Well, that was interesting.... So last year I wrote a blog, around the same time, about a cupcake challenge that I took part in. Last year I won 2nd place in the junior category, which includes grade 6-9. This year was my first year competing in the senior category, grades 10-12, and it was really nerve wracking. I remember during the awards ceremony, I kept on tapping my feet and nervously clapping my hands. I think I did slightly better than last year this year, I mean, I only got 1 place higher. That's right, I got first place. But let me tell you, it was no walk in the park. I had procrastinated so much, to the point where I had to build my display on the very last day. And, I had to come up with a flavor that really emphasized the secret ingredient, berries. I had tested like 5 flavors until I had settled on it being a Strawberry-Ginger cupcake with Strawberry-Basil frosting.  

I loved doing this competition, and I urge you to take part in the club FCCLA to participate in your school too! 

Check out the pictures below to see the cupcakes and the stands!

Happy Late Diwali! You know that deal that I told you about in October? Well, that was to make a Diwali cake for the mayor! This weekend, there was a Diwali festival at the Bridgewater Senior Center. The entire event was amazing; all the dancing, singing, and food was amazing! I made a 2 tier cake and around 75 cupcakes, and they all went away in like 30 minutes! I am not joking. As soon as I announced that the cupcakes were being served, everyone cleared the dance floor and rushed to grab a cupcake:) I got requests from so many people to save a cupcake for them!
The cake and cupcakes were so fun to make! The cake took me until 2:40 to make and the henna design took me around 3-4 hours. Yes my hand was stuck in the position I held my bag in, but I loved making everything! The entire event was really fun, and it came in the Central Jersey News too!! Click here to read the article. 

Below are the pictures and a video from the event.

Well that went well! Frosted World just had its first big event! It was so hectic for me though!
​Let's start from the beginning, so there is this event that the town was having that I had volunteered for. The event is a tree planting ceremony that is supposed to honor an Assamese individual. But that's besides the point. This event was huge, they predicted that hundreds of people would show up. So 2-3 weeks before the event was supposed to take place, I was asked if I wanted a booth for Frosted World. Naturally, I said yes, because I really wanted to do something that was just mine for that event. 
I made around 140 cupcakes for the event, and they all sold out and I talked to a lot of people about Frosted World, and I talked to the mayor as well! This would be the 3rd time I met him. You should have seen his face as soon as he ate a pina colada cupcakes! It was the best feeling ever, I got the satisfaction that I was doing the right thing and these are the kinds of things that keeps me going!  

Below are photos of the event. 

Gosh, I can't believe that it has already been 3 years since I opened Frosted World! On Saturday, 6/11/16, I donated all of the money the Frosted World has made, to CORD, the charity I donate to.  It has been a very rough year this year as I have entered High School, and I found it hard for me to balance my school work with the bakery. Despite all of that, this year I made $5130, and I could not have done this at all if it wasn't for my customers support! This bring the amount of money that Frosted World has donated to CORD to a little over $11,000! Once again thank you all so much for supporting me! Keep a look out for more posts! I hope you order from me soon! :)

You might have noticed this already,  I am on the cover of the BReeze, the Bridgewater-Raritan newspaper! I couldn't find the link so I am scanning the article and posting it here. Thanks to all of you for continuing to support me. 

Hey! I finally got a chance to blog again, and I want to share something with you...
I am the Northern Region winner of the Farleigh Dickinson NJ Youth Business Idea competition. I entered my FrostedWorld idea in this competition based on Mrs. Linda Canulete's (School counselor) recommendation. There were a lot of people who were competing and I really did not have any expectation to win.  When they announced my name as the Northern region winner, people all around me started giving me hugs, even though we were strangers. Everyone was so happy and nice to me. I have attatched the photos from the event, and will soon post the video of me speaking, soon. 

Here is a link to the FDU website with all of the semi-finalists and finalists (If you need help finding me, I the one holding the football and plaque)

http://view2.fdu.edu/academics/silberman-college/centers-and-institutes/rothman-institute-of-entrepreneurship/outreach-programs/new-jersey-idea-competition/

Pictures Below!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Is it the end of 2015 already? I can't believe the year went by so fast. I feel like I'm still in middle school. (Not really, I just remember it very vividly. High School is all I am thinking about right now) Anyways, that's not that important right now. Guess how much money I made so far? I made $3000 since June 2015, and it's all because of you guys, so thank you so very much. I could never have made it if it wasn't for you. Let's reflect on the year and how much progress Frosted World has made so far.

So far Frosted World has donated about $6000 to CORD (June 2015) . If I include the $3000 I made this year,  it would be about $9000. This amount of money seemed like a dream 3 years ago and now it is true. It is really not about the money, but the positive impact this can make in people's life through CORD.

