Sunday, December 20, 2009

Pirouette Garden














The biggest challenge of my baking career came when we (my husband and I) decided that I should make our wedding cake. I thought about it long and hard and decided that since this would be a once in a lifetime opportunity, I'd do it.

Mark and I decided to have a small (50 person) family and friends occasion and was held at the Church of the Epiphany, Plymouth, MN. We were using the church hall as the reception hall so everyone pitched in to transform the 'Sunday School room' to a wedding reception hall. Since it was a small wedding, I basically planned everything from cards, to deco, to flowers, to outfits, and finally to the service sheet. Mark took care of everything else including the reception menu. To top it all off, 2 days before the wedding, I had to make the cake (if not for the support of family and friends, I would have crumbled).

So fast forward to the 17th of December 2009, the adrenaline is starting to pump through my veins. Thank God I had Aunty Anna, the sweetest lady in the world, to help me with the cake. We started by baking the 14 inch bottom tier and then the 10 inch top tier. We then left it to cool overnight and I went back to the church to finish up the table settings and the pew decorations.

Come morning the 18th, we meet with the photographer, finalize the service bulletin, set up the audio system and returned to Aunty Anna's at 6pm. We whipped up the chocolate cream, spread it over the bottom cake, stacked the top cake, covered it with whipped cream and allowed the cream to set. We then started lining up the pirouettes against the sides of the cake, all 6 tins of pirouettes :)

The finishing touches were to line the cake with green ribbons, pine leaves and top the cake off with white gumpaste flowers (made a week earlier). The last challenge was to transport the cake to the church in one piece, and we managed it with the help of two very close friends. Finally everything was ready for the 19th of December 2009, our wedding day.

It was a beautiful ceremony and although it was in the dead of winter, beautiful candle lights, a Pirouette Garden and smiles of all our guests made it an unforgettable night.





Saturday, August 8, 2009

Christmas Cake Toppers

Cake toppers are a very nice way to finish a cake. They can resemble any motive, season or occasion from weddings, baby showers, Halloween and Christmas.

I've assembled a few videos on how to create simple but interesting Christmas themed cake toppers.

Fondant Angel - Mayen
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Christmas Tree - Lorraine McKay

Christmas Penguins - Lorraine McKay

Snowman - Lorraine McKay

Choir Boys - Cake Baker

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Chocolate Box














I made this mango cake for Rob, Elsie and Nikki, who are friends of ours from Tucson, AZ. We meet up as often as possible whenever they come visit LA and it's always over exotic Asian cuisines. So tonight is Malaysian night and I'm really looking forward to meet them, along with Daniel, our cousin and a couple of his friends over some good Malaysian food.

Chocolates were my inspiration for this cake and I decided to made a simple 'chocolate box' for some Bliss dark chocolates that I got. The base of the box is mango cake with mango flavored buttercream, all decorations are fondant and the butterfly is edible as well. Finally, I placed all the chocolates in gold mini muffin cups and into the 'chocolate box'.

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Calla Lilies


















Calla Lilies are very beautiful flowers. Many Asian brides have these lilies in their flower arrangement packages and cakes are designed around these flowers.

Calla Lilies come in several shades. To me however, the pure white lily out stands all other shades and look gorgeous on a pure white wedding cake. I put this cake together with fondant calla lilies and leaves. The cake, calla lilies and leaves are dusted with luster dust and all parts of the cake is edible except the white trim ribbon that adorns the cake.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Care Bear Cake Pops












Today, I woke up to extra cake pops sitting on the counter and my uncontrollable mind started devising a way to create other cake pops that no one has tried before. Thus, the care bear cake pops. I had to make sure all the pieces were dry before decorating the eyes and all but they came out so cute.

