Cupcake Obsession

(*sorry cake above was cut by the birthday girl before i managed to grab this photo :p)

Today is a very special day for a special someone…. it’s my husband’s grandma’s (aka Mama’s) birthday! She is turning 88 this year and to look at her, you wouldn’t even think she’s a year over 60! Her vivacious character, booming voice and sharp mind make her someone to reckon with. :) Plus do you know she successfully plays the stock market!!! She’s the only grandma i know that actually plays the stock market and consistently makes money at it!! haha… She trades better than most people i know come to think of it Mama… how about some stock tips!!

Well.. as this was her 88th birthday, I wanted to surprise her with a special birthday cake. As I knew that one of her biggest passions is her garden, it was easy enough for me to decide on the theme of the cake. But i wanted to go a step further an include some subtle elements into the cake that makes it uniquely her cake. First off, it was to include the specific flowers or plants in her garden into the cake. Her favourites included ferns, ixora’s, and one of her favourite plants, the Anthurium. In addition she has a wooden bench that she usually sits on to admire and appreciate her own flower garden. Every now and then, her favourite pet, Tyra, would join her. Tyra’s a little Jack Russell that just never seemed to grow. I would describe her as one tiny, sly, evil and scheming and dog i tell you. You can literally see her thinking up her little schemes with just one look from her. I will see if i can get a picture posted up of what she looks like so you can see what i mean :p Shucks.. couldn’t find any.. put here’s a picture of the real Mama holding Tyra

Well, based on all the elements, i decided to make a 2 tier cake, with grandma sitting on the top of the cake on her bench with Tyra in her arms and her being surrounded by all her glorious flowers on the bottom tiers. After confirming the design, i began work on the flowers and my little miniature grandma figurine or “mini Mama”. As i know that Mama usually wears baju’s and has a bright red one with white flowers splashed all over it, i decided to make my mini Mama wearing that baju. I then added the little details such as her accessories like her little jade bangle, watch,  earrings and rings.  Once those were completed, i started on the bench, and added some wood prints on the bench to give it that woody look. This in itself took 2 days for me to complete. Thinking everything was all set, i left them out to dry.. lo and behold it started raining.. and raining and raining for 3 days consecutively!!!! Aww man…. i could see my little figurine starting to sink into itself with the high humidity.. wahhh!!!! Praying for the sun to come out or at least for it to stop raining, i kept my fingers crossed the next few days and finally it stopped raining and though there was no sun, the humidity did lighten up a little allowing my little “mini Mama” to dry. Whew!! Here’s a close up picture of my completed mini Mama.. so does it look anything like the photo above?

So now i only had left to bake the cakes, tort them, frost them and cover them in fondant, which though it sounds easy, takes me about 1 day to complete. The part i hate most, kneading the colour into a huge chunk of fondant… it’s a serious work out on the arms and wrists!! haha.. oh well.. at least i get to work off some of the calories that comes from eating the chunks left from levelling the cake :p

Well.. after all that work, this was the final product. Mama was very happy when she saw it and you can see her in the picture below pointing out all the little things that made the mini Mama recognisable as her Happy Birthday Mama!!! And may you have many more to come

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Amy e-mailed me the other day asking me if i could do some cupcakes for her friend’s birthday. Desiree had recommended me to her and she had been impressed with the work she’d seen on my web. As such, she asked if i could make some cupcakes representing her and her friends plus some Starbuck cups. Why Starbucks cups some of you might ask? Well.. Amy told me that her and her friends always hang out at Starbucks all the time and they are known as the Starbuck girls. So she wanted the cupcakes to be designed to include their favourite hangout.. thus the Starbuck cups.

After thinking about it, i remember previously coming across some gorgeous face cupcakes someone else had done and thought this would be perfect for Amy’s cupcakes since she wanted the cupcakes to represent each of her friends. Amy had even though ahead and provided me with a photo of her and her friends as a guide for me. So once the idea was pitched to her and confirmed, i went ahead and started thinking of ways to make the cupcake look like each of Amy’s friends. After doing up some really bad sketches which i’m not going to post up here :p  i began on the cupcakes.

