TastyFingers

Long long long time ago Aifang got me to make some cakepops for her friends’ birthday, specifically 4 of them! The idea was to use the cake pops and insert into a basic cake base. We saw really nice cake pops from this website http://www.bakerella.com/ she makes really really nice cakepops and even has her own book! You can get the book at Borders.

So, looking at her website, I felt that I would be able to make it a success…..HAHA Singapore weather sucks.

All the steps to make cake pops can be found in bakerella’s website, and you can get lots of inspiration looking at what she has done too.

2 places that I know sells candy melts are Phoon Huat and BIY. I do not know of other places that sell, basically because I have never been to before.

I used a choc fudge cake mix and then mashed everything up and mixed it with a container of chocolate buttercream. Time to roll them up into balls! This is to create some CHICKS!  

And these were actually shaped into apple like shapes, you will have to chill it for at least 1 hour if not it will not set properly and you will have it start falling apart, like how it did on me, FRUSTRATION!! These are cookie sticks where you have to dip into some melted candy and then poke into the rolled balls to ensure they will stick. Mine didnt stick properly and I have no idea why. When I dipped them into the melted candy, it detached from the sticks.

This is how the melted candy is supposed to look like, it is actually not as easy to work with as you think, because the consistency is really thick and you will most probably leave drip marks on the cakepops no matter how well you try to smooth it out. I used some veg shortening to smooth it out, it helps a little, but not all the way, be careful not to add too much either because it will not harden in the end.

You can see here what i mean by not being able to smooth them out the one at the far left looks the smoothest, but actully at the back, its not that perfect! This is the part where im leaving it to dry out.

There is one in the process of falling apart, a bit seng-ek alrdy.  Apples!!

Here’s a chick for you guys!

Here’s what I used for the chicks feet arms and nose!

Another irritating part was that water vapour starting appearing on the candied pops! Its because of the cold cakes coming in contact of the warm melted candy. I let it airdry instead of cooling it in the fridge. I did it this way because when i removed a batch cooled in the fridge, the water vapour was even more hardcore! This is the reason why I said Singapore weather sucks! The humidity and heat causes lots of problems. Wish I can have an airconditioned kitchen. Fat hope! I added eyes and mouths to the chicks and apples. I know, pretty weird combi of animal and fruit. I also don’t know how we ended up picking this combination!

Sweating apple

Oh yeah, the candy also started cracking!! I was in torture knowing that my cakepops were falling apart, i used more candy to cover up the cracks, making them look like hair on the chicks!

Afterwards, I had remaining candy and cake balls, so I dipped them in some jimmies and coloured sugar.

This is the round base cake that is supposed to be green grass! As the chicks couldnt stay on the sticks and were dropping off, I was so desperate that I ended up removing them from the sticks and putting them direct on the ‘grass’. But it ended up looking pretty cute!! =)

I will update with the pictures of the final look soon!

HI Awesomes! I always have trouble with figuring out how to start each post. This one is about a shoe and shoe box that I made!

It first started out with Julian(sec sch mate) asking tabs to ask me if I could help him make a shoe for his buddy’s 21st birthday about 1 month back for 80pax! Shocked. Haha, but I decided to just give it a shot even thought I’ve never made such a big portion before.

Holy Moly! My oven broke down after I agreed to helping him, in the end I had no choice but to order some cakes from a bakery and sculpt them! Then he reduced it to 50 people and that was still a large amount, so we discussed and decided to make a shoe box and one side of the shoe. I borrowed the shoe and box from him to use as reference!

I’ll have to say, i really dont have good estimation powers. I overestimated the amount of fondant i needed by 3 boxes i think. HAHA! powerrrrr.

The original box was meant to be grey, but Julian felt it would be too weird if people actually ate a grey cake! hahaha, so he advised me to make the Nike SB pink box instead. The shoe is a nike dunk, Heineken. As the name suggests, its main colours are green and red.

I had to stack 4 layers to get the correct height and enough quantity for everyone to eat. I then crumb coated it with buttercream.  

This is the basic shape of the shoe that i scuplted. I was quite nervous when i scuplted it because I was worried that I might cut it out of shape!

On the top left is after I have covered the cake in pink fondant. Then I rolled out chocolate flavoured fondant that has been coloured black to cut out the nike logo. Then i pasted it on, using water as the sticking agent.

And, here is the shoe! I didnt take any pictures during the process, like only those 3 shots you see on the top left, then its all the completed shots! A solid red is really quite hard to get in fondant, thats why i just tinted it pink and then after using a craft gun that I bought at spotlight to create the thin straight and uniformed lace and placing it on, I had to paint the lace red with red gel colouring.

Also, at the butt of the shoe, there is a star that represents Heineken, I cut it out with a star cutter set I bought from BIY. I realised I didnt take a close up shot of that…wasted! But you can see it on the last pic of the above collage.

