I love cakes, maybe a lot of you love them too. I happened to know a lady in Penang who makes amazing cakes that are 3 dimensional and edible through a client's wedding. Her name is Lee Sin and she makes her cake from home, based in Penang island. If you still recall, the East Meets West wedding? Or, the cake below would recall your memory. Well, the main intention I'm blogging about this is just to share with all of you what I thought is interesting and to spice up the content of this blog a little. This is my sincere offering and hope that everyone enjoys this post :)
Almost all that what you saw above is hand made and edible, for an instance the flower and body of the cake is made of fondant(sugar paste) and sugee cake. One day, I happened to be talking with Lee Sin and I am real interested in what she does and ask if I could come and see her work. She agreed with the suggestion and boy I'm so excited when paying her a visit!
The time I entered the house, I think I saw some fake flowers in the living room. Yes I'm right, but what really amazes me is, all were hand made by Lee Sin with clay! I have purposely show a larger crop of the red flower above and look at the stamens, they are 'flurry' like the real ones! Apart from that, the texture of the petals are really life-like. Below, is not regular bear toy bought from hyper market. Yes, you're right, it's handmade work from Lee Sin again.
This is Lee Sin's work station. When I was there, she was doing a "Hiking Cake". This cake was ordered by a lady for her husband's 50 years old birthday. The husband loves hiking a lot and Lee Sin drafted out the outlook of the cake.
There you go, the husband resting after some hike with his Golden Retrievers.
This part is amazing too. As you can see, Lee Sin making a banana tree using fondant. Look at how detailed she made and the texture of the leafs!
Putting up the bananas one by one. You can imagine that how much work and focus is needed in finishing these fine details.
This is a banana tree made from clay that Lee Sin made for practice purpose earlier on before starting this "Hiking Cake".
In order to retain the cake's freshness, Lee Sin prefers to work over night. For example, if there is a cake that is due on Saturday, it is the norm that she would work the whole Friday night till the next morning so that when she delivers, the cake remains fresh. A big salute to Lee Sin, she creates a brand new edible art each week and imagine the sleeping hours she had sacrificed weekly in order to let her clients enjoy fresh cakes on the event date. She never complained but smiling all the way when telling me about this.
Cutting the family emblem of the client which is edible too, to be placed on top of the 100 mini cakes ordered by the client.
Based on the outlook, I were thinking that there must be a lot of people thought it is not edible and will unwrap the cake before eating. lol... This white mini cake is actually edible in whole. But of course, according to Lee Sin if you think it's too sweet to take it as a whole, you can always unwrap the fondant and consume only the cake inside. :)
Lee Sin shoots her own cakes too with her Nikon DSLR, I saw quite some of her shots and she definitely knows what angle to take. That gives me pressure if the next time I shoot her cake during an event, I must make justice of her cakes with my camera!
The completed "Hiking Cake". The wife is panting at the mid of the hill while the husband is at hill top resting already. hehe... This is such a great piece of art! Everything that you see below could actually be eaten!
I am not lying, Lee Sin's expression above is what she displays most of the time when she talks about her creations and when doing her cakes. Throughout the session, I get to know quite a bit about Lee Sin. First of all, she sees all her cakes as work of art and it is her hobby. Lee Sin actually graduated with an artistic background and started learning about making cakes after her retirement via self taught during year 2008.
Lee Sin started to learn making her own cake on 2008, the cake above is her very first cake for her mother's birthday. During that time, she was looking for a unique cake for her mother's birthday celebration but after going through a lot of cake houses, she couldn't find one that she thought is unique. Out of disappointment, she bought some books and searched online how to make cakes, based on her preferences, trial and error, she has created the cake above with her own hands only by referring to the sources mentioned earlier. From there onwards, her interest in creating different design of cakes aroused and not stopped till date.
The mandarin oranges, are made from fondant and real cakes by Lee Sin for a client. This work has soon caught the attention of the media and not long after that, the media people from Bernama and NTV7(video link) and Kwong Wah Daily came to interview Lee Sin about her life-like cakes. Therefore, when Lee Sin went shopping or walks in the street, some people that recognizes her would refer her as "the cake lady" from the news :)
Top left: A full size violin made for her son's birthday. Full size violin means the size of violin played by an adult violinist, the cake is made according to the actual size. Top right: A cake made for her elder son's proposal of marriage. The black box contains the real proposal ring. Lee Sin had shown me her design of cake for her son's wedding dinner. Man, it's amazing and I can't wait to see the picture of it when it's done!
A cake made by Lee Sin for her high school mates' reunion event.
Some of her previous work. I am especially impressed by the cake on top left. The roses and leafs are actually hand made out of real chocolote!
Creating cakes that has never been made by others before is Lee Sin's greatest motivation. Therefore before starting on a design, she would search on Google to see if that cake existed elsewhere. Just look at the red "Mee Koo"(a traditional Chinese delicacy) and the Rolex watch, the details are uncompromised even that they were made by hand with sugar and cake only. Again, everything you see from the cake above and below is edible, except the watch's glass.
I always think that how you celebrate an event depicts how important it is to you. The cake, especially, is a very important symbolic item that shows how much you value that celebration. Thanks to talents like Lee Sin, your celebration would never be the same as other people again as each cake brings different implicit and explicit meaning to everyone of us. My experience visiting Lee Sin ended up with "wow... Wah... oh my god...". I felt like I'm from stone age, how embarrassing :p Am so glad to know such a humble and extremely friendly talent.
If you like Lee Sin's work too, join her Facebook page to follow her latest work and view more of her previous work too in detailed by clicking the box below. Her Facebook page is the channel to get to her if you're interested to make a custom made cake for your unique celebration. However, please be advised that Lee Sin is cutting down on her orders now as she'd like to give more attention to her family. So, good luck and place your orders early to avoid disappointment! Thanks for reading.
