"Shimmery Ivory Cupcakes"

I was commissioned by Raja Jesrina Tan Sri Raja Arshad or fondly called Jess to make another order of cupcakes. This time its for her Wedding Party, which was held on 19th April 2014 at the Shang-ri La. The concept of the wedding party is elegant, luxurious & ethereal. The colour she wanted was a combination of white and light ivory. The flowers were fantasy flowers and filled with sugar pearl dragees in the centre. I had the flowers and cupcake base airbrushed a pearl sheen so in order to create the shimmery effect. The lace cupcake wrappers were also custom made in light ivory and ordered from overseas. The cupcake itself is lemon poppy flavoured with vanilla frosting.

 

The ivory base of the cupcakes were airbrushed a pearl shimmer as Jess wanted the shimmer and lustre effect

The cupcakes with the fantasy flowers in ivory and pearl dragees

The wedding cupcake up close. Looks ethereal and classy and just the way Jess wants them to be!

I had these flowers airbrushed too

  

I had the cupcake lace wrappers custom made in ivory to match the theme of the wedding party

  

Congratulations again Jess on your marriage!! Thanks for the 2 big orders for this year. I guess with these two big orders, I am sort of done on big orders for the time being. I will see how the future pans out for me and then decide if I should really continue. For now, I will only make special request cakes and on a smaller scale as my hands are still not a 100% healed!

 

 

 

"White Roses"

These cupcakes order was commissioned by Raja Jesrina, who recently tied the knot on 16th April 2014. She had a specific idea on what she wanted for her akad nikah (Muslim marriage solemnisation ceremony) gift box. Her ideas were of course great but I realised that it was quite a lot of hardwork and I needed to start early so that I don't get too stressed at the last minute. 
 

To date, this order is one of my biggest projects this year. Although there were only 150 pcs  of cupcake gift boxes to make, each box of cupcake is very tedious work. I started off this project by sourcing all the materials needed from different suppliers. There were many materials needed for each box - the clear PVC box, the lace cupcake wrapper, pearl beads in 2 sizes, ribbon, name tags and so on. Researching and compiling the prices are very important as Jess has set her budget and I must try to adhere to her budget.

Lace cupcake wrappers

The first thing I did was to order these lace cupcake wrappers as I wanted the cupcakes to look classy and elegant. Since the custom order takes about 3 weeks, I had these ordered in early March as I didn't want to take any chances on the wrappers not arriving on time.

The clear PVC gift boxes

I had the clear PVC boxes ready with the lace wrappers and pearl beads prior to inserting the cupcakes into the boxes. Each of the box needed to have the same amount of pearl beads. So, I had the beads weighed before putting them into the boxes. I actually stuck the lace wrapper to the box first before putting in the beads.

The name tags for the gift box

Jess had given me the pdf file format for her monogram and she wanted the tags to be printed on pearl white cards with the fonts in silver hot stamping. I managed to get my trusted company printer to get these cards printed for me at a very good price. However, Jess was not too happy with the size and wanted them smaller. So, I had them modified to the smaller size and punched a hole at the side instead of in the middle.

 

The organza ribbons were cut in advance prior to making the cupcakes. Oh, and I also had to handpaint each of the roses with silver accents as Jess doesn't want them to be too white.

Hand painting the roses

The roses were airbrushed in pearl white and I also hand painted them with silver edible paint. This process took me 4 days to complete as I only had the nights to start my work! If you've read my earlier entries, you would also know that I recently (February) had a carpal tunnel release surgery on my right hand, thus my painting pace was a bit slower then before. I also had these precious gumpaste roses handmade in the Philippines and they were flown into KL by my husband's colleagues, who happened to have a meeting in KL around the same time. Thank goodness for me on the timing! At any other time, I would probably make my own roses, but my hands are just not at their optimum best at the moment. 

This is how the gift box looks like up close

The cupcakes had two flavours, vanilla bean and orange spice. The baking process and getting the cupcakes assembled was quite easy, it was putting them all together that took a long time! I was so exhausted by the time I was done but at the same time I was very satisfied with what I have produced.

The cupcake in the box without the final touches



The cupcake gift box with the silver organza ribbon and name tag

Aerial view with the name tag



The cupcakes ready to be collected

 

All in all, I am so glad that I managed to complete the above order with only asisstance from my maid (who happened to have a very bad tooth ache at that time!). Congratulations again to Jess and I hope she was happy with the cupcake gift boxes.

 

 

Thank you again for the order, Jess!!

