SQUIRES KITCHEN PROFESIONAL WEDDING CAKE DIPLOMA

I have just returned from ICCA, Kuala Lumpur after attending the Squires Professional Wedding Cake Diploma course. It was a hectic 3 days course where our classes started at 9.00am sharp and ended around 7.30pm.By the time I reach my hotel, I will be too exhausted even to have my dinner.I also had the misfortune of cutting my finger accidently when I was cutting my styrofoam with a sharp knife. The cut was quite deep and luckily Adlina gave me a band aid. In a way my wound hindered me when I was piping the top tier with scrolls. But what can I say, it is all part of the game.

Rosalind taught us alot of new cake decorating techniques. She also taught us to carve a pillow cake and we also made sugar paste flowers. We were also taught how to make a flower spray and how to assemble our flower spray creatively on our wedding cakes. All the students who attended the course were really skilled cake decorators. They came up with many outstanding cake designs and I felt really happy to have attended this course as I learned so much from them.I can safely say that i'm now more equiped with the different and latest techniques in cake decorating.

There will be an entourage to the Squires Kitchen in London in March 2010 for a cake competition and Malaysian cake decorators are invited to join under the umbrella of ICCA. A few of my friends and I have decided to join the entourage to London. In fact on the second day of our class, Rosalind recieved an email from the Malaysian ambassador in London saying that he was very proud of the Malaysian cake decorators and he'll be there to join us.This invitation is opened to students of ICCA and if anyone is interested, please contact ICCA for more details. I think they have the details in their website.

Prior to my departure to KL on Sunday, we had a Creative Cupcake classs on Saturday. This class was attended by 11 wonderful and talented ladies and I really had a good time teaching them the basics of cup cake decorating. All of them took less than half an hour to learn the technique of piping the Wilton rose flower. I'm sorry to say that I totally forgot to snap pictures of the class because there were so many students present and I was too engrossed in conducting the class. In this class, students were taught about 6 types of icing, 3 types of buttercream of which one will be not smudge and melt easily. 2 types of royal icing, a type of buttercream which looks and taste like whipped cream but need not be refridgerated. A delicious ganache was also taught and my students had more fun licking the ganache than decorating with it. To all my students, I wish to convey my heartfelt thanks for attending my class. Most of them are waiting to join my Wedding Cake Class which will be held soon.

Lesson learned :- snap pictures of students before and after class so as to ensure that i'm not carried away teaching. I must also make sure to put my camera in my apron pocket. The other day, my camera was kept in my handbag and I forgot about taking photos.

CLASSES FOR OCTOBER 2009

Our October classes will start on the 24th October(Sat)and the first class is Creative Cupcakes. In this class students will learn

1) how to make moist chocolate cupcakes

2) how to make smooth & shiny buttercream(for free hand drawing/piping and filling-in)

3) how to make a special buttercream which does not melt or smugde easily (tak jadi comot). this buttercream is suitable to pipe flowers,designs & borders on your cupcakes. the buttercream is hard but you can bite into it.

4) how to make royal icing & smooth shiny ganache

4) learn how to decorate your cupcakes with fondant,ganache, piping jelly and edible image.
As bonus we will give 4 cupcake recipes

By attending this class you will be guided through all the rudiments of baking delicious cupcakes and decorating them creatively with all the different medium of icing and decorations. You too can develop your talent in cupcake decorating to something rewarding by taking orders from customers. Call me at 016-4753114 or submit the form on you right with all your particulars to attend our class.

Our popular Chocolate Making Class will be held on the 31st October (Sat)due to a large number of requests from students. Please be advised that we have revised our fees for this class to RM220.00 due to some new additions in our module. Our new module is as follows and the new lessons are in italics.


1) A history on chocolate and the production various type of chocolate like dark, milk and white couverture, compound and Belgian chocolate.

