Cupcake Party for 5 Little Girls

 When my friend asked if I might be interested to conduct a cupcake making and decorating class for 5 little girls under the age of 5, I didn't have to think twice to say, "Yes".  How much fun would it be?  HEAPS.... right?  Mmmmm...  it was fun but it was hard work.

I want to break an egg too!

Preparation was simple, I baked some cupcakes in advance so they would have something to start decorating while they waited for the cupcakes 'they made' bake in the oven and cool down.  Prepare the buttercream, I used the American style buttercream which is more durable and slightly less messy, mix the colours, pack the baking tools, ingredients and bring the toppings!  

I show up early to setup and my friend's little girl, Erin who is 3 and her friend is already there waiting and as her Mum says, "They are SUPER EXCITED!"  Okaaaay.  My friend surveys my set up 10 minutes later as I cover her nice dining table with my tools and the small ones for small hands, and tells me I better have lots and lots of pink frosting!  I did have more pink frosting but she wasn't wrong when later I asked the girls what their favourite colours were, the two answers I got were Pink and Strawberry.  I had to make more pink frosting later.  I also gushed and ooohed over purple and yellow to try to get the excited about those other colours as well.

How much candy is on top of that cupcake?!

The girls were great, they helped me stir the butter and sugar, they each got a turn to crack eggs... and smash eggs, they folded in flour and then they got bored.  So we took a 10 minute break while I set up for the decorating part.  I brought different types of sprinkles, 100 thousands, little jelly gems, jelly beans, chocolate balls, rainbow chips and coloured sugar.  Let's just say the decorating part was the 'funnest' part for the kids.  They really piled up their cupcakes as you can see from their photos.  They wanted to eat one cupcake first and after their Mums said OK, they picked at their cupcakes.  5 minutes later, they still hadn't finished eating the candy and toppings they put on top of the frosting!  They must have been on such a sugar rush after.

A very pretty cupcake for you...

Look at the intense concentration - adorable.

Do you have enough Jelly Gems on yours?

All packed and ready to be taken home.  I had a fun time making those labels with my new Uchida Scalloped Egde Round hole puncher.  Someone on Amazon was very happy doing business with me. : )

Star Trek Logo Cake - This one is for the Trek fans everywhere

I didn't have to scratch my head very hard when I was planning my husband's birthday cake.  I think the picture says it all.  I was a bit tricky as I didn't want him to know that I was making the cake for HIM, so I told him that some customer is asking for a Star Trek cake and I told him that because it's soooo geeky that I wasn't sure whether I wanted to take the order! ; )

He was quite helpful when I showed him some Star Trek related cakes online and suggested the logo cake.  He then got a bit technical about which logo was for which movie or series.  At one point he even suggested I write to the customer and ask her which series her husband is a fan of.  I told him in no uncertain terms that I wasn't going to open that can of worms and I was going to choose the original logo and the birthday boy is just going to have to be happy with it.

  

I honestly thought that he had clued up and knew the cake was secretly for him.  I iced the cake and left the writing for when he was in bed.  I tried to stick to the slanted writing as per the title font and I piped the star out of buttercream then froze it for 15mins then transferred it onto the cake.  The cake was a lemon chiffon cake with lemon cream layers and covered with vanilla buttercream.

The Ducati Cake

 

The people who order from me tend to find me after finding my blog through Google, so when K wrote to me to request a cake for her boyfriend as a surprise a couple of weeks back, I was ready to rock and roll.  At first she was had ideas to either do cupcakes or cakes and with either a Ferrari or Ducati bike element.  I was very happy to make a car out of fondant to add as a topper to the cupcakes or a cake, but was very very very hesitant about the bike as it involved a lot of detail.  Detail = time, and I didnt normally have that much time since I didn't have that many days to work on it.

K was quite excited about the idea of the Ducati because her boyfriend loves them and she was very persuasive.  She sent me many photos and at one point even asked for just the bike to be drawn on top with icing.  They were all good ideas but I was just conscious about time as I needed to make the bike and give it at least a day or two to dry.  In the end, I ran with the idea to make a small 3D bike to place on top of the cake in a road scene.

A road made of chocolate cookie crumbs.  If only there were real roads like these!  Wonka's Chocolate factory maybe?

