March 2011 was a month full of events. 1st, it was my newborn baby's fullmoon, followed by my nephew's fullmoon and my niece 6th yo birthday.
Well, i was thinking to give the kids a very special gifts for the special days- so what else apart from my homemade cupcakes for them?!

Purple is always my niece's favourite colour, so the cupcakes were covered by purple fondant. As time is really limited for me, so i just quickly moulded out a girl figurine and a bee and a butterfly figurines for decoration.
At the same time, i moulded a set of baby shower's figurines for my newborn nephew too.

my niece love the cupcakes, and according to her mom, she kept the figurines and ate the rest of sugar paste!
How i wish my baby girl will enjoy baking and doing sugar arts with me when she's grwon up later!
There is nothing more encouraging than seeing your love one apprecite and like your work!

christmas cookies and cupcakes

Christmas,  always been a joyful event to celebrate. Also, it's a day where u'll want to thank special people in your life.
I decided to do some baking stuff, to be given away to the people i really wanted to thank them during this  christmas.

1st, i make a batch of chritmas cookies ( could only get christmas tree, gingerbread boy, and bell cutter), for my son to give to his kindi teachers and frens. Thought it would be a wonderful idea, so that he can be proud of this.
My sisters helped me out on this, by helping me to cut the cookies and do the royal icing decoration, else, it would at least took me 6 hours to do it alone. Then, i packed the cookies in plastic bags, tied with a ribbon and a small card. Here's the final products.
i made 2nd batch of cookies few days later when realised the amount is not adequate to be given away, this time, my niece of 5 years old came to help me up. Seeing her cousin has the Christmas gifts for kindi frens and teachers, she's asking me to help her to make the cookies for hers too. Even though the products decorated by her were not so tidy, but she's happy as she also had some cookies to be given away!
When i fecthed her in kindy on Christmas eve, her teachers were so appreciative and asking if i was the one taught her how to make those lovely cookies. My niece was really happy and proud that all her frens loved her gifts. ( Too bad, my little boy seems did not know the meanings of mummy handmade cookies for him)

The last thing i made was fondant frosted cupcakes, with initial intention to give to 2 doctors that has been seeing me for sometimes w/o charging me any consultation fee, of whom i really want to thank them. I chose to make cinnamon apple cupcakes. also spent on many hours to do the Christmas figurines. Yeah, i made fondant snowman, Christmas tree, Santa Claus, Christmas penguin, Christmas candy, reindeer etc....
and, it looks really really beautiful. Seeing the beautiful figurines, i eventually ended up making 7 boxes of fondant decorated cupcakes. This is the 1st time i decorated cupcakes with fondant. (n the downside of fondant cakes is - it;s nice to see, and definitely not nice to eat).  My husband even took 2 of the boxes for his best fren and one of professor.

Felt really satisfied when everyone gave me a nice compliments on the cupcakes. Hopefully, i'll have more chances to do this for many other frens!

potato chips cookies

i was quite free on last friday evening ( hubby coming back late, and my son was busy watching his cartoon). Nothing else but baking some simple cookies came across my mind.
Decided to try on spritz cookies, and after reviewed few recipes at wilton's website - i finally op to do this : potato chips cookies. It looks simple, but i ended with a big problem!
i supposed to crush the potato chips until very fine before mixing into the cookies batter, some how i didn't as i thot the potato chips crushed is fine enough, but it actually still remain coarse! So, guess what happened?
yes! the batter can not went thru the disc of cookie press!
so, i have no choice to use cookie cutter to cut the batter. as the recipe is meant for spritz cookie, so the consistent of the dough are too soft to use cutter, ended up the shape of cookies were weird.
anyway, the cookies still taste good. my son like it and i think it's because of the potato chips inside.
so, lesson of the day: no shortcut in making cookie!

1st experience on royal icing decorated sugar cookies

 I have been thinking of making some cute cookies for sometimes. To produce pretty, cute and nice cookies, i guess decorated sugar cookies is the best (after searching some info thru internet). Though using fondant to decorate sugar cookies will produce much neat and pretty cookies, but i dun really like the over sweetness of fondant, therefore, i decided to try on royal icing.

That was also the 1st time i tried to make royal icing. i got the recipe from joyofbaking.com. The royal icing came out very good.

I invited my niece of 5 years old to join me in this cookies making session. She enjoyed the session very much. Not only this is her 1st experince on cutting cookies using cutter, me to actually. Lack of experiances making  the cookies cut out are not very smooth, and they were slightly too thick.....

After letting the cookies to cool on cooling rack, lastly, it came the session of piping and flooding royal icing on cookies. Piping outline and dots of royal icing on cookies really need experiences and steady hands. As we ( me, my sis and her daughter) were doing this for the 1st time, so the lines did not look great at all.

Although the final products didn't look perfect, but we appreciated this experience very much. At least, i finally know how to make royal icing and how to flood the cookies. And my niece enjoyed this very much and important most is she's proud of her work and she loves the yummy cookies! ( she even brought her own made cookies to kindy and let her teachers have a trial on the yummy cookies! And, of course, she get a good feedback)

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!