2) Chocolate making process and techniques.

i) tempering chocolate without using tempering equipment
- tempering couverture choc
- melting compound choc

ii) moulding chocolate in creative designs using various techniques
- marbling
- drizzling
- brushing
- dipping chocolate - 2 techniques ( strawberry- tuxedo/wedding gown and wafer decorating )
- coloring chocolate - creatively to make designs

iii) lollipop ( 3 techniques) - couverture, oreo, color

iv) chocolate transfer using transfer sheets

v) clustering ( new technique)

vi) dark choc mint

3) delicious praline filling : recipes and hands-on making strawberry and mocha praline

4)Making of Chocolate Card ( making a greeting card from chocolate - not using Indonesian mold !!!)

6)name & address of chocolate suppliers to get you started to make homemade chocolate

7)packing, pricing and marketing plan of your homemade chocolate

Free packing items

250 g raw couverture chocolate will be given free - to take home to practice

OUR NEW CLASS MODULES

Princess Bella Cake
samples of cupcakes decorated in fondant, gumpaste and royal icing
single tier cake decorated in fondant and royal icing

We will be introducing more new modules in our cake decorating classes as per our students requests. For example, in our doll cake class , students will be taught how to bake a cake using the Wilton wonder mould. They will also be taught how to make the best fondant and how to cover the cake smoothly. Students will then be taught how to decorate their cake with different techniques like frills,embossing, bows, lace, flowers, etc.This is a one day class and our students will learn a lot of techniques. If you are interested to join any of our cake decorating classes, please fill in your particulars in the form on the right column and submit to us. We will then email to you with further details our class schedules. All our classes are limited to 6 students as we emphasize on giving individual attention.

Bonus for our doll class: Students will be shown how to decorate a Barbie Cake with Kebaya using buttercream and royal icing.

CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES

Chocolate Truffles

We will be teaching how to make chocolate truffles in our chocolate making class. Since home-made chocolate has become popular with chocolate enthusiasts, we decided to add some new recipes in our chocolate class module. In this class,our students will learn how to make delicious truffles sitting inside pretty and colourful shells. These shell enclosed truffles are suitable to be given as gifts for birthdays or on special occasions like 'hantaran' , valentine's day, mother's day etc.

GOODIES FROM LONDON & SWITZERLAND

My niece, Parveen Banu and her husband Mohd Nazim who got married last month went to Europe for their honeymoon. They returned home a couple of days before the first day of Ramadan and thank god they were spared from the HINI virus. My niece said they spent most of their holidaying in France and Switzerland as ithose were their favourite countries. Amidst their holidaying, my niece managed to get some 'cake related' gifts for me as she knows that I love cake decorating. She also bought some fondant embosses, cutters and chocolate moulds. These are not posted in the pictures as I have not opened the package yet. Will remember to post the pictures when I open the packages.

WEDDING CAKE FOR MY NIECE, PARVEEN BANU

3 tier wedding cake decorated in fondant and royal icing. comprises of walnut butter cake, sujee fruit cake and belgian chocolate mud cake
close up of cake decorated in maroon coloured royal icing and topped with fresh rose flowers
adorable & romantic cake topper
specially made golden hued tiers.

WEDDING CAKE

stringwork and royal icing roses make this cake covered in ivory coloured fondant look elegant

first tier of the cake

second tier of the cake constructed with pillars


English roses and fondant ribbon roses creates a romantic theme for this stacked wedding cake.


colourful royal icing piped Petunia flowers.



roses waiting to adorn the romantic English theme wedding cake

Sorry for the long hiatus in updating my blog. I have uploaded some pictures taken before Ramadan and hope you will enjoy looking at the pictures. PG CakeCrfat's new class schedule will be out soon and please come back to our blog to check it out . I have a couple of requests to have a wedding cake class by my students and I hope to have this classs in my next schedule. In our wedding cake class module, students will be taught how to construct TIERED CAKES using STACKING METHOD and PUSH IN PILLARS METHOD. What you will learn in this class :

1) bake delicious WALNUT BUTTER CAKE and SUJEE FRUIT CAKE to use as your base

2) use fondant to cover your cakes smoothly

3) pipe Petunia/Roses in royal icing

4) pipe stringwork around the sides of your cake to make drop strings

5) pipe ruffles on the base of your cake to create borders.

These are some of the cake decorating techniques which will be taught in our wedding cake class. If you are interested to know more about this class, please don't hesitate to drop me an e-mail at zarmgmum@yahoo.com