Special cakes for the special people in my life

All the cakes use basic decorating techniques, using the star tip. For the princess cake, I made 2D tip royal icing flowers ahead of time and placed them on the cake. This cake seems like a tough one, but it really isn't. I like its simple yet elegant decorations.

Birthdays Come And Birthdays Go

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you did not get old? How about this idea - if we don't blog for a period of time then we don't age? Naa, the fun of life is encountering the challenges of every year as we gleefully watch others age and blissfully think of ourselves as still that young and energetic 18 year old!!
Birthday cakes are a wonderful way to record these epic moments. Here are some from the past year or so. The Elmo cake was terribly last minute to say the least. But the birthday boy couldn't have cared less!

Some of the cakes were totally unplanned creations. I just baked a cake an did whatever came to mind.

Fondant & Gumpaste

I made a practice cake for my Fondant and Gumpaste class. We learnt to make the sheet draping, the hanky, daisies and garlands. This cake cannot be scrutinized aesthetically as we used the techniques we learnt without worrying about the look.

My first fondant cake

I wanted to make a special cake for someone special. But every time I made a cake, my hand pain came back. Every time the pain returned, I always get more determined to bake a cake! But you do have to be wise. Injured muscles need time to heal. So I chose to do a fondant cake where the stress on the wrist and palm are not as pronounced as when decorating with buttercream icing.
I am so happy with the result. The fondant cakes are part of the 3rd Wilton course that I haven't yet taken. I followed the instructions in the book and I hope you agree that for a first fondant cake it turned out just as I had imagined, very special for my favorite person. I used a 24oz packet of white fondant icing and colored it with buttercup yellow and juniper green. I mixed in the colors till there was a slight marbling effect. I used garlands and fondant balls at the base of the cake. I used a Yellow chocolate marble cake, covered with white BC icing.
Just because I said it seems to be easier than BC icing decoration please don't expect it to be effortless. When you look at the wonderful 'artwork' that some talented women do with fondant, you will understand the hard work they put into it.

A coupla cakes!

I made these two cakes this year. One of course is for Valentine's day. As you can see I really didn't have any plans for that day except for having good food and some cake!! I was trying to watch Shall We Dance as I was decorating the cake. I obviously didn't catch much of the movie but I really loved Jennifer Lopez's clothes. They were all so very feminine and flowing! You thought I was going to talk about cake?? This cake has rosettes, drop flowers on rosettes and e-motion techniques. I used half a packet of red velvet cake mix. So the cake was gone in 60 seconds!!

I love this cake and I hope you think the same. I particularly like this shade of green. It is a combination of leaf green and juniper green. I have used the reverse shell border on top, it is my favorite border. So I am always drawn to make cakes that have this border. The flowers are wild roses. I was supposed to make them using royal icing, but I just used stiff buttercream icing and got by with it.

Of Birthdays and Cakes

Right after I attended my very first cake decorating class, I took it upon myself to bake cakes for a few wonderful people, I love. The above is the teddy bear character cake that I made YET again. To make it a little bit interesting, for the kid, I added balloons (in case you were wondering what those blue, orange and yellow globs were!!). This is the 2nd cake that I EVER decorated (including the one made at my first class) and I was so so happy when everyone at the party liked it. God is Great!!!

The above joker cake was made to supplement the teddy bear. I don't know how long it take others to decorate cakes, but I usually end up spending 5 hrs just to decorate and clean up. By the end of it I am ready to just slap the icing on :)) When I got done with the two cakes I thought that they looked real horrible. But looking back, I guess I was just too hard on myself.

I don't know how I manage it, but miraculously I was once again making two cakes on the same day. I taught myself the rope border to decorate this cake. I didn't have a plan or design for the cakes so I don't think they reached their full potential. But shown above is one of them anyway.

I have decided to avoid dark colored icing because unless it is chocolate icing, it will take way too long to get to the shade that you want. That's what happened to these red roses. I spent at least an hour and a half getting to the shade that I wanted. So if you can avoid dark icing, by all means please do!! Having said that I love this cake. It was for a beautiful young lady who had just turned 16, hence the 16 roses, red is her favorite color and her name comes from the term 'the Rose of Sharon' from the Bible denoting Jesus.

So that's it for now :)

Cake Walk!

Here are some pictures of the cakes I made for Wilton Course 1 and 2. You have already seen my very first cake - which was the Teddy Bear character cake. I made that cake twice within such a short period that I had so much of brown icing left, so I made another cake to use it up. I just thought up a random idea using the drop flower technique and taught myself the shell border to finish this cinnamon swirl cake.

Then I made the Clown cake for the second class. I use cake mixes to make my cakes and French Vanilla is my favorite flavor. The flavor is mild enough to necessitate the need for icing. But for some reason all my friends love the Cinnamon Swirl cakes I make. I somehow feel that Cinnamon Swirl is too sweet to need any additional icing! I usually gobble up the pieces left over after leveling the cake!!

