Fresh Flowers for a Cake, plus Basketweave Tutorial

One of my regular customer loves combining cakes with fresh flowers.

These are fresh gerbera daisies on top of a fondant basketweave cake, looking like a basket of flowers. 

The basket handle in not edible. Just detach it from a real basket and wrap it with ribbon, do the necessary coating with chocolate or aluminium foil and poke it into the cake.

Two lengths of fondant strips to make fondant basketweave.

One long vertical strip followed by a few horizontal strips.

Another long vertical strip... 

...followed by more horizontal strips, join them from the gap between the 2 verticals.

Third vertical and more horizontals.

In the end, you have a basketweave cake. 

The 'rope' made by twisting 2 long rolled fondant "____________". Is there a term for this?

Position the rope for top and bottom borders.

This is a professionally arranged bouquet by a florist.

When ordering, just let the florist know the intended use and you will get the perfect arrangement size.

Here's how they do it.

Flowers remain fresh and no water getting on the cake.

Attaching the bouquet on the cake.

Tadaa!

Good for Mother's Day too!

My 6th year of Kids and Cupcakes in Kinderland!

I am very proud of this long and sustainable work with Kinderland.

All proceeds goes to The Malaysian Association of the Blind, Perak branch, a charity supported by Kinderland. Besides the making and selling of rattan products, they also have a permanent centre providing massages in Super Kinta, right in Ipoh town. Just a mention here, Kinderland also employs hearing and speech impaired kitchen crew to do the daily cooking for kids.

I would like to thank my baker friend Carol for her contribution in baking all of this year's cupcakes and making some fondant flower decorations. I was super busy that weekend. This is one of the few events important for me and not to be missed.

There is another of my charity event that I have not mentioned here before. It is the annual NASAM (Nasam Stroke Association of Malaysia) Charity Food and Fun Fair. This year it will be held on Sunday, June 2nd, (9am-1pm), at the Nasam Centre (9, Lorong Pinji, Off Jalan Pasir Putih). It will be my 4th year participating.   100% coupons collected from my stall is for Nasam, planning to increase my range of products to reach RM1k contribution this year...cupcakes, macarons, decorated cookies, and novelty cakes.  So come and support. Tickets sold are RM100 per booklet, however you can buy loose ones on that day. Lots of good food for sale like the famous Ipoh Salted Baked Chicken, Vegetarian Sushi (my personal favourite), the well known Stadium Satay going for RM1 per stick. This is where if you have leftover coupons, spend them at this stall. There's lots more stalls like Hovid, and handicraft by Nasam itself,...etc. Looking forward to the event. Come early, I sold out at 12noon last year. 

I shall conclude with pictures of cute kids and their cupcakes.

My oldest kid.

 My favourite picture this year.

A Hundred Cupcakes on a Cupcake Tower

Here's how a cupcake tower with 100 pieces of cupcakes look like.

Total of eight tiers with extra spacing for flowers.

This event is a combination of wedding and mother's birthday, it is actually a gift from my customer.

Therefore, you see the combination of longevity peach, peony and the Chinese character for "Double Happiness"

The large peonies are artificial fabric ones.

Loving the idea and look of using fabric flowers for cupcakes tiers.

A tutorial of a mini peony for cupcakes.

I'm also starting to like this format of presenting tutorials which is common now in Facebook and Pinterest.

One look and you can immediately see the sequence of steps instead of scrolling down to get the whole picture. I'm limiting them to 5 steps...I love working with limitations. :)

My cupcake class handouts have these 5-step tutorials too. 

All the easier for my cupcake students to continue their self-learning at their own pace.

I think that's what I will call them in future...my "5-step tutorials". 

The Fraker Wedding • March 24, 2013

 

 

 

The Finley Wedding • March 24, 2013

My 100th blog post :)

Time to celebrate my 100th blog post!

As I write this, part of my house is being repainted, 

with the aim of creating a more conducive idea inspiring environment.

The 100th blog post...need to make it a good one.

This cake is done for a wedding planner sometime late last year...instruction given was champagne, cream and white showing tone effects.

Here's a look at some behind the scene cake work. 

Doing the pleats. 

Rectangular cut-outs and folds of the same size...assembled to form pleats. 

Second tier, flower cut-outs and royal icing piping at boarders and lines to make lace effect.

More pleats at the top tier.

Assembling the flowers, calla lilies and sweetpeas. 

Sweetpeas to provide some ruffles to straight lined calla lilies.

Just playing with the lines of flowers...abstract art using flowers,

another idea I want to grow for my designs.

Green and Red Wedding

A green and red wedding theme at Indulgence, Ipoh.

The cake...a ruffled design by Cotton & Crumbs in the Wedding Cakes A Design Source (Issue 44),

in supposedly ombre green, with some red, in the form of butterflies.

Each guest gets either a red or green apple,

and a clothes peg, hand-made personally by the bride.

A closer look at them. 

One in Western bride and groom costume,

the other in the traditional Chinese wedding costume.

Creative!

Simple dining room set-up.

A Ferrero Roche tower made by the bride and friends.

A sweets and fruits display table at the reception, also by bride and friends.

Red and green eggs, unique!

A closer look at the cake...ordered by bride's aunt and mom.

The insides of the cake,

some green (pandan flavour) in it too.

My first wedding cake for 2013.