Tuesday, June 29, 2010

How to Order

If you are interested to place an order or get a quotation for customised cupcakes or cakes in Seoul, please drop me an email at orders@buttersugarcream.com with the following information:

Date
Quantity
Preferred Flavour
Occassion
Inspiration

If you have some ideas for the theme or a link or a picture of something that inspired you, send it to me so we can work on the design together.

For customised cakes and cupcakes, please understand that there is a 2 weeks advance notice for orders otherwise there will be a surcharge of 50%. This is to ensure you get uncompromised quality.


**Minimum Order**
Regular Cupcakes - 2 dozen
Mini Cupcakes - 3 dozen

Retro TV Birthday Cake

I’ve done a few birthday cakes but this has to be the most special to date. My brother wanted something special for his girlfriend so I thought it would be fun to make a birthday cake for her instead of getting one from the bakery. Together with my sister who is also known as Naughty Girl (the childhood nickname stuck), we brainstormed a bit and discarded a few ideas that were too silly or over the top or in his opinion, lame.

In the end we came up with the idea of the retro TV cake and as she is very fond of the TV (there’s a in joke about this) and it would work. The cake was a layered chocolate sponge with chocolate buttercream filling.

My sister and I decided to go with a bright orange colour. It was almost fluorescent at one point but we were going for Cyndi Lauper’s hair colour circa ‘She Bop’. I think we got it. We had to think a bit about what to use to create the frame for the screen, the dials and the speakers. We agreed right out that the antenna’s could be made with Pocky Sticks aka Rocky. These were very easy to find. We thought of icing the border in chocolate buttercream but decided on using choc chips as it gave it more texture both from a visual perspective and also when you bit into it.


For the dials, we used a Japanese brand of marshmallows with a chocolate filing which we covered in chocolate. To let them dry without the chocolate sticking to anything, we inserted a skewer into the side and stuck them in a flowerpot. The plant never looked better!


For the speakers, we just used square wafers which were easy to find. After I iced the cake, Naughty Girl painstakingly put the choc chips in one by one to create the frame for the screen. At this point it was starting to look like a TV. After we decided that we were only going to need 1 dial, we gobbled down the other two chocolate covered marshmallows and made a few more with the remaining marshmallows. Isn’t decorating fun?? You get to trial and sample! ^_^

She loved the cake, so now there is one more person to taste test my experiments in the kitchen!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Soccer Cupcakes

It's World Cup fever! This customised cupcake order was for L who was planning a surprise birthday party for her husband. The idea was to invite a few friends over and it also happened to be the South Korea vs Uruguay match that evening, so the soccer theme was perfect!

L gave me free reign in the design as long as it was soccer related. I decided against a 2 dimensional buttercream only type design. Having had some fun with fondant and gum paste, I decided to create 2 designs: 1) Soccer balls sitting in grass and 2) the Korea World Cup official jersey against a white background to really bring out the red in the jersey.


The balls were fun to make although quite time consuming as I first had to draw the hexagon patterns on it then colour it in with the Americolour Gourmet Writer which, to be honest was a breeze to use. The felt tip gives you a lot of control, my only caution is to be careful not to smudge it. Even when it's dry, if you finger has moisture, it will still smudge. Don't want to be ruining all that hard work. If it does smudge a little, wet a small part of a kitchen towel and gently brush it. It may come out a little.

To ensure uniformity, each ball was weighed in at about 15gms. I then rolled it into a ball shape, then cut off about 1/4 to make the base so it sits steady on top of your cupcake. Can't have those balls rolling off now. Final weight was a steady 11gms. Ok, now some of you might not be feel the need to be so precise... this is why I scored to be most like Monica from Friends in one of those personality tests. Sigh. : )


Getting the red colour for the shirt was not easy but Wilton's Red Red and a couple of other colours got me there in the end. Making those little shirts sort of reminded me of Cinderella when she got the little shirt out for the new mouse Gus. I grew up with Disney if you haven't already figured that out.

The surprise was a bit dampened as L's husband discovered the cupcakes before the party! According to L, he lurved them so that makes up for ruining the surprise. I think L has certainly racked up those brownie points with this.

Frogs in Pond

A friend of mine, S kindly asked me to cater her son's 2nd birthday. Her son Thomas is really into frogs so she sent me a link to some other Frog cupcakes that she found online. I thought it might be a little more interesting to create a theme around that, so I added the pond, grass and flowers.

I thought of using blue food gel on top of the cupcakes for the water feature but I decided not to in the end as I didn't think it would look quite as attractive as the other cupcakes. I think each cupcake should try to look as attractive as it's neighbour so they all have an equal chance of getting picked and eaten! LOL. So just did a zigzag swirl with the Wilton 1M tip. The gel option would be great for a cake though.

I tried out the frogs first and made this batch. I used choc chips first for the eyes but found they were too small and didn't add that cuteness to the frogs.


Here is the final product. I wrapped a cake stand with green crepe paper but this crepe paper is the stiffest crepe paper that I have ever seen! It just would not mould to the stand! It made me so mad. I just hoped people wouldn't focus on it. ; )



Here is a close up of the frogs with M&M's for eyes. Cuter, huh?


I created a variety of flowers. There were little rosettes, frangipanies, chrysanthemums and roses.


There were lots of kids and adults with green lips at the end of the day.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Where it all started...

Every Secondary School (high school) female student in Malaysia takes a few years of Home Economics as part of the school curriculum. I was no exception. I enjoyed these classes as it wasn't just book studying and not boring basically. I had already started learning to bake from my Aunts and my Mom so it was always fun (unless I forgot to bring some ingredients!).

These skills came in handy when my husband (knicknamed Maddog) suggested that instead of buying some candy as favours for the guests attending our daughter's 1st year birthday party (it's all quite formal here when it comes to the 100th Day and the 1st year birthday) that I bake some cupcakes instead. Made it more personal he said. I decided to make Red Velvet Cupcakes with a Cream Cheese Frosting. They turned out dense and gives you really nice texture especially when it is accompanied by the cream cheese.

50 cupcakes later with no help from Maddog, I was thinking... I'm really enjoying the decorating part. The baby was asleep and it was calming.


I had bought a hobby decoration kit from Sydney a little while back and decided to 'break it out' for this occassion. I kept it simple with the closed star tip and made stars and swirls topped with loveheart sprinkles.


The cupcakes were packed into individual boxes (which I found in the packaging/wrapping paper street in Namdaemun market)and cushioned by tissue to ensure they didn't mess themselves up with the sides of the boxes.

I was happy, the guests were happy and so began my baking journey in Seoul.