Happy Birthday, Dad! (updated)

I am now in Malaysia over the holidays and staying at my parents'. Today is our dad's birthday and sister no.4 made a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Why am I doing this post if I didn't make it, you ask. Well, because I know sister no. 4 will probably not put up this post. FYI, sister no.4 is the one who had a baby girl six months ago. She HAS been baking quite frequently over the last few months actually. YOU ask her why she hasn't put up any posts :P

Anyway, Happy Birthday Dad!!

p/s: sorry, picture to follow soon.


Here's the pic, a week later :P

Christmas Cupcakes Part 2 (or Take 3?)

My sister from KL bought me some snowflake plunger cutters (is that what they are called?) and so I decided to try them out as I wanted to give some cupcakes to a friend. It's been raining a lot recently and the fondant was really soft and sticky. Nevertheless, I think they turned out all right and yes, I did make the snowman this time! (Because I only made one :P)

Happy Birthday, Sister No. 5!

These are dedicated to sister no. 5 who is celebrating her birthday in oh-so-cold London. They are from my Cupcakes by Sue McMahon book. They are sort-of lemon cupcakes. Sort-of because there's only lemon rind in them, no lemon juice nor extract. While the cupcakes were still warm, granulated sugar was sprinkled on top and lemon juice was poured over it. The cakes have a really nice lemony crunch to it.

Happy Birthday, Sis! I hope you have a wonderful birthday!

Christmas Cookie Gifts

I made cookies for my sons' teachers as Christmas gifts. The jar ones are for my six-year-old's teachers and the pack ones are for the other teachers. No, I'm not playing favourites. It's because it's my older son's final year in the kindergarten, so his teachers get the jars. They are all the same cookies, it's just that the other teachers only get one Christmas tree cookie. If I were to give jars to all the teachers, I'd be up to my neck in cookies and I think I'll just go crazy :P

Indian Inspired Eggless Cupcakes

After frequent requests for eggless cupcakes, I have decided to give it a go. This is quite a tricky one because I wasn't quite sure whether egg substitutes will be able to bind the ingredients together. First try was a major disaster! The cakes sunk so low, they looked like bowls (Bowlcake? Start a trend, maybe? Maybe not).

Round 2 turned out much better, although, for some reason (and maybe it's my imagination), they're not as tasty (but were still moist). Anyway, doesn't really matter I suppose, considering a cupcake isn't just about the taste, but how it looks like as well!

Round 3 was the first order I got for eggless cupcakes. Since it was for a Hindu Temple, thought I attempt to give it an Indian touch. What do you think?

Christmas Cupcakes - Take Two?

I have really been MISSING IN ACTION for ages...due to a myriad of reasons.
But I did don the apron and baked some cupcakes yesterday and today. Actually, I baked not because I really want to...but because both my boys had end-of-year Xmas parties at school, and I had a ladies luncheon today etc.. And since I was baking already, I decided to bake some for some good friends as Xmas gifts.

Cupcakes for my S1

Cupcakes for S2
Cupcakes for Ladies Luncheon

Cupcakes for my Friend, CL
(Had another similar box, for my friend WW)

Cupcakes for Friend, SH

This is going to be my last batch of baking for the year... I will be MISSING-IN-ACTION again for another 3 or so weeks. I will be flying back home to Kuala Lumpur on the 19th December...and then off to the States for 2 weeks, and only back here in Jakarta on the 8th of January 2010.

Wishing all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Happy Birthday, Hubby!

It was hubby's birthday last Friday, and so I decided to bake cupcakes! 2.5 dozen of them...

The Yummiest Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

They were bleedin' yummy! The chocolate cakes were moist, and the frosting was smooth as! See my other blog for other yummy looking non-cake foods!

Baked Mango Cheesecake

Sister No. 4 is visiting with her family, so I made this mango cheesecake. Not because she likes mango cheesecake but because I've been meaning to try out this recipe which I got from the Food & Travel magazine.

The base is the usual digestive biscuits with melted butter. But this recipe required it to be baked for 10 minutes. I have to say this baked recipe is much better than the chilled one that I made a few months back. I will definitely make this one again.

Christmas Cookies

Yesterday, we had a baking session at my six-year-old's school. It started off when he asked his teacher why they were not making anything for Christmas (they made mooncakes for the Mooncake Festival). So when the teacher told me and said something about making cookies, I volunteered to help out.