Julian and I then cabbed down from my place to Berjaya hotel where the party was held. Its somewhere in the middle of chinatown and quite ulu, when we wanted to leave the place we got lost man. Nicely.

I placed the shoebox and shoe in separate boxes to transport and then assemble it at the hotel. I put 4 dowels into the shoebox so that it will be able to hold up the weight of the shoe. And actually at the bottom of the shoe I had cut out a cardboard cake board to the base shape so that it can be placed on the shoebox conveniently.

And here is the final product!! YAY!!! I heard from Julian that the birthday boy didn’t cut the shoe and kept it! ahahha, too precious to be cut up. Overall, i am happy that everyone liked it, seriously happy!! =) thanks for giving me this opportunity to make this cake Julian!

Blur Queen Sotong came over to my place last week to learn how to use fondant, more like play with it!! haha, PLAYDOUGH. Skyler was supposed to join us, but couldnt, so we’ll have another date sometime soon!

My oven is down, have I mentioned it before?! I cannot stop boasting about my spoilt oven! Therefore, I bght 2 marble cakes from NTUC and then we proceeded to cut it up! BY THE WAY, SOTONG IS ALSO KNOWN AS PINK MONSTER. YOU’LL SEE WHY.

Body of the Skate, electric pink (we found it to be not electric enough, instead the normal Wilton gel red gave a more electric pink look than this!)

Joel trying to steal the limelight as sotong works hard!

Final product! Ain’t we fast or what!

Happy DAY, loll

Product of Boredom aka JOEL

with a lump of shit coming out from his mouth no less!

Aifang, my most loyal consumer of me wanted a cake for her good friend. We discussed a few possibilities and decided on a nutella bottle that doubles as a telephone. This idea was derived from those japanese novelty coke can/ telephone.

Her friend LOVES nutella hazelnut spread and I was told he could finish the whole bottle in one sitting! WHATTTTTT?!?!?! Plus, they enjoy chatting on the phone, therefore, this combination was the perfect one.

I was really excited to make this cake! Haha, but being me, and new in this, I wasn’t sure how i was gonna get the image of the nutella sticker details on! Bought some edible ink pens and crossed me fingers! But when it really came down to the details, I realised the pens weren’t gonna work as they weren’t the right shade and were too thick to draw the details! I hurried down to popular and got a super fine tip paint brush. Time to put my copy cat skills to the test!

It was a nutella cake IN and OUT. The nutella cake recipie I used is the one by the all famous nutella cake by kitchen goddess Nigella Lawson. I cut 3 roundish-ovals and layered them with nutella spread for the body, and one round piece for the cap.

Body wrapped in choc fondant, cap wrapped in originahnahnahhhhh

Body was further wrapped with white fondant and subsequently subjected to my copying skills. I used gel food colouring to paint the designs on.

Success!! Happy beyond words!

Added in the phone numbers, hahah!

Decided to tag it priceless to indicate their everlasting friendship!

Final product! The pig-like tail is actually the phone cord in case you guys wonder! HAHA

Recipe

Nigella Lawson’s Nutella cake

6 large eggs — separated
1 pinch salt
115 g soft butter
1 jar of Nutella (400 g) (Yes, an entire jar.)
1 tablespoon Frangelico (hazelnut liquor) or water
100 g finely ground hazelnuts
120 g dark chocolate, melted

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. (350 F).

Prepare a 9-inch springform pan: grease and line with parchment or wax paper.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs whites and salt until stiff but not dry. In a separate bowl, beat the butter and Nutella together, then add Frangelico (I just used water), egg yolks, and ground hazelnuts. Fold in the cooled, melted chocolate, then lighten the mixture with a dollop of egg white, which you can beat in as roughly as you want, before gently folding the rest of them in a third at a time. Pour into the prepared pan and cook for 40 minutes or until the cake’s beginning to come away at the sides, then let cool on rack.

There’s actually an icing recipe to go with the cake, but I didn’t use it.

for the icing
100 hazelnuts
125 ml double cream
1 tablespoon Frangelico or water
125 g dark chocolate

Toast the hazelnuts in a dry frying pan until the aroma wafts upward and the nuts are golden brown in parts: keep shaking the pan so they don’t burn on one side and stay too pallid on others. If you use unpeeled nuts, transfer them to a kitchen towel, and rub, rub, rub. Most of the skins should come off. Transfer to a plate and let cool. Leave them whole or chop them up, depending on how much skin you actually managed to get off.

In a heavy-bottomed sauce pan, add the cream, liquer or water, and chopped chocolate and heat gently. Once the chocolate’s melted, take the pan off the heat and whisk until it reaches the right consistency to ice just the top of the cake. Unmold the cooled cake carefully. Ice the top with the chocolate icing, and decorate with the hazelnuts. Serve with a lightly sweetened whipped cream.

