Joseff's Mickey Mouse & Thomas the Tank Engine 5th Birthday Cake

Joseff is the only child of a very good friend of ours. 

They live all the way in Levin, but they drove up to Auckland 

(where his mum has family and friends) for Joseff's party.

Joseff's mum was adamant that he must have a BIG cake this year 

because she knows that as soon as he starts school, 

he might no longer want to have big parties, 

so this might be her last chance to celebrate 'Filipino-style'...

Joseff likes both Mickey Mouse & Thomas train, 

and couldn't choose between the two. So why not both, hey? 

Luckily, we had months to plan and study this combined-theme.

We found this photo from Flicker and thought it would be perfect 

if we did a few tweaking here and there. 

This is now our version of the cake, for Joseff:

The cake was creamy milk chocolate mud cake with chocolate ganache (bottom tier) 

and white chocolate mud cake layered with 

caramel and white chocolate ganache (top tier). 

It weighed a whopping 10K! 

(That's heavier than our little princess at the moment).

All the 3 cake toppers were hand-crafted (no molds, etc.) from fondant. 

Again, the letters and number were made / cut by hand 

(we do not have flashy cutting machines round here... yet. 

We are still poor hobbyists who run on pure passion).

Best of all, we got to attend Joseff's party and enjoyed 

yummy pan de sal, relleno'ng bangus, puto... (in short, Pinoy food!), 

and the company of some great old friends.

Thank you, Joseff, for joining us in this sugary-sweet journey!  

Kobe's LA Lakers / Basketball 1st Birthday Cake

Remember Gab's 'Elmo Cake' from last year?
Well, Gab's cousin Kobe turned 1 last week.
It is an awesome feeling when a whole clan puts their trust in us.
We are honoured!

Kobe's parents are huge LA Lakers fans.
Ok, it's pretty obvious judging by his name alone. 

For inspiration, his mum sent us this photo from a Cake Central gallery:

So, working as closely as possible to the budget that they set for Kobe's cake,

we set out to design a cake especially for Kobe and his family...

To make the ball topper, we used RKT (Rice Krispies Treat) for the very first time.

We love 'first times' here at Sweet Art Cakes! The RKT was yummmo!

It's a miracle that there was enough of it to make the ball
after we started munching on the freshly made RKT. 

Here is sort of a a step-by-step photo-mentary of how the basketball came to be.

 Yes, a lotta love went into this cake. 

Just like every cake that comes out of our little kitchen.

Tah-dah! Kobe's cake is made up of:

1. A little Kobe-like handcrafted edible figurine topper (on topper, LOL)

2. An edible (RKT) basketball cake topper

3.  The cake (creamy & moist milk chocolate mud cake layered with chocolate ganache)

in the shape of a basketball hoop/net

Note: The fondant letters/number was made / cut by hand 

(we do not have flashy machines round here... yet.
We are poor hobbyists who run on pure passion). 

And some more photos to adore:

You can tell we were beaming with pride when it was picked up in the morning.

 

Until... my phone went off and it was from Kobe's mum.

Somehow the cake toppled over when they got home. Heartbreaking! 

Fortunately, their venue was local and we weren't due to be anywhere
for another couple of hours. We asked her to send a photo of the broken cake 

to see if we could help them out with some damage control: 

So, very swiftly, we got ourselves ready for the day -
baby and all (poor princess, had no idea what the rush was all about...
 had to keep reminding ourselves - it's ok,
little changes to daily routine reinforces resilience...),
then we packed together a 'trouble-shoot kit':

When we got to the venue, everyone prepping the place up was so happy and serene.

Such a pleasure working for Kobe's mum who was so calm and collected about it all.

The hall kitchen was very handy and spacious... 

and Kobe's grandfather was cracking jokes now and again.

 So, in the end, no matter if it no longer looked exactly like it did in the morning,

the cake got fixed! Whew! 

Word from Kobe's mum: 

"Hi Joy! Party was great! and yes the cake did hold up pretty well! 

Thank you again for all the work that you and Jane have done! 

And the cake was delish as always! Everyone loved it!"

Thank you, Kobe, for joining us in this sugary-sweet journey!  

Keith's 70th Birthday 3D Book Cake

We were asked to create a cake for a writer/journalist who turned 70 today. At first, we had no fixed plan of what we were going to do. But after doing our homework, and thanks to the world wide web, we learned a few important things about Keith.

But before getting into the story, here is a picture to hopefully show you just how much love we pour into our unique creations.

Here goes... Keith writes Western novels. 

His pen name is Chap O'Keefe.

The title on the blue book is one of the many novels he has written.  

On an interview, Keith mentioned 'Play Box Annual 1928' as 

one of the memorable first books he read as a child. 

 He wrote for Sunday Star Times for decades. 

These details made it into the yellow book below:

 Again, as a child he belonged to a comic book club called Tiger Tim Club.

He had a badge which looked like the one on the ink bottle below:

All the lettering on this cake was meticulously drawn using edible ink. Oh and no, we haven't just got cleverer, we simply had a new addition to our little team - a calligrapher (wanna be, for now, learning constantly just like we all are, but we think he did an awesome job)! Hooray!

A view of the cake from the right side:

A view from the left side:

And lastly, a view from the top:

We hope you enjoyed reading this post today. We certainly did. 

We learned, amongst many other things, 

that we would rather under-promise and over-deliver.

We also learned that two heads are always better than one. 

Many heads, however, make a team!

Thank you for joining us in this sugary-sweet journey. 

Kloé's 5th month birthday flower cupcakes

On the 29th of every month, we celebrate Kloé's birth 

by doing what we do best... just cause we can :)

Inspired by Shaelyn's fondant-finished Barney cupcakes, 

we made these shimmery white flower garden cupcakes.

In the past 4 months, we've just been eating the cupcakes, but this month

Kenneth & Joy decided that a very good tradition to start would be to

bake for the hospice on the 29th of every month.

When our princess is bigger, 

she will then get to take them down tot he hospice herself

and hopefully learn something valuable about life in the process. 

So that's what we did. We took them down to the hospice and it felt awesome!

Thank you for joining us and our princess in this sugary-sweet journey.

Barney & Friends Cupcakes for Shaelyn

I love you, 

you love me,

we're best friends

as friends should be...

Well, hello everyone! Finally got to blogging. Been a busy start for 2013, but things are slowly getting back into swing. We hope you all are having a fan-taste-tic March. 

Here is something we made as a gift to a friend's gorgeous girl, 

Shaelyn, who turned 2 last weekend.

Here's a very pink Barney:

A very green Baby Bop:

 And a very yellow BJ:

We made a dozen. This is what the rest of the cupcakes looked like...

 

 

And just a couple more, cause they're too pretty not to share :)

 And here they are, all boxed up and ready to party!!!

 Thank you for joining us in this sugary-sweet journey!