Last year I made a resolution to blog regularly and I can confidently (?) say that I somewhat delivered, at least a little bit... :).

I grew a lot this year and matured, because I didn't accept all of my orders, I had to learn to say no, as I have an extremely busy schedule with high school homework and activities. I would have really liked to do those orders. All the orders  i took turned out to be really good and I have pictures! Everyone likes pictures, right? Here is the link to my gallery.

Another big thing that happened to me this year was meeting Swami Tejomayonandaji during the Mahasamadi camp . He blessed me and appreciated bakery.  You can read all about it in my July blog. I also met the mayor of Bridgewater! which was also extremely exciting, and he said that he would order a cake from me. (Still waiting ... :)). How exciting is that! All in all, this year has been very exciting and I really enjoyed it. Hopefully, next year will be even more exciting! 

Wish you all a very Happy and peaceful 2016!!!

Hi everyone! I've been getting a lot of orders recently, and I have not been accepting some of your orders. I'm very sorry if I didn't accept your order. It is just that I have a lot of school work as I am in High school now, and I am trying to cope with everything and maintain good grades in school and do good in all of my other extra-curriculars. I hope you can understand this. I really want to take all of these orders but there are only so many hours in a day, and my parents keep insisting how important grades are.  Again, I'm really sorry if i didn't take your orders. At this rate, I would be lucky if I am just able to breathe !!

IT is most probably the best day of my life right now!!! I am so happy I can't even describe how I am feeling with words. I just won second place in a cupcake competition!!!! . 

 I am part of a club in my school called FCCLA, which stands for Family Career and Community Leaders of America. This is a national club, and there are 2 competitions that we go to over the course of the year, one in spring and the other in fall. During these, we compete with other school's FCCLA clubs in different events, a banner creation, a wall hanging event, and the cupcake challenge.  The Fall Competition just happened yesterday.  I competed in the Cupcake Challenge with my friend Thi Tran. She made the display, which turned out really cute and pretty, and I made the cupcakes. We had to start planning for this for about 2 months in advance. Let me tell you, those 2 months were not all fun and games, I had to master my recipe and we had to coordinate everything over text. 

But all that hard work we put into this was worth it. The cupcake challenge is split into 3 categories, junior (Freshmen), Senior (Sophomore-Senior), and occupational (Vo-tech students). We competed in the junior category as we are freshmen. Each category is then split into 3 divisions, bronze, silver, and gold,  based on the complexity and your overall score in the events. You  will have no idea what division you are in until they announce your name in the awards ceremony. I know we did well, but wasn't sure that I will win as there were a lot of good competition.  Countless thoughts were racing through my head during the awards ceremony.  Did we do this good? Did we do that good? I shouldn't have done this. We might not get an award!!  I was starting to feel a bit dejected when our name was not announced in the bronze and silver medals. The announcer  moved on to the people who placed in the gold division. My friend Alyssa was in the audience, and her team placed 2nd in the senior category of the banner contest. Suddenly the announcer said, "2nd place, the team from Bridgewater Raritan High School" I was relived, and it almost felt unreal, and for the rest of the day I couldn't stop smiling as this was my first win at a cup cake competition!

So, I finally met the mayor of Bridgewater. I met him for the first time in Martinsville, when I was part of the group at a booth representing our  dance school, Bharat Nritya Academy. It was during the fall festival my dance school was performing at the event. The mayor came to our booth and he was talking to my dance teacher, Rekha Srinivasan. I managed to catch him as he left the booth.  I wanted to explain about my bakery to him  and request him to support my cause. I mentioned about FrostedWorld and that I donate all my money to charity. He was excited and promised that he will support my cause. 

 I saw him again when my dance school was hosting a Diwali function at the senior center. The dances we did were really cool and I could tell that the audience really enjoyed them. We also taught everyone how to do dandia including the mayor, which was really cool. The mayor had won the election and I used this opportunity to congratulate him . My dad and I had a good chat with him. I mainly just stood there trying to get a word in between my dad's pauses, but  the mayor did remember me and mentioned that he will order some cakes for town hall! That will be incredibly cool if these orders come through. I will send him a reminder after a while... :)

YAY!! I ended the 2014-2015 year yesterday, June 13, 2015, with $4,350, which is almost 3 times my goal of $1500. This year I got a lot more orders than I expected to. In the middle it was just a bombardment of orders and I felt very overwhelmed  with all of my activities. My parents told me to not accept orders, but I didn't have the heart to do it. However, I had to, as my schedule was getting too hectic, where i could get only a few hours of sleep. Those days, you wouldn't want to cross me, I acted like a grumpy old lady. 

