The Wedding Cake of Hawaliana Selamat and Khairul Ismadi

It was my dear classmate’s wedding on 15 September 2013. Hawaliana Selamat is now a married woman, Alhamdulillah may your marriage leads you together to the end, InsyaAllah.

Flower Sprays and vines

I was anxious to be given the honor to create her wedding cake which the order was made much earlier. After going back and forth, price and design she finally decided on a 2 tier stacked cakes with separate cake flavors on each tiers. Bottom tier was Moist Chocolate Cake, and the top tier was Lemon Pound Cake.

Finished cake with Royal Icing detailing

The sizes of the cakes were 12” bottom and 8” top in round shape. After the cakes were done sandwiched and iced, they are stacked and secured with enough pillars inside to support the heavy cake. Both cakes were filled with lemon buttercream and chocolate buttercream respectively and iced with basic crisp white fondant and embossed with quilted effects all around. Marzipan tool was used to manipulate the fondant to mimic the pleats and folds at the button points.

Quilted effects Fondant

The sugar flowers were made ahead of time just to spare all the last minutes to the cake. the color pallet for the flowers was not decided in specific but the bride said she wants it in pastel colors. The sugar flowers gathered into two sprays one was larger than the other. The larger flower sprays was put on top and the other was put on the side of the cake.

Top tier Flower Spray

Towards the end of constructing and building up the cake, how I not realize the cake weighed so much that I panic thinking of how to transport the cake in one piece. But I’ve managed to transport it just fine, Alhamdulillah. And as it was really late that this cake finished to be transported, only lousy kitchen lighting been utilized for the pictures hence the darkness in all of the pictures. Apologies for that~ :-)

Bottom tier (side) Flower Spray

Scarlet Rouge - The Love of Syaza and Shakir

Lets start this entry by wishing Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to all fellow Muslims in Malaysia and all over the world and Maaf Zahir dan Batin. May Allah bless us with health and wealth through physical and spiritual, ameen.

Yet another complimentary cake for the Butik Kaseh Collection package. The first wedding cake made after a long break from Ramadhan. White and Red were chosen by the future bride and groom and the cake was made especially for them - Syaza and Shakir. Congratulations for both.

The flavor of the cake was moist chocolate cake of a new recipe to replace the older. it is super moist and deep in chocolaty flavor. Enriching its flavor, Strawberry Buttercream sandwiched in between cake layers and crumb coat the whole cake underneath the fondant. Moist Chocolate Cake is by far the most loved cake flavor ever and to accompany that with Strawberry Buttercream, it translates a new dynamic flavor profile of the cake. The choice of Strawberry Buttercream was driven by the red theme of the wedding.

The construction of the cake was a one piece cake without any tier stacked up. the dimension measures 4 inches high and about 8 inches in diameter.

Keeping it simple but yet sophisticated, the cake adorned with Royal Icing detailing. Shells, Scrolls, and Dots embellished the the cake that contrast the crisp white fondant. Polka Dots on the side of the cake while Shells finish the bottom sides neatly.

Piped Little Roses also helped in bringing up the overall cosmetic appeal of the cake as they were also tinted in deep scarlet red hue. Scrolls beautify the top edge of the cake all the way round and layered with a simple swirl of the same royal icing. This gives a little more delicate touch and dynamic to the design.

Ma Petite Chérie - Little Darlings of Spring

It has been a long time since the last time this blog being updated. Apologies for that as I have been really busy with my study, assignments and other jobs. Never the less, I have been gathering materials to keep this blog posted. InsyaAllah.

Soothing Turquoise reminiscent of Spring

Just recently I’ve made a wedding gift cake for the client of Butik Pengantin Kaseh Collection as part of the complimentary extras of the package chosen. I have to admit that I had a hard time trying to finish up the cake as I mentioned before that I was busy with other things. But, it went all right at the end. The cake turned out better than I expected. Alhamdulillah

Wedding of Ejan and Ekin - Johan Setia, Klang

The flavor of the cake was Semi-Sweet Chocolate Cake (since it’s a favorite!) with chocolate buttercream filling. I’ve been told that the color theme of the client’s wedding was turquoise and hence to selection. The décor wasn’t much elaborated – Message on cake and just scatters of little royal icing roses. The base fondant is tinted with turquoise color to match the wedding theme and the little roses were inspired by the Spring Season.

Little Darlings of Spring

The overall color pallet chosen was generally primary colors but in slightly off towards soft and muted shades. Pinks replace Red, Turquoise replaces Blue and Yellow. A light Green tinted royal icing was used to make the flowers' leaves just to enliven the overall Spring appeal.

