Sunday 15 January 2012

Baby Cake for a month old baby celebration

Hi All,

Thanks for visiting my blog, this time I will share with you my first big project. A friend of mine who gave birth to a beautiful baby girl 9 days before Christmas contacted me and inquiring if I could bake some cakes to giveaway for her baby girl's one month old celebration. I was so thrilled, but it was only one week away so I had to move fast.

Just a little bit of background, in Chinese tradition which we happily adapt when a baby reach one month old the parents should celebrate by giving away food or sweets to well wishers who came to visit the baby. Well, it's my version of the tradition anyway please correct me if I'm wrong. On the modern day people turned to cake or cupcakes or even cookies to make it more fancy. And the food usually accompanied with red eggs to symbolize happiness, prosperity and fertility.

So back to my project, the mother contacted me a week in advance and I have to think and move fast because she ordered 25 cakes including packaging and the mandatory red eggs. With the time constrain I conducted Bakerz Mum to source any baby related cake decoration in our trusted cake shops. And she came back with a baby silicone mould which I think was a great a idea. So here's the baby cake with sugar baby on top.

  The baby cake, and yes the baby is made in sugar and hand painted by us.

Work with silicone mould is not too hard it's just time consuming. Basically what you need to do is color your fondant with flesh food coloring, put some tylose in, take a small amount and roll it into ball. The next step is pres it into the mould and make sure you have smooth surface and no crack on the fondant, flattened the bottom and took excess fondant off with very sharp knife. And chuck it into freezer for 30 minutes (that's the time consuming part since I only have one mould) and take it out once the fondant harden. Quickly peel it off the mould and voila you got a sugar baby.

The sugar babies, the top row babies had been colored and the rest is still setting, don't forget to let the babies set for at least 10-12 hours before you color them.

My babies are full colored now, coloring babies is time consuming but it's fun.

The other thing that daunt me is the time constrain that I have, I have to ice the cakes 25 of them in one day to guarantee freshness and because you can not refrigerate fondant....my oh my....At the end I think I can ice a cake and cover it with fondant with my eyes close hehehe.

My production line, and this is not all of them

Once the cakes are covered with fondant, we have to move quickly and methodically. Please follow the flow as bellow.
We moved the cake to the flattened box, and the box is sitting on top of turn table. The reason being is because we're not using cake board but we're using doyley instead so we can not transfer the cake after we finish decorating.

The cake sits nicely on top of the doyley

Placed the lace on top, I prepared the laces days in advance so their pretty set by then.

Bring on the baby

Sugar baby positioned perfectly on top of the sugar lace

And I pipped pink royal icing to give sweet accent to the cake

The almost finish cake

Add some sugar flowers to give it a nice touch

The finish product plus the red eggs for good luck.

I know it's not an extravagant cake, but I think it looks pure and nice just like babies are. The challenge is to bake 25 identical cakes, iced them and decorate them according to the deadline. Well the other challenge is at the same time I have to make a 2 tier birthday cake and organizing a garage sale. Bakerz Mum was by my side every steps of the way and at the end I can say we've done a pretty good job.

Thanks for checking my blog and I will update you soon with the birthday cake I did with these 25 cakes.

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