We decided that I should prepare the dough and just let the kids cut out the cookies using Christmas cutters. There was something wrong with the oven and it took a long time for the cookies to bake. After they were baked, we had to wait for them to cool down so that the kids could frost them. I made some glace icing and coloured them red, blue, yellow and green.

It was a looooong morning and at first we thought maybe we should've had let them just frost the cookies (without the cookie-cutting process). But we figured we made the right decision because the kids had a blast!

Christmas Cupcakes

I made these vanilla and chocolate cupcakes for my hubby to bring to his office. I would like to say that I made the snowmen but sadly, I didn't. Of course I bought them, as usual. It just makes more sense (ahem, for a lazy cow like me :P) as the alternative is just way too time-consuming.

The Santa Claus is a non-edible figurine. It came in a pack of five and when I bought them, I didn't really pay attention. I just got the first pack of Santa Claus that I saw. If you look very closely, the SC looks like he's squatting and getting ready to ......er, erm......you figure it out......hahaha.

Blueberry and Cream Cheese

This is, again, from my Cupcakes by Sue McMahon book. It's actually lemon cupcakes with lemon cream cheese frosting, topped with blueberries and brushed with a blueberry jam glaze. I guess I didn't put enough blueberries and glaze, so it looks a bit 'sparse'. But yummy nevertheless.

Almost fell asleep on my cakes

Yesterday was a super-rubbish day. Woke up with joint pains due to the changing weather, missed BOTH trains to work and had zero attention the whole day. Trip home was no better as well, with a cancelled train and freezing weather (not quite, but it was REALLY cold).

When I finally got home, I had to make 3 dozen cupcakes. It would've been okay if they were all the same, but I had to make ONE dozen strawberry cc, ONE dozen chocolate and ONE dozen red velvet and ALL for different occasions. It would be quite terrible if I cancelled the orders at the last minute, so I forged on make them. Finally finished about 1am, but caught myself on time from falling into the frosting bowl.

On the bright side, I think they turned out quite well!

Birthday - Red Velvet with Vanilla Frosting



Strawberry Glory



Spring Chocolate

Under The Sea

A couple of days ago, my ex-neighbour texted me to thank me and to ask if I sell my cupcakes (I had given them some of the snowman/snowflake cupcakes). Her son (who is the same age as my older one) was going to camp and she wanted to order some for him to share with his friends.

She was very flexible in that she didn't mind what flavours or colours they were. So I just did half vanilla and half chocolate. At first, I thought I'd do a Christmas theme then changed my mind as I wanted to use the sea creatures-shaped sprinkles that I have. I didn't want to do all blue again as I've been doing that, so decided to do half blue and half green. There's loads of green under the sea, right? ;)

The sprinkles are shaped sharks, dolphins, turtles, sea lions, fish and sea horses. Hmmm...I wonder if the kids noticed them!

Lemon Cupcakes

Lemon Cupcakes

After such a long long time, I finally found some time and energy to bake! My colleague's birthday's tomorrow, and so I had promised that I'd bring cupcakes for afternoon tea in our weekly meeting today.

Although I ended up staying up until 12:30am, it was fun because I had a play of my MIL's Kenwood Chef!

Can't wait to bake my banana-walnut-cinnamon muffins tomorrow!!

Honey Loaf

Decided to bake something a little different. Tried this Honey Loaf recipe from Rachel Allen's bake book. Panicked a little because the recipe asked for 3oog plain flour, but i only had 200g. Tried to be smart and add self-raising flour, and overdid it as well. The taste of the honey really came out nicely, but due to my flour mishap, was a bit dry :(. Oh well, still went well with a nice cup of tea :).

Birthday...again

Snowflake and Snowman Cupcakes

I had a lot of buttercream left from the birthday cupcakes on Saturday. I never know how much to make and always end up making so much more than I need! But more is better than less, as I found out one time when I had an order. I decided to make less and I ended up not having enough to frost the LAST TWO cupcakes!! Boy, was I annoyed! Actually, 'annoyed' is a very polite way of saying how I felt that day! Sigh.....

