6-tier Ivory Rose and Orchids Cascade Wedding Cake

I feel blessed to be invited and take part in my friends Azzy and Omar’s wedding. We had multiple discussions on the design of the cake that go with the theme and venue. This fresh flower cascade 6-tier wedding cake is the best idea we came up with. What a dramatic effect :-D

The wedding cake was displayed and put under a spotlight in the entrance of the stunning Eastington Park Manor House. It was decorated with white roses, spray roses, orchid, carnation and lisianthus. The flavour was vanilla madeira cake with vanilla buttercream.

I also made this trailing bouquet with the help of my floristry tutor Ayako for the bride with her favourite roses and orchids. I need to ask the photographer for a picture of the bride holding it, this was me doing a demo of the trailing length.

Here is the practice cake I prepared last week.

 On the day the flowers were wired arranged, and wrapped into small buttonholes.

Thank Azzy's friends and family for helping with logistics on the day!

*~~*~*~~*~*~~*~*~~*~*~~*~*~~*~*~~*~*~~*

Every time I see Azzy and Omar  they are so happy. When I watch the two of them together, I know they are meant for one another. I was touched and emotional when I saw my two close friends getting married.

Wishing Azzy and Omar a happy married life with never ending journey of happiness, love and joy. Best wishes to my beloved friends and an amazing life ahead!

Tiered Cake with Fresh Flower

I probably mentioned before cake decorating and floristry are my biggest hobby, both of them together is my dream. A few weeks ago I took a 2 day course by Makiko Searle and Ayako Saida making sugar wisteria and arranging fresh flowers for a tiered cake.

We spent the first day icing the cake and making the sugar wisteria, it took quite a bit of effort making and turning a bunch of flowers into wisteria stems. Makiko said we will need to make hundreds to have a trailing effect and to cover all the cake tiers :-O

The second day was the exciting flower arrangement day! Ayako provided us a variety of fresh flowers - Roses, Statice, Carnation, Lisianthus, Hydrangea, Limonium and Veronica - they were all in stunning pastel colours :) Fresh flowers create the dramatic effect, but not all flowers are non-toxic and most of the time they are not in season, sugar flowers do not have these problems.

We were taught how to make a posy

which was used as the cake topper

Next we had to arrange the flowers into the oasis, I enjoyed this part the most :-D

This was the final outcome from the professional tutors, the top tier was the posy and a sugar wisteria, second tier was all sugar wisteria and the bottom tier was fresh flower arrangement. How gorgeous!

Ours were 2 tiers because of the time limit, this was my finished look : )

I took the cakes and flowers home, tried to add one more tier to make the whole cake look more like my tutors' one, I don't have the long dowels so I arranged the cakes as open-stacked under the second tier.

Also tried to put the posy on the second tier, the overall look looked so different. The whole cake + fresh flower arranging was too addictively enjoyable - I want to make another one now! :-D

Minecraft Creepy, Steve and Stampy Cat Birthday Cake

There was a TV program talking about all the popular video games since the first game was first invented. When I was a teenager I remember playing Bomberman, Super Mario and Tamagotchi. Many of the recent games have passed me by, and one I haven't played was Minecraft. The program said Minecraft is an educational tool schools use in children's projects, and it had shown children enjoying playing it in the classroom. It looks very fun. Although I havent tried the game, I have made the characters - Creepy, Steve and Stampy Cat - for Sebastian, Abitya and Dylan's birthday! :-D

The characters are so pixelated! : ) 

The game is made in blocks, so was the cake : ) I didn't stick the characters on the cake so the birthday boys could have some fun arranging them on the cake. 

Céline Boston Tote Handbag Cake

When it was Karen's birthday, I tried to guess the design she would like for her birthday cake. I was guessing maybe jewellery or shoes cake, as she owns her online jewellery shop, she styles for photoshoots and she lives in fashion, so she surprised me by choosing a light beige Céline Boston Tote Handbag as the design! Her choice of cake design was so cool and it matches her style and personality very much :-D

The cake is lemon cake with lemon curd buttercream. This was my first time making a handbag cake, I was measuring and making templates to get the proportions/details right, it was very fun to make this cake, I felt like I was stitching up a real handbag! I hope people looking at the cake or pictures cannot believe it is an actual cake :-p

To make the cake more unique, I turned the logo of Ciaté Nail Polish into Karen's name : )

