my first wedding...

...cake.

I previously mentioned that I'd  be taking a break from blogging but this occassion warrants a special blog entry. =)

Like I said, I made my first wedding cake, not MY wedding but my cousin's wedding. It isn't worth mentioning just because it is my FIRST wedding cake, but rather it is special to me, at least, as I witnessed and learnt much from this whole cake making experience.

Let me first give a little background before the question marks in your brain discourages you from reading further and your hand just scrolls the mouse to have a glance at the pictures. ha~

Well, my aunt, my mum and my dad have casually mentioned on different occassions to ask me to bake a little something for my cousin, Adeline. Prior to that (like many months ago), Adeline did ask if I could make a wedding cake for her, but later dismissed the idea. I struggled a little with what should I bake and somehow settled with decorated cookies in the shape of wedding cakes. Isn't that cute? I mean, it IS a wedding cake and it's small and..something..new!

I had cookie dough ready in the the refrigerator and I thought things were going my way. I happily rolled and baked them on Thursday. Wanted to flood them on Friday and by Sunday, they would have dried, nice and hard =)

But, no! That wasn't my dad's idea of an ideal gift. He wanted a nice grand wedding cake.

Time check: 09.10.09, Friday, 3pm

Wedding date: 11.10.09, Sunday, 7pm

RIGHT. 2 days. a grand wedding cake. and no time. 

Oh before I forget, I promised my sister to help her out with her friend's birthday cake due, 09.10.09, Friday 6 pm. HELP!!!

I scrambled to work things out in my brain. No cake recipe. No filling in mind. No design. What could be worse than scrambling to work on nothing?! Thank God, Anna loaned me Peggy Porshen's book and I immediately chose the designed inspired by the "pink wedding cake".

Design, settled. No fondant. Gosh, thank God, Dennis called Kitchen Capers and they waited for us for 10 mins just for us to rush and get the fondant. I had marshmallows and icing sugar, but I figured ready-made fondant would buy me much more time and boy, was I glad Dennis made that call. =D Thanks dear!

NO CAKE RECIPE! I experiment on many cakes, to only realise, 90% of them aren't suitable for tiered cakes! =((( I always fell back on Rei's pound cakes recipes, not that they were particularly good to eat or anything, but those were the only ones I've ever tried. I had no time for mistakes, no time for risks, I just had to make do with whatever I've done so far. Now, the filling. I needed something that would hold up for a good 8 hours and not taste yucky. I wanted to go with chocolate ganache. The hard kind. (ie. more choc than cream) BUT, my sister reminded me that the cake was already chocolate. So, we scrapped that idea. I finally settled on Italian Meringue Lemon Buttercream. Very reluctantly. Read: Very reluctantly. I had a few unhappy episodes with making italian meringue and I've stayed away from it since a long time. But but, it went on SUPER well that day and I do believe it's God's guidance. =D

When I finally finished baking the cake, it was already past 12 am. -_-'' Thank God for Dennis and my sister, Sandy who struggled to keep their eyes open and still painstakingly cut out the fondant flowers. In order not to complicated things, I decided to go with white flowers =pp While we were at it halfway through and the clock pointing at 2, my sister said my mum mentioned we shouldn't be making cakes cos they're unhealthy. I got kinda pissed that here we are, slogging out, and there she goes complaining.

We decided to abandon the operation wedding cake, packed up and went to bed.

Early next morning, I helped out at the last pretty floral class for this year at CSC club. With my eyes barely opened and brain hardly awake. I'm glad all the participants were happy and learnt something new. The tea ceremony was held on Saturday, 1pm and I obviously couldn't make it. My mum dropped a bomb on me when she told me that my dad happily told my aunt (my cousin's mum) that I'd be make her a wedding cake!! YIKES!

We scrambled to get things done, and thank God, my other sister, Freda, offered to make the wedding figurines. OH, I couldn't thank her enough =D

We made more flowers and by the time all of us surrended, it was past 3 in the morning. And, we still had to attend service the next morning at 8.30am. O.o

We still manged to drag our sleepy heads to church and struggled to pay attention to the sermon and rushed home after service and a quick breakfast. My sister only got started with making the groom on Sunday afternoon and I'm glad we all made it in the end =) Thank God for her perserverance and her creativity! I was so busy with the buttercream and other stuffs, she handled the fingurine all by herself, with a little help from Sandy. I'm really proud of them!

