Baking Recipe: {Pre-Christmas} Celebration Cupcakes

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! As usual, I guess I'm always a tad late. {Lol}. Can't believe it's nearing year end and new year 2011 is just around the corner. In fact, it's this coming Saturday. Wow!! How was your Christmas celebration? Any plans for the New Year Eve?

Originally, I had plan to cook for my family on Christmas Eve. Instead my god mum suggested to dine out. So of course my family and my god mum's went ahead and dine out. It was a twist to my surprise. Usually we would go for Western cuisine, but this time, we had Chinese Fusion Fine Dining cuisine. I had to say that I was at first slightly disappointed when I found out we had to have Chinese food during Christmas Eve and was sort of dreading the whole typical 9 course meal, starting with Four Seasons, then the Shark's Fin Soup, etc. However, my god dad surprised us with a customize meal. I must say, it definitely has introduced me to a different side of Chinese Cuisine.

Since Christmas day is the next day, and after all Christmas is the time for giving and sharing, I've decided to bake my very own version of Celebration Cupcake. {Lol} Basically, I tossed in some coloured ball sprinkles into the cake batter. If you're thinking.. {what is she up to?}. I wasn't thinking at all. I was just having fun baking something unorthodox, but topped the cupcake with Limoncello Buttercream frosting. {Yummmmmm} As to decorate the cupcake, the colour and snowflake out of white chocolate as the theme was definitely inspired from my friend Pei Li's Christmas Miniature Cupcake.

Recipe

Yields approx 16 medium sized cupcakes

Ingredients (Vanilla Cupcake)

2 1/4 cups cake flour
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
6 large egg whites, at room temperature
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
12 tbsp unsalted butter

To prepare vanilla cupcake:

1. Preheat oven to 350F or 180-190 degrees. Line muffin pan with cupcake liners.

2. Combine milk, egg, vanila extract in a separate bow. Whisk together the ingredients.

3. In a mixer with dry ingredients and a padle attachment, beat in the butter at a time until it resembles like bread crumbs.

4. On medium speed, pour half the liquid in until batter is incorporated and add the remaining liquid. Turn speed up and whisk for another 2-3 minutes.

5. Fold in colour sprinkles for some light colouring effect.

6. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean. Transfer cupcakes to tray to cool down.

Ingredients (Limoncello Buttercream)

4-5 tsp of lemon juice
3-4 tbsp of limoncello liqueur
3-4 cups of icing sugar (or just enough for taste of frosting consistency)
1 1/2 stick of unsalted butter
2 tsp of vanilla extract
1 cup milk
5 tbsp all purpose flour

To prepare limoncello buttercream:

1. With a paddle attachment, whisk butter until light, fluffy and creamy.

2. Add in icing sugar a little at a time, as you may not need 4 cups of icing sugar.

3. Turn speed down to slow to add in lemon juice and limoncello liqueur. Then turn the speed up again and continue to whisk until frosting double in volume, as it'll be light and fluffy.

4. In a saucepan, heat up milk but not to boiling point. Let cool slightly, then toss in flour all at once and stir vigorously, until milk and flour is incorporated. You will notice that the liquid will thicken up and return to stove and let mixutre simmer, while continue stirring.

5. Once liquid is thicker, let cool for a couple of minute. With a sieve, press the thicken liquid through into the buttercream. Discard the lumps. Turn the mixer back up and whisk the buttercream for the last time for 2-3 minutes until well incorporated.

6. With a 1M wilton tip, frost the cupcakes according to your choice of design. I did the 1M swirl and some star shape flowers. To decorate my cupcake, I made snowflakes out of white chocolate.

Ingredients (Snow Flake ornament)

1/2 bar of cooking white chocolate (you may decide how much to use according to how many ornaments you plan to make)

To prepare snow flake ornament:

1. Print out snow flake template of your choice. You may google for "snow flake clip art" and there will be tons of choices to pick from.

2. Melt white chocolate over a double boiler.

3. Place template underneath parchment paper prepared on a flat tray.

4. Place chocolate in piping bag with no.3 or no.5 tip; colour by piping out the chocolate following the template accordingly.