As for the Starbuck cups, i did a google search to see what the Starbuck’s logo looked like since i never really studied it before. So after finding some great pictures, i begain the painstaking effort of slowly painting on the logos onto the cups.. which trust me is one of the toughest things I’ve ever done due to how tiny i had to make the Starbucks cup in order to fit it onto the cupcake. Trust me, painting on the logo onto a cup that is smaller than my thumb is not the easiest thing to do. I could feel my hand shaking with each stroke of my brush and i had to hold my breath every time i lay brush to cup. Whew!! So once the cups were finished i began on the faces which took me longer than expected. Overall i was very satisfied with how they turned out Can any one guess which cupcake represents which girl in the photo? Haha.. a little hint *the cupcakes are arranged according to the sequence of the girls in the photo.

 From the photo, Amy is the girl on the top row extreme left and the birthday girl is the girl in the top row extreme right. So according to the cupcakes, Amy is also the girl on the top row extreme left Did any of you guess it right? :p

Anyway, here’s a shout out to the birthday girl, wishing her a very Happy Birthday. I hope all you guys liked the cupcakes!

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Well.. to start off this post, i just had to say that this past week has been a pretty slow week for me and the continued economic slowdown has been depressing me as well as my cakes apparently.. this was a chocolate cake i baked the other day.. apparently my mood was affecting my baking so that the cake ended up not rising and sinking ever so slightly in the middle… aargggh!!! :( Luckily it was just for us to eat at home so it wasn’t too bad :p

However, the week was soon looking up after I received an e-mail from Ko Chen. Ko Chen had stumbled across my cakes while surfing the net and asked if i could make her daughter’s 1st birthday cake for her. She had loved the pyjama themed cake I made for Valerie and wanted me to make Natalie’s 1st birthday cake for her. She even provided me with a picture of the cake she wanted!! Wow!! I was so impressed since it’s not easy looking after a 1 year old, working and still having to look for cake ideas on the net!!

Anyway after several discussions with her as to whether she should have a 2 tier cake or a 1 tier cake with cupcakes on the side, etc, Ko Chen finally decided on a 9″ cake with a little girl clutching Piglet and some complimenting cupcakes to finish it off. The reason for the Piglet, well it is Natalie’s favourite soft toy and she carries it whereever she goes so of course you had to have it on the topper right?! So after confirming the design with Ko Chen, I immediately started work on the cake topper. As usual I went on a hunt for ideas for a cute little girl topper and one of the first places i searched was to Lorraine McKay of course!!! Her cakes are a constant inspiration to me and I always hope that i would be able to someday make cakes as gorgeous as hers.  I’m still a long way off but i think I’m slowly getting better Guess what! I hit the jackpot on my first try.. Lorraine done a little girl topper that I thought would be perfect.. so using that as a model, i began modelling my own little Natalie clutching Piglet. This topper is, to date, the figurine with the most details I’ve ever attempted, and took me a good 3 days to complete to my satisfaction. So I was actually pretty happy with the way she turned out although i still think i need to improve on the face… :p

Oh and just for fun, i thought i’d show you a picture of how tall the little girl figurine is. That’s a Nivea lip gloss tube next to the little topper, and well.. i’d say she’s about the same size as that topper 

As for the cake itself, as I wanted it to look really sweet, and keep in line with Ko Chen’s request for flowers on the cake, I decided to use little flowers all around the border of the cake as well as having a matching border on the top of the cake. This was very time consuming to do as each individual flower had to be positioned on the cake exactly so to get the pattern and effect i wanted. Plus, to give the cake that extra shine, each individual flower had to be dusted with some luster dust to give it that nice glisten in the lights.

However, once everything was assembled i was very happy with the cake. And everything was even more worthwhile when i saw Ko Chen’s delighted expression with the cake I made. As for little Natalie, she was too distracted with my little schnauzer, Jasper, to look at the cake.. haha.. But all in all, seeing Ko Chen’s delight with the cake just made all the time and effort put into the cake worthwhile

Unfortunately for me, stupid little me forgot to take pictures of the little complimenting cupcakes i had made as well… they were on nutella cupcakes with piglet and little girls as toppers. Arrgghh.. Ko Chen do you have any pictures of the little cupcakes to share? :p

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I got an e-mail from Mala about a month ago asking if i could make 2 boxes of my pooh cupcakes for her. Apparently someone had given her my cupcakes to try and as she found them very cute and colourful and wanted very much to share my cupcakes with her colleagues and family.

