Baking with lavender!

Hello again!

I finally decided to leave my job and give baking a more serious attempt; and this is my first week as an OMO cake lady. Have been baking quite a bit with lavender the past few days, and am quite excited to experiment more to come up with new cakes in the coming months!

If you have 10 min to spare, do help me with a little cake survey! Our FB cake page is www.facebook.com/nijibakes and the survey link is as follows: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WWLDPMM

Have a great week ahead!
(below: Earl Grey lavender and Chamomile lavender cupcakes)

Strawberry themed cakes!

Work has been hectic, but I haven't been letting it affect my baking! My week is pretty packed with little rest on the weekends as a result; but being to do what I like on the weekends helps me to de-stress a little :) It isn't strawberry season now (all the california strawberries on the market now are all either tasteless or sour), but I have been getting strawberry-themed orders from recent customers, and so I ended up making a strawberry cheesecake and a strawberry marshmallow shortcake. Both customers liked what they got, thankfully, and it made all the effort worthwhile.

Blackberry maple layer cake

Sorry for the long absence in between posts! Work has been quite intense for me the past couple of weeks and I just couldn't find the time to slip in a blog post in between. I've been trying to keep up the baking though, and somehow managed to bake 3 cakes yesterday - 1 experimental and 2 for sale.

The cake experiment was for a spelt flour cake sweetened with pure maple, with light cream and blackberries sandwiched in between the 2 layers. Am still hoping to bake with more wholesome and natural ingredients and this cake is part of my attempt to do so! Sadly the sides turned out a lot browner than the photo in my recipe book; and I'd probably need to try this out a couple of times to get it right. Despite its looks, the cake was delicious (thankfully) and made for a nice little breakfast treat this morning.

Have a good week ahead everyone!

White Matcha Azuki Bar

Success sometimes comes quite accidentally/ coincidentally - speaking from personal experience with making this matcha azuki cake :) And it's when you can really achieve consistency each time that you know you have finally "made it".

I was pretty lucky the first time I put this cake together - the sponge layers were soft and fluffy; and the consistency of the chantilly cream was just right. And I managed to take the above shot that attracted a new high of FB likes.

But when I actually tried to make it again for actual orders, I failed a few times, with issues ranging from a flat/ dense sponge to overbeaten cream. The mistakes were quite painful (imagine having to make things from scratch over again) but it really made me pay attention to every step along the way, so as to get things 'right'. I don't think I am a 100% consistent yet, but at least I know I am somewhere close!

D would know how many meltdowns I have had when trying to bake for sale; and strangely baking has made me more conscious of how high unnecessarily "high-strung" I can get in times of crises! :P I have since learnt to take mess-ups more calmly (still work-in-progress though!) and am really thankful to the home support (sometimes emotional, sometimes physical ie. help with clean-ups) during those times.

And the happy outcome from minor setbacks along the way has been pretty positive feedback from customers who ordered various renditions of this cake! Check out Niji Sweets for some recent photos/ comments! :)

Punggol Cake

I feel a little sheepish about my long absence, but my pace of life has suddenly picked up considerably and it's become tougher to bake regularly - much less blog about my bakes. I suppose things are always tougher at the beginning, and hopefully when I am more settled down in the new job, I can gradually find time to experiment in the kitchen again! So pardon me if my updates become a bit more infrequent - but do check back from time to time!

I just wanted to share a very short update on a "fun" cake I made this week - a chocolate cake in the shape of Punggol Town, covered with caramel swiss meringue buttercream; complete with a mini Punggol Waterway and Coney Island. The little white marshmallows are supposed to represent HDB blocks along the waterway. It was a very unusual order from an architect for an urban planner's birthday. Since I've never made any odd-shaped cake before, was admittedly a little doubtful how it would turn out in the end. Thankfully all turned out well and the customers were pretty happy (not to mention amused)! :)