This cake makes a statement instantly - right away you can tell it's a cake for an engagement. On top of that, it doubles as a display for the couple's most romantic photos. You can't pack more punch into a cake than that! The rest of the cake was designed to match the invitation - with scattered blue leaves and royal blue ribbon.
As mentioned in my previous post, the theme of a cake can be a testament to one's personality - or what someone thinks of one's personality. This was a love job for a close friend of mine and this is what I thought of her... a shopping queen! The shoe, the handbag, the shopping bag, the feathers, the pearls, the bling, all very her. I must admit, this would be very similar to a cake I would make for myself. No wonder we're friends!
You can gain great insight into people's personalities through their cakes... the theme of any cake can be one way of answering the question: what is your one possession that defines you at this point in your life? The usual suspects are a car (for guys), a designer handbag (for girls), an iPhone (for the tech-savvy), a cartoon character/soft toy (for kids), or a football or football jersey (for the sports fanatics). For this discerning lil boy it's his Sony Vaio. For such a serious and grown-up toy, we wanted to jazz it up with a little festivity, so we added balloons, presents, party hats and a colourful cake base.
One of the least traditional wedding cakes I've had the pleasure of cakeing. Even more risque than the cupcake tower a few posts ago, this one actually had the wedding couple *ahem* asleep in their bed... and with undergarments strewn all over the three layers of cake no less! The offset layers of cake also added to the quirky theme. Lucky the lights were on during the wedding but who knows what the little figurines got up to once the night was over! 
This is before Porky Pig, Shaun the Sheep and Cow and Chicken became famous... they were just farmyard animals enjoying the greenery and having farmyard conversations! What a simpler life they led without the trappings of fame, and Porky was still walking on all fours!
I'm not sure if the birthday boy owns a Ferrari, but this sure is the closest I'll ever get to one! Gentlemen, start your appetites... this cake weighed about 8kg upon completion!
I've made a few larger pram cakes so it was fun to make a mini pram this time, suspended on shaped wire. The advantage of having a fondant topper is that it can keep forever as a memory of the special occasion it was made for. Note to those preserving toppers/figurines - they keep best at room temperature. Please don't fridge them! :)
In the setting of the beautiful Tea Room at the QVB, this 7-tier cupcake tower was arranged for a lovely couple, both of them wedding photographers/ videographers. So their own wedding of course needed to be fantastic and elegant. It was such a pleasure working with them and observing their creative flair come alive in their theming and decorations. Purple hues were used all over, as evident in the vanilla cupcakes with butter cream icing, and fresh flowers peeping in between. The personal touch of this tower is the cute wedding couple figurines sitting atop the cake, in a slightly risque pose... the bride, with a camera around her neck, appearing to slap the ever-cool-looking Aviator-wearing groom on the butt. Their playful personalities personified forever in fondant icing!
A fun cake for a kid's birthday... full of colour, some shapes to stimulate their curiosity and a bunch of the characters they've fallen in love with through the tv. And unlike other newer characters these days, adults can probably identify with Elmo, Big Bird, Cookie Monster and the gang too. "Can you tell me how to get...."
Every girl's gotta have a handbag cake some time in their lives.... whether it be Louis Vuitton, Chanel or Christian Dior, Guess it's up to the individual!
This guitar has been through alot... it's been strummed, waved in the air and smashed to pieces. As if that wasn't enough, it then got sliced up and served on a platter for dessert. Such is the life of a caked electric guitar!
White and gold is a popular colour scheme for weddings and I can see why! Even with a cake that is mostly white, just a few embellishments in gold can make all the difference. Here the slight twist on the traditional with funky whimsical hearts all over the middle layer makes it a little modern and edgy.
This is one of my first corporate orders and true to form they had set guidelines to cake by. Moore Stephens wanted something to celebrate their century that represented the occasion as well as their corporate identity. As the logo had to be precisely reproduced, we had it printed on edible paper and then stuck onto the cake.
Ever felt like someone was watching? If you're a kid, you might recognise these Yo Gabba Gabba characters. If you're like me, you might just feel like you're in the Big Brother house! I love creative ways of presenting characters and although this is undoubtedly a normal round 3-layer cake, the characters (if you're a kid) are unmistakeable. It's all in the eyes...
I love collaborative efforts and this was a wedding cake collaboration with one of my favourite florists, Stef Smrk-Dansey of Chic Floral Design. I'm extra pleased I got to watch her in action, wiring, arranging, adjusting and placing the flowers onto the cake. Also love the twiggy twirls connecting both layers of the cake. Because the flowers included the deep rich red colour and lots of little extras were added - ie twigs and berries - we kept the cake a simple plain white with just some embellishments in white royal icing. Not I Do - We Do!
Another car bites the dust! I have learnt more about cars through cakeing than I ever imagined I would. Not just the make and model but the shape and curves of the body. So much so that, to blow my own trumpet a little, I saw a car under a sheet of tarp the other day and I could actually tell it was a Ford Mustang. Now that's paying attention to my subjects!
This wedding called for an elegant understated design in white and a light blush colour, in the form of delicate lace arond the base of each layer. The angular lines of the square shapes were offset by the soft large open magnolia on top, made out of fondant.
This cake requires a bit of explanation! The recipient was a chef who owns a Chinese restaurant. No confusion over what he serves... yes you are right, roast duck! Oh and he also has a wife, daughter and adorable lil pup. OK so maybe that was pretty straightforward... but one of the more unusual and realistic cakes I've made to date!
