It came out fluffy and moist and was a hit, even with the kids! I used white buttercream icing and topped it with purple sugar sprinkles. I will definitely make these again in the future.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Eggless Chocolate Cupcakes
I made these cupcakes for a family of vegetarians. I didn't even have to bring out the mixer for this one, which made for an easy clean up. The recipe asked for me to stir the ingredients together with a fork. Some eggless recipes use condensed milk while others used baking soda and vinegar. I went with the latter and found a recipe on Cooks.com since it sounded less sweet.
It came out fluffy and moist and was a hit, even with the kids! I used white buttercream icing and topped it with purple sugar sprinkles. I will definitely make these again in the future.
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It came out fluffy and moist and was a hit, even with the kids! I used white buttercream icing and topped it with purple sugar sprinkles. I will definitely make these again in the future.
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
It's A Red Kind Of Day
Did you know that red velvet cake gets its color from the chemical reaction between highly-acidic ingredients (like vinegar and buttermilk) with cocoa that causes the red pigments to be revealed?
That was then...now people opt for the easy-to-use red food coloring!
Red velvet was the project of the week, to celebrate a friend's 26th birthday. I've made red velvet once or twice before in small batches for nobody in particular, but this had to be good! I tried Cake Boss's recipe and didn't like it too much..maybe I rushed through it too quickly but it turned out to be a culinary disappointment. So instead I went with America's Test Kitchen recipe. Like the receipe states, I added the cocoa powder to the red food coloring and made a paste..which looked like mashed beets. I was reluctant to use so much food coloring because surely back in the day, they didn't work with coloring but instead really did count on that chemical reaction to create the deep red color. Nonetheless, it mixed really well with the rest of the batter and I got a nice red color. Unfortunately, the cocoa separated from the rest of the ingredients in the oven and stayed at the bottom of the cupcake! I'll have to perfect this recipe in the future to avoid that, perhaps by using less cocoa.
The tricky part to this order was making the requested automaker logos, BMW and Audi. Usually I would turn to fondant as I did with the above letters, but the birthday boy follows Islamic practices and if the fondant contained gelatin, that would go against his beliefs. I wasn't sure if the fondant had gelatin so to be on the safe side, I decided to look for other ways.
I came upon a technique a few months ago called "Frozen Buttercream Transfer" or FBCT for short which essentially means you place wax paper on top of a horizontally flipped image, and outline the image with black decorating icing. You can see below how I started filling in the BMW logo.
I then filled in the rest of it in using colored buttercream icing. It was a bit tricky to get the icing into all the corners and making sure it was packed in nicely. You don't want any spaces or bubbles to show when you're done! After this step, I covered the entire pattern in white buttercream icing and placed it in the freezer for about two hours.
That was then...now people opt for the easy-to-use red food coloring!
Red velvet was the project of the week, to celebrate a friend's 26th birthday. I've made red velvet once or twice before in small batches for nobody in particular, but this had to be good! I tried Cake Boss's recipe and didn't like it too much..maybe I rushed through it too quickly but it turned out to be a culinary disappointment. So instead I went with America's Test Kitchen recipe. Like the receipe states, I added the cocoa powder to the red food coloring and made a paste..which looked like mashed beets. I was reluctant to use so much food coloring because surely back in the day, they didn't work with coloring but instead really did count on that chemical reaction to create the deep red color. Nonetheless, it mixed really well with the rest of the batter and I got a nice red color. Unfortunately, the cocoa separated from the rest of the ingredients in the oven and stayed at the bottom of the cupcake! I'll have to perfect this recipe in the future to avoid that, perhaps by using less cocoa.
I wanted to make about 20 mini red velvets to spell out "Happy Birthday". I cut out rolled red fondant circles using the end of the 1M Wilton tip, then cut out the letters using Wilton's metal letter cutters. This is what it looked like put together with some gumpaste glue.
The tricky part to this order was making the requested automaker logos, BMW and Audi. Usually I would turn to fondant as I did with the above letters, but the birthday boy follows Islamic practices and if the fondant contained gelatin, that would go against his beliefs. I wasn't sure if the fondant had gelatin so to be on the safe side, I decided to look for other ways.
I came upon a technique a few months ago called "Frozen Buttercream Transfer" or FBCT for short which essentially means you place wax paper on top of a horizontally flipped image, and outline the image with black decorating icing. You can see below how I started filling in the BMW logo.
