"Hi, I am back!"

I haven't been blogging for a while now. Actually 4 months to be exact. I have been busy and plus I haven't been making any cakes lately.

I have been wanting to blog about this cake I made for our good friends, who visited us from Jakarta last April. Coincidentally, Pak Halim's birthday had just passed and I thought it would be nice to surprise him with a birthday cake.  I knew right from the beginning what cake I wanted to make for him. I decided a tuxedo cake as I have always known Pak Halim to be one of the most distinguished gentlemen that I've ever met. The cake was simple but elegant and suits him perfectly.

 

The tuxedo cake

The cake was lemon flavored



The black of the tuxedo was airbrushed to achieve the perfect shiny black colour




A nice red flower to complete the tuxedo

This is one of my favourite cakes and boy was the birthday man surprised! I am happy that my simple gesture meant a lot to Pak Halim and his family. We had so much fun with them and we played the tourist around Bangkok city with them.

 

Another cake I made was for a friend's daughter on the occasion of her 9th birthday. Ediana's daughter, Aressa wanted a Teen Beach Movie theme cake. How I wish I was in KL, where my edible print supplier is so easli accessible but alas am in Bangkok and we had to make do with normal printing for the sugar frame.

 

The whole view of the cake

Side view of cake with the sand decorated all around the cake



Aressa wanted a surf board on the cake

The sugar frame with inedible printing

The cake was a vanilla bean cake. I had fun making this cake as it was a fun theme. I hope Aressa loved her cake and her guests enjoyed the cake too!

 

Those were the only two cakes I did from the months of April to August. Am quite sad actually that my business hasn't taken off here. For one thing, I have not done enough marketing and another the people here (at least the one I meet) are just not willing to pay for the cakes like my clients in KL are willing to. Its difficult trying to explain that the cost of making these one of a kind cakes. The time I spend on each of  the cake itself and the design will never be the same as another cake.

 

How I miss my busy cake making days in Malaysia, whereby there's always an interesting cake to meet each week. But hopefully my drought season will end soon. I will be conducting classes for the Adult Education Program in ISB as part of my PTA contribution to my children's school. At least then I will still be practicing my cake making.

 

 



 

 

"Captain America"

A friend of mine, Nurbiha or Nur, as I call her, ordered this Captain America themed cake for her son's 8th birthday last Saturday. I managed to squeeze in this order before I left for my hub's hometown, Batu Pahat over the weekend. The cake was a chocolate cake with Belgian milk chocolate ganache. Since time was not on my side, I only made the base of the cake in Captain America's colours and theme. The figurine, unfortunately was a toy! I usually try to make these figurines with sugar paste but I didn't have the luxury to do so this time. However, I was quite happy with the cake and so was birthday boy, Raimi.

 

Birthday boy, Raimi at his birthday party!



According to Nur, he was so thrilled with the cake! Thank you for the order, Nur and a happy belated birthday to Raimi!!

"Going into 2014 - Final Curtain for 2013"

Happy New Year 2014 to all my blog readers!!

It has been a very busy start to year 2014 and yes, am still MAIDLESS!! My maid is currently on a 3 months leave and she has gone back to Indonesia. So, despite my promise to her that I would not overtire myself by making cakes on my own, I actually managed to complete 5 orders since she left in early November 2013. So, am feeling quite proud of my achievement that I actually managed to fit a full time office job, housework, my family and my cakes in the last 2 months or so. I still have another month to go before my life is back to being completely normal!!

 

The end of 2013 also marked my last year in the 3 series. I turned 39 on 27th December and I had a good time catching up with my cousin, Amy on my birthday. Plus my hubby also treated me to a wonderful Japanese dinner and my besties came to my house to surprise me with a mini birthday celebration on New Year's Day. All in all, I had a great ending to my 30's and even though I don't look forward to the big 40, I hope to remain young always at heart.

 

The beginning of 2014 also marks new beginnings for my kids. My eldest is now in secondary and my youngest is now in upper primary. I am getting OLD!! I do feel my age everytime I'm done with housework. The ache and pains are more pronounced now than it was 5 years ago!!! Hahaha...

