Happy Birthday Missy Xiao Hui!!

You can never find a more soft spoken, generous and kind lady as my friend, Lea.   I take this opportunity to congratulate her on the safe delivery of her second boy recently!   She will have her hands full with two boys now, they will tax her good patience many times over but I know Lea, when the tough gets going, the going gets tough!  All the best dear Lea for she has take up the calling to be a SHAM (stay at home mom) to care and provide the best care to her two boys.  I envy her so.

Now let's talk about cake which this blog is all about.   The cake featured here is for Lea's sister whose birthday was celebrated in August.  Lea ordered this cake and have it carted 5 hours to her hometown in Johor.  That's speak volumes, the love and care Lea has for her family.

At first, Lea planned something naughty.  Like a boob cake with lace and frills.  Then she decided that it would not be suitable afterall.  Finally, she settled on sweet and nice.  As usual, she gave me a free rein to do whatever I want.  Am really grateful for the trust she's shown to me.   I am able to let my creative juice flow.

It was not hard, I made plenty of sugar paste flowers with my flower cutters using sweet pastel colours.  I propped them on toothpicks.   The cake is yellow butter cake with lemon curd cream. 

Here is the result.  Hope you enjoy it!

Happy Birthday Esmond!

This batch of cupcakes was for Esmond who turns 6 who celebrated his birthday at his kindergarten.   Cat, his mom specified no cream on the cupcakes as his kindergarten is very strict about cleanliness.  Icing on the cake basically means mess which means all that cleaning chores which means schedule disruption which means the poor children is left behind the school syllabus! 

Unthinkable!   HOW dare you make my kid fall behind his studies?  Do you know what that means to his future?   HIS FUTURE?

Opps.

So.  No icing on the cake.   Poor kids.  Everyone craves icing on the cake.  You know that!   It is the best part of eating a cake.  That saying which goes...bla bla icing on the cake which means the best part of all??!!   Now, how do one enjoy a cake deprived of the best part?!  Huh?

Ok.  Back to topic.

Now.  Icing-bare cupcake means boring cupcakes.   And, I know for sure kids do not like boring cupcakes.  

Now I am under duress.  

Then I've got an idea.

Then I am out of duress. 

I dressed up the cupcake.    I used boys' theme embossers and imprinted patterns on the sugarpaste.   The cupcakes were naked no more. 

PHEW!

Then I made one special cupcake with Ultraman on it - Esmond's fav hero!   Now, this is hard work.  the oval shape head is the hardest part to shape.  First few tries, the head is too fat, then it was too thin, then it was too puffy, then it was too gaunt.   Practise make perfect... true.  TA-DAA!!

Then, I made a little toadstool cupcake for Esmond's little sister Marissa.  Being a mom with a set of kids, wise ol'Cat knows better than to deprive the other kid of a cupcake!  This is a special request.   I'd say - a blardy good call! 

Esmond is happy to report that he likes the cupcakes, his friends like the cupcake, his sister likes the cupcake and his teacher likes the cupcake.  Hopefully, the kids walloped every single bits including crumbs.  I won't want to create a mess nor do any harm to their bright future.  Would I?

Sailing! Sailing! Happy Birthday Joshua!

Mic ordered this orange buttercake for her sunday school charge, Joshua.   Other than Joshua is a boy, Mic did not offer further clue.  Boy!  I had fun!

I decided to go a' sailing this time.  I came to conclusion that boats are more a boy's thing.  I came to that conclusion on my own.   Smart, no?  

Hahhhahha!

Anyway, let's move on to another under-appreciated topic : flat tops.

As, Mic does not like icing on her cake.  She said it's messy for her sunday school kids.   And I thank God for the lovely golden crust that this buttercake had yielded.  I would give this an A+ for its golden top.  Look at flatness and eveness of the top.  It was not domed or cracked or dimpled.  It allowed me plenty of latitude to put flat designs on it.   Should it dome or crack or dimple right there in the middle of this cake, like any other innovative bakers out there, I would have to cover and disguise the faults with fruits or creams etc.   See, now I do not have to do that.  In all its glory, an original golden even & flat top.   *Let's pause for effect*

....PAUSE...

