My current manager has a saying, "sweet young things". Then pointedly says to me that I am neither sweet nor young. How would you interpret it?

Anyway, and with this cake, you're all up-to-date with my cake and baking stories! Finally! It's only taken two years...

And for some reason, and by luck because to be honest, I don't spend that many weekends in Singapore, I had two cake requests in the same weekend. It's not even often in Sydney I had two cakes for the one weekend so it's really luck of the Irish (is it??) that I had two requests for the same weekend.

Good that they're both buttercream based. Bad that they're both for Sunday. But I prepped early and didn't plan anything else (the irony is that the day job keeps calling this weekend) so I'm literally just working the weekend away. Till next time! :-)

I pretty much had a mental battle with myself over this one for weeks. Whether I was even going to take on the challenge cause:

Singapore. Heat. Humid. Melting ganache. No tools. Expensive ingredients. No kitchen space. No oven. Where do I even get the speciality ingredients? What brand fondant do they sell here? 

In the end, I scrapped together this 2 tier cake for my colleague's son's 2nd birthday. It was stressful... like mega.

First off, two tall tier cakes takes a long time to bake. And well, my fridge isn't all the big either so I just didn't have any room anywhere. Then I had to let the AC run pretty much all the days that I was putting the cake together. That's just a waste of money and electricity (as humid and hot as it gets here, I absolutely loathe AC...)

Then I had like the tiniest rolling pin (think something you'd use to make dumpling skins, not huge ass pieces of fondant to cover 8 inch cakes!) that I had to make do with to cover the cake. Oh and I had no lazy susan so I pretty much had to turn the cake manually whilst at the same time not dent the cake in anyway. I had no wooden or plastic dowels to hold up the second tier but I learnt this amazing trick of using thick drinking straws instead. Luckily those are easy to obtain.

I also had to express order cloud shaped cutters and ebay isn't really a thing here so they don't have the cheap options online. I still got them online but it was like same as store prices except that stores don't have stuff like this readily available. So stressful.

In the end, managed something that I think looks ok. Will I do another fondant cake here? Umm...

I've had another extremely busy weekend (and week building up to it)! With a wedding in the Blue Mountains followed directly by a Kitchen Tea back in the Sydney CBD, it was always going to be a logistical challenge.

I did have an amazing (and rather cold) time away outside of Sydney on Friday evening and Saturday before hastily fitting in a morning bushwalk on Sunday morning before the drive back to Sydney. I was exhausted. The wedding was beautiful and very much what the bride wanted.

So was the Kitchen Tea - the cake, which I had completed by Friday morning, turned out well too! We were supposed to have a cake topper as well but my dear friend forgot it. No matter, flowers to the rescue and as she had already prepped everything, it was really easy! The cake was delicious just in case you were wondering! Very happy with how it all turned out.

It was a great afternoon (despite the dreary wet weather storming outside) at Doltone House opposite Hyde Park. Lots of laughs, competitiveness and general fun. Really enjoyed myself and was quite impressed by the service.

I'm at a point in my life ("career"; the day one) where I'm not quite sure if I'm staying or if I'm going so this lucky girl (and boy) were extremely fortunate to be able to catch me in town to do their wedding cake. It was a case of 'maybe' for a long time!

4 mega tiers of Vanilla Coconut, Chocolate Peppermint and Mocha Caramel cake sandwiched with lashings of buttercream (a request from the bride.. she really really LOVES buttercream). The waiter who took the cake off to the kitchen where they promptly butchered it (I was livid) carried the cake as though it weighed nothing... hats off to him because I'm pretty sure the whole thing was a good 20 odd kg?!?!

And the flowers, oh they were so pretty: blushing brides with yellow chrysanthemums, billy buttons, baby breaths, lavender and roses. It made having to get up at 5 AM with minimal sleep so worth it!

There have been a few things I've come to a realization with in the past few months. It's probably been simmering on the back burner for a long time but it's kind of come to fruition with my time away from home and not having baked it so long. And the main one that stands out is: I would not want to do this full time and for a living. As much as I love baking and doing it in small doses, I don't think I'd enjoy it if it was anything more.