Back to my cakes, I had two last orders at the end of December. The first one, which I haved named, "By the Beach", is ordered by my college mate, Patricia or as we fondly call her Pat, for her son, Rohan's 2nd birthday celebration. She ordered a Rob the Robot theme cake, refer to my blog entry Last Order for December 2012, last year for Rohan's 1st birthday. For 2013, the theme of the cake was a beach holiday theme with the cake having a sand castle and surrounded by all beach/sea themed items. I actually made the sand castle out of cake and had the whole palm tree beach effect on the cake. I also added elements such as fishes all around the cake to show the underwater effect. I had handpainted each of the underwater element with edible colouring. That was the best part in making the cake! I forgot how much I used to love painting.

Overall view of the cake complete with the beach sand and a palm tree too!!



The sand castle and beach stuff

The fishes and turtle

The blue fish

The cake is a dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate ganche frosting. Happy Belated 2nd Birthday, Rohan!! Thanks again for the order and support, Patricia!!

My second cake order was from my cousin, Liza or fondly called Liz  for her daughter, Iman's 11th birthday. I call this cake, "Hoo Hoo Says The Owl". Its an owl cake but not a real owl! I copied the owl from the photo of Iman's stuffed owl toy sent to me by her mom!

This cake was quite fun to make and I loved the overall effect of the cake. Liz left everything to me and I added my own elements into the owl cake. I even textured the body of the owl to have the hair or fur effect on the cake. I started the cake by baking a basic 9" square cake, which I then shaped into the owl based on the photo sent to me.

The cake is again chocolate with dark chocolate ganache, a popular flavour with the kids.

Iman's stuffed toy owl made into a sugar treat!

Aerial view of the cake with the starry night background

Its just plain adorable

The side view with the owl perching on a tree branch with leaves and flowers!!

Thanks again for the order Liz!! Happy Belated Birthday, Iman!! We're both Capricorns!! Hurray to us as our birthdays are at the end of the year when everyone is going to turn older by celebrating their next birthday already but we've just only celebrated our birthdays!!

Happy New Year 2014 again and may this year be kinder to us Tigers and not to mention bring more prosperity to Pink Ellies Novelty Cakes too!! May I also be more creative in the coming year and produce more beautiful cakes!!!

Thanks for reading my blog in 2013 and I hope you will continue doing so in the years to come :)

xoxo
Elinna Bahrin
Pink Ellies Novelty Cakes

"Let's Go Bowling"

Last Saturday, one of my good friends from my Jakarta days, Hanie, threw a birthday party for her son, Danish's 9th birthday. The theme of the party was bowling. So, Danish wanted a birthday cake that has the bowling theme. Hanie actually sent me a sample photo of a cake that she would like to have for her son. I played around with the original cake design and came out with a cake that has the bowling elements mixed with some of the colours used in the party invitation. The cake was 3 tier with only the top and middle tier being real cakes. The middle tier is chocolate and top tier is vanilla.

 

It was quite a smooth process making this cake even though the cake was 3 tiers. Way much smoother than the Harry Potter cake!! I had the cakes bake on Friday morning and frosted Friday evening when I got back from work. Since only 2 tiers were made of cakes, I only had to bake 2 types of cake. I  covered all 3 tiers and had the cake airbrushed to a deep black with a tinge of silver in the colour. I can't get this lovely shade using just regular icing colours. Airbrushing a cake always make the cake look better and the colours are more vibrant.

 

I had the template of my bowling pins all cut out and ready. I used these templates for my gumpaste and I loved how they turned out. I actually managed to sleep at midnight on Friday and continued my cake the next morning. I was very surprised with how smooth things were with this cake. Syukur!! The only difficult part was actually driving the cake all the way from Shah Alam to Bukit Kiara and I managed to arrive at the destination with my cake in one piece!!

 

 

My 3-tiered bowling cake for Danish

The 2D bowling ball and pins

The bowling pins from the middle tier

The cake was decorated with the 5 colour circles that was part of the party 

 

The party invitation

More bowling pins

Danish and his friends (my kids included) at his bowling party

Happy Birthday Danish!! Thanks for having us at your 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...

