birthday cupcakes

It's been a while since anyone last posted! Today was one of my oldest dearest friend's daughter Emily's first birthday, and so I decided to try out rolled icing for the first time! To keep it really simple and easy, I ended up making vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting, but I managed to top 8 of the cupcakes with a lemon frosting. I think they turned out awfully pretty, considering it's my first try with rolled icing!

Happy first birthday, Emily!'

Earl Grey Cupcakes

I actually made these a couple of weeks ago, for my hubby's colleagues who gave him Christmas presents. They are Earl Grey cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting. This is, again, from the Primrose Bakery book. The cake was quite dense but had a nice hint of Earl Grey.

These are also dedicate to our baby sister who celebrated her birthday last Wednesday.

Happy Birthday, V! I hope you had a wonderful day!

Christmas Cupcakes

These were made weeks ago, but I was just too lazy to post them :-P They were made at different times, for different people - friends, neighbours, teachers and colleagues. They were mostly vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting.

For Music Teachers

For Neighbours

For Hubby's Colleagues

For School Teachers

Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting For Friends

Wishing Everyone a Merry (Belated) Christmas

&

A Happy New Year!!

Christmas Baking....

Here are some photos of previous week's baking. Didn't take everything I baked as they looked somewhat the same anyway....

A box of Christmas Cupcakes...

Christmas Gifts...

Pink & Purple Birthday Cupcakes

Ladies Luncheon Cupcakes
(colours a bit "jeng")

Cupcakes for Charity Bake Sale

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Raspberry Cupcakes with White Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

This is, again, from my Primrose Bakery book. The frosting is made by mixing melted white chocolate pieces with vanilla buttercream frosting. I only made this when I had some buttercream leftover as the recipe only requires four tablespoons of it. My kids loved it! Maybe because they love raspberries :-)

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

Orange Cupcakes with Orange Blossom Buttercream Frosting

These are from the Primrose Bakery book. The cakes were nice, with only a subtle hint of orange. The frosting was nice too but waaaaayy too sweet! The recipe uses 115g of butter and FIVE HUNDRED grams of icing sugar. And no, I did not follow the recipe. I only used 230g of icing sugar and you can tell because the frosting was so so soft and 'runny'. But even then, it was so SO sweet. I really can't imagine how it would taste like if I had followed the recipe!

Purple and Orange BIRTHDAY Cupcakes

My girlfriend ordered 50 cupcakes for a party yesterday. When she first told me that she wanted PURPLE and ORANGE cupcakes, I asked "is it for Halloween??"
Nope.
It's for her daughter's 13th Birthday.

I was a little apprehensive with the PURPLE and ORANGE colour combo... but I think the colour combination turned out quite alright. What do you think??


As 49 cupcakes fit NICELY in a square box (the 50th would be the ODD one out!), I refunded her the money for 1 cupcake. HeeHee :-)

By the way, these are MINIs... half chocolate and the other half vanilla cupcakes - all frosted with vanilla buttercream and then decorated with fondant butterflies and flowers.

Yellow Buttermilk Cupcakes

These buttermilk cupcakes are from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes book. I made them when my older son had a playdate and I think the kids really enjoyed them. But to be honest, I don't think I will make them again. Personally, I still prefer the fluffier vanilla cupcake recipe that we have. I know that some people prefer their cakes to be denser but not me. But to each his own :-)

Froggy Cupcakes

I made these for a friend's birthday last week. No, it wasn't for a child. A quite old man, in fact. Our nickname for him is Frog (for reasons that I shall not divulge here) and hence the froggy cupcakes :P

Cupcake Treats

Tomorrow will be the LAST DAY of school for both my boys....and then it's 7 weeks of looooooooooooooooong lazy Summer holidays.... So what does a good mommy do?
Whip up some mini cupcakes for both the boys to share with their classmates....

One of the Boxes of Cupcakes.....

(Other box is exactly the same)

Yes. yes. I know that I should have arranged them properly and not crookedly. Been a bit disorganised and clumsy today. Got frosting on the sides of the box and on myself too!

And whilst I was at it, I made extra for tomorrow's luncheon at my friend's house. She has invited over a few friends for a get-together before the long break.

Cupcakes for Ladies Luncheon

HAVE A GOOD SUMMER HOLIDAYS, EVERYONE!

Cupcakes for an Aunt

I went to visit an aunt the other day and I made her some cupcakes. They were chocolate with vanilla buttercream frosting - sweet and simple. But I think I was colour-blind that day. I don't know why I thought the roses were pink. Ah, well!

My Little Munchkin turns 3!

Well, he turned 3 last week actually. For a few months before his birthday, he kept saying that he wanted a Barney cake to share with his friends. So that was what he got. I bought those edible icing images and they were ready-cut! Unlike the Thomas ones which I got for my older son's birthday. I sure had a tough time cutting them out! And these Barney ones had different images. I was very pleased with them. So I made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting, stuck the images on top and piped stars all round. I think they were very well-received by all.


