You are currently browsing the archives for November, 2007.
This week was really busy for me as I was in the midst of doing up the wedding cupcake order for Iman and Joyce. I had to rope in my poor hubby during the weekend to help me with the decorating and packing of the cupcakes… Thanks boo!!
At any rate, I had spent most of the week preparing for their wedding cupcakes… and other than squeezing in some time to experiment with my 2nd batch of honeydew sago cupcakes, I’d pretty much spent most of the week doing the preperation for the wedding cupcakes.
Earlier on in the week, the printers had finally come back to me saying that the custom made boxes were ready. I eagerly grabbed a cab and rushed down to pick up the boxes. Oh.. they were so elegant, pretty and cute… and I think I did make the right decision to personalise it just that little bit by adding their names and wedding date on the box. Don’t you think the box turned out beautifully?!
Once I got the boxes, I rushed home and started folding the 180 boxes that the wedding couple had requested for… to tell the truth.. that alone required nearly 3 hours to complete… whew! Next came the cutting of the tissue to line the box. I didn’t want to make use of normal baking paper as I found they don’t look as pretty, so I made a special trip down to Bras Brasah to look for other types of paper I might be able to make use of… After spending about 3 hours there with my hubby.. as he of course had to stop at Swee Lee and look at his guitar stuff and of course make a pit stop at the bookshop to look at books, etc, etc… we finally made our way to the Art Shop. After spending another 1 hour there, I finally found some nice ivory coloured paper which I thought would go perfectly with the box and the cupcakes. Oh and guess what! While I was shopping in Bras Brasah I bumped into an old classmate of mine whom I’ve not seen for years and whom I’d lost touch with… so all in all it was a great day! Found what I needed and re-found a friend 
So with the paper in hand, I began cutting it up to ensure that each piece would fit perfectly into the box. As the paper was very delicate, cutting it was quite difficult and took me nearly another 3 hours to complete… but at the end of the day, looking at the boxes which were tissue lined made it worthwhile.. now, all that the boxes required were the wedding cupcakes!
After spending a day baking the cupcakes, I spent another 8 hours together with the help of my hubby to frost and decorate the cupcakes… of course during the baking process, with the whole house infused with the smell of chocolate cupcakes, my hubby could not resist and would come in to steal a couple of cucpakes from each freshly baked batch… luckily for me I had factored this in and had ensured that I had some extra cupcakes on hand :p
My mom was also really sweet, as she took half a day off to specially come down to help as she was worried I wouldn’t be able to cope. Thanks Mom!! Well, with so many extra hands to help me, things went a lot faster than I had planned… but with all the cupcakes I had to make, the house was starting to resemble cupcake land with all the cupcakes I had to make… haha
Well… after all that hard work, the last step was to individually pack the ready baked, frosted and decorated cupcakes into their customized boxes.
This was what the end product looked like…
So after an exhausting day of work, we managed to complete everything and deliver the cupcakes to Iman and Joyce’s wedding on time…. I just hope that their guests liked it every bit as much as I enjoyed doing it…. :0)
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 2:45 pm. 3 comments
Just completed the icing for my honeydew cupcakes. In the end I decided to go for a buttercream coconut icing with a little honeydew puree added in.
I tried to add the sago after completing the icing, but realised that it caused the buttercream coconut icing to melt as the sago was wet.. crap! After realising this, I did the rest of the cupcakes without the sago. Hmm… back to the dilemma of how to incorporate the sago into the cupcake. Arrgghhh!!
Haha.. I think I’ll have to take a leaf out of Chockylit and maybe add the sago in as a filling or mix the sago into the icing before piping it on the cupcakes. :p Not a total disaster… at least the cupcakes turned out pretty and tastes fantastic, with the coconut enhancing the taste of the honeydew flavour to give it that honeydew sago dessert taste
Here are the pics! What do you think?? Good enough to eat?.. *slurp*
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 6:40 pm. Add a comment
In my last post regarding my 2nd order for cupcake faces, I had promised that I would post up pictures of the completed cupcakes… I know it’s been a while, but only just uploaded the photos from my camera… hehe
Anyway, here’s a look at how they looked
These were made with a rich, creamy chocolate ganache frosting, and the features were done using royal icing… I thought they turned out quite nicely as I tried to make the ganache thicker
During the making of the cupcakes above, I had some extra cupcakes leftover so decided to make a very special cupcake for my very special boo…
These very special cupcakes had both oodles of ganache frosting as I decided to use up all the remaining ganache I’d left from making the face cupcakes above, and in addition, I topped it with swirls of royal icing… haha.. enough to give anyone instant diabetes.. Oh well.. my boo has a super sweet tooth, so he should enjoy it… and it’s only once in a long long while right hee…..