 

"Monster High for Hannah"

My sweetie pie, Hannah, turned 9 last  Monday, 14th October 2013. Prior to that day, she wanted to have a pre-birthday celebration with her friends in school. The reason being the school will be on a mid-semester hols during her birthday week and she won't get to see her friends for that duration! So, I decided to bake her cupcakes and make party favours for her classmates. She was so excited that she even helped me decorate her own birthday cuppies. I had Hannah choose the Monster High images that she wanted on her cupcakes and I then sent them for printing into edible form. I chose the theme colours of blue, pink and black. I made cookies & cream flavoured cupcakes for her. I hope you had a great celebration in school, sweetie!!

 

The cupcakes decorated with Hannah's favourite MH images

The famous logo of MH - the skull with a pink bow

More cupcakes up-close

The party bags I made for Hannah's classmates - zebra print



 

"Of Stripes & Spots"

One of Hannah's besties, Azra Alya, celebrated her 9th birthday yesterday. To mark the occasion, her mom, Roszhita ordered a zebra stripes and leopard spots theme cupcakes from me. I never liked the animal prints design, be it on a fabric, on a person or even on accessories. After making this order, I changed my mind. I actually love how these mismatched sprints could create such a great effect. Maybe now I'll be a bit brave and try out a piece of clothing that has these prints on them!

When I first heard about this order, I was quite skeptical on how the cupcakes would turned out especially when I had to decorate the cupcakes with two of Azra's fave colours of pink and purple. My first thought was how am I going to make the colour pink and purple work on top of the zebra stripes and leopard prints?

So, I came up with the design to make all the fondant decoration on the cupcakes in pink. That way, not too many colours on one cupcake display. I only added the purple and silver (to tone down the dark purple) as ribbons on the cupcake casings. For the top of the cupcakes, I made Azra's initial A, a bow and a flower as the main element on the cupcakes. I always believe in the term, "less is more" and I'm glad I did. The cupcakes turned out really nice and Roszhita was really thrilled when she collected the cupcakes from me.

I love how vibrant the colours look when all the cupcakes are arranged together

The details on the cupcakes

Another close-up view of the cupcakes

I chose purple and silver organza ribbons to dress up the casings

Happy 9th Birthday, sweet Azra... May you have more wonderful years ahead to celebrate all the joys of life... Thanks for being such a wonderful friend to Hannah... 

xoxo

Auntie Elinna

"Crumble Me Apples"

I had to blog about my apple crumble pie because I tried a new recipe last weekend and the pie crust and crumb topping turned out fantastic. Before I continue, the reason why I made the apple crumble pie was because I had guests over for barbeque on Merdeka Day, which was on Saturday, the 31st August. When I was grocery shopping for the barbeque, I saw these lovely green apples and the first thought that came to my mind was, I have to make an apple pie with these apples. If the apples look so good, so they must taste good too!! 

I was happy as I had my second dessert sorted out especially when I know my cousin, Amy, who loves apple crumble pie and has been wanting me to make one for her for ages already. The other dessert I made  for the barbeque was chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. The frosting is topped with Hershey's chocolate syrup and roasted almond and walnuts. 

Back to my apple crumble pie, the pie crust was a sweet shortcrust pastry. The only difference was that I added some ground almonds to the basic pastry recipe. The texture of the crust was good and not grainy. For the filling, I sliced 8 green apples and cooked these sliced apples in butter, sugar, cinnamon powder and a pinch of nutmeg. I only simmered these apples on the stove for a short time as I don't want the apples too soft. After cooling the apples and I've filled them in the base crust (I had the base blind baked in the oven for 20 mins), I proceeded to make the crumble for the top. The crumble is made of flour, icing sugar, a pinch of salt  and yes I added a bit more ground almonds and cold butter. Its very easy to make. I mixed all the dry ingredients together and slowly added the cold butter until it became the crumble texture that I wanted. Then, I baked the pie for another 30 to 40 minutes. 

My apple crumble pie

I served the pie with vanilla ice-cream and of course Amy loved it. She even thanked me for making her the pie :) BTW, she took what little left of the pie home and I was very happy, I made someone happy :)

The apple pie eaten with vanilla ice-cream. This was Amy's plate :)

The other dessert was my sinful chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting

Simply sinful and calories overload but taste oh so good!!

Thanks to all my wonderful cousins for coming over and I had such a wonderful time! We should have these meets once a month. Its really fun catching up :)

My lovely cuzzies : From left - Liza, Azura, Hazrene, Me, Evelyne (SIL),Ezel and Amy

Until the next meet gals :) Love you lots, lots and lots...

xoxoxo

Elin

"More Cupcakes"

I had plenty of cupcakes to make at the end of June. Cupcakes are relatively very simple to make and I could do it without much preparation unless if its a fondant cupcake that requires sugar modelling!

