KRAZE KITCH BAKESHOP: January 2011

Nice to be back online! It's been a long hiatus for me since my birthday blog. Having a newborn surely takes its toll on one's work hours hehehe.. Anyway...

Being an excited mom-to-be (at the time I did this), this next project was something I looked forward to... Obviously, I was painstakingly OC to make everything uniform and precise for CLEO's cupcakes.

Carla, my client, wanted a baby-themed line-up. How I envy bakers in the US who have all the cutters and molds they need. They can simply roll-out and stamp fondant and wa-lah!! Instant topper!

So given my limited resources, I had to literally mold and cut-out most of the candies freehand style, except the circles and the ovals. In the end, I think it was worth it!

For the onesies, I drew and cut-out a stencil on photo paper (so the mold is a bit hard, durable and non-stick). Then I repeatedly traced the shape using my Exacto cutter:

Next, for the milk bottles. (Trivia: I always wondered why my nanny kept on saying "biberon, biberon"... apparently it means baby bottle! And here I was wondering what the h*** a baby-ron was.) I rolled out a thin log of white fondant and then flattened them on two sides to create a rectangular prism.

Added a mini-flowerette as the bottleneck and white ball as a nipple. I decided to stage them on an oval disc just to add more accent to it.

Then here comes the most challenging part... the babies and the bears..

For the baby, it's actually rather simple, using an illusion. Start off with making the baby's head. On flesh fondant (white fondant with a teeny-weeny amount of orange gel color) using the flat wedge tool, make depressions for the eyes. Using a tilted round cutter, press slightly to create the smile (it makes the smiles more uniform as opposed to tracing one by one). Just top it off with a small ball for a nose.

Then I thinly rolled out colored fondant to create the blanket. Lay it out like a diamond and fold the top corner down a bit to make the edge smoother around the head later on. Then fold in the right flap wrinkled or loose to create a little bulk. Fold up the bottom corner and finish off with the left flap. This creates the illusion of a bulky baby body when in fact there's nothing inside.

Then just add a silver dragee for a pacifier.

My favorite of them all would be the teddy bear. Artistically, it's the most enjoyable thing to do in the whole project.

Start off with making spheres for the bear's head and slightly bigger spheres for the body.

Then make tiny spheres and using the small ball tool, make an indentation or well dead-center. This will become the ears.

Using tylo glue prepared the night before, attached the head to the body, then the ears to the head. (You actually use the tylo glue for everything.)

I just added black fondant dots for the eyes and an oval for the nose. For the arms, wrap a short log of fondant around the back of the neck. Make the middle part of the log thinner so it's less bulky and easier to wrap around.