My sincere apologies

Assalamu'alaikum to all my muslim friends and a very good hello to everyone else.
First of all ............I am SOOOOOO SORRY..... for having 'vanished' from the blog world since July.

One project after another... challenges after challenges...... struggles while trying to catch the rainbow..... time flies and suddenly I realized that I have abandoned my blogspot for the past few months..... Once again .. my apologies and my sincere thanks to those who have remain loyal and sometimes send me a gentle reminder.... 'No new post?'..... a gentle reminder but a good wake up call..... Anyway..... we at The Weddingcake Boutique are BACK.... and boy do I have lots and lots to share....... so please bear with me..... I will upload story by story.....


Demo Session with Eddie Spence

This year I could not afford to attend the handson session with Debbie Brown and Eddie Spence.

However, Vivian from ICCA (the organisers) was so kind to have told me about the demo session Eddie Spence was conducting and so I went....

I did not regret a minute of it altho it took precious minutes and hours from me as I desperately needed those minutes and hours  to try and complete my cake for the ICCA competition.... thats another story in itself...


For those who have never heard about Eddie Spence... here's a short intro:-

He started at the age of 14 as an apprentice; he was not allowed to do any deco direct on any cake for TWO years --- all these apprentices do is to practice and practice on the side... and if their decorations are good enough; then they are chosen to be placed on the actual cakes .... and so he had to hundreds and hundreds of royal icing birds, figurines, collars......... BEFORE he was allowed to touch a cake..... I wonder how many of us have the patience to tolerate that.....I have heard of some people who are brave enough to conduct a class of their own just after a week or two of them attending the very same class......

Anyway, he started teaching at the age of 23 ... and today guess how old our good friend is ?...... A good ripe golden age of 78 !!!!! mind you.... so he has had more than 50 years of experience..... WHO can beat that?

At his age, he puts almost of al to shame  ... Why? you may ask....

First he is 78...... most of us are at least 2/3 his age.....

Second, his hands are shaking all the time....   even when he is holding the piping bag BUT the minute he starts piping, the line he pipes is a lot more straight than any of us.... he pipes a bird in less than 1 minute, a picture of a girl holding a basket of flowers with chubby cheeks (yes the cheeks are chubby) in less than 5 .....
All those in the picture below was done in less than 15 minutes.......

 

Let me share with you something very useful  from Eddie --- for royal icing work.

--  Do not use fresh egg whites; if possible separate the yolk from the white one day before you need to make

     the icing; and leave it at room temperature for one day; in our weather, we need to keep it covered with a

     piece of clingwrap and refridgerate -- this will stabilize the white .

--  For extension work, add about 5 drops of lemon juice  or vinegar to your icing sugar... to strengthen the icing.

--  Its VERY important for you to remove as much air as possible before you use your roya icing.
     Paddle it against the side of your bowl or even on the table before you use it to coat your cake or to put it in
     your piping bag.  This is very important when you do pipe with royal icing.


All in all, we went away feeling very happy but very worried about our cake..... even managed to have a chat with Robert and Bev ; owners of Squire Kitchen and took a photo with Debbie Brown.

A time well spent indeed.

Masterpieces  by  the  Master  himself.