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| Chanel Purse Cake |
I decided to go with a simple, yet classy Chanel-type purse, with quilting and black piping and the classic Chanel logo in front. Monday morning rolls around, and I'm working on the cake for Tuesday delivery. Mom calls at 1030am and says, oh yea, birthday girl has decided to take Tuesday and Wednesday off. Can you make the cake for Thursday instead? I'm like uhhh no, it's already in progress man. You can't just change up the date the day before delivery and expect me to adjust my schedule! Then she's like oh, then can you keep the cake 'til Thursday? Will it still taste fresh? Again, I'm like uhhh by then it will have been in the fridge for 3 days. It will still be good (as in not expired or mouldy), but will it be at its optimum freshness?? Of course not! Sigh. Sometimes I wish I had a magic baking wand cuz it's hard for people to understand why you can't whip things up or make changes at the last minute.
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| gold details |
Anyway, Mom says fine fine fine, then just deliver it to the birthday girls' house instead of the office on Tuesday, and she can enjoy it with her family. Ok so all is good. But whilst I was working on the cake, I kept thinking that the whole point of my mom asking me to do the cake, was for them to enjoy it at work with the rest of the office. Gaaaah, so I dropped everything else and resolved to have the cake finished in the next 3.5 hours so that I could deliver it to the office before I had to pick up the kids from school and the office had closed for the day. Oh, did I mention that I had my 5-year old at home with me and I still had to get her ready, feed her lunch and drop her off at school at 1230pm?
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| Ube-macapuno chiffon cake |
Seriously mad rush to get this cake done!!! 3 layers of ube (purple yam) chiffon cake, filled with housemade ube halaya (sweetned purple yam mash) and macapuno (coconut sport) strings. I went with a half circle shaped purse so I had to do minimal carving. After quickly assembling and crumb-coating the cake, it was ready to be draped in fondant. I decided on a light blue base, instead of all black or all red (frankly I didn't have enough fondant on hand in these colours). Too bad I didn't get the chance to take any in-progress photos, cuz I had to focus on finishing the cake in time!
To get the quilted pattern on the cake, I cut out a cardboard triangle from a cereal box, and used the diagonal edge as a guide, rolling a fondant quilting tool in a criss-cross pattern all around the cake.
Then I rolled a long, thin black snake of fondant, and used a little water as glue to attach it as piping all around the edges of the purse. I printed out the Chanel logo, and used it as a guide, tracing the shape onto thinly-rolled black fondant and cutting it out with a sharp Xacto knife. I used a little water to attach the logos to the cake.
For the zipper, I used the same quilting tool, but made lots and lots of vertical lines, side by side by side, on a long strip of black fondant. Then I painted it gold, stuck it onto another strip of black fondant, and then stuck that onto the purse. After letting the gold dry, I ran the quilting tool straight down the length of the gold strip to get the zipper look. Then I free-hand moulded the zipper pulls, complete with Chanel logo charm, attached them to the cake with a little water, and then painted those gold too.
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| zipper details |
Now for the purse handle, I really wanted to make the classic gold Chanel chain, interwoven with a black strip, but I just didn't have enough time! So I had to go with a simplified version: two long thin snakes of fondant, twisted together and draped on the sides of the cake. I wasn't able to make the handles stand up cuz there was no way the fondant would be dry enough to support itself in just a couple of hours. (If only I wasn't under the extremely short time pressure!!)
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| closer look at the zipper pull |
Even though I was running behind schedule, I had to finish the cake off by decorating the cake board. It just looks more polished that way. I rolled out one big thin piece of white fondant, and draped it all around the purse to look like fabric, attached it onto the board with some water, and then trimmed the excess off with a sharp knife. The edge of the cake board was decorated with ribbon, attached with some royal icing.
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| "fabric" covering the cake board |
So long story short, I managed to finish the cake and deliver it to the office by 230pm (and drop off the 5-year old at school in the midst of all that cake-decorating), half an hour later than I had planned, which made me (just a little) late to pick up the kids from school afterwards! Ohhh the stress of it all.
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| made it to the office! |
But.... as usual, the stress and panic was all worth it after seeing the birthday girl's face light up when she saw her surprise cake! Even my mom was surprised cuz she didn't know that I was going to be delivering the cake to the office today, since we had "apparently" already made alternative arrangements for delivery tomorrow to the birthday celebrant's home.
I didn't get a chance to chat with everyone cuz I had to run off and pick up the kiddos, but my mom did let me know afterwards that the birthday girl didn't want to cut the cake cuz she wanted to take it home and show her family!! Lol. But anyway, she compromised cuz of course everyone wanted to eat some cake. She ended up cutting the cake horizontally, to "save" the front of it so the design was still visible haha. I'm so happy that everyone loved the taste and soft fluffy texture, even those people who had never had a purple yam cake before! And I'm proud that I was able to make it presentable, even under the crazy time pressure! Happy Birthday, Arlene!
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| the happy birthday girl |
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| make a wish! |
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