Quintbelles Insider: Liezl + TJ

Autumn is a fantastic season. And the colors are so pretty! Burnt oranges, reds, yellows, moss greens. It's a perfect time for weddings, too. The weather is ideal-- not hot, not too cold (and make ups wont melt!). Too bad the Philippines only has 2 seasons - rainy and sunny. Luckily, it gets a little breezier around this time :)

This week, we made a wedding cake using the maple leaves in autumn colors. Each leaf is cut by hand, air dried and then brushed with colored dust. No two leaves are exactly alike.

The cake is then accented with gumpaste flowers (also made by hand) in the lighter shades brushed with dust.

To compliment the theme, we used carrot walnut cake with buttercream. Normally, we would use creamcheese icing to pair with the cake but we wanted to make sure the icing won't spoil :)

The cake is 7, 10, 14x8.

Louis Vuitton Inspired Wedding Cake

We've done bag cakes in the past but never 5 layers like the wedding cake requested by wedding coordinator Anet.

The lowest layer is an epi trunk with gold dragees, next is a damier round cake, followed by a tan leather neverfull bag, then a multicolored bag and finally a monogram bag. While these are not exact copies of the LV bags, we took elements from their collections and made bags from fondant and gumpaste.

This was for a Chinese wedding so we wanted to make sure the cakes are not all dark browns. Turns out pretty, yes? We added a luggage tag with the couples initials. Although not visible from the photo above, the gold label on the trunk has a gold heart drawn on the plate. We love putting little details hoping the photographers catch them-- much like hidden mickeys!

The cake part is carrot walnut with buttercream. Total height of 42".

Quintbelles Insider: 3D Cat

We rarely get to do 3D cakes so it's exciting when there are requests for them! Chloe, the birthday girl, loves cats! After looking at several options, we decided on an orange tabby cat.

Her mommy doesn't like fondant so we agreed to use marshmallow icing instead --something we rarely do too! Double excitement for us. We love trying new things, you know :)

And so, here is the cat cake.

Tadah!

So here's how we made this. Start by baking an 8" round cake, a 8" bowl cake for the body and a 4" cake for the head. Crumb coat the cake as below.

Crumbcoated

Then cover the cake with the orange marshmallow icing. Since cat fur isn't actually very smooth, we didn't think it was important to smoothen out the icing all too much. After which, we put in the details-- paws, eyes, nose, tail, whiskers!

Coated

Finally, the finished cake!

The cat looked like its frozen in surprise so we decided to put eyebrows!

We were told that the birthday girl liked that cake! So, yey for us! :)

Quintbelles Insider: Tonee and Rod

The bride, Tonee, saw a photo in a magazine and wanted something similar for her wedding cake. Her gown was gonna look frilly too so the cake design is perfect for her!

Original photo. This cake is inspired by Cake Concepts.

Her theme consisted of a wide array of colors but we decided to pick one particular color -- turquoise-- and designed the cake around it.

Photo from Chum

Front View

Cake Top

Insider tip: Use foams to prop up the skirt while it dries. Makes for better frills :)

The Thermometer

For the longest time, we have been eyeing candy thermometers. I don't know what took us so long before deciding to do so~ they're great for a multitude of things but best of all, you don't have to second guess the temperature of whatever it is you're doing.

Two recent cakes were made out of boiled icing and to make that icing, you'd need to boil sugar and water up to a certain degree 260degrees to be exact-- and since we didn't have this nifty gadget yet, we were eyeballing the temperature of the mixture.

Based on a chef (from cravings), you can test sugar temperature by using your fingers and some cold cold water.

Here is something I found on the internet:

Tests for Sugar Temperature

To water test, fill a small bowl with cold water, remove ½ teaspoon of sugar mixture from the saucepan and drop into water.
Leave for one minute, then test using thumb and forefinger.

Thread 110 - 114°C (230 - 238°F)
The sugar mixture will form a fine thread if pressed together then pulled apart.

Soft Ball 114 - 118°C (238 - 245°F)
The sugar mixture will form a soft ball which can be squashed flat.

Hard Ball 118 - 138°C (245 - 280°F)
The sugar mixture will form a ball which will hold its shape when pressed.

Small Crack 138 - 152°C (280 - 305°F)
The sugar mixture will separate into threads that will snap cleanly.

Hard Crack 152 - 163°C (305 - 325°F)
The sugar mixture will separate into threads which are brittle and hard.

Caramel 174°C (345°F)
The sugar mixture becomes golden in colour.

The problem with this is that it's not accurate. By the time you figured out which stage it is, it might already be too late. Hence, our two not quite perfect attempts on boiled icing. We dont have pictures to show though but trust me, it wasn't pretty!

Our third attempt though was perfect! It was the right consistency, it was easy to spread and was easy to decorate with. Now we just have to figure out how to make it smooth! Any tips?