For the last cake in the course 1, I made the Rose Bouquet Cake, sans the lettering, the bow and stems. I placed them in the center and did a shell border interspersed with sweet peas. I used the wrong plate that anyone can ever use to place a cake on!!

The Wilton course 2 was really trying for me. The royal icing I made turned out really runny, and even though I had followed the recipe to the 'T'. I kept adding more and more icing sugar but it did not help my case. One thing I learnt about royal icing, is that it takes colors very well, so a little bit of color goes a long way. We used a different technique for making the daisies and we all liked it better than the Wilton one. I have to say that I had a really patient and good instructor. So here is my Basket Full of Flowers cake.

Bake Decorate Celebrate??

Watching PBS Create! is a hobby of mine(that is if you can ever call any form of watching TV, a hobby!) I love the cooking shows, makes my mouth water all the time and makes me hungry even after I've just had my lunch. I love to watch Daisy cook. Even though some of her dishes may not be stuff that I would eat because of cultural differences, it always intrigues me to watch her cook with all that energy and vitality. I have tried some of her dishes and they taste real good. Looking at her, no one can even guess that she is the mother of 2 kids and one of them is already in college!! I mean seriously!! I remember reading in a recent survey that Puerto Ricans have the highest life expectancy. I absolutely believe it when I see Daisy cook. The Puerto Rican cuisine plays a major role in their long life. So take a hint everyone!

Other cooking shows I love are Lidia's Family Table, Simply Ming and Everyday Food. Simply Ming is by far my favorite because being an Indian I can relate more to Asian food and actually try out some of the dishes. For simple cooking its Everyday food all the way. This is one show where Martha Stewart has bet/invested right. Another show that has become quite a favorite is Jacques Pepin. He is an interesting man with some useful tips and ideas.

Of course I travel the world with the travel shows and enjoy the sights and sounds of beautiful countries. I LOVE Bob Ross' Painting. I just love that show. I know the man is long dead and these shows are old tapings but hey, I am sure glad that they are still telecasting it.
Does this post sound like a marketing pitch for PBS Create? Well it just might be, you never know :))

Anyway the point of my post today was to talk about a show called Bake Decorate Celebrate on PBS. So as is my usual routine especially on quiet weekends, when I have a splitting headache, to watch all the different PBS channels, I was flipping the channels when I caught two ladies making some Wilton style decorations on Create. I was soooooooo excited. I didn't move. I just sat in one place and watched the show. When the program ended I looked to see what was next and imagine my surprise when I realized that they were running only this show on this particular day from morning to night!!!

Mr. PT came to the sad realization that I was pretty much going to hog the television that day and thanks to the commercial-free format of PBS, he didn't have a hope of getting his f(oot)inger in on the remote. Ha Ha ! I begged him to make this huge selfless sacrifice and I thank God that he obliged. Mr. PT is a generous man.

So I made myself comfortable on the couch, got myself a few refreshments and painkillers on standby, trusting that Mr. PT would provide the rest if I happened to run out! I watched and I watched for 3.30 hours and taped another hour:))

I watched - two women, being a little tense with each other. One of them didn't know anything about decorating and the other obviously is not a seasoned TV host. The tensions did run high, but I just loved to see them actually demonstrate the stuff that I had personally learned at Wilton cake courses.

Then I went to the website and saw all the experienced cake decoraters bashing the women on their forum!! Most of the women who do cake decorating for a living take it very seriously and boy can you see it reflected in their work!! But to their credit I think the women have at least made an effort to try to teach us something on the show and I am sure(hope) they will improve as time goes by, ESPECIALLY the cake decorating part really does need to improve.

These shows seemed geared to give an introduction to decorating, but my advice to viewers would be to learn the decorating part from somewhere else because the deco.'s are not done properly on the show. The other thing was the fact that they did not have very many new ideas. almost all of the cakes they did were already in the Wilton course books and their other publications. Maybe I am expecting too much??

I found a few things amusing- the ladies usually sneaked up a look while they are decorating to probably check the timing or something and they are not aware that the other cameras are still focussed on them. There is definitely a lack of communication between the cameramen and the women. The women need to be able to identify which camera is focussed on them in order to maintain their decorum and the cameramen need to know when to focus on which part of the cake, to get a shot of the method being taught. So that is possibly an area for improvement.

But overall I have to give the ladies the benefit of the doubt. I don't know how my body language will be if someone was filming me for a local show which had the possibilities of becoming a national show.When we decorate we do so in the privacy of our homes and have the opportunity to redo stuff and we certainly do not have someone standing over our shoulders telling us we still needed to shoot 4 more shows!! Even though most of us might love to hear that said to us, I don't think its an easy thing to do. So good luck to the ladies and I hope they try harder and do a better job.

So after all this talk of cakes here is my first cake from Wilton Course 1. I made a character cake and I was really impressed with myself, when I got done. I did not in the least expect it to turnout the way it did. For beginners, well defined character cakes are the easiest to do, in my opinion. Look for character pans that do not need anything too fancy and you will be surprised at how nice the cake will look just with a star tip and a few color changes!!