I wish Karen again a Happy Birthday with Light Beige Céline Boston Tote Handbag (Cake) ❤

❤ A Little Treat for You ❤

If you are reading this, I believe we enjoy doing something similar - baking and cake decorating! I would also like to thank you for visiting this space, here is a little gift for you - a discount voucher to shop in Cake Craft World  ❤ which of course you can share with your friends and family : )

They do a very wide range of items, from piping bags, nozzles, cupcake cases to food colouring gels, baking tins, fondant and all kind of baking and cake decorating tools. I get my supplies from them : ) you can order your items online, they do next day and international delivery : )

Have fun shopping and making cakes! & stay warm xoxo

Strawberry Chocolate Rose Petal Cake ✿

A special design for someone special :) This was a cake I made for Sal's birthday, the rose petals were made of strawberry chocolate, inside was sponge cake layers with fresh cream and a rainbow of different coloured fruits. This is a design inspired by Cafe Pouchkine's Rose du Tsar and Tony Wong's Pink Rose. It took me a while to figure out how to make a cake like a big rose. :-O

The strawberry modelling chocolate needs to be rolled out to paper thin to create the rose petals effect,

and quite a lot of petals are needed to cover an 8 inches cake ;) 

 The strawberry chocolate was not too sweet, I think it matched very well with the rainbow fruits inside. The rainbow colours from the fruits reminded me of Sal's Sesame Street Rainbow Birthday Cake from last year ❤.

The rose I made was fuller than Cafe Pouchkine's Rose du Tsar and Tony Wong's Pink Rose, I couldnt figure how they used so little petals.

I wish Sal a very Happy Birthday with her lovely family xoxo

Japanese Bear and Rabbit Soft Bread Bun ♫

The bakeries in Japan do a lot of bread buns in animal shapes, they are all so creative and cute. I was up too early because of jetlag last Sunday, I decided to make some bread to kill my time! :-P I didnt prove/ferment my first bread (panda bread) quite right last time, I let my dough to prove/ferment next to the radiator this time and it rose much better ♪

Japanese Bear and Rabbit Soft Bread Bun

makes around 8-9 buns

Ingredients

175g White Bread (strong) flour
75g Plain flour
50g Sugar
1 tsp Salt
1 Egg, Whisked
100ml Water
3 tbsp Milk
10g Dry yeast
25g Unsalted Butter, at room temperature
Oil, to grease
20 melted chocolate, to decorate

Method

1. Place bread flour, plain flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl and mix well.
2. In a separate bowl, put in the whisked egg, water, milk and dry yeast, gently whisk until incorporated.
3. Add the milk mixture into the flour mixture and keep mixing until combined.
4. Start kneading by hand or by a mixer with a dough hook attachment for minimum 10-15 mins under high speed until the dough become smooth and elastic.
5. Knead the dough properly until it forms a thin, translucent film.

6. Add the butter and keep kneading for another 10 mins until a strong gluten film forms.
7. Knead the dough into a ball, place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover the bowl with cling film.

8. Leave to rise (1st rising) for 1-2 hours or until doubled in size.

9. Remove risen dough from the bowl, punch down and turn out onto a lightly floured surface.
10. Divide the dough into 9 pieces, form the first 8 dough into rounds, use the 9th dough to form some smaller rounds as ears and stick them to the larger rounds.

11. Cover with cling film and let rise (2nd rising) at room temperature for about 40-45 minutes, or until doubled in size.
12. Preheat the oven to 180C, place the dough on a baking sheet, lower the temperature to 160C and bake for 10 minutes, lower the temperature again to 130C and bake for another 5-10 minutes.

13. Remove and cool them on a wire rack. Pipe some melted chocolate as ears and mouth to finish.

I am very pleased with my second bread-making result, the buns turned out very soft and springy :) they stayed fluffy even after a few days.

Next time I will try to make some savoury ones or with fillings like those I saw in Tokyo :))))

Dessert Cups

Happy 2014 :) Hope you all had some nice time over Xmas and new year, I am back from my long-ish holiday seeing my family and friends and am catching up with some overdue posts :) These are some dessert cups I made for Sharine's Xmas party dessert table last month.

Flavours are tiramisu, blueberry cheesecake, strawberry trifle, mango and passionfruit panna cotta, chocolate mousse cake :-D

Which one would you like most?