Wedding Cake in Graphic Cutout Hydrangeas

A customer requested a simple square cake with a bow but then change his mind for a more elaborate design and requested me to put a silk-flower on top of his cake. And i was like...huh? what? Silkflowers? Oh no no no! That cake will have my name stamped on it and I will not associate my own cake with silkflowers. So I told him nicely and presented my ideas and he and his wife loved it.

Since he wanted the inside cake to be Devil Food cake so I covered the cake with Pattince Chocolate Fondants that taste really yummy too. Below is the cake.....

Harajuku Girl Fondant Cake

Finally, a customer challenged me into making a more interesting Fondant cake for her friend's bachelorette party. She gave a list of stuff that I must fulfill for her Harajuku Girl theme cake. She was very pleased with the outcome and they loved it so much. To miss darzian, thank you so much for ordering my cake and made it more alive and interesting for me.

Wilton USA & Squires Kitchen Diploma

Yippie yayyyy!!! Finally I get to do my two most desired things recently... I went to the ICCA (International Center of Cake Artistry) and did my Wilton Method Intensive Decorating (USA) and my Squires Kitchen Diploma Course: Advance Level (UK). It cost a bomb to do these Wilton USA intensive courses and the diploma but it was all worth it. Now I know a lot of cake decorating techniques.

I feel so lucky to complete these intensive decorating courses. It was really hard and very demanding courses because everything was crunched into 8 consecutive days only. Below are some of the project that we did in the class.

Anddddd my precious diplomas. Haha!

Devil's Food Cake

Been making a lot of Devil's Food Cake lately. For some reasons when I posted my new design for the cake in my www.facebook.com/dwenujang and www.facebook.com/PrettyYummyThings a lot of my customers started to order this cake again. And of course some of them asked me to change the design a little to suit some special occasions.

 This was my first design of my Devil's Food Cake. The Fluffy white Meringue frosting was too soft for the cake and cannot stand the hot n humid weather in Kuala Lumpur. However not many people ordered this cake maybe because it looks rather plain.

 This is my new improved design of Devil's Food Cake. I used Vanilla Swiss Meringue Buttercream and then topped with Chocolate Ganache and Chocolate nuggets. The Swiss Meringue Buttercream and the Chocolate ganache set well on the cake and can stand long hours without refrigeration and most suitable to the scorching hot and humid weather of Malaysia.

 This is my latest design of my Devil's Food Cake. I was requested by a customer to change the design to be more colorful and children appropriate. So I changed the Chocolate Nuggets with colorful chocolate coated peanuts for the top of the cake because it has odd shapes and can stand up well and provide a good dimension to the cake design. On the side I used colorful sugar coated chocolate candies from Nestle Smarties, similar to M&M but I don't like M&M because it has those printed letters on each candy.

So Small by Carrie Underwood

Sometimes life is so hard to deal with and just when you thought that you are okay, another tragedy happens. It's a never ending story of war and you have to fight for your life. At some point you just feel like giving up to just lie down and die. But you just don't have that much courage to die either, so you end up stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea.

I find this song from Carrie Underwood is so moving and so true of the life we live in.

What you got if you ain't got love?The kind that you just wanna give awayIt's okay to open upGo ahead and let the light shine through
I know it's hard on a rainy dayYou wanna shut the world outAnd just be left aloneBut don't run out on your faith
'Cause sometimes that mountain you've been climbingIs just a grain of sandAnd what you've been out there searching for foreverIs in your hands
And when you figure outLove is all that matters after allIt sure makes everything elseSeem so small
It's so easy to get lost insideA problem that seems so big at the timeIt's like a river that's so wideIt swallows you whole
While you're sitting around thinking 'bout what you can't changeAnd worrying about all the wrong thingsTime's flying by, moving so fastYou better make it count 'cause you can't get it back
Sometimes that mountain you've been climbingIs just a grain of sandAnd what you've been out there searching for foreverIs in your hands
Oh, and when you figure outLove is all that matters after allIt sure makes everything elseSeem so small
Sometimes that mountain you've been climbingIs just a grain of sandAnd what you've been out there searching for foreverIs in your hands
And then you figure outLove is all that matters after allIt sure makes everything elseSeem so small

Pillsbury's Lemon Delight Pound Cake

My friend Kamizi always love a good Lemon Pound Cake. For some reason he doesn't like any chocolate cake or any dark chocolate frosting at all. So recently for his office colleagues birthday celebrations, he ordered a Lemon Pound Cake in square shape and ask me to decorate nicely because he wants to show off my cake to his boss.