The bike took ages... I think I started at 11pm and finished it at 2am.  My eyes were quite dry and vision was going wonky at this point so I decided to leave the glossing of the bike till the next morning.  The cake itself was a Vanilla cake with whipped chocolate ganache in between the layers.  I used Vanilla buttercream for the icing.  I particularly like the colour of this grass as it reminds me of the colour of the countryside in the UK.  I also made the post out of fondant.

The road sign says "Route Thirty-Six"

By the next morning, the bike was firm but you could still make a dent in it if you held it too hard.  I went over the red parts with some piping gel from Wilton to give it that nice sheen and let it dry.  I had in mind to make the road out of chocolate biscuits/Oreos and my daughter was very happy to help me pound the biscuits to crumbs. I was really afraid the bike would fall over during transport so I just stuck the toothpicks which held the bike in place into the cake first and packed the bike in a separate box, bubble wrapped thrice over to be safe.  I think I would have cried if anything happened to that bike.

I used one of my kid's toy's packaging to cut the shape for the glass screen for the bike.

 I think the boyfriend was happy with the surprise cake, and hopefully the bike is now sitting on his shelf.

Mei Yang Yang Birthday Cake

 

I really should have posted about this cake before I wrote about Zac's In the Night Garden cake as I made this cake last month for my daughter's 2nd birthday.  I knew for a long while what cake I was going to make for her as it is a character from her favourite cartoon Xi Yang Yang and Hwei Tai Lang (Pleasant Goat and Bad Bad Wolf).  I know, I cringed when I saw the translation into English but that's what the title means.

Mei Yang Yang (Pretty Goat) is a sweet and vain goat. She pretty much plays the role like Smurfette does in The Smurfts.  I was a little scared drawing out her face free hand as it was the first time I was doing it and I didn't want to do a botched job.  I had a print out of her face in front of me as I started. I used little rosettes to make her 'coat' (not sure if fur is the right word here either) so it stood out.  All in all I thought it was a good likeness and the fact that my OH was impressed said a lot.  

I baked a strawberry and berry cake for her with home made strawberry jam in between the layers.  Strawberries are finally in season again in Korea.

I got the inspiration to string up her name like on a laundry line when I was looking at wedding ideas with my brother's girlfriend.  I saw some fabulous cakes and saw this fabulous idea!  I had some leftover wrapping paper which I used to make flag buntings to decorate the house for the party and I cut out her name, glued it onto the string with hot glue and tied it to two Pepero sticks then stuck it into the cake.  I have kept her name to be hung up, somewhere... when I get around to it.  It's for keeps.

My friend Liz came over and helped me make these flag buntings.  We had a nice chat over 2 hours and did quite a lot of these.  Total cost is probably under KRW10,000.

Just to make my life more difficult, I made cupcakes.  I felt that a party for the kids without cupcakes wouldn't be a Gerry party.  People have come to expect cupcakes when they come over.  Such has become the association that I have created.  Gerry = Cupcakes.  I love it! 

So I made these Pink, Purple and Yellow Marbled Rose Cupcakes Frosted with Vanilla Buttercream, Sprinkled with Pink Sugar and then topped with.... wait for it, Cookie Pops.  Yes, Cookie Pops covered with Royal Icing.  First of all, I loved the colours but they took AGES to make as I had to let the cookies dry overnight after I outlined and flooded them with royal icing.  But the effect was worth it as a cupcake tower.

Here they are ready to go into the oven.

Fresh out of the oven, nicely swirled.

 

Ok, so I couldn't resist one.

You can just see the birthday girl in the background there.

Happy Birthday Baby!

In the Night Garden Birthday Cake

My son is a fan of In the Night Garden, the British TV programme aimed at toddlers and pre-schoolers.  His sister watches it occassionally but it was when she got the Makka Pakka plush toy that sings and talks that he really started taking an interest.  So it was a bit of a no-brainer when it came the time for me to think about what kind of a cake to make for him for his 1st birthday a week ago.

I saw some cakes online where they created the characters out of gum paste.  They look like the real thing but I was going for an "OMIGOD!  That's Igglepiggle."  Perhaps I was in doubt of my abilities to get Upsy Daisy's face colour right or contemplating how I would get Iggle Piggle's blanket to fall just so.  It could also be the stark reality that I would have no time to complete the characters as they would need at least 24-48 hours to properly dry out and I only had 4 days to make and bake (at the same time complete 2 orders the day before the party) and prepare for the party.  So I thought, "Nah!". 

