Harvest themed & Halloween cakes

"One October Eve in Fun Family Farm"

Though we don't observe/celebrate Halloween, it is a festivity where candies and sweets are a must, therefor people would want to see and order for Halloween-themed cakes/cupcakes. So, here are two versions of my 'Fall' cakes; all are cupcakes. One part was regular cupcakes and the others was "pull-apart" cupcake. Perhaps I'd say 75% to 80% credit goes to my beloved hubby and son who have always been there to help me preparing the cakes and "helped" me with making the decorations.

The pull-apart cupcakes was about a farm in October, ready for corns and pumpkins harvest, that's why I gave title "One October Evening in Fun Family Farm". The other one is just "One Spooky Halloween Night", where I put decorations of spiders on their webs, cute mini ghosts, jack-o-lanterns and bats flying in the night with the moon as the backdrop.

If you have any question, feel free to leave message or send me e-mail, pls. Thank you!!

Practice Makes Perfect

Doesn't this remind you of Woodstock Rock Festival 1969 - the flowers generation?:)

My first practise of tiered cake with fondant-gum paste roses

... and my first princess-doll cake practise

Spring and Late Valentine's Cupcakes

There are two shapes of this version of "cupcake"; round and square. I used a sponge cake recipe from an old recipe book bought from the Library clearance and the filling was my home-made jam. Coated with quick-pour fondant icing recipe found from my wilton cake ideas' book then covered them outside with fondant. I brought this for the March women's fellowship. I was totally missed the February fellowship so I decided to mix the late Valentine's Day's celebration with the early "Spring welcome" by making these cute cupcakes. I heard from some of the sisters that they loved the cake look that they didn't dare to eat theirs:)...

Rock Climbing and Snow skiing cake

This was for my friend's hubby's 50th birthday. He loves snow-skiing and rock-climbing and the birthday was held outdoor as well (where they were camping). Imagine, with my lack of experience, we drove down to the park (about more or less 1 hr 40 minutes) and I had to put all my decoration stuff (frosting and candies) in a cooler while the cakes (3 tiers) had to suffer the heat (which that day was around mid 80s).

All the time I was just praying and hoping the cake won't turn melted like a puddle of snow being 5 seconds in Sahara!:(

I guess that's one of the reasons the cake didn't hold the candle too well (see how number 5 seemed a bit crooked?) and piling up the cakes, despite the dowels, were not as easy as usual. Well... good experience and good lesson to consider a better system next time if I'm asked to make cake for some hours driving. Thanks to Nina who trusted her hubby's cake on my hands:).

PS: Yes, the people there, I made them all except the snow-boarding figurine (you can tell:)LOL).

Glittery-Girly Cake

And this one is supposedly considered as "April's Cake" but since the birthday girl (who happens to be my friend Dana) was not doing well on that particular date of her birthday, we had to postpone our party to May 5th - which happened to be "Cinco De Mayo" day.

She was pretty annoying (LOL) for what to put on her cake. "I love this and that flower, but I don't want any flowers on my cake". Only on the Saturday before her birthday a flash of idea bump my head that I should do tiara. So here I was, only 3 days to go before the day and only started the tiara worked on Monday. Unfortunately, even though I made a spare for breakage, it still wasn't enough. I needed extra time and extra spare. Two tiaras were broken (which were all fully made of edible fondant-gum paste). They looked gorgeous, only too ugly broken to be mended:(. So, I had to use fake tiara... ughh... I wish I had time to prepare these stuff. But, have no fear, dear... next time I'll prepare myself (as always) a week ahead:). Not to mention the content inside is cake mix with store-bought strawberry jam *sigh*, while I'm proud and boasting myself as a person who love to make all-original made of scratch cakes.

This mid of May I get an order from friend (that's right, this time being only friends, relatives and people around who give order to me); for her hubby's 50th birthday. I must prepare days ahead to allow me time for getting annoyed of any unwanted results and give me mood boost again (LOL), so stick around to check my ideas!

