Showing posts with label Royal Wedding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Royal Wedding. Show all posts

Monday, September 9, 2013

Royal Wedding Cakes

This year, I have been blessed with 4 Royal Wedding Cakes for the same family. The State of Pahang is massive, and with that, so is their extended family! I grew up with several princes and princesses from various states, in my primary and secondary school days. It's such a small world!

As many of you already know, the first 2 Royal wedding cakes I did, were in January this year. 2 couples were getting married on the same day, and I had the daunting task of creating 2 huge wedding cakes for at the same time, plus 30 mini wedding cakes for the VIP table as well.

You can check out my blog post on that wedding here January 2013 Royal Wedding Cakes

It's the month of August 2013 now, and one of my best friends, A, who is related to the Pahang Royal Family got married as well. It was an intimate wedding held over a course of 3 separate celebrations. For 2 of the occasions, there had to be cake. Of course, the cakes came from myself, and these are what I came up with.






I was given free reign of the designs (Yay!), BUT, under no circumstances were there to be any white flowers or black. Damn! I was SO close to putting a little touch of black on the wedding cake. Oh well, it still turned out beautiful though, and had a soft, vintage feel to them. I was very pleased with the cakes!!

And with A's wedding out of the way, that was the last day I would have a night off for a long, long time. The moment her wedding was over, it was crunch time. I had a huge 6 tier, the following weekend in Kuantan.

I spent the entire week prepping for the trip and to make sure all elements of the cake were flawless. All the tiers were boxed and my Dad did a stellar job, custom making my boxes to the precise heights and widths that I needed. The hardest part of the job, in my opinion, is the delivery. Everything may look great when it's done, but when you need to drive a fragile item in varied traffic and weather conditions, through a hurdle of obstacles, wrong turns and bends....the cake can get damaged.

So, the day finally came to transport all my cakes, equipment, luggage, and myself to Kuantan. The driver was prompt and ready for the daunting task of driving us to Kuantan, without any damage. He was pretty good, taking it easy and of course, he was very familiar with the route. So every bump and uneven surface along the way, he could anticipate. I was very impressed.

Meanwhile, a few drivers from his clan were racing up the highway, enroute to the Royal Wedding. It was quite funny as he was really embarrassed to be driving that slow!

We arrived 3 hours later, which wasn't bad at all. The staff at the Zenith Hotel welcomed me back, and it was great to see all the familiar faces once again.
My work space was ready in one of the conference rooms, upon request. And then it was time to unload!

This was where I was most anxious. I prayed that there would be no severe damage. But I was quite confident that I packed the cakes up well, and they weren't moving in the boxes at all! 

All the effort paid off, and there was not a single petal broken from my sugar roses, nor any major damage to the cakes. The two largest tiers had a little icing droop down the bottom, but nothing I couldn't fix. I was very, very relieved.

Meanwhile, travelling behind us were 10 other fondant cakes, from a different supplier. These cakes ended up in my conference room as well, and the driver had kindly asked me to have a look at them. When I settled in and had a moment, I opened the boxes up one by one. Out of the 10 cakes, 4 were damaged. Roses were falling off, a few butterflies had broken, petals had broken, mini blossoms were loose....it wasn't a pretty sight.

So. What do I do? I fix them. These cakes were gifts to the various Sultans from each state. I had to do something. I picked up my piping bag and filled it up with royal icing, and get to work. These cakes were poorly put together and even when I picked up the decorations, they weren't even stuck on the cake properly! No wonder during the delivery, the decorations fell off. The delivery is the most important part of the cake, I think. You can make a hell of a cake spend days on it, but once you put it in a moving vehicle for 40 minutes or 2 hours, and it starts to fall apart....all that work means nothing anymore.

So to all the cake decorators out there, do take note. Make sure all your bits and bobs are firmly attached to the cake, and nothing is moving. Stacked cakes shouldn't have any movement on them, whatsoever.

Once those were done, it was almost 5pm. Time to unwind and relax before the big day. Where's the vino? :)

I was up quite late the following day, and began my day at 11 a.m. I was raring to go! I also decided to document the assembly of the cake, just for the heck of it. And will upload that at the end of this post.

Meanwhile, here are a few pics of the ballroom. What a gorgeous gold setting and ambience the boys at Kamasutra Events created! Some of the finishing touches were not ready yet, so do keep that in mind :)
 
The pelamin (stage)

Stage

The red carpet for the bride and groom to enter onto the stage

Ballroom
VIP table

VIP table

The cake stage, right in the middle of the ballroom


The cake was well on its way by 2pm and I was very happy with the results. It turned out so beautiful, and forgive me for sounding corny, but it really was fit for a princess! :)

I really hope I get to do more cakes like this in the future. It's such a beautiful sight when it's all put together and complete. And the sense of achievement I get, is exhilarating!




