Clothes??? for my Food???

I'm sure you must be wondering why I gave such a weird name for a blog
 "Clothes for my Food"...

Well, I have two reasons:

1st

Partly, the name is inspired by the modules dedicated to this blog. I figured that it's creative if we can incorporate aspects of each module into the name.

2nd

The second reason is related to my new found interest-Food Decorating. Have you ever seen a cupcake or cake or even a cookie and you are just mesmerized with how pretty and appealing they look? Well, I know I am. Although I am not equipped with the skills yet, I am slowly trying to explore the art of food decorating. I'm particularly interested in cake or cupcake decorating with fondant. After saying all these, you might still be wondering how this is linked to the tittle that I've chosen. Simple, I envision my food ( particularly baked goods) to be appealing and presented in a creative manner. The decorations are the clothes for my food. Without any decor, yes, the cake will still taste as yummy, however it lacks the visual appeal. As we all know, visual appeal is one of the important factors in enticing customers or potential eaters besides the smell and the taste of the food. Without decor, food will be like a picture without colour.

Hopefully, you understood my so called "vision". =P

In the posts to come, I will try to share with you my learning experiences in Food Decorating and hopefully share some tips with you. For now, I will share with you my previous tries I had in decorating cakes, cupcakes and cookies.





These are my very first Miniature Fondant-Covered Cake Dummy. I made use of small IKEA boxes as the structure to practice the technique of covering the cakes with fondant. Besides the boxes, you can also use Styrofoam dummies that are cut into cake sizes. These dummies can be found at Poon Huat or Art Stores ( but usually these are expensive =S).

This time, I tried covering a REAL cake with fondant. TRUST ME, its not as easy as it looks. My little sister (wanted her hands to be featured in this picture =P) is smoothing out the surfaces if the cake as well as to push out any air bubbles or air pockets that are trapped below the fondant. This is a crucial step as it helps to give a more finished look to the cake.

I usually buy the basic white rolled fondant and tint them with food colouring myself. Tinting fondant involves lots of kneading to ensure that the colour is distributed well in the fondant.

This is the finished cake! As you can see, there are still are pockets bulging out of the cake. Covering a dummy and a real cake, is really different. For a dummy, you don't have to be so careful about crushing the "cake", but when working on a real cake, you have to take into consideration many factors such as cooling the cake beforehand so that the buttercream/frosting is stiff enough for easier handling and to make sure that the fondant is pliable enough that it wont crack (tear) easily.

Knowing that I need real training for covering a cake, I tried my luck with cupcakes. Made these as my Aunt's birthday present. For me, covering cupcakes was much more manageable than covering the cake, could be due to the smaller size.

The finished cupcakes.... =)

I attended a Cookie Decorating Class with my little sister and we got to make the cookie of four different flavours as well as the "SAFE" royal icing that is used for the decoration.

My Finished Cookies. Troubles that I had while decorating was maintaining the amount of pressure I was exerting on the piping bag and to keep my hand steady. As you can see, my lines are all over the place. =P