Friday, March 23, 2007

Perseverance, perseverance, perseverance

For the past two weeks, I've been trudging up a very steep curve, sometimes slipping two steps back and picking myself up with a stronger resolve to try harder the next time.

And it's all got to do with orchids.

Yeah, orchids.

You see, my best friend, Laine has bestowed me with the honour of making her wedding cake ever since she learnt of my newly acquired cake decorating skills. She asked and I said yes and we both got very excited at the prospect of me doing her wedding cake.

For her, it's your best friend making your wedding cake. For me, it's going to be my very FIRST wedding cake. You can't imagine how thrilled I was when she asked if I could make her wedding cake. I was practically leaping with joy!

We've discussed and I agreed to make a two-tiered cake with her favourite flower - orchids.

I swear they are not the easiest sugar flower to make. It took me a week to figure out how to join the flower parts (throat, petals and base) together. And this week, I've been teaching myself how to colour them with food chalk colouring.

I must say I'm still on a very steep learning curve because after two weeks of trying, I'm still stuck with a really ugly batch of sugar orchids.

Now, I gotta get back and make more orchids.

I gotta keep at it. I gotta keep at it. I gotta keep at it...

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

Little Miss Sanrio

Last month, I received a request for a Hello Kitty birthday cake. A friend had asked me to bake a vanilla butter cake topped with strawberries and a Hello Kitty figurine (see last entry). It was the one order which I delved into enthusiastically because I once obsessed over Hello Kitty and other Sanrio characters - Little Twin Stars and My Melody.

I think I was 9 nine years old and the Atria then housed a Japanese departmental store called Kimisawa. It was end of the year school holidays and my classmates agreed to meet at Atria for someone's birthday. Whose birthday it was, I couldn't remember but I do remember jumping with joy upon discovering those whimsical Sanrio stickers. It was a special edition of scratch & sniff stickers with gorgeous scents like gardenia, ice cream soda, chocolate, raspberry, rose and jasmine, to name a few.


I was such an avid collector that I had a little clear holder to hold my stickers. I also remember slotting the stickers back into their original plastic case after holding them under my nose for a good whiff. I daren't scratch them as I didn't want to lose those lovely scents. The scents were so powerful that my sticker holder smelt of a wonderful mishmash of sweet scents. All in all, I had a total of 16 Sanrio scratch & sniff stickers.

I still remember saving half of my $5 monthly pocket money to buy Sanrio stickers which cost $2.20 each. At the end of the month, I'd badger my parents to make a trip to Kimisawa or Printemps (at Yow Chuan Plaza) to get another scratch & sniff sticker for my Sanrio collection.

Of course, after 20 years, those sweet scents are all gone but they are still lovely to look at.

Hmm, I see some whimsical designs that can be translated onto my cakes.