Soft-tonal Primary Hues

Buttercream: The Dream Cream

Buttercream is a classic, versatile, and widely used complimentary component to make up various pastry dishes like cookie sandwiches, desserts, and cakes. Needless to say that cakes are the most common pastry products that married well with buttercream. Either to frost, ice, sandwich, or décor a cake, buttercream alone gets all the jobs done. How versatile is that? Of course you can flavor it with any flavor your heart desires. Additional flavoring may be from essences, extracts, emulcos, concentrated fruit purees and essential oils which all are potent in concentration. Adding too much liquid to buttercream will compensate the overall texture of the buttercream. Same principle goes to liquid food coloring. Nonetheless, any food enhancers of flavoring or colorant which are dry (powder form) in nature or even viscous liquid (gel or paste) will work immensely without compromising the texture.

Some examples of Flavored Buttercream: (Left to right) Chocolate Fudge Buttercream, Coffee Buttercream, Rose Buttercream, and Vanilla Buttercream

 

To date, buttercream recipes have been tweaked, improvised, and innovated with newly engineered ingredients. This is due to the quest of researching substitutes to the actual butter in the recipe since butter cannot hold it shape in room temperature (talking about Malaysia). The earlier recipes of buttercream incorporate 100% pure butter and as the time goes by, some recipes offset a little amount of butter with other fats like vegetable shortenings and margarine. In contrast to butter which derived from dairy origin, margarine and shortening come from plant origin widely from palm oil (unless stated otherwise in the packaging). The oils from the plants are hydrogenated to change the consistency to the one that we know – solid in room temperature. Another food innovation of the same category is “Krimwell”. It is a special type of margarine that is used widely by Malaysian bakers and cake decorators as it serves exceptional quality in buttercream consistency. Also, Krimwell is the plant derived (palm oil) substitute for butter. However, there’s always a catch in substituting ingredients, in this case it will compromise the taste of the “Butter”. Some people will never trace any difference but for some others, butter emulco or butter flavoring might do the trick to get the “almost” authentic taste of butter.

Vanilla Buttercream, Rose Buttercream and Coffee Buttercream may have a little softer of a consistency since they are flavored with essences. In contrast to the Chocolate Fudge Buttercream that uses Cocoa Powder for flavor and color, it has a rather firmer consistency.

The easiest buttercream recipe on earth is just icing sugar, butter, milk or water, and vanilla essence. I’ve read somewhere online that this recipe is also known as the “American Buttercream” (please don't quote me on this). Other traditional ones can be categorized by the method of preparing, which are the Italian Method, Swiss Method and French Method. One thing they have in common is that they incorporating either egg whites, egg yolks, or even just yolks. Italian Method uses the Meringue technique by whipping egg whites with hot sugar syrup, Swiss Method also uses Meringue technique but with tempered egg whites and fine granulated sugar, and last but nut least the French Method which uses the technique similar to the Italian Method but instead of just egg whites, it calls for only yolks or the whole eggs. Too much of a hassle aren't they? For domestic bakers, I can assure you that the so called "American Buttercream" serves just as effective and more importantly fool-proof.

Slight differences may be noticed in the texture of buttercreams. The grains of icing sugar may not be fully dissolved and cause little tiny grittiness to the texture. I believe that there is the 10X grade of icing sugar (the finest), but sadly in Malaysia, we can't easily find icing sugar with various degree of fineness (it's okay though, it's not the end of the world...lol).

Ornate Cupcakes

Cupcakes aren't just cute little things, but they are sweet too. same with other cakes, cupcakes can be elaborately decorated. From a simple Icing Sugar dusting to Buttercream to even Fondant. For me creativity has no boundaries. And with foods, creativity to decorate cupcakes or cakes in general has always sparks my enthusiasm. To be honest, it's much more fun in decorating than to bake. Here are some pictures taken from a Cupcake order for "Hantaran Perkahwinan"dated September 2012. They were Lemon Poppy Seed Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream frosting.

Design wise, the cupcakes were in the size of 2"-bottomed regular Black Cupcake liners. The frosting was Vanilla Buttercream as also for the Buttercream Roses. The Buttercream Roses were piped on a Flower Nail for an easy handling and then let cool down in the refrigerator. Once the cupcakes are frosted, the Buttercream Roses were transferred on the frosted cupcakes. Gold Sugar Pearls called Dragées in French embellished the Buttercream Roses to enhance the Luxurious Appeal. It was a tedious job actually, but it was all worth it at the end.

Buttercream Roses - Gold Dragées embellished as Dews

Sweet Temptation - Adorably Chic and Ornate

Pale Yellow - Almost cream-colored