MyVi Novelty Birthday Cake for Pn Ida

Ida ordered this MyVi birthday cake to celebrate her husband Miey's birthday. This was one of the "express cakes" that I had made. The chocolate cake was baked a day earlier, I frosted it the next evening on the day of pickup after I finished work. I modelled the cake after Sham's MyVi, which was quite fortunate because I didn't have to go out to do my research. From the picts I took of Sham's car, I first cutout the shape, then frosted the whole cake with buttercream. Miey's actual car was silver, but I couldn't use metallic colours for buttercream, so I used light grey instead. I finished the cake by 10.30pm right on time. Ida came to collect the cake right after and celebrated her husband's birthday at the stroke of midnight. As Ida's sister Nora said, "Kek kereta MyVi tu dah jadi kereta potong malam tadi!". Cute. :)

Upright Doll Cake for Little Shereen

 

Little Shereen is turning 5?! Gosh, time does fly fast. Shereen is my bff Shen's eldest daughter. She's such an adorable little doll and a friendly one too! 

For her 5th birthday, she made a request to her mom that she would like a doll cake. So mummy Shen ordered this special choc moist upright doll cake for the birthday girl. I would usually recommend it for a party with 30 - 50 people. Shen didn't realize that the cake would be that BIG. 

I heard Shereen was so excited with her cake that she wanted to cut it as soon as they reached home. She's just too cute! Shen and family celebrated Shereen's birthday the next day and well... they had birthday cake leftovers for many days after that! I understand that Shen is now dieting hard to loose all the weight gained from eating Shereen's leftover birthday cake. :)

Red Velvet Cake for Puan Azrena Azizan

9" round Red Velvet Cake, frosted with creamcheese and walnut topping. This is a very interesting cake, it's a red coloured chocolate cake with dense velvety texture. A little tangy from the sourmilk and white vinegar. The first recipe I tested didn't quite meet my expectation, it was dry, bland and too tangy. I tested several more recipes until I found the perfect one that uses sourmilk. I just love it, it's moist and has a rich flavour. The sourmilk makes the cake moist. It must always be stored in the fridge and is best eaten slightly cold. Not too cold because it will be hard. Take it out of the fridge about 1 hour before serving.

Baked Lemon Cheesecake for Pn. Farrah of Ampang

Simple baked lemon cheesecake with chocolate cookie crust. 9" round. One of my favourite!

Wedding Doorgifts Cupcakes Ordered by Ms. Ida of Taman Permata

 

My new friend Ida ordered these cupcakes on behalf of her friend. She requested a simple design only with the names of the bride & groom. The cuppies were to be placed in the dome covered 4oz pudding cup, and given to guests as doorgifts.

I baked 100 pcs of vanilla (with a dash of mixed spice) cupcakes two days ahead, and decorated them with Superbibik the next night. It took us 4.5 hours to complete all 100 pcs of cuppies. I couldn't have done it without Bibik. I heard from Ida that the customer and guests loved the cuppies. Alhamdulillah! Thanks Ida for trusting in me, I extemely enjoyed making the cuppies!

Hantaran Bertunang Cupcakes for Shahariah

My friend Sha booked me a month early to do these cupcakes for her brother's engagement. The theme was green and white, with a dash of gold. I baked orange flavoured butter cupcakes and made the roses 2 days ahead. Kept the cupcakes in the fridge until the nite before delivery. I like the peace and quiet of the wee hours to do my cakes and to get inspiration for the design. Since it was Saturday, I rose at 4am to decorate the cuppies and finished at 10.30am, the cuppies arrived just in time at Sha's Setapak Jaya house.

It's a Saturday (12 Feb 2011) I won't forget. After dropping the cuppies, I took the children for brunch at our favourite mamak restaurant after which we went straight home. Right after 11.30am my niece Farrah came over to pick up her steamed fruitcake and baked cheesecake. Around this time I "chatted" a bit with my aunt, Makcik on Facebook. At around 12.30pm I dozed off and slept until 3.30pm. I had just finished my late lunch when I received a call from my mother who told me that Uncle Carl (Makcik's husband) had passed away earlier. It was a shock to me because I had just chatted with Makcik right before I went to sleep.

Uncle Carl was a wonderful person. He was thoughtful and kind especially to my children. He adored them and they adored him, which was why Sham and I always had a soft spot for him. He was very supportive of GG Home Biz, always encouraging and motivating. Now when I make my classic carrot cake, I will always think of him. It was his favourite. Thank you Uncle Carl for coming into our lives, even for a short time. Thank you for bringing us all together. I will always cherish the memories we had with you. Al-Fatihah...

Hantaran Bertunang Cake for Wahidatunnisa

 

Wahid was an old schoolmate and hostel-mate from my Seremban days. She messaged me about 3 weeks ago to order a hantaran tunang cake for her sister. Initially the colour theme was green and white, then one week ago Wahid called to inform that the colour theme had changed to pink and cream. Fortunately I haven't started with the roses as I was still thinking of a design for the cake. 

I started with the project on Hari Wilayah holiday, baked the 8" vanilla butter cake in the morning. While it cooled, I started with the pink flowers, leaves and white fillers. I decided to make 8 medium sized roses for a small bouquet to be arranged on top of the cake. I left them to dry for a few hours. Later in the evening, I started with covering the cake with cream coloured fondant. While arranging the pink roses I realised that I didn't have enough flowers to fill out the bouquet, so anxiously I made more roses (at the same time hoping that they would quickly harden). I had to work the next day and did not intend to stay up all night to do the cake.

I thought it would be nice to add more colours to the bouquet too, not contrasting ones, just a bit of pastel yellow and cream hues. First I made 5 yellowish cream roses, and guess what, they were still not enough. At the last minute I made 3 more light cream flowers. In all, I made 16 roses for this cake, and in record time (one and half hours for the 2nd batch)! I had wanted to make a simple bouquet but it ended up to be quite an elaborate one because I made the roses too small. Makcik dropped by as I was finishing up. She suggested that I add a bit of detail at the foot of the cake. She loved the royal icing dots that I did on a previous fondant cake, hence the dainty polka dot border. Thanks for the great suggestion Makcik! The cake was finally finished at 11pm.

For all the exasperation, I was very pleased with the end result. It was all trial and error, which I will definitely take note for future projects. I learn new things every time I make a new design, the challenges made cake decorating all the more exciting for me. Wahid, thanks ya for believing in me. Great to see you again!

Birthday Cake with Custom Edible for Baiti

 

I received  a call from Baiti of Cheras approximately a week ago to order a chocolate birthday cake for her younger siblings. She wanted to surprise them with a special cake with a picture of them on top. I asked Baiti to email me a pict of them so I could edit and forward to the printer. Received the picture but it was a bit too small, I enlarged it as far as I could (I need at least 500kb for cake sized edible image), added the texts and quickly forwarded it to be printed.

It was raining all day on Sunday (which was really weird because it's supposed to be dry and windy around CNY season) when I made the cake. I baked a 9" Devil's Food cake (I love this cake!), frosted it with buttercream and placed the image on top. I chose to use white buttercream so the picture would be the focal point of the cake. I thought if I add too much colours, the cake would look a little "semak" (crowded) because of the strong background colour of the image. Doing the buttercream decoration was the most fun part, did the basketweave on the sides, trimmed it with shellwork edging, and the rope on top.

Baiti dropped by in the afternoon (it was raining cats and dogs!) after her class in Shah Alam to collect the cake. As it turned out, Baiti was my sis Elin's ex-BBGS school mate. I'm glad Baiti loved the cake, so were her siblings, I had a good time making it too, on that cold rainy Sunday.