A smashing cake... naturally.

It has been a tradition in many families for their babies to have their first-ever taste of cake on their first birthday. For the first twelve months of their lives, these babies have been on super-strict diets, their mums religiously writing down each and every first food they have tried. Not only do some babies get to try cake for their first time on their birthday, some lucky babies even have their own special cake to mark their first big milestone. Obviously with limited coordination, these cakes usually get "smashed up" hence they've been affectionately termed Smash Cake.

Smash cakes have become extremely popular in the past few years, and have even almost become, dare I say, a rite of passage, into free-eating and toddler-hood. It is because of this "free-eating" that I was super surprised when we were approached by a super-health conscious, yet very fun mummy, for her daughter's first smash cake. Not surprising though, she asked us to create a delicious, but not-so-naughty version for her soon-to-be one year old.

Kira's "not-so-naughty" pink ombre smash cake, with fondant candle — Kira's "not-so-naughty" pink ombre smash cake, with fondant candle

Baby Kira and her older sister have been very fortunate to be raised on mostly organic produce and natural products. They try to only eat organic, their clothes are lovingly washed with organic detergents, they even sleep on an organic bed! To capture the magical memories of baby Kira and her first "natural" smash cake, they had commissioned their very talented sister in law, Amanda Lui, from Amanda Lui Photography to do their photoshoot.

To make this cake, we used a recipe from a London-based baking blog called Bake, and re-created their Wholemeal, Honey and Vanilla Sponge. We used wholemeal flour, reduced the sugar, supplemented the sugar with honey, natural yoghurt and vanilla beans. The aroma and taste of the cake was beautiful, a delicate honey flavour with a gorgeous texture from the wholemeal flour. We tripled the batch as we like our cakes at Cake Me! to be high and grand, and a smash cake is no exception.

Instead of a lemon curd filling, we used cream cheese to create a healthier cream-cheese "frosting". Kira's mummy insisted on zero-sugar frosting, so the cream cheese "frosting" is actually pure cream cheese. Yes, no sugar, no stevia, no spendour, no equal or any other sugar alternative!! Might sound a bit strange (and stinky!) but it is actually pure genius. Kira loves cheese and wouldn't realise that frosting is meant to be sweet in the first place.

For the ombre effect, we used natural colour paste by Creative, so it's free of artificial additives and preservatives. It's also made in Australia. When we first sourced the paste, we were worried that being "natural" that the colours would be muted, however we were pleased with how the colour turned out, deep pink where it was supposed to be, light and pastel-ly on the top. One thing we noticed when we opened the bottle was that the natural colour "paste" was runny up the top and gluggy at the bottom. Fortunately the colour seemed to mix fine with the cream cheese. We haven't tried the paste on fondant, but hopefully after a good stir, the paste would work well on fondant too.

Baby Kira had a wonderful time at her photoshoot. She looked so adorable in her pale pink onesie trimmed with black polkadots. She dug into her cake and loved it (even mummy and daddy got to enjoy the delicious cake off-camera). Unfortunately for big-sister Caitlin though, she was so excited about eating the "icing" not knowing that it was a hundred per cent cream cheese and zero sugar. Making the most of this rare sugar opportunity (her mum said she could, "Go for your life!!"), she took a huge chunk of what she thought was pink icing and put it in her mouth! Needless to say, she was not too impressed. Lucky for Caitlin though, her mummy let her indulge in the flame of the fondant candle.

“Loving this amazing cake by the ever talented Liz Tu from Cake Me! Liz met all my fussy requirements of a “less naughty” cake and still delivered a stunning cake! That’s not sugar icing, it’s all pure cream cheese icing with natural food colouring. Little Kira is sure going to have a smashing time!!”

— Jen

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Cake Artist?

A common request from followers of this blog, is for me to write about what happens behind the scenes. People seem to be interested in the design process and how we get to our finished product. I've ummm-ed and ahhhh-ed about blogging about this as I am frankly quite embarrassed to show you what goes on, especially for a self-confessed perfectionist this is a bit difficult to digest... but for the sake of a bit of humour, I will swallow my pride! Here it goes...

Some of the sketches we provided our client

I've mentioned in previous blogs that I'm no artist on pen and paper, and that I'm almost always hesitant to send a client a sketch of our cakes. I'll have beautiful visions and images in my head, but when I try to put pen to paper, it never comes out the way I intend.

The recent Lego Superheroes cake... thankfully it turned out how we had pictured it in our heads and not what was on paper!!

