Cake Pops... At last!

I read Bakerella's blog religiously and dream of making (and eating) those wonderful little things called Cake Pops. My excuse was that I didn't have most ingredients. I finally decided to try it anyway... and I'm so pleased that I did. They aren't perfect but they taste awesome!!!

This little doggie's ears are just a couple of Kellog's choco flakes. For the nose I bought Cadbury's Gems... those colourful ones and peeled off the candy coating... like I loved to do as a kid. The eyes and mouth are drawn on with edible ink sketches that a friend brought from the US. But for some reason they weren't writing well on chocolate. And yeah, I used microwave melted Milky bars for the white coating and not candy melt or even cooking chocolate.

I had asked my sister to buy me a few mini cupcake liners from the US. What I didn't realize then was that I didn't have a mini cupcake baking tray. I was looking for an alternative use for them and found inspiration on the internet. How I wish I had discovered these before my SIL's baby shower!

These came out ok for an experiment I guess. Next time round definitely got to give attention to detail, cleaner lines and finish.

Birthday favour boxes

A friend's baby girl celebrated her first birthday last Saturday. I was asked to make pillow favour boxes and coordinate the colours with the party theme - white and blue. I also made the favours that went into the box: Chocolate Cake! 

I realized only much later, during a conversation with my friend, that neither he nor his wife had ever tasted anything I've baked and just went with their instincts that I'd do fine. I'm happy that they trusted me, but it's a pretty scary thought as well.  I'm so glad it all worked out!

Note to self: Samples, samples, samples... make sure your customers know what to expect.

Boys, cars and trucks

I made this shadow box for a friend's baby boy last December. Another friend from college wanted the same concept on two picture frames in two different colours for her new born baby boy. I love the hand painted feel on the shadow box, but decided to try something new and used paper cut out shapes instead.

The name is a coincidence :)

Valaikaapu

I’ve had to put much thought into phrasing this post and realized that it’s actually pretty simple. We wanted to celebrate the awaited birth of my sister-in-law’s baby. Oh wait! Didn’t we already do that? Not the traditional way! So my mom-in-law hosted a Valaikaapu ceremony.

I’m not sure about the exact ceremony and there’s been a lot of debate about what it could mean to a Christian… but I know for a fact that we didn’t really care. It was an opportunity to recognize and celebrate the new life and thank God for this blessing. And what greater joy than being surrounded by people who’ve seen you in diapers huh?

I think my mom-in-law sort of made up customs… none of us were sure for certain… but the ceremony was beautiful, simple and meaningful.  And I’m sure my SIL loved it!

And who can say no to colourful bangles?!!!

My contribution wasn’t much this time around… but I did manage to squeeze in a few of my origami square paper boxes. They were big enough to hold a couple of bangles, a banana, some beetle leaf and nuts, a piece of turmeric and a rose.

  

So colourful! So pretty! Me likey a lot!!!

Baby Shower

Finally!

After dreaming of planning a small party for a really long time, I got a fabulous opportunity to organize my sister-in-law’s Baby Shower. Boy was I happy! I’ve browsed through so many ideas over the years and was just dying to have an opportunity to use them in a small intimate setting so that I can keep costs low and see how all those ideas stocked up in my head would translate in real time.

When the opportunity did come, stream lining the ideas down to a realistic number was the most difficult part. The rest came easy! I did have a ton of help from my husband and two of my SIL’s best friends. So it was all relatively stress free too. 

We decided on a late evening terrace party. I decided to go with paper pom poms and paper lanterns for décor. There is something so wonderfully summery and light about those pom poms that I simply adore.

Paper pom poms were super easy and fun to make. But those paper lanterns were a pain to even find in stores. When I finally did find them they had huge pictures of Santa Claus printed on them, but after some careful peeling off of the printed areas of the paper and sticking white tissue paper they were passable… when lit up.

 The party started late evening, so for lighting we used our Christmas fairy light set. Actually three sets of fairy lights. That and two lanterns had the terrace pretty well lit.

I love the idea of a wishing tree and just had to have one. I had a branch of driftwood lying around the house that my parents had picked up on a beach of the Andaman and Nicobar islands. It was perfect for the occasion with a shell holding the paper tags.

The ‘Celebrate!’ banner is a free download from The TomKat Studio. Initially I planned to design one but ran out of time.

For favours I made little pram boxes for Choco-Pies. My friend brought me a couple of boxes of brads from Michaels when she was visiting from the USA and I’d been waiting to use them ever since. So I used them for the roof of the carriage to help fan out the paper.  

That was super fun planning… can’t wait for when I get to do something like this again. 

Oh! And before I forget... there was cake! It doesn't look like much all butchered up in this picture... but it was a chocolatey world of D-E-L-I-S-H!!! *drool*

Humf!

As much as that sounds like utter exasperation, its not. Humf is this little purple guy and the blue one's his mum and the pink thing's his friend. They live in a show on Nick Jr. as I have now learned.

I was asked to make a birthday banner with the Humf colour theme. This is what I made. Next time round the ribbon will definitely be green. And as always... my banner photography is just plain bad.

Happy Birthday Mommy!

Mum asked me to bake a cake. Honestly! I might have not too subtly suggested that I want to bake one for her… but she asked me anyway. And I was super happy to try! I had so many ideas running through my mind and I showed my husband a few million sketches of the cake and I’m sure he had his doubts about having married me. Anyways, in the end I shot down all my far-fetched ‘Ultimate Cake Off’ ideas and settled for a super simple cake that looked more wedding-y than I liked. But it tasted awesome and was all gone in 2 days!

This is the cake in action…

And here’s a section of the cake…

And here’s why I think its super wedding-y…. white with red roses and silver dragees? Really?

The cake is the Best Chocolate Cake Ever from I am Baker. (Just realized that it's just the 'Best Chocolate Cake' and 'Ever' has been my own subconscious appendage.) The frosting is butter cream and the stripe technique I’ve used is also from I am Baker, though hers is SO much better.

The red ribbon and red roses are made from Marshmallow Fondant and taste yuck! I used way too much powder food colouring. My sister says it’s actually not colour but weird powder flavouring that I’ve used. We threw out all the roses but a bit of the ribbon did get eaten. It had a sort of sourness that did taste strangely nice against the sweetness of the frosting. But only strangely so!

To make the roses I followed a fondant ribbon rose tutorial on Youtube. There are so many of them and they're all pretty much the same. 

A huge blunder I made was that I decided to grind my own granulated sugar and make it icing sugar. It didn’t have the smoothness that comes with store bought icing sugar and so the roses began to crack and I had to quickly refrigerate them to get them firm. Can you see them breaking away in the picture below? Well… live and learn!

And finally that gratifying picture of the cake safely tucked away in the refrigerator after hours of slaving over it.