For the Love of Cars & Balls

To be honest, after the whole day of doing eye-straining sugar cut-outs the day before for 60 cupcakes, it was the thought of this cake that kept me going. I was looking forward to making this little cake for my ex-manicurist. Her only son turned 2 on Saturday and she's been planning for a cake from me since last year! We've been talking about her son's favourite things and that got her into the mode of observing her son more carefully. After a couple of months, she told me that her son's very fascinated with cars and balls. Now, that's a tough one. How do I get these two things together and make sense? Well, I put that thought away for some time and just last week, it hit me! Dhaarmin is 2 and when my two children were at that age, I used to let them watch The Wiggles. It's an Aussie educational programme with songs and dances, and they loved calling out "Wake up, Jeff!!!" In that programme, the four guys have a car they call... The Big Red Car. Yes, just exactly that. The whole cake theme would be an episode with The Big Red Car introducing popular sports to children! So, I bake an Orange with Chocolate Swirl Cake for the car and a couple of sports balls (1.6kg in total). I had The Big Red Car driven by not the boys but the a smiley Snooker Ball and 3 other popular sports balls - the Baseball, Basketball and Football. I also made out of sugar paste a small tennis ball and golf ball as candle holders (which I didn't photograph). Mum was ecstatic when she saw the cake and I hope young Dhaarmin recognises The Big Red Car and names all the sports!

Office Birthdays

The staff at the local Cargill (manufacturer of animal feed and nutrition) celebrated their monthly birthdays (June-September) last Friday and I baked for them Chocolate & Orange Swirl and Lemon Poppyseed Cupcakes. The theme was animals that they produce feed for. That's as much as I could do for a product like that! 4 bags of animal feed and these animal cut-outs (as simple as they look,) took me the whole day! I didn't even get to cook dinner that day...sigh.

Roller Disco

Another current tween/teen pastime that's caught me unaware- Roller Disco. I mean, I know they're quite popular in the US of A but here? I know there's an ice-skating rink in the mall and I know there used to be a roller-skating rink somewhere downtown but that was like 20 years ago. I'm guessing they're revived roller-skating and incorporated the disco theme, supposedly you can roller-dance better to Funky Town and Saturday Night Fever than a Bieber song? Nevertheless, despite my ignorance, I think Roller-Disco would be cool. I can just visualise us 'oldies' revisiting roller skating, bobbing to songs we're more than familiar with, embarassing the hell out of our kids and muttering under our breath "please don't fall, please don't fall" while trying to 'do our thang'? Hmm...I think I'll stick to the rink-side. I've got brittle bones.

It's a 9-year old's birthday with a small party of 20. So, I baked a 9" Lemon Poppyseed Cake (finished weighing 2.1kg) for the girls and covered it in bright pink. Next, I made an LP (for the young ones- LP stands for long-playing microgrove record, no cassettes or CDs in the early 70s) for the top of the cake and attached a pole for the disco ball. No, we cannot NOT have a mirrored disco ball for a disco party! Because it's a small-ish cake, I also did a couple of time-consuming cut-outs for the cake instead of many 3-D figures. A 70s roller-skating chick and silhouettes of boys and girls with afro hair, mini skirts and bell-bottoms doing disco moves. Made the birthday girl figurine as centre of attraction AND lots of edible disco dusts! p/s: After these pictures were taken, I realised that the name was spelled wrongly. Thank goodness it was just replacing one alphabet or I'll have to redo the whole disco pole!

Star Wars

Young Master turns 11 today and he said "for fun", he'd like a Star Wars-themed cake. He's a huge Star Wars fan and the character he loves is Obi Wan Kenobi. So, here's my version of not-so-Old Ben...

and the Sith Lord... Young Master and Little Miss said that these two versions look like kids. I think they do, too... especially Darth Vader. He looks like a kid dressed up for Halloween! Our young Padawan loved it and was especially happy with his choice of cake - Chocolate Fudge layered between Vanilla Butter Cake and Rich Chocolate Cake. This 7" cake finished weighing 1.8kg.

Happy Birthday Obi Wan! May The Force Be With You...

Rainbow

"Red and yellow and pink and green, Purple and orange and blue,

I can sing a rainbow, Sing a rainbow, Sing a rainbow too.

Listen with your eyes, Listen with your ears,

And sing everything you see, I can sing a rainbow,

Sing a rainbow, Sing along with me"

The Rainbow Song was all I was humming in my head while working on this simple but apt design for a 5-year old. This little 7" Rich Chocolate Cake weighed only 1kg.

Hari Raya Aidilfitri 2011

This year's Hari Raya cupcakes - the one and only set this year! Was away for a week prior and during the long Raya holidays so I missed out the festive bake-rush this year. Nonetheless, these were Lemon Poppyseed Cupcakes.

Hip-Hop Breakdancer

This young man is a hip-hop breakdancer... I know hip-hop and I know breakdancing. But hip-hop brakdancing? I can only assume it means breakdancing to hip-hop music. Nevertheless, I Googled for a couple of pictures of hip-hop breakdancing and my jaw dropped. These kids can really do stuffs! I can't imagine the number of emergency room check-ins with the kind of the stunts they do! #mumspeak# Anyway, I had to decide which stunt was possible to work on using sugar with my limited skills and I chose a move that was kind of what they call a Jackhammer. To top it off, the birthday boy actually wanted a trampoline for his birthday but that wasn't possible with them living in a condo. So...he'll have to make do with brakdancing on a cake trampoline ;-)

This 8" round Vanilla Butter Cake weighed 1.5kg. Great size for a small party of 10.

70th Mahjong Treat

This mahjong cake was called for to celebrate a 70th birthday a weekend ago. The last time I did a similar cake was for my mum-in-law's 90th birthday in May and it was a huge hit. I had intended to do a full table this time round but the large party was scaled down at the request of the birthday boy so I had to reduce the size of the cake, too. I couldn't have done a "smaller table" because the mahjong tiles need to be actual-size for better effect. So, we had a 1/4 of a table. I also did away with the green felt and placed the layers of white mahjong "papers" to represent the majority of our home mahjong tables. The 13-tile winning combo is again featured here (I can't think of any better combo than this to wipe out everyone's winnings!) with the usual suspects - dices, chips and the directional token. This 10" Devil's Food Cake weighed 2.4kg.