But there's some little factor I didn't tell him though, I have never made a really good Lemon Pound cake before this. Somehow I have several recipes of this cake but I have never tried them before. So I picked one recipe and made two portions of it so that I can sell one to him and the other one was for me to eat.

The recipe I used was from my Pillsbury, The Complete Book Of Baking that I got when I used to live in Honolulu many years ago (in the late 90's). I picked this recipe because it didn't use Butter but the recipe required me to use Vegetable Oil instead. And to be exact the recipe is called Lemon Delight Pound Cake. However, the recipe also use 3/4 cup of Orange Juice instead of lemon juice, and this made me wondering why though. Maybe because lemon juice is too sour compared to a freshly squeeze orange juice. But why call it Lemon Delight Pound Cake then? Why not call it Citrusy Pound Cake or something? Hmmmm!

So, I baked the cake and gave it to him and they ate it. Their comment was why wasn't it taste so lemony? In addition to their question was why the texture was not soft or moist although the recipe use oil instead of butter? However, now I have found a much better Lemon Pound Cake that use Butter and real lemon juice. And I've baked that recipe last week and the cake was moist, soft and very lemony. So I will NOT use the Pillsbury recipe anymore. Adios!

Below are the photos of my Lemon Delight Pound Cake from the Pillsbury recipe. The square one was bought by Kamizi and the round one was mine. And my final design for my Lemon Pound Cake will look something like this next time (The round cake one, lemon yellow and light turquoise color but I might change the light turquoise to a lime green color.)

For Kamizi's Colleagues Birthday:

My final design for my Lemon Pound Cake.

My First Fondant Cake

Fondant can turn a plain boring cake into an interesting and beautiful one with smooth surface, sharp shape and very neat. I have always been so fascinated with Fondant as fondant is so similar to modelling clay such as FIMO Polymer Clay and any Air Dry clay except fondant is a sweet edible clay. Since I am sort of an expert with FIMO Polymer Clay (my previous profession), Fondant work shouldn't be any more difficult right? No, not really! Just like everything else that is new to you, practice makes perfect. Plus some basic knowledge of handling fondant is very important.

When I first work with fondant, I discovered several issues.....
1. How to get rid of the sweats on the surface of Fondant?
2. How to handle the fondant so that it won't be sticky and damage it's shape before you even place it on the cake?
3. How to store fondant that is already on a cake? Can it be refrigerated? How long can it last?
4. What is the most popular fondant brands preferred by cake decorators?
5. What type of coloring agent that is most suitable for fondant? Is it water based or oil based?
6. What is the difference between using powdered sugar and cornstarch when handling fondant so that it won't stick to the work surface? Which is better and why?
7. Why is it after I place my fondant on the cake, the fondant surface becomes sticky?
8. Do I need air conditioned room to work with fondant? Or a room with ceiling fan is sufficient?
9. How long can I keep Fondant cake in an open room before being consumed?
10. How long before my delivery date should I start making a fondant cake? When is the best times?

I am sure I will discover new set of problems as I work more with Fondant later. But for now, I need to find answers to these 10 questions first.

Below are some of my first Fondant cakes. Not so perfect but they were ok and acceptable.

Inside this Captain America's Shield cake is a Yellow Butter Buttermilk Cake. The whole cake was 2.7kg in weight and the diameter was 10.5 inches.

Fondant work on birthday cupcakes. Simple but very sharp!

How To Catch a Fast Moving Train?

