Baking Recipe: Sneaky Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes and Frisco Here I come

As you all may already know, Foodbuzz Festival is happening this Friday November 4th, 2011 in San Francisco. I'm just getting more and more excited as I count down the hours.

Amidst from my busy schedule to clear my work, I can't bear to leave you with nothing. I have been contemplating whether to post this, since after all the recipe isn't mind. Perhaps you can treat it as a recipe review instead? I figured I better not post it up here as I might get into legal or copyright trouble and the whole lot; if  you get what I mean. However, if you like The Hummingbird Bakery, then maybe you might have their baking recipe book. The vanilla cake and vanilla butter cream is adapted from their lovely book titled "Cake Days".

Disclaimer: Photo displayed is taken from The Humming Bird website. I do not own this photo nor it's for promotional purposes.

I have to say, I might have just found myself a new vanilla cake recipe that I like. It's moist and really aromatic. The whole house smells like vanilla when it's freshly baked out of the oven. Thinking of it now is making me drool.

Sneaky Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes came upon when I received an order recently whereby my customer's kids adores any cake flavour except for chocolate cakes. To top that, they love heaps of frosting.

So I thought why not I bake them a real vanilla vanilla cupcake. Vanilla in the cake and vanilla in the butter cream. Who don't like vanilla? After all it's an epitome of a classic flavour. Simple, rich and aromatic. I could really just lick vanilla butter cream off my fingers if I had the opportunity.

Also it's my first time having to bake for boys. A thrilled indeed cause then I got to stay away from the colour pink. Plus to make it slightly extra special, I've decided to try my hands on using ready rolled fondant. To my surprise I am loving the fondant I bought from the bakery. It's not overly sweet. Which means I get to either make my frosting with regular sweetness or tone it down depending on my customer's preference. I don't have the skill to mold any figurines yet. For that I thought lets make them some sneaky smiley faces.

What do you think? Does this put a smile of your face? Keep this smile on okay? Cause I can't wait to show you San Francisco through my eyes.

Till then everyone, I will be back so don't stop buzzing me over here at my blog. Give me a holler!!

xx

Baking Recipe: Amanda's Pink Rainbow Cake

I am so happy to introduce my sweet little niece to you. It was her big day, her Full Moon. Being an aunt [I felt older for a moment.. still young at heart nevertheless ;)] to her means I have the privilege to prepare her lots of good healthy meals and also to share with her my passion. I am recording this day for her and hopefully when she's older she will look back to know that she's a fortunate little girl who have lots of love from her family, where by her arriving in to this world has touched my heart.

For Recipe: click on image + zoom

Disclaimer: Picture courtesy from Pei Li's Miniature, please do not copy and reproduce, TQ.

For sweet Amanda, it has to be something special. The theme has to be pink for the cutest little girl, however I didn't want it to just be in plain pink. It has to be unique. The Pink Rainbow Cake is deeply inspired from another talented dessert blogger, Linda from Call-Me-Cupcake and also from Pei Li's Miniature. Pei Li has created a 1:12 scale miniature Pink Rainbow Cake and I thought this would be the perfect cake for my niece. We have been secretly planning on this, and this is my own version of Pink Rainbow Cake; plus it's edible. The cake has some what a chic flare to it. It's a classy simple vanilla cake frosted with vanilla butter cream. The design is simple with a surprise on the inside. It's a gradient of colour all related to the pink theme. The challenge to this little 6-inches, 5 layered cake was tinting the colour, as it's really tricky. Too much or too little will end up with a different colour once baked. To finish off the cake, instead of writing, I decided to make little flags with her name spelt on them and I feel this was the cherry on top of the cake. Enjoy!!

xx

Baking Recipe: The Gossip Girls Themed Cupcakes

Hi all! Seems like I've been away quite awhile from blogging eh? Well, I apologise as I got a couple more orders to rush for the upcoming Chinese New Year which is exactly next Thursday (03/02/2011). I promise you that once I've got all the photos sorted, I will share them with you. However, there won't be much recipes I could provide you this time am afraid, as they are orders which the customers had a preference of the flavor of the cake.

On a high note, I can suggest or recommend the recipes that I've tried which have not fail me to this day ;p.

Recently, another friend of mine (Lynn) who's planning to throw a farewell party for herself has requested/ordered from me to bake some cupcakes for her. To decorate the cuppies this time, I got to play around with a couple of new designs. I went as far as sketching and planning the colour for the theme, although I had a rough guideline that my friend wanted some red, light pink, or white to be incorporated.


Disclaimer: Photo taken from Hollywoodbuzz. Not for promotional purposes.

Speaking of designs, you must be thinking {Oh! What a theme, and what or how should I decorate the cupcakes?} Well, I googled for ideas, and I was quite surprised that there are a lot of "Gossip Girls Themed Cupcakes" around. However, to be honest, I did mine a little different, and just looked in to other bakers' work for inspiration.





My Gossip Girl Themed Cuppies Sketches

 

The theme was quite a challenge, since I've never watched Gossip Girls before. I believe it's a teenage/adult American TV series which is set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, NY. Plus what could one person design for such a theme? It could be bags with all the high end brands like Chanel, LV, etc or shoes like Christian Louboutin. For me, I was sure that I don't want bags or shoes, but I like for it to be chic with geometric shapes perhaps and hopefully in tune with the whole NYC lifestyle. {eyes frowning o_0 ..lol).

There are 4 designs all together. One of which is a Chandelier; at least I like to think so it is. All designs that I had in mind were piped using my limoncello lemon butter cream frosting. Right now, I was not even sure if the designs I came up with are do-able. Frankly, it was a test to push my abilities.

When came to the cuppies flavour, I went with vanilla butter cake, and tinted it red. As for the frosting, I made an adult version with Limoncello Liqueur added to my delish Limoncello Lemon Butter cream Frosting [recipe].

As for the cake recipes, I like to suggest using your trusty vanilla cake, butter cake or even your white cake recipe. I have been a strong believe on trusting your own taste as all of us may like a different recipe. I've tried [joyofbaking] cake recipes and they are dense and moist. Not bad at all.

This time round this year, I hope I get more orders so I get to experiment with other designs hopefully according to a specific theme. However, overall I will still bake and cook not because of the orders I get but because I find it therapeutic and such a great way to relax.

For dessert and cake order inquiries, please write to

chicgorgeousdesserts {at} gmail {dot} com

xx

Baking Recipe: Bittersweet Passion Cupcake (chocoalte cuppie with passionfruit buttercream)

Hmm.. Did I get your attention this time? Anybody? {wondering}. I’ve always LOVE the scent, smell and taste of Passion Fruit. Be it mixed into iced tea, in desserts or the puree used in jelly. Since passion fruit is in season, I bought a whole lot so that I could finally use them in desserts.

Oh doesn't Bittersweet Passion sound seductress? Well, my Bittersweet Passion is actually a Chocolate Cupcake with Whipped Cream Filling and Passion fruit Frosting.

Cupcakes Galore

You're not going to believe what results I got by just typing keywords like "cupcake" or "cupcake + blogs" etc.. The results were endless.

(Disclaimer: I do not claim that I own the photo above. Photo's taken from Londonist.com. It's purely to share the joy and wonders of baking delicious cupcakes. )

Not to mention I stumbled upon sites in the USA, UK, Aus, etc.. all describing on their little treats. What a joy reading them and surely inspired me to continue baking.