Boyz N Girlz Tea Party

These were from last Thursday. Made it for a friend's friend, for a tea party. There were five flavours altogether. Those above are simply chocolate cupcakes.

These are orange cupcakes...

And these here are cookies and cream cupcakes...

Strawberry swirls also made a comeback.

And my favourite, lemon and coconut cupcakes.

Here's all the cupcakes in their boxes, ready to be transported. I only hope that my customer is as happy as I am.

Last Call for Eid

For the weekend, I had cupcake orders for an Eid open house event. I had to keep things simple since I was notified at the last minute. I had only 8 hours to complete 3 different types of cupcakes, with 3 different designs.

The order was for Vanilla Butter Cupcakes, Carrot Cupcakes and Apple Spice Cupcakes. In this post, depicted are the Vanilla Butter Cupcakes (top image) and Apple Spice Cupcakes (bottom image).

My Ugly Gateau

I had a can of dark chery in syrup sitting in the pantry for quite some time. So few days ago I decided to put it to good use by making a gateau. This gateau was made from chocolate cake, layered with white chocolate cream and cherries. The outside frosting was simply vanilla flavoured whip cream.

The cake tasted good enough for me, though I would probably not use the same recipe for the cake next time. The recipe resulted in a pretty dry cake.

For a gateau, this cake was a terrible one. A gateau is supposedly a cake with its best dress on and this here, is definitely a dress down gateau.

Potato, Onion and Tomato Bake

Also, I was alone not so many days ago and because of that, I took the chance not to have rice and made myself a meal from the oven. So I used as much leftover materials as I could find from the fridge and made this bake.

4 large potatoes (extras I had from the gnocchi project), peeled and thinly sliced
2 tomatoes, thinly sliced
1 onion, thinly sliced
30 g butter, cut into smaller pieces
freshly ground pepper to taste
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 cup grated Cheddar cheese (I used parmesan instead because I had some left from the previous work)

1. Preheat oven to 180C and brush an ovenproof dish with melted butter.
2. Layer the potato, tomato and onion alternately in the dish, finishing with the potato layer. Between each layer, dot some butter and sprinkle with pepper.
3. Combine the milk, cream and stock. Pour over the layered potato and top the assembly with cheese. Dot with any remaining butter.
4. Bake for 1 hour 30 minutes or until the potato is tender and golden brown.

Because I used Parmesan instead of Cheddar, the finished product doesn't look that good. Parmesan generally does not melt when baked. Unlike Cheddar, Parmesan browned. Nevertheless, the whole thing still tasted great!

Creamy Blue Cheese Gnocchi

Last week I made these gnocchi with creamy blue cheese sauce for dinner. It was pretty easy since I wasn't in the mood to cook the usual full course Malay meal that day. Here's how..

For the gnocchi :

3 really huge potatoes, peeled
2 cups plain flour (I used superfine because that's what I had)
30 g butter, melted
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
some freshly ground pepper to suit your taste

1. Cook potato in large pan of boiling water until just tender; drain and then mash.
2. Add flour, butter, Parmesan cheese and pepper. mix until well combined and knead until smooth.
3. Form dough into small 2.5 cm rounds and indent each one of them with fork prongs to shape.
4. Heat a pan of water until boiling and lower batches of gnocchi into the boiling water. Gnocchi are cooked when they float to the top. Drain and keep them warm.

For the creamy sauce :

60 g butter
2 tablespoons plain flour
2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder
freshly ground pepper
125 g blue cheese, crumbled
3 spring onions (here I used parsley because the mart was out of spring onions)

1. Heat the butter in a medium pan; add flour. Stir over low heat until flour mixture is lightly golden.
2. Add milk gradually to pan, stirring until mixture is smooth. Continue stirring over medium heat until mixture boils and thickens.
3. Add mustard, pepper to taste, cheese and spring onions, stirring until cheese has melted.


Well, lastly of course, pour the sauce over the gnocchi and serve at once.

P/s : Blue cheese smells really strong so u might wanna reduce the amount if you are not a fan of stinky smell. ;)

Eid Cakes!

Eid was slightly different this year because I opted not to make any cookies. I baked cakes instead.

This was the coffee sponge cake I made the day before Eid. The cake was torted into two and I layered them with coffee buttercream in between. The outer part is also coffee buttercream and I plastered some chunky peanuts onto it sides. The piled up truffles were simply Ferrero Rocher, The white truffles are actually coffee flavoured truffles which I made earlier in the morning and were then covered with melted white chocolate and left to set in the fridge. The coffee buttercream was wonderful, I have to say. Eheh..

And this one is my Oreo cheesecake. This was easy to whipped up. Doesn't require any baking and i got it all done in less than half an hour. Easy peasy. It doesn't taste too cheesy (which is perfect to me.., I don't like cheesecake that is too cheesy to the throat) because I used gelatine powder to make it firm instead of just cheese.

So that's for Eid. I'll have birthdays to deal with next month and I hope I'll be able to make more whole cakes.

Here I Go Again...

Last week, I had another quest of making three types of cupcakes in a day. They were Carrot Cupcakes, Lemon and Coconut Cupcakes and the Strawberry Swirl, again.

My sister insisted on me doing this lucky ball theme for the Lemon and Coconut Cupcakes. So, yatta! I did it..