Long story short, the Petronas Chemical Group or PCG ordered from me a day before their meeting, 75 cupcakes with 3 different flavours. For most bakers, this is quite an easy order and not complicated at all. Most bakers don't work during the day and most bakers could take their time as they have the whole day to do it. This baker, me, work from 8 to 5 pm and is the designated driver for the kids in the evening for their tutorials. So, am only able to start my baking at 8 pm. By the time I was done, I was exhausted and I sometimes wonder if its really worth it! Come to think of it, lately I've been contemplating on actually retiring from making cakes.

Time is so precious and I don't even have time for myself anymore! Well back to the cupcakes, I made sea salt chocolate, red velvet and vanilla bean cupcakes.

Cupcakes for PCG

The sea salt chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream

The red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

My very popular vanilla bean cupcakes

I was very happy with how they looked and even though I was tired, I made sure my cakes were still good in quality and taste! After this order was delivered I had to make another 50+ cupcakes for the weekend. Man, it was just cupcake orders that week. First I had to make cupcakes for my MIL, who happened to be in town that weekend. Then, I had to make for my friend, Mastura, who just had a baby girl. So, its supposed to be a baby shower sort of surprise for her. At the same time, I also had an order from Azlina, who wanted to have the edible images of t-trex on her son's cupcakes for school. 

It wasn't that bad as I had the whole Saturday to plan and bake my cupcakes, or so I thought. I took my time starting those cupcakes and I did my errands first. At the end of the day however, I was still in a rush cause I left it too late to start baking and I started stressing myself out!! I'm glad though that I still managed to finish all of them by the time I left for dinner at my SIL's abode. Alhamdulillah for that :)

Baby Aisyah's Cupcakes

The baby shower cupcakes for my one of my bestie, Mastura

We chose the theme colours of pink and yellow to welcome baby Aisyah

 Dino Cupcakes

Dino cupcakes for Adam's 4th birthday

The t-rex photos were chosen by Azlina and printed into edible form

After this particular weekend was over and all cupcakes safely delivered, I had to make another cake for Raja Johanna, whose husband, Tengku Datuk Zafrul just turned 40. That will be in my next blog entry! I never got to rest that weekend actually!!

"Pom-poms & Clouds"

When I received this cupcake order for a pajama themed birthday party, I thought okay this should be fun to make. The concept is very different from my normal orders. Aziana wanted me to make mini pom-poms on sticks to be part of the cupcakes decoration. She wanted the colour theme to be white and grey and decided to have clouds on sticks too as part of the decoration. Initially, I was thinking to myself, "what a weird combination these cupcakes will be", but after I've done the mini pom-poms in white and grey, I actually loved the effect these pom-poms had on the cupcakes.

The clouds were very cute too. Instead of making these clouds with paper, I decided to make them with gumpaste and I had these clouds dusted with edible lustre and even added some silver sugar shimmer dust. The cupcakes were red velvet and the frosting was cream cheese.

The cupcakes with the pom-poms and clouds

Frontal view of the cupcakes

Side view and the clouds can be seen clearly from this angle

The frosting was also made to look like clouds

I had fun making the pom-poms and would love to use this idea again on another cake! Maybe for my daughter's or mom's birthday cake. Thanks for the order, Aziana and I hope you gals had lots of fun at the party :)

"Its All About Squares!"

After a long break, I had an order last weekend for cupcakes with the Minecraft theme by Jesrina Arshad. I have heard of the minecraft game as my kids are absolutely nuts about this game. I do know that everything in the minecraft world is square and is made of square blocks. So, when Jess told me that her niece, Zahra wants the minecraft theme for her 9th birthday bash, I thought to myself, this should be easy enough.

Well, I was quite wrong as its not that easy to make the gum paste to be perfect squares or cubes. Thus, the sugar modelling took longer than I anticipated and I ended up pulling an all nighter as I didn't take the day off from work that Friday. If I had done so, I probably won't be so rushed for time. I started out making the square like boy and girl characters. Its fairly simple enough but when its scaled down to fit a cupcake, all the parts are going to be small!! So, its a very tedious process!

I felt that by the time I had all the sugar characters ready for the cupcakes, I was turning square too!!! 

Lesson to self: Never procrastinate and always take time off work if the order is quite challenging!!

I actually don't enjoy making cupcakes with sugar modelling as it is very time consuming and very tedious especially when I'm such a detailed person. I much rather do a big cake and have the modelling done on a slighlty larger scale. I ended up making these characters and things for the cupcakes: 4 pieces boy characters, 4 pieces girl characters, 5 TNTs, 5 square rose plants, 5 creeper faces, 4 diamonds and swords and lastly, 3 sheeps. 

