Thursday, July 22, 2010

Number Cakes

Age is just a number ? Hmm.....

To me, the excitement of birthday celebrations diminishes once you have to add another digit to the age. And...after 30, most people i know would prefer not to be reminded of it and 'celebration'(?) is limited with those closest to you....

Anyway, I like birthdays, the very least it gives you a reason to eat cake, and let me continue baking them :-D


For a dear friend for her son's 1st birthday celebration. Number 1 cake with photos I copied from her FB. I really like this little pic of them, love and laughter... it's contagious... i can't stop smiling.
I watched Eclipse recently, love that old sweaters quilt Bella received from her mom, and also it reminded me of the photo quilt in the movie Stepmom . I'm bad at finishing my needlework projects (i have loads of unfinished cross stitches, beads on baju kurungs and yna's hat, sofa pillow covers, jeans hem alteration etc... etc... stashed somewhere in the house), so... i won't jump into quilting just yet . For now, i'm just as happy to be doing quilt patterns on cake. Anymore takers? Thanks Tie...


For my son's joint birthday celebration with his cousin. (This is the 1st b'day cake i ever baked for him)

For my niece's 1st birthday, my bro was surprised that this Mak Jang remembered! 1st birthdaylah... so special


For my regular customer, a kindy nearby, Tadika Fitrah Ehsan. They have been ordering one, two or sometimes three cakes almost every other Thursdays. And i just love to hear their "wow..." everytime they see the cakes, even for this ugly not really smooth fresh cream topping, lucky me!


An old photo of a two digits cake I made a few months ago, back when the number moulds suddenly appears on the racks of all the bakery supply shops in this area; they weren't available previously. Errr... yes, i was so excited and bought two moulds, even though the cake order was only for 1kg :-) . Thanks Firah.. dah banyak orders u yg lain masuk yang ni baru nak post pic.


and.... there's no lying how old this pic is, LOL! Ordered by a loyal customer from JPPH office Sbrg Jaya for her daughter's bday, thanks Yanie!

A few mre pics added here just because I don't want to create a new post

Num4 cake with very good pics of the boy

Red Black & Bling cake for a special mom

Monday, June 28, 2010

Weddings & Engagements in June

It's definitely high time to update this blog when calls and messages I've been receiving lately started with "..do u still bake?", "...are u accepting orders now?", "...dok buat kek lagi dak?" or something to that effect :-)
June has been a pretty hectic month for me, so many orders especially for 0606 I was not able to accept, I'm sorry.
I noticed that many couples (& their families I guess) choose bold colors for this mid year school holiday wedding season.
1) Black & White (& Silver too)
 Black & white cake ordered through a baker friend As. Design requested was from a picture in Saji magazine sent via mms. I like the zebra stripes around the cake but couldn't quite make out what were the flowers in that pic, thus gave me a good reason to try making these 3 anemone flowers. I don't like using those inedible flower stamens but since the design in that pic uses wired flowers, I guess the bride is okay with this.

 Another order received via a baker friend too, Nina. The butterflies were made similar to the ones on the round hantaran box. Hubby who rarely makes any comment about the cakes I make liked this one; but then again most of his shirts are either black or white....

Ordered by my regular customer Reen for her sister's wedding. Would really love to add some black royal icing swirl designs to overcome my guilty feeling for not making her previous cupcake order for the engagement ceremony similar to the picture she gave. I even bought the pattern press set by wilton to design the swirls, maybe next time lah...

One of the 2 orders received thru another baker, As.

Gray and white themed cupcake ordered thru the cake kiosk at Giant. Love how the silver cupcake liners shimmer...

2) Gold and Yellow
Ordered by Nani for her bro's wedding. I always use bright yellow for gold themed cake, but I think I made a mistake on this one because the hantaran sets on the back of Nani's car (she was on her way to Terengganu for the bride's wedding) were in pale shades of gold, beige and brown. I'm sorry Nani, hope the 'unwanted' yellow color provided some contrast to the hantaran trays.