We also enjoy having the freedom to make changes to the design of the cake whilst we are making it as we are often able to create an effect that we didn't think was possible, whilst designing it (for example Domo with one arm up and the other down, or the weight of the sun topper floating above the cake instead of sitting on it) or improving the overall look of the cake (displaying the Hello Kitty cake on a rectangular cake board instead of a round board as quoted).

I take pride in having real attention to detail, and at the same time, our cakes have clean lines, look fresh and have an uncluttered finish. But somehow my pictures always look like a scribbled mess and even I can't decipher what I've tried to transcribe from my head. Even my eleven year old niece critiques my sketches and tells me that she'll have to teach me how to draw one day.

With cakes like Genevieve's Winter Wonderland themed cake, she was happy for us to design the cake whichever way we wanted, as long as it was not a "Frozen" cake. So originally we had planned a more "busy" cake that was round and unsculpted. Having the flexibility in design meant that we were able to sculpt the cake into an actual iceberg, and then decide to keep the lines clean and uncluttered, and not over-complicate the cake with the igloo or polar bear up top.

Having the liberty to change the design gives us the flexibility of making the cake look better than what we are confined to by our drawings

Quite often, clients get so excited about their cake, they ask to see a sketch of what to expect. I'm always happy to provide a sketch, but always pre-warn them so that they won't doubt our cake-making abilities.

So here I am exposing my vulnerabilities to you all... please don't judge me!!!

Admittedly we now have a new design studio which helps the sketches look slightly more acceptable. But for a great laugh, and for the ultimate mind-blowingly embarrassing picture... here are two I drew when designing my kids' cakes. Amazingly though, I showed them to my four year old and asked her what the sketches were of, she confidently exclaimed "Ohhhh that's my bucket cake, and that's Xav's digger cake!!". So there you go, it can't be that bad? ;P

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The blanketed crusader

This cake is one that is extremely close to my heart.

Waz, the Blanketed Crusader and his cake. Designed by Khanh of Cake Me!, this cake perfectly sums Warren up.

I remember taking the bus home one winter's evening after uni. It was bucketing down, very cold and very dark. Kind of scenario where you'd prefer to just stay on the bus and not get off, even though you couldn't wait to get home. But there, waiting in the rain by the unlit bus stop was my brother, on his little bicycle, with an umbrella. He's always been like that.

Fourteen years later, my brother Warren founded the charity organisation 300 Blankets, to keep those who are less fortunate in our community warm. Waz works a full time job in Merchandising at the Myer Headquarters, but after work and on weekends, he directs a team of over 70 volunteers to provide warmth to the homeless. 300 Blankets raises awareness, funds, buys, collects and distributes blankets to the homeless. His work isn't just about providing tangible materials, it is also about providing warmth through friendship. Every Wednesday night, rain, hail or shine, Christmas Day, his birthday or just any regular Wednesday, you would find Waz out with the Vinnies Soup Van distributing food, a hot drink, blankets and friendship to those who need it most.

Waz and some of the awesome 300 Blankets volunteers — Waz and some of the awesome 300 Blankets volunteers

The stories and experiences that Waz shares are moving, heart wrenching and more often than not, puts a lump in your throat or fills your eyes up with tears. Listening to my brother speak at a recent event and looking around at an audience of over a hundred people, you can see how his work and anecdotes pulls at people's heartstrings.

So that's Waz as a brother and as a member of the community. What makes Waz extra special is that he is your normal, average person. He loves his fiancee, his family and his close group of friends. Waz is our everyday superhero. He's a man with many hats (or lego heads, as this cake suggests).

Superhero Lego heads, Chocolate mud cake and Red Velvet mud cake with chocolate ganache

The other Waz we know and love is "Uncle Wazzie" as he is affectionately called by his niece and nephew. Waz is a big kid at heart, an awesome uncle, and our kids adore him. He loves toys and for years, worked in the toy department at Myer, and then later, in the Buying Office for Toys. Waz has especially loved Lego and made sure he rubbed his passion for these coloured bricks on to his niece and nephew. Another of Waz's childhood loves is Raphael, the red teenage mutant ninja turtle.

Warren. Our brother, friend and uncle. Hero in a half shell. Friendly neigbhourhood spider. We couldn't be more prouder of you, Waz. Happy 30th birthday to our Blanketed Crusader.

Lego minifigure Waz cake, complete with his signature mole, 300 Blankets tshirt, and CAPE!

Everything is awesome. You are everything AWESOME.

To learn more about 300 Blankets or to volunteer/donate to the charity, please go to www.300blankets.com.au.

