Cupcakes for my 12 year old nephew

Another day of slogging in the kitchen for my 12 year old nephew's birthday. My sister has asked me to make the cupcakes in the shape of 12 but blur like sotong me bought the wrong box. The board and box were just too small so if I wanna make the shape of 12, I can only use like 10 to 12 cupcakes. So I gave up and just winged it, below is the result of my non-planning. Next time, I have to really plan how I want the cupcakes to look like before I start doing anything! Anyway, made a total of 59 cupcakes (25 chocolate and 29 vanilla) today......am rather zonked out now........

Engagement Cupcakes

These are dedicated to our dear sister no. 5 in London, who got engaged two weeks ago. We are all very happy for her and are oh, so excited about the wedding! Her fiance is angmoh (to our non-Malaysian/Singaporean readers, that means red-haired man....), from Norwich. A very nice bloke.

Re. cupcakes, these are just simple vanilla with vanilla buttercream frosting. The lighter coloured ones were actually pale pink. AGAIN, it's the photography. Yes, yes, I will try to find a photography course to attend soon. I hear ya!

Anyway, Congratulations to G and R!!

Birthday Cupcakes for a Little Girl

I had a last minute order yesterday for a dozen cupcakes for a 3-year-old girl's birthday. Since it was sooooo last minute, I stuck to tried and tested vanilla cupcakes with flowers and butterflies. Can't go wrong with flowers and butterflies when it comes to little girls right?

Cupcakes to Get You Hot and Bothered?

I was wondering over the weekend...if you were to give your other half (or someone you REALLY fancy) a box of cupcakes, what would they be like? Vanilla or chocolate? Swirls? Heart-shaped sprinkles?

What you really want is to get the receiver hot under the collar, and flavours play a big role. So I think chocolate and strawberries are perfect (someone suggested oysters, but I thought oyster-flavoured cupcakes would be a little disgusting...and expensive!).

According to aphrodite-chocolates, "Chocolate's reputation as an Aphrodisiac originated in South America over one thousand five hundred years ago, where it is known that it was thought to have mystical and aphrodisiac qualities by both the Mayan and Aztec cultures - the Aztec emperor, Monteczuma drank fifty golden goblets of chocolate a day to enhance his sexual prowess".

As for strawberries, according to Love Potion, "Touted as an aphrodisiac fruit since the times of ancient Rome, the strawberry was a symbol of Venus. In the French countryside, there was once a tradition of seving newlyweds cold strawberry soup to help promote the aphrodisiac of honeymoon romance. There's also a legend saying that if you break the strawberry in half and share it with a member of the opposite sex, you will soon fall in love with each other."

So - with all that in mind, I think a box of chocolate roses and strawberry hearts should do the trick. How you eat them with your chosen partner is up to you (this is a family-oriented blog, for goodness sake! Can't go any further than this!)

Valrhona Chocolate Cake

If you read the previous post, you would understand why there was a lack of posts for a week or two. Both sisters from Jakarta and London and yours truly were back in Kuala Lumpur. Why were there no posts from Kay-El and Melbourne, you ask. Er, I did mention in our very first post that we are a group of lazy sisters, did I not? ;p

Anyway, we're all back from our holidays. Well, except sister no. 1 who lives in Jakarta. She is still on holiday and will be so for another month! So, don't be expecting any posts from her for a while yet.

We (my hubby, two sons and I) went to Krabi in Thailand for a few days to celebrate hubby's birthday. My almost-six-year-old and I believe that a birthday is not a birthday without a cake. So, I arranged with the reception to have a cake delivered on his birthday. We ended up having dinner at one of the hotel restaurants, and at the end of our meal, the cake was brought out and the birthday song was sung. It was a chocolate cake (and hubby loves chocolate cakes) and it was a very pretty cake (see picture below - the long piece of chocolate actually has the words 'Happy Birthday' on it. Yes, yes, very 'dodo' of me to take the picture this way round.). The cake tasted ok, nothing to shout about.

So, when we returned to Singapore, I decided to make him another birthday cake. And of course, it had to be a chocolate cake. A Valrhona chocolate cake. It was a birthday cake only in name because we didn't have any wordings nor candles nor birthday song. Er, okay, okay, we had a cake just for fun then!

