Elaine's POV

--written by Elaine

I had wanted to start off this blog with how we started and why the name Quintbelles. Val wrote how we came up with the name already. I tease her that if I were the author of that article, I would have written that it all started with me. Tee-hee…

But kidding aside, we started with simple recipes like cookies and biscuits. Lifestyle Channel was not yet shown on tv-- we didn’t even know how to beat egg whites into soft peaks. With no formal baking lessons, we made a salty cookies (due to use of salted butter then added salt!), uneven baking (temperature mistakes), uneven shapes (no patience) , flopped cakes (underbaked), burnt cakes (overbaked!), watery icings (no mixer), tough pie crusts... every mistake you can think of...

So we try and try again, and even enrolled in some baking classes...the outcome improved over time and we would change the recipes according to our liking. I remember our first cake--it was a total disaster. It turned out like melted ice cream! It didn't hold its shape! Our parents, supportive of our venture, tasted our cakes and told us parts we could change. We'd like to think that we've improved since and we’re now doing wedding cakes, birthday cakes, and other celebration cakes.

Drop by our site www.quintbelles.multiply.com and view our recent cakes --you wont find the melted cake there! Haha! :)

Ting and Gilbert's Wedding Cake

Quintbelles used to have a photolog but since it was difficult to upload photos, we have stopped using it-- fortunately after Tere chanced upon our site. After several messages and emails exchanged, Ting and Gilbert (her friends!) confirmed their order for their wedding on Feb 2007. The wedding ceremony and reception was held in Tagaytay. The photo above was sent out as their wedding invitation. The couple explained that they are inviting their friends and family to travel with them (the Fairy Couple leading the way) to their destination wedding. As a continuing thread, we made a fairy couple for the cake topper.

A very decisive couple, Ting and Gilbert sent us a drawing of the cake design they had in mind. Motiff of pink, silver and dark chocolate brown were all incorporated into the cake.

The final wedding cake is 18" high (6", 10" and 14" diameter) carrot walnut cake with cream cheese icing .

We allocated 3 hours to drive to Sonya's, estimating that was all we needed to get there before the agreed time. The cake left 8am and was supposed to be there by 10am-11am. Unfortunately, traffic in city prevented us from getting there as expected. After several frantic calls and text messages, the cake arrived at 12noon. Thankfully, the couple (and the guests) were still on their way to the reception. We were still able to take a few shots of the cake and retouch some parts of the cake that might be necessary for problems that *might* occur during cake transport.