A drizzly Friday

Unlike every Fridays that I could barely recall, today is possibly one of those “extraordinary” days that I would not fail to remember even in the next couple of years.  I have been staying here in Albany for the last six months and since then I had never felt this freezing coldness that would awaken me before the crack of dawn.  I instantly checked my online weather indicator – an astonishingly 2° Celsius. Oh my, and it’s not even winter.  I got Goosebumps all over.  My hands and feet turned stone cold and I shiver uncontrollably.  I guess this is how people respond to extreme low temperatures when not in fact used to the cold.  

 

For the last 3 days, we have been experiencing torrential rains and strong winds brought about by severe storm and bad weather conditions.  From our window, I could hear the strong wind gusts and rowdy sound of the leaves and trees outside.  The dripping rainfalls on our window glass give me a melancholic mood.  There is something very bizarre about rain or when it rains.  There’s so much symbolism to it that you can relate to just about everything in life.  And right at this very moment, I feel a certain twinge of solitude.  I feel so alone, so far, far away from my comfort zone.  

This  photo I have attached was taken from our window view of the outside blustery weather.  The picturesque skies now hovered by gloomy clouds.  A depressing vision of what was usually a "Thank-God_it's Friday" day of the week.

My 2nd fondant cake

This is my second attempt in fondant making. It’s another birthday cake as a present for a bubby girl by the name of Charish. 

I decided to make some trendy modifications with the cake arrangement. I wanted to have a two-layered cake but in two different colors. So, I made butter flavored on the bottom then topped it off with chocolate flavored. Voila! It looked just as appetizing as those you probably buy at Goldilocks. 

However, I am quite discontented with the outcome of my finished product due to some reasons. First, the coloring was inefficient. I nearly stained my hands but still I wasn’t able to achieve the right hue I wanted to have. Second, I only got barely two hours to complete my cake since the party will start at 7 o’clock. You see it’s pretty difficult to concentrate on your craft when under time constraint more so for a starter like me. And managing the fondant takes a lot of patience and passion.

Apparently, I run out of ideas in my design plus the fact that I still haven’t got those cutter-with-shapes thing so I once again used my scrapbook cut outs. 

The birthday girl loved the cake same with everyone at the party. It’s probably the most rewarding remark I had ever received.

My first fondant cake

I am really ecstatic about this cake because this is actually my very first fondant cake, which I made for a friend's birthday.  And to top it off, this is my first blog entry here in blogspot.


I’ve always been fascinated with the art of fondant making and I definitely have a high regard for people who are blessed with ingenuity to explore such skill.

And this almost certainly, was what inspired me to give it a try. So the first thing I did is search for instructional videos of "fondant-how to" on YouTube, attentively acquiring the method itself and techniques. Next, I tried to look around the web for designs which will essentially serve as patterns/guides for my future projects.
The next day, I found myself making it with so much enthusiasm that it will turn out not perfect, but at least fair enough.

And so that was it... The cake was Very Moist Chocolate with Butter Cream Frosting and covered with Marshmallow Fondant Icing. I actually got the idea of the cake’s design from cakecentral.com but I failed to replicate every single detail. For some reason the food coloring I used was not very efficient. I had to add more drops to achieve the intensity of the color that I was expecting to have. Also, I made a mess with the bow of the ribbon. I shouldn’t have done it in the first place, for someone who is a novice in this field, making a bow is not really a very good idea. I used readymade writing icing for the inscription and I guess that was the only thing I didn’t mess around . The hearts design are meant to be cut out from the fondant icing sheet using something like a cookie cutter which I don’t actually have at the moment so I just used a heart-shaped guide from a scrapbook magazine (hmm thanks to my resourceful ideas). 

Over all it was a totally exciting, new learning experience. It was really enjoyable playing around with the fondant icing. I guess the key to making good outcome here is passion, knowing that this is what I wanted to do. It may not be the best but certainly it made me feel overjoyed.