Back to the buttercream I had left. So, on Sunday, I decided to make some cupcakes for my neighbours. Since it's nearing Christmas, I of course decided to go with that theme. I didn't want to use a lot of colour and I had the blue buttercream left, so decided to do snowflakes. At the last minute, decided to do a snowman, using the same tip as I used for the snowflakes.

Birthday Boy(s) Cupcakes

My friend, whose son is allergic to dairy, ordered these cupcakes for her two sons' birthday party. The older boy is four and the younger son is one. She saw the picture of the other blue birthday cupcakes I did a couple of months back and wanted the same. Well, not exactly the same. The sprinkles are star-shaped and we left two dairy-free chocolate cupcakes without frosting for the older boy. I dusted them with icing sugar and the candles '4' and '1' were put on them.

Happy Birthday, James and Daniel!

Flowers, Flowers, Flowers

Recently, I got an order for a dozen cupcakes for a birthday. I had to make them quite late in the evening due to trains and bus delays (that's London for you :P) after work. Almost fell asleep making them, so was slightly nervous about the cakes not turning out right. Luckily, all went well! Only thing is, my kitchen was a bomb after that and I couldn't be bothered to clean it up. Bleah.

baking joke

Sorry peeps - I haven't been baking so no posts on that! What I DO have, however; is a sad announcement to make:-

Please join me in remembering a great icon of the entertainment community.

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday of a yeast infection and trauma complications from repeated pokes in the belly.

He was 71. Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, Snap-Crackle and Pop along with Captain Crunch.

The gravesite was piled high with flours. Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded.

Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not considered a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times he was still a crusty old man and was considered a roll model for millions.

Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play Dough, two children, John Dough and Jane Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly dad, Pop Tart.

The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 minutes.

LOL!

Raspberry Swirls

I was craving for something sweet last night and I didn't want to have ice-cream, so I looked through my Cupcakes by Sue McMahon book and found this easy recipe for biscuit cupcakes. It says in the book "These are like a crumbly Viennese biscuit" and they are. The ingredients are just butter, caster sugar, plain flour and cornflour. I actually made them after dinner - so easy to make! I should call them strawberry swirls as I didn't have any raspberry jam. Still very yummy!

MIA. Again.

Hmmm...it does seem I've gone MIA again. I do apologise to the readers (ie. my other sisters. haha) that I've neglected this blog a little bit. Other than the short trip last week to visit sister no.1, I have no other excuses. Except that, er, I have an addiction. To what, you ask. Games on Facebook!! So addictive. I think I need to join Gamers Anonymous, or whatever they are called :P

But today, I decided to get my big behind off the chair and make some cupcakes for a friend. One of her sons is allergic to dairy and has never had cake before until I gave them some carrot cupcakes (without frosting) about two weeks ago. I found a dairy-free chocolate cake recipe and decided to try it out. For the frosting, I just put glace icing.

My friend bought me some Thomas cookie stampers a while back, so I rolled out some fondant and tried them out. I should've made the glace icing a bit thicker and also made the top of the cupcake more level. And another thing I should've done was pressed the stamper a little bit harder. Well, I know now! Next time will be better........I hope.

This Little Piggy...

A friend of mine saw FrostyD's piggies and squealed with excitement (pun intended!) and ordered a dozen for a kid's birthday party. My other half helped me with the ears, then declared to the world that he made them! The cheek!

30, Flirty and Thriving?

Seems like only yesterday when I turned 30. Sigh....30, not flirty, and definitely not thriving! I had an order for 30 cupcakes to celebrate a 30th birthday and the birthday girl actually had TWO parties to celebrate this special day. I don't think I can even last through one, much less two parties. Old before my time :P.

Halloween Cupcakes

My six-year-old had a small Halloween party at school today. I was asked to bring some sweets but of course, I had to make cupcakes! I got the idea for the tombstones from a website (can't remember which but a lot of sites have the same designs) and the mummies were from my beloved sister no. 1, of course. Erm, the bats, spiders and ghosts were bought ready-made. Wilton ones, I think. I was told the cupcakes went down very well with the kids :)

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Happy Halloween!!

Thousand Apologies

I want to apologise to those of you who tried to order some cupcakes via the email jakarta@atouchoffrostcakes.com
I've experienced some problems with access to the server for some time. The problem is now corrected, and I hope to respond to your inquiries promptly.