Ordered by Isa, the weddiing planner who attended Wani & Razif's wedding and saw the hantaran cakes I made a week earlier. This was for a wedding in Alor Setar.

Ordered by Cikgu Hanim for one of her cousin's engagement ceremony. The cupcakes were not heavily decorated with fondant pieces to let the gold shines (??? ha ha ha.... lame excuse, actually i didn't have enough time to decorate because the order delivery date was brought 2 days earlier than planned)

The one I was so excited about, because it's different. A set of 61 cupcakes (rows of 5+6+7+8+9+8+7+6+5 = 61) joined to form a hexagon pull-away cupcakes on a 20" round cakeboard. The hardest part was smoothing the icing and having to extend my arm to fill the alphabets in the center. This is ordered by Kak Nani for her neighbor's son wedding reception held in Pusat Budi Penyayang hall in Kepala Batas. Heard that they forgot to order tiered wedding cake, thus this was used for the "cupcake pulling" ceremony :-).



Matching cupcakes that take some of the design elements from the above cupcakes cake was made to complement it. Heard that the cupcakes were gone quickly and even Kak Nani didn't get to taste it.





One of the great advantages about being a baker, u can just give a cake as a present. This is for hubby's cousin who lives near our house. It was her first daughter's wedding, this cake was for makan-makan with their neighbors who've helped a lot on the wedding day. My first attempt at making buttercream basketweave around a cake.....

Gotta go now, will be adding some more pics soon.

Continued.....

3) Blue n Green
2 orders from Nani delivered to her parents' place. I had a great time at their house, especially watching Nani's 2 year old triplets playing and also chatting with Nani's dad who was a MSD official in london during the asian financial crisis in 1997.
Cupcake design given by Nani was from Rani of bakedecorate2u, sorry I missed out the green leaf on the cupcakes :-)

 Ordered by Yamunna for her sil's engagement day

 Ordered thru As, who is also a baker but does not want to jump into decorating using fondant yet :-)

Ordered thru the cake kiosk at the only shopping mall in Kulim


For a customer who wanted only alphabets on the cupcakes for her sis' green themed engagement, bad decision on my part to do vines

A simple photocake for a beige and green themed wedding



 For a wedding last April, ordered by a cikgu kat SMKC, maaf nama pun dah tak ingat (hey.. this post title says June)

4) Purple
 The second cake ordered and collected by the groom, Razif himself. Requested the cake to be made wider than the usual 8", i.e. this is 10"

The second cake ordered by Isa, the wedding planner

Ordered via Mas, a customer and also my very good friend at maybank :-)

The order from Izan for her sis, Hidayah's wedding. The delivery date of 0606 was booked 3 months earlier.
Sorry Izan, because so many things went wrong with this order. The fondant was so brittle and the only shop that sold the Halagel gelatine I use was closed for 3 days, so I had to use the ready made white roses (had they sell deep purple ones, i'll definitely get those too)
The top tier was only 6", no stackable cake board for that size to hold it in place. So, the top tier slide on the way and broke at least 2 petals on the purple roses on the side of the top tier :-(
Again...I'm really sorry, Izan n Hidayah

5) Maroon, Red and Pink

 2 orders from Asmawati, my very regular customer; maroon+white and chilli red+white sets.

Ordered by Nasuha, insisted it to be exactly like the one I did about a year ago :-)

 Pink and green cupcakes ordered by As for her cousin's engagement

 
Pink and light purple cupcake with photos of her fiance-to-be. Order received via the cake kiosk at Giant hypermart.

I was very sure I wouldn't have enough time to spend on this order even though it came about 3 weeks before; so I accepted Johanah's order with the condition that I'd use ready made flowers, and was so happy when I found these red lilies exactly like the picture she sent. So, I only made the large flowers and the cupcakes.
I usually prefer to deliver tiered cakes myself, but was so sorry that I couldn't send this order to Baling because my schedule was so packed that weekend :-(    The two cakes were glued to the boxes to avoid it from sliding around inside the box during transport.