Minnie Mouse Theme Cake

I love customers who know what they want and at least got some idea of what kind of cake they are looking for. Hints and clues make my designing easier. This time this nice customer love the idea I presented to her after she told me that she wanted a Minnie Mouse theme cake for her daughter's 8th birthday. So we decided to go with red, white, black, polka dots, bows and Minnie Mouse ears. This whole cake is not a new idea. There are hundreds of similar ideas out there but I think we managed to come out with a cute, nice cake for her daughter's birthday and she was pleased with the cake. She loved the Red Velvet cake inside that Minnie Mouse.

One Year Old Birthday Cake

Somehow a lot of customers are celebrating One year old birthday for their kids this year. This one she requested a birthday cake that shaped into number One and has racing cars on top of it. She wanted me to use my Swiss Meringue Buttercream for the frosting but do the racing cars in fondants. And naturally whenever there are many kids at a birthday party, chocolate cake is the number one choice. So I did my Devil Food Cake.... moist, heavy, not overly sweet and packed with chocolate flavor.

Below is the cake I did for her little son.

Black Theme Birthday Party = Tuxedo Cake

A customer Mr. Haycarl asked me to make a cake for his birthday that is black themed. Immediately I suggested a fondant Tuxedo cake. He gave me the license to choose the cake flavor and at first I decided to make a triple flavor marble cake; vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. And then I was going to layer it with chocolate ganache and strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream. I think this would have made a great cake. But at the last minute I changed my mind and decided to go with my Red Velvet instead which I can be sure will be a big hit and it did.

Below is Mr. Haycarl's birthday cake.

Teddy Bear Cake

I love a good challenge as it gives me a good practice of creating new cakes and I get paid to do it too. I always encourage my customers to give me interesting cake orders. So on the 29th December 2012, I made a Teddy Bear fondant cake for a One year old birthday girl and this was the first time for me. It was fun and exciting to make. The best part is I discovered some basic problems of how to work with fondant and how to properly and safely transport fondant cake to the customers. Since Malaysia's weather is so hot, humid and raining all the times, fondants are so sensitive to all these and air conditioned room is such an important factor in order to keep the cake and the fondant from melting, sweating and fell apart.

Below was my first time Teddy Bear Cake made from Fondant and I used Devil Food Cake on the inside. Kids love a really good chocolate cake.

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!