CAKE CONNECTION'S ANGRY BIRDS CUPCAKE CLASS

Angry Birds. I know not what they are all about. But there I was taking an Angry Bird Cupcake class by invitation from Cake Connection. After a pleasant email from Shyamala and Nancy, the co-owners of Cake Connection, six other food bloggers and I came together for a long morning to afternoon session of sculpting 6 angry sugar paste figurines. We had so much fun, a little bit of pain and most definitely laughs. Nancy was the perfect instructor....extremely patient, kind, generous and forthcoming and Shyamala was very welcoming.


This is what the Cake Connection looks like as you enter. I have come here several times to get my sugar paste supplies. Cool, cozy and inviting.

Sonia of Nasi Lemak Lover, Veron of Quay Po Cooks, Jocelyn of Petite Nyonya, Ivy of My Story, Chris of Pure Glutton and Tomoko of Caramel Factory were there......my fellow bloggers. 


In the workshop.... the tools of the trade and the materials like fondant, cupcakes and buttercream were all set out for us..  

There were notes and super colourful playdough.....yummm...also known as fondant and sugar paste.

We were more than ready. Nancy started by explaining clearly and logically the difference between fondant aka sugar paste and gum paste aka modelling paste. Fondant is soft and used for covering cakes and/or making 2D shapes, it may also be used for simple flowers while gum paste is the more pliable and therefore wonderful for sculpting fine sugar art work like intricate flowers, 3D figures and other delicate pieces. It's an ingredient that is added called CMC powder ( a man-made gum) or gum tragacanth (natural) that makes the diffrence in the paste's pliability and elasticity and to how hard it sets. Both CMC and Gum Tragacanth are available at the Cake Connection. Nancy also gave us invaluable tips which is what a good and worthwhile class is all about. Tips that you can never learn from a book but only from  the experienced. 


Tips on how to knead colours into fondant more quickly and evenly. Tricks on how to make small amounts of fondant more workable, how to work clean and neat, how to make edible glue, how to secure your figurines, how to get an evenly flat and not floppy fondant covered cupcake, how to make lifting minuscule cutouts easy, how to colour fondant a really deep red or black, which brands are better for this or that.......and all the whys and why nots...She also let us in on the secrets on making fondant taste like strawberry bubble gum. Oh My YUM...Invaluable lessons learnt.  So I came home armed not only with six angry looking birds in my pink box but with mental ammunition for my next sugar paste project. Now that's an excellent class no? Yes.


The angry birds ~ that I made....mmhm ~ so fun ~ so tiring ~ my eyes crossed a few times when I rolled out their tiny pupils and cut out their fierce eyebrows ~ the beaks were somewhat tricky. And must they have feathers and tails too!? These may look like child's play but believe me they are not. We heard Sonia heave a big, fat sigh .....now that made us laugh.....not angry ~ 

Do they growl or twitter ? Don't be angry little black bird ~ I made you ~ 


It wasn't easy rolling out a perfect round (perfection is the keyword in sugar paste class I find)....and Nancy said "Not too much pressure." The eyes are 'simply' 3 tiny circles of fondant, one larger than the other, each pressed flat and all glued one on top of the other. Easy? No.

He reminds me a little bit of the Simpson's don't you think?

Oohh la la here they come ~ the angry birds ~ owwww ~


The 3D figurines were secured with spaghetti poked into the cupcake and the angry bird figure poked over the end sticking up. Yes it secured them alright. The easiest part was making the nest. 

When pigs fly ~ 


God ...those nostrils gave me problems. One had to be bigger than the other....and I like the way all the dark 'inside' parts of the noses and ears merged and looked like they were one. Very clever Nancy.

Could they be partners in crime? These very angry birds ~

Hey Mr. Red Bird !.....your beak drove me crazy ~ duh

Finally ~ Sweet success ~ Tweet ~ No wonder figurine-d cupcakes are so expensive! ~ We spent almost 5 hours decorating...just decorating (not baking) six cupcakes! Never more shall I wonder why. 

