A gift from mummy (Part II)

As I have mentioned in my previous post A gift from mummy (Part I) , I did make a separate birthday cake for my dear daughter just for her birthday celebration with the family. Just like my elder child's birthday, we usually will celebrate the kids' birthday together with the extended family. So I had to come up with the cake fast since I only have 1.5 days to complete it before the event. *Stress* My daughter has gone to and fro with the theme of the cake which didn't help a bit! First she wants Dora, then she says Princess Aura and then Tinker Bell. I had to do some research online to show her a few pictures to convince her what she really wants. After much thought, she finally decided with one and so I made this for her....

Comparing with her last year's Snow White Birthday cake, it was just as "laborious", lol! Not because it was more work, but because I was not as experienced with fondant. With the Snow White cake, I did chocolate icing to cover the cake, but with this Tinker Bell Cake, I used fondant...a lot more "dangerous" if you ask me, lol! Luckily I managed to cover the cake nicely and no visible air pockets trapped inside. ;D Yippeee!! You should check out my first fondant covered cake....quite bad, lol! So experience and luck play a major part here....but if you attended the "W..." course, they will definitely show you how. I didn't attend any class, so all these you see any mistakes or imperfections....close one eye okay? Lol!

One of the "exciting" part about this birthday celebration was to actually move this whole cake to my MIL's house! If you have watch Food Network Channel, they always have this Food Challenge where famous bakers will come to bake beautiful, mostly tall and multi tiered as well. At the end of the challenge the bakers will have to cautiously move their master piece from their work table to the presentation table. Everyone would be holding their breadth every time they do it...fearing that the lovely piece of edible art will topple and gone to waste. Quite fun to watch....but when it was my turn to do something like this, it ain't fun I tell you! Although the trip was only 10 minutes, I was all stressed out, lol!
Thank goodness, I managed to transport the cake to my MIL's place without much "damage" to it. Perhaps the Tinker Bell topper was a little "shaken up" with a few minor cracks, but the rest is all well...I think. :P You can see Tinker is slanting to the left...*sigh* Good thing it didn't topple before the party was over. ;)) I guess my mistake was not adding enough stabilizer so that my topper is hard enough...well I learn something every time. :)Here is a shot of the cut up cake (yes! we cut it up!) You can see there's 4 layers of chocolate sponge cake, sandwiched with chocolate whipped cream and fresh sliced strawberries. I have adapted the Chocolate Sponge Cake recipe from Kitchen Corner, a fool-proof recipe I must say, thanks Grace! All along there is this "myth" that we have to use butter cake for a fondant cake...but I am glad that I proved it otherwise. ;) This sponge cake was able to hold my fondant up really well and it was much softer, lighter and with the chocolate whipped cream, it was delicious! I am glad I took the risk else I will never know. ;)A slice just for me...yum! I love the slight tang from the fresh strawberries and the dark chocolate (I used Valrohna..again) cream and cake, a perfect combination. ;) If you wonder why I always use chocolate cake all the time..that's because my whole family are chocoholic! Lol! So it's purely a request from my daughter....and yes the strawberries too. :P

I will leave you with this last shot of the whole not cut up version of the cake....a nicer view I guess. :) Overall I was really happy with this cake and my family enjoyed the cake too, especially my little girl. I am so glad I only have to do this a few times a year....lol! Hope you all enjoyed viewing the cake or perhaps a little motivated to try out fondant? Either way, hope everything went well. ;)

P.S.: There is something wrong with the Blogger image upload, I can't upload larger versions of my photos! Anyway, will try loading them again tomorrow. ;)

Have a good week all!

A gift from mummy (Part I)

If you have been wondering why have I not been updating my blog lately...well I have a really good reason for that. It's my younger daughter's birthday and I have been really busy, planning, baking and decorating the cakes for her. And because of my daily duties, to work with these extra jobs on hand, really requires planning. But I was really glad I managed to pull it off and everything went and as planned. *Phew! Big relief!!* And if you are wondering why is post title names Part I, that's because I made cupcakes for her class celebration and another actual birthday cake for home celebration. Without further ado, here is are the cupcakes!

It's been such a long time since I made fondant cupcakes. The last time I did it was way back last year for my elder child's graduation party in school. :) So making these cupcakes was like a refreshing course for me. ;D Even though it took me two days to complete these, I really enjoyed the whole process. ;) It's almost like getting to play with my old favorite toy again, heehee. :)

I did quite a bit of research before I started working on this. I even sat down and watched an episode of the cartoon with my girl! Lol! I really liked it by the way. ;) If you have not seen Pororo before, check out their website to find out more. ;)

I shan't go into too much detail as to introduce the characters to you. Actually I cannot remember some of their names already. But when I brought the cupcakes in to my girl's class the other day, her classmates were going like "Pororo!! That's Eddy, that's Loopy" etc etc...you get the idea. All the kids were really thrilled getting a cupcake and I was glad they enjoyed eating it too! ;D I used my yogurt vanilla cupcake recipe adapted from the Blueberry Yogurt Muffin recipe. I followed the recipe exactly except for the yogurt, I used plain low fat yogurt instead of blueberry ones. It turned out really nice, not as dense as the usual butter cake.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed viewing the pictures.I know I have enjoyed making them very much, lol! Do stay tune for my next post for my girl's birthday cake. :)) Hope I can find sometime to post it up soon though. You all have a good day! Cheers!