Surprise!

A dose of love and an element of surprise - best ingredients you could impossibly fit into a mini cupcake. These were baked for a surprise party, which was a mean feat to host but I'm glad it turned out well and that the rain didn't dampen the high spirits. Nutella icing which mumsie helped to pipe at least half of them, and tried out the sponge cake recipe I've sneaked from Cake boss - famous for its secret light and fluffy texture. (Hint: Beat your eggs well and heat milk and butter on low heat) If only I had the top baked till golden brown, that would have been perfect! Oh well, looking at these baked goodies sweetens my day already ♥

DIY Red velvet cupcakes,

Spent an afternoon two weeks ago baking cupcakes after raving about the Red velvet ones during the exam period. Took inspiration from a bunch of Martha stewart's recipes (you know you want to click on the link) and hey presto, Red velvet cupcakes with blueberry fillings and cream toppings with walnut. I promised to share the recipe so here goes:

2 1/2 cups of cake flour, sifted

2 tablespoons of Cocoa powder (I used Van Houten pure soluble cocoa)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon of salt

3/4 cups of sugar

1 cup of vegetable oil

2 eggs, room temperature

Beet root juice (for red colouring)

1 cup buttermilk

1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda

2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar 

A handful of blue berries

A packet of shelled walnuts

Modern recipes usually use deep red colouring but beet root gives it that organic au naturale feel, rather than having chemicals doused into the batter. You can use your hands to juice out the pigment betains from the beet (gloves are highly encouraged), and you add as much as you want until you achieve the desired shade :) And because I used beet, the baking soda would have to be reacted with vinegar first because the alkaline environment would change the red pigments to a more bluish state. (Correct me if I'm wrong here!) I'll let the pictures do the talking.

If you can infer the consistency of the batter, it was rather moist. The batch didn't turn out very fluffy, perhaps due to insufficient mixing (time to invest in an electric mixer hee) I still have so much to learn. As for the consistency of the cream, electric mixers will definitely give you the best (I mixed manually)

Christmas season is coming, and I'm so excited! The Christmas tree is up, but the feeling hasn't really sink in yet. And even though it really means the advent of the upcoming school term, it's one of my favourite holidays where we can all give thanks for the year and look forward to renewed promises to the next ♥ 

P.S. Do share your baking experiences or recipes if you have any, would love to know!

DIY Birthday cake: nobody gets too much heaven no more,

It was my mum's birthday a whole month ago, so I decided to bake her favourite Blackforest cake before the 18th of September, Happy blessed birthday Mummy, we love you ♥ You could simply get a recipe online but I decided to improvise mine because of certain dietary preferences for low sugar levels and fresh ingredients in my family. Here are some tips for archival purposes as baking reflections, but you could just read along so you won't fall into these baking pitfalls on the way (even though I think they were pretty heelarious) Just my two cents' worth so take it with a pinch of salt ☀ 

1. On whipping cream

Chill your mixing bowl in the fridge for about 15 minutes before starting on the whipping cream because the humid Singapore weather disintegrates it pretty fast. Also, you might want to get an electronic mixer instead, because after adding confectionery sugar after the soft peaks, the stiff peaks appeared really fast. Mixing manually, I couldn't gauge properly so it got churned to butter (irreversible) and I had to start over. Oh, and the cream doesn't stay fluffy for 3-4 days in the fridge without stabilizer, as you can tell the cream on my cake became really flat :( You can try adding a few teaspoons of instant pudding mix, I heard it works like a charm!

2. On cutting halves

This was where I went deadly wrong because I was so anxious to half the cake whilst it was hot and the top section broke into two (I'm sure you can spy some cracks on certain pictures hee) So I suggest you wait for it to cool down before taking a sharp knife to cut at the cross section, if not you can always cover your flaws using a bunch of strawberry hearts like yours truly hahaha.

3. On chocolate shavings

The pre-packaged ones in the supermarket were way too expensive for my liking so I decided to make my own, it's really simple! Take a bar of chocolate (of the ideal colour gradient you desire) and using an apple peeler, just shave the sides and Viola! Chocolate shavings ✌ If you wanna do chocolate curls, just melt a bar of chocolate on a flat aluminum tray and use a knife or a metal spatula to scrape a thin strip after it cools.

4. On Black forest filling

The key idea here is adding loads of cornstarch and waiting for the water to slowly evaporate whilst on a slow fire so it reaches a good consistency. Try not to mash it up too much in the pot because it becomes very runny and hard to spread over the cake later....that happened to me and it kept oozing out from the sides.

5. On storing

Haha I kept mine in the fridge for about 5 days, it still tastes the same except that it became really dry and the whipped cream flattened immensely. Also, it was hard to find a box to store it at first because I worked on it whilst it rested on an overturned porcelain place and was too fragile to be shifted. Would love to get one of those pretty cake stands.

So much to update but till later, ciao!

Pretty please with icing on top,

With an outburst of baking creativity, Felicia and I decided to spend an afternoon fiddling with coloured cupcake frosting (which we spent hours looking for inspiration on the net, talk about cupcake porn)

Popped by the nearby NTUC @ Dawson place to get the necessary ingredients ☺  

My favourite bit about baking is that you get to modify the recipe, like stuffing marmalade into pastries or in this case, we had strawberry jam fillings in the cupcakes which tasted really good with the vanilla. (which I just remembered that we forgot to add haha) Even the batter looked good enough to eat!

If you look really closely, we used triple cupcake holders for each because I don't like them too flimsy and they tend to get out of shape very easily. It gets a bit tricky if they come apart though.

Goodness bakin' in the oven

The frosting was the trickiest part; we slapped in tons of icing and egg white whilst beating for our lives (which was really quite fun) and seeing how the frosting took its consistency texture was really satisfying. It's also a tad scary on seeing how much sugar goes into those sweet treats from the confectionery, eek.

The piping bit was extremely entertaining because we tried beautifying the cupcakes with the various piping tips (some in vain) and it was a race against time because the frosting was slowly becoming runny (I blame the humid weather) Some of our cupcakes were successful, though some turned out a bit disastrous but really cute all the same.

Piping flowers didn't really work out

Playing around with the dyes

A dash of colour sprinkles was sufficient to transform them into drops of heaven (pardon the amateur piping though) Putting them in the fridge really helped to harden the frosting and they turned out really well, even though by the time I brought them to school for the gang to savour, they were half smooshed.
Had great fun talking to Feli too ☺

Failed attempt at creativity

Glad that the pictures turned out well, even though I was using my half-alive Canon Ixus digital camera ☺It's Friday but with Pre-camp greeting me at the start of the weekends, I'm feeling pretty disoriented. Nonetheless, the past week has so loving, with ice cream and rag work and baking and badminton and silly camwhoring and suppers and dinners (which has rendered me broke)

Broke, but happy.

P.S. Just received confirmation for my trip in Melbourne, everything has been booked and I'm bounded for Down Under in 8 days, very excited and hopefully promises of picturesque photographs ♥