A date with my cupcakes..

Brandon and his ex-classmates (from P6), Yi Jing and Rosalind and together with Rosalind's classmates from St.Margaret School have made a date with my cupcakes *lol* These are for THEM!

Thanks Lee Lee for the sugarpaste flowers and leaves. They are all so pretty!

Meeting venue: Ferry Point Bungalow chalet
Date: 28th October 2007
Time: 3pm onwards

My naked cuppies.........

Some of you must be wondering why am I MIA for a while... hehe... my PC was infected with virus lor...only managed to download the pics today.

These were naked cupcakes (before dressed up). I baked them last Saturday for elder ds, Brandon's chalet gathering with his ex-classmates on Sunday. I am going to dress them up nicely with the sugarpaste flowers and leaves contributed by Lee Lee. So nice of her! Thanks Lee. The children were so delighted with the cupcakes.

I made 2 different cupcake bases - Vanilla Cupcakes and Chocolate Muffins.

The Vanilla Cupcakes are really nice. The recipe is shared by one of my forum pal, Cuen, in IK. The texture is really soft and moist. I have slightly modified the recipe to suit my taste.

The Chocolate ones are nice too. Recipe shared by Peony, a forum pal in IK and M4M.

I have posted Peony's recipe here for your easy ref. For more details, please check it out at her blog.

Chocolate Chip Muffins (Recipe by Peony, M4M & IK)

Ingredients:
1 ¾ cup plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate soda
¾ cup castor sugar ( too sweet, shd reduce to ½ cup )
¼ cup cocoa powder
100g butter, melted
1 egg
1 cup plain yoghurt
½ cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
½ cup chocolate chips

Method:
1) Preheat oven at 180°C.
2) Sieve flour, bicarbonate soda and cocoa powder together. Stir in sugar and chocolate chips.
3) Beat egg and vanilla essence together, add in yoghurt, milk and melted butter. Add all the wet ingredients into flour mixture.
4) Fold in all the mixture until dampened, but not smooth.
5) Spoon mixture evenly into lined or greased muffin tray.
6) Bake for 20 mins or until the until skewer comes out clean.

Cupcakes

Doris, my dear friend was at my place last Friday for dinner. I made some cupcakes for her to bring home to share with her room-mate, Yukiko. Both of them are dessert lovers..anything that are sweet, they both like it. Hope they enjoy my cuppies!

Those little flowers are contributed by Lee Lee. Thanks Lee!

Simple sugarpaste..

Lee Lee (Hugbear) gave me some of her sugarpaste dough and I had fun playing with it.

These are the output from the dough..haha..

Mini Egg Sponge Cakes

These little egg sponge cakes require very minimum ingredients. Since I have all the ingredients at home, I give it a try. This is a variation on the familiar kueh baulu. The texture is soft and light. I did the first batch of the batter and after baking, I have difficulty in removing the cakes from the moulds. I did grease the moulds but somehow it just got stuck into it... I got mad!... did another batch and make sure the moulds were being greased properly before I poured in the batter. Finally, the cakes after baked just dropped out easily by itself! hehe..

I used my doughnut tray for my mini cakes and papercups for the bigger ones.

Mini Egg Sponge Cakes

What you need:
3 eggs
100g caster sugar (I used 80g)
2 large pinches of salt
1 tsp vanilla essence
80g plain flour (sifted)
Cooking oil for greasing the moulds

Method:
1) Preheat the oven at 200deg for 10 mins.
2) Grease the moulds with cooking oil.
3) Beat eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla essence for 3mins on medium high speed till the mixture is very thick and creamy.
4) Using lowest speed of the mixer, add in the sifted flour quickly till incorporated. Do not overmix.
5)Fill the moulds to the brim with mixture.
6) Bake for 8 to 10 mins till the cakes are golden brown.
7) Remove the cakes and cool.

Special Note:
* Beating of the eggs - This incorporates air into the mixture that makes the cakes light and spongy.
* Do not overmix when adding flour to the egg mixture. This will result in heavy and dense cakes.
* Use non-stick moulds as this enables the baked cakes to be removed easily.

lusciously moist Lychee Muffins

Lusciously moist and fragrant, light and refreshing muffins will brighten anyone's day... these are the words used to describe this Lychee Muffin in the cookbook "Delicious Asian Baked Treats" by Oi Lin, the author. Well, indeed it brighten my day! I simply adore this muffin.

Simple Cupcakes

Didn't bake much last week as I was feeling terribly sick. Visited the doctor and was given mc for two days. The medication made me drowsy and I had a complete rest that I am feeling better now. Well, getting better meaning I can resume my baking hobby again.

Dss were craving for some cupcakes. I did a batch of Vanilla Honey Cupcakes (Nat's recipe, my forum pal from m4m) and go easy and simple with the frosting. I cut down alot on the icing sugar as I was afraid it's really too sweet for my kids. In fact, I didn't measure the butter and icing sugar, just agaration, so you can see it didn't hold the shape very well. Nevertheless, the cakes are really nice, soft and light and the frosting didn't taste too sweet and it was well received by everyone. Yippee!