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Turn back time... The Cake Me! evolution

Almost five years ago, a client commissioned us for her thirtieth birthday cake. I remember googling images of record players to create a cake to fit the theme of her party. Apart from requesting a record player and preferably incorporating some pink, blue and purple, like the majority of our clients, this client left the design completely to us (and to google of course). It's such a wonderful feeling to be entrusted with the design and it's sooooooooo much fun to have free rein in the creativity.

The record player we made for a client in 2010

Our turntable cake, based on the Technics turntable in 2015

Turn the clock forward five years later and I find myself googling images again for a turntable. This time however, this new client was much more prescriptive in her husband's fortieth birthday cake. She had seen photos of the record player cake we'd made five years ago, however as her husband "Fermo" owns Joey Smalls, a bar in Brunswick, and as such, works with turntables all day, this client has requested that the cake to be similar to the one he uses (Technics SL-1210 M5G Turntable). I'm usually the one with a pen and paper sketching out designs, but I received a few image files from the client. For the first time ever, these image files included one of her own sketches! Let's just say that I was more than a little bit excited!!!

The client was afraid that she was being too pushy, but NO, I loved it. It wasn't til then that she totally reminded me, so much of... ME!! Back when I commissioned a cake company to make my wedding cake toppers (before I started making cakes myself), I gave the designer four A4 pages of notes and photos of my husband's suit, my dress, the veil, right down to the details of the beading on the train of my dress. I was so scared that the cake designer would think I was totally nutters (she probably did), but she LOVED it too. She squealed with excitement and asked if she could keep a copy to show her colleagues and future clients. I now understand exactly how she must have felt, as I felt the same way when I saw this client's sketch.

My four page "brief" for my wedding cake toppers... Um no, I'm not a bridezilla... ;p

I love detail, I have a high attention to detail and those who know me know that I spend another 80% of my time on the final 20% of the work. Sadly though, not everyone appreciates the detail and so quite often my detail is unnoticed. With this client however, I am certain she will see and appreciate the detail I've put into her husband's cake. And this is what excites me.

Images of the Technics Direct Drive Turntable System and our "Fermo" cake, based on the Technics Turntable

Although I still love the simplicity of our original record player cake, I'm so proud to say that I think our techniques have evolved and refined over the years. Just as I still love the cows I did on the Shinkansen cake all those years ago, I can confidently say that our sugar sculpting skills have also improved in the cows on the recent Domo-Kun cake. And again, I totally loved our original digger cake, but the digger cake we made earlier this year was again an improvement on that.

Quite often when we come across a ridiculously amazing cake that someone else has made, we feel an overwhelming sense of admiration. In fact, it might even be an overwhelming sense of overwhelm-ness?! At those times, I hope that I can remind myself that we're slowly evolving too, and hopefully we'll keep improving and refining our own skills and techniques.

And for some further nostalgia since we're on the topic of evolution.. here is a photo of our very first cake...

The very first cake we have ever made with fondant... pre Cake Me! era

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Happy 40th Birthday Fermo, we are so happy that you loved your cake!! For those of you interested in experiencing some of the music from a real Technics turntable, check out http://www.joeysmalls.com.au/ in Brusnwick. They are serving up Huxtaburger from Thursdays to Sundays!

“Thank you Liz for the most amazing cake! Your attention to detail is outstanding and we all loved the citrus mud flavour. My husband was blown away! Congratulations on a job well done.”

— Meghan

A grand note, worthy of a blog post...

Throughout the years we've received heartfelt testimonials and reviews from many of our loyal customers. I have scattered some lovely reviews on some of the pages on this site. But today, I received such a beautiful testimonial penned by a loving granddaughter, I actually didn't know what to do with it, so I decided to blog about it. I'm not going to say that it was more beautiful than any of the other testimonials I've ever received, but perhaps the reason why it was so touching to read was because we actually felt so honoured to have been asked to make this cake in the first place.

Those of you who follow our facebook page (www.facebook.com/cakeme) might have seen that we wrote about how we always feel chuffed to be entrusted to make someone's milestone or special occasion cake. So to have been asked to make a special grandmother's 90th cake, it was truly an honour. Ninety. Wow, just a decade away from a century, what an achievement!

The testimonial made me feel so warm and fuzzy I didn't want to condense it, so if you're interested, you're welcome to read it here.

She mentioned:

“My grandma, an avid pianist and music lover, also has an inclination for all things purple and my challenge was to articulate this particular theme to the team at Cake Me. Thankfully Liz and Khanh combined their creative minds and exerted a little engineering flair to come up with a number of cake ideas accompanied by detailed sketches for my family to select.”