Thank you to Nancy and Shyamala from Cake Connection. T'was wonderful :)


The Cake Connection also makes beautiful wedding cakes to order, conducts various levels and varieties of sugar paste/fondant and baking classes for adults and children in addition to having an abundant supply of ready made sugar paste flowers, an array of sugar craft tools, food colours in regular and fluorescent shades, gold, silver and pearl edible dust, ready made fondant both white and coloured and so much more and finally, of course, experienced, warm and friendly instructors. You would do well to give them a visit for your supplies and consider taking classes too. I have taken their World of Roses class and it was worth every sen :) True.


PS:


Sonia has shared Nancy's yummy chocolate cupcake recipe from the class. Hop over to Sonia's if you would like the recipe. It was YUM and chocolatey and moist. 


Perhaps you can guess how I ate the cupcake. I lifted the fondant pieces including the blue base carefully, preserving everything whole and in perfect order. I placed it on a flat plate....then ate the cupcake while looking at the angry birds being angry at me. I know.....I'm weird.

WEDDING GIFT CAKES ~ 'HANTARAN' CAKES

These are what kept me busy the past 2 weeks. For a close friend. I'm glad it they turned out all right and that A was very happy with them. She wanted them pink with touches of brown.

I made the simplest of roses. One of the type of roses that I had learnt to make at the sugar craft class ...a few months ago. I am so glad I attended the class. But after a hiatus since the class it took time to get my mojo back and after a few trials I managed to make sense of the process required to make those "simple" roses. They were simple really but like everything else it takes consistent practice not to lose it. 

I wish I had been calm enough to take some photographs to show you how they were made but as usual I just wanted to get on with them and at the time nothing was more important than getting the roses completed satisfactorily. I will show the steps in a future post though. So keep a look out.

The cakes were simple and the ribbon was chosen by A to match the decor for the rest of the wedding gifts. 

The recipe for the fondant is here. I had made a white velvet butter cake by Rose Levy Beranbaum.....my favourite cake master. She, who bakes like a chemist. 

I had coloured the sugar paste for the roses a pale pink and then dusted the edges with coral pink lustre powder. It came to life. Both the leaves and the roses were steamed to seal the lustre colours in. I love steaming them because it gives a sheen and a satiny finish.

The fondant for the cake was a slightly deeper but still light pink and then I piped the brocade design (again).

Decorating cakes is very much like painting for me. I have no clear idea of what I will be doing until I do it. The cake evolves rather than planned. I was pleased. And relieved. My friend A loved it. I hope you like them too :) This is an eye candy post.

A had decided to make six small cakes instead of one large one so that each set of family members could get one complete cake to take home after the ceremony. Instead of cut pieces of cake. How clever :)

Hantaran cakes in a Malay wedding are part of 5 or more trays of gifts exchanged between the bride's and bridegroom's families. Other gifts may include trays of fruits, chocolates, shoes, handbags, Malay dress. Or anything really. It seems that anything goes nowadays. 

The trays are elaborately arranged and decorated with flowers with months of planning and carried to the brides home in a procession, placed and arranged formally on a carpeted floor and the wedding vows are taken while the families watch and witness the occasion.

For more on weddings click here and here. The weddings of my nephews and their lovely brides few years ago. 

PINK ROSES WEDDING CAKE

Colours make the world go round. In my world. 

Two days before the cake was to be picked up was a period of intense focusing, ups and downs, debating, changing of plans and finally, the night before, a feeling of relieved exhilaration. 

I made a brocade design over the fondant covered delicate yet rich velvet butter cake and topped them with  three romantic hues of pink roses.

However the colours did come at a cost. There was plenty of gum paste kneading and mixing of food colours until I was satisfied with each hue. But it will always be my favourite part....creating colours.