Care bears were a part of my childhood and if I had a chance to turn 7 again, I would definitely have these at my party.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Hello Kitty Cake Pops












Hello Kitty Cake Pops - Bakerella
After googling for some ideas, I came across Bakerella's Hello Kitty Cake Pops. They were so cute, I just had to make them. The cake itself was chocolate, the ribbons and nose were fondant and the eyes and whiskers were drawn with an edible ink pen. Drawing on chocolate wasn't easy, I realized, because of the chocolate's oil base. Either that or the quality of my edible ink pen. So next time, I'll probably try the eyes and whiskers with black fondant and change the chocolate cake to a white/yellow cake. Overall, I thought they were just totally adorable.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Gift Wrapped















I made a 'gift wrapped' cake yesterday and it was the highlight of my day. I started out with a yellow fondant and spent the better half of the day trying to figure out a good combination color for the extra accents. I looked literally everywhere for it, wedding theme sites, gift wrapping sites, color pallet sites, to absolutely no avail.

Finally I had to start with the cake without an accent color in mind and as I kept at the ribbons and curlers, I realized there were some extra purple fondant I had. So I tried to match the colors, creating what I thought was a perfect color combination for yellow.

In my humble opinion, yellow is a very strong color and rarely matches well with other colors except colors with a lighter and yellow tone (eg. cream, beige, light brown, rust and ultimately white). So you guys who are trying to have a yellow themed wedding - your work's really cut out for you :)

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Shells & Corals


















This was a beach themed wedding cake I designed. The entire cake is covered with edible glitter and all shells and corals are edible. Corals were made with royal icing and shells with fondant. Luster dusted pearls also adorn the cake.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Autumn Leaves
















This cake was made specially with autumn leaves in mind. Autumn is one of my favorite seasons after winter and I decided to design the cake as such.

My inspiration came from the beautiful ribbon I purchased at a discount. It had a beautiful tone of pink and that was what inspired me to add the little pink flowers to the chocolate vines and leaves.

This cake can be modified towards a 3 tiered wedding cake with the addition of two extra layers of cake, fondant and autumn leaves.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Butterfly Garden


Spring is in the air so I put together this little 6" butterfly garden cake. I used a leaf stamp for the leaves to create the veins. The butterflies are edible and attached to florist wires using a small piece of fondant.

I personally think that florist wires should never be inserted directly into the cake. This is because, these wires have contents that aren't safe to be consumed, especially by kids. So I inserted a fresh flower cake spike into the center of the cake and placed all the wires into the spikes. This way, the when the cake is ready to be cut, all you have to do is remove the cake spike and cut the cake up.

This cake was for a simple family get together on a beautiful spring day and the kids went nuts over the butterflies.

Friday, April 24, 2009

Black & White Wedding Cupcakes
















This week, I had and order for a black and white themed wedding. The bride requested for the pineapple flavored cake for both the rehearsal party cupcakes and her 2 tiered wedding cake. The theme for the wedding celebration was black and white and she fell in love with the simple vine& flower design for the cupcakes. The wedding cake however was a zebra stripped design. These were mini cupcakes and just the right size for a pick-me-upper throughout her 'high-tea' rehearsal party.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Cake Flavors

Below are my most requested cake flavors. These flavors are timeless, perfect for all occasions and are the best for cake sculpting.

Dark Chocolate 
Classic Butter 
White Vanilla 


We also offer specialty flavors below:


Red Velvet
Banana
Marble


For multi-tiered cakes, you may choose different cake flavors for each tier. When placing an order or quote request, please state all cake flavor details in the form below:

Cake Order Form

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Fillings

Many cakes these days are filled with many exotic flavors. Back in the day, cakes were simply filled and frosted with dairy/non-dairy whipped cream. These days, a multitude of flavors explode in one's mouth with a single bite of cake.

This is mainly due to the incorporation of flavors of the cakes versus the fillings. It isn't always easy to decide on a particular cake flavor and and a different flavored filling. Many would agree that for an important event, especially for a wedding, where the cake has to be positively perfect, cake tasting is absolutely necessary. In fact, most bakeries and cake studios offer this as a compliment to a cake order. Utilize this opportunity to try different cake versus filling flavors. You never really know what flavor combination might blow your mind.

All our cakes may be filled with any of the fillings listed below:

White Buttercream - Cupcakes (may be colored)
Vanilla Buttercream

Chocolate Buttercream
Raspberry Filling
Mocha Filling
Cream Cheese Filling
Chocolate Ganache