Sorry for the incovenience and disappointment.

Halloween Birthday

This order was delivered today.... These are mini vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting, to be shared with Harry's classmates at school. His mommy requested orange-coloured Halloween cupcakes. But I figured that I should have some black and white with the mix. Only after I've finished, I thought that perhaps I should add an eyeball or two, and a couple of bats....

Happy Diwali / Happy Deepavali

Happy Diwali / Deepavali! Had an order for the Festival of Lights. Thought I should give the cakes some bright colours to make it more festive.

Melting Moments

Not in a good way though. It was so SO hot today! I had an order for chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and banana cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. And the frosting got so soft after like, two seconds. Even with the air-conditioning on. Well, I hope my customer enjoyed them anyway.

Bad photography

A friend of mine called me up the other day and she was telling me that there is a crisis. My heart almost stopped wondering what it was because she was SO serious! Then she said this other friend, whom I know, needs to get some cupcakes. Aiyoh.......I thought what crisis, scared the hell out of me. Anyway, she wanted the smaller ones and chocolate flavours with vanilla buttercream icing. I had to deliver them on thursday and I said no problem. Guess what? I forgot that I had training the whole day on thursday! Since I have already promised her, I would have to deliver in the morning and be late for my training loh.

My friend did not specify on colours and I was trying to figure out what colours to use. In the end, I went with lilac icing and pink letterings. As usual, my bad photography skills are not helping as you can tell from the photo. Anyway, friend called me up this morning to tell me that my cupcakes were a hit and they were all wondering if they could order from me, isn't that great?

He's Six!

Yes, my firstborn turned six last Sunday. Although he was having a party on Saturday (the party venue on the actual day was fully-booked), he wanted me to bake him some cupcakes to bring to school on Friday, so that he can share them with his other friends and teachers. It so happened that my mother came to Singapore a few days before that and I had asked my sister to get me some sheets of edible icing images.

And of course, he wanted Thomas. I had plans to make the buttercream frosting and pipe stars round the rim. But I........er, overslept and was in a mad rush. I definitely did not have time to make the buttercream frosting, much less pipe stars on it. So, I slapped on Nutella on the cupcakes and stuck the icing images on top. Yes, Nutella straight out of the jar. And yes, it was a shoddy job done. I know, I know I'm a terrible mother. But hey, he still loved it and the kids didn't notice any different and enjoyed it. So it all worked out :p

He had another birthday cake at his party - one which I did not make, so I will not post it here. Why didn't I make the cake? Well, because 1. they have a 20% discount if you order the cake from them, 2. they charge you SGD30 if you want to bring your own cake and 3. I could do without the stress. I did plan to make him one on the actual day itself. But we were out the whole day and I was dead tired when we got home. Also, we had some leftover cake from the party. In the end, he had a birthday milkshake! An Oreo milkshake, which he absolutely loved. So that worked out too :)

Pretty cupcakes

When my sister from Jakarta stopped over in KL from her holidays, I was quite excited to get her to show me how to pipe the beautiful flowers that she has been piping. So, I actually prepared everything and all she had to do was just pipe and show me. Aren't these pretty? =)

Are you a soccer fan?

Most guys are...including my hubby. He's so mad about soccer that he actually subscribed to a service that PINGS him on his mobile phone whenever a club in the Premier League scores!!

This dozen of soccer-themed cupcakes were ordered by a loving wife as a surprise for her soccer-mad hubby.... P/s Soccer fans would know what the Yellow and Red cards mean!

Wrapped!

Literally.

I had an order for a dozen cupcakes packed in two boxes....
- Purple and White cupcakes meant for a gentleman, and
- Pink and White cupcakes for a lady.

As you know from my previous post, I only had Pink boxes left. The lady who ordered it was quite disappointed when I told her that I only had Pink boxes. She had previously seen the White boxes with the Purple ribbon, and was hoping for the same. As I aim to please, I went around town to look for an alternative box BUT to no avail.
So what do I do?
I wrapped the Pink boxes with Purple-striped wrapping paper.

Here's how the box looks WRAPPED...
The other half-dozen was in the PINK box....

Yes. I did put in an order for White cupcake boxes....but if they are not available soon, I might have to turn down orders for cupcakes that are Gift-packed in half dozen boxes.

We'll see....