"Myiesha's 4th Birthday"

My niece, Myiesha celebrated her 4th birthday last Sunday and my mom had organised a small family lunch to celebrate the occasion. My daughter and I decided to surprise Myiesha with a birthday cake. Since Myiesha is so into "My Littlest Pet Shop" figurines, I decided to make her a cake with these figures on them. Hannah is also into these cute animal figures and I asked her to choose 2 or 3 for me to replicate in sugarpaste.

The pets took longer than I initially thought to make because: 

1) I started late - almost 10 pm

2) I had no idea which one to make

3) I was still tired and recovering from the 230 cupcakes that I just completed and delivered the day before!!!

So, I wasn't really my energetic self but since the lunch was the next day, I had to somehow finish at least 3/4 of the cake decoration. I did manage to get my sugar figures done and the cake covered with fondant by the time I stopped at 1.30 am. I was glad coz I didn't really have much time the next day! 

I made Myiesha a banana cake since she loves banana and the cake is frosted with vanilla buttercream. My mom was very happy with Myiesha's cake and I was quite satisfied with the result. I had to ask Hannah if my figures looked almost the same as her toys and she gave me the thumbs up!! Phew!! She did warned me before I started making the cake that the pets had very detailed eyes and that I had to follow or my pet won't be the same. And so I did... This was how my cake looked like :)

The whole view of Lil M's cake

One of the birdie LPS pet

The cake looks so bright and cheerful 

  Happy 4th Birthday, my dearest Myiesha... Mama Lin loves you, sweetie :)

"Another Lego Cake"

Last weekend, my friend Salmi requested that I make for her son, Azri's 8th birthday, a lego themed cake. Don't know why, but kids are so into lego these days, especially boys. Must be due to our very own "Legoland" theme park that just opened last year in Johor. Well, back to my cake, I accepted the order even though I was down with a nasty migraine for the better part of last week.

This was my second lego cake. I had done one last December for Oleen's son, Naeem's 8th birthday. So, I decided to change the concept of my cake as I do not like to repeat my designs. For this cake, I worked around the "Contruction Lego" theme, where I had the cake look like a lego building site and the lego men were in the construction get-up. I made a square base cake this time around but I still retain a round shape for the second tier.

All in all, this was a fairly easy cake to make. The only tedious part was making the lego blocks. The cake turned out quite nice and I was quite happy with it. 

The overall view of the "Construction Lego" cake...

Lego contruction man no 1...

Lego construction man no 2...

The building site with the lego blocks...

Lego blocks up-close...

Birthday boy's name in lego logo colours...

Thanks for the order Salmi and thanks for having us at your function. Am so glad that Azri loves this cake :)

"Dinosaurs"

Eliena wanted a dinosaur themed cake for her son, Zack's 4th birthday celebration. It was quite a challenge for me but hey, I decided, why not. So, I accepted the order and started making my dinosaurs a few days before I had the cake baked. 

This cake theme was a tough one to make. The cake is easy but the sugar dinosaurs, not so! I spent many hours trying to make the dinosaurs stand but didn't succeed. The weather was just not helping and the humidity means my sugar creations won't harden enough to make them firm! I decided to make the dinosaurs sit instead. I tried to replicate the toy dinos that Eliena gave me and I airbrushed them to the closest I could. I used rice cereal treats for the body of the dinosaurs and the rest are all made of gum paste.

The hardest part of the cake was making the dinos. Once I got them done, the rest of the cake was a smooth journey for me. The volcano was also made of cake and I shaped it to look like a volcano with lava spilling out. I'm quite satisfied with how the cake turned out even though I didn't get the dinosaurs to stand but they still looked alright. At least to me.

The whole view of the cake. The volcano was made of cake and gum paste and airbrushed and hand painted with gold dust to look like molten lava

Side view with Zack's name

The purple dinosaur

The yellow green dinosaur

The grey black dinosaur

 Hope you had a great birthday celebration Zack. Thanks for the order, Eliena...

"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