By NASA MARIA ENTABAN
alltherage@thestar.com.my
A LITTLE over two years ago, Satira Diana Borhannuddin found a way to turn her love for art, decoration and desserts into a successful business and most recently, a web show.
She hosts Piece Of Cake, an online show on how to make cakes, cupcakes, trifles, cookies and other delicious desserts.
The web series, which begins airing today, teaches viewers simple and non-time consuming baking and decorating methods.
Satira has been running Pearl Cake Couture & Event Styling, a cake styling and intimate party decoration business – which started out as a hobby – since 2010.
A web show seemed to be the next logical step for her.
Satira Diana, founder of Pearl
“It started as a cupcake-making hobby. My friend and I would make cupcakes, decorate them and upload the pictures to Facebook,” says Satira, 30, who is also a host on Ntv7’s The Breakfast Show.
“The cupcake scene at the time was booming and we started getting requests from friends and family to make cupcakes for events,” she adds.
“We made it our ‘thing’ to come up with creative and interesting ways to decorate cupcakes that no one had thought of before.”
A competitive person by nature, Satira soon moved on to custom-made cake designing and styling, as well as intimate party decorating.
No matter how crazy or out-there a client’s idea for a cake is, Satira finds a way to make it work.
So far, she’s put everything from cartoon characters, dolls and floral arrangements to sportsgear, make-up sets and even body parts (an anatomically accurate-looking knee joint for a knee surgeon) on cakes.
“I get bored of my own work very quickly,” says Satira with a giggle. “I’m always challenging myself to come up with new ideas. Some designs can be a challenge, but with enough research and trial and error, there’s always a way to make it work.”
She also hardly ever repeats designs, as all her cakes are custom-made for each client – one of her most recent being celebrity power couple Yusry Abdul Halim and Lisa Surihani, who wanted a gramophone on their wedding cake.
The “gramophone” cake, Satira says, was the biggest challenge she’s had so far, mainly because she had to find a way to ensure the cake, while still edible, would last throughout the ceremony without collapsing.
Piece Of Cake viewers may have to wait a little while before they can create their own versions of the gramophone cake, as the show will kick off only with methods to create simple desserts.
“It’s not your typical cooking show,” says Satira. “It’s got a very lifestyle feel to it and the desserts are simple and easy to make, but they will turn out really pretty.”
Piece Of Cake can be viewed at facebook.com/CelebrateTV. To find out more about Pearl Cake Couture, visit pearlcakesevents.blogspot.com.
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