Last year I learned a lot more techniques, you can see it in my cakes. I started off with doing just simple fondant designs, like the Jake and the never land pirates cake. Then I went to sculpting objects, such as the animals for the environmental/ birthday cake. However, I really learned about my talent when Kalpana Aunty ordered my first ever 3 tier cake. It is the second Frozen cake I made. But I was really scared of this cake, as I had never carved anything before, I had to carve a staircase. I ended up executing a really good cake. From then on, I had gotten a lot of attention, and more people ordered multiple tier cakes. When my cousin's birthday came around, he asked for the car version of the transformer Bumblebee. For this cake I really wanted to expand my horizons, and I made a 3-D carved car cake. As soon as I finished and uploaded this cake, I immediately got a cake order for a 3-D airplane cake, which was really tricky to figure out because of the weight distribution, but I managed. Later, my piano teacher was hosting a salsa music festival, and she asked me to make a cake, and on top she asked me to create a replica of a lizard sculpted by a famous Spanish artist, Gaudi. When I told my parents about this order, they called me crazy for accepting to make the replica. I had painted the lizard by hand, and it took 4 hours. The cake turned out great, nobody wanted to cut the cake. Then I got asked to make a peacock cake for a sweet sixteen. This cake is one of my well-known cakes, and I got a lot of attention from this cake. Then, once again, my piano teacher asked me to make another cake for a classical recital. For this cake I had to make a replica of Van Gogh’s sunflower painting. When she told me about this order my jaw hit the floor, I had tried a new technique with rice paper, and created the flowers using fondant and rice paper. At the end of the year, my parents finally bought me an edible printer, after hours and hours of bugging them. And now I am using it and trying out on some of my cakes.

I am very proud of myself this year, and my parents are as well. I hope this year I do as well as I did last year.

 

Guess What! I just finished making my biggest order ever, 700 1.5"x 1.5"x 1.5" pieces of fruit cake. I got this order for Sri Sai Baba's Sarva Dharma Service Center inauguration in NJ, and they were planning to give the fruit cake as Prasad for the function. Initially, I was so scared to take this order because I thought I couldn't handle making all of it. Eventually I said yes, as I wanted to challenge myself and prove that I can do really big orders. A couple of weeks after I accepted the order, I held a taste test for them at my house. I made 3 different variations of cake for them, and they decided that they liked a recipe which had a power punch of spices and fruits.  

My parents and I assembled the 700 boxes during the week, assembling 100 or 200 a day.  I baked 22 cakes, which would be cut into the squares, over the course of 3 days with a lot of help from my mom. However, I knew I still needed help to finish the process and I enlisted the help of my friends and family to label the boxes, cut the cakes, wrap the pieces and stuff them into individual boxes. Look for the assembly line video below. Thanks a lot Radha Chithappa, Gayu Chithi, Sahana Radhakrishnan, Abina Nimalashanthan, Anika Nerella, Ishita Khanna, Roshni Dhanasekar,  Kavya Dhanasekar, Samyuktha Kumaran, Mukta Patwari!!! You guys are the best!

Last week I made a salamander themed cake. Yes, i know what you are all thinking, "Who would order a Salamander cake?" Well, my piano teacher's company Speak Music Conservatory was hosting a concert for a band, Fresc, who played Catalan music. They wanted me to make a cake based on the salamander from the mosaic park in Barcelona. This Salamander was created  by the famous artist Gaudi.

When I first saw the salamander I thought that the word gaudy originated from this architect's name, because his salamander was bright, flashy and colorful.  When I googled about it, I realized that wasn't correct. My teacher was concerned that I couldn't do it at first, so she asked me to make a simpler version. However, I wanted to create the mosaic finish and bright colors to do justice to the original salamander.

I made the salamander out of rice cereal treats, covered it with fondant, scored the mosaic patter and hand painted the vivid colors. I had to paint it. I had to test out a couple methods until I found the one that worked best. After 4 hours of detailed work and careful painting, I was able to pull off the salamander. My dad said it looked better than the real thing. Of course he will say it as he is my dad. I knew I could improve it a lot, but I was pleased with what I created!

Finally, I made a 3 tier peacock cake! I have always wanted to make a peacock cake. Normally, when I am bored and on the internet, I search up "Amazing Cakes". Ever since I came across a peacock cake, I have always wanted to make one. It finally happened! Madhavi Aunty helped me fulfill my wish. She ordered a peacock cake for her daughter, Radhika, for her sweet sixteen. Thank you Madhavi Aunty and Radhika! 
I had to do so much work for this cake, and I enjoyed every second of it. The peacock body was made out of rice crispies, and it took me several tries to get it right. The process to make the peacock feathers took a very long time. I decided to make trial feathers with different colors, and I had my parents choose their favorite feathers. This way, I could decide which color combinations looked better together. You can find pictures of them in the slideshow below. After the feather was chosen, I had to make replicas of it. Getting the feathers to look almost identical was somewhat hard, but I was up for the challenge. Luckily, on Thursday I had a snow day, and this allowed me to start and finish the feathers of the cake. I was really pleased with the end result of the feathers.

