Fondant Race Cars Cake

Gabriel, Gabriel you are 6th! 

This year my son asked for race cars cake, I took up the challenge to make him a two-tiers fondant race cars cake. Thanks to a friend of mine who is very experience in making fondant cake, as I have the chance to work with her on the fondant element for the church women's retreat I get to learn more on how to use the mould to create very pretty stuff! I have more confidant in using the fondant tools and decided to invest a bit on it. I am so thankful for my friend tip on how to stack up the two tiers cake, I stacked up four cakes into two tiers! initially it is a mission impossible for me, I nearly gave up...but luckily I made it!

This is yet a perfect fondant cake, as you can see I am not able to smooth the side of the fondant cake. I'm not sure is it because the roll fondant I made was too thick? I'm satisfy with the little gum paste cars I made and the number six which cut out using the number cookies cutter looks perfect. But the day before the birthday celebration, the cake shown sign of collapse, need to figure out how to resolve this issue in future fondant making!!

Gabriel and his friends were so happy with the fondant race cars cake, not just that Gabriel was so happy on the birthday celebration day, you see he was surrounded by his best friends and he laughed a lots! 

Love you, my son! you are the star in my life, you bring so much joy and comfort to me in your own way. I love your easy forgiven heart that always forgive me when I am so strict to you. You always comfort me with your kind and loving words that cheer up my days, may God blessing always be with you, watch and protect every steps you make in your life. Happy Birthday Gabriel!

Fondant Butter Cupcakes : Happy Birthday WT

It has been sometimes since I last play with fondant. I was thinking whether to make a cake for WT since he is not in Melbourne, but my son said he wants to give his Dad a cake. We went to Coles and he picked up the animals icing and insisted that this should be in the cake decoration ... what I can say is, ok! Here we are, a fondant butter cupcakes!

This round, I only spend a morning molding the fondant as it is really easy to handle compared to my experience with it in Singapore. The weather here help a lot! No sticky and sweating fondant! The fondant harden so fast, I should do more fondant while I still have time in Melbourne, Lol! 


Love the end result, as you know I'm not good in cake decoration and my expectation on it is very low, this result already make me very happy. I didn't spend a bomb on buying tools for fondant making, never for this round too. I only have a pack of white rolled fondant, mixed the the pink and green myself. I used my existing cookies cutter, and bare hands to roll the flowers and leaves. And lazy me not even preparing any butter cream but used the strawberries jam to apply on the cake and da...da, the fondant sit firmly on top! 

Snapped so many photos this round, just to keep a good memories and to wish WT who is in Doha, a very happy birthday, my dear! 

Gabriel, Gabriel you are 4!

This post is a bit overdue due to Gabriel was down with tummy flu and then the virus spread to WT and then me... I am glad that this year we celebrate Gabriel's birthday a week earlier (on 17 Mar 2012), he was sick since 21 Mar until now. We are in the process of recovering!

Gabriel insisted to celebrate his birthday with his teachers on 23 Mar, so I baked the 3D fondant cake for him to bring to school. The cake was baked on Wednesday and decorated it on the same day, keep the cake in the box and store at a corner of the room, swtich on air-con and switch it off when thinking of the electricity bill which needs to pay :) It was ok on Thursday, but Friday morning when I checked on the cake, I saw the cake sponge a bit distorted on the side!!! The fondant on top of the cake is way too heavy for the cake sponge to shoulder... luckily, it is time to bring the cake to school!

There is lot of things in life we value, but what is better than seeing the smile on my son face. When his teacher show off his birthday cake to his classmates, I can see his eyes glued on the cake, waiting ...

he loves this moment. Cutting cake by himself!

Serving food to papa, mama and all his classmates before sit down and eat his cake. Good boy, well done!

Nursery and Playgroup classmates 2012.

17 Mar birthday party cake, which I bought from Cupcakedivinity with $200.

Grandpa and grandma flew in from Penang to celebrate Gabriel's birthday party. He was really happy to see them, kept asking Grandpa "are you staying?" ...mama also hope they can stay!

Lunch buffet ordered from Smiling Orchid, the adult food is good but...the kid menu one is not!! As Gabriel invited his classmates to party, so I ordered additional food from Smiling Orchid kids menu items... the mini hawaian pizza looks soggy and the mini tuna croissants are as hard as stone!!

