Wednesday, August 11, 2010

The Wonderful World of Nemo....

I knew I wanted to make a Nemo cake for my daughter's third birthday since a year ago. After some research, I was inspired by the Nemo cake by Spring Lake Cake. However, I decided to bravely go ahead and make my own figurines instead of using plastic toys. I hand-crafted all the decorations and figurines using gumpaste and fondant. Some details are piped with royal icing, including the 'Happy Birthday' message and the little bubbles.

Voila! Ze Cake. The bottom tier is dark chocolate cake with chocolate ganache, my daughter's favourite. Top tier is strawberry cake with lemon buttercream.

Left side of cake. Oh and there's Dory! :)

Back of cake. Here is Pearl, the cute little octopus, amidst some anemone and sea grass...

Right side of cake. More coral and anemone.

Dory looks like she found something in the sand, which is just brown sugar.

Another close-up of the back of the cake.

Here's Peach, the starfish.

Nemo and his dad, Marlin. They were a little hard to make, but I had fun creating them.

Welcome to Metro City.

My sister LOVES Astroboy! She requested for an Astroboy cake for her birthday. I wasn't very confident with my figure-making skills yet at that time, so I created a cake for her with a 2D image.

I chose an octagonal shape for the cake just for extra quirkiness. It's chocolate butter cake with coffee buttercream inside, covered with yummy chocolate fondant.

I piped the Astroboy image out of royal icing on top of a gumpaste circle.

The buildings are created out of gumpaste, and details all piped with royal icing.

Texas Hold 'Em

My dear Uncle Alan turned 70 this year. To celebrate, we had a big bash for him at his favourite restaurant. And of course, a big bash calls for a spectacular cake. My cousin gave me the idea for the cake, and I took it and ran with it. The concept here comes from the Chinese term for 70-year old - "chat cheong" (seven cards literally), and no change. LOL!

It is chocolate and vanilla butter cake with coffee buttercream on the bottom tier, and chocolate and vanilla cake with orange zest buttercream on the top tier.

The decorations including the deck of cards are all hand-crafted from gumpaste. I handpainted all the cards with food colouring gel paste.

My uncle and aunt posing with the cake. Happy Birthday uncle!!