The purple butterflies cake project

If you have been following my misadventures on my recent cake decorating course that I took, you would have known how stressed out I have been over my final cake project. There were only 5 lessons that we had to take in this basic cake decorating course, but it was enough to ‘stress’ me and Germsy out. In between all the cake talk, I guess we bonded even more with a glass of wine in hand. Fun times indeed!

In order to ‘graduate’ from this course, we each had to assemble a two-tier cake and decorate it with fondant. We were told to select a design by the end of lesson 2 and this was the cake that I chose – a gorgeous Anna Sui cake adorned with black fluttering butterflies.

[Image taken from http://www.hannahgracecakes.co.uk

Looks mighty challenging huh? And it was! I was told by my teacher to bake 2 X 6-inch cakes and 2 X 8-inch cakes and have them stacked one on top of the other. I honestly thought I had a 8 inch cake pan at home but it turned out I baked 2 X 7-inch cakes instead. I only realised the error when I stacked the 2 different sized cakes together and they look abit odd. But I was simply too tired to whip up another batch of cake batter and begin the process. So I chose to live with the mistake.

A lot of prep work was needed in order to make this cake. Besides covering our 2 cakes with fondant, I had to make the fondant butterflies a couple of days before, make sure they harden and bring them into class for the final decoration.

I made a total of 20 big butterflies and 14 small ones. 10 odd or more butterflies were broken in the process. Total time taken kneading of fondant plus making of the butterflies: close to 3 hours.

After settling the fondant butterflies, the next step was to cover our chocolate cakes with the fondant of your choice. Since mine was a purple-based cake, I had to tint my fondant which took me 1 hour to tint 1kg of white fondant. This was really getting to be quite time-consuming. Thereafter, I had to transport my cakes to Germsy’s place to have my fondant rolled out and covered there. Thankfully, Germsy’s daughter was a whizz at rolling and covering the cakes with fondant. So the sweet gal helped us with all our cakes with us taking a supporting role. Total time taken to cover 6 cakes : approximately 2.5 hours. Of course it’s not all work and no play, the wonderful host poured out some drinks while we worked.

Covering the cake with fondant is truly no easy feat. You have to make sure that fondant is rolled out to the desired thickness before laying it on the cake and slowly covering the gaps without breaking the fragile sugar piece. Well, didn’t have much luck in that department for a part of my fondant cracked really badly while covering the cake. So in order to ‘rescue’ the cake, I cut out a piece of fondant and covered the cracked part. This became a joke in the class for my cake looked like it had a stamp over it. I guess that’s my signature then.

Okay, now to the very last part – assembling the cake.

At our last lesson, we were taught how to stack our cakes and making sure that it had the right support without collapsing.

Next, we were given about 2.5 hours to put the finishing touches and decorate our cake.

The mother-and-daughter team doing a far better job than me in their cake decorating.

This was me, initially, working on my cake.

Towards the end, the rest of the gals chipped in and helped add the sparkles to my black fondant butterflies, simply because I added way too much cornstarch and the white specks couldn’t be removed. Yikes! But I guess it was good fun!

And just like that we’ve ‘graduated’ from cake decorating course 1! Don’t you think the pals’ cakes are also very lovely? I absolutely adore Germsy’s white cake with neon pink bows! Classy and funky all rolled into one!

And here’s a shot of us gals with our teacher.

My Anna Sui Butterflies fondant cake – it ain’t pretty but I guess I’m really proud of the cake that I’ve put together.

Of course, there’s room for improvement and hopefully if I ever do get the chance to make one of these cakes again, I hope to do a much better job at it.

Till then, we will be eating loads of choc cake here at the loft!

This has certainly been one pretty ‘mammoth’ and fun project that I’m glad to have done with friends on my career break. Doing this project has also opened my eyes for I’ll never look at any fondant cake the same way again.

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My very own Tiffany cake!

My fourth lesson of the Cake Decorating Course saw us baking, icing and assembling our very own fondant cake!  A lot of work and care went into kneading the fondant and paying attention with the details while decorating the cake.  Not a glamorous shot of our work with tissue stuffed in the fondant bow but yes, that’s how the bow gets its shape according to my teacher.

Here are the cakes that we made in class.  Don’t you think the pink cake with the brown bow and polka dots look absolutely adorable?

Couldn’t help but feel a huge sense of achievement with how the cake eventually turned out!  Like the Tiffany & Co jewellery box adorned with a bow, the cake feels like it’s almost too pretty to be eaten.  So I’m gonna be admiring it for a little while longer before I cut it up and share them with friends.  Fingers crossed but I really hope they like it.

And here’s a group shot of my cake decorating buds with our cakes – all obviously happy with how our cakes turned out. 

I’m seriously nervous about my final project but hope it turns out looking decent for it’s gonna be served as dessert for next week’s dinner party.  Otherwise, I’m screwed and will have to make another dessert.   Yikes!  So please cross your fingers and toes for me won’t ya? 

What did I get myself into?

So a friend asked if I was going to be interested to do a cake decorating class with her and her daughter.  I thought, ‘Sure, why not?’  It was one of those things that I didn’t mind doing and with free time on hand, I thought it would be a good way to level up those paltry baking skills of mine.

So this was supposed to be a cake decorating course where we not only learned how to bake a basic vanilla and chocolate cake but also how to decorate a cake properly with butter-cream icing and then fondant.  I was really excited for I often oogled at pretty fondant cakes and wondered when I would be able to try my hand at making some of them.  And remember these gorgeous Chanel cupcakes that the ex-colleagues got for me as a farewell gift last year?  My ultimate goal was to make one of these EVENTUALLY.

I thought it was going to be all fun and games at this cake decorating class that we were taking.  After all, how difficult could it be?  I soon ate my words.  We were cruising in lesson 1 but for the rest of the lessons, we basically needed to do our homework before going to class.

By the end of lesson 2, I learned how to cover a cake with butter-cream icing and decorate the cake with a simple piping gel design.

Pretty pleased with the result but of course, icing of the cake could be improved.

We were told that we had to prepare a 2-tier cake covered in fondant as our final project on lesson 5.  Of course, I’m a little nervous but I chose to go with an Anna Sui type of cake – think chocolate cake covered in purple fondant and adorned with black butterflies.

And over the weekend, it was mad baking at the loft.  A total of 5 chocolate cakes were baked and that’s not all, made 2 batches of butter-cream icing.  All these are now sitting in my freezer waiting to be assembled for my final project.

So fingers crossed and wish me a good luck won’t ya for my final project?  Can’t wait to show you guys the pics of the cake IF it turns out well.