Now you have something new to appreciate when you attempt to bake next time.  Food for thought, huh?!

Happy to report that Mic love it and so did the kids.  Except for Joshua, Mic was told that he does not eat cake. 

hmm.

Happy Birthday Keshwar!

It's World Cup season! 

It's appropriate to have a football theme cake at this time!  LOLS!

A friend ordered a Brazil cake for her nine year old boy, Keshwar.  When his birthday rolled around, sad to say that Brazil was already disqualified from the World Cup.  Nonetheless, his mom says go ahead with Brazil.. he loves Brazil! 

So a Brazil cake it was to be!

The difficult part is the wording in the banner which is part of the flag. 

There was no space to spell out the entire words Ordem E Progresso  as it was sooo tiny!  I cheated and thankfully the mom didn't mind! 

We started with a delightful and flavorful Orange Buttercake! 

We covered it with a tangy Orange Buttercream!  YUMS!

The flag goes on top.

Covered it with starpoints icing!

I love starpoint icing!

The name in colourful gumpaste!

Assembly time... each alphabets has an added stand so that it could go right into the buttercream so it looked propped  up!

A '9' for nine years old!

uh....missing some alphabets....

The finished Brazil cake!

Happy to report that the mom and the whole jimbang loves it!

Happy Birthday Aunty Vijaya!

This is the second time my buddy colleague ordered cakes from me!  

Hi Shantha! **waves**  Glad you like my creation that you have come back again and again and even a third cake - her boy's birthday too!   (to be featured in the next post!)

This time, the cake for mommy!

Again, the design is left entirely to my own devices!  I love how people trusted me enough to work creatively on their cakes. 

The freedom to let my imagination flow is so liberating.  Almost therapeutical.  You should try it sometimes.   

I thought of a two layer cake, light and moist.  With tangy orange curd as filling which I spread generously in between the layers.  

The cake layers turned out beautifully.  Look how flat it is.  Sweet success!  

I like that the crumb is so fine.  

Crumb coat with a layer of thin buttercream. 

The buttercream is also flavoured with orange.  Not from essence but real orange whizzed to a fine pulp.                           

Aunty Vijaya is the birthday girl here - so "MOM" it is!  

Roses for the lady! 

Like a rose garden.

Finished product. 

Hope you like it!

Happy Birthday Flo!

I must say so myself, this is a well-behaved cake - look how flat it is.   Should this cake domed, I would have to cut it down to a flat surface and waste some cake. 

An order by Serena for her best buddy, Flo who is into all things flowers, a true blue flora and fauna girl. :)

She give me a free hand (yippee!) to come up with the design myself but severely reminding me that the theme has to have flowers.  Goddit!

First of, it's a orange buttercake which I layered into two, filled with tangy orange curd and frosted with orange buttercream. 

Next up, huge sunflowers.  Bright and vibrant colours.  Unfortunately, it was a wet day.  Humidity hung heavy in the air - a threat to these delicate sugarpaste flowers.  I bought these to bed with me in airconditioned room.   Worried about them all night long.  **sweats** 

Followed up by these. 

Spread tangy orange curd and then a layer of orange buttercream.  No one will complain, right?

Piped borders at the base and making the garden come alive!

Secured sugarpaste alphabets.  Added more sugarpaste daisy details at the side of the cake.  Well, it's coming along fine, I should think!

My girl, Susanna helped with the holey round patch.  She is a great help.

Completed sunflower garden.  What do you think?

Happy Birthday Yew Mei!

This was a last minute work.

I was given only 2 days notice but happily, I got a free hand in the design of the cake.

First of, I started with 3 stack of cake layers.  I filled each layer with white chocolate buttercream. 

One coat of buttercream - a crumb coat.

Cover the top with rosettes.  Lovely!

Lined the top and base with little icing tips.

Almost there....

Stuck little sugarpaste flowers.  Going for elegant look.

Dressed the top of cake with a sugarpaste bear and snail on a bed of roses.

Next up, the birthday girl's name accompanied by another snail.

Finished cake.

A slice of cake..

The mom send pixs of this. The happy happy birthday girl. 

I love a pix of small hands. 

and all kids like snails, no?