We’re at Kedah at the moment. This is one of the states in Malaysia located at the northern part of the country.  A state where it was famous for its laksa and its paddy fields.

Another wedding we’re attending, but this time it is a very close cousin’s of mine. Hanis. We’re a very family with many aunties and uncles with respective children who quickly become our cousins and second cousins and whatnots.

Kedah is also the birthplace of my mother and when both my grandparents were alive, we came home for Eid every year and it was a blast, year after year.

The Kedahans too, at least the ones I’m related to by blood are great cooks. You will not get through a day without stuffing yourself silly. The Laksa Teluk Kuchai, white plump noodles in spicy fish broth, served with shredded vegetables are by far my favourite. As well as fried ikan pekasam and kacang poi and ubi kemili and a myriad of other dishes.

All of my aunties and uncles are generous people and the dinner tables seem to refill itself all day long.

I can’t wait.

We’re going over there tomorrow to join my clan.  The kids are whining that they should spend a night here when their cousins are already there.

BTW, a little note on the cookie picture.  It’s one of my favourite cookie design and cutter too. I love the Topsy Turvy Wedding Cake .. but sadly it’s not a typically common choice.  So, when Azzu requested for them, I chanced upon it.

It took a bit of time to make since I have to fill in the different colours in the bottom tier, one by one. But the rest were so much fun to make. She wanted lime green and purple and the rest was up to me, she said. Whoohoo!!

When I started playing with sugarpaste, I was fascinated by the myriad of things you can do with it. But most of all, I love that I can imprint designs on them.

But to my dissapointment, embossing pins or mats specific for cake are exorbitantly expensive, I seriously felt like strangling someone. Hahah.

So, I turned to ebay and found these. These Cuttlebug embossing folders are meant for scrapbooking, where you put a paper in between and run it through a pressing machine and out comes beautifully embossed paper.

And bonus points, there are plastic thin folders and cost me about USD9 to ship 9 sets. The only snag is that you can only do a small portion of fondant at a time. But I do cookies, anyway.

These were for Farahiya for a wedding doorgift. I made the ribbon rose the easy way, no tool whatsoever. Take a ball os small fondant, make it into a sausage, and thin the up side and just roll.

My favourite new colours .. pink and orange. Looks cheerful and happening.

If you live in this particular latitude and longitude as I do, you’d notice how it rains a lot the last few weeks. In case you’re not sure where I am, I live in Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia in the region where monsoons are rife.

It rains in the mornings.

It rains all through the afternoons, ripping branches off tress and sent them sprawling on the roads, stalling traffic.

It rains at nights, ever so welcome so we all can climb onto beds, into our plush comforters and turn on the air-conditioners for that continued creature comfort.
Note: Duvets aren’t entirely welcome here cos even the lowest tog is too warm.

And for house owners, these rainy season is about discovering new leaks on your roofs. Sigh!

We found lines of slowly dripping rain water on the walls of our master bedroom. In the girls’ room. Next to the PC. Even one drip managed to soak through a whole box of non-stick grease paper, I use for my cookies.

They’re everywhere. Sinister lines. You just have to go and touch them and hope that it’s dry and not still drippy-drip.

Sigh! I guess the house does need a makeover. It’s after all 12 years old and it’s high time for a major overhaul too.

Well. Must keep an umbrella at all times now.

Note: I pray for the folks up north in Terengganu and Kelantan and Kedah and Perak for their flooding woes. Here I am complaining about dripping, leaky roofs while they have their houses being swept off by gushy and rushing floodwater, parking itself some 200m away from its original location. *eyes buldging*

And the stories about a housewife killing a large snake just sent shivers down my spine. I wouldn’t want to wade through the floodwater imagining of what sort of creatures are swimming to save themselves in that murky water. But if you’re stricken by the floods, you have not much choice I guess.

And the boy and the girl who drowned. How sad it must have been for the parents and relatives.

I pray for you and for your losses on your house, livelihood, ruined paddy fields and the hardship in these coming months. Amin.