My favorite part of the process came next, the assembly. What I enjoy about it is that you start to see the cake come alive. The assembly made the peacock look realistic. I forced my dad to record the assembly of the feathers; the video is underneath the slideshow. Don’t look at the video and say “Wow! How did she assemble the cake in a minute?” I didn’t. Just the feather assembly took me more than 30 min. The whole cake took me about 20 hours to complete, without including the time I spent on research. 

Cake Fun Facts:

Weight (Heaviest Cake so far): 20lbs

Height (second tallest cake so far): 16 in

Cost (most expensive cake so far) - $200

First time delivering and setting up the cake at the venue

First time making a 3 tier cake – 10”, 8”, 6” 

Hope you had a great party Radhika! Happy Birthday!

I'm back! It is just a few weeks, but I've made so many interesting, specialty cakes in a short while. I had made a Lightning Mcqueen, a Pokemon, Elmo, Environmental and a couple of Frozen cakes. For the Elmo cake I used several new techniques. I used  shallow carving technique for creating the Elmo, a Cake leveler to cut layers of the cake,  and a special tip for piping Elmo's hair,  I had seen Buddy from Cake Boss use this tip, and I had always wanted one for me.  Finally, I bugged my parents and got the tip for this cake. The effect was awesome! Here is a picture of the finished cake. 

 I made a Critter themed cake for a 5 year old. It was a pond/meadow setting with several animals, many are NJ animals, on it. I spent an entire day carving and sculpting all the animals. At the end of the day my hands were killing me, and asking me for a break. There were so many different animals, and so many trial and errors for every one of them. I liked making all of the animals, but my favorites would have to be the alligator, and the box turtle. I have added a few time-lapse videos of me making the cake, including the alligator sculpting. I used several mediums for this cake like modeling chocolate, fondant, homemade rice cereal treats (no marshmallow), and butter cream frosting. Here are some pictures of the finished cake, close ups of the animals, and some time-lapse videos.

Guess what! I surpassed $1000, and I just need $500 to make my goal target of $1500. If you need any holiday cookies, just contact us and we will cater to your every need.

Oh My God!!! I haven't posted anything in... like forever.  I was so busy with school, and extra-curricular activities that left me with no time for blogging. I'll try to work on my blog more often this year. 

I have made a lot of cakes and learnt quite a few new techniques in the interim. More and more, I find myself using fondant for my designs. I'm still learning everyday, and the newest technique I am learning is to carve a cake.  Last week, Pallavi aunty ordered a spider-man cake, and I thought this will be a good opportunity to carve the Spider-man's face out of cake. Just between you and me, Spiderman was supposed to have a bigger nose then what he has in the picture. Here are some photo's of how I carved and created the face.  I'm pretty happy at the way it turned out! Click on the pictures for additional information!

I am also getting several two tiered cake orders. The most recent one I made was for a dancer's sweet 16 party. She wanted a Salangai/Ghungroo (the bells dancer's wear around the ankle for dancing) as the key design element. The entire cake was covered in fondant, as all of my 2-tier cakes are. I worked on this cake for  about 19 hours, in total,  but enjoyed every minute of it. For this cake each bead had to be separately rolled, cut, and painted 3 times, and  fixed on the base individually. I went through several trials and errors before I figured out the way to make it perfect. My hands hurt a lot by the time I finished everything. I have some pictures of my original conception, to the final product, as well as the making of the Salangai. Click on the pictures for additional information! 

Finally, a big Thanks to everyone who ordered from Frosted World, so far! My target is $1500 for this year and as of today, I have earned $465. Need a lot more orders, obviously. Post your thoughts on the cakes in the comments section below. 

Hi Everyone! I just wanted to apologize! I haven't done a blog in such a long time. Sorry! Anyway, I can't believe got past my target amount of money!!! For a long time my goal seemed unreachable, now I have reached it! I can still remember the day when I first started this bakery. I am thanking Alekha and her mother Sudha, for helping me reach my goal , which was $100 away. They gave me three orders, cookies, cupcakes, and my first ever two tiered cake order. At first, I'll admit, I was really scared about this order. In the beginning I wasn't sure I would be able to finish the cake. I made a schedule for the week before to make sure that I would be able to finish the cake on time. First, I finished the flute design they wanted on their cake. Here is a picture:

The day before the cake was due, I was scrambling to finish frosting the cake. Since it was mt first ever two tiered cake, I had a little help from my parents. The entire thing took me 12 hours in total. I think the cake turned out pretty good. Hope you enjoyed it Alekha! One thing is that I didn't get any feedback from them about the cake. Hopefully, I will get it after I publish this blog.