MomMy Hanny: The First Year of my Baking Quest

Friday, September 27, 2013

The First Year of my Baking Quest

Last Sunday, my daughter Eu-La celebrated her 4th birthday. We had a simple celebration for her special day. I bought her a balloon, and we dined at a restaurant. A month before her birthday, she asked if she could have a pink cake and requested another Barbie cake like the one from last year. I told her I would create a new cake design for her. She inspired me to learn how to bake and design cakes.


Eu-La poses with her "Three Layered Hello Kitty Cake" Covered in Modeling Chocolate

It has been a year now since my baking quest began. In my previous post, I mentioned that I prefer buttercream frosting over fondant because of its taste. Recently, I met the owner of a baking supply store where I buy supplies for my cake decorations. We had a conversation, and she encouraged me to try fondant in my cakes. I told her I had tried using homemade marshmallow fondant, which turned out well, but we didn't like the starchy taste. She suggested using gummix to improve my fondant. To shorten the story, I baked and covered my cake with gummix. The fondant outcome was so good that I could easily mold it, but I had to work quickly because it dries fast. The taste was similar to the marshmallow fondant I made before. I displayed the experimental cakes at our bakeshop. The photos below show the results of using the gummix fondant.

I have been learning tips for baking and cake decoration through online pages and videos posted on YouTube. Thanks to the internet, I can take baking classes for free, but I still want to enroll in a professional baking school. Maybe when the children are a bit older, especially SJ, because he isn't weaned yet, so I cannot go out for long periods because of him. One night, I was watching video tutorials and came across My Cupcake Addiction's channel. This isn't my first time watching their tutorials, but their post about making a rainbow cupcake inspired me to use modeling chocolate to cover my cakes instead of fondant.

New cupcake designs

We had a customer who inquired about and ordered a doll cake, and I am happy that I can now try the recipe. We are also attending a birthday party, which made me decide to make two cakes; one will be our gift for the birthday girl. I love the outcome of the experiment. I feel more comfortable using modeling chocolate because I can take more time to form it since it doesn't harden as quickly as fondant, and it tastes much better because it is chocolate.

This month I have received bulk cake orders, and I am happy about that. This makes me a lot busier. We needed extra income so we can enroll our children and save money for their future education. This gives me more passion to pursue baking and market my cakes. I have collected photos of the cakes I have previously designed, had them printed, and placed the albums in our bakeshop to promote ourselves, so we can reach more customers and let them know that we are now accepting cake orders.