I was so relieved the bride loved it. Although she had requested for a replica of the wedding cake that I had made before I couldn't concede to her request. On the last day I had to make a drastic change of plans because I realized that the cake was too large and the roses not large enough. I had also made the roses all of the same size which meant that I did not have the variation of sizes that I did before to enable me to give the arrangement a pleasing natural garden look. Lack of experience made me overlook the fact earlier.

Where once the roses I made would be inconsistent in size due to my inconsistent and unconventional methods this time around each rose was of an almost equal size ever since I had attended the gum paste roses class. I will have to learn to make bigger roses in future. The class was a boon because I can now make very beautiful roses but a bane in my attempt at replicating my last wedding cake. Ignorance was a kind of bliss then.

But when you're at your wits end it helps having loving family rallying around you. Full of helpful suggestions and support I managed not to lose it all. Finally we decided to give the cake a simple topping of roses. I must say, and I say again, colours make all the difference. It brings an otherwise plain and simple cake to a totally different level. I almost didn't want to give the cake away. Perhaps that's how the father of the bride feels when the time comes to give the bride away.

But all is done and over and I now appreciate my pre-wedding cake life more than ever. Yay. 

This time I had dusted the edges of all my roses with two shades of pink petal dust. Particularly Coral Pink. Then I did what my gum paste teacher told me I should not do to gum paste roses. I steamed them. That set and sealed the colour in and the pink did not fade as pinks and purples always tend to even after a mere 24 hours. I was jump-for-joy pleased. Otherwise the pink roses would have been a pale almost pinkish shade of white by the time the bride came to pick the cake up. Lesson learnt. Defy your teacher for a good cause. :)

And I will never again make sugar flowers without brushing on petal dust. It brings the flowers to life. They glow and look so very beautiful. Like a blissful bride on her wedding day.

The leaves I had made the same way and of the same colour when I had made this cake. I resisted buying a rose leaf veiner because it was quite expensive so I used the Wilton veiner that came with an old set I had bought ages ago.

I had also made some tendrils of simply twirled craft wire around a pencil. I loved doing that. And the results were cute. The white filler buds I had made this time around instead of buying them as I usually do. They were so easy and adorable to do.

 

The only item I did not make this time around were the white with yellow centre filler flowers because I did not anticipate using them. It was a good thing I had some spare from the  last wedding cake.

I love wedding cakes of colours that take my breath away. Don't you? My best wishes to the lovely bride and groom.

My fondant rolling for a ten inch cake was made so much easier with a lovely inky blue silicone mat that Sarah-Jane of siliconemoulds.com had included in the squishy parcel she sent me with the financier and jumbo cupcake moulds amoung other fun things some weeks ago.  Thank you Sarah. It was such a great help otherwise I would probably have had almost a foot of extra fondant hanging over the base of the cake :P All I had to do was to swipe a teeny bit of vegetable shortening over it for a smooth and effortless job. 

CAKE CONNECTION SUGAR ROSES CLASS

No I haven't vanished. Again. I've been busying myself making sugar paste roses, hydrangeas and leaves for a small wedding cake that I had agreed to make. I have to say I've lost a little bit of the passion I had had once....a few years ago. I wonder why, myself. But I think it has a lot to do with cleaning up after. Sleepless nights. And stress. I guess.

So it was very timely that I visited Cake Connection a few days ago to get some supplies. Cake Connection is located at Jaya One and has a beautiful supply of gum paste flowers and cake decorating ingredients and tools. As I was paying for my electric and apple green food colours  I was introduced to A World of Roses sugar paste class. I felt a flutter of excitement. So I enrolled almost immediately. My first sugar paste class ever! 

With the class coming up I had a feeling that all I had taught myself was going going going down the drain. I know that I had probably picked up some wrong techniques, some weird habits and have made wrong conclusions from the various sugar paste books and instructions that I have collected over the years. Now it's time for a total sugar paste roses make over. I was totally ready.

