Strawberry shortcake cake!!!

Kia Chee e-mailed me quite some time back asking if i could do a Strawberry Shortcake cake for his daughter’s 1st birthday.

This would be one of my greatest challenges and Strawberry Shortcake is an iconic figure.. at least to me.. haha… She’s been around for ages and let’s face it.. all of us as girls have owned a Strawberry Shortcake toy or one of her friends at one time or another. Even now they still have a Strawberry Shortcake cartoon!!

Anyway.. enough about me reminicising about the past… For Kia Chee’s daughter’s cake, the design was to be a 2 tier cake with a Strawberry shortcake figurine holding hands with a figurine of his little girl – Jitian. Of course, we had to have the words Happy Birthday on the cake right, so that was added on the 2nd tier of the cake.. oh well.. haha.. to save my breath, i think it’ll be easier to show you what the final cake looked like rather than describing it to you

This cake was pretty challenging in terms of the individual stripes i had to do for the top tier of the cake, as well as doing the 3d letters to make them stand vertically on the cake. Added to that, Strawberry Shortcake’s blouse had multi-coloured stripes that had to be individually hand painted on after i had completed making the figurine.  That was pretty hard to do and i had to make sure i had a steady hand to ensure that each line was drawn on straight :p

As for the little girl figurine, i realised how a lot of parents like to tie their little girls hair in a little ponytail right on the top of the little girl’s head so i decided to make this little girl figurine with the same type of hairstyle. The parents also wanted the little girl figurine to have her lips pouting out as per the picture they provided me with.. so that’s why the little figurine also had her lips pouting out. Hopefully i managed to capture Jitian’s expression in the picture, in the little figurine of her i did

Happy 1st birthday Jitian, and i hope you had a very Happy Birthday

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Another Pooh theme cupcakes!

Clarissa was celebrating her birthday and fell in love with the Pooh theme cupcakes i featured on my website. So she asked me if i could do some Pooh themed cupcakes for her I of course agreed

Here are some pictures of Clarissa’s cupcakes I decided to have Pooh smacking his lips while eating his hunney for Clarissa’s Pooh figurie..

Once again, here’s wishing a very Happy Birthday to you Clarissa, and i hope you liked the cupcakes!

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Birthday cake for Jing Le

I got a mail from Mabel just the other day asking if i could do a cake for her son’s birthday. Mabel had seen the cake I’d done for Wenqi and was impressed with the figurines. As such she wanted me to do a cake for her.

Her only request was that the cake included a hippo. Why a hippo you might ask… well.. the story Mabel told me is so sweet and romantic! Apparently Mabel is a fan of hippo’s and loves any hippo or hippo related stuff and collects them. So while she and her husband were dating, he had given her a little hippo soft toy. Later, after they got married and had their son Jing Le, this little hippo soft toy was then passed on to Jing Le and became one of Jing Le’s favourite toy. Isn’t the story so sweet!!!

So for them, the hippo has a deep meaning for them and was a must to be included in the cake design. As such, after discussing some various cake ideas with Mabel, Mabel finally decided on having a little boy topper in bed reading (since her son loves books) with the little hippo toy topper next to the boy. This design was perfect as Mabel told me that she always tucks the little hippo next to Jing Le when he goes to sleep.

During the process of making the topper, i was thinking long and hard about how to make the bed. Initially i was thinking of making the whole bed out of fondant but this would make the topper very heavy. So after much consideration and after cracking my brain, i finally hit upon a brilliant idea and decided to make the bed out of chocolate wafers instead. The chocolate wafers worked perfectly and i was ecstatic with the way the bed turned out!

My favourite for this cake was the little hippo i made. Don’t you think he looks like the soft toy!! This little fella was only about the size of one segment of my pinkie and i was very happy that i managed to fit in so much detail on the hippo notwithstanding how tiny he was Oh and did you notice the little dimples i added onto the little figurine to make it resemble Jing Le :) The hairstyle here is a little different as Mabel requested that i spike up the hair on the figurine I thought this cake turned out great and I just hope that Mabel and her son loved the cake as much as i did, and they had as much fun eating it as i had making it

Happy Birthday Jing Le!

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Flower birthday cake for Joyleen

Hui Boon e-mailed me after coming across my website. She loved the cake that i did for Natalie and wondered if i could do something similar topper for her daughter’s birthday.

Hui Boon was really nice and already had a cake design in mind, so for me, designing the cake was really simple as all i really needed to think about was the little girl topper for her cake As i always like to do the toppers a little different, i decided to do another girl topper that would differ from Natalie’s cake, and this was the final topper that i came up with. I thought she looked adorable. In keeping with the flower theme on the cake, Hui Boon also requested that the little girl topper be holding a bunch of flowers in her hand. I was really happy with the way this little girl turned out and i hope that Hui Boon loved it as much as i did

Oh.. you guys might be wondering why there is one petal which is empty The reason for this is that the petal was left deliberately empty so that Hui Boon could add the candle onto the petal later on. So here’s wishing Joyleen a very Happy Birthday and i hope that she’ll get a blast from this cake when she’s older and looks back on these photos

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A flower garden cake for an avid gardener..

(*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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Girl cake with flower cupcakes to go with it…

Jolene e-mailed me the other day asking if i could do her birthday cake and some cupcakes to go with it as well. She had found a picture of the cake and cupcakes that she  wanted.. or at least the rough design and asked if i could do something similar for her. The design she wanted was simple but pretty and was basically a small cake with a female topper on the top with lots of colourful flowers all over the cake. The matching cupcakes were topped with swirls of frosting topped with matching flowers that matched the cake.

After looking through the photos of the cake and cupcakes she sent me, i told Jolene that it wouldn’t be a problem to do the cake. However, Jolene later mentioned that she didn’t really like the female topper and wouldn’t mind if i changed it up a bit although she did like the general design of the cake.

I was quite excited to do the cake as this was my official 2nd cake order.. plus i’d get to practice making my figurines!! Yay!! I love doing figurines although i still think that i have a long way to go to make them look more realistic. But i guess for this being my 2nd attempt, i thought the figurines looked pretty good

The cake i did for Jolene is a 6″ butter cake with buttercream frosting which was covered with a layer of fondant. This is my favourite buttercake recipe and i usually can’t stop eating it whenever i make it.. :p I just hope that Jolene liked the cake as well as i do. Unfortunately the buttercream which was suppose to crust, wasn’t co-operating well with me today due to the humidity and general cloudy weather. So I ended up with a buttercream that didn’t crust which caused me a little bit of trouble when i tried to smooth the fondant. Luckily it didn’t turn out too bad and i was able to start decorating the cake which is my favourite part

I think I’m getting better at making the figurines don’t you . As for the cupcakes, these are my new and improved nutella cupcakes… with a little surprise inside (which is a whole spoonful of you guessed it! NUTELLA!! Yummy). The cupcakes were swirled with frosting and topped with little flower toppers. I thought they still looked a little plain with just the flower, so decided to add some sprinkles to it. Sprinkles are my all time favourite accessories as i think they really help me to jazz up anything with just a snap of my fingers.  Trust me these cupcakes are to die for! My hubby swallowed 3 down at one go and he’s supposed to be on a diet!!! haha…

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