A little cupcake cheer…

I love facebook!! Haha… i just have to say it again. Another one of my long lost ex-classmates, Jane, whom i found on facebook recently ordered a batch of cupcakes from me.. Yay!! Unfortunately Jane’s friend recently had recently been hospitalised with a heart condition and Jane had therefore wanted to bring her some brightly decorated cupcakes in place of flowers to cheer her up during her hospital stay. With that in mind, Jane asked if i could do some butterfly’s and flower cupcakes for her.

With bringing cheer as the foremost purpose in my mind.. i started to brainstorm for ideas as to how i could do up the butterfly’s so they would look nice and cheerful. I did have on hand a cookie cutter shaped in a butterfly.. but after minimal thought.. i decided not to use it as the butterfly cutter would not help to give me the cheerfulness that i wanted to convey in the cupcakes since the butterfly’s would only be in 1 solid colour if i used the cutter. After some thought.. i remember coming across someone on flickr who had done some alice in wonderland themed cupcakes, and i remember that she had done some very cute butterflies on it. As such, i decided to model these cupcakes after hers. I decided to do half of the order of cupcakes with butterflies and the other half with flowers, and this was the end result.

I had used my favourite and delicious chocolate cupcake recipe as a base for these cupcakes and had foregone using swirls for the cupcakes. Instead… i decided to use little discs of fondant as the base for which the butterflies and flowers were to be placed on.

Unfortunately, on the day Jane came to collect the cupcakes, I found out that her friend’s 2nd heart operation had some complications and her friend had slipped into a coma…. I do hope that she has since regained consciousness and is on the road to a great recovery. From me and my family, please know that our hopes and prayers are with you and that we really hope that you get well soon. I hope that anyone else that reads my blog will also add a little short prayer for her speedy recovery.

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Little doggie cupcakes for my Auntie’s birthday….

I was talking to my cousin on msn the other day when she told me that my auntie’s birthday was coming up. After seeing the cute cupcakes that i did such as the bears and bees cupcakes and the lamb and duck cupcakes, my cousin asked if i could do some cupcakes for my auntie.

After thinking long and hard about what my auntie liked, i decided that i’d do some cupcakes topped with cute little dogs for her. My auntie is crazy about dogs and i remember always playing with a little chihuahua she had, called meatball when i was young. Meatball was super cute and very dedicated to my aunt. I remember she always followed my aunt around the house all the time. Unfortunately, meatball passed away some time ago.. and knowing how much meatball was missed, 2 of my cousins decided to pool their money together and get my auntie a schnauzer puppy. But alas, things weren’t to be.. a couple of days after the puppy was brought home, it became sick and died within a few days. 

Well… i guess doggy cupcake toppers should be pretty safe and as long as they’re cute my aunt is sure to love them After discussing the idea with my cousin, we decided to go ahead with the doggy idea but my cousin thought that we had to have bees too since they are so cute! Well… off i went to try out different little doggies and of course surf the internet for ideas or pictures of doggies that i could follow. I finally came upon a really cute doggy model from someone on flickr and decided to base my doggies on her cute ones I made about 10 of these cute fellas and decided that of course with dogs you had to have some toppers with little doggy accoutrements such as doggy toys and of course doggy bowls. With this new idea in mind, i modeled some additional toppers of doggy bowls full of food and little doggy toys such as balls, a bone and hee hee.. a kong toy! Last but of course not least were the little bees and some flowers for accents.

Unfortunately i didn’t manage to take a photo of all the little cupcakes… but here are some of the cupcakes i did for her birthday. Don’t you think it’s adorable

My Auntie loved them and said no way was she going to be able to eat the little doggies… she said she’s probably going to store them in her freezer and take them out every now and then to look at them cos’ she just can’t bring herself to eat something that cute Knowing that she loved the cupcakes really made my day Hopefully i’ll continue to have a chance to do these cute little cupcakes and bring a little cheer to everyone that sees them.

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Home made wanton soup..