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 5:12 pm. Add a comment
After re-evaluating the disaster that was my attempt at making honeydew sago cupcakes, I relooked at the recipe for my honeydew sago cupcakes, I determined that the main problem arose from the sago itself. The last time round, I had added too much sago into the cupcakes, and as sago is relatively tasteless and is chewy, it had given my last batch of honeydew sago cupcakes it’s chewy texture. As such, I decided that instead of adding the sago directly to the batter, I would instead add it to the icing.
In addition, due to the amount of liquid I had added to the previous batter, I had to re-adjust the amount of butter, flour and eggs I used. As such, this too was amended.
After coming up with the new proportions, I started pureeing a new batch of honeydew to be added to the cupcake batter, and started whizzing and mixing up my 2nd batch of experimental honeydew sago cupcakes.
I hesitantly put in the newest batch of cupcakes into the oven to bake and waited with some trepidation for the results…. For the first 10 minutes of the baking process, my face was literally glued to the oven door as I watched to see if my cupcakes would rise… luckily for me it did, and pretty soon the lovely smell of honeydew and coconut was wafting through the kitchen as the cupcakes were being baked. Keeping my fingers crossed as they came out of the oven, I heaved a huge sigh of relief when I saw they had turned out perfectly at least on the outside… now for the final test.. the taste test!
Waiting for the cupcakes to cool, I finally grabbed one off the cupcake tray and took a huge bite…. the conclusion… YUMMMY!!!!! The cupcakes tasted delicious, with just enough of the honeydew flavour and the coconut adding that additional frangrance to the cupcake. Now, all I have left to do is to frost the cupcakes and I’d be set!
Yay!! I’m quite happy with the result, although as I was muching on the cupcake, some additional ideas did creep into my mind to further tweak the recipe… hehe.. oh well… another time. Once I complete the frosting on the cupcakes, I’ll only have to look for some victims to try it! Anyone interested?? Oh.. and you can see the pics, in my later post here
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 9:59 pm. 2 comments
After locating Chockylit’s website in my previous post, I was inspired by her creativity and wonderful cupcake recipes. As such, when I recently had some honeydew after dinner, the first thing that hit me was that I should see if I could come up with a honeydew sago cupcake recipe!!! If you’re wondering how I jumped from honeydew to honeydew sago cupcake recipe.. haha.. don’t ask.. till today my hubby still can’t quite figure out my thought processes and still thinks I’m weird!! :p
For those of you that are not familiar with honeydew sago dessert, it’s a very popular cold dessert in Singapore which is basically made using coconut, sugar/ sugar syrup, pandan leaves, sago and of course.. HONEYDEW!! I started to research the web to see if I could find anyone else who has attempted this recipe… but alas… I couldn’t find any. However, I did manage to find several websites that actually have the recipe for making the actual honeydew sago recipe. The recipe I’ve linked to is one of the recipes that I felt was more authentic to Singapore… so hopefully for people who are interested in making this dessert, my link does help! Oh… in addition, do note that you can use other fruits as well in place of honeydew if you wish to do something different…
At any rate, to get on with my story, once I got it into my head to try and come up with a honeydew sago cupcake recipe, I couldn’t get it out of my mind!! So early the next morning, I rushed out to the Shop N Save near my place and started looking for all the necessary ingredients to make a hopefully successful recipe! I did manage to purchase the coconut milk and honeydew without any problems.. but they had no sago!!
Luckily for me, I was near a market, so I quickly popped over and started looking for shops that sold sago. Unfortunately for me, I have no idea what raw uncooked sago looked like, so I actually didn’t have ANY idea what I was supposed to look out for. Finally, one of the shop Auntie’s took pity on me finally asked me what it was that I wanted.. I told her and she straight away asked how much sago I wanted.. at that very instant my mind drew a complete blank.. all that could come out of my mouth was “eeerrrr….”. The Auntie then asked me how many people was I cooking for and so I said I was actually trying to cook it for the first time. The moment that came out of my mouth, the Auntie gave a huge ‘HAH!! Then you know how to cook or not!!”… which I might add turned heads at least 3 km away! Before I could form any sort of an answer to her query, she just started giving me directions on what to do and how to cook it. Which actually did help :p hehe… In the end, she told me to buy 100g, which eventually only added up to a tiny little bag. Looking at it doubtfully, I decided to purchase another 100g as it just didn’t seem to be all that much.
