The Cupcake Journey Episode 2: PB Strikes and the Cookies Crumbled!

Having been bitten by the cupcake bug, there was just no stopping! My mind went into overdrive thinking of all the possible flavour combinations and I would have done a batch of every that crept into my mind, if not for mum saying that it's perhaps time for the oven to take a little break...

So before going on some sort of a cupcake hiatus, I decided to add two more flavours. Instead of the unconventional, I went down the tried and tested route by sticking to two common and pretty well liked flavours - Peanut Butter and Cookie Crumble.

The cupcake bases were the same chocolate ones as the ones in the previous cupcake post, that I had developed a liking to. They were just so moist even after spending hours in the fridge! It was abit of a challenge to get them into the oven quick enough though as they tend to not get maximum rise if the batter is left sitting around.

For the peanut butter ones, I kinda went to town with the peanut butter when I was mixing it into the Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMBC) and it went all sloppy and soft - definitely not pipable and not what I was after! Luckily I had used only about a quarter of the stock SMBC I had made earlier, for the trial PB cream so I grabbed another quarter of plain SMBC and added the PB little by little this time to get the right consistency and taste.

It was almost like doing a titration (pardon the geeky reference..guess I can't suppress the chemist in me!) with the PB addition into the cream but after adding about a quarter cup of the creamy heavenly stuff that we so casually refer to as PB, I decided to stop. It was still pipable but I sensed it was at that cliffhanger point (you can see from the picture that the cream was pretty soft and perhaps the swirl wasn't the best choice of pattern to pipe in this case!) where anymore PB would tip it over the edge into unpipable stuff. The colour wasn't deep though, so I had to rummage through the fridge for that bottle of brown powder colouring...a sprinkle or two of that stuff and I was ready to pipe!

The Cookie Crumble cupcake had me stumped for a bit as I wondered how I was to achieve that taste that we've gotten so used to whenever someone mentions Cookies n' Cream. I knew I had to start with Oreos for sure, so I crushed a couple of them and added them to some plain SMBC. But I soon realised that it wasn't giving me that flavour I was looking for...that had me clutching at straws for quite a while until I decided to add in a little of the Oreo cream that I had scraped off the biscuits prior to crushing them.

Adding the cream really hit the spot for me flavour wise and I was happy to be able to add another 2 tantalizing and tempting flavours!

Till next time! The cupcake journey plods on!

The Cupcake Journey: Durian, Chocolate Hazelnut & Mocha!

I'm almost done with the clearing of a ton of backlog on this site and finally I'll be able to blog about something I've done a few days ago rather than a couple of months ago...

Everyone seems to LOVE cupcakes don't they? I'd much rather have a cupcake than a slice of cake simply because its just more convenient to pop one in your mouth that holding a frosted slice of cake in your hands which just turns into a big mess.

Cupcakes are dainty and pretty to look at after some piping work, and they don't require much working on either. They're also extremely versatile with regards to flavours/ colours/ whatnot and that makes a plain vanilla cupcake a piece of blank canvas. With the ability to tint and flavour frostings as well, the possibilities are mind-numbingly endless.

Having only recently discovered the wonders of Meringue Buttercreams, I was eager to get started with adding cupcakes to my menu! And with the King of Fruits - the Durian - in season, I decided that the best way to kick off the journey was to make some Durian cupcakes.

I wasn't too keen on baking the durian in the cake itself as I'm really not a fan of durian that has been baked/cooked. Somehow the heat changes the aroma and it becomes too pungent and just well, weird.

So I decided to mix the durian with some freshly whipped cream, just enough to loosen up the thick durian paste but not enough to mute the flavour, and pipe the mixture down the middle of each cupcake to give it sort of a "core of heaven". Sort of anyway.

That was done easily enough with an apple corer that was lying in the drawer having been forgotten about for a long long long time! Once the cupcakes were cored and filled, they were topped off with a luscious swirl of Swiss Meringue Buttercream that had been flavoured with just a hint of durian as I hate artificial durian flavours.

My mum absolutely loved every last bit of it and I wasn't surprised as she was a real durian fanatic!!