*seething*

Nothing girly about a woman seething eh? Nothing major, it’s just that the Cel-com broadband is oh-so-slow this morning. And my internet banking just wouldn’t work as no matter how many times I’ve requested for the blinking verification code, it never comes to my phone.

*molten lava about to be puked out*

Anyhow. I should report that my Cookie Class : Baby Shower theme last Saturday was a BLAST!

I get nervous easily (for you, you and you who are scoffing when you read this, I’m watching you! *eyes narrow with murderous looks and finger wagging*) and strangers make me a nervous wreck, far too easily. But then again, once I get to know the students and we all started to laugh a bit, it became like a bunch of friends poring over icing and cookies. It was fantastic. And you wonder if this was my first class eh? Nope, my *counts* 15-16th class already.

Should have brought my camera and snap some pictures, but always, I forgot. Sheesh!

Anyway.

Here’s some fanciful girly pinky cookies for y’all. These were requested by Noreen from Little Favors for some girls’ party. Told’ja, my flaky memory!

Tiny sprays of daisies.  These were arout 1.5inch.  Smallest cookies i’ve decorated.

Smooch!

Sparkly pink crown !

Stripey handbag.  Sky blue and hot pink work seriously wonderful!

Psychedelic handbag .. ouch!  See that little red speck.  Darn the stray sanding sugar.

What would a girls’ party be without dresses and all girly things?

From Razzle Dazzle Cookies

Traffic seems a little lighter these days and I’m so relieved! It’s the end of the year and people are taking their kids and parents and maids to Disneylands and Hong Kong and Bandung and wherever else my kids have been itching to go, that we have not gone before.

But the most important thing is that the traffic is lighter. Mega important since I’m a Just-In-Time person when it comes to clocking in at work. I can tell you this. The time between 8:00 t0 8:05 can be dissected into many time zones, the most popular and hectic is known an injury time.

Anyways. The whole point of the post is to tell you that I woke up late today at 6:44am and yet managed to swipe at 7:59am. Phew! Major relief!

Ooohh .. the baby pram cookie (see picture) are ordered by Noreen of Little Favors for her client’s cukur jambul.

Let me tell you this. I normally sketch my designs on paper and plan everything. I make a note of how many colours I need, how much flooding icing and how much piping icing. The bags and the box and the ribbons. Very well-planned, even I was impressed sometimes.

But nothing beats sitting in front of a tray of blank cookies with icing bag in hand and start to decorate. This is where the actual differs from the plan and sometimes it works and sometimes it sucks. But for the pram, I was mighty happy.

I’ve always struggled with the prams but I am so glad that the design took off. The ruffles by the side of the prams look contemporary. Hehhe! *feeling smug*

It’s Akma Akid’s 4th birthday and Arliza (who once has attended my Cookie Class) ordered a whole set of HAPPY BIRTHDAY AKMA AKID and an accompanying circus of dinosaurs an other less mean animals, like hippos, elephants and sheeps.

I think I’ll call this design Patchwork Alphabets.  Truth be told, before I jumped into this cookie-business, I was once and still am an accomplished quilter.  Okay okay!  5 quilts do not necessarily earn me the title.  So sue me!

Anyhow.  The alphabets gave me a reason to tinker with a huge box of alphabet cutters sitting on my shelf.   MrGart has already given up asking me about utilising things that I buy.  Yikes!

Truth be told too,  although the alphabet cookies were simple enough, I ran into a cookie disaster.  Seriously, ppl do get complacent.  I did.

You see, the white patch I did on every cookie, that turned out to be too thin and even after 6 hours of air-conditioning, it just won’t dry.  Not the whole cookie, just a little teeny-weeny patch.  I threw out the whole happy-ness and started again.  Alhamdulillah, the second round went well, except that I missed out one “H”.  *ampun*

These are a sheep that I did, using the rosettes to mimic its fleece.  I never liked black icing, feel that black on food seems a little sinister, so that explains my sheep has blue eyes.  hahaha.