My hubby has been complaining lots that he’s putting on lots of weight.. so i decided to make home made wanton soup for him. Where to get a good wanton recipe from.. well.. who else but my walking food dictionary.. my dearest mother

After a quick call to her, i thawed out a package of mince pork… not too fatty of course, but it must have a little bit of fat to bring out the texture and taste. To season the mince pork, I added a dash of soya sauce, sesame oil, pepper, a little pork powdered flavouring and a little sugar. Mixing up the meat thoroughly with the seasonings, i then left the mince pork to season in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Next, peel and chop up some nice, juicy and sweet water chestnuts (of course sneaking a couple of these delicious things in my mouth in between chopping) :p.. who can resist them. In the meantime, soak a couple of dried mushrooms in water and once they are softened, chop them up as well. Mix the diced water chestnuts and mushrooms in with the meat, add a little cornflour to the whole thing and plonk the meat back into the fridge for it to get the meat a little sticky. Here’s a picture of the mixture after mixing everything in… see all the yummy mushrooms and diced water chestnuts scattered between the mince pork. Yummy.. Oh and if you have some spring onions you can chop up some and add them in to the mixture as well.

Well.. onto the wrapping of the wanton…. i bought some ready made egg skins from the market and using a little flour mixed with water to make a glue paste, i basically added the meat to the wanton skin and voila… wanton! haha… i managed to get about 25 pieces of wanton from the amount of meat i had… not too bad i guess Here’s the pile of wanton’s i piled on a plate. Dumb me forget to add a little flour in between each wanton to ensure they don’t stick together.. so some did tear when i was ready to cook them later since they stuck to each other like siamese twins. Grr.. oh well.. i’m not fussy as long as they are delicious.

I cooked the wantons separately in a bot of boiling water for about 3 minutes and just added them to a pot of home made chicken stock soup…. and ta-dah.. dinner was served. I gotta admit they were delicious… haha.. after eating just chicken breast everyday for the past 2 months due to my husband’s healthy eating habits.. this made a nice change. We finished the wanton’s in no time and my hubby drained the whole big bowl of soup at the end of dinner.. :p the wantons were gone so quickly that i didn’t even have time to take any pictures of it.. suffice to say the home made wanton soup was a success :) 

I made wantons using minced chicken breast the next day and although i have to say i prefer the taste and texture of the pork wantons, i have to say the minced chicken breast wantons were quite good as well

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Hippy themed wedding cupcakes..

About a week ago, i got a call from someone asking whether it’s possible for me to design, customise and do up a cupcake tower for a hippy themed wedding. That definitely started my juices flowing.. i mean how cool is that to do… a hippie themed wedding… cool :) Of course the first thing that popped into my mine was flowers and tie-dyed stuff.. but just to make sure that i had a good idea of the theme, i immediately went to my trusty laptop and started surfing the net for inspiration. These were the end product.. nice and bright don’t you think

I just realised after my many hours of searching the internet, that there are lots of hippy stuff out there :) But here’s the thing that got me thinking… is  there a difference between retro and hippy?? After surfing the net for both.. i realised that there is a common theme between the 2 in terms of the bright colours but the difference lies in the fact that retro seems to have a more circular design whereas the hippy designs include peace signs, smiley faces, lots and lots of flowers and of course tie dye and the emphasis on free love.

After all that surfing i realised there aren’t that many designs out there in the world wide web of hippy designs for cupcakes… hippy cakes yes.. but not hippy designed cupcakes… so after much discussion with the bride, and her sister, we finally came to the conclusion that we’d keep it to 4 cupcake flavours and 4 designs, namely, the smiley face, the peace sign, flowers and of course a heart… Well… once the design was settled, i continued to research and think about how best to do up the cupcakes (mini’s were requested) and what colours to use since there wasn’t a fixed colour theme… but then, come to think of it.. can you have a fixed colour theme for a hippy wedding?? haha :p

After trying out a couple of designs and think up various colour combinations, i decided to stick to a couple of colours and of course to make sure that the colours were bright enough to blind.  Problem with that of course is how to get the colours bright enough without adding too much dye to the frosting and causing it to turn bitter!! After some experimentation and a frantic purchase of several different paste colours… i finally managed to get a nice bright pink, orange and of course purple!!! Cool… next up… to do up the designs in fondant….

I’ve read many bad reviews about how bad fondant actually tastes, especially a certain brand that seems to be the only available brand here in Singapore!!! Of course, with this in mind, i had opted from the get go that i would never ever buy and use this particular brand of ready made fondant. Add this to the fact that this was the only brand in Singapore, i was left with the only option of making my own. As can be seen from several of my previous posts on fondant, it was a never ending cycle of experimentation before i finally got a recipe that works in our blastedly hot and humid weather that changes into a blink to a humid and rainy one and of course tastes delicious to boot!! Trust me.. it was a delight when i finally got the recipe down pat! Well.. off i was to whip up a batch of this delicious fondant and start on my designs for the little hippy cuppies.