Anyway, having taken the first step in the cupcake journey, I was eager to carry on and make more. Lots more in fact!

I had the chance to make some chocolate ones when my mum said that she wanted to give dinner to my Malay neighbours during their fasting period some time back. After trawling through the Net for some ideas and rummaging through the cupboards in the kitchen, I decided to go with a Chocolate Hazelnut Cupcake and a Mocha one since hazelnuts and coffee seem to be chocolate's BFFs.

Having made a fresh batch of chocolate cupcakes, I decided to core the ones that were to be the Hazelnut ones and leave the Mocha ones alone. The hollowed out cupcakes were then filled with the heady concoction of Nutella, chocolate ganache and gently whipped cream and then topped with Swiss Meringue Buttercream flavoured with more gooey Nutella.

I found that the Buttercream couldn't hold much Nutella and tended to become a lot softer after adding it in. I wanted to pipe the cream on so I couldn't afford for the buttercream to soften beyond a pipable consistency. Had to add as much Nutella as the cream could hold and thought the flavour and richness would take a hit but in the end, they turned out fine!

For the Mocha ones, I dissolved a tablespoon of instant coffee granules in 2 tablespoons of hot water and set it aside to cool before adding it to some plain Swiss Meringue Buttercream and gave it a couple of swirl arounds with the paddle in the mixer. The concentrated coffee meant that I didn't need to add much to get the flavour I was looking for and also gave the Buttercream a lovely shade of brown - not to mention a great aroma too!

Can't wait to take the next step!

All Ruffled Up!

I'm not an adventurous person by any means, but when it comes to cakes and bakes, I'm a whole different person. I love taking on new recipes and attempting to jazz things up in tried and tested recipes. Doesn't often lead to success but hey if you never try you never know right?!

So having leftover buttercream in my fridge, I set my mind on attempting something I saw while trawling the net some time back: the Ruffle Cake.

Piping decorations can really help improve the look of any ordinary looking cake and take it to another level visually. If a plain sponge cake is Cinderella then the buttercream is the fairy godmother...or something along those lines!

I got down to making two 7" sponge cakes and it wasn't long before they were sliced, iced and stacked with a crumb coat layer and put back in the fridge while I prepared the buttercream to go on the outsides. I decided to go with a yellow tone to complement the mango flavoured insides of the cake.

Before long, the cream was ready but I was still feeling a little nervous about the doing the lacy frilly design. After another couple of minutes watching YouTube videos on achieving the pattern, I was ready to go. 

The strange thing was that, once I started, I didn't look back and only stopped once the sides were all done...such was the momentum that carried me through the whole way! Thankfully, it came out alright and pretty even in size. The top was a little tricky and I had abit of a problem getting into the rhythm and had to keep stopping along the way as I wasn't sure if I was doing alright. 

Piled up a couple of cubes of fresh mango and the middle and I was done! Woohoo!! 

Probably should have taken more pictures at different angles though...

The Engagement Bouquet!

It's an Indian tradition to bring desserts and "sweets" for engagement ceremonies and the interpretation of "sweets" has inevitably changed with time. Traditional sweetmeats which are now considered much too sweet for the modern palate, have given way increasingly to cakes and cupcakes in particular.

My brother-in-law's brother held his engagement ceremony recently and my Mum and I decided to make a very presentable and unique cupcake bouquet. She had done one many years back so she was comfortable with the idea while I couldn't say I was completely sure!

She took about a week to piece together the basket by gluing individual chocolate coins round and round a cake board. It didn't look anything like a basket initially to me, but by the time she was done, I have to admit, I was extremely amazed!

I decided to go with large red velvet cupcakes as the "flowers" for the bouquet as it was pretty easy to whip up. I cut back a lot on the red food colouring though..I certainly don't think they need to be that bright in colour like the ones sold outside! That's like colouring overdose!

Instead of the rich cream cheese frosting swirls, I chose Swiss meringue buttercream swirls tinted in various shades to sit atop the cupcakes. I was afraid about the temperature that these cupcakes would have to sit in as the ceremony went on and in this tropical heat, I wasn't prepared to risk it with the cream cheese frosting.