Finally after that humiliating, but enlightening experience with the shop Auntie, I rushed home with all the ingredients and started to cook the sago. Pouring out the 100g of sago, I started cooking it.. but the more I cooked it, the more the sago expanded. Oh no!! At the end of the day, I had a humongous bowl of sago which is actually still sitting mostly unused in my fridge at this very moment. Sigh.. oh well, lesson learned I guess.
After settling the sago, I then cut the honeydew and pureed it. Mixing the pureed honeydew with some coconut, I then added it to my basic cupcake recipe followed by half a bowl of my sago. I quickly popped it into the oven and eagerly waited for the final results.
When the timer rang, I opened the oven door and…. CRAP!! the cupcakes hadn’t really risen very well!!! AARRGGGHHHH!! Sigh, think there was just too much liquid in relation to the flour and butter. I had originally thought that the sago would assist to absorb some of the puree, but I guess that didn’t happen. Deciding I could always fix that in my next batch, I decided to ignore it’s not too appealing appearance and try the taste of the cupcakes.
Disheartened but not demoralised, I eagerly pryed out one of the cupcakes from the tray and popped it into my mouth… verdict… total and absolute…. DISASTER!! Sigh.. I can’t put it any other way, other than to say that my experiment was a total and absolute failure. Problem was that I added too much sago, which gave the cupcake a very chewy and dense feel to it.. very much like a kueh. In addition, I could hardly taste the coconut OR the honeydew. In other words, I had a super bland chewy and pretty much inedible cupcake. Sigh.. into the dustbin they all went.
Of course given my stubborn streak, I’m not giving up so easily.. I’ll just have to tweak the original recipe… and hey! Failure is the mother of all success right?? Back to the drawing board! Hopefully, in my next post, I can post up a successful honeydew sago cupcake recipe. Wish me luck!!!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 3:23 am. Add a comment
Ooo Hooo!!! Got a order for wedding cupcakes for a wedding this coming Sunday for Iman and Joyce! Congrats you guys!! This is my first big order and I do thank Iman and Joyce for giving me the opportunity to do the cupcakes for their wedding!! I’m so excited!
Iman and Joyce wanted 2 miniature wedding cupcakes to be presented to their guests as wedding favours for their wedding banquet. After having a discussion with them to find out some details on the wedding, I started my quest to look for a suitable wedding favour box that would be able to fit 2 miniature cupcakes… Unfortunately in Singapore it’s actually quite difficult to find pretty, ready made wedding boxes.
The first place I thought of to begin my search was of course Spotlight, which is located at Plaza Singapura. I love Spotlight, don’t you!! All those raw materials to be found there… bolts of beautiful clothes, pretty ribbons, boxes, cutters, scrap booking materials, templates, etc,etc…. oooo…. so many things there for you to buy!!! I go crazy everytime I head there!!!
So off I go to Spotlight where I found some beautiful chinese take-out boxes of varying sizes and colours. They even had chinese take-out boxes that were prettily decorated in Christmassy designs!!! I was sooo tempted to buy them… but as I was on a mission, and I knew that my husband would probably kill me for buying any more stuff to decorate the flat, I had to let them go…… sigh 
So off to the payment counter I went with only samples of the take-out boxes I hoped to use for the cupcakes.
Eagerly rushing home from Spotlight, I got home and quickly whipped up a batch of mini cupcakes and stuffed them in the oven to bake. The minute the timer went off, I took them out of the oven and hopped on foot to foot impatiently waiting for them to cool off enough for me to handle bare handed, before quickly popping the cupcakes into the chinese take-out boxes to try on for size. To my utter disappointment, the boxes Spotlight had were either too huge or too small to fit the 2 mini cupcakes!!! Aaarrggghhhh…. Next stop, Poon Huat!! I quickly went to Poon Huat located near Holland Village to search for favour boxes, unfortunately for me, the boxes were all too short to be able to house 2 mini cupcakes with frosting… what to do now?!
I resorted to doing research on the internet and going into various forums, that would hopefully yield other places where I could get boxes. However, my attempts yielded no results and had no choice but to start calling various manufacturers to see if I would have better luck there. I was getting pretty demoralised after making at least 20-30 calls for which the manufacturers declined to manufacture such a small number of boxes. I only needed about 200 but most manufacturers had a minimum manufacturing order of 1000! Other manufacturers that did agree to print 200 boxes quoted me very high prices which would no way fit within the couple’s budget.
I was just about to give up and tell Iman and Joyce that I couldn’t find any boxes, when I finally got a break and managed to contact 2 manfacturers who would be willing to print a small quantity of boxes for me, at a price that was within my couple’s budget. Yahooo!!! I quickly made an appointment to meet up with them and then started to search for examples of what I wanted the cupcake boxes to look like, bearing in mind that the box should be unique and small enough to not take up too much space on the banquet table.