After much kneading and colouring of the fondant, plus many hours of trying out different colour combinations, i finally settled on the colours i wanted. Problem was.. i needed cutters to do up the flowers and hearts. So off i went to Phoon Huat to search for some cutters…. hehe… oh well.. excuse for me to buy cutters is always good All in the name of research and satisfying a customer’s wants right! So after an hour of shopping in Phoon Huat.. i finally went home with more than what i bargained for… :p I can never seem to just go to Phoon Huat and get only what i want.. all those cute little dragees and cupcake decorations always drag me to buy just a little bit more of this and that.. no wonder my hubby now chooses to sit out in the car to wait for me hoping that I would be out of that shop just that little bit faster :)

Well… armed with my new cutters, i quickly did up the requisite designs for the cupcakes and left them out to harden a little. I then did up the cupcakes and popped them into the oven to bake. More whisking took place and voila… icing was prepared… add the colours… more whisking and finally icing was ready to be piped over the cuppies. I decided to do a simple round swirl so that the designs from the fondant would be the main accent to the cupcakes, so after icing and placing the ready fondant designs… these were the final product… The only thing i think i would change a little is the smiley face.. haha.. smiles not big enough i think

Sadly though.. at the end of the day the bride had decided not to go ahead with the cupcakes… oh well… i did get a fun time out of designing the cupcakes and of course.. my new cutters!

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My sweet hubby.. :)

Well.. today is my birthday… sob sob.. finally hit the big 3-0… gawd!!!! Well.. i decided to spend this special day of mine doing whatever i wanted.. and that was to laze in bed, play with my dogs, watch tv and haha.. do a little reading and surfing the internet for new ideas and recipes.. what else!!

As this was a weekday, my hubby and me had decided before hand that we’d celebrate my birthday this weekend rather than today.. so you can imagine my surprise when the doorbell rang this evening and i opened the door to find a delivery man holding a nice big bunch of roses for me…. Isn’t he sweet… my hubby of course.. not the delivery man :p The roses were gorgeous and stupid me forgot to take a photo of the flowers in its wrapping before i plopped them into the vase.. but lucky for me i did grab the camera to take some photos of the flowers in the vase… this bouquet of roses is actually called “one and only” according to my hubby.. the name is actually represented by the sole white rose surrounded by the large group of red roses.. haha.. unfortunately you can’t really see the white rose in the picture unless you focus on the top right hand corner of the picture where you can see the white rose just peeking out Aren’t the flowers just gorgeous…

Apparently the roses above weren’t to be my only surprise today… my hubby actually came home later with a cake!!The cake is a nice chocolate cake with a kit-kat base topped with gooey chocolate ganache… doesn’t it sound yummy already! Well.. of course we couldn’t eat it first… we had to have dinner.. and for today, i didn’t cook, we went to our nearby Redhill market and bought the best curry rice!! If you haven’t tried the curry rice from the Redhill market you absolutely have to! Their curry rice is just the best in the world.. and don’t worry if you can’t eat spicy.. it isn’t hot or spicy at all and its just great for me as i can’t take hot! And yes, I’m still Singaporean even despite this fact :p

Well, to tell you a bit more about this fantastic stall, this curry rice stall is not run by an Indian or Malay but by a chinese couple who are always super generous with their portions. Trust me when i tell you they are generous! My hubby can usually eat 4 packets of chicken rice at one go.. and for this stall, he just orders extra rice which is more than enough to fill his bottomless pit i call his stomache Well, to go on about this stall, they will usually add a huge bowl of rice and fried chinese cabbage which is nice and soft, then cover this whole mixture with their curry sauce until everything is just soaked with the sauce. Once that is done, they will ask what you want to add to the rice. They have a huge variety of accompaniments which include a crispy deep fried pork chop (my personal favourite), a great huge pork mince ball (my hubby’s absolute favourite), satay pork, fatty pork in dark sauce, sotong, fish, fishcake, fried eggs, etc… They continually change they’re accompaniments as each one is finished… so  you never know what’s available until you get there!! The thing i find most funny is the fact that everytime we order food from this stall, the auntie always asks my hubby if his order is for 2 people! Haha.. and she always gives us 2 spoons even if my hubby orders only a packet for himself.. that’s how much food my hubby orders!