The elephant.  Okay okay.  Maybe elephants have long, swishy tails instead of curly ones like a piglet’s.  Yikes!  Should really listen to my 4-yo Ariz then.  Sorry Arliza.

I love designs like this. I hope one day I can make a full size topsy-turvy cake this like. But for now, I comfort myself with a cookie version only.

Hahah.

I bought the cutter a while ago and these came with 3 textured mats for fondant, but I’m just lazy. So I just used RI.

Here goes, simple decoration with swirls and dots with silver dragees accent.

100 of these cutesy little cookies were requested by Nurul for her baby girl, whom I had the pleasure of peeking in the car when Nurul came to pick them up.

Pretty lass and such wonderful mother too.

These were for Tania’s Engagement doorgifts and hantaran. Hope she likes them. It’s kinda rare for green to be chosen, but that gives me the opportunity to test my mint green colour.

As doorgifts.

Imprints for the Hantaran Round Cookie

Pink fondant ribbon flower.

The Silver Heart with Ribbon Flower

The accompanying Heart with Dots and lined with silver dragees.

Munira was so sweet when she called asking details about my cookies and the best part was when she just decided on the colour theme and let me be.

So, there. I hope the engagement went well and I hope insyallah sampai ke pelamin dan berbahagia ke anak cucu. Amin.

Suhaili ordered this and truthfully speaking, I had a major disaster with them. Despite the fact that the order was small and I was prepared. However, since I’ve never stick edible images on royal icing covered cookies, I did not know that once the image is on, if the Royal Icing is still wet, it will never set dry.

Arghhhhh!

I literally threw away the whole batch and quickly ordered another set of images. Alhamdulillah, it all worked out fine.

So, moral of the story. Make sure your cookies are completely dry before you stick the image on. Got it ?

These cookies I tell was so much fun to look at. And was a pain to make, all because I had to hide them from Optimus Prime obsessed Ariz. I gave him one and he gleefully talked to it.

These were for Aiidin’s birthday party and thanks Famy for trusting in me, yet another year. Haha .. *shudders thinking about the awful Thomas The Train I did before*. Hopefully I’ve gotten better. Yikes!
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First 2-tiered wedding cake. A 6″ cake which is also 6″ tall on a 8″ cake. The past 2 weeks have been kinda relaxing for me, cookie-wise. Hahaha. Since I didn’t take a lot of orders preferring to focus on Ramadhan.

I only did a High Fashion cookies class on the 29th August and that was it. I was so relieved after the class as I was looking at a leisure month. BTW, the class so much fun. It was Ramadhan nevertheless and I was fasting but somehow it was very interesting. The 11 students who came were very enthusiastic and I’m grateful that I was able to conduct the class well.

Anyhow.

I meant to write about some of the cookies I managed to deliver for the past month but someone borrowed my camera through hubby and yet to return. I hope that person returns it back soon and she’d better not delete any of the pictures, still!
*shudder*

Well. There’s 2 weeks of Ramadan to go and then it’s Hari Raya and suddenly we’re right smack in the wedding season. The good thing about taking time off like this is that I get to reflect and to really plan for my October wedding orders. Whatever I can do in advance like fondant ribbon flowers and fondant hearts cutout I should start soon. And this is the best to check on stocks of ribbons and bags and tools.

Anyway.

Selamat Berpuasa to all you out there. The last 10 days is fast approaching and we should all quadruple our efforts. Insyallah.

I have this cutter.                 

But I really want is this cutter.

So how now brown cow?

*hangs head*

I know this is a bit late, but well, better late than never eh?

Anyhow. This month’s class will be on the 25th July 2009, a Saturday and is set to begin at 10:00am until 12:30 pm.

The theme this month will be Wedding Cookies and we’ll be doing a lot of tiered-wedding cake, wedding dresses, hearts and stuff like that. Click here to go to Cake Connection and get the other details.