My brother decided to join the force, partly to skip studying for his 'O's and look at his creation. -_-''' Of course, this wasn't what went up in the end, this was! (see below)

If there was a time I feared covering cakes with fondant, it was then. All the past attempts didn't have very good results. The fondant cracked and wasn't smooth. But this time, It was all well. VERY well instead. Even my sister mentioned that this time, it was the best of all. =DDD If there was any tip about covering fondant cakes, it would have to be not to roll the fondant too thick. The weight of the fondant weighs down on the cake and the edges will start to crack and be unsightly =)

All ready, just missing the bride and groom toppers which were still giving us problems. =( The groom's arm refused to stick on nicely. But we were glad it eventually did. =D

This shot was taken at the hotel itself and I was glad we managed to surprised my cousin and cousin-in-law. Wishing them a really blissful marriage ahead as they learn to continue to love one another, as they have promised.

Although they are not christians, I still want to leave them with one of my favourite verses.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails...."

-1 Corinthians 13: 4-8-

simple and good

I was supposed to post this up a longg while ago but the lazy bones in me prevented me from doing so. It's so long that I kinda forgot what I wanted to include in this post. bahh..

I titled this post "simple and good" for obvious reasons. It's always nice to get back to the basics and bake good'ol cookies and cupcakes after ploughing through with all the fanciful cakes.

My brother actually requested for this chewy chocolate chip cookies. While I remember the recipe being really simple and quick, I was apprehensive with how the cookies would turn out. After all, the skill with baking chewy cookies are the temperature and accurate timing. Pull them out too soon and they'd be too soft, pull them out too late and they become crispy. =S

I've used Anna's recipe (subscribe here!) for the chewy cookies and I must say they were really pretty good. What I love about cookies are that you could flavour it any way you like it! Don't like nuts? Omit them! Love more chocolate? Up the choc chips! Love a little citrus kick to it? Add some orange or lemon zest. Looking for something colourful? Add some M&Ms. See? The combinations are endless. These cookie dough yielded cookies approximately the size of those at subway. Having said that, it wasn't as successful an attempt as my previous one but still nice, crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle. I'd have liked it a little more chewy though. So you see, I must have either baked it too long or at too high a temperature.

Nonetheless, the gooey choc chips dispersed amongst the cookie made up for everything. How wrong can chocolate go? The colour was great and not overly sweet. YUM!

Next up! CUPCAKES! If you noticed, I mentioned having to bake 210 cupcakes for an order. I was terribly upset with the way those 210 cupcakes turned out and am really glad that the people who ordered were alright with it. *phew*

Feeling indignant about it, I decided to try it out again. The same problem persisted, but manifested in a smaller scale. Maybe I haven't got to know my oven well enough. Yikes! The recipe I used yields 16 cupcakes. With so many cupcakes, I intended to flavour some so that it wouldn't be so boring to eat 16 cupcakes of the same flavour. Being the forgetful me, I happily filled the 12-hole muffin pan and popped it in the oven. Only to realise after 5 mins that they were ALL plain! I had intended to flavour them with some piped strawberry jam on top and some others with sprinkled chocolate chips. Sigh..I was only left with 4. So I went with chocolate chips with all 4 since the bag of chocolate chips were already sitting on the kitchen counter.

The cupcakes definitely tasted as good, with a slight improvement in the appearance. Great for snack, decorating and dessert! Despite it being a pound cake recipe, the cake was still soft and fluffy and more importantly, moist!

Again, this recipe was taken from Anna and it can be found in her book. This recipe is also featured on a TV program aired a while ago on channel 8. Hop on over here to get the recipe! (episode 7)

Simplicity.

pound cakes!!

Do a simple search and I bet you'd get many raving reviews over this condense milk pound cake! So many mentioned about how this pound cake recipe yields Sara Lee tasting pound cakes. Ahh..Sara Lee pound cakes were my favorite when i was a child. It's been really long since I last tasted one and sad to say, I've really forgotten how it tastes like.

Speaking of which, it's my first time baking pound cakes. I baked my first pound cake using Rei's recipe on chocolate pound cake and reduced it to fit a 6" cake pan. I probably reduced it a tad too much and the miserable batter filled less than 1/2 the height of the cake tin! What made things worse was that knowing my oven's got this annoying over heating top element, I forgot to tent the cake! the top cooked too fast, too soon, that I ended up with a volcano! boohoo!=(( It was such a disappointment, I didn't bother with any pictures. The taste however, was wonderful. moist and soft.

I couldn't take it lying so I just had to try out the condense milk pound cake recipe which Rei kinda posted too. This time, results were much more satisfying! just look how tight and fine the crumbs are!

I was taking pictures of the cake when my sister just came home from school. Needless to say, she asked to try the cake and of course i gladly obliged. One mouth from her and she asked for another slice! So I had to try it and I fell in love with it right away. Moist, soft and acceptable sweetness! Although I can't give any comparison to Sara Lee's pound cakes, these were good enough and need no comparison =)

I didn't manage to capture how fine the crumbs were on the picture above and thought I'd take a close up shot on the crumbs. I don't think the picture did justice to the cake but, well, I hope you get the picture. (pun intended)

So what are you waiting for? Try this and you'll not regret!

Recipe here