I didn't have any cake left as I brought them all to his school. So when I got home, I baked another cake (for the birthday song with the family at home) - this time a vanilla sponge baked in two sandwich tins. I spread Nutella in-between and just used the leftover buttercream I had from the cupcakes. For his name, I just used one of those ready-to-use gel icing. Hmmm..... now looking at the picture again, maybe I should've sprinkled some hundreds and thousands all around.

Farewell Party

A friend of a colleague has tasted the chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting that I made and liked it. So for her farewell party at her company, she has decided to order 50 of them. On top of that, she has also ordered 25 vanilla cupcakes with buttercream frosting and 25 vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting. Heh.....this is the first time that I'm using our colour ribbon and sticker, presentation is quite nice right? = )

Sprinkle, Sprinkle, Little Stars

Haha, I'm just being lame (re. the title). I made these for my six-year-old's music school today. There was some sort of exhibition for kids (basically enrichment classes!) and he was one of five violinists selected to perform. So I made these for the other musicians. I admit that it was a really shoddy job! I don't know why the buttercream turned out really really soft. And I didn't have enough! So I just flat-frosted them and dumped a lot of sprinkles on top! :P

End-of-Season Party

Today was the last soccer game of the season for S2's team. And one of the coach had graciously offered to host a party for the team and families. I couldn't exactly show up empty-handed. So this was what I brought... Chocolate Cupcakes with Chocolate Buttercream.

Initially, I wanted to craft individual soccer jerseys from fondant with each team member's jersey number and maybe write down their names on the individual cupcakes. Then I got too lazy, and thought of printing the jerseys from my computer and stick them onto the cupcake with toothpicks. Even that, I was too lazy to do. And decided to have wordings. When the time came to make the cupcakes, I was a real lazy bum. Lazy to even do fondant cut-outs of the letters.

:-P

CNY orders

Had a total of three orders over two weeks during the CNY period and I am swearing off cupcakes!! Haha.......just kidding. =P My first order was for a hundred mini chocolate cupcakes. 50 with chocolate frosting and the other 50 with peanut butter frosting. Didn't take a photo of that coz I was crazy busy with rushing them off.



Second order was also a hundred mini chocolate cupcakes but this time, it's all with peanut butter frosting. Friend wanted to give to relatives and requested it to be packed in 20s so had 5 boxes in total.



Then another friend ordered ten vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream and I gave her two free to make a dozen. Thank goodness my eldest sister was in town that day and she helped me with the frosting; if not, I probably would have gone mad rushing it! Thanks Cheh!

Gong Xi Fa Chai - Take 3

The same friend that ordered the 2 dozen CNY cupcakes earlier ordered another dozen for one of her group meetings. So here they are....chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting.

I was feeling a bit off today, and didn't see the block of butter that I used for the frosting. I was like auto-pilot and proceeded to whip the butter with the icing sugar....and as usual, I took a taste. And thought that it was kinda salty. I thought my tastebuds have gone awol with my not-too-feeling-well. Then I walked to my bin to pick up the butter wrapper. Yup. You guessed right. It was SALTED BUTTER. No wonder. Unfortunately, I had run out of butter, and could't make another batch of buttercream frosting. And didn't have the car as well.
I asked my No.1 fan for Chocolate Cupcakes, i.e. S2 to come and have a taste test. He said "It taste like normal. I love it!". Hopefully, my friend would agree as well. I told her that I would give her money back if she is not satisfied with the product....

Soccer Mad??

My younger son, S2 is turning 10 tomorrow. And to celebrate his turning 10 in the year 2010, we had a party at home yesterday. I had bought a Pinata in the shape of a soccer ball earlier in the week ....sorta by chance. And since he had soccer game both yesterday and today (YUP! Games on both Saturday and Sunday!) , I thought I would just stick to SOCCER for his birthday cakes as well. As my S2 prefers chocolate flavour, naturally all the cupcakes here are chocolate ones...

Mini Cupcakes for yesterday's Birthday Party
(Can you see that it is in the figure 10? And S2's Jersey number is indeed 15....which is also used as "is" here. You can't see it here, but his football boots actually have the WHITE swish Nike sign)

His actual birthday is tomorrow,......and I had to bake more cupcakes for his classmates.

Mini Cupcakes for S2's Class

(It's in a plastic container for easy transport)

A Standard-sized Cupcake with Flowers for S2's Teacher

Extra Cupcakes...which I gave to S2's Friend's Family

Gong Xi Fa Chai - Take 2!

If you don't already know..., Chinese New Year is celebrated for a total of 15 days. Today is actually Day 8. For many Hokkiens, tonight at midnight is the BIG prayers to "Thi Kong".

These 24 chocolate cupcakes were ordered by my friend, CL for her Vietnamese friend. Vietnamese celebrate their new year in accordance to the lunar calendar too. And they call it "Tet" for short.

Cupcakes all-lined up....

16 cupcakes ready to go into the box....

And two more boxes of 4s....