Truthfully speaking, most of my orders are either for weddings or engagements or risik and the likes. And more for wedding favors and hantarans too. So this is like right down my alley. *glee*

But. But. But.

Unfortunately, when I was at the Cake Connection yesterday, I was told that the class has been sold out. In fact, we’ve had to take in 10 ppl! Wow! I had to pick my jaws off the floor.

I am flattered that I get this chance and that I’m more suprised that the response to the cookies classes have been superbly encouraging.

So, guys .. if you’re keen and you’re not the early 10, don’t fret just yet. We’re having this on a monthly basis now and I’ll be sure to announce the dates for the future classes, kay!

Till then. Enjoy your weekend.

It’s 5:19pm and an unusual time to find me still sitting in my room.

Normally, by 5:15pm, I would’ve dashed to the car headed for home.

But. Jeng jeng jeng…

Tonight is the Anuar Zain’s concert. Yay! And I am going. With GartRed, since MrGart has developed a sudden allergy over the sights of MrCroon’s meneran while he sings and for the life of him, he could not tolerate seeing MrCroon’s whites of the eyes while he belts out his ballads. So Gartred it is.

Where is she?

Anyhow, thought I’d gloat a bit, while I wait. No?

Here’s what kept me busy last night. 50 of these.

The theme was silver and white. And I am so so glad that the silver worked. Heheheheh! Serious. I’ve never done silver before, something about metal fear. But I did an Aztec Gold before and it was a blast.

Nah! Close-up. Obviously still swooning over my silver.

I met up with a tall, lanky girl named Alia a few weeks back after she called me up to ask about the cookies. Her aunt, Farida had ordered the milk bottles for SHAQUILL’s birthday as well as MOZZAD’s khatam Quran do.

So, she and her glitzy friend Trina poured over the catalogue of pictures I brought while, we the Garties were all hands eating the ketam at Kayu Manis over at Bukit Jelutong.

Here they are, Alia!

She wanted a silver-white theme, a wedding cake a heart monogram.

And I so love the silver, alhamdulillah. It really worked and I was so happy.

The 3-tiered wedding cake in silver and white. Since silver is rather mute, I added tiny daisies with golden yellow centre and leaves just to perk things up a little.

Alia ordered 25 of the cake and the other 25 of the heart monogram.

Just to highlight the silver. I tinted my icing with a drop of black, then a touch of royal blue. Once the flooding is set, I brushed the silver lustre dust mixed with some fresh lemon juice. I used to use a normal bruch which was so ineffective for large areas like this. So, now I got wiser and use a blusher brush, of course a specially reserved for the purpose.

So, Selamat Bertunang, Alia.

Azhad Muhaimin is my Mak Ndak’s first grandson and I wanted to do something special to commemorate this event. So, I made 94 pieces of this. Salah kira la, that’s why it’s 94 instead of a round 100. Haha.

Anyhow. Initially Mak Ndak wanted to have the full name written and I said, alamak .. panjangnya. So, we settled on Azhad.

Would’ve been swell if we were there but at the kenduri day, we were jumping off our boats to swim to shore, for lunch before another snorkelling session at Pulau Redang.

So, glad to know that the cookies were a hit and I wish we were there.

Baby pram. I didn’t like that I outlined it again, sedikit messy. Must improve. And I now know better things to do with the wheel.

The Milk Bottle. Notice the slightly mottled effect on the bottle. Yup. I thought I’ve done this enough, but somehow my icing was a little too runny and when it dried, it mottled. *hangs head*

Shyamala called and informed me that the class was overbooked and that 9 students have committed to the class. Yikes! *nervous*

Farah, my florist friend tagged along since she wasn’t sure of the location.

There were 9 alright and there were 2 young guys, Ehsan who’s done a fair bit of cake deco and Fakruddin who does fruit carvings. The girls were Farah, Su Chin from Singapore, Hasniza and alamak, I forgot the names of those gorgeous and gregarious ladies. Yikes! Must remember to write down names. I know the faces, but names escape me. Story of my life, eh?

