My Kids Birthday

We celebrated both our daughter and son's birthday on 28th December 2008. Ayra turned 5 and Adam turned 2 yrs. For weeks I was cracking my heads on the design of the cakes for them, as they keep on changing the characters that they want. In the end I decided on a Barbie Mariposa cake and a Dibo the Gift Dragon since my daughter loves Barbie and my son loves Dibo. If any readers have not heard of Dibo, well, its a purple dragon that brings gifts to those who wish and airs on Disney channel everyday at 9am. Barbie Mariposa on the other hand was the latest Barbie series where Barbie's character was a Fairie, trying to save the Fairyland from destruction..or something like that..:)

I started baking on Saturday night and since the party was on Sunday at 4pm, I only started decorating the cakes in the morning. I had strict instruction to both my kids that no one was to disturb me so that I could finish the decoration in time to get ready for the party and the drive to McDonald where the party was being held.

I baked a chocolate moist cake topped with chocolate ganache with edible picture of Dibo and his friends for my son and an orange cake for the Barbie Mariposa. The inspiration to do the Barbie Mariposa cake came after seeing the work of a fellow blogger and cake decorator, Kak June of cupcakekasih http://sayasukacupcake.blogspot.com/.I really love her work and wish that someday I could be just like her. The drive to McDonald was also a challenge since the wings attached to the Barbie was huge and I had to hold the cake all the way to McDonald so that the Barbie doll stayed intact.

I really love how the cakes turned out. They were a hit and no leftovers for me to eat :( Here's the pictures. Hope you like them too :)

Flower Garden

This is a flower garden cake, adorned with colourful flowers and butterflies made from soft fondant. The cake itself is one of our favourite - orange butter cake with orange mousse filling topped with buttercream. The orange cake is very refreshing and gives a zest to those who eat.

White Engagement Cake

This is an engagement cake with a minimalist approach. Its done in white, with just a few roses on top. Very very simple just like the bride and groom themselves. The cake is orange cake covered with white fondant.

Chocolate Ganache Cupcake - A real Devil!

I promised my office mates that I would bake them some cupcakes, so on Sunday, whilst I was in the kitchen looking over my recipe book on what cake should I bake for them, I saw an unopened chocolate chip on the table. Hmm..that gave me an idea.....A chocolate cupcake covered with chocolate ganache. For a bit of zest I decorated the cupcakes with pink flowers - just for fun...I hope they enjoyed the little chocolate devil as much as I enjoyed baking them.

Shopping for baking items

I had a wonderful weekend splurging myself on shopping items ... not on clothes, not on shoes not even parfume but on baking items and cooking books! Yup! you read it right - BAKING ITEMS!... I would never thought that the day would come that I would enjoy baking so much and would go all out to find baking items to satisfy my new passion. I bought myself some tips, new pans and some sugarcraft items. I am still looking for some more items but sadly, they are not available in any of the baking stores in KL. That means I have to browse the internet for the items...thank god! for the world wide web...it sure makes shopping for items not in KL much, much easier. Now, if only i have enough patience for the items to arrive .....
Anyway, here's a list of my favourite baking stores in KL/Selangor for those looking for baking/decorating items.
1. Bake with Yen - they have outlets in Puchong, PJ and Chow Kit area
2. PastryPro
3. ICCA in PJ, Sri Hartamas. They opened a new store in Kota Damansara on 16 Dec 2008 which was now their HQ with big kitchen for classes.
4. Bagus outlets in Tmn Melawati and Shah Alam.

Strawberry Shortcake Cupcake

Recently I had the pleasure to do a strawberry shortcake cuppie for an adorable lil girl, Lillie. The cuppie was just for fun for Lillie and some of her friends who came over to Lillie's house during the school hols. This was the cuppie I did for them - A vanilla cupcake with edible image of strawberry shortcake. When my daughter saw this she insisted I baked a few for her to eat and lucky her, I had some extras and she was happy to have them all for herself.

A Barbie cake surprise

A few months back, a friend of mine wanted to surprise her daughter with a cake for her birthday. She told me any simple design would do. Since her daughter's age was the same as my daughter, 5 years old, I decided to do a simple Barbie cake. This was an experiment - my first Barbie cake. The dress was made from moist chocolate cake covered with purple and yellow fondant with some flowers attached to the skirt. When I brought the cake to the office the next day, she was not the only one surprised but so does my other colleagues....they did'nt realised that I could bake! :).

Welcome to Cakes by SweetCravings

Hi and welcome to my blog on cakes, cupcakes,cookies and all things delicious and delectable from Sweet Cravings. A bit about myself - Im Azrina from Selangor, Malaysia. I am a full time working mom and I love to cook whether its dishes for my family to desserts like cakes and cookies. Previously I've never been bothered with the design of cakes as long as they are delicious but all this changed last year when I decided to bake both my daughter and son's birthday cakes. I browsed through many cake books and the internet for kids birthday cakes and was really surprised by the many deligthful designs. I then baked a 2D Barbie cake for my daughter and a 2D Cars cake for my son using a Wilton cake pan and buttercream icing. It was a hit among both the kids and adults. I was really proud to be able to do the cakes myself for my children. From thenon, my love for cake decoration developed and I decided to learn more via cake books and the ever reliable internet. Recently, I decided to branch out of buttercream and learn how to decorate using fondants and I was really hooked on fondants. With fondants, the designs are limitless, only limited to your own creativity - it could be a sloppy design or immaculate, at the end of the day, the design is yours to claim. I still love buttercream and use them in all my cakes but I use fondants for novelty cakes or whenever requested. So, come in and enjoy this blog as this is my journey into the baking and decorating world. I have compiled some of pictures of previous cakes that I baked and will continue to update them with newly designed cakes as and when available.
Enjoy the site :)