Do try it out for next Christmas!

xx

{Birthday Cake Project} A 'Summer Passion' Cake



** First stop.. don't forget, CHRISTMAS GIVEAWAY is still OPEN [<--click], so please help me to present the beautiful gift I selected for you foodies soonest possible. ;).

The past weekend was a busy weekend for me but a good weekend indeed. In fact it was a great weekend. I started celebrating my birthday on Thursday, where my colleagues gave surprised me with a Caramel Cheesecake, then on Friday {my actual Birthday}.. I had a wonderful breakfast with my best buddy, and then come Saturday evening my best buddy and the rest of the ladies took me out for dinner and then presented me with a Chocolate Ganache Cake called Four Seasons baked by another local blogger. What a sweet sweet weekend for me. I'll definitely try to post some shots of the lovely dinner we had.

me, myself & I making a really long wish

Apart from all the minor dining, I had my very first cake order to deliver which I hinted in my past posts. {Yeayyyyyyy!!} To be honest, I was filled with nerves as this cake that I'll be baking will be for my best buddy mom's birthday which happens to fall on 20th December. OMG.. talking about the chances of screwing up the recipe, the decoration etc.. There were 1001 things going through my head.

Luckily, my best buddy, Steph told me in advance. She gave me pretty much approx. 2 weeks notice and it's definitely a great head start for me. Coming up a with the cake flavour that I would think suit their taste buds was no different than coming up with a cake for my mom's 55th birthday., I knew they love citrus flavours. All I could think of was the island of Capri in Summer. That was my inspiration. To tie my whole cake together, the buttercream frosting and cake has to be white in colour, summer yellow curd and winter snow mascarpone cream and to decorate with lemon yellow pearls.

After much thought,the cake itself was a dense White Vanilla Poppy Seed Cake sandwiched with Lemon Curd and Light Whipped Mascarpone Cream and frosted with Limoncello Buttercream. I'm calling my cake Summer Passion Cake. What do you think?

Okay..you may think that there are lots of flavours but to my surprise it worked out really well. Firstly, I made a white vanilla cake and toss in poppy seeds. The sweetness of vanilla cake was balanced with tangy lemon curd and whipped mascarpone cream. Instead of using Limoncello Cream Cheese Frosting which I made previously, I've decided to change it to a buttercream with limoncello liqueur.

To decorate the cake..that was the tough part as I've never taken up any cake decorating class before. However, I did try my best to make it look as pretty I possibly can. I whipped up some royal icing and piped all sorts of sizes of pearls and left it out to dry. To bring out the lemon yellow I placed some fuchsia white chocolate pearls.


Summer Passion Cake

Most importantly, the end result is what counts. I've got a confirmation from my best buddy's mom that the cake is beautiful in and out. {Awww.. she's too kind.. brought tears to my eyes} So overall, the cake is DELISH and definitely worth having seconds or third helpings.

For dessert and cake order inquiries, please write to

chicgorgeousdesserts {at} gmail {dot} com

xx

Baking Recipe: {Part 2} Christmas Giveaway and Chocolate Profiteroles

*Christmas Giveaway*



Disclaimer: Photo used is from marthastewart.com. Not meant for promotional usage as it's to just highlight the season for giving.

First stop, CHRISTMAS GIVEAWAY {yeayyyyyy!!} It's the time of season to forgive and forget. On top of that I've a special gift that I personally picked out for you lovely loyal readers who have been giving me so much support. I can't say THANK YOU enough.

I've been hinting in my past couple post that I'm planning a giveaway. I do apologise if it took me so long to come up with something. Basically, I was looking high and low for a perfect gift. I went on a small shopping spree today as I have got my very first order to bake a birthday cake for my friend's mom. At the same time, I spotted something that really inspired me to celebrate this Christmas in style. Lol.. I got myself a set and that very same time I had a light bulb moment. {I thought to myself.. I've finally found finally the PERFECT GIFT for any foodie friend!} Gosh.. I'm just so excited.