That's why when I was in Sydney in October, I bought the figurines from Toys R Us.  Easy.  So now it was left to me to create the scenery.  I had to make the gazebo first.  I was about to go to Australia for 2 weeks and when I got back I had only days to fulfill my cake orders, bake and decorate Zac's cake and prepare for the party.  I had no time to make the Magic Gazebo which will take days to dry out.

Iggle Piggle and Makka Pakka wave Bye Bye.

I thought about how to make the top of the gazebo as it would be challenging.  I considered using fondant and make it into gumpaste but it seemed like a waste of good fondant.  No one was going to eat it and I wanted it as a keepsake (we'll see how long that will last after a couple of home moves) too.  I got the idea to use Rice Krispies made into treats from watching Cake Boss.  Buddy goes on about how he uses rice krispies/cereal to mould the larger and more complicated figures.  

A good friend of mine, gave me a box of rice krispies not long ago and told me that you just melted marshmallows to mix with the rice krispies and that's how you get rice krispy treats.  The box also had the instructions on the side.  Bing!

I just love the colour combination on Upsy Daisy.

Melting the marshmallows was... interesting.  I wasn't sure what exactly it was supposed to look like cos it was mostly soft and stuck to the bottom of the pan.  It didn't get liquidy or gooey just smeared in a soft form.  I chucked the rice krispies in just when I thought I was about to burn the marshmallows if I left it in there any longer stirring or not.  It came together in the end.  It was pretty hot to handle as I was molding it but I wanted to shape it before it got too cool and hardened.

Tomliboo Oo, Tomliboo Un and Tomliboo Ee out having some fun!

I scraped the rest of the leftovers out from the bottom of the pan and my husband was quite happy to munch on that.  I had to soak the pan overnight to get all the marshmallows out.  After I shaped the top of the gazebo, I stuck a toothpick into the top to add the round white ball that adorns the top.  Then I cut the pieces of blue and yellow fondant that covers the gazebo.  To hold up the top of the gazebo, I wrapped long toothpicks with blue fondant which I left out to dry but not before marking on both the base and the top where they would fit in.  This was important as the top of the gazebo would be extremely hard to pierce after the rice krispies hardened.

The base of the magic gazebo was just made from gum paste as it was quite thin.  I was really happy with the results as the dimensions were about right for the cake and Iggle Piggle who shared the top tier of the cake with Makka Pakka.

I also added some daisies and blossoms which are in the show as well as the little balls of flowers that dot around the landscape in the garden.  These were gum paste balls covered with Tylo (edible glue made from water + CMC powder) then rolled in coloured sugar.  Here's what it looks like in the show:

This is a close up of the flowers balls I made with coloured sugar:

The cake had serious chocolate flavour. I first tasted it a year ago from my friend W who made a delicious birthday cake for her daughter.  She gave me the recipe which she got from Allrecipes.com.  I made it for my Dad in May and after the first mouthful he said, "This is too much chocolate!" and guess what the name of the cake is: Too Much Chocolate Cake!  Hee hee hee.  Oh but it's soooo good though.  Think of a Devil's Food cake plus chocolate pudding (Jell-O) and chocolate chips.  Deep, dark and intense.  The kids were on a sugar rush for hours after!  Here's the recipe.  I added Chocolate Cream Cheese frosting between the layers to add that little bit of tartness to cut through the heaviness of the chocolate.  A match made in heaven.

Mickey Mouse Cake

I knew that eventually someone would order a Mickey Mouse cake. In fact, the ever popular Mickey was what got me on this journey of decorating cakes in the first place. When my daughter was about to turn 1, I went to many bakeries to look for a customised Mickey or Minnie cake. I got a lot of blank looks and a lot of Korean which I did not understand. I was frustrated and annoyed. I mean, it should be a simple thing right? Ordering a cake that is personalised with a favourite cartoon character? Or it should be!

But my inability to communicate to the bakers assistants and my lack of knowledge of Korean cake decorators at that time forced me to go for a more expensive option a friend recommended: The Hyatt's bakery. When the Executive Pastry Chef came out to take my order and instructions, I knew it would be expensive. To this day, my husband still does not know how much the cake that feeds 30 really cost. All he knoww is "It was very expensive, it's better you don't know... don't ask!".


Anyway, here's a cake story that turned out well. A wanted a Mickey Cake for her son who was turning 1. After several emails we established that the cake needs to be BIG. Enough for 50 people. So I suggested using my biggest pan (note to all, I am not a commercial bakery and can only access certain sized pans that are readily available at the baking stores here, should you require a cake that feeds more than 75, please give me ample notice) 15" x 11" and made it tall.