Feel free to drop question or even if you think you want to order a cake from me. Let's try our wildest imagination and fantasy into the form of cakes!

Cakes I bake and decorate on April '09 - Part 1

Cakes I bake on April 2009:

1. The two (2) top ones are the pic of "Baggins Bag End's House" inspired by JRR Tolkien's character Bilbo Baggins' hole-in-the-dirt-house. For my hubby, to honor his passion of JRR Tolkien's books "Lord of the Rings" and "the Hobbits".

2. The bottom one (purple and gold yellow) was for a dear friend's 50th birthday: Marilyn. Inspiration came from her likes of vines and her fav. color (lavender and purple) and then I add the inspiration mixed of these ideas into Psalm 23!

Cakes I bake and decorate on April '09 - Part 2

Cakes I made on April 2009.

1. Top two pictures of "Pea in the Pod" theme was for a baby shower @ church.

2. Middle to line 3 are pics of my son's birthday party's cupcake. We picked the theme of "Little Einstein" and I used edible paper and ink for this project with regular buttercream frosting.

Lapis Surabaya Asli (Indonesian/Surabaya Layer Cake)

Honestly, I never made this cake before. I guess because I used to take it for granted that there are so many relatives, aunts and neighbors who can make this kind of cake - so I was just used to eat without bothering getting the knowledge on how to make it.

This is one of Indonesia's signature cakes. Good for any occasion, especially to be made as wedding cake! You may find the same 'layer' style and (quite close) ingredients similarity everywhere, yet it's what we call "Lapis Surabaya" (Surabaya layer cake) as it's been so distinctively known being made by Surabayans. Click HERE to learn more about Surabaya, Indonesia.

Then the time of me wanting to eat this came and I wanted so desperately to be able to do this. After digging on my printed references, and searching online as well, I found the 'most suitable' composition of this cake according to my 'taste memory'. The reason being I mentioned "taste-memory" as when I looked up on those both printed and online references, there are different versions of this cake. But I do know, for sure, the original one, calls for more than 24 egg yols for the whole thing. So I came read all through those informations, decided myself that I wanted to try the best to my 'calculation' and my not-so-much-knowledge of cake baking. After that, I was so delighted and excited that the result turns out to be perfect! My first try! The other thing I can proudly said here is that I made the jam myself so I can guarantee that this cake is "preservatives free":)... Yay!

Just pay a good attention on the details and timing and do the mix one layer at a time (exception for those baking-experts!:)) and really DON'T mix during the process of adding butter and flour, I can assure you that the process of the making will be perfectly fine. So, here goes!

Ingredients (per layer):
11 egg yolks
1 white egg
1/3 Cup of butter
2/3 Cup of sugar
½ Cup of flour (low protein)
1 teaspoon of vanilla or rum essence
Apricot or Peach jam for filling
Cocoa powder (for the chocolate layer)

Direction:
Heat the oven to 350 degree (Fahrenheit)
Grease 3 9-inches diameter pan, if you’re using the regular pan
Beat the butter until white and soft. Set aside
Beat the egg yolks and the white egg, with sugar and vanilla or rum. For 30 seconds to 1 minute in low speed, to mix them well
Then increase the speed to medium (if using stand mixer, or high speed if using hand mixer) and beat for 6 to 7 minutes or until the mix is white and raised.
Immediately lower the speed and turn off the mixer.
Fold gently the butter, followed by flour.
Keep folding gently until all mixed well.
Pour into the pan and bake in the center of the oven for 18 to 20 minutes. Don’t open during the process.
Insert a toothpick to see if the center is well-cooked. Remove from oven and cool.

NOTE: for the brown layer (middle one), replace 1 tablespoon of the flour with 1 tablespoon cocoa powder.

Assembly:
When the cake layers are all cool, spread the jam on one lowest part, top with the middle part (brown) and spread the jam again on it. Cover with the top part.
You either can decorate the cake with butter cream frosting or without. Bon appétit

Cake Time

Here are some of my cake decorating works...

Please e-mail me for queries for ordering cake.