While waiting for the transfers to freeze, I put together the mini cupcakes. They are topped with a dollop of cream cheese icing (Buddy Valastro's recipe, although any cream cheese icing recipe will do). They stacked up pretty nicely and were a sweet bite-sized hit!
And now time for the great reveal! After the BMW & Audi logos were fully frozen, I cut the wax paper and carefully flipped the logo onto each cupcake. Then I slowly peeled back the wax paper and voila! A flat, colored-in buttercream logo! I brushed a but of silver pearl dust onto certain areas to make it look more like the real thing. As they come to room temperature, the logos soften and take the shape of the cupcake without falling apart. Here are what the BMW and Audi logos looked like up close.
Red velvet cupcakes topped with cream cheese icing, ready to go!
And thats the story of how red velvet, the hottest cake flavour out there, was brought to my kitchen!!
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Bumblebees & Birthdays
Got an order for a 1st birthday party. The party was going to be a bumblebee theme..black and yellow and a hint of white. These cupcakes were topped with yellow buttercream icing and black sprinkles.
I had been practicing my cakepop skills for a few weekends now, leading up to this order. They weren't going to be regular cake pops...no sir! These were going to be bumblebee-shaped, with wings, and antenna, and stripes! I had tried a few methods before settling for this variety. The difficult part was shaping them without them cracking. On my first couple tries, they kept cracking before I could dip them, and the crack would show through the chocolate as a clear dent. I found out the cracks were happening because the cake would expand as it went from a cold area (fridge) to warm area (my counter). So I realized I needed to put them into the fridge for just 2 minutes and then let them come back to room temperature before dipping them. Another issue was that the cakepop would fall off the stick and into the melted chocoalte (more truffles for me!). So it's always good to make a few extras!
The white wings are made out of fondant. The antenna are black sprinkles. The stripes and face were drawn on with an edible marker. As you can tell, quite time consuming!
The above was a test run done a few weeks ago - you can tell some of them had expanded and cracked right through the chocolate. You can also see I experimented with wing shapes. But my brother said the folded wings looked like mouse ears and that the flat ones were more animated and child-like. These were a pale yellow - I blame this on the candy melts I got from the local bulk store. Adding yellow coloring didn't help. I then tried the Wilton melts, they have a more prominent yellow color..
The following were the cakepops I made for the birthday party. As you can see, they all survived. None of them cracked, they all stayed on their sticks, and they're a brighter yellow!
The cake was fun to do. The top tier was 6", two layers of chocolate. The bottom tier was 9" and a sandwich of chocolate-vanilla-chocolate. I tried a new buttercream recipe - that of the cake boss himself, Buddy Valastro! A mix of shortening and butter. I found it to be very smooth and tasty, and easy to spread and decorate with.
In the past, I've had trouble getting nice dark colors. They usually turned out to be pastel-like. This time, I mixed the yellow fondant ahead of time and found it got darker the longer I let it sit. Black fondant is another story. I was mixing the fondant for a good 20 minutes. Then went to rinse my hands and found it had dyed my hands RED! In the end it stayed a dark grey and couldn't get it to be jet black, so I opted for Wilton's black fondant for the dots and ribbon border. I then piped a few white dots just because white was also part of the color theme. This was the end result:
The whole lot, ready to be devoured!
By the way, my hands are back to their normal color..took a lot of scrubbing!! :]
I had been practicing my cakepop skills for a few weekends now, leading up to this order. They weren't going to be regular cake pops...no sir! These were going to be bumblebee-shaped, with wings, and antenna, and stripes! I had tried a few methods before settling for this variety. The difficult part was shaping them without them cracking. On my first couple tries, they kept cracking before I could dip them, and the crack would show through the chocolate as a clear dent. I found out the cracks were happening because the cake would expand as it went from a cold area (fridge) to warm area (my counter). So I realized I needed to put them into the fridge for just 2 minutes and then let them come back to room temperature before dipping them. Another issue was that the cakepop would fall off the stick and into the melted chocoalte (more truffles for me!). So it's always good to make a few extras!
The white wings are made out of fondant. The antenna are black sprinkles. The stripes and face were drawn on with an edible marker. As you can tell, quite time consuming!