Anyway.

The theme was Baby Shower so I kept the colours pastel, lilac, pink and sky blue. And the cookies were pram, milk bottle, heart, round for bib, rattles and squares for monograms.

Girls, hard at work.

Farah & Niza ( I think) .. concentrating.

Ehsan, who has such steady hands and great designs to the envy of us, gals.

Cookies Pictures Ahead!

These were Ehsan’s

One of my demo cookies. Alamak, the wheels’ a bit senget.

Su-Chin’s artsy cookie.

One of the prams we made.

Fakruddin’s replica of CakeConnection’s logo. Good job!

Just my demo cookie, for those who do not prefer a lot of icing on their cookies.

Since Farah was curious how to make basketballs, baseballs, tennis balls or golf balls, so I demonstrated a baseball. This shined cos it’s fresh and super wet.

Fakruddin’s lot.

Another plateful of delights.

A trayful of such great attempts from first-timers at cookies. Good job, people!

Shyamala from the CakeConnection at PJ One, requested these for his son’s birthday party last weekend. She specifically requested for dinosaurs but did not specify what species.

I can tell you that in the last few weeks, I’m an expert on dinosaurs since Ariz’s fascination on these dinos.

So, I made tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus (these could easily be transformed into a triceratops, but I didn’t pursue that) and a brontosaurus.

An orange T-rex. I had the eyes painted with edible marker. Wanted to do proper eyes, but a check in Ariz’s World History encyclopedia revealed that most dinos have small eyes, so dots would do then.

A baby bronto. Ariz complained that this was not a bronto cos they have longer neck and they eat leaves. Hokeh …

Doesn’t this remind you of the friendly Barney ? I couldn’t help but use his combination. Funnily enough, Ariz was not reminded of his best buddy, padahal dulu so the very obsessed with the purple dino.

A bunch of the stegosaurus. Ariz complained too that these did not look like they were meat-eating or carnivores. Sheeshh! The way he complained, mengalahkan orang yang order. I think Shyamala & Nancy, when I brought in the cookies, were beaming. And here, a little tiny todd, complaining to the heavens. But then, how can you refute a dino expert?

And lastly, 30 pieces of these butterflies in lilac and hot pink. I guess, you can’t please girls with dinosaurs, they’d give you looks that could kill, so I guess these would keep them smiley and prissy too. Heheh

This is Farida’s 2nd order from me. Remember the SHAQUILL’s milk bottles?

She requested for a round, simple design. So, I did a 2.5″ round cookies, with pale ice blue background and orange swirl border with royal blue text.

To MOZZAD, ramai orang suka nama you. Heheh and alhamdulillah sebab khatam Quran and insyallah more khatams in the future, ya?

A bunch of love letters, ordered by Anees for her brother’s girlfriend/fiance/wife. That part I’m not too sure.

The love letter and its matching envelope.

I actually love the cookies, but sadly, I had to refund Anees because the red icing broke down and crumbled. The white was okay.

This was what happened. Red is hard colour to get, seriously. I was supposed to make the red at least 2-3 days in advance, so that the red can deepen. But I was out of time and I made it only the night before and I had to put in more red gel paste. To the point that it broke down. I should’ve suspected that earlier, but I thought it would be okay.

To Anees, I apologise for the mistake and even though agak comot, I hope the cookies tasted great.

These were meant for her brother’s wedding, I think. She wanted pale green & pink, and then purple.

6-Petalled Daisies

Butterflies

Hope the wedding went great. Banyak betull wedding these days. My mom was telling me, she had like 6 weddings to attend in a weekend, tapi I takde pun. Pathetic, I know!

Father’s Day looms near on the 21st June 2009. Honour THAT man. Make him smile from ear to ear to know someone cares for him and someone appreciates him. We’ve made moms happy last month, it’s their turn now.

So, what are you waiting for? Call Farah at 019.220.4939 and or email her at farahfloristngifts@gmail.com