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.