In the end, the frosting held up well and everything went without a hitch!

Shirt And Tie For Dad!

Somehow, Father's Day gets totally eclipsed by Mother's Day but I guess that just goes to show how much respect and love we have for our mothers. Not that the fathers don't deserve any! I guess it's just the way it is, the world over!

Ever since I made my first mango mousse cake a couple of years back, my dad was hooked. So it wasn't difficult to decide on the filling for our annual Father's Day cake - a vanilla sponge sandwiched with 2 layers of silky and aromatic Italian mango mousse.

But me and mum wanted the decoration to be a little unique and slightly departing from the usual. So we jumped on the fondant bandwagon. She had recently bought a whole packet of white sugar paste and we weren't too sure how to use it although everyone seemed to be making really interesting cakes and decorations with sugar paste of all colours!

It was an interesting experience working with it for the first time and I think we did pretty good. Both of us didn't really like the taste of sugar paste, so we decided against covering the whole cake with a massive piece of it and instead went with a tie shaped piece that gave the cake a shirt and tie look! 

The creaming job should have been alot smoother though and could have been done in a darker colour for more contrast...

Nonetheless, he was delighted with it!

The Occasion That No One Ever Forgets!

If there's one occasion we have all marked mentally, its Mother's Day. Even if by some chance, you've completely forgotten, the world itself will remind you. With florists seemingly swimming in overpriced roses to gift shops stocked to the ceiling with gifts for moms and dedication events and tea parties and what not, it's quite impossible to miss it.

I had decided some time in advance about the decoration and type of cake for Mother's Day but as past experiences have taught me, its not too good to be set on one and only one decoration idea as things can turn out pretty different from the grand image that you had in your head...

Mum had been craving for chocolate cake for the longest time and I decided there was no better occasion to satisfy that craving! The cake wasn't much hassle I think - just try to load as much chocolate as possible onto a chocolate sponge cake! Thankfully, everything went well with the cake and it was left in the fridge to set while I agonized over the decoration.

I had an idea in mind to use macarons as part of the decor but as with macarons, you don't really know what you'll get - at least for me! To prep myself beforehand, I had attended a lesson in macaron making and I was a little more confident but it still was a nerve wracking couple of minutes as I stood in  my kitchen folding the egg whites into the almond mixture.

The macarons turned out well in the class and thankfully didn't let me down at home either!

The next step was getting all the decorations together and placing them on the cake..which doesn't sound that difficult but for me, after I had everything on, I realised I had focused so much on the macarons that I had completely forgot about the other areas of the cake which now looked pretty bare. Sigh.

Luckily mum came to the rescue and took a look around in the fridge before coming back out with multi-coloured chocolate pearls which made the cake alot more attractive in the end! I didn't want to involve her in the process but oh well!

Présentation de Crème Brûlée

Next up is.....not a cake. Rather, it's something that I thought was quite impossible to make at home due to the involvement of a torch. The nearest I've been to one was the Bunsen burner back in the chemistry labs in secondary school and I wasn't too keen on using one at home!

But as with anything else, I succumbed to curiosity and began researching for a Crème Brûlée recipe and most importantly, got the torch as well. It wasn't that difficult to get one but there were actually quite a surprising few varieties to choose from...

Once the recipe was chosen and the hardware in order, it was all about getting it done!

Unfortunately, other than having seen this decadent dessert on TV and being served to others in restaurants, I've never had one myself! So in the end, I didn't exactly have a benchmark to base my recreation of this French wonder.

I turned to the Internet once again to see what others would describe its taste, and I got words like creamy, silky, melt-in-your-mouth...along with specific notes (no surprises since it is a FRENCH creation!) on how exactly crisp the caramel on top should be.

Well, in the end I thought it wasn't the best Creme Brulee made by Man, but I wouldn't say it was too bad either. The custard was firm yet a little wobbly, it was smooth and silky yet rich and creamy, and the sugar shell wasn't unappetisingly burnt or too hard. And I had fun with the torch as well. So what can I say...it was a good day!