Teachers Day cupcakes

Again, from the Cupcake bakeshop, for teachers day... Hadn't a clue how to whip cream so ended up with lavender butter on my first attempt... I saved for use on toast, and also in the cream cheese frosting. Yum! Had some problems finding lavender, fortunately happened to pass a tea shop in the basement of Raffles City Shopping Centre which carried it.

Searched youtube and found a helpful video on whipping cream. Phew. Am really enjoying all of Chockylit's recipes, and want to work through them all if I can : P !

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

Hooray, another excuse to bake! This time, Children's day celebrations at church. We were supposed to bring 12 snacks each for every child we have, so that was 24 from me. Went to theCupcake Bakeshop site, which I think has the loveliest cupcakes ever, with such interesting flavours! The ice cream cone cupcakes looked so appealing, thought they would go down well with the kids (they did : ) Wonderful recipe, very straightforward, not a problem to carry off for newbie like me. Great tip on filling the cones, I really went conservative, and even then still had some spillage...




The other useful tip was slashing bottoms of sturdy white cupcake holders, and using that as an ice cream cone stand - that helped a lot when icing the cones and later for transporting them. I supposed I could have baked them stood up in those cupcake holders on a baking sheet, but I used my muffin pans instead, because I have 2 of those : ). I had to stuff aluminum foil around each cone for stability. Although when filled with batter, the cones are quite stable enough on their own, once the cake starts to rise, it only takes a gentle shake to send them spilling over... as happened with my first batch : P.



Here's my reject pile... casualties from the first batch, plus one "Ran out of icing" and one "Icing too cold"


Sophie enjoyed them!


The cakes themselves turned out really well, soft and fluffy, very tasty. Buttercream icing was too sweet for my taste, as always, but what to do - as I understand, you need the sugar for the icing to be able to hold up at all. The ice cream cone did get mushy fast, especially in our hot humid weather, but not too badly.

Black Forest Adventures

More baking : )

Last weekend, for a friends' birthday, I thought I'd try a black forest cake. I had real difficulty with the genoise though... came out really dense, not light and airy... think the bain marie part did me in, hee hee, all because of laziness! I used my medium sized saucepan and bowl, which left not a lot of room to whisk 6 eggs and sugar vigorously. So after transferring to the mixer and beating for requisite 6-8 minutes, I was still not achieving "a ribbon that stays on the surface for a few seconds".. : P. But the volume did triple!!! Other than that, wonder if the way I added the dry ingredients affected it? The book says "slowly" - but what IS "slowly"? Like very small trickle slowly? Or "within 1 minute" slowly? Alarmed by the way putting in quickly reduced volume, but also remember reading somewhere that you do not want to overbeat once flour is added, or you will get a tough cake. So don't know what the right pace is. Also had a problem with my springform pan, which was an expensive looking free gift from Meyer, but also non-stick! So my cake didn't rise as much as it probably could, because it was pulling away from the sides, and worse - my batter kept dripping out the bottom!!!! Asked my baking guru friend, who recommended a kaiser pan from phoon huat. So will buy when I next attempt something requiring that.




Here it is... ended up using 1.5 recipes of genoise, because although I could have split one into three layers, they would have been REALLY FLIMSY discs. Anyway, what saved it was Griottines (sp?) from Culina...used a whole jar (including juices!) and they were so yum. Whipped the cream ok too, having learnt from a previous cupcake experience - will have to put that up later just for the whipped cream lesson alone! Fortunately our friends love alcohol so they enjoyed the cake!