Dinosaur Party for Alana

My Baby was turning 3 and to repeat the success of Red Ridding Hood party I planned the party ahead against my wife's dismay. She always opted to have private celebration. But in bakerzdad's world na ah....my little girl is getting the greatest party ever (in my own term of course).

After a little convincing and the fact that little Alana was starting to sing 'Happy Birthday' by her own at the end my beautiful wife obliged to have a party for Alana.

For the theme we decided to go with Dinosaur as Alana in the stage where she's 'Roarrrring' all the time and she loved the dinosaur play set we got her for Christmas. At first we were thinking something more girly but it's just not her.

For the cake I made 3 dinosaurs to symbolized Alana turning 3 and everything looks nice in a set of 3. 1 dinosaur is sitting on the birthday cake and 2 accompanied sitting on small dummy cakes.

I designed the invites and backdrop to reflect dinosaur theme and I chose to go with yellow and green with a hint of pink to retaliate with girly dinosaur theme.

For the dessert table I made macaroons, pudding, cakepops and chocolate bars accompanied with apple juices and sugar cookies.

I found a pack of foam dinosaur cut-out in KMart and decided to use it on the cookies a quick and lazy fix for the cookies.

Noodle boxes serving as take away containers for dessert table. it looks beautiful, but since I serve lunch for my guests it took some encouraging for them to take same lollies home.

I had my mum made dinosaur rag dolls for the little guests to take home, this is definitely labor of love as she's coming to Melbourne from Indonesia for a holiday and she's been on this project for 2 months. Love how everyone appreciate her effort and these dinosaurs were adopted by the little guests and the they get to name them.

Proud Opa and Oma who made the dinosaur rag dolls and bring it all the way from Indonesia.

When I said I want to have the greatest party for Alana I mean it as I prepared some entertainment for the little guests. I made dinosaur eggs with mixture of coffee, sands, flour and baking soda. I placed plastic dinosaurs inside the egg for the little ones to hatch. I got the eggs scattered around the playgorund and have them on scavenge mission to find the eggs.

And inside the eggs are small plastic toys for them to keep.

The finale of the party is PINATA, never done this one before but it seems like a great idea. I found many people on the internet suggested to do trap door pinata which is easier and not introducing too much violent to the little ones. But I couldn't find one in dinosaur shape, so I have to go with traditional bashing the pinata until it's cut open.

After a few turn of the little ones bashing the pinata without success I took matter in my own hand and bashed the pinata to dead. I literally wreck the broom stick I used to bash the pinata, that to show how resilient the pinata was.

Thanks for visiting my blog, I will update you with my next project.

Cowboy Cakepops

My friends are throwing joint birthday party with cowboy/cowgirl theme and asked me to do cakepops for them. I'm not really and expert cakepops maker and they asked me to do cowboys, cowgirls and horses cakepops which I had to decline because I'm not confident enough with my skill doing shaped cakepops.

At the end they still wanted me to do cakepops with design that I'm more comfortable with. because the theme is cowboy/cowgirls I decided to do cowboy/cowgils hats and stars with the initial of the birthday boy and girl.

My cakepops was part of a fabulous dessert table, unfortunately it was a really hot hot hot summer day and I was too busy chasing my girl around the park so I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the whole dessert table.

Here's a photo I snitched off my friend's facebook, I hope she wouldn't mind. It was a great dessert table and despite the scorching hot weather we had a fun day in the park.

Thanks for checking my blog, I will update you with more projects soon....very soon...

B+L Wedding Cakepops

It was back in January that I received a Facebook message from recently engaged Miss L to make cakepops for her wedding. Miss L is my former colleague back in 2009 and never I imagined that I will take part of her most important day of her life.

Fast forward 11 months, and yes she's so organized she got everything for her wedding in line and she even sent me design guide for her cakepops. The design is quite simple yet elegant, and she wanted me to incorporated their initial on the cakepops. The color of choice is watermelon, I took it somewhere between pink and orange, to have specified color I had to color the 100's and 1000' and the cachous with powder colors.

The venue was at beautiful Yarra Ranges Estate and I had so much fun driving all the way there to deliver the cakepops. In all  I made 131 cakepops, 126 mixed of dark chocolate mudcake coated with dark chocolate and white chocolate mudcake coated with white chocolate plus 5 gluten free dark chocolate mudcake coated in both dark chocolate and white chocolate.

I arrived way earlier than the ceremony time and basically had the venue for my own, I spent around one hour placing the cakepops on planter pots supplied by the bride. Since I have venue for my own I took some pictures of the cakepops on bridal table.

The backdrop is just breath taking making me wanted to re-do my wedding, but me and my wife always want to re-do our wedding all the time. Not like we don't like our wedding is just so many beautiful venues out there with countless different takes of what a wedding should be, and we're just too greedy hahahahaha.

Sea of cakepops, the bride wanted me to placed dried moss on the pots to make the cakepops look like flowers and I'm so proud of my cakepops the fruit of our hard works.

The reception area showcase wedding photos of both bride and groom parents and grandparents from both side a really smart idea and hold very sentimental value. So I took the liberty to take photograph of the cakepops on the reception table.