And here's the AMATEUR video of the making of the Royal Byzantine wedding cake video. It's a 3 part series, but for this blog post, I will upload the final part. The first 2 videos can be found on my Facebook page Miss Shortcakes .
Thanks for stopping by!



 








Sunday, February 3, 2013

Starting 2013 with a big BANG!

Ok, I have to admit it - I anticipated Doomsday 21.12.12. I went out to buy candles, batteries, instant noodles, 30 litres of drinking water, and even got my Dad to fill up the spare gas tank for the stove.

My reasoning was, at least I was somewhat prepared for the 3 days of darkness that was supposedly to happen on the 22nd of December. I was warned that it might happen, so I went out and did what I had to do to "ride out" the 3 days.

It obviously didn't happen. And that meant, having to get back to work. 

DAMN.

The end of 2012 was very busy for the business, with loads of preparation for operation BIG CAKE that I had lined up in  the last 2 weeks of January 2013.

The first project was a 5 tier wedding cake, for a sweet girl who ordered it from Australia. She's Malaysian and was having her wedding reception in KL for 700 guests. She wanted something pretty in pink with sugar flowers to suit her Vintage theme. And her other requirement was that it had to be BIG. 

So, this is what I came up with :

























The top tier had a full posy of sugar roses, peonies, and filler flowers, and it was lifted on a candlelabra stand, with a beaded trim. The second tier had pearl drape piping, the third tier had a lace stencil, the fourth had swags with bows, and the final tier had pink and ivory stripes. 

I do apologise for the bad photography. It was a horrible day with torrential rain and the hotel foyer that we were in, had dim, yellow lights. So it was not a great day for cake photography. Such a shame, I wish I had better shots. It was such a gorgeous cake!








The second project I had was for a corporate client, Nikon. Their theme this year was, "Going Green" and they wanted a cake to suit this. I made all the sugar leaves on this cake as well, in different sizes and colours, veined them, wired them, and also glazed them to create a shiny effect. The cake flavour inside was green tea.

Each tier was 4.5" tall and the largest tier on the bottom was 11" x 11". It weighed a ton!




The next project in BIG CAKE was for the Royal Family of Pahang. It was in fact a double wedding, held at the The Zenith Hotel, in Kuantan, Pahang. I had to do 2 cakes, for the same night, as well as 22 Mini Wedding Cakes for the VIP table! And on top of that, I had to go to Kuantan to assemble the cakes a few days before the wedding. 

The brief was an elegant wedding cake, to look like present boxes, nothing to "weddingy". 

I suggested one cake to be in squares, and the other in round boxes. The square one was to be in green and yellow with gold embellishments, and the other in different shades of gold and ivory.

It was a fantastic experience for me to pack up all my tools and equipment, cakes, supplies etc for 4 nights away on a job. And not just a job, it was for a Royal Wedding! 

I started all the preparations a month in advance and trust me, I spent many, many long hours through the night, planning, designing, and creating these 2 cakes.

A driver was sent for me and we transported all my supplies in an air-conditioned van, safely. There was only one small accident on one of the cakes, which I cleverly disguised later. No one knew.

My workstation for the stay there was in one of conference rooms at the hotel, and a stainless steel bench was brought in specially for me to work. It took around 3 hours to get there, and another 2 hours to set up my space, and check into my room.

Work began immediately that day and went on every night till around 10pm. There were tons of people about everyday, working on the wedding. Staff for the flowers, decorations, gifts and favours, drivers, security, hotel and palace staff, and little ol' me, working by myself on the cakes. 

There was a conference room set up for all the wedding staff, for meals, 24/7. It was a nice touch. I was well-looked after by the hotel staff and spent a few hours with the pastry team too, demonstrating my craft. I managed to get some help for one day from the pastry team, and they helped me with some gold painting and icing the Mini Wedding Cakes. I wouldn't have been able to finish without their help. 

Here are the photos from the event.

The Ivory and Gold Round Present Box Stack


Close up




The Square Present Box Stack

Close Up

On the stage
Yay! I'm finished!
My cake being wheeled into the ballroom by the Pastry Team

Safe and sound!


Mini Wedding Cakes for the VIP table

The ballroom

VIP table for the Royal Family
The stage
Interesting fact : Some of the gold dust that I used on the Royal Wedding cakes were made from 24 K gold! 

What a huge month it was for me, and now it's time to kick back, and relax for awhile... :)

Thanks for reading and until next time...