Now, for the CHRISTMAS GIVEAWAY (CLOSED)..  to enter:

1. Please follow ChicGorgeous on blogspot,. Currently I do not have twitter or facebook. You'll have to be a follower of my blog to participate.

2. My humble target now is to up my readers to 28 followers or beyond the figure I set. So once the target is met, I'll do a draw. Personally, I appreciate any current and new interested readers to continue to support me on my journey of baking or cooking a feast. If you do adore my blog, do be a follower. :)

3. Leave comments on any of my current December 2010 desserts adventure post . Be it whether you have tried out the recipe or you thought that the recipe looks/ sounds/ taste good. While leaving your comment, it is important to state that you're interested to participate in the draw and leave me your e-mail address. This way, I'll know that you're interested in joining the Christmas Giveaway. 

4. Feel free to suggest what you like to see more in my blog, or suggest a recipe or couple of recipes that you would like me to try to bake. Bear in mind I'm an amateur.. but it'll be fun to share the baking journey together with you. I'll be more than happy to give it a shot as long I got the time and able to find the ingredients here at my local supermarket. Nevertheless, I'll find time to experiment. {Brownies' honour ;p}

5. Please note: Currently shipping is limited to participants only in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, US, Canada {newly added} and UK. I do apologise to other readers in other countries.

**Disclaimer: Participants should take note of their own country import rules/guidelines. Chic&Gorgeous Blog will not be responsible for customs.

{Chocolate Profiteroles}

Over the last weekend, I decided to bake some profiteroles for tea for my parents. Profiteroles are such quick and tasty treats to whip up.. and it was my very first time tackling puffs.

You know, I always had the impression that baking eclairs or profiteroles are tough, as when I look through my baking books, they always sound so complicated. However, the profiterole recipe below was adapted from Kimba's Kitchen. Kimberly from Kimba's Kitchen is such an excellent cook and baker who's also Malaysian but now residing in Melbourne. My favourite place to visit and chill, due to the diversity of culture. Just looking at her photos already makes my mouth water {drooling}. Lol..

For the profiterole filling, it's my own quick cheat. What happen was I wanted the filling to be filled with light whipped cream. Unfortunately this time, I've forgotten that I've ran out of thickened cream for whipping, whereby the fat content is higher in the cream. All I was left was with a cooking cream. Luckily I had a stash of Mascarpone in hand. Now that was a life saver.  All I did was added a couple of doll up of mascarpone, cooking cream, icing sugar and vanilla extract.. whisk it a little bit until combined and {voila!} out came a looked alike whipped cream.

For the melted chocolate sauce to drizzle over the tiny sinful profiteroles was another quick step. All I did was melted my Hersheys Semi Dark + Milk Chocolate Chips. Lol.. Isn't that another cheat? Oh well! It's Sunday.. and I was trying to avoid as much clean up as possible.

Okay, for the killer recipe.. which reminds me you can use this same recipe to make eclairs. Instead of 1 cup water, you can always substitute with 1/2 cup whole milk + 1/2 cup water and pipe them in a longish shape.

Recipe:

Ingredients (Profiterole)

adapted from Kimba's Kitchen

125 g plain flour, sifted
70 g unsalted Butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
4 eggs, at room temperature
250 ml warm water

To prepare profiterole:

1. Preheat Oven to 200º and lightly grease baking tray or lay tray with parchment paper.

2. Put the butter, salt and 250ml water into a saucepan and bring to boil. Stir occasionally. Add the flour into the boiling mixture. Reduce the heat to low, and then beat quickly with wooden spoon until the mixture leaves the side of the pan and forms a smooth ball.

3. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and set aside to cool. Using electric beaters, beat in the eggs, one at a time until the mixture is thick and glossy.

4. Pipe the mixture onto the prepared trays. Bake for 20 minutes or until the balls are puffed. Reduce the oven to 180º and bake for another 10 minutes until the puffs are golden brown and crisp.