Couldn't make the birthday party for a dear friend so I sent a cake in my place. I think here the colours maketh the cake. I had to choose carefully, the cake was for a girl AND a guy, and I wasn't sure what the party setting was going to be like. All I knew was that there would be dancing, and lots of it... so I opted for something loud with a bit of glam.
What better way to show the birthday girl some love than with a larger than life ruby red pucker! This cake pretty much says it all!
Following on from the post before, this is the reader herself! Casually perched reading one of her four favourite titles, in her living room made of cake. At bottom left there is a fireplace... coz you always need a cosy fireplace for a good bout of reading!
For a book lover passionate about her reading. As she has four favourite books, we had to have each one as cake!
It was a privilege to provide a cake for Joanne my sometime extra-pair-of-cake-hands. I decided that one cake design wasn't enough for her, so I settled on six in one - each slice a different look. I think we only ended up eating two 'slices' that night. Sometimes I get carried away with cake! The figurine is exactly as she is all dolled up - sleek in (usually) black and full of sass!
Here is a friend's adorable French bulldog Poggi immortalised in cake. Where do I start! Once again I love the challenge of something life-sized, realistic and detailed. The shape of the head was not as tricky to carve as I'd anticipated, but the weight of the head required a bit of engineering effort to support. Cake Poggi is sitting on a styrofoam base because extra dowels were needed to anchor it upright. He was threatening to lick the countertop :p Dusting with edible chalks was the fun part... Once the cake began to look disturbingly real, I knew I'd achieved the look I wanted! The most satisfying part... when my friend thought she'd brought the real Poggi in the car with her when she looked over at the cake - forgetting for a second that she'd just picked up cake Poggi.
Another take on the Hollywood theme. The usual suspects are there - dazzling stars, red carpet, film roll, but this time a giant bucket of popcorn takes centre stage. Litle bit of oversized nostalgia to set the mood :)
This was one of the first wedding cakes I had the pleasure of cakeing this wedding season. What a nice opener - strong bold purple on white. Purple seems to be the colour of the season, in various hues. (More purple-themed wedding cakes to come!). The decision to be made here was whether to let the butterflies stand out or the mini daisies. In the end the daisies won out as the butterflies take the cake top anyway. Nothing flat about this cake, everything pops out!
My friend requested a bunny for her cake. Trying to avoid it looking like a kid's birthday cake (I did consider a giant bunny or a 2D bunny face) since it was a 30th, I kept the bunny small but still centre stage. I never usually use more than 3 colours in combination (unless it's a realistic cake) but I loved the various shades of purple here with red and neutral white. I wanted them to make the statement keeping the rest of the cake muted. Tiny flowers and bows added a soft touch especially the flower in the paws of our cute lil bunny.
I've always loved baby pink, mint green and latte brown together. This was a love job for a 60th birthday. Simple flowers make a statement when placed strategically and not overdone. I much like the pop-out look of the mini daisies scattered diagonally around the middle of the cake. A few little details in royal icing piping and voila! One birthday cake to go.
I haven't been uploading many cupcakes lately but they're definitely still gracing my countertop. This is one of our favourite Sesame Streeters with his favourite snack. Didn't have to think of how to fashion cookies out of fondant... I just used actual (mini) cookies! Cookiieeeeeee.....
I thought it was about time I uploaded another handbag cake. This is an Hermes Birkin bag, supposedly one of the most sought-after bags according to SATC! Instead of making a giant bag to feed everyone at our relaxing lunch party, I decided to keep it small and complement it with a dainty lil cake on the side in matching colours, using the buckle from the bag itself as an embellishment. This way we could tuck into the lil cake and let the birthday girl take home her Birkin. Each girl there also got to take home their own little LITTLE Birkin (top right) - I just couldn't resist!
My first 5-tier wedding cake, constructed with columns no less! Deep red always looks striking on white - an incredibly romantic colour scheme that will always be in vogue. 
Vroooom! Still love cakeing the big boys' toys! With all the details a Harley has, the challenge was in deciding how many to include to make it realistic without overcrowding the cake. Feel like you could ride this bike? Well you'd have to be a tiny 2" cake figurine but I hope the answer was a 'yes', even if just in good spirit!
I've lost count of the number of Tiffany boxes I've caked so recently for a Tiffany-lovin' girl I decided to put a little twist on the design with a mini Tiffany box inside the larger gift box - all cake. And because who wouldn't want their own piece of Tiffany, separate mini Tiffany cakes for the guests, each packaged individually in tiny pail boxes. Cake for everyone and some for the birthday girl to take home! (However I was later told that she couldn't bring herself to cut up the cake hence didn't 'open' the cake to find the lil Tiffany inside till a few days later!)
A small thank you to the chef who single-handedly cooked for my entire birthday party. I love occasions that allow me to show some gratitude to the people who have done me kind favours through the years. Also lets me show them what I think of them. When I see this birthday boy I will always see 'chef''! By the way, this was a tiny hat and I thought I could get away without dowels but note to self, aaalways use dowels. Especially with a soft (yet oh-so-delicious) flavour like white mud.
Two friends of mine - a lovely couple - got engaged recently and ordered a cake but gave me no direction on design *yay* my lucky day! Like any cake decorator who dreams up more designs than she can cake, I turned to my scrapbook (powerpoint) of cake pictures I've admired over the years and immediately a yellow, black and white cake caught my eye - three colours I would never have used together before but I loved the b&w of it with just a tinge of yellow to bring it to life. Moreover it matched the elegant b&w invitation - the only hint of the party theme I had to go on. The third layer was hand-painted - a technique I've taken a liking to especially with the finished product looking a little like it's been printed on and a sunny yellow flower topped it off, taking the hard edge off the b&w and straight lines.
