Chocolate banana cupcakes for children's day

my son's nursery celebrated children's day on last friday. Got to know the event only 2 days prior to the celebration when i saw a memo inside his nursery bag. Teachers encouraged the children to bring some small gift/ food to share with friend for the event.
Then came across my mind - How about baking some cupcakes for his classmates?
Why chocolate banana cupcakes? Kids love chocolate, and happened that i had some ripe banana at home - so, there came the chocolate banana cupcakes lorr.

To make the cakes looks attractive to the kids, i decided to mould some fondant teddies for the kids. For the very short spare time i have ( i have to finish 12 teddy bears in 1-2 hours), my work became very cincai, as u can see the figurines were not smooth at all. My husband and my sis did comment that those things looks like half teddies, half pigs and half monkeys. Haha....

Anyway, it's my 1st effort of making some meaningful home made gifts for my son's friends. I hope the kids don't mind really. did bake some bigger cupcakes with some blossom decoration for his teachers. I plugged in a small flag with my son's name on it into the cupcakes too!

Here the gifts ready to be given away.

Black bottom cake

For those bakers, black bottom cake is not a new term for them. But for me, i first heard about this term when i was searching online on some recipes of cupcake. I found this - black bottom cake, decided to try it out.
It is actually a chocolate cake at bottom with cream cheese chocolate chip mixture on top. It'll look like this:
(that's my version, may not look as good as those experienced bakers' cake)

 

The cakes taste yummy. A little bit of cheese in the cake always make the cake taste super delicious even  for those who are not cheesecake lovers.

I do not really know why most cake recipes do advise on adding small amount ( 1/2 to 1 tsp) of salt into batter, and i guess probably there is some function of salt? But, i find it makes the black bottom cake taste a bit too salty by doing this of which it covers the sweetness taste of chocolate cake. I'll prefer to omit the salt on my next try.

My First attempt of fondant cake

Never knew what is fondant till lately i browsed through some cake pictures in Google. Those fondant figurines are so adorable, i just love it so much.

So, i started my journey of learning fondant decoration from 2 persons, Ween Nee ( a very good fondant artist who make awesome and perfect fondant figurines) and Amy. As a full time working adult plus mother, i  really could not find too much time to attend baking classes, so i read and watched some videos online on fondant decoration.

I got all the basic gadgets of fondant decoration from baking supplies shops, online ordering.... then, finally i decided to start my 1st project on fondant cake, in conjunction with my hubby's b'day!

It took me 3 days to complete the whole cake. i was busy with fondant colouring for the 1st day.

I know my husband will definitely like SLR camera, fountain pen, IT gadgets, cars..... but that will be technically too demanding for a beginner, ( 1st timer). So i decided to mould 2 figurines for him - he himself and his beloved son!

2nd day, i baked the cake, and moulded the figurines. My son kept disturbing me while i was doing the figurines, making the whole process eaten up much time of mine, and thank god he din spoil it ( after many warnings from me!). I told him that were papa and him, he was so happy, sitting looking at figurines for hours! Here are the figurines.....

 

And on the 3rd day, the birthday date itself, i completed the cake decoration.

This is the whole b'day cake presented to my husband!