The flavour was Chocolate Buttermilk with Vanilla Buttercream frosting. It was really fun seeing Mickey's face take shape. I used gum balls to create the border at the bottom of the cake to give it that Mickey Mouse Clubhouse feel and added a red border at the top as I always imagine Mickey with red pants. Well allllright!

Kid's Birthday Cakes - The Little Mermaid

Ok, I've made a few cakes during my cake decorating classes but this is by far my favourite cake!  It's not the most complicated or technical in execution but it's the prettiest!   The Little Mermaid is my favourite Disney cartoon and Ariel is my favourite Disney Princess back in the days when they didn't market the Disney Princess as a separate product.  

The cake was made with the Disney Princess Ariel Wilton cake pan and then decorated with buttercream.  The sides were iced with the Cake Icer Basketweave tip #789.  Then we outlined the face with black coloured buttercream and we filled in the banks with the Open Star tip #16.  The challenge was drawing the outline, filling the face in is time consuming and tiring but not too difficult.  Decorating the sides of the cake was equally as fun.  Creating the waves, starfish, fish and octopus just completed the mood for the cake.

  This cake just makes me happy looking at it. 

Carrot Cake Anyone?

Have I mentioned that I love carrot cake?  There used to be a little sandwich shop near my uni that sold these little bars of carrot cake.  I used to buy my Crab Mayo baps there and one day I decided to pick up one of the carrot cakes.  I had no idea what that yellow frosting was but it was love at first bite.  I later found out it was cream cheese. Before that, cream cheese was absent from my diet and since then it's been here to stay!

There are many versions of the carrot cake, some have fruits like apricot and mandarins inside or in the layers and some add chopped walnuts.  For me, I like the nuts on the outside and nothing but carrot on the inside.  The recipe I use is from the Hummingbird Bakery bakebook that my friend got for me for my birthday.  I tweaked the recipe a little so it's not quite so 'spicy' and the recipe gives me a really moist cake.  Couple with the Cream Cheese Frosting... divine!

Surprise Birthday Cakes

Just before I left on holiday I got a request for 2 cakes from V who had arrived in Seoul just 2 weeks before.  It was her husbands birthday and she wasn't sure what the office culture here was like and whether there was going to be cake... well she was going to make sure there was going to be cake! : )  

I know what it is like to be arrive in a new office so I thought it was a wonderful way to surprise him to celebrate his birthday.  She also wanted another one for a smaller celebration at home the following day which was his actual birthday which fell on a Saturday. 

I've always loved the way the Hummingbird Bakery in London decorated their cakes so I attempted theirs simple swipes here to give the buttercream texture.  I think next time I won't be so gentle, and use a heavier hand to get deeper grooves and some nice light and shadow going.  It will make for better pictures too.

See what I mean about the pictures not turning out so well?  My camera had problems adjusting to the whiteness of the cake so the shadows weren't captured very well.  I am sure there are ways to get around it but I'm not sure how to adjust the settings on my camera. Seems like photography lessons are on the books for next year.

 When it came to the cake, she had a clear idea of what she wanted.  They both liked cakes that weren't too sweet and they enjoyed fruit toppings on cakes.  V's husband also liked apples and I incorporated that into the cake which was the one for celebrating at home and it was a Chocolate Chiffon cake (Cake No. 2) layered with apple and Italian Meringue Buttercream.

Chocolate & Apple Cake with Italian Meringue Buttercream, topped with seasonal Korean grapes and chocolate curls.

The first cake which was for the office was an Orange Chiffon cake layered with peaches and cream. I chose a selection of seasonal fruits to top the cakes.  I had some problems with the chocolate curls as the chocolate bar was either too warm or too hard.  In the end after a messy start and with some help from my Mom (hee hee) I got some nice curls going and that went on top of cake number 2.

Orange Chiffon cake layered with peaches and cream, topped with Mandarins and a selection of seasonal Korean grapes.

Ok, I admit I was a little excited about delivering the cake to the office.  It was a bit like receiving flowers when you're at the office (hasn't happened in a looooong time, Maddog if you are reading that's a hint!) except this time I am not the receiver but the delivery girl.  Weird huh?  It was a surprise afterall and it went without a hitch.

The cakes were eaten and people were happy.  My work there was done.