Our friend Riza is expecting a baby boy. We gave her a lovely little shower at my dear friend Mae's house. I have to admit that I do get a little excited with our party preparations. It actually started a year ago when I prepared my daughter's 5th birthday. Remember the Barbie Princess Themed Party? So this time, well I have to say that I was excited again about coming up with the whole baby shower design concept. I decided to concentrate on three color schemes - BLUE, WHITE and SILVER. So where to begin. DECORATIONS Yes, of course the decorations. I absolutely love paper pom poms and balloons. I saw Martha Stewart pom poms for sale at Walmart and bought them...arrghh big mistake. They are just tissue papers and you need to make them into pom poms. Why oh why did I not buy tissue papers at the Dollar Store instead, it's definitely cheaper. Definitely do my own next time. They are so easy to make. I will definitely recommend giving them a go - will cost $1 per pom pom to make! There are some great tutorials out there on the web. How about Martha Stewart tutorial.
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 This week's creation was requested by a dear friend for EID L' ADHA's Feast. What is Eid L' Adha? From Wikipedia "Eid al-Adha (Arabic: عيد الأضحى ‘Īd al-’Aḍḥá,IPA: [ʕiːd al ʔadˁˈħaː], "feast of sacrifice") or "Festival of Sacrifice" or "Greater Eid" is an important religious holiday celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Abraham (Ibrahim) to sacrificehis son Ishmael (Isma'il) as an act of obedience to God, before God intervened to provide him with a sheep— to sacrifice instead" My dear friend requested for something simple. I thought this is a celebration so a gift design will do. A dove which symbolizes peace is a great topper for the cake. HOW TO MAKE THE DOVE  1. Get a ball of gumpaste or fondant (w/ tylose powder) and roll using your hand to form a cone shape. 2. Then shape the head and the neck using your two middle fingers. I will probably make the head a little smaller than the one shown in the picture. 3. Bend the bird and insert a stick (skewer or lolipop stick). Flatten the smallest end to make the tail and score the tail using your pallete knife. 4. To make the beak, get a small ball of gumpaste and roll into cone shape. Get a scissor and cut halfway to form the open beak. Attach using melted chocolate. Get a piece of paper and put in between the cut (beak). The paper will be replaced by the twig that you will be making later. 5. To make the wings, use the Wilton leaf cutter (the biggest one). Try to reshape the widest end to make it more rounded and then score the wings as shown in the photo. 6. Get a small bowl and put cornstarch powder - you will use this to dry the wings so it will dry to the position you want. 7. The next morning attach the wings using melted chocolate. 8. Make the twig using gumpaste and let it dry. Once dry, attach to the beak using melted chocolate.. HOW TO MAKE THE CAKE Bake two (2) 10 x 3 in round cakes and two (2) pillow pan shaped cake. Torte the round cakes into four and fill with your favorite filling. Create a dam or circle of icing just inside the edge of the cake. This will prevent any filling from seeping out when the next layer is added. I frosted the cakes using chocolate ganache. I really love frosting the cake with ganache compared to buttercream when covering the cake with fondant. It is true what the experts say that you can get that perfect sharp edges using ganache frosting. I placed the cakes in the refrigerator overnight (or 4 hours will do). It took me about 8 hours to decorate the whole cake. Starting from the cake board, the bottom cake, the lid and the pillow cake. I put five (5) dowels on the bottom tier with the dowels cut slight higher than the cake, to make the open lid effect. I used styroform for the lid although I could have used a 10 x 2 in round cake instead. Hope you like my creation this week! Until my next cake! Here are more photos of the cake.  Simple but Elegant design for a cake. The celebrant loves green. I got the sweetest message from the celebrant today. "Luisa, I want to thank you for the most beautiful cake I've ever seen. If you went on TV you would surely win. Everybody was so amazed at how everything was perfect. I hope to get to meet you one day, you must be a great person. Thank you! Jeannette" Wow, it did made my day. So nice to be appreciated by someone that I have not even met. I love this new found passion! ~ ABOUT THE CAKE ~ If I have more time, I probably would have added flowers but since I have 3 days (I mean 3 nights) to make this cake, I thought a Satin looking ribbon will do. I remembered that awhile back I bought a cake stencil. Perfect time to put it to use. I used Satin Ice Ready Made Fondant and gumpaste for the board and ribbon. Love how this cake turned out. Hope you like it too! I posted this cake on Cake Central, an online cake community I visit daily, and the next morning I saw that it was second cake in the most saved cake of the day. I had to capture that moment as this happened only three times on all my creations. Here is a photo.  HAPPY 70TH BIRTHDAY JEANNETTE! Thanks John for trusting me on this cake. Have a wonderful weekend everyone!   Updated 2011.11.24 I had been asked twice where if I got my inspiration for this design I had been making ribbons since last year on most of my cakes. Example as shown below made in October 2010. My real inspiration for this cake was the one created by Inspired by Michelle Cake Designs. Michelle Rea made the version in Oct 2010 I also bought Sharon Zambito's Box and Bow DVD Tutorial, which is very helpful. Here is another version   When I was searching for cake/cupcake inspirations, I chanced upon quite a number of blogs about Dessert Table ideas. I LOVE the idea so I decided to have this Halloween Dessert Table for the Welcome party we organized for our two friends. I started with a simple arrangement for now. The party was to welcome a newcomer in town and a "surprise" housewarming for my very dear friend (Mae). The venue of the party was at her newly purchased house. I decided to make Halloween themed sweets. I made a Jack o' Lantern cake. I made two bundt cakes and put them together. I got this idea from Sharon Zambito (SugarED Productions). I covered the cake with white fondant and airbrushed it with Americolor Airbrush Food Color Orange. I brushed the indents with cocoa powder to highlight.  I made Jack O' Lantern, Ghosts, Witches Hat and Skull Cake Pops. Of course the idea was from the queen of Cake Pops - Bakerella. I was supposed to make some Black Cat Cake Pops but there was no time left. Too much on my plate...I only do these at night when my daughter's in bed.  You see, aside from cake pops...cookie decorating is another thing I am getting interested on. There are so many sweet inspirations on the internet...I just have to try making them all. So I made Jack o' lantern, Witches shoes, hats and pots Vanilla Sugar Cookies/ I decorated the cookies using Royal Icing. It was so much fun...I am glad I tried it.  I also made Halloween themed cupcakes. At the last minute I added some Dead Finger Cookies (Idea from Cakejournal). I only have sliced almonds for the fingers but a whole/half almond would have worked better for the nails. I also should have brushed more cocoa powder for more effect. Oh well maybe next Halloween.  The night's favorites were the cookies and the cake pops, not that the other treats were not great (as per my friends and the kids they are all great). Everyone had lots of fun eating the treats. Here are some photos at the event. Enjoy! |
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January 2019
AuthorMy family and friends call me Bobie. An IT Specialist and have discovered cake decorating, a new hobby...my new passion. Categories
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