My First Cartoon Cake - Tuxedo Sam!

November 8th Sunday. Created my very 1st Cartoon Cake! pondered over the week which cartoon character to do for my cake! had great suggestions by friends and i searched over the internet for snoopy, my melody ... then i shrink my choice to characters that you can't get in a bakery... instantly i tot of Tuxedo Sam! Not many knows this penguin. Its also a Sanrio character! whenever i go Thomson Plaza for piano lessons, i would run all the way to the Sanrio counter and i love all the cute Hello Kitty, Little Twin Stars, My Melody and Tuxedo Sam items! the only 2 T.Sam items i ever own - a paper clip that i used to keep my music opens open but thats missing now and a little tiny sticker book that is all T.Sam stickers! The sticker book is somewhere in a box in my mum's storeroom... hopefully i can still find it!

Wanted to leave the house but i was delayed as little Rachel needed attention. Gx offered to give me a lift to class but as usual he steps out of the house late and he tot i was gog to the same river valley showroom kitchen for class! drove to haig road and we found the place and i rush in but i alittle later than usual! but i found myself a corner seat giving myself a corner to concentrate on piping T.Sam! we were shown 2 methods of baking a chocolate cake. Genoise and emulsified. ever tried Genoise with Chef Nan and it failed to rise as this batter cannot be over beaten! the exciting part was when we were shown how to do chocolate transfer for the cartoon characters! wooo..... this was fun! we got to piped out the outline of our cartoon character and then filled it up with colours! its like drawing and painting with chocolate! how nice! cos we get to eat it after its created! My 1st penguin was pipped and somehow the thickness of my lines were not ideal... so i quickly pipped a 2nd penguin!

then sadly, the blue for T.Sam didnt look ideal! afraid that i was running out of time as many seemed to finish flooding their creation, i chanced upon a purple and i used it as i tot it mit look good but it wasn't exactly the same colour thou... with other students still working on their cartoon pieces, i tried to mix the blue and filled it in on my 1st chocolate outline. with extra chocolate, i pipped many heart outlines! Sadly when i transfered the chocolate penguins onto the tray my purple T.Sam had an accident and a corner was broken! stayed calm and left it to harden in the fridge... Instructor Philia then showed how to do Italian meringue buttercream which i had learnt from the macaron class the day before so i stepped back and let the rest of the class watch her do it. We assembled our cakes with oreo biscuit crumbs with th buttercream and frosting the cake was not easy!

thou it was difficult to get the cream really smooth on the cake, it wasnt too bad for my 1st try althou i really wanted it to be perfect! the best moment was when every lady in the room got their cartoon characters, there was wooo and ahhhs! No matter how the buttercream looked on the cake, once the chocolate masterpiece is in place, the cake looked good! i pushed the chocolate hearts outline all around the side to "cover up", to draw attention away from the uneven frosting! then we pipped buttercream trimming around the cake!

Viola! my very first cartoon cake! I made a Tuxedo Sam cake! i used the chocolate penguin that i 1st pipped as the blue didnt turn out too bad althou its not the bright royal blue! also becos the purple penguin had a little overflowed colour due to the accident. but both colour looked pretty on T.Sam. Lucky for me, my dear hubby knows Tuxedo Sam! So i gave him the 2nd penguin as a reward for being so nice, allowing me to have my very own "me time" doing what i want and giving me a chance to learn what i love!

With the perfect timing, this cake was made with a person in mind. My mother-in-law. Her bdae was the following Friday but we usually have bdae celebration dinners on Mondays. So the timing was perfect! My MIL knows T.Sam cos she brought hubby and SIL to thomson to get the soft toy years back! heard the story many times and so i know she will be surprised to receive a T.Sam cake! Showed it to her when she got home on Sunday nite... thou she is very tired from a day's work, it was nice to see her smile when she saw T.Sam!