5. Using a small sharp knife gently slit the puffs to let the steam to escape. Return them to the oven for 10 minutes until the insides are dry. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Ingredients (Whipped Cream Filling - my own cheat ;p)

1/2 cup mascarpone cheese

1/4 cup light cream
4-5 tbsp icing sugar (or more, according to your taste)
1 tsp vanilla extract

To prepare whipped cream filling:

1. With a manual whisk, mix all the ingredients until it's well incorporated. Make sure to not over whisk the mascarpone as it will split. You'll notice the texture to be thick just like whipped cream.

Ingredients (Chocolate Sauce)

1/2 cup milk chocolate
1/2 cup semi-dark chocolate
2-3 tsp butter or 2-3 small cubes of butter
1-2 tbsp cream

To prepare chocolate sauce:

1. Heat up cream, but not to boiling stage.

2. Pour cream over chocolate in a prepared bowl.

3. Slowly mix in butter,  and continue to stir until chocolate is completely melted. While mixing with the wooden spoon/ spatula, you'll notice the chocolate sauce will slightly thickened.

To assemble profiterole:

1. With a knife cut the profiterole into half, where it was originally slit earlier during baking phase.

2. Spoon a doll up of cream, and sandwich the top and bottom of profiterole together.

3. Drizzle chocolate sauce over the top of profiterole.

Note: Profiteroles are best eaten fresh, and assemble them before serving. Alternatively, I prepared the profiterole and chilled them in the fridge for about 15-30 minutes before serving. I assure you, the taste remains and it's delish.

Okay peeps! I can't wait to share with you the gift I selected. Don't be shy to participate. However, I appreciate if you abide the conditions >.< . Am certainly looking forward to reading your feedbacks and happy baking y'all. Do continue to stay tune.. as I'll try to post a couple more recipes before Christmas.

xx



Baking Recipe: {Part 1} Christmas Cranberry Cookie

The past weekend has been a blast as I made 2 types of treats. Yup..you heard me right. Two types of treats which I've been dying to make for sometime now. For starters, since Christmas is around the corner, I've decided to pre-experiment to bake my very own version of Cranberry Cookie frosted with Lemony Royal Icing on Saturday. And then for tea on Sunday, I was itching to make some tea snacks, thus making the Chocolate Profiterole. What a perfect way to start the Sunday evening with a light dessert. Lol..

Oh! Not forgetting.. I'm so excited to share with you that recently I got my very first order from my very dear friend, who have requested me to bake a birthday cake for her mom. Gosh.. I'm excited yet a little intimidated. Will keep you posted in the next post.

Anyways, for now.. I'm eager to share with you the treats I made for Christmas, and I'll continue to bake a couple more in the coming week.

For my Cranberry Cookie, I've decided to use my trusty cookie dough recipe and added in the cranberry and some white chocolate myself. This cookie will not have a strong white chocolate taste, that is if you're concern about the level of sweetness. I only used the white chocolate to add hint of natural sweetness to bring out the lovely cranberry flavour. Also no christmas cookie will be complete if it's not frosted. So this is my first time working with royal icing. I don't think my hands were steady enough to frost the cookies. Will definitely have to practise more ;p.

Baking Recipe: Dark Chocolate Ganache Cupcake with Mocha Buttercream

It's December, and for this month there are a lot of December babies; my mom, cousin, work colleagues and not forgetting myself too. {Lol}

Not to mention Christmas is around the corner. You all must be busy preparing for Christmas. Started your Christmas shopping yet? As for myself, {gosh.. where do I even begin}.. I'm already thinking of what Birthday/Christmas menu to come up with. Afterall, it's the time of the year to eat, drink and be merry. Will update you peeps later about the menu once it's finalised. Most likely in my next few upcoming posts.

Right now, I like to dedicate this blog to my darling MOM. It's her 55th Birthday and for this year, I've decided to bake her Dark Chocoalte Ganache Cupcake with Mocha Buttercream. What better way to incorporate both of the flavours which are my mom's favourite. Well, as I know she did mention she like chocolate cake and as I observed over a period of years, she does love to drink coffee.

I've put a lot of thought into the cake, even at one point I became indecisive that I even consulted Elisabeth from Food and Thrift Finds to have a second opinion. Not knowing Elisabeth was busy preparing a meal for Thanksgiving, she still found the time to revert back to me. {THANKS Elisabeth!} Of course, Elisabeth thought the cake sounds divine. So we have a winner {well.. in my opinion}.