Vanilla Honey Cupcakes (Recipe by Nat, M4M)

What you need:
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup fine sugar
2 eggs
1 1/3 cup plain flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup honey
2 tsp vanilla essence

My Modified Version:
1/2 cup salted butter*
1/2 cup fine sugar*
2 eggs
1 1/3 cup cake flour*
1 tsp baking powder*
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup honey*
2 tsp vanilla essence
* I cut down on sugar and honey as I will be doing sweet toppings for my cupcakes.

Method:
1) Beat butter till soft.
2) Add sugar till fluffy.
3) Add eggs one at a time and beat well.
4) Add flour, baking soda and baking powder.
5) Add milk, vanilla and honey and beat mixture thoroughly till smooth.
6) Spoon into cupcakes.
7) Bake for 20 mins at 180 degree celsius or until toothpick comes out clean.

Pau anyone?

started my baking slowly after a few days break haha.. and decided to make some pau for our afternoon tea yesterday. This is a recipe shared by a pal from one of the parenting forum. Can't remember whose's recipe was that.. will check it out and post credit later :)

The texture is soft and slightly chewy, not those fluffy type that sold outside. I prefer the later. I used red bean paste and lotus paste from PH and made my own vegetables filling and custard paste. Poor shaping of my pau and some resemble 'soon-kueh' as commented by my sis..haha.. need more practices yo!

Rockin' Girl Blogger Award

I am so happy to receive an award on my birthday! Is the "Rockin' Girl Blogger ward", awarded by singairishgirl, thanks dear!

Is my B-Day, give me a break!

No work, no bakes, nothing..simply eat and relax on my B-Day yesterday..hahaha... I have a list of program line up for me..Yeah, I truly enjoyed myself very much :)

A big THANK YOU to my loving hubby, two wonderful children, my sil and Junye for the lunch date, my dear friend - Doris for buying me dinner on Friday night and a group of dear kakis - Alice, Lee Lee and Carol for buying me dinner yesterday too. Many many thanks to my in-laws, parents, brother, sister, friends and ladies at m4m for their birthday wishes! and not forgetting the beautiful birthday gifts from my sil,Alice, Lee Lee, Leslie, and my cousin, Joann for her Awfully Chocolate Cake!

Hokkaido Milky Bread

Alice, my dear friend, bought me a pack of Japanese Bread Flour from her baking teacher. Thanks Alice. I used it to make Hokkaido Milky Bread and is so yummilicious!

This is the recipe.

Assorted Breads

These assorted buns were baked for my family's breakfast on a Saturday morning.

Peach Longan Marshmallow Cake

This is another marshmallow cake I made on the same day. I did a bigger one, double the recipe as I need to use up my whipped cream which is going to expire in two weeks time. As I only left with half can of peaches, not sufficient to cover the whole cake, both dss suggested adding in a can of Longan (their fav!). hehe... I welcome all suggestions.. Well, it tasted pretty good with the longan and peaches :)

Peach Marshmallow Cake

Was on half day leave yesterday. While dss were busy revising for their exam, I was busy in the kitchen making marshmallow cakes ..keke.. I used peaches instead of the usual mangoes as I can hardly find them in the market now.

PSLE is here!

Bryan, younger ds is sitting for his PSLE this year. His first paper on English started yesterday. Today, he is sitting for his Maths paper, followed by Chinese paper tomorrow and Science paper on next Monday. I know for the past weeks that he was really very stressed, juggled in between his school works and his so call tight tuition time-tables. Poor boy :( I can't help much with his revision and I know that he is putting his best and I am hopping and praying at the same time that he excels in his exam.

The same goes to Brandon, my elder ds who is sec two this year, is sitting for his streaming exam on the same date as PSLE, 3rd Oct. His will stretch till next Friday as he has to sit for 9 subjects. This is his critical year as he will be streamed and posted to courses depending on how well is his result. All the best to him and hope he gets his result in flying colors.

All the best and good luck to you boys!!! HIP HIP HOORAY!!:)

What I can do is to give them my words of encouragement and moral support by cooking their favourite food.

I took leave on 2nd Oct and these were the dishes I came out with.

Children's Day Brownies

Made some brownies for younger ds to share with his football kakis and passed some to my neighbours' kids to celebrate Children's Day which falls on 1st October every year. Thus, those P6 and below school children need not attend school on this day as it is a declared PH. I simply forgotten that my elder ds who is 14 this year no longer belongs to this category *lol*

Younger ds, Bryan, helped me with the decoration of the cuppies and we had alot of fun doing it together:)

I would like to thank Brenda, a forum pal from M4M who shared with me this easy recipe. The texture is moist and not dry. It still stay soft the 3rd day.



















packed in a gift box to give away...