Was going through my old photos the other day and just realised that I had some pictures of my christmas ornament cupcakes that I just had to post up! 
These are pictures of my hubby enjoying the christmas ornament cupcake I made… :p see those bite marks.. haha… they’re not mine! At any rate.. I did take a nibble and I have to say I was actually quite surprised that they tasted as yummy as they did! I’ve always been hesistant about using fondant for any cake decorations as I’ve heard that they taste like plastic and are just horrible… However, this recipe I used was reputed to have a great flavour without having an overpowering sweet taste or the plasticy aftertaste that a lot of other store bought fondants leave in the mouth.. so I have to say I was very satisfied with the overall taste of the ornament cupcakes..
If I have to say so myself.. It is quite delicious
My hubby did manage to resist eating the rest of the cupcakes and passed some to his colleagues… the feedback that came back were also great One of his colleagues actually saved the cupcake and brought it home to share it with her hubby… both of them came back saying that the cupcake was delicious yay!!! Another successful project Hopefully I can make more of these next Christmas and get more orders
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Posted 1 year, 12 months ago at 5:25 pm. Add a comment
As Christmas drew nearer, my hubby started wondering what to give his colleagues as presents… as such, I asked if I could make cupcakes for them. However, I wanted something different from a normal christmas cupcake and started looking for ideas on the internet hoping for some inspiration.
Guess what!!! I found someone who had made christmas ornament cupcakes!!! What’s that you might ask.. well, it’s a cupcake that looks exactly like a christmas ornament or a christmas ball. Most of the cupcakes I had seen placed a dome shaped cupcake on top of a cupcake base and decorated the dome to look like a christmas ornament. I thought that was really really cool, but wanted to take it a step further by making the cupcake totally round rather than having it sit on a cupcake base. To do this, I had to make several cupcakes which had a totally round base rather than the usual flat cupcake base. To do this, I couldn’t use my normal cupcake pans, so I started searching for ways to bake a dome shaped cupcake.. luckily for me I found a silicon half sphere baking tray at Poon Huat!! Yay!!!
Since I love chocolate cupcakes and I have a fantastic chocolate cupcake recipe, I decided to bake chocolate half sphere cupcakes :p I then joined 2 halves of the sphere using buttercream icing to form a round ball.. this was what they looked like after joining them.
Don’t they look cute This was followed by slathering the whole chocolate ball with buttercream icing, followed by a layer of fondant. To make the christmas ornament cupcakes look realistic, I also made little tops for the cupcakes using fondant.. I then left everything to dry..
As you can probably tell from the pictures above, I had a really difficult time getting the balls to look totally smooth and round, hopefully they won’t be too obvious after adding on the decorations.. I can’t wait for them to dry so that I can start decorating them
To make the balls look like christmas ornaments, I dusted the balls with luster dust and also pasted on the little caps which I had did earlier on. This was was followed by using icing to pipe on the designs on the ball. This was the fun part! After the icing had dried, I then dusted the designs with luster dust for the final time and let them dry.. these were what they looked like.. don’t they look fantastic… I thought they really looked like christmas ornaments don’t you?
To be frank.. my first attempt at making these were a total flop.. I had so much problems with the fondant especially… it kept bubbling under the skin. After several attempts, I finally figured out what the problem was and finally solved the bubbling problem.. but I have to admit, the beautifully completed christmas ornament cupcakes came a little too late for a christmas present… oh well.. at least my hubby managed to give it to his colleagues for a boxing day present instead Here’s some close up shots of the completed cupcakes…
My favourite is the snowflake cupcake…
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Posted 2 years, 2 months ago at 1:36 am. 4 comments
As the christmas season is drawing nearer, decided to experiment with a recipe I’ve been dying to try out. The inspiration came from coffee bean’s peppermint ice blended coffee… This is one of my favourite drinks of all time but coffee bean only has it once a year during the christmas season. Yummy… I just love the blend of coffee and peppermint.. plus it comes with a miniature peppermint candy cane… :p Ok.. I’m crazy about candy cane’s… but can you blame me.. its delicious.. and oh so festive
So with that in mind, I decided to try and make my own peppermint mocha cupcake recipe…
Of course, what’s a peppermint mocha cupcake without candy canes! So I just had to make a trip down to buy candy canes during one of my weekly shopping trips to NTUC Fair Price… I ended up buying 3 packets of candy canes.. think I overbought.. but I just couldn’t resist… I just loooovvve them.. don’t you.
So armed with 3 packets of candy canes, I started my foray into the peppermint mocha cupcakes…
First, I started out with a basic mocha cupcake recipe, then added some peppermint essence and placed everything in the oven to bake… Soon enough, the wonderful smell of coffee and peppermint permeated the kitchen and drew my ever hungry husband to the kitchen to have a look.
I forgot to take pictures of the unfrosted cupcakes unfortunately.. sigh.. stupid me.. but the cupcakes turned out a nice browny colour and had a rich aroma of coffee….
As I placed the cupcakes out to cool, I began to work on the frosting. Hmm.. what to use? Royal icing.. nah.. too sweet… hmm.. buttercream icing… hmm.. maybe.. cream cheese frosting? Hmmm.. I think that’s it.. decided on a cream cheese frosting so as not to destroy the delicate melding of coffee and peppermint. The cream cheese would add to the delicate flavour without detracting from the overall taste of the cupcakes.
Luckily for me, I had some leftover cream cheese from my last cheesecake baking session. Next was to decide whether the frosting should be a plain vanilla frosting, coffee frosting or peppermint frosting… hmm.. decisions, decisions. Oh.. what the heck.. I’ll do a cream cheese mocha peppermint frosting to complement the cupcakes
So mixing and mashing, I started whipping up a batch of cream cheese frosting… but horrors of horrors I just couldn’t seem to get the frosting to a nice piping consistency to enable me to prettily pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes.. oh no!! Oh.. for those of you that don’t know… this was my first try at making cream cheese frosting.
At my wit’s end, I rushed back to my computer and started vigourously searching for alternative cream cheese frosting recipes. In the end, decided to try and salvage my original cream cheese frosting recipe by adding a little bit of butter and putting the cream cheese in the fridge to harden up.
After an hour of frantic searching on the internet to see what went wrong with my frosting, and nail biting to while away the time, I finally went back to the fridge to check on the frosting. Luckily for me, the frosting did harden up some and I was able to pipe on the frosting. Last but not least… not to forget about my candy canes, I mashed up some and used them to decorate the cupcakes to give it that little bit of crunch…
As can be seen from the pictures below, while trying to take pictures of the cupcakes, the frosting started melting.. sigh.. in the end, the overall frosting was more of a runny consistency. Sigh.. back to the drawing board to try out another frosting recipe.
These are the pics of the cupcakes before the frosting started melting…
These were some of the pics after the frosting started melting…
Final verdict.. even with the disaster of the runny cream cheese frosting, the cupcakes were delicious.. the blend of coffee and peppermint was perfect and did bring to mind the christmas season. In addition, the cream cheese frosting although runny was not too sweet and perfectly complimented the cupcakes itself without overpowering the delicate flavours.
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Posted 2 years, 3 months ago at 6:29 pm. 1 comment