This class taught us to make 4 kinds of roses. Intricate wired roses, un-wired roses, ribbon roses and miniature roses. Oh the miniatures were so adorable! And the wired ones were gorgeous. It also taught us how to use petal dust, how to make rose leaves and to colour them. . Lynette was our talented instructor throughout the four hour class. Thank you Lynette. It was very enjoyable and enlightening.

I was glad it was a small class because I was quite the klutz. Stress was written all over some of our faces because we were told to hurry otherwise we would be short of time to make the other roses. 

First off we were taught to make wired petals so that it had time to dry and harden by the time we finished with other roses. We used spoons to cradle them and to give them shape. Why didn't I ever think of that!

This was how it started out. Rolling out the gum paste with wire inserted and cutting out the shape.

After some thinning of the edges and some cupping of the petal and curling of the edges we then had a finished petal ready to be rested on a spoon and air-dried..... 

We made 5 of them and air dried them while we proceeded to make the bud and inner petals of the rose.

The half rose ready and standing. Mine in the forefront.

Then we attached the 5 wired rose petals that we had made earlier to make a full blown rose. We then made and attached the calyx and ovaries (yes.. Lynette said ovaries and we all had a good long giggle) at the base of the rose. And finally we dusted them with pink petal dust.......

The finished rose. Gorgeous no? 

We made and coloured some rose leaves.....steamed them over a kettle to deepen the colour......

 And we made  gorgeous ribbon roses.....so easy and fluffy....YUM..

 

The cool and cozy Cake Connection kitchen....I'd love another class...Inspiration has found me again...

Lynette the instructor in striped blouse. Me, behind the camera.

A SNOW WHITE FAIRY CAKE ~ FOOD FOR THOUGHT

This is my long delayed fifth contribution to Food For Thought, the brain child of the lovely and brilliant Jain of Once in a Blue Moon.  All I can say Is I've been meaning to. This is a fortnightly meme of food and books. The perfect combination.  Thank you Jain for hosting this meme. It's a brilliant idea and one of the most exciting I've come across.

THE FAIRY FOLK AND SHE by Mary-Anne Grosse Ivie.
***** 
WARNING ~ FAIRY OVERLOAD

I have to tell you that when this book arrived in the mail I said to myself that it had better be good because I had  no wish to write a bad review or to feel obliged into writing a good one in spite of. I needn't have feared.

It was an enchanting fairy tale ~ with a twist. In the World Within a World of fairies, gnomes, elves, brownies, warlocks, witches, sorcerers and sorceresses lay the enthralling towns of Tranquility, Serendipity  and Ever After and a little further away, Darkland, a place where evil triumphs. 

Lisa, the daughter of the Old woman in a Shoe sacrifices a good part of her life to Razzlewitch who, in return, saves her family from poverty and hunger. While there Lisa discovers that she has powers she never knew she had. It is a story where love, trust and kindness conquers all  A tale told by Mary-Anne, I believe, from her heart.

Like all fairy tales the line between good and evil was distinct. Their names say it all ~ Verity, Melody, Kindred, Willoway and Zyneth the evil one. 

Although it was an intriguing fairy tale of good fighting off evil in which the child in me could sit back and enjoy I couldn't help but notice through my adult eyes, how, as the story went along, its characters raised, in their quest, the deeper and more soul searching questions of free will versus destiny, of the need to believe in the power of love and trust, and at one point, there even rose the question of the existence versus the non-existence of a supreme being. I found that as refreshing as the characters are innocently charming.

I was especially surprised too at the way the story  came to a close. I had expected the story to end with a scene in Tranquility. It didn't. Secretly, I wished it did. It would have been the most bewitching place to bring the gentle end of the story to. But then again it made complete sense that it didn't because Lisa was after all a human living a real existence in a real world. Life, as we know it, is not a fairy tale.

