Covering Course 3

Some of the things we did in Course 3.
Clockwise: Royal icing flowers (lily, morning glory, primrose & poinsettia),
Ruffle garland, Brush embroidery and Drop string aka swags & overlapping drop string that are quite scary to do.

Also in the syllabus are covering and adorning a 6" square mock cake with fondant, making the Wilton roses - also in fondant (will post the pixes soon), and learning the tiered cake construction in which we will apply in our next lesson (the last one, yay!). We will have to bring 2 tiered wedding cakes/mock ups covered with fondant to be decorated and assembled in the 2-hour class.

I am currently out of town and will only be back 2 days before class, so I honestly hope i can manage. I want to make an effort but at the same time, time will not be on my side so i guess, i will have to think of a design that is interesting yet not too complicated. Well, good luck to me.

Will people eat fondant now?

I'm so excited to find this online. Real fruit fondant!

Generally people love fondant icing for its versatility and it makes beautiful cake presentations. But sadly, once the cake is cut, it will be peeled off and left on the side of the plate while the cake is being consumed. And more often than not, they usually end up in the trash can. Sometimes, i wish it was made of wax instead. Such a waste of (expensive) resources and effort. It is, literally an eye candy.

Perhaps now that it comes in flavours, (orange, lemon, blackcurrant, raspberry and strawberry) people will start eating fondant. I for one, don't really have a sweet tooth, but i can't wait for them to reach our shores to sample it :)

Silicone rolling mat

I have to say, having the right tools (and of course, knowing how to use them) is vital. The silicone rolling mat is my recent important purchase.

Silicone rolling mat by Sugar Impression.

A good investment.

I'm not sure if there are other similar ones out there apart from the Wilton wheel but this, my friends is essential for working with fondants. I decided to get one (even when that means burning a hole in the pocket) as i find the Wilton wheel - which i got it from my Course 3, doesn't really do the job in making the friend's butterfly cake and after experienced hell when i was doing the cousin's animal themed cake without one of these.

You still have to dust good when rolling fondant, but it makes the job much, much easier.

Nadhirah's Butterfly cake

My dearest friend celebrated her daughter's birthday, yesterday. She had asked for me to make a butterfly cake for her cutie pie. The butterflies and lettering for the baby's name was done using patchwork cutters. 2 words: NOT easy! (There's always new challenges each time, but i guess i have to count my blessings when things pan out rather well eventually.) Alhamdulillah.. :)
And i was so grateful that my brother's maid was around to help especially with the after cleaning! Make that a double Thanks be to God! Hehehe..

The cutesies with the cake.

Happy Birthday, little one!
Hope you had a great time hitting 1 year! :)

Friend's E-day cupcakes

My first fondant cupcakes.
Freshly made, of course.

A friend of mine is getting hitched! :D

The cupcakes were made according to the theme colour - Black, Silver & (deep) Purple. I was going for ready made flowers at first, given i've no experience or whatsoever in crafting sugar flowers. But since i couldn't find any, i then tried dusting food colour to white ones but wasn't very happy with the end result (pix below). So in the end, i decided to give myself a try on making roses as seen on David of Cakin' Crazy video on youtube. Not as refined, but i was quite happy with it :)

There was some drama happening while in progress, (at 3.30am.. yep) but luckily, everything worked out in the end.

Also made the tier for the dulang.

The before & after dusting work.
Not really a success.

Testing on the tier.. kind of Alice in Wonderland-ish i think..

Ready to go..

CONGRATULATIONS, Farra & Edy!

Do I dare??

Before i share in an entry of the cupcakes i did for my friend's engagement day, here's some news. Joanne, our instructor told us about it 2 weeks back. A Cake Competition held by ICCA in October.

Looking at the prizes, i feel so tempted to take part but looking at my competence level at the moment, hmm... perhaps not :'(

For those who are interested, get info and rules of the competition here. Good luck!

15% sugar price hike

I, as a cake decorating hobbyist will definitely feel the pinch! :'(

Time flies.. Course 2 update!

..with Jo, our instructor.

I have just completed my Course 2 as we speak! :D It has been quite hectic, the past 1 month. Not so much on baking but i've been pre-occupied with other things.

Course 2 was more on flower making but this time we were taught using the royal icing instead of buttercream as well as learning the flooding technique with Colour flow.

It was rather less stressful this time round as we only had to bake for the very last class. The only major challenge we had to deal with was bringing the flowers to and from class without breaking them.

But even having had to bake just this once, i had to say goodbye to my plan on coming up with something of my own for the Course 2 graduation cake - i was thinking cream/pinkish for the basket weaving in the last lesson. Due to time constraints i had to simply use the royal icing provided during previous classes for my final flowers to decorate our basket - hence the strong colours. You'll see.. (Nothing to worry, though.. royal icing can be kept chilled or frozen for a long time! Elakkan pembaziran! ;)). And decided to stick with white for the basket afterall for afraid that there won't be enough buttercream, then i had to do another round of colour mixing, and then risking going home with basket only half woven... yada yada yada....
Plus as said, the colours from before were pretty intense. So it won't turn out as i wanted it to be anyways.

Now.. here comes the visuals!

Weaving in progress.. almost there.

The results from Course 2 lessons:

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All sorts of colourful flowers ina a variety of woven baskets.
Most of the class did roses.

Absolutely love love love the 2 tones!

Sweet daisy arrangement with apple blossoms and violets.

Love birds with a cluster of Victorian roses and brown daisies.

Vibrant chrysanthemums, pansies, primrose and violets in a cascading arrangement with (the compulsory) 2 birds by moi.
The only arrangement with the chrysanthemums.. (nak jugak mention.. heheh).
[I was lazy to add fresh leaves to fill in the gaps].

without the Colour flow birds

here's from a different angle..

[I am on another project now. Fondant cupcakes for a long time friend's engagement. Wish me luck! :)]