Unfortunately, not long after e-mailing me she realised that some of her colleagues were on a health kick at the moment so she unfortunately could not confirm the order. I thought that would be it.. but about a month later, Mala called me! You could imagine my surprise!!! Mala apparently had been trying to convince her colleagues to try the cupcakes and had finally managed to do so, so she was now ready to order the cupcakes!!!

So of course i had to do these cupcakes for Mala right So off i went to make my yummy chocolate cupcakes with Pooh, Piglet and Tigger as toppers. I really hope that Mala’s colleagues and family enjoyed the cupcakes especially after all the hard work she had to go through to convince them to try the cupcakes Thanks Mala for your support!!

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My cousin called me the other day and asked if i could do some special cupcakes for a girlfriend’s birthday. Like every other girl, she loves LV bags, Chanel bags, Prada high heels, nutella, and well a whole lot of other things which i shan’t go into right here right now

So after some discussion with my cousin, we decided to go with doing some bags and shoes for the cupcakes. I only realised after placing the toppers on the cupcakes that they were a little bit too small.. will definitely be making them bigger next time

This was the first time i made the bags and shoes.. but think they actually turned out quite well. Since the birthday girl liked nutella, i had to do my yummy nutella cupcakes for her, and of course these cupcakes had the special surprise in the centre… a whole blob of nutella baked right into the centre of the cupcake!!! Yummy!!!

So what do you think of the cupcakes?!

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As everyone knows, Halloween is just around the corner and of course, i had to get into the groove and come up with some special cupcakes for this occasion right?!

Although Halloween was not widely celebrated when i was a kid, i believe nowadays more and more kids and teens are actually celebrating Halloween nowadays If you take a drive around some places in Singapore you can even see some houses all decked out for this occasion with lights all strung up and fake cobwebs on the gates. Walking into Cold Storage you will also see lots and lots of Halloween decorations plus the all important pumpkins of various sizes all available for sale. Everytime i see all the decorations and pumpkins available at Cold Storage I always miss the time when i was studying in Perth where you would see everyone decked out in full Halloween costume with all the gore and vampire teeth everywhere… people even go out and rent costumes for these occasions so it’s always fun to see what everyone comes up with and trying out the costumes are always really fun!

Anyway, as i had some extra cupcakes leftover from a batch i made, i thought why not try making some Halloween cupcakes?! After thinking, i decided on doing ghost cupcakes, pumpkin cupcakes and mummy cupcakes… since i always think these 3 are always the core decorations for Halloween

So here are the cupcakes And Happy Halloween in advance for everyone out there!

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Yudi called me the other day and asked me if i could do some sunflower cupcakes for his girlfriend’s birthday as his girlfriend loves sunflowers.

I tried scouting around Singapore for some nice sunflower cutters that wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg but wasn’t very successful in my search. In the end i had to improvise and ended up using another flower cutter and cutting up each petal in 2 to make additional petals so that it would look like a sunflower.

I thought they tured out quite well considering i had to improvise on my cutter :p I just hope that Yudi’s girlfriend loved the cupcakes as much as i did

These sunflower cupcakes were nutella cupcakes with a gooey nutella centre and frosted with a pale green frosting before being topped off with the sunflower. I thought the light green frosting would bring out the yellow of the sunflower and make it pop

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Jeff, Alan and Rosaline’s friend contacted me the other day and asked if i could do some cupcakes for him. His girlfriend, Pearl’s birthday was coming up, and Pearl loved the cupcakes I’d made for Alan and Rosaline’s baby shower, so as a birthday surprise, Jeff asked if i could do some cupcakes for him.

He wanted the cupcakes to spell out Happy Birthday Pearl and as his girlfriend loves playing mahjong, he thought it might be a good idea to have the rest of the cupcakes being mahjong tiles as toppers I was excited to do up the mahjong tiles since i haven’t made it before and well, whenever i think about mahjong, i remember the noisy family gatherings during Chinese New Year and the happy clatter of mahjong tiles being shuffled and long conversations being held while the mahjong was being played.