The above was a test run done a few weeks ago - you can tell some of them had expanded and cracked right through the chocolate. You can also see I experimented with wing shapes. But my brother said the folded wings looked like mouse ears and that the flat ones were more animated and child-like. These were a pale yellow - I blame this on the candy melts I got from the local bulk store. Adding yellow coloring didn't help. I then tried the Wilton melts, they have a more prominent yellow color..
The following were the cakepops I made for the birthday party. As you can see, they all survived. None of them cracked, they all stayed on their sticks, and they're a brighter yellow!
The cake was fun to do. The top tier was 6", two layers of chocolate. The bottom tier was 9" and a sandwich of chocolate-vanilla-chocolate. I tried a new buttercream recipe - that of the cake boss himself, Buddy Valastro! A mix of shortening and butter. I found it to be very smooth and tasty, and easy to spread and decorate with.
In the past, I've had trouble getting nice dark colors. They usually turned out to be pastel-like. This time, I mixed the yellow fondant ahead of time and found it got darker the longer I let it sit. Black fondant is another story. I was mixing the fondant for a good 20 minutes. Then went to rinse my hands and found it had dyed my hands RED! In the end it stayed a dark grey and couldn't get it to be jet black, so I opted for Wilton's black fondant for the dots and ribbon border. I then piped a few white dots just because white was also part of the color theme. This was the end result:
The whole lot, ready to be devoured!
By the way, my hands are back to their normal color..took a lot of scrubbing!! :]
Cakepops & Truffles
I've read about cakepops on Bakerella's blog and figured it's time I tried to do this. For my first solo attempt, it didn't go so bad. It's a time consuming process but still fairly easy. Only a couple fell off the stick as I was dipping them into the candy melts...so then I turned them into truffles! Still delicious either way!
Hey what's that back there??..i'll get to those in a second.
When in doubt, make a truffle!
Hey what's that back there??..i'll get to those in a second. When in doubt, make a truffle!
Butter & Cream = Buttercream?
It should be called criscocream since most buttercream recipes call for shortening. I tried a buttercream icing recipe with no shortening, and instead used unsalted butter. I looked through several recipes and read reviews before I chose one. It didn't turn out as stiff as I had hoped, so piping swirls on cupcakes proved a little difficult (I will be trying other buttercream recipes in the future). This still tasted good! I topped them off with a white fondant daisy.
These were made for a fundraising event for a woman battling brain cancer.
These were made for a fundraising event for a woman battling brain cancer.
Charity begins in the home...but shouldn't end there.
November 23, 2011:
"Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn't come from a store."- Dr. Seuss
I made these cupcakes for a workplace charitable campaign. The first set were Oreo cupcakes which I had made several times before. They seemed to get good reviews so knew they would sell. These have half an Oreo cookie on the bottom of the cupcake, crumbs mixed into the buttercream icing, and half 1/2 a cookie on top.
The second set were made to look like ornaments. I used mini candy canes with the ends cut off to resemble the hooks. Then I decorated the cupcaes with mini M&Ms.
The next set I made were regular cupcakes topped with buttercream icing and bits of crushed candy canes. A few of them had a piece of candy cane in them to satisfy the ocassional sweet tooth.
"Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn't come from a store."- Dr. Seuss
I made these cupcakes for a workplace charitable campaign. The first set were Oreo cupcakes which I had made several times before. They seemed to get good reviews so knew they would sell. These have half an Oreo cookie on the bottom of the cupcake, crumbs mixed into the buttercream icing, and half 1/2 a cookie on top.
The second set were made to look like ornaments. I used mini candy canes with the ends cut off to resemble the hooks. Then I decorated the cupcaes with mini M&Ms.
The next set I made were regular cupcakes topped with buttercream icing and bits of crushed candy canes. A few of them had a piece of candy cane in them to satisfy the ocassional sweet tooth.
Football Sunday!
November 6, 2011:
A friend of mines hosted a Football Sunday party at her house and of course I saw this as an opportunity to get creative! Here are some chocolate-almond cupcakes, topped with buttercream icing grass. For the football, I piped some laces onto a chocolate-covered almond. Delicious!
I also made a small 6" round cake to go with it - covered in buttercream icing with the field yard markers in fondant.
A friend of mines hosted a Football Sunday party at her house and of course I saw this as an opportunity to get creative! Here are some chocolate-almond cupcakes, topped with buttercream icing grass. For the football, I piped some laces onto a chocolate-covered almond. Delicious!
I also made a small 6" round cake to go with it - covered in buttercream icing with the field yard markers in fondant.
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