So this cake was a lot of fun and it made me realize that I still had it in me to pull something out of the proverbial hat. And I still loved (almost) every minute of it. But I was so stressed that the cake would fall over or something would go wrong and I just don't ever want to be responsible for something bad happening to the cake!

In short: time permitting (and that's not a lot of time), I would love to do more but here and now, I have other things I also want to do with my time...

I'll bet not many of you were expecting a post whilst I am away!

Well you thought wrong! Super duper teamwork and time management has created yet another collaboration with Chau Ly. This is our two tiered beach themed wedding cake for a colleague.

It just reeks sophistication and I cannot believe this lady can do such an amazing job from well just a dirty iced cake. The thought, time and effort into this is not small and it isn't always appreciated by all. I appreciate it and I am sure the bride and groom will too.

I just love working with this talented lady and can't wait to do more cakes with her next year! 

I'm full of self-doubt sometimes and always compare myself to the best. What if I am not good enough? What if it's not clean cut? What if it collapses? I don't thrive on people singing me praises. I'm just someone who always strives to the best of my abilities.

I"m always so excited to get queries and orders as it kind of lets my (limited) imagination run along with the ideas that my customers bring to me.

I've known this couple of a few years now - first meeting when I was at my last job and well, we kind of just understood each other and the difficulties of work we went through. I was so happy to hear Mr Irish finally became an Australian citizen last year and 12 months on... they were getting married!

The beautiful flowers are provided by the Bride's florist - very Australian. Native, simple and summery colours. So the cake flavours were summery to match (at least one of them was). Passionfruit & Vanilla and Black forest Kirsch. 

I'm so happy to have been a part of it... even if the weather was hot in the mid-30s!

I think of it as the Mexican version of Halloween or All Hallow's Eve. Or some people think of the cartoon or some similar children's show. No matter, it is the day that Mexican's celebrate those who have passed away.

Amazingly, it is not at all "scary" but more about colours, flowers and things to celebrate their loved ones.

A very important customer of mine recently asked for a cake for his daughter's 18th birthday in the theme of the day of the dead. It was an interesting challenge and I couldn't be happier with the way the cake (with one whole tier being VEGAN) turned out!

I've never done a black tier before so I was really happy that it wasn't anything majorly different to a white or ivory tier (well duh, it is just coloured fondant right?). And the skull.. it's pretty much freestyle. 

Vanilla on the bottom and Red Velvet on the top and encased in White Chocolate Buttercream. Delish.

So my colleague at work today said that if you bake a  Red Velvet Cake for a guy, then he is "yours". Hmm... how to interpret that?

Made a ton of white chocolate sour cream ganache and had this mixed in with buttercream and whip-pity whip and like magic, it turns into this soft and fluffy and spreadable yummy concoction!

Always get a little anxious building cakes! And always never forget to use dowels. 

Close up of the natives and baby breaths... part of the wedding theme and farm wedding down in Berry, South Sydney. 

And the finished product. Simplistic. If I were to do more, I'd have another 1 or 2 boronia bunches and a few more baby breaths to make it "pop" (like how they say it on Cake Boss) a little more.

A beautiful day for a beautiful wedding overlooking Sydney Harbour.

Double tiers of both White Chocolate Passionfruit & Hazelnut Dark Chocolate complete this cake. These are gourmet flavours and on our favourites list! Sharp edges to highlight the cake (alas, if only we could make them all perfect like those you see in wedding magazines), large flower on top and ribbon to accentuate. The stenciling definitely brings a more traditional and elegant theme. White & gold ribbon is in stark contract to the black ribbon we had on our 3-tier cake in November. Elegance versus Chic one could say.

Another busy week coming up. Christmas baking and Birthday cakes are calling. Time to finish with a big bang!

From this..

To this...

To this...!!!

We're stoked it turned out so well. A lot of time and effort went into this beautiful cake. And it was such a lovely day, perhaps a good sign for the new wedded couple. Enjoyed making this so much, love all the techniques. Think of us when planning your next wedding!!

This one is layers of peanut butter cake, vanilla cake and coconut white chocolate cake and covered in ivory and white fondant. So now.