I give this book 5 stars. If I hadn't had errands to run because I was an adult I would have sunk myself into an overstuffed pillow, sucked on some lollipops and stayed there until I was being called for dinner as opposed to cooking it. This is a book for both children and adults because it made me  wish that I lived in Tranquility amoung fairies, elves, goblins, warlocks and brownies....minus Zyneth of course.

Although there were ample mentions of food in the book especially the mention of pink fairy cakes first introduced when Seraphina the sweet fairy brought some to Lisa for tea I just couldn't bring myself to make them for this review. I should have because it became Lisa's favourite cake in the story.  

But I didn't. Fairies do something to me. They make me silly happy. I had such a blast making sugar paste fairies and I knew instinctively that she had to be sitting on a dreamy white cake (inside and out) deep in the woods, surrounded by shrubs, flowers and birds with lots of shade and bands of streaming sunlight. There! I said it.

Please don't mind her eyes. She looks a little squint but I dared not rectify it further for fear of making her look even more startled. H says she looks like the blue female in Avatar. No dear..this is Seraphina..let me spell it out to you.... S-E-R-A-P-H-I-N-A ......The Fairy.

I had searched the interenet on some instructions on how to make the fairy and this is the best video that I came up with. It was very helpful but unfortunately it stopped short of showing how to form the body and her dress. So the rest they say is trial and error....and lots of patience. But most of all have fun! 




Since I do not own a mould for a fairy face I had to be happy just rolling out a ball of sugar paste, moulding out the socket for the eyes with the end of a rounded stick and the rest they say is shaky hands and squint eyes. The video advised that the eyes be painted to look sideways rather than straight at you otherwise it would make her look very startled

I had also made the limbs by eyeballing the amount of sugar paste since I did not have those fancy thingys. Then I had a problem making the blouse and skirt. It made me almost cry (in fun) (I think) but finally I did it. The most enjoyable part was deciding the colour of her clothes. So fun fun fun. I was silly happy. The flower 'hat' was another thing that made me silly happy making and putting it on her little head. And of course the hair made me feel like a fairy hair stylist. Now that I've bared my soul please don't judge me.

Ah...And the WINGS! Oh that was so fun too. However they are only partly edible because I had used a gauzy paper print to stick onto the sugar paste wings for a more colourful and sweetly pretty pair of fairy wings. They were perfectly pretty. The rest they say is edible. Except for a toothpick in her little head and body.

Finally I glued all the parts together with royal icing and how I love her long and slender limbs and little Cinderella feet.  


And the cake was a white cake from Collette Peter's, my favourite cake decorating book. It was soft, white and delicious.

I had taken the idea for its decoration from her lovely lovely book too. All was of white cut out vine leaves, rose leaves and some flowers carefully arranged and glued on with egg white onto a domed shaped fondant covered cake while Seraphina the fairy watched me, quiet and still. And sweet ~

Here's the recipe for the Snow White Cake ~ by Colette Peters

3/4 cup vegetable shortening
1 1/2 cups castor sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 3/4 cups cake flour
1/2 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk, room temperature
4 egg  whites, room temperature


Preheat oven to 350 F.

Grease and flour 2 9 inch baking tins. In a large bowl of an electris mixer, cream shortening until light and fluffy.Slowly add 1 cup of the sugar, continuously beating until fluffy. Add vanilla. 


In a small bowl, sift dry ingredients together. Ad 1 T of the dry ingredients to the shortening mixture and mix well. Then add 1 tablespoon of the milk. Alternate in this manner until the flour and milk is finished blending well after each addition. Do not overmix.


In another bowl beat agg white until fluffy and then add the 1/2 cup of sugar and beat until stiff and shiny. Gently fold in teh egg whites into the flour mixture until blended.


Pour into prepared pans and bake for about 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.


Decorate with fondant and sugar paste decorations.


The recipe for the fondant and the sugar paste are here and here.