Fondant Birthday Cake

Finally I make it! A 10" Dinosaur Fondant Cake!

Tomorrow is Gabriel 4th birthday and he will be celebrating it at school with his classmates and teachers. He has asked for a dinosaur cake long ago and I have practised to bake/make it many times, sometime it cross my mind to change plan to buttercream cake thinking of I don't have the skills to make the fondant cake.

There are many time I told myself not to stress out as the last resort is just buy a cake and bring it to school :) I baked the cake in the early morning of Wednesday and decorated it with fondant on the same day, it took me a good 8 hours! Until now my arms still feel the muscle pain from too much kneading, sitting there with the head down all the time is no joking, getting a stiff neck and a good laugh from WT mentioned I lack of excercise :)

I appreciate this learning journey, the self challenge bring up another role of me as a mother to this little boy... I need to bake his birthday cake :) Lot of you inspired me, you bake the beautiful cake for your kids even with so much daily errands. Initially I didn't have the confident on cake deco, but after a few rounds of trying, I've indeed fall in love with this activity :) Thank you my friends for helping me to success!

Homemade the "Happy Birthday" banner for the cake.

Farewell to my hand held mixer of 12 years. She stopped half way while mixing the cake batter and I had sense she have some problems few months back, I told her "come on, finish your last mission!" She completed the mixing duty. She has done a good job and her last mission is Gabriel's birthday cake!

To prevent trimming of the cake domb or to get a flat cake top, cover the cake with a piece of wrapping film/ clean cloth while it is just out from oven, gently press down the cake while the cake is still hot. A technique mentioned on "I am baker" blog, it really work!

Dinosaur Fondant : Success!

This dinosaur fondant is my third attempts. My first fondant (which I made in early Feb)melted after sitting in the room temperature for 5 hours, I thought it could be because of the condensation from the cold buttercream underneath the fondant cake. I placed my second attempts inside the freezer then fridge before moved the dinosaur figurines to the room temperature as suggested by a web forum discussion, it was a wrong decision! The dinosaur became sticky and very messy!  

Playing with Fondant

These dinosaurs were made after the Dinosaur fondant cake , it is part of my experiment with fondant, to test how long the fondant dinosaurs can last on room temperature (So that I know whether is feasible for me to make a fondant cake for my son or not, is my last thought to have a bleeding cake for his birthday). As you see in the first picture, the fondant figurines bleed ... it was just out from the fridge.

Dinosaur Fondant Cake

Baked on early Feb 2012.

Thanks to Internet video tutorials and lots of good information on how to decorate the fondant cake, finally my first 3" high fondant cake is born. Initially I thought I'll never have a chance to try on fondant cake since I don't have the luxury to attend baking classes, I was wrong. 

This is supposed to be a trial run for Gabriel's birthday cake which is end of next month, but to bake a 2 kg cake and cover it with fondant decoration really need times, I still not sure whether I'll make it again with a better decoration. See how it goes!

When Gabriel saw this cake, he was so happy that mummy baked a dinosaur cake for him, he kept asking "will you bake the dino cake for me on my birthday"...Hmm...yes!

Just a note:

1. To prevent fondant from sticking to the work surface while rolling, apply some powder sugar on the work surface and fondant. 

2. Never flip the side of the fondant, as the bottom surface will not be as smooth as the top.

3. To keep cake moist and fondant able to stick to the cake nicely, apply a good layer of buttercream.

4. Crumb coat is good to not just cover the cake crumb but the imperfection of the cake too.

5. The cake with fondant is very heavy, need to make sure it sit on a cake board that is able to withstand the weight.

6. Hot whether really no good for fondant, to prevent melting of fondant keep it in air conditional room as we are in tropical country!!

The brown fondant is a mixture of dark chocolate with white fondant, it tastes so yummy with the chocolate flavour. The rock is a mixture of the brown fondant with more dark chocolate added, it created two different tones of brown.  

The single dino figurine really looks lonely, but what to do, Gabriel already woke up from his nap and I've to leave all this behind...

I'm submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #16: Fun with Fondant! (February 2012) hosted by Yvonne of iceamericanos