The Color Turquoise

To me turquoise simply means a color when you can't really say if it's green or blue; and is created by mixing sky blue and leaf green icing colors.
Various shades of turquoise is explained at Wikipedia and interesting fact of the mineral can be found at Sleeping Beauty Turquoise
Pantone.com announced that turquoise is the Color of the Year for 2010. It's only January, and I already did 2 cakes with turquoise theme, well...  they might be right.

Order from Mas for her friends at the bank. I like these colorful cupcake boxes, but... they are a little too expensive, and the guy at the shop said it's their last pack. I only realized that the "z" alphabet looks more like an "x" in Kunstler Script font after I've printed all the edible images!  Sorry Mas, and thanks for ordering

This is the cake I decorated during wedding cake decorating class at PGCakecraft. It served as a practice for me before making my first wedding cake for a customer who is brave enough to order hers from me :0 Thanks Zareena for sharing with us your knowledge from the expensive Wilton & Squires Kitchen classes you attended at ICCA
P/S We didn't have enough time to complete the flower arrangement :)

Choux Pastry

Choux Pastry (well... cream puff actually) has intrigued me for so long.... The first time I looked at someone making it was 25years ago, during a tea party at our high school counselor's house. My sisters always told me, " senang aja, macam belajar dalam kelas SRT" (it's easy, like how we learned in SRT). Hey... I didn't take SRT, it was not even in the syllabus in mrsm;  and i've never seen my sis made them either.
So.... I attended a pastry workshop last week by Chef Alan Ooi. Here's the pic of my creation :0

After 2 failed attempts at home (the ones we made at the workshop were okay), I tried again and decided to take some photos, and this time I used the mixer instead of using my hand muscles to beat the sticky dough. The detailed instruction with (much better) photos can be found at Delia Online

The paste after being mixed, using K beater

Choux paste pipings

Voila! Choux Pastry

If I'm going to make these again, I'll bake it longer to brown it, and slit the chouxs to let the steam out after baking. Looking at how Yna popped these little munchkins into her mouth (after being piped with whip cream+custard filling), I know I'll be making some more very soon. Here's the recipe I used, using easy to remember numbers

50g butter

100g water

50g flour

1tsp sugar

2 eggs (100g)

Bake at 175C for half an hour

Anytime Cake

My hubby's aunt ordered a cake for her grandkids to enjoy, and the 2 kids really did enjoy this cake, half of it is already gone while I was enjoying my laksa kebuk.
Laksa kebuk (in our family) is fresh home made noodles made from wheat flour, not from rice flour like the dried kind sold in grocery shops. Kebuk is the hand press used to squeeze the dough through, so i guess u can make the dough from semolina or rice and still call it laksa kebuk, ....... as long as it's served with fish based gravy :)

Pink Aurora

Satisfied with the last Thomas n Friends themed cake, Hanani ordered another chocolate cake, this time for her niece's birthday in Gerik. Glad that my choice for the pink background was right, it's Uzma's favorite color. The only Disney Princess my daughter Yna likes is also Aurora, simply because she's the one princess that always wears pink.
Thanks Hanani, and sorry for arriving late;  I was heading to our previous pickup point before I called you :0

My solution to make the white courverture ganache filling taste a little more like chocolate, add pure cocoa butter (the one with slightly yellowish color, the cheaper very white ones are made of and taste like sugar and shortening) I read that white chocolate is not considered chocolate by US FDA since it has no chocolate liqueur or cocoa solids. And btw... chocolate liqueur is halal (i.e. without alcohol), refer here www.ifanca.org/glossary  

Thomas & Friends Cake

I've been wanting to make a train themed cake for quite some time, thus was really excited when I received an order for Thomas & Friends cake from Hanani. Nani even willing to come all the way from Penang island to pick up her order, thanks Nani.

Her order was for a chocolate cake with fudge filling, but I thought I would be too unappealing for little Thaqif, so I added a white chocolate whip cream layer too. Looking at how Yna just scrape all the leftover from the mixing bowl into her mouth I just hope that Thaqif would like it too.

