On Saturday, we had the opportunity to make a cake for little Sophie in San Diego. She kept insisting that she wanted a tiger cake and when asked if it was because of Tigger in Winnie the Pooh, she gave us a blank look. I was then pretty sure they were tigers she saw at the San Diego Zoo.
So keeping the tigers 'looking like tigers' and not like Tigger, this is the cake we came up with. Guess what was the only thing little Sophie ate off the cake? Yup, the tigers lol!
Cake was vanilla with a vanilla buttercream filling.
After a long winter, we look forward to Springtime with the same yearning of a child longing to buy candy displayed in the candy store window. We put away our thick coats, bring out our spring clothes and buy a bunch of vegetable and flower shrubs to fill our pots and planters.
These cake balls were made for a spring party to celebrate the passing of winter and the beginning of color.
Cake pops have become all the craze recently and many clients have asked for cake pops at their party rather than a traditional or sheet cake. I have to agree that these little cake pops appeals to the masses from adults to little ones and having just one is physically impossible. It is also such an ease during parties with kids since they are able to serve themselves by picking pops from it's display.
Having said that, I have made more cake pops in the last six months and Spring Chicks are by far the cutest pops I've ever made. With it's little feet and feathers fluttering in green grass, it is just a joy to made these little bites. This is exactly why I LOVE my job!!
This weekend we were honored to be invited to attend the masters graduation of Ms. Hoong Yan See Tao at the University of Texas, El Paso. A cake was requested for her graduation party to serve at least 40 people and above is the cake designed for her. Having managed to extract information about the graduation colors, textbooks and desired cake flavors and filling, I created a 2 layered chocolate and vanilla cake with a raspberry filling for all 4 tiers of the cake. The edge of the cake board is also lined with cake pops in the shape of a mortar board with white tassels. Cake pops were moist chocolate cake with milk chocolate filling.
My surprise for her was the little figurine studying late nights with never enough coffee and books strewn all around the table. I though it was a perfect description of every college student's life. Below is a close-up of the sleeping figurine.
Congratulations again Ms. Hoong Yan See Tao!!! and all the best for your future pursue of a PhD.
I had the most amazing opportunity to spend three days in New York City with Chef Elisa Strauss in a cake sculpting class hosted by the Institute of Culinary Education (ICE). The class was constructed to teach students how to structure, carve and ice cakes to make them look realistic, which is one of Chef Elisa's specialties. Lots of creativity was brought on by Chef Elisa during these three days and it was so much fun!
Having spent three days learning everything from basic information to cake decorating tips, I believe it was worth every minute being there. We interacted one to one with the instructor and realized that there is more to cake decorating than just icing the cake. It's the time, love, effort and details we put into each of these custom cakes that make each one special and different.
Above was the cake I designed. This cake was white vanilla with vanilla buttercream filling. Mark and I had the privilege of sharing this cake with some of our friends and it was heavenly!! Now I finally know what a minimum thousand dollar cake tastes like.
Check out more photos of the cake sculpting class at ICE with Chef Elisa of Confetti Cakes, NY using the link below. My cake is featured in the third photo (with three flowers on the cake board):
Last Saturday, we were in El Paso to deliver a cake to 7 year old Joshua whose one sole passion is SpongeBob. He had requested a Spongebob cake weeks ago but had forgotten all about it. The morning of his birthday arrived and when the cake was displayed, all Joshua could whisper was "SpongeBob". I think he really liked the cake and I felt so honored to have had the opportunity to give this little boy his dream cake.
Cake is dark chocolate with a milk chocolate ganache filling.
Last weekend, I had the opportunity to design a cake for a little 5 year old who loves ballerinas. When asked, this little girl had told me that she wanted a ballerina cake. Having that in mind, I started researching possible ideas for the cake and most of them consisted of a ballerina figurine (which I was already going to make). So, I decided to design the cake around ballerina colors - pink and white. The cake above is what I came up with.
To compliment the cake, and since it was a party for other little kids, I added about 40 cake pops surrounding the base of the cake (photo below). It was really cute watching little 3 - 5 year old kids walking up to the cake to pick up their cake pops.
Cake was chocolate with Oreo cookies & cream filling and cake pops were devil's food cake with milk chocolate filling.
Tinkerbell and friends graced the home of my favorite clients Rob & Elsie Miller for a Christmas party they threw a couple weeks back. A specialty cake was requested and I was given the honor to design the cake any way I wanted. Nikki, their little girl happens to love cartoons, fairies and princesses and I though, what would be better than Tinkerbell.
Most of the cake was created based on a cartoon image I found online and many small details (ie: birds, ladybirds, mushrooms, trees) were thought of as the cake came together. Cake was chocolate with a raspberry filling.
The best moment for me came when Nikki and her friends immediately screamed out "TINKERBELL!!" and started softly petting all the characters (how cute!!!!!). I could tell that they tried very hard to hold themselves back from ripping Tinkerbell and her friends off the cake (good job kids!!) and waited until the cake was cut before debating on which character to take home with them (oh kids!!). Kids really make all the effort worth it.
This cake was designed for a very lovely lady, Melinda, who turned 21 last week! Since she is currently racking her brain at South Dakota State University doing Electrical Engineering, I decided to humor her with a circuit board cake.
It isn't coincidence that she's taking a power electronics class this semester so I asked Mark (my husband) to bring home one of his dummy circuit boards for inspiration. He did and the cake above is what I came up with.
Simply put, Melinda is trying to figure out the power factor of the circuit while her Professor looks on.
PS: This cake also raised a few eyebrows at Mark's workplace as they couldn't imagine seeing an edible version of a circuit board that they build everyday, lol.
We had a customer today that requested the traditional Indonesian Spiced Layered Cake for Valentine's Day. This cake is famous in the Southeast regions of Asia and is flavored with cinnamon, cloves and ginger.
In Asia, this cake is usually purchased or given as a gift during the Lunar New Year and is eaten very sparingly, because of it's richness and cost. Having said that, it is hard to describe the pleasure of biting into one of these slices. You will have to try it to experience it's imploding taste.
Oh and did you know that cloves and ginger are aphrodisiac spices? Now that's a cake to feed your loved one on Valentine's Day!!
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.
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.
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
I've always had a bubbling desire for designing cakes, and baking pastries. I believe, you can create wonders with a little creativity and loads of passion.
We recently moved to Tucson, AZ and currently operate a home based cake studio.
