Christina Ong - The Contemporary Buttercream Bible

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Welcome to the first complete contemporary guide to using buttercream. We are immensely proud to be able to share with you our techniques, tips and ideas all our expertise in this book. There is nothing in the world like buttercream. Not only does it allow you to be hugely creative but it also tastes absolutely delicious. Its a winning combination!

We know through our own experience that it takes practice to produce great results, but you will be amazed at the stunning and intricate designs you can achieve straight away with buttercream. Dont be daunted, just dive in and try a few techniques. You dont need a lot of equipment, we didnt start with anything. You dont need to be a brilliant artist, we discovered that working with buttercream unleashed a creative streak we didnt really know we had. You do need a sense of adventure and a willingness to look for inspiration everywhere. Soon youll be piping pretty cupcakes and beautiful couture cakes. Just remember that not so long ago we were exactly like you...

We just cant help but smile (often a little teary eyed) whenever we share the story of how Queen of Hearts Couture Cakes came about. We could never have imagined that buttercream would bring us to where we are now. It really changed our lives.

Working and living a thousand miles away from your family is hard. Our familes are in the Philippines, however, we are very blessed to have met wonderful friends in the UK who treat us like their family. So on Mothers Day in 2011, we wanted to give our two second-moms something more special than just a card and bouquet of flowers. We decided to bake something for them. And so we scoured the internet (because we didnt have any recipe books) for ideas until we stumbled on a video tutorial on how to make a sunflower cupcake using an improvised piping bag made from a plastic food storage bag. A few more clicks and we watched a tutorial on how to pipe a rose, camellia, chrysanthemum, then a whole cupcake bouquet! We instantly fell in love with the idea and can still remember our excitement to try it.

We didnt have any baking equipment at all, so the following day we went to the supermarket to buy the ingredients, and then off to the discount store for a silicone cupcake baking tray and spatula, and then we also bought the cheapest hand mixer we could find. Oh yes! We were ready and we didnt waste a single second. Before long a lovely smell filled our tiny house not just the kitchen but the entire house! There was no room for a full-size oven, so we used to do all our baking in a tiny 5L electric oven, which lived on top of the fridge. Crazy... funny... but its true.

And so there they were, our first ever half dozen gorgeous golden brown dome-y cupcakes. We had our improvised piping (pastry) bags ready and followed the video tutorial step by step. Tadaaa! Our first ever sunflower cupcake. We also attempted to pipe roses and they turned out to be flowers.

So the special day came and we surprised our friends with our homemade gift. They both really loved it even though some the cupcakes were coming off the wrappers. One of them, Aida, was really the person who convinced us to improve our skills and suggested the idea of making a business out of it. It was as if she saw something in that first, slightly wonky bouquet. She made us feel that there was real potential there. So we kept practising, fell in love with piping until we became obsessed, and that was really the start of it all.

We kept practising, we set up a Facebook page and a website, but no orders arrived for our fledgling business.Meanwhile we kept bombarding Aida with our baking efforts until we finally developed a really good cupcake recipe. Then one day, we had a call from a local school asking if we would be able to join their summer fair. It was in three days time. Without hesitation, we said yes.

Right there and then, we started working on it using just our tiny oven all we can remember is that we barely slept just to prepare for our first ever fair. Our efforts paid off, we were so overwhelmed with the responses from everyone. When a lady approached us and asked us if we would be interested in taking a pitch at a larger local event, we gave her a hug!

And so we went to another event, and then another, and then another. We had to move to a bigger place as the business got bigger. Not only that, but we also went from cupcakes to bigger cakes and then even bigger wedding cakes. We have literally never stopped since.

We practise and practise and practise whenever we have time, even now. And from local fairs, we are now being invited to big exhibition shows, to teach around the world and to contribute to magazines and blogs. We are also very proud to have been invited to join The Experimental Food Society which is an organization formed to front the UKs most talented and pioneering culinary creatives. It is really quite overwhelming!

We are often being asked where we get our inspiration from. Our answer is, anything beautiful, from fabrics to paintings, dresses to photos, anything eye-catching that we could translate into an edible form of art. One thing that we would share with you is to keep innovating. Dont just settle for whats already there or what everyone else is doing. Dig into your imagination and keep on trying and exploring different ways and techniques.

We hope these things will help you in your cake journey, just like they did for us. So join us as we continuously strive to revive and modernize this age-old Buttercream Art. We hope that we can be an inspiration to all of you who are starting or growing their own cake business, and those who are simply baking at home. If you feel frustrated or you are running out of patience, just think about those two girls that started baking using a small 5L table-top oven and ended up writing The Contemporary Buttercream Bible. Just think of them and you will feel much better knowing that if you put your whole heart into whatever you are doing, you will make it!

Its really important to learn and eventually master the basics of buttercream because you will find that you use the same simple recipe, techniques and equipment over and over again. Once you understand the nature of buttercream, you will know how to get the very best creative results from it.

We strongly believe that our buttercream recipe is at the very heart of this book. It is the most important element that enables us to create amazing couture cakes, as we will show you in the following chapters. Buttercream is a delicate medium, and you do need to understand its characteristics in order to get the most from it.