All Hail The Queen!

So here I sit, on Christmas Eve, with a stuffed nose and burning eyes, wondering where I should pick up from!

Such a long time since the last post and so many bakes in between...I don't know where to start.

Against my better judgement (and a growing hole in my wallet) I've been experimenting with macarons...there're just so many factors that can contribute to having either a failed batch or a successful one that it seems necessary to offer a prayer to the Macaron Gods before starting on them! What a fuss pot.

Italian macarons aren't the favourite of the purists but I don't care...it works for me and is a lot more practical for the home baker with limited resources. Leaving the French macaron batter lying around waiting for its turn in the oven isn't exactly advisable...

It was a crazy long journey from macaron Frisbees to decent looking ones worth taking pictures of, but there's still loads of room for improvement. Would be awesome to take some classes if only I had the time now!

Ganache fillings seem the best for macarons that need longer storage as cream based or worse still - custard ones - will completely soak through them and leave you with a soggy, sorry batch of macarons after a couple of hours of maturing in the fridge.

Three flavours have passed the cut after being in production for some time. Lemon seems to go awesomely well with a creamy white chocolate ganache with the sour, tartness of the lemon cutting through the cloyingly sweet white chocolate.

Pistachio's oily nature lends itself well to being combined with white chocolate after being made into a paste. It doesn't overwhelm the milkiness of the chocolate but complements it with its nutty aroma. There's a reason why the pistachio macaron is a staple in every bakery these days!

And lastly, the dark chocolate macaron. Sweetness, and bitterness all in the same bite! Nothing makes you feel less guilty about chomping down on a calorie laden macaron than a dark chocolate one. The bitterness from the chocolate immediately mutes the extreme sweetness of the macaron shell and leaves the palate free for another bite!

A Birthday Pie?!

Birthdays are always a special occasion and for my family, its celebrated with a specially done homemade cake that lends a personal touch to the occasion! It used to be my mum's responsibility to make the cake but she's now passed things on to me so I'm in-charge of carrying on the tradition! A month before a birthday, the birthday person is asked nicely/interrogated/grilled by me until he/she comes up with a favourite flavour and any other special requests.

August is when my sister gets a year older and this time she wanted something else entirely - a birthday pie! I had no idea if a birthday was celebrated anywhere else in the world with a pie but she was adamant about it and so a pie it was going to be!

She specifically wanted a peach pie complete with a lattice top and I have to say I was dreading to start working on it. I've never really had much success in working with sweet pie dough; it's always too crumbly and cracks when I'm rolling it out. I can never seem to achieve that "drape rolled dough over rolling pin and unfurl it over the pie dish" thing that you always see on the telly.

This time was no different unfortunately. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong...maybe the butter isn't cold enough, maybe I'm over working the dough, maybe I'm adding too much water, maybe, maybe, maybe...sigh.

Somehow, the pie bottom was rolled out and placed into the dish and the lattice was carefully arranged over the top of the pie. I couldn't manage to do the traditional lattice design as the dough was just too soft to weave. It wasn't a very neat looking lattice in short...

My mum also had plans for a small cake that she was waiting for the opportune moment to try and it would be perfect for the occasion - The Handbag Cake!

I was skeptical at first as to how the overall look would be like but I must say I was extremely impressed! Intricate and precise piping work all over meant that alot of effort and planning went into the cake although it look particularly complicated. Shows that my mum still has it in her!

I was extremely glad everything turned out well in the end and my sister was happy she got what she wanted! Happy birthday Sis!

Probably should have taken that picture with the candle lighted though...

After taking on the "Thousand Roses" and Ruffle cakes, I yearned for another cake to challenge me both technically and mentally. That's not to say the other cakes I've attempted were walks in the park, but both of those cakes - specifically - took lots of time, energy, patience and certainly lots of effort to complete. 

And truth be told, it made me feel good when I feasted my eyes upon the completed works. It made me feel alive..as ridiculous as that sounds!

So when my Mum showed me a YouTube video of the Ombre Cake being done, I knew that one day, I will just have to undertake the challenge! After months of putting it off, I realised it was now or never and just went for it!

My friend had requested for a small cake of any flavour and decoration and I decided that this was the opportune moment to make the Ombre. At least it wouldn't go to waste sitting in my fridge! I watched the video a couple more times, took a deep breath and finally got down to doing it.

I had prepared a double recipe quantity of the Swiss Meringue Buttercream before hand and decided to split the whole thing into three equal batches and tint them in graduating shades of red like in the video. Well two of those portions were tinted, while one remained its original shade of pale ivory. After looking at pictures of the Ombre cake, I realised that graduating shade of colour for the dots of cream were best, instead of using a combination of totally different colours.

The cake itself was a regular strawberry sponge that was a deep shade of pink (friend was nice enough to send me a picture heh!). This was sliced into three rounds and filled with strawberry jam and softly whipped cream. After a light crumb coat and 15 minutes in the fridge, the cake was ready for the Ombre makeover!

One by one, the dots of the three colours went on, got smudged on one side to create the "tail" and the process was repeated. Four long hours later, it was finally done! Thankfully, it went without any hitches or hiccups and the cream held up well in the afternoon heat that was baking the house. It wasn't perfect but nonetheless, I was over the moon!

Definitely my best creation to date!

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!