The overall view of the cupcakes... The square and stiff world of MINECRAFT...

The cute little square sheep and the girl character

The boy character and the square rose plant

The sword and diamond and the creeper face

A closer view of my sugar work

 I hope Zahra was happy with the cupcakes and thanks again Jess for the order...

"Cupcakes, cupcakes and more cupcakes!!!"

I was commissioned by my good friend from Jakarta, Elona, to make 230 individually packed cupcakes as gifts for guests attending her mom-in-law's 80th birthday celebration. At first, when I accepted this order, I thought this would be easy enough. After all, I've made numerous cupcakes with buttercream frosting and it was always relatively easy for me. Boy, was I wrong!! I never expected to spend more time than I actually planned to finish up all 230 cupcakes. Luckily, I had baked more than 230 pcs and bought more than 230 boxes as unexpected things or situation always happen when you're pressured to meet the dateline.

The baking process went quite smoothly despite that I had to run to the store in the middle of baking because my maid forgot to mention that I ran out of baking soda!!! Of all the things!!! That set back my flow of baking for a while. Frosting and making flower patterns as the cupcake deco was easy but if you had to do it all by yourself, it can be very tiring! As I'm such a perfectionist, the process took longer than I expected it to be. Still, I managed to finish icing all the cakes and by the time I started putting all the cupcakes in the individual boxes, it was already pass my 5.00 pm dateline. Since Elona had a wedding to attend that night, I promised her that I would deliver to her the cupcakes. I finally finish at 10.00 pm and had them all delivered to her by 11.00 pm that night. By then, I was so exhausted and my back was about to break in two!!! Moral of the story is I must get myself a more reliable assistant that I could delegate some of the tasks. Being a one woman show is no joke!! 

Am glad to say that I'm very happy with my final product. The cupcakes are what I envisioned them to be and most of all, Elona was very pleased with her order.

The final product of my individually packed cupcakes and ready to be delivered to Elona's

Close-up of the boxes... I chose polka-dot ribbons in 5 colours

The cupcakes had the flower theme decoration and I made the colour combination the same as the 5 colours that I had chosen for the ribbons.

These are the 5 designs I used for the cupcakes. I had to make 46 cupcakes for each design

A close-up of the individually packed cupcakes in 5 different colour ribbons

I am happy and thankful that despite the hiccups I faced in the process of completing this order, I still managed to finish it and am very pleased with the results :)

"Jungle Fever"

Its 2013, a new year and its time again for me to open a new book and reflect if I could achieve in 2013 what I could've done in 2012 but didn't! This maybe because I didn't have the time, courage or just simply didn't bother to follow through in 2012. One thing's for sure, this year, I plan to put more concentration on my son. That means more time for him and less time on cake making. Haziq will be sitting for his UPSR examination and I need to give him all the support he needs.

I admit that I did somewhat neglect him last year because I was too busy making cakes! Well, this year I would have to be more selective on my cake orders and put my son's priorities first. That being said, I still started the 1st weekend of January 2013 with a big cake order. My regular client, Raja Jesrina Tan Sri Raja Arshad commissioned 60 3D cupcakes with the jungle animals theme. Yup, 60 animals to make. She gave me a free reign on the animal design but she gave me a few photos of how the theme of the cupcakes should be. These cupcakes were for her only nephew, Zaeem, who celebrated his 1st birthday on 05th January 2013.

At first, I thought I was not ready to do this. Actually, I was still in a holiday mood and not yet ready to start baking and decorating cakes but I still decided to accept the order. I couldn't say no to Jess as she has been very supportive of my cakes and has ordered quite a few from me last year.

I decided to make 7 types of jungle animal - tiger, elephant, lion, monkey, bear, hippo and snake. That's quite a lot to do as I was alone and my maid was off for a few days. I succeeded and managed to get all the jungle animals done a day before the cake was due.

The frontal view of the "Jungle Fever" cupcakes for Zaeem's 1st birthday

The friendly monkey, tiger, lion & hippo

The cute bear

The smiling monkey and lion

Side view of the cupcakes

The elephant and smiling snake

The animals looked easy to make but the process was actually quite tedious. Am so happy they turned out alright and Jess was very happy with the cupcakes. She SMSed me the next day and told me, "...thanks so much for the cupcakes they looked fantastic!! Everyone loved them v intricate, loved it!!..."

I am very happy to start off the year with a very satisfied customer. Even though I have decided to cut down on my cake orders, I will still update my blog though it won't be as often as before. Let's hope for a better year ahead!

xoxoxo

Elinna Bahrin

Pink Ellies Novelty Cakes