When were designing the cake, we weren't sure whether the family had wanted a sculpted grand piano cake, a cake with a grand piano topper, or a piano-themed cake. After consulting with them further, other than "piano" and "purple" they themselves weren't sure what design they wanted either. So we drafted up a few very rough sketches and sent it off to them, and they decided that the latter option was what they wanted, a piano-themed cake. To be honest, I'm always anxious about sending people sketches as I'm no artist on pen and paper, so I don't want people to doubt our cake abilities after seeing my drawings. So you can imagine how very happy I was to hear that they appreciated my scribbles and even went as far as describing them as "detailed sketches." ;)

The piano-themed cake for a grandmother who is affectionately known as "Pepeng", and the top of the piano with the lid off.

Creating a beautiful cake, ensuring that it tastes divine, making sure that it is personalised for the individual, giving the cake its own character and all the attention to detail, literally takes hours and hours. Quite a few people have asked us over the year why we choose to do cakes. And the answer has always been that the joy in seeing someone's face light up when they first see the cake is incredibly rewarding. Quite often we don't get to see the cake recipient as the cake is delivered to a venue, or the cake is ordered by a loved one, or is picked up by someone else. So we rely on testimonials like these. It truly has to be a labour of love, or we wouldn't do it.

It brought us immeasurable joy and satisfaction reading how the grandmother herself actually felt:

“On the day of the unveiling, no one was happier and more impressed than the celebrant herself, my grandma. Whilst it did take a bit of coaxing to get my grandma to cut into the cake (She had repeated that, “The cake was too beautiful to cut”), all guests fell into an appreciative silence as we enjoyed the chocolate mud ganache filling.”

This is love. Grandmother "Pepeng" with her granddaughter on her 90th birthday.

“So thank you, Liz and Khanh for making my grandma’s birthday all the more memorable—we couldn’t have trusted a better team of cake artists to handle my grandma’s birthday with the talent and experience that was delivered on the day.”

No, thank YOU. We love cakes, and creating your grandmother's cake was truly an honour for us. Happy 90th Birthday Pepeng.

And this is exactly why we do what we do.

Cake Me!'s first blog entry

I love reading blogs. Blogs can be so intimate, so vulnerable, reading someone's inner thoughts that they've put out there in the world wide web, but not professionally edited or premeditated. I love reading about another person's passion, and seeing the photos that accompany the post. I've always wanted to start my own blog but keep putting it off as I don't know whether anyone would be interested in hearing what I've got to say. So I'll give this a try and see how it goes!

I thought it would be most fitting to start my very first Cake Me! blog entry about a cake we created for my mum's sixtieth birthday. Mum has always been a low-fuss, low-key, simple, yet classy woman. She has always put her family ahead of herself and has made uncountable sacrifices for us. So it was quite a surprise for us when she announced that she was having a big dinner celebration for her sixtieth birthday.

From the very beginning, Mum has been a huge supporter of our cakes, so we knew she would like pretty much anything we created for her. We thought her cake would be easy - something classic, classy, pink with roses. I had the perfect design in mind.

Then my dad came into the scene.

No, he's not a baker or cake decorator. He knows very little about cake aesthetics. But for the cake to be "perfect" he said it needed something "extra special, symbolic and traditional". He said that cake should have a symbolic cake topper of the Goddess of Longevity. For those of you who are South East Asian may know that this Goddess has huge ear lobes, carries around a peach in one hand and a walking cane in the other. For luck and prosperity, she is usually dressed in bright red with gold accents. I had no idea what she looked like so I went to ask google for help. Google came up with the male version:

*JAWDROP*... without offending anyone's culture or beliefs, I wasn't sure if this character/God was one I wanted on top of my mum's "simple, classy, classic" cake.

Firstly, everyone knows that red does not go well with pink. Secondly, my mum is a very young sixty year old (still can't believe she's 60!). She is vibrant, beautiful, fun and happy. She doesn't look or feel a day over 40, so we were beginning to wonder if this was part of my dad's quirky sense of humour? Joke or not aside, the question is, how do we incorporate THAT with our cake?!

Anyhow, a "client's" request is a client's request. And a VIP one at that. So off I began sugar sculpting a female version of the images I found on Google, with a mumsy-twist.

My brother was horrified. He was the first to object to the walking cane and said it was "not our mum at all". He didn't mind the topper as she was quite cute, so as a compromise, we swapped out the walking cane for my mum's most prized possession.. her iPad! So... the result? A semi-old Goddess of Longevity with huge ear lobes, holding a peach in one hand and an iPad in the other. Pink flowers surrounding the base of the topper with the red and gold-accented costume, to help her blend back into the pink cake.

So what's the verdict? What do you think of the final cake? Which cake do you like better?

PHEW! There, my first blog entry done. Thanks for reading! xx

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