How to catch a fast moving train is just my sentiments on what is happening in my life right now. This is just a metaphor of how I felt so left behind by those who are much pioneer than me and have been baking and doing cake business way before me. I felt so little, so left out and so hard sometimes!

Lately, I literally have to refrain myself from looking at other people's websites or Facebooks because when I see their work on cakes and cupcakes I felt so inferior. A good friend once told me to avoid from comparing myself with some people that we know and already been doing this cake business for years way before me. She said that I should focus on creating my own cakes and recipes and developing my own designs and ideas slowly for my own niche market.

She kind of opened my mind a lot and make me feel better a bit. But being human such as I, so fragile, so insecure and slightly on the verge of nervous breakdown, I couldn't help but wonder; how long will it take me to be as good as I would like to be and be at the same level as those who I look up for? Never seems to be the answer for now.

Whenever I sigh and make an unhappy remark on my Facebook wall, friends often told me that life begins at 40 like it's a fun thing to say. Yes! I know that I just turn 40 this year and as cliche as it sounds, I have to start all over again at the age of 40. And the worse part is, I look the worse now than ever too. Money seems to be the most important factor to get everything in life and since economically I couldn't afford to pay for my membership at Fitness First anymore, so there goes my gym exercises and at the same time since I have to work my ass off to get so little income everyday, I simply don't have the time and too tired to even to make a run at the park.

Now the next question is, how can I catch up with my best friends youthful good looks? They get to go to the gym, eat good food and can afford to wear LaMer and SKII for their skins. Lately, I wouldn't want to even taking pictures with them anymore because I will look like a fat daddy and they look like a single good looking young men.

I think by the time I could afford to live my life like before (if and maybe implies), I would be beyond repair already. No LaMer or SKII or the gym could saves me.

I suppose I would never get to catch that fast moving train anymore. Seems like my world has changed and I have to make do with what I can for now and just let them go past by me. Yes! I do feel so sad with my predicament n I do felt so left behind everything that used to be around me. At times I feel like I just want to pack up my bags and go to some foreign country and start a new life away from my familiar everyday here. But this kind of thing only happens to Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray and Love. Hollywood makes all your dreams come true. But reality sucks the energy out of your souls and every single things that I encounter everyday and every time is a battle, life is a war.

PINK ROSE, PEARLS AND A CAKE

I thought I play around a little. Since my customer ordered my Strawberry Layer Cake, I made an extra batch enough for a small cake. Somehow I am drawn to Pink color roses, not too bright with a cream color base on the cake to contrast the colors and so I end up making one floral, very feminine cake. Not too complicated but yet looks so much like a wedding cake. To make it more like a wedding cake, I added tiny white sugar pearls all the over the cake one by one. I kinda like it actually!

Rainbow Inside My Pink Roses

A customer was having a wedding ceremony last 31st August and she needed a cake for one of her Dowry to exchange with her husband. She said she likes my rainbow cake and she wanted me to make a smaller Rainbow Cake for her wedding. So I made a 1.8 KG Rainbow Cake and follow her pink theme color for the cake decoration. And she absolutely loved it and wished she didn't have to gave away that cake.

Below is the cake I made for her on the 31st August.

Pretty Cupcakes

I always believe that people eat through their eyes first and the taste comes second as an added bonus. Imagine if the food is ugly, nobody wants to eat it unless somebody said that it taste really delicious then only we would try right?

But not in the case of cupcakes, not only they are so pretty dainty little cakes but they taste really delicious too. Thanks so much to the sweet frosting that we piped on each cupcakes and then sprinkled with sweet colorful sugar tiny beads, balls, rice, heart shaped or stars.

I have always love to eat cupcakes. Even when I am already tired of eating every single ones that I stumble upon in every cafe and bakeries in every malls in Kuala Lumpur, I go home and bake more for myself.

Whenever you suddenly strike with a mood to bake and you got all the ingredients in your kitchen, go on and bake some for yourself. Home baking is suppose to be a joy and not a chore. So enjoy yourself and create a pretty one. Below are some of my own cupcakes.