Year of the Tigger!

It is said to be an optimistic year based on the Lunar Calendar. We will enjoy Chinese New year but also Valentine's Day!  Here is my lovely friend Tigger, the most popular Tiger I know. He makes an awesome cake topper to this festive Chinese New Year cake :)
 

He is adorned on top of a bright chinese red fondant cake!  The cake is decorated with fondant made double happiness symbols,a golden nugget and red firecrackers!

 Here was my inspiration, I saw this Lucky Money envelope and knew right away I had to do Tigger! :D  

This was Tigger before I painted his stripes! He's so helpless..

  Here is Tigger finally sculpted and I just attached his head!   I used black flower stamen for the whiskers!

I created the gold signs with square cookie cutters and then turned them to diamonds and hand piped the chinese characters.  While piping the chinese "happiness" letters I realized that I was much better at piping in Chinese than in English!  LOL :)

The story of why the colors are Gold and red.. check out Wikipedia for the Chinese Mythology that started the Chinese new year tradition.

Each firecracker is a rolled piece of fondant and I mixed t tsp. of gold pearl dust and 1/2 tsp. of lemon extract and painted on the gold strips on the mini firecrackers.

Here I used Edible Gold Dust spray and sprayed the golden nugget!  

I attached the Chinese plagues on the sides of the cake and then placed Tigger and his golden nugget on top  and then added the final decorations by piping red strings for the firecrackers to be connected!  

This is a Square 6" inch with vanilla bean cake and Green tea buttercream!  Wishing you all a wonderful and prosperous year!  Enjoy your lucky money!

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

The Game of Go!

The chinese game of "Go" is called Wei-Qi. The game is played by two players who alternately place black and white stones (playing pieces, now usually made of glass or plastic) on the vacant intersections of a grid of 19×19 lines. The object of the game is to control a larger portion of the board than the opponent. A stone or a group of stones is captured and removed if it has no empty adjacent intersections, the result of being completely surrounded by stones of the opposing color. ( provided by Wikipedia!)

My friend Clara thought her dad would like this as his birthday cake, so here I have constructed the "Go" or "Wei-qi" board using ivory and tan fondant. Clara's cake is green tea cake with red bean buttercream!  Sticking with the asian cake flavors :D 

I used custom black and white M&M's as the game pieces. 

Here are the black and white M&M's for decorating and the blank game board I just created by using a ruler to cut thin strips of black fondant for the lines on the game board.  

Technically I am playing myself here!  AH HA!  I am playing while attaching the game pieces!  I think I am my own worse enemy...cuz it looks like a tie the way I placed the M&Ms...LOL :D

 Anyone up for a game of GO?  Or just some cake????