Pirate Cake

Yay, an order through this site!

I was contacted by Swati, whose son’s 8th birthday was coming up, and had requested a pirate cake.

She said she wanted a very fluffy and light cake of 9″, so I suggested a chiffon cake. She wasn’t fussed with the flavour, as long as it tastes good and is fluffy

The boy wanted the priate cake, and Swati sent me a photo of another cake and asked if I could replicate this.

This sounded like a fun project! Usually I make cakes with cartoon characters that are famous and I can find a picture on google and print them out to trace, but this one I had to do free-hand, and I thought I did pretty well

The original cake had chocolate coins on top, and I don’t know if there’s a shortage or a ban on these things but I could not find them ANYWHERE!

Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if they were banned coz those chocolate tasted so fake it’s probably all trans fat!

So anyway, I ended up having to make my own gold, hehe!

I melted the white chocolate and turned them into round little discs, and once dried I painted them with edible gold paint (love these paint!)

So here’s the cake!

Swati’s feedback:

Hi Cabnolen,

   Thanx for making such an awesome cake…perfect design n very delicious. so intricately decorated…Thank you so much…loved it

Swati

Red Velvet cupcakes duo

A couple of weeks ago I was contacted by the little girl’s father, Ken, to make 12 rosette cupcakes and 12 blue & white china cupcakes like my previous works, for his daughter’s 1st month celebration.

1st month celebration is very big in Chinese society. A friend asked me if we celebrate every single month for the first year of the baby’s life and the answer is of course NO, just the first month is a special, precious time.

It is usually celebrated by the grandparents giving the baby pure gold chains (if a boy) or pure silver chains (if a girl) to wear on their wrists and ankles, and they wear a red string of walnut cookies in the shape of donuts around their neck to “gather in the saliva” (so babies would stop drooling once they get past this stage).

Close relatives would get together and celebrate this special occasion, “oil rice” would be enjoyed and taken home or gifted to other friends and families.

Anyway, long story short, my part in this celebration was to provide these cupcakes

Ken later changed his order to 24 each, so I ended up making 48 of these.

The cake itself is red velvet, and of course the icing is cream cheese buttercream (what red velvet would be complete without cream cheese?)

So here they are!

 

Ken’s feedback was on TradeMe so it was a short and sweet:

Absolutely great trader!

Cupcakes were amazing.

Highly recommended A+++ 

 

Sounds good to me

Wedding cupcakes – brown and metallic theme

My first official wedding order! Very excited!

The bride contacted me via e-mail a month before her wedding, and asked for 50 mini cupcakes, half chocolate brownie with vanilla icing and the other half vanilla with chocolate icing, both topped with the silver star similar to my previous star cupcakes.

Her wedding theme was brown with metallic elements, so she wanted the stars to be silver, and I myself added the idea of getting the silver cups.

Now these silver cups I ordered on TradeMe, and I must say I had no idea 0.5cm would make a difference but it did! Look how cute they are! I mean, I made the mini cupcakes before (but the cups were purchased from Moore Wilson’s) and they were 3.5cm diameter at the base, these ones are 3cm.

This is how small they are in my already-very-small hand!

Eeeekk! Such an adorable size!

And here they are in their entire glory

However I’m still waiting to hear back from the bride/groom as to how they went – I am assuming they are now blissfully whisked away somewhere honeymooning

Belated Valentine’s Cupcakes

Yes, it happened more than a month ago, but it’s never too late!

Tessa contacted me via my Facebook Fan Page a few days before Valentine’s to ask if I could make 6 cupcakes for her beloved, and delivered.
She wanted 3 of them to look like the love cupcakes I made last year, and the other 3 saying “I love you” respectively.
This sounded like fun! And of course, who can say no to a box of cupcakes

So off I went, and also I made a little card to go with the delivery.
Let’s just say the boyfriend was stoked and his colleagues were very envious!

Here’s what she said:

Thanks so much Cabnolen, he loved them!!!

They looked amazing and exactly how i wanted them!

Thank you soo much!

Yay

 

Barbell cake!

Now this is one giant cake!

My husband’s colleague had her 40th, and as she’s a gym bunny, we thought a theme around exercise is something to go with.

After some thoughts, I decided on something like dumbbells or barbells.

She asked for a chocolate cake, and it needs to serve around 50 people, so off I went!

It wasn’t until I hit Google that I discovered how hard it is to find dumbbell cakes. I mean, dumbbell/barbell and cake in the same sentence? That’s difficult!!

BUT, nonetheless, I was inspired by a dumbbell cake where the bells are made of round cakes cut in half vertically, then placed on it’s side.

I thought about it, and wondered what happens when someone’s standing on cake, tries to lift up a ridiculously heavy barbell?

She would fall through the cake, of course! So here’s my inspiration!

The cake itself was around 6kg, and used up 18 eggs! And good on Alex for eating up the barbell all by herself! I love it when someone loves exercises but is not afraid to eat cake!  What’s the fun in exercising so hard and not allowing yourself to enjoy a little?

 

Here’s the cake in its entire glory!

 

 

Now look at little Alex struggling to lift up the bells!

 

 

 

 

Filigree and lace pre-wedding cake

So, only 50 days until our wedding day!

I was very excited about this project I had set for myself, as we were planning for a pre-wedding party for our colleagues and friends in Wellington.

The theme was inspired by my gown which I had purchased a while back. I already thought I would wear this for our pre-wedding party, and the more I thought about it, the more I decided I really love the 50′s fashion.

I loved the pretty round skirt, the fedora hat and I am a huge fan of guys in suits in general.

When thinking of 50′s, Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn come to mind, and my e-invitation ended up looking like this:

 

To go with this shade of pink/purple, I decided on a 2-tier buttercream covered cake, white base and some pretty patterns piped on it in the same colour.

It took me a good few days just to decide what flavours to make the cake, as my fiance’s colleagues have had the chocolate brownie way too many times (in my opinion), but it IS a beautiful recipe and I always go back to this when a chocolate cake is called for.

Vanilla was another safe option, but was a bit boring and unoriginal.

Finally I decided the chocolate cake is loved for a reason, so my bottom tier would be an 11″ chocolate cake.

The top was a last-minute decision and I made the vanilla cake but added some coffee powder and Bailey’s and turned it into a 7″ coffee cake.

The filling naturally ended up being coffee buttercream, both between the chocolate cake and the coffee cake.

It took me 3 coatings on the cake and I decided I didn’t like the colour of the coffee as the background of my filigree piping.

So I whipped up another white batch of buttercream and coated the cake with that.

I suppose I should have done a bit more homework on how to make the coat smoother, but I got a bit tired from these 4 coats and decided that my piping will just cover the uneven surface.

I had decided on a pretty lace pattern for the bottom tier, repeated but in different orders for some variety, and the top just covered with filigree patterns.

Here comes the cake!

 

And a few more photos of the cake:

 

 

 

Sorry for my horrid cutting-skill!

 

And just general photos of the food of the evening, which we made ourselves. The service staff at Sprig & Fern said “This was the finest looking buffet we’ve ever seen!“

 

 

 

 

 

In the end, when cutting up the cake, most people asked for the chocolate cake anyway!

 

Rosette Cake

I’ve been eyeing this cake for a while now, but never really had the opportunity to make it.

Thanks to my flatmate Gaetan who ordered a “simple vanilla cake” for 4 people (he was bringing it over to friend’s), I thought this would be fancy yet simple (was pretty impressed with myself that this took me about 20min to decorate, rather than 5 hours like most other cakes)

The result was pretty good, although I know where I could have done better, perhaps I will get another order for this simple yet fancy looking cake in the near future?