The Dogs Did It....

We are so fortunate to know this wonderful young lady, C.T., in our company. She is brilliant and absolutely beautiful inside and outside. She was the first person to place an order as we start our venture. She encourages us and we value her input toward the business.
She just celebrated a birthday and her husband wanted to get a cake for her birthday party. The husband wanted to have their beloved dogs, Murray and Nugget to be on the cake.
It was not easy to design a cake with dogs on it and making sure that it's CT's birthday, and not the two doggies. For the longest time, I can't get my head on the designs of how the cake should look like. One of the afternoon, it just hit me... I can blame it on the dogs!
So, I came up with the design of a very lovely, pretty cake, with ribbons and flowers, then I'll put some paw prints and some 'dirts' all over the cake, as of they were stepping all over the cake! Brilliant!

Here's the picture of the 'boys' on the cake. The boys are made from gumpaste and the dirt are from the cocoa petal dusts. As for the details, I put dirty tennis ball and a dog bowl, filled with dog biscuits, also made of gumpaste.

Motherhood

This cake was a special request for Valentine's Day from a gentleman who liked to create a cake for his wife who is a new Mother! He wanted something sweet for his wife and his newborn baby. We came up with a Mommy bear holding her little bear cub, made out of sugarpaste/gumpaste. Designing this cake came so naturally for me, since I had my baby, two years ago. Motherhood was the most rewarding thing I have ever experienced in my life. I would not lie that it is a lot of work, with an occasional frustration in between, but I have to say, I have never experienced love like this before.

Here are the pictures of "Chee-Chee" (the Mom) and "Cob-Cob" (the baby bear)

The Day the Penguins Waited for the Train

We had a request to make a custom birthday cake for two gentlemen, one loves trains and watches, the other one loves the outdoors, but both have the love for the penguins. Nothing excites me more than making those sugar penguins, after all, that's how we started! The challenge was that this is a "male" cake, so nothing flowery and pastel colors on the cake. The thing that came to mind was silhouttes. I ended creating designs based on silhouttes with monochromatic colors. I chose the shades of brown while I kept all the gumpaste penguins and the train crossing light in colors and let them be the center of the attention.
Bonnae helped me painstakingly cut and attached the train tracks out of chocolate fondant on the cake and cutting all details on the trees, bushes, and the billowing smokes.
Great job, Bonnae!!!
Here are the penguins: one looking at his watch for time, and the other one looking over the horizon wondering if the train ever arrives....

Happy Birthday, Little One (Pocoyo cake)

I was reminded once again of how time flies. My baby, who's not so little anymore, just turned two last week. I had "Teddy Bears picnic" in mind for his birthday cake, but after watching him enjoying Pocoyo on daily basis, I decided to make him a Pocoyo-themed cake. Pocoyo is a animated series about this young lad's life adventure with his buddies: Ely, the pink elephant; Pato, the duck; Loula, the dog; and sleepy bird.

It's the first time for me to make fondant/gumpaste figurines based on actual characters. It took me lots of try to get Pocoyo right, even then I am not 100% happy with how he's turned out, he's more like a lego character than Pocoyo. The second character was Ely, the elephant. She's not THAT hard to make, but she is larger than the rests, and of course, I have to pick an awkward pose for her.... yes, that's me, always up for a challenge. The gumpaste figurine was heavy on top, so I have to use a lot of supports (read: cocktail sticks and spaghetti sticks).
Though I wasn't completely happy with those two gumpaste figurines, my dearest son recognized the two characters in an instant, it gives you such a gratifying experience.

I hand cut the "trees" made of chocolate fondant, I pre-cut the tiny flowers (for the flower bushes--and boy aren't they so tiny!) and just place the rests of the guys on top of the cake. I also made small colorful balloons made of gumpaste.

Here's the scene that I have to make the adaptation from:

And here's the finished cake!

Happy Birthday, my dearest Son...