Muffins for LCSG Lelong Day

I have been trying to pick up cycling since moving to Punggol town but have not cycled enough to be a confident cyclist. Needless to say, I am confined to cycle on the park connectors and the furthest I went is from my place to my office, or rather ex