Well, needless to say after we finished that delicious dinner (of which my hubby actually finished 1/2 of my portion since i can’t finish it) we were actually too full up to eat the cake… but as soon as 11 o’clock rolled around, we could resist the cake no more and quickly took it out to eat. Here are some of the pictures we took of the cake before we cut it up.

Here’s a picture of the flowers, the cake, my hubby and me.. and of course.. who could forget my little schnauzer, Jasper who wanted to take a lick at the cake before i stopped him.. naughty boy..

Well.. that’s my 30th birthday celebration… sigh… i’m so over the hill… haha

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Cute cuppies for a 2 year old’s birthday.. :)

 Here’s a picture of my latest cupcakes for another birthday girl whose turning 2 today. Happy Birthday!!!

These cuppies are all mini cupcakes… my favourite among all the cupcakes has to be the little lamb that is sleeping. Do you see him.. he’s in the middle right at the bottom row of the picture

So to start my post, I have to begin with how after posting up my pictures for my previous bears and bees cuppies, several orders from my families and friends have come up requesting me to do similar cupcakes for them. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for their support and i hope to be able to come up with new and different ideas and designs for the cuppies for everyone

Well, for this latest order, it’s actually for my mom’s good friend’s grand-daughter. Hahaha.. i know sounds complicated right Anyway the grand-daughter is turning 2 today and my mom thought it would be nice if i could do up some cupcakes for them. As i wanted to do something different from the bears and bees cuppies, i started looking around for new ideas and of course something cute After thinking long and hard, and after considering the fact that the cupcakes would be mini sized, i had to keep in mind that i couldn’t do any figures that were too big. As such, i finally decided to do up littel duckies and some flowers to go with them.

Once i had decided on the theme, i quickly started surfing the internet to see if i could find any pictures of cute ducks.. i found a few and along the way I actually found a little tutorial on you-tube that teaches you how to make the duck. Yay!! Now i wouldn’t have to spend time figuring out how to make duckies.. haha

So without further ado, with the you-tube video in front of me and my yellow fondant in my hands, i started making the little ducks. However, I wanted each little duck to look different, so i started playing around with them and tried to make each one look a little different. As you can see.. i made one with only it’s bum showing and feet out of the water :p.. I also tried to do one with it’s head between it’s wings… haha.. not sure if they look all that great.. but well.. i think they’re cute I tried to make the duckies look as if they are swimming in some bubble bath.. haha.. but not sure if i succeeded

Anyhow, after completing the ducks, I have to admit i started comparing them to my bears and bees cuppies and realised that these little fellows fell a little short from my previous cuppies, so i had to find something else to oomph it up. So back to the internet it was to look at more pictures.

I finally came upon a picture where someone had done cute little fondant lambs for christmas.. haha.. they were so totally cute that i just had to make them.. :p Thanks whoever you are for the inspiration and i hope you don’t mind that i borrowed your idea. In fact.. my little lambs are very much modeled upon your cupcakes

Anyway, i think the little lambies turned out great and i decided that the final cuppies would be a mixture of lambs, ducklings and of course, bright flowers

I decided to make my usual chocolate cuppies which i love.. and which i think children of any age will love, and then made the icing early this morning. Last to go on the little cupcakes was of course my beloved little ducks and lambs.. unfortunately i did have a small mishap.. haha.. can you tell? I actually had broken one of the ducklings wings and had to glue it back on… and.. if you look closely enough at the picture above.. you might notice that one of the little lamb’s ears is actually broken off.. haha.. oops :p I hope no one notices it.. hee

Well… these are the final cuppies snug in their little box just before collection. I thought the grass and flowers brightened up the cuppies really well and made it look really cheerful. What do you think?

Here are some close up views of the adorable little lambs and of the “2″ that i did for the little girl’s second birthday

Well, when they finally came to pick up the cupcakes this evening, they were delighted with it!! Even my mom who came with them to collect the cupcakes was surprised at how cute and cheerful they looked Yay!!!! Haha.. so happy that my cupcakes can make their day

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