flower basket

For the last session of my Flowers and Cake Design class, I made a flower basket cake!

Each of us baked a cake at home, and brought it to class to decorate for the final project during class. I only baked half a batch of my cake batter because I didn't want to make a tall and layered cake. The thing was, as I was removing the cake from the pan, the bottom of the cake stuck on the pan and I lost a thin layer of cake, and that resulted in my cake being really short.

And because the cake was already short, I didn't even level the top of the cake before I iced it and brought it to class.

The main technique the instructor taught us to do was to make basket-weave patterns on the side of cakes. The idea was that we would make the side of our cakes look like a basket with buttercream icing, and then decorate the top of the "basket" with flowers we made with royal icing.

Since my cake was so short and round-topped, I couldn't make a more conventional flower basket cake. Instead, I made my version of flower basket cake...



My basket is on the bottom half of the top of the cake, and there's a handle on the top rim, and then flowers in between. A very rounded and puffy flower basket on the top of the cake if you may. I actually kinda like it!


The colored flowers were the ones I made in advance with royal icing.


And I added a few buttercream icing white roses when I was finishing up the cake.

Overall the cake turned out fine! Yay!

afternoon wall

Guess where this is.


It's the black wall across from the roasting room at the caffe. I like how the thick ribbon "curtains" I made for the window filter the afternoon sunlight and make these keyboard-like images!

roses

I don't think roses are my favorite flowers, but I have been really enjoying making roses with both regular icing and royal icing.


Up until this Tuesday I had been making ribbon roses (no separate petals) with regular icing for some of the cupcakes I make for the shop.


I was able to make "(almost) Wilton roses" using royal icing after the instructor reviewed the techniques Tuesday!

I'm thinking for my class project next week I want to make roses for the cake we have to decorate. Lots of roses.

royal icing flowers

I almost forgot to blog about my "Flower and Cake Design" class! During this class, the instructor showed us how to make a few different flowers using royal icing. Royal icing is pretty much just powdered sugar, water, and meringue powder, and dries soon so users can make flowers or decorations in advance and use these hardened flowers whenever they need them.


My practice royal icing flowers.

I still can't make really pretty ones, but it surely is fun trying.

Plus these little royal icing flowers taste pretty decent, too! :D

a-gui wears a t-shirt

"Huh?!"


"Oh well."

I was cooking and a-gui came by my leg, and he kept wiggling and moving next to me. I looked down and saw he was wearing a t-shirt from Best Friends.

He looks pretty cute in the shirt but he didn't seem to enjoy wearing anything, so John helped taking it off pretty soon.

At least he wore the t-shirt long enough for me to snap a couple photos of him in the t-shirt. :D

choux pastry with custard

I've been experimenting with different pastries and baked goods for the caffe, and one of my most recent experiment was choux pastries.

I made these choux pastry puffs, and filled them with vanilla custard that I made from scratch. They turned out better than I expected, but I still need to make the choux pastry "puffier" for next time.

flowers

I started the second cake decorating class course this past Tuesday, and this class is focused on flowers and cake design.

For the first class we learned about gum paste and fondant, and how to mix and utilize these two ingredients to make simple flowers.



Apparently this was the only class during this course that we were going to use gum paste and fondant to make stuff. For the most part we are going to learn to make different flowers and cake designs using royal icing.

Fun!

a-gui's first birthday

a-gui turned a year old on the 5th!

OK it was probably not really his birthday, but when we adopted him on November 5th last year, he was about two months old, so we decided his birthday should have been September 5th.



I happened to have made the ribbon rose cake for my decorating class, so we pretended it was his birthday cake and tried to have him pose with it.

After a few attempts I had to put the cake right next to him before I could snap a better shot of both the cake and him. a-gui just had to take a little bite on the cake... hence the above picture! :D

I love a-gui!

i am making cupcakes

I've been making little cupcakes for the caffe these days.


These are tall little chocolate cupcakes. I like how they have a "pop-over" top!


And I'd "dress 'em up" a bit with little silly dots and flowers before displaying them in the shop.

Yay for cupcakes!

cake with ribbon roses

John and I have been really busy with remodeling the shop... after 6 years we've decided to change the interior look. The remodeling is pretty much finished and we're back in business after a few days. Been kind of busy, which is good, and I shall post some before-and-after photos soon!

Yesterday I started another cake decorating class! This one is all about flowers and cake designs. I think I'm going to really enjoy it! Last week, for the fourth and last basic cake decorating class I made a golden butter cake, iced, and decorated with ribbon roses and put little balls around the base.



I like it!