I didn't have any frosting in-between because I don't have the whatchamacallit, cake splitter??, to split the cake into two. It was just one whole cake with chocolate ganache. It's not very pretty (again, it's my photography skills. Or, ahem, lack of it!) but dang, it sure is goooooooood! And top it off with a scoop (or two) of vanilla ice-cream.....aaaahhhhh, heaven! :D

Full Moon Cupcakes

It was my baby niece's full moon and sister wanted to give cupcakes as favours for the party. So, together with sisters from Jakarta and London, we made a total of 125 cupcakes on the day itself. Have to say, it is A LOT of work. Furthermore, oven in my house kaput so had to lug EVERYTHING to my sister's place to make the cupcakes.....sigh.....somehow it seemed more work when you are not doing it in your own house.

Pink Birthday Cupcakes for a Guy?

A colleague ordered a dozen cupcakes for her boyfriend's birthday. Her dilemma? She was dying for vanilla cupcakes, but the boyfriend really likes strawberry cupcakes, and ordering two dozens will be too many. Her solution? Make the frosting pink to give the illusion of strawberries!

I thought I should make the cupcake slightly more 'manly' by adding some black icing on the letter 'Z'. Quite 80's, don't you think?

Spring Garden

Made these for BF's office to announce our engagement. Since there are loads of girls in his department, I decided to make the vanilla cupcakes a little girly, with flowers and butterflies.

It's NOT Grey!

I know what my sisters are gonna say - "DON'T do this dull grey colour!" Well, it's NOT grey, it's lilac. For the life of me, I just can't take nice photographs with the colours 'jumping' out at you. Sigh! Time for a photography course, perhaps?

Anyway, a friend of one of my sisters' ordered a box of chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and a box of vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting. I asked her what colour she wanted her vanilla frosting to be and she said "Any colour!" So I decided to do them in lilac as it is my absolutely favourite colour in the whole world. Hmmm....I just sounded like Lola there. Does anyone read Charlie and Lola? My six-year-old and I just loooove Charlie and Lola.

But I digress. I hope my sister's friend and her friends enjoyed them. Even if they were grey ;p

Roses....

Here's a box of Roses....

Cupcake Orders...

H received an order from his office for 70 cupcakes. The instructions was to make them colourful with sprinkles and flowers. I should have lined them all up on the table for the photo, before packing them into the boxes. Anyway, here they are....

Cupcakes for NSN

I also had an order from Cupcake Lover. I hope he continues to order on a weekly basis. :-D

Cupcakes for Cupcake Lover

At the same time, we are consigning a batch of 10 cupcakes to a cafe in the building where H works....as a test to see if the cupcakes will fly.

Vanilla Cupcakes in Yellows and Orange

Chocolate Cupcakes in Blues...

All Packaged...and ready to go!

With or Without?

Here is a batch of cupcakes made for H's office.

Which do you think is better?

With Sprinkles or Without?

My H prefers the Sprinkles . I am still 50/50.

What about you?

Strawberry Cupcakes

I had an order for strawberry cupcakes with strawberry frosting. I was debating whether to use the recipe from Martha Stewart's website, which produces a more dense cake, or our vanilla cupcake recipe. I decided to go with the latter because I have always preferred the lighter and fluffier cupcake. I pureed some fresh strawberries, swirled the puree into the batter and added some chopped fresh strawberries. For the frosting, I made buttercream and added strawberry puree into it. I hope the lady who ordered them enjoyed eating them as much as I enjoyed making them :)

Strawberry Cake

Tasted this some time ago at my friend's housewarming party so been wanting to make it myself. The strawberries smelled so good! I thought it was quite delicious. =P

Moist Chocolate Cake

My friend had a "devilish desserts" party the other day so I decided to bake our super moist chocolate cake. The last few times I baked this, a lot of people has commented that I should have chocolate inbetween the cake. So, this time round, I slice the cake and pour some of the chocolate sauce on it (since we always have a lot leftover anyway). It definitely made a difference and no wastage!