Preparation of Rachel's 4th Birthday

This morning, I woke up very early feeling fresh (though I slept quite late last nite and didn't sleep well - cos I'm too excited!!) and in a high spirit! Well, it's time to prepare Rachel's birthday cakes and to test the capability of my new oven. :)

I started off doing the sponge cake for her big circle cake to put the Barney Topper on. This is quite normal as I've always been doing this for sale. Then I started to do the cupcakes. I tried doing 1 batch first, but can only yield 11 cups (I thought can yield more than 12 cups as the last time I did with the same recipe, I yield 12 cups). This is the baking of my 1st batch of cupcakes (nothing fantastic, cos only 11 cups which my old oven can handle):

So, as I needed at least 14 cupcakes, I just had to do another batch. But this time round, I did 2 batches at 1 shot! It was so shiok!! No more doing 1 batch by 1 batch and baking 1 batch by 1 batch. The feeling is just great, cos now u know that ur oven can handle the quantity, there was no stress! No stress of unsuccessful cupcakes! And this was taken before they proceed to bake:

And after 15 mins, this is how it looks:

So satisfying to see that my oven can accomodate a total of 30 cups at 1 go and 2 layers of sponge cake at 1 go. My dreams finally came true!

Well, after bake, decoration need to be done lah, without much saying. This is the decor for the whole cake:

I'm quite happy with it as the theme and colours were so nice and matched. Maybe becos I'm very happy today and my mood was very calmed when I decorate this cake, that's why the end result was good.

Then, I need to whip up the buttercream icing for the cupcakes. This is the most difficult part and the part which I hated most (bcos the icing sugar just fly everywhere), but thanks to Wilton Website and a blogger, I managed to find useful information about the buttercream and ideas on how to minimise the mess and made my day a better one. Now, I'm in love with buttercream and told my maid (who will be going back soon) that I will bake her a cake for her to bring home and decorate with buttercream.

For the cupcakes, I'd actually prepared before hand this barney figurine

but by the end of the day, most of them didn't "survive" except for 1, I also dunno the reason, ended up, the cupcakes only have 1 with the figurine (which my inital plans was the whole cake is surrounded by such cupcakes) :

These are the finally end products of the cupcakes:

These cupcakes will surround the whole cake, dunno how's the effect, anyway, tomorrow will be the day liao, we shall see.......................