Gluten Free Cakepops come with special design and card that indicate that cakepops in this pot is all gluten free.

Another take of the cakepops

Peppa Pig Party

One BakerzMum and me was contacted by our dear friend to do a dessert table for her daughter's birthday party. We were ecstatic as we had so much fun with Alana's (our DD) dessert table.

The theme was Peppa Pig, very interesting theme as we can use a lot of vibrant colors. The main theme color is pink with supplementary colors of blue, yellow and green.

I did the cake with green base to mimic grass as on my cake Peppa and her brother George is having a birthday picnic. A miniature pink cake also involved in this cake as it's Peppa's birthday and they raised their hands up in the air to indicate that their having a great time. I add duck pond on the cake board plus little duckings.

The background is blue with big yellow paper pom pom as the sun and some smaller pompom in white as the cloud. looking into the pictures, the pom poms can be hang a little bit lower. However I had limited time to set up the table and boy the party guests are quite punctual with their time unlike my usual party guests hahahaha.

I did some pink pompoms for the table too and an extra yellow pom pom. The array of color is quite vibrant and I'm quite happy with how everything turned out.

My pride and joy are the cookies, these cookies are for give away at the end of the party and it comes with thank you message on the wrapper. Simple design yet looks so good.

The cake is chocolate cake filled and covered with dark chocolate ganache, and then covered with fondant with fondant decoration. So happy how the edge turned out so sharp, a technique I keep on perfecting.

BakerzMum did the macaroons, not the best looking macaroon but they tasted yummm.

Green and pink cakepops to go with the theme colors, we did upsidedown cake pops to create height on the table.

candy buffet with aray of vibrant colors, the jelly beans smells heavenly....love the color of the gummy bananas too.

I had super duper fun preparing for this dessert party table and really happy how it turned out. Hoping that I get more project like this in the future. Thanks for looking, I will update you with my next project.

Little Red Riding Hood Party

Hi everyone,

I'm not going to post a cake this time, I mean not just a cake but a whole dessert table. We've come full circle with this project, as you may know that I started baking and cake decorating when I experimenting with fondant for my daughter's first birthday. I was making cookies-on-a stick back then, fast forward one year I did a whole dessert table for my daughter's second birthday. Here's a picture as a reminder when it all started.

Cookie-on-a stick I did for my daughter's first birthday

And now I present you, BakerzDad's first dessert table, it took months to plan, a week to execute and forever stays in my heart.

The theme was little red riding hood inspired by some beautiful creation by talented party stylist out there and the fact that red and pink is always my daughter's color. Initially I wanted to do Alice's tea party but at the end I decided to do little red because it's more suited for my daughter. So I went to the internet for some inspiration and I found the cutest rendition of little red by some Japanese lunch box company, so basically the picture that inspired me is taken from lunch boxes hehehehe. 

The invite

All of my cake decorating journey I've seen tons of beautiful dessert table and I promise myself one day that I will make my own dessert table. The opportunity came when we decided to throw  birthday party for my daughter and I was already planning months in advance especially what I did was trying to build cake stands collection.

I started with the printable, trained as desktop publisher sure came handy when I need to get some graphics done. I'm not the most creative person so what I did was basically using what I have from the invite design and make some printable out of it. This is the part that you need to plan ahead when you want to make sure no last minute rush. I got the printable printed and trimmed weeks before the party so I don't have to worry about it because it's quite time consuming to do.

The printable

For the desserts, I started a week in advance for the cookies as I can store them in airtight container and it won't go stale. The next step is macaroon shell, I tried 1.5 recipe in oppose to single recipe and my macaroons didn't turn out as I wanted but I can't be bothered to redo it. I store the shells in an airtight container and filled it one day before the party.

Cookies

my fat macaroons

I had my mum and dad came from overseas and I got my mum printed labels for apple juice bottles, I love how it turned out.

I did cupcakes and cakepops last once I finished with the cake. The turned out quite well too.

 Cupcakes

Cakepops

Let's take a closer look on the dessert table, I bought some lollies and marshmallows for the buffet and it added color to the table.

And now we move on to the cake, seeing a lot of dessert tables I can tell that since the table already loaded with sweets you don't need big cake and the design should simple as you already got a colorful table. But I can't resist myself, I've been dying to try on 3 tier cake and what's the best time to do it if not on my daughter's birthday. So BakerzMum and me decided to do 3 tier cake but I compensate with the design as I don't want it over crowded the table. I decided to once again took the graphic from the invite and playing with color.

Bottom layer is chocolate cake with ganache filling and I cover it with red fondant with minimum decoration.

The 2 top tiers are lapis surabaya with cut out fondant mimicking the invitation design.

This is a darn heavy cake but I'm really happy how it turned out and a great experience for me and BakerzMum.

We had a great day, as I finally got to do my first dessert table and everybody had fun at the party probably a little bit sugar overdose.

My little family

Thanks everyone for checking on my blog, hopefully I got to do project like this more often. Here's a sneak peek on photo session of the cake done with portable studio tent. I will update you with my next project.