I found out phoon huat sells black fondant and tried to get it for a black chanel handbag Huiting ordered from me. But alas! No black! Decided to use chocolate flavoured fondant which is alrdy a dark brown and add colouring to get black! OMg, still had a hard time kneading and all! And it got really sticky too the first piece, but i added more icing sugar to the second piece and it turned our better! WEEEEEEE!

The cake was for her 2 good friends Misha’s & Reiko’s birthday. Here are some pictures.

The straps of this bag are the most daunting part, and I was trying out a different way of making them, but as you can see, less work = less pretty.

The cake was just a basic chocolate cake, and I forgot what filling I used for the cake, if I used any at all.

The first ever cake that I did for someone’s birthday was a PINK chanel classic flap bag. PINK was an impromptu colour. Ignorant and foolish and inexperienced me wanted to colour WHITE fondant to BLACK fondant from scratch. Epic.

This cake making experience was a really good experience. I baked carrot cake as that was what AIFANG requested for and I agreeed because it was a dense enough cake to hold the weight of fondant. It was my first try at carrot cake, and lucky for me, it was a success!

I used a martha stewart recipe and tweaked it here and there based on the ingredients I could get my hands on.

Carrot cake would naturally come with a cream cheese frosting. BUT it was a wrong choice as FONDANT + CREAM CHEESE= FAILBLOG.ORG. You reading, please learn from my tried and tested mistake of the year. haha!

THIS WAS WHAT HAPPENED

E-P-I-C

But I’d have to say, this was a blessing in disguise. Because I prepared my cake before hand and had cut out the necessary portions, I had extra, and decided to bring it to work for my colleagues to try! This was what it really looked like in case you guys were wondering!

After I had put the pink base and as I was cutting the purple hearts, I already noticed that the pink fondant was kind of ‘melting’ and drooping at the bottom as you can see from this picture, but I dismissed it and thought that it won’t continue melting. But alas!! The next morning when i woke up, SHOCK OF MY LIFE. hahahahaha. So I whipped up a batch of wilton failproof white icing to use it as coating on my cake.

Ok, back to the Chanel. White to black fondant attempt fail. It went from blueish-grey to dark blue to dark dark blue, but NEVER black. And I kept adding shortening to prevent it from sticking to my hands and surface, so, with all the gel colouring and shortening, my fondant was so went and soft and totally not usable! I have hence forth reached my first fondant colouring failure. Haha, I subsequently found out that white needs to be brought a shade darker using brown colouring first before using the black colouring, it would have been easier that way.

Lucky me bght a 1kg pack of fondant and coloured the remaining fondant pink. OMG, pink?! ahhaha,had to throw away all the wasted failure of a fondant. Now, time for some pictures!

Shredding in process

Bakeded!

kontrast

The day Sookie want CRAZEEEEEEY!

PILE OF SHIT AND PINK PALMS

Took me just 15 mins to colour fresh fondant pink! Nicely rolled and quilted.

Final Product!  

Recipies

Class Buttercream icing

A. 1 cup vegetable shortening

B. 1 tbsp vanilla extract

B. 2 tbsp water

C. 4 cups icing sugar [sifted, for smoother consistency, sift twice or more]

C. 1 tbsp meringue powder

C. pinch of salt [optional, its to balance out the sweetness]

Cream A for about 2 mins till creamy, add B and continue creaming. Add C and mix on medium speed until all ingredients have been thoroughly mixed. Cream further for another 5 mins to get really creamy icing.

Carrot Ginger Layer Cake

http://www.marthastewart.com/recipe/carrot-ginger-layer-cake-with-orange-cream-cheese-frosting?backto=true&backtourl=/photogallery/carrot-cake-recipes#slide_1

The recipe is really long and detailed, so just go directly to this link to check it out!

If you can’t get buttermilk, just measure 1 tbsp of white vinegar into a measuring cup and fill it with milk up to 1 cup.

I replaced pecans with walnut, you could also use other nuts to your own preference.

Damn my poor memory, but I think what really triggered me to make a chanel bag was after reading that joanne peh ordered a cake from a NP school mate for david gan. BANG BANGGG. I subsequently went to check out her blog http://muffinsareuglycupcakes.wordpress.com and was inspired! AND i just went to her blog again, and realised that she’s featured in so many magazines and baked for so many special occassions and events! She’s so amazing!

So, I bght a 6in butter cake, some fondant from phoon huat, apricot jam, edible gold glitter, THATS ALL.

Excited me went home and got down to work! Because it was such a small cake, the details had to be really intricate, and this was my first experience, it took me a total of THREE hours to complete it. NICE.

omg, i just typed a long ass post, but duygrh37x32mesui3gndxnm!!!!!

I will probably get back in the mood another time, chaoza!!!