Stylish Blogger Award and A Shout Out

A Stylish Blogger Award

Firstly, CONGRATULATIONS to all awarded The Stylish Bloggers! Elisabeth from Food and Thrift Finds has done it again. She has left me a sweet comment informing me that she has a gift for me. And to my surprise, she has awarded me and other fellow food bloggers The Stylish Blog Award. {MANY THANKS!!} When an award is handed to you, how can we turn it down right?

Of course I'll be more than happy to accept the award and participate to the terms and conditions. What do I have to do? Basically I have to tell you 7 things about myself that you may or may not know about and the best part is to award any fellow bloggers whom I think that their blog is stylish, chic, gorgeous and most imporatantly an inspirational blog.

Note: *To accept this award, there are 4 rules:*
1. Thank the person who gave you the award:
2. Share seven things about yourself
3. Pass the award on to bloggers who you think are fantastic.
4. Contact the bloggers you picked and let them know about the award.

So, here are 7 things that you may or may not know about me >.<  Not sure it'll consider as 7 things or just one. {Lol..}

1. I have a double degree, in 2 completely different major. One in BSc(Hons) in Computing and the other is a Piano Performance paper which is a Fellowship in Performance in Pianoforte.

2. Since 6 or 7 years old, I found myself drawn to Beethoven's Symphony No.5 in C minor, and since then I knew that I've always wanted to be a musician, a pianist. I've always like the sound of the piano as it has all the range of sound that allows me to immitate any instrument in the orchestra. It just feels that I've a mini orchestra in my own hall. {Lol}

3. While I was 10 years old, I took part in a couple of art competitions. One was organised by Toys R' Us whereby I had to draw Jeffrey the Giraffe travelling the world, according to the selected country in the competition. I recalled drawing Jeffrey in Spain, whereby I drew a matador and Flamenco dancer, and another was Jeffrey in Venice I believe whereby I drew the gondola etc. I won for both country that I drew, and it was the best gift ever to win Toys R' Us gift voucher. This would mean that I got to get more toys. {Lol}. Plus the art was show cased in our local newspaper. I've been trying to locate the clippings till this day.

4. To date I play 2 musical instruments now, the piano and the violin as my 2nd instrument.

5. I am a trained classical pianist, and have performed in a couple of my music teacher's recital, and won 1st prize in a piano competition whereby I performed Yanni's pieces which I made into a medley.

6. In year 2006,  I have been lucky to be selected by the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra for an audition in piano playing. However, it was down to us final 5 and I didn't manage to make the final cut. I was really depressed at that time, as I felt that my dream was shattered. It's really a tough competition especially being a pianist. Nevertheless, at the end of the day I realised having even the opportunity to be invited for an audition was an experience of a lifetime, standing in our very own Philarmonic stage situtated in one of the tallest buidling in the world, The Petronas Twin Towers.

7. Currently I'm an IT Consultant by day. However, during weekends I try to role play to be a chef or a pastry chef. {Lol}. I discovered that I love to cook since I was 10, but never took it up as a profession as I got older is because Music is and will forever be my first love. I didn't have the opportunity to pursue further in music in a conservatory is because my parents felt that I may not be able to get a job back here in KL. I was heart broken, but I told myself that everything happens for a reason. Hopefully in my next life, I will get to be a pianist again. Right now, I don't choose which comes first as I do both cooking, baking and still practise on my piano and violin.

Now, I am happy to present The Stylish Blogger Award to {drumrolls}:

1. Alicia from Aligirl Cooks
2. Pei Li from Miniature Patisserie Chef and Pei Li Miniatures
3. Kimberly from Kimba's Kitchen
4. Alina from The Constant Hunger

Congrats again to all fellow bloggers. Do spread the award around to let another fellow blogger know that their blog is heard, seen and show them that they are appreciated! You never know what litte cheer could do to another fellow blogger. For me, it sure motivates me to keep going ;)

xx