The Carrot Cupcakes went with the standard garnishing for any carrot cakes globally. The frosting was cream cheese and the tiny carrots were made from sugarpaste.

Here's the Strawberry Swirl with a different look.

Another Addition

I received a request for some strawberry swirl cupcakes and peanut butter-filled cupcakes not too long ago. As usual I was busy with daily work and so I ended up with more simple finishing for my cupcakes.

This one here is the Strawberry Swirl... I had some extras so I decided to gave some to my ex-Human Resources Director. Hope she enjoyed them.

And this is the usual, made those fondant flowers quickly. It was indeed the easiest garnishing I could think of at that time. Not so attractive, but super easy.

An Experiment

This was an experiment of Peanut Butter cupcakes. For this I mixed the peanut butter into the batter and not filled the cakes up like I always did.

After that coffee frosting attempt, I made the frosting for this one by adding some peanut butter into the frosting mixture.

I've made the chocolate triangles many weeks ago when I was bored and I decided to use them here.

I kinda prefer this one more than those vanilla cupcakes with peanut butter fillings.

Not So Recent

I have not posted anything new for quite some time. I've had a number of cake projects but I haven't got much time to dispose in front of the computer. I can't remember when I made this one, two months ago, I think. I made them for a girlfriend dedicating the cakes to her boyfriend. I resorted for simple frosting with skewed chocolate ganache effects on the cakes. The words on the cakes were suppose to have some %^&*# meaning which I shall not reveal for the sake of the couple. Heheh..

I flavoured the frosting with coffee and white chocoloate. My first attempt of flavouring frosting this one, but nevertheless, it's delicious!!

Here's putting in the truffles into the hollowed chocolate cupcakes.

Pearl's Vegetarian Bruschetta

Pearl finally made her bruschetta. Here are the ingredients she used for the snack :

1 whole baguette
2 ripe tomatoes, diced
1 very huge onion, diced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons basil
a dash of salt to taste
some grated mozzarella

The baguette was first sliced and dabbed with olive. In another bowl, she mixed the diced ingredients with basil and salt.

She then topped the baguette with the mixed ingredients, then the grated mozzarella. I would have preferred feta instead of mozzarella, but Pearl insisted on the latter.

Bake the bruschetta in the oven at medium heat (approx. 100C) for 5 minutes or till the cheese melted.

Jenny Ratna's Birthday

For Jenny's birthday, Farrah ordered 9 birthday cupcakes.

The top right corner would be the most challenging design up to this day. :) Still what customers want, customers get.

They are chocolate cupcakes with chocolate truffles for fillings.

These boobies are also made for Jenny. Another challenging conquest yet I manage. The usage of sugarpaste was necessary for this sculpture cake. Saty who were helping me with the sculpture, was very detailed in sculpting the...excuse me, nipples. Mom helped with the coloring of the sugarpaste and she was a genius in combining colours that results in truly real hues.

Sugarpaste is just too sweet for me, but it gives a smooth realistic finish to the cake. It is normally used for wedding cakes and cakes that needs perfect finish.

I bought the sugarpaste readily from the store as making it would be too time consuming. I'm happy with these boobs. They are mini chocolate cakes.

A Healthy Snack

Yesterday, Pearl and I made some healthy snack. It was an inspiration from Nigella's.

We crumbled some Mc Vitie's wholemeal cookies (around 4 to 5 pieces). I bought some frozen strawberries from the supermarket a couple of days ago, so we pulsed the whole 500g pack with 1-2 tablespoon/s sugar in a blender/food processor. It has to be frozen strawberry so it will give you some coarse chunks, not soggy ones. I also had some plain low-fat yogurt which is best for this snack. I was tempted to use whip cream, folded with some melted white chocolate (the variations you can have), which will definitely be tastier, but I had to say no to that. So next, we layer the ingredients in some clear cups. First, the cookie crumbs went in, then the strawberries and then the yogurt. Repeat the layers until the cup is full, making sure that the final layer will be the yogurt. Sprinkle some cookie crumbs again on the yogurt for garnishing.

Moving Out

These were made for a friend's mom who is moving out to a new house.

I made 50. And that took me all day!

SimpliciTy

I decided to go simple over the weekend, baking some cupcakes for friends.

Here's what I did. I don't want to mention this but it's the peanut butter cupcakes again. It's the safest bet to give to friends other than the usual chocolate flavour. Everyone loves chocolate, I know, but nobody really hates peanut butter too.

The chocolate lattices and sticks was a courtesy made by Pearl. Pearl did some R&D on a new flavour. She made coffee cupcakes soaked in espresso syrup which was terrific! They tasted strong in coffee, bittersweet, a must try for coffee lovers.

This one here was made for our household consumption. I hope to turn it into cupcakes presentation real soon. At the mean time, I would have to look for some coffee lovers to be the victim.

More..With Strawberry Bittersweet Chocolate Truffles

My latest attempt was in making some chocolate truffles and placing them in vanilla cupcakes. This one here is made for a birthday girl.

So happy birthday!

This one made in different design, is made for a girl, to be presented to her boyriend. The design for this, was solely her idea.

I'm kinda satisfied with my two latest produce. A little different from what I've done most of the time, yet I'm liking it.