Basic Butter Cake

It is now the school holidays and the beginning of endless whines of "I'm bored! Can I play the computer, watch TV, play Wii, play with your phone, etc, etc?" We'll be staying put here for the holidays until Christmas week when we'll head back to my parents' for a few days. How do you entertain a seven-year-old for six weeks? .....I really don't know. Will probably find some holiday camp for him. SOON!

In the meantime, Mummy ie. moi, just has to get her butt off her chair and not be so lazy and find some activities for everyone to do together. We've been to the library a couple of times and borrowed tonnes of books. And yesterday, we baked a butter cake. My hubby loves this butter cake with chocolate chips. Unfortunately, I didn't have any chocolate chips when I thought I did, so we just made it plain. I measured out all the ingredients and my son put them in the mixer and mixed it. The cake turned out really well. Maybe next time, I'll let him do all the measuring. Or is that too ambitious?

Chocolate Hazelnut Cupcakes

These are from Rachel Lane's Wild About Cupcakes. All her chocolate cakes are quite dense and crumbly and this one is no different. I really like the chopped hazelnuts in the cake and the frosting (just melted dark chocolate and Nutella) was nice, not too sweet.

Breads....

Did not intend to bake so many types of breads...

Wanted to bake a brioche in my Bread Maker - which had not seen the light of day for FOUR years. But a technical problem resulted in my having to knead the dough by hand.

Not accepting the fact that my Bread Maker had decided to die on me, I attempted to use it a second time... a simple loaf this time round. Shucks! The mixing just won't happen. Again, I had to mix and knead by hand. So this is the result...

Clockwise from Top:
Bacon & Onion Rolls from the Brioche Dough, Simple White Loaf & Mini-Brioche

Also baked a yummilicious (but costly) chocolate cake....

Happy Diwali.....

Okay. Okay. A little belated. But I only received the order on Friday....so by the time I pop out to the shops to get the ingredients, and bake...it was Sunday already.

HAPPY DIWALI

As usual, I baked some extra for my boys' snack at school.... Look at the cool Cupcake Holders that I had bought from my recent trip to Melbourne. Great, huh?

Cool Cupcake Holders

Back in action!

My oven is finally working, after more than 3 months living at my new place.

If anyone remembered my baking resolution, it was to try a new recipe in honor of my sisters' birthdays.

I DID attempt a new cupcake recipe for Sister #4, but it was so disastrous it was too shameful to post photos of it.

But I (and my cupcakes) have been redeemed!

Green Tea cupcakes

They turned out really well. They have a chocolate base with a hint of green tea, and the green tea in the icing was conspicuous.

Happy Belated (x10) Birthday, Sister #4, M!!