Well, once the design was decided on, i did some research before beginning to make the tiles. These were the final results. I just hope that Pearl liked the cupcakes and here’s wishing Pearl a very Happy Birthday!

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First off for this post, i really have to thank a very special girl for helping me to spread the word about my cakes and recommending me to her friends. This person is Wenqi, who had the honour of being the first person who ordered my first offical cake from me. After seeing her cake, 2 of her other friends have also approached me to do their 21st birthday cakes for them. Valerie’s pyjama and cow themed cake was one and well… this is the other.

Joy, a friend of Wenqi’s contacted me shortly after Wenqi’s birthday and asked if i could do a birthday cake for her too. Her 21st birthday was coming up shortly and she wanted a unique and fantastic birthday cake to celebrate this special day. After having several discussions with her, she decided on doing an Angel themed cake. Her specific request was for a central Angel topper for the cake and have the Angel holding a rose. After some brainstorming, and to distinguish it from Wenqi’s cake, i also decided to do some cute little cherub as an accompaniment to the main Angel, which was to represent Joy, and of course the usual boatload of lots of clouds all around the cake

In addition to the cake, Joy also requested for a batch of cupcakes featuring 3 cherubs, 3 roses, and 3 dogs. The dog was to represent her little faithful companion

Anyway to make sure i could do up the main angel to look like Joy, Joy sent me a picture of herself and her dogs for me to see. I realise now that modelling a figure after someone specifically is actually really hard to do.. but i do hope that i succeeded at getting the angel to look just a little like Joy. Anyway.. her’s some other close up shots of the cherubs on the cake

As you can see, i decided to do all the cherubs in different positions for both the cake and the cupcake toppers. My favourite of all the cherubs on the cake, had to be the one with his tongue sticking out and making a monkey face. For the cherub cupcakes, my favourite was the one that was taking a snooze Don’t you think they’re just so cute?!

Anyway, here’s a shout out to Joy wishing her a very Happy 21st Birthday and i do hope that she liked the cakes and cupcakes

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Do you guys remember me doing up a batch of cupcakes just recently for a little girl named Khairina? Well.. her mom threw her another little birthday party for just the family and asked if i could do another Little Mermaid cake for Khairina. Aren’t the little girls nowadays just so lucky!!! Like another other little girl i could mention, Khairina also had 2 parties to celebrate her birthday!!! Aren’t these girls just so lucky??!! I never had 2 parties in my day… i’m so envious!! What i remember of my birthday parties was usually a celebration at McDonalds or just a simple celebration at home with a cake. Never did we get 2 celebrations for our birthdays!!! Just think about the sugar high the little kids would be on from all the cake and candy.. haha. Gosh… the parties must be wild!! Hmm… now I wonder if children now not only get 2 parties but get to have 2 presents from everyone too!!! That’d be so great!! Haha…

Anyway… the cake order from from Joanne, Khairina’s mom, was of course very welcome as cakes are always fun to do and you have all that surface space on the cake to decorate and go crazy with. Very different from cupcakes… though i hasten to add that i do love decorating cupcakes as there is just something soothing about them. Oh well.. enough of my ramblings and on to the cake.

As Khairina loves Ariel, the Little Mermaid, Joanne asked if i could do a cake with Ariel, Sebastian and of course Flounder as toppers on the cake for her. As it was only to be a little party at home, they didn’t need too big a cake and had decided on a 7″ cake. Deciding on the main characters to add on the cake were simple enough, but i had to decide how to place the toppers and what they should look like. E.g. would Ariel be sitting? Standing? Lying down? etc. After searching on the internet for images and ideas, i finally decided to make Ariel lying on her tummy with her hands on her chin and a dreamy look on her face. Flounder and Sebastian would of course be placed just next to her giving her their usual advice In addition to the 3 main characters, i also made fillers for the cake like corals, starfish, etc to add on to the cake to give it the whole underwater look.

I was actually really happy with the way Ariel turned out since I’ve never done a figurine lying down before.. and though i had some trouble with her hair and had to redo it several times, i was very happy with the final look. So what do you guys think of the cake??

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