After printing out examples of boxes that I liked, I brought them along to the meeting with the manufacturers. My sweet husband, who was tired and grumpy, still supported me and acted as my chauffer for the day, bringing me to the meeting and sitting there while I had my discussions with them.. Thanks sweetie!! :*
After much discussion with the manfacturers on what boxes would work and what wouldn’t I impatiently waited for their quotes to arrive. Finally settling on one supplier, I confirmed the order. As I wanted Iman and Joyce to be able to have a keepsake of the wedding favour (if not the cupcake, at least the box!) I asked the manufacturers to help make the box more personalised and unique to the wedding couple by getting them to include the couple’s name and wedding date on the box.
That settled, I then started brainstorming for cupcake flavours as well as designs for the cupcakes. As the wedding couple did not have any specific requirements, that gave me free reign on my creative juices… As the cupcakes had to suit people of all ages and had to be suitable to all palates, I thought it best to stick to standard cupcake flavours such as vanilla and chocolate where I can’t go wrong. In addition, as the cupcakes would probably be sitting out in the open in Singapore’s hot and humid weather for at least a couple of hours, while the banquet was prepared, the icing had to be royal icing as buttercream icing could easily spoil.
That decided, I baked up a batch of vanilla and chocolate mini cupcakes and decorated them in various ways before presenting them to the couple for their final decision. In the end, the final conclusion was to have miniature chocolate cupcakes with large swirls of royal icing, decorated with strawberry flakes and lastly for that romantic touch, the cupcakes would be topped with a little heart shaped sweet.
These were the samples of the cupcakes the couple decided on :O)
Don’t you think they look yummy and just so sweet Upon seeing them my hubby titled them Sweethearts. So I think, I’ll call them just that!!
Well, their wedding is this coming Sunday and I’ll have a long day of baking and frosting coming up soon… My greatest fear is that my hands will cramp up during the baking and frosting process!!! So wish me luck!!
I’ll try and post up pics of the final product in my next post for you guys to take a look.
To Iman and Joyce, I hope you guys have a beautiful wedding on Sunday!!! :O)
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 2:24 am. 2 comments
I’ve been constantly on the net these couple of days trying to find new and exciting cupcake recipes when I stumbled across a fantabulous blog!! She’s called Cheryl Porro, better known as Chockylit, and this is her blog: http://www.cupcakeblog.com/
She a software quality engineer but (as she says it..) a “baker for hire at night”
So what makes her blog so great you might ask… well.. I would guess it’s her many many unique and of course FREE cupcake recipes listed on her site. For me… her site also provides me with inspiration to try and be more innovative and creative in my quest for trying new cupcake recipes… and attempting to create a new cupcake recipe that’s never been invented so I can take over the world!! … MWAH HA HA HA (*evil laugh*) … err.. nevermind…
But seriously, Cheryl’s website is great.. you can find all manner of unheard of cupcake recipes and even the basic ones such as delicious chocolate cupcake recipes!!
Some of the more interesting cupcake recipe’s I’ve found on her blog includes her cupcake recipe for what she terms “red-hot cupcakes“.. What’s so different about her red-hot cupcakes is that she actually uses chilli powder as one of her ingredients in the cupcakes!! Oh… and what about her cupcake recipe for sweet corn, maple and bacon cupcakes .. salty and sweet at the same time… and apparently very yummy!!
These are just to name 2 of her more unique cupcake recipes!! Admittedly I have yet to try baking any of her cupcake recipes for myself.. but you have to admit that her unique use and mixture of ingredients is an inspiration!! I believe one of these days I need to drill down and get to baking one of her recipes for myself!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago at 5:45 pm. Add a comment
I had a sudden craving for strawberry cheesecake the other day and finally decided to try my hand at doing one… Per the recipes I’ve come across, cheesecakes usually fall into 2 categories… baked or no bake cheesecakes… I have to admit I took the easy way out and decided on a no bake cheesecake recipe :p
After pestering my hubby to bring me to the nearest Cold Storage to get all the necessary ingredients and the juiciest strawberries I could find, I finally got home and started to whip up my first ever cheesecake
After half an hour of mashing, mixing and refrigerating, I finally got to the fun part of decorating my cheesecake using the big fat juicy strawberries.. hehe.. of course along some of the strawberries ended up in my mouth.. what could I say, they were just tooo juicy to resist…
Once I had squeezed as many of the strawberries as I could on the top of the cheesecake, I then started to spoon on the strawberry jelly over the top of everything.. and then back into the fridge it had to go to set overnight.
To be frank.. throughout the whole process, I believe I actually spent more time waiting for the cheesecake to set than anything else.. and I’m not exactly a patient person.. so I did actually not refrigerate the cheesecake as long as was required, so while I was in the midst of spooning on the jelly layer, some of the cheesecake base actually ended up floating up… arrggghhhh… but overall for a first attempt I think it didn’t turn out all that bad don’t you think so?
That’s my finished strawberry cheesecake… which after the photos my hubby straight away dug into… I guess it was quite a success considering that he finished the whole cake off within 24 hours!!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago at 9:10 pm. Add a comment
I recently just had my wedding and of course, I have my wedding cake. What caught my attention for the wedding cake was not the cake itself but the beautiful flowers that were added to accentuate the cake. The flowers were beautiful and extremely lifelike and per my understanding, was something that could be stored as a momento.. so long as we kept it in the fridge..
Upon my exclamation over the flowers, my husband (who’s crazy about marzipan) started asking me if the flowers were made of marzipan and whether they could be eaten… as I suspected they were probably made of fondant and probably tasted horrible, I gave him a cheeky smile and asked him to try it.. which he did! Haha… the expression on his face when he took a little nibble was sooo funny… When I finally stopped laughing long enough and asked him what it tasted like.. he told me it pretty much tasted like plaster…. and asked me why the hell didn’t I tell him earlier that it would taste like crap.. oopppss…. heheh…
At any rate, the flowers on the cake got me interested in pastillage/ fondant and as I had some time on my hands, I started to do some research on fondant and various recipes to see if I could do my own fondant. Unfortunately during my research, I realised that fondant/ pastillage is not really suited to the Singapore weather as fondant after shaping needs quite a bit of time to dry off completely and our humidity was not conducive to dry out the fondant… I also stumbled upon other people mentioning that their fondant creations also melted in high humidity… which didn’t bode well for any experiments I might try.
Being stubborn, I decided to hell with it.. and to just give it a shot. I finally bought the necessary ingredients to make the fondant and on a hot day in Singapore, I began my journey into the mysteries of fondant.
As any baker knows, fondant needs to be kneaded to the right consistency once the ingredients are combined… now this was a nightmare for me! haha… the fondant mixure basically stuck to my hands and this being my first time making it.. I wasn’t as careful with my hands, which made my whole kitchen a total mess with the fondant mixture basically sticking to everything from forks, spoons, bowls, the icing sugar packet, etc.. I mean it really stuck to EVERYTHING except what I wanted it to stick on which was to itself so that I could form a dough-like ball… arrggghhhh!!!
After nearly half an hour of my frantic and messy fiddling with the mixture, it finally started to come together into a somewhat respectable ball… FINALLY!! and I was able to set the fondant ball aside and begin the horrendous task of trying to clean up my kitchen. At the end of an hour when everything was finally straightened out I was pretty much too tired to do anything, so I decided to try shaping the fondant the next day instead.
I was so excited with the thought of playing with the fondant the next day, that throughout the whole night I actually had images of wild creations dancing through my head… so jumping out of bed early the next morning I rushed into the kitchen and grabbed the fondant ball and settled on my coffe table to begin my experiment. Unfortunately, when I finally got settled down to molding the fondant I was totally stumped as to what to create first.. In the end, after a couple of hours surfing the internet for tutorials, I finally found a video from Lorraine McKay that was fantastic! So following her detailed instructions, I did up my own little baby elephant… What do you think… does mine look anything like hers??
Unfortunately I think the fondant I made was a little too dry, so it wasn’t as malleable as it should be and cracks appeared in the elephant while I was trying to manipulate it.. oh well.. for a first attempt I think I didn’t do too badly
Unfortunately a few days later my little fondant elephant attracted too many ants as it wasn’t drying out properly that I finally had to throw it away… wahhhh…. sob sob…
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago at 12:51 am. 6 comments
Just got a call from my loyal supporter again today.. .. apparently the cupcake faces my Aunt gave her friends were a big hit and they were back for more Chocolatey Choc Madness cupcakes!!
This time around, they still wanted to have cupcake faces, but instead of glasses to have a a nose added instead… so i’ll be in the kitchen again this week baking up a fresh batch of cupcakes! Yay!
I’ll be sure to post up the pictures of the cupcakes when they’re done… in the meantime.. I’m trying to come up with a new cupcake flavour and do some wild experiments in the kitchen while I’m at it… Anyone has any ideas??!!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Posted 2 years, 4 months ago at 11:08 pm. 1 comment
