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.