Wednesday, April 22, 2009

VSS turns 10! (belatedly that is)


VSS turned TEN on the 28th of March 2009 and yours truly was tasked with the catering. VSS is very special to me because I really believe in the vegetarian cause and the people there are amazing. Thanks to VSS, I have made some awesome friends who continue to inspire me to be better vegetarian, i.e., be more environmentally friendly, and hopefully to be vegan one day! 

So, I wanted to make the best possible cake for VSS and hence I started experimenting with vegan fondant, after doing extensive research over the net. Somehow, I managed to get some vegan fondant by substituting agar with gelatine but though the batch was workable, I think there needs to be more tweaking to make it pliable. However, it was good enough to work with and I decided to use it. I decided on a garden theme and spent two days making bees, flowers, butterflies, snails and ladybird bugs for the cake. 

I also decided on a two layer cake, so after gleaning information from youtube, I learnt how to make a two tier cake stable. Even though I initially wanted to cover the entire cake in fondant, I decided against it because I know most people will dislike the sweetness of it and also it will end up being wasted. So, I did a cream cake and added fondant figurines on it. I felt that it was one of the best cakes I've made (I'm sure the experts in fondant making will disagree) and even though I laboured over it for days, it was all worth it!

3 comments:

Cookie said...

Congrats, you have moved your cake-baking to the next level! Haha.

I still thinking how to make sure the 2nd layer will not sink into the first!

PS: I saw the vegan cream cheese at Cold Storage @ UE2 (Mohd Sultan)! I thought you might be interested...

Halimah Ilavarasi said...

Hi Cookie,

I got still a long way to go to reach the Sifu levels of ReiRei and Gina :) hahaah

To make sure that it doesn't sink in, what I did was to get a smaller cakeboard, the exact size of the 2nd layer. In this case, it was 6 inches. Then I wrapped the whole cakeboard with aluminum foil cos' you know the bottom is actually paper rite?

Once I decided on the position of the smaller cake, on the 1st layer, I inserted five disposable chopsticks, all cut to the exact height of the 1st level cake. Then I placed the top level on top. In this way, when they cut the top cake, it will not sink into the bottom cake because the chopsticks will hold it in place. Apparently, we can also use wooden dowels but it is expensive (comes from wilton).

I'll go have a look at the vegan cream cheese but I think it'll cost a bomb! Sigh :(

Cookie said...

Oh, *slap forehead* I didn;t know the bottom is the cake board... I know about the pillar, but I kept wondering how the pillar can support the top layer...

Thanks for sharing yr knowledge -
I am egging to give this try but need to think of an occasion first :-)

The vegan cream cheese is $8+ per pack. I think is it just 200g or so! Ya, a bomb! I couldn't bring myself to buy it.