I'm so excited that Threadcakes is back!! Here's my "first" entry this year :) The design I chose this time is very cute "Chick Love".
Outside is store-bought chocolate fondant with homemade marshmallow fondant decorations.
Inside is Betty Crocker Butter Pecan cake (yes, I *do* use box cake mixes occasionally), Smucker's orange marmalade and homemade orange custard cream.
Leftover cupcakes and marshmallow fondant from the book cake project turned into these cakelettes. The bottom two in the photo have names of my friends in Japanese. I used たのしメール from Arnest Inc. to cut out those Japanese characters.
There was a book talk/signing event for my friend EK's parents, and I had an honour, privilege and pleasure to make a cake for them.
Spirit of the Nikkei Fleet: BC’s Japanese Canadian Fishermen was nominated for this year's Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award.
The 'body of the book' cake was supposed to be the same size as the 'half title page' sugarpaste piece on top of the cake :( and that's one of many, many shouldas & couldas...
The top line was piped with black royal icing and the bottom was written with FoodWriter.
Pacific Dogwood is the provincial flower of British Columbia.
I always have a hard time figuring out cake serving size... a dozen of cupcakes to the rescue!
I had an honour to make a birthday cake for my friend UW. It's a quadruple layer cake with white sponge and orange mousse filling. Sponge was drenched with coconut-flavoured simple syrup. The outside is coconut-flavoured whipped cream and coconut flake coating.
It had been quite a while (6 months?!) since the last time I made something out of rolled fondant, which made it even more enjoyable to make these frangipani/plumeria decoration. Also, this wonderful tutorial made it so much easier!
UW's husband PW asked me if the cake had a name and all I could come up with was "uh... orange mousse coconut cake?" Lame, I know. That got me googling for some info and I found this wiki article; hence the name "Ambrosia Cake"!
Here's more interesting fact! I'm pleasantly surprised how appropriate this flavour combo was for a birthday party ;)
"In ancient Greek mythology, ambrosia (Greek: ἀμβροσία) is sometimes the food, sometimes the drink, of the gods, often depicted as conferring ageless immortality upon whoever consumes it."
On the last day of my work experience (practicum) at Luscious Creations, my classmate and I got to design and decorate mini 4" cakes... on the spot à la Food Network Challenge :) We decided to make ones for each other, which made this assignment even more like FNC where you have to design a cake for a client you'll meet just before the challenge begins!
This is the one I made for my classmate Yoyo. I wish I could have made a Transformer cake for her but there's no way I could make it without some reference to look at :( So I combined her favourite colours: pink & black, one of her favourite decorations on cakes: a bow, and "Frog Prince" :)
I had an opportunity to work on a "free reign" dummy cake during my work experience (practicum) at Luscious Creations. It was meant for some charity event and their theme colours include lime green. I took the word 'lime' literally and designed this very lime-ful cake.
Each tier is 'double-height' (approx. 6"-7" tall) and I had a hard time covering those with rolled fondant :(
I entered this cool online cake-baking contest called Threadcakes. The t-shirt design that I chose is "Hey, Mr. Blue Sky"... Check out my entry here :)
I cheated a little bit and used Betty Crocker Super Moist :) I picked Rainbow Chip because I thought it would be cute some rainbow colours underneath the blue sky, yet underneath the dark, gloomy sky.
Frosting is homemade :)
Grey rolled fondant isn't very appetizing :(
The fourth and final wedding cake that I made at school was a part of the practical test. I gave myself a plenty of time (two hours, excluding time to make a batch of rolled fondant), and this time I swore to myself (as well as St. Honoré!) that I'd finish the decorating within the self-allotted time. No overtime. No mistake should be made again.
Just like the last one, there were quite a few criteria that needed to be met and, of course, the time constraint. I wish I could have a pastel-coloured cake with all-white decorations, but the cake itself had to be white. (Thanks for reminding me of the criteria, EU!) Besides, colouring rolled fondant takes long, and colouring rolled fondant the way I really want takes even longer; hence all white.
The third wedding cake that I worked on at school - all on my own this time. Well, this wasn't the first time to work on a wedding cake by myself, but I must say it was pretty challenging due to all the criteria to be met and the time constraint...
I'm happy with the crimped edges... (Thanks a lot for your books, Chiho!)
I'm happy with how the colours worked out, too.
There's always something to think "shoulda woulda coulda" about, but I had a great time overall :D
Two full-slab carrot cakes decorated by me & Nicole for VCC's Positive Space campaign.
6 colourful squares and 1 big black square were made with marzipan. Letterings were made with rolled fondant...
times two.
Here's the second wedding cake decorated in class. I teamed up with one of my teammates whom I worked together with on the first one.
Wedding Cake Competition was held as a part of Congress 2009 by the BC Chapter of the Baking Association of Canada. There were many beautiful cakes by both professional pastry chefs and pastry arts students...(photos @ Flickr) and here's my cake:
I'm so ecstatic and humbled to come in third place in Student Division *hurrah* I'd like to thank Ms. B whose guidance and support I couldn't have done it without.
Here's to the happy couple!
update: prize & bronze (glass) medal
An 8" two-layer chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream (coloured vanilla buttercream for a star) and rolled fondant decorations for my friend's daughter's 4th birthday.
Mini rope border on top - hoping for "cowboy lasso" feel...
A huge yellow star is (supposed to be) Woody's sheriff badge... (it was a cocoa star on the test-baked cake)
24 cupcakes with a "J" and 4 stars representing 4 amazing years!
I told you it's not a Christmas cane! XD
It...
took...
3 hours.
Colouring each icing and drying time between colours probably took most of the time spent.
Approximately 200 g of Wilton Ready-To-Use Rolled Fondant + 3 hours = 24 J's (not Christmas canes), 113 stars and a blue plaque with a red ribbon.
to be continued...