Anyway... i'm still searching for a better tasting white choc, the couverture I have tasted more like condensed milk than chocolate :(

Take us to the top, Arsene Wenger tells his Arsenal players | Arsenal - Times Online

Take us to the top, Arsene Wenger tells his Arsenal players | Arsenal - Times Online

We'll see this coming Wednesday... good luck Gunners! There's not much excitement with this season's EPL in our house, much of it I think because Asyraf (my nephew) is still confined to the bed after his spinal injury 5 months ago. Asyraf, my kids and hubby would put on their MU jersey and stayed up to watch MU matches whenever they could last season.

 

This order came on such short notice, I left it with my helper for the customer to pick-up; now I realized I didn't even get her name. Her request was for 10 Arsenal logo cupcakes, with the balance left for me to choose whatever flowery image I like. I must have had a short term craze for swirls and spent the whole evening looking for swirl designs and even put up an order for the AI templates from Kerawang.net ! (Actually, I do like their designs, they seem a lot softer with traditional malay flair)

Cupcakes and Roses

Ordered by Ja all the way from Langkawi.Cupcakes with five red roses and a white rose (only Ja knows what the roses mean). This is the first time I received a delivery request to an address without any Taman, Apt or Jalan prefix to it :) 
Finding the house wasn't that difficult since I've been there a few times visiting a friend (she still has the strength to drive every week to KL to work, I've given up all the traveling since the past 2++ years). With a little guide from Ja over the phone and asking a makcik to point me Najmi's house, I arrived at brightly painted house that sits on a carpet of lush green grass. It was a beautiful sight indeed, a lot different from my mom and mil's house where grass is treated the same as weed, so what's left was just sand and gravels. Me, I'm glad I managed to save my little plot of grass in front of the house from being covered with cement and tiles by the renovation contractor (at hubby's instruction) a few years back.
I learnt a good lesson too delivering this order, when in kampung don't ask where is this and that house number, over here everyone knows each other by name. And.... spare some time to sit down and chat with the makciks  :0
Thanks Ja....

100110

The above number holds a very meaningful meaning to at least two couples, i.e. the date of their engagement.

First order from Mas for her good friend, wanted the cupcakes deco in beige theme.

Second order, from Firah for her sis (in gold theme)  and also for the entourage from her fiance-to- be's side (in green theme).

I'm wondering, next.... would the wedding date be set to 011010(Friday) or 101010 (Sunday) and the belanja set to RM10, +++   :)

Starting with the above orders, I will only make the full fondant topped cupcakes in medium size, this way I'm able fill 30% more cake volume compared to the tiny 2oz souffle cups I've been using previously... all with a little price increase, especially since the price of icing sugar has increased 50% in less than a year and decorating with fondant is very time consuming

Ben Sepuluh Cupcakes

Just when I thought the Ben10 series has lost its popularity, CN starts airing the new season last week.

 

This set for a girl who really adores the Ben 10 series (initially mommy wants some mickey n friends pics too, but later changed to only Ben 10).

 

These 70 individually packed cupcakes from a birthday boy to all his friends at school. Thanks Latha, I should have followed my Garmin instruction to locate your house instead of wasting 30 mins stopping and asking people for directions (and all of them were wrong)

And this edible image was ordered by Adilla together with some souffle cups for her to bake the cupcakes herself :)

Engagement Cupcakes

The simple design for these purple themed cupcakes was made based on a picture sent by Fara Nissa. Our communication was only done thru emails, I only realized that I didn't have her phone number only an hour before Fara's requested delivery time. Luckily her house was quite easy to find....

This set was requested by my neighbor Farah for her friends, in pink and maroon theme. Had to make do with the 8"X8" which was a little small since the only shop that sell the 16-holes cupcake box was closed for the holidays. The couple came over two days earlier to have their pics printed on icing sheet, I completed the editing and printing in just half an hour, with a little additional charge for their urgent request. Thanks Yati, Wani & Shukri.

P/S To my customers, sorry for the long silence and missing pics/entries of some of your orders. I was in a hurry completing them before leaving for our routine end of the year holidays :)   ....this time was to kampung Kay Ell. Also, Yna has started going to the 'real' school (that's what she calls it) i.e. primary school.
Happy New Year !!!