am officially paralyzed on the right side of my body.
Thank you BADminton!

 Despite of my aching shoulder, forearm and wrist (Basically my whole right hand and leg.. Yeesh!), I was able to make these 9 (I..Have..Never..EVER..Made..Less..Than..25..Cupcakes..In..My..Whole..Life. I am so used to having a huge batch of naked cupcakes in frost of me to decorate and now with just 9... Every cupcake is special, VERY special.) cupcakes for one of my best friends and neighbor, Swathy.



Above: I decided to decorate (And paint! See the pink-ish tinge on the cake box? Oh, and I used Wilton Pink food coloring since I didn't have any paint! Haha!!) the cake box since I can't wrap this present up with wrapping paper! I have been addicted to writing like this lately... It is just SO fun.. And colorful!

Below: There are 9 cupcakes but I only took the lucky 7 cupcakes since it looks better this way...
The cupcakes are all vanilla flavored and topped/covered with vanilla butter cream and/or fondant.
Below: This cupcake is my FAVORITE of them all! Maybe because of the rose and colors...
I made the veins very.. err.. deep? in this rose just to give it a more interesting and different look.

I guess they all turned out the way I wanted except for the butterfly printed one...
I need to improve on the dusting!

Anyway...

HAPPY 14TH BIRTHDAY,
SWATHY!!

~K

Friday, July 30, 2010

Eu Han's underwater ship wreck birthday cake!


Tum tee tum tee tum.. Waiting for the butter to defrost!
Cant wait to start baking cause I haven't baked for quite some time :)

Well it is going to be my FIRST sculpted cake and it is going to be a ship wreck with lots of life around and in the ship wreck! I am REALLY nervous about sculpting the cake! Hope it goes well! Wish me luck! Haha!

I have prepared all the sea creatures ahead of time such as the octopus, star fish (Which are stuck to some of the rocks/pebbles), a school of fish and some VERY cute little crabs (Currently the photo under the title and discription) :D

Ok! Butter is done defrosting! Time to start baking!

Should be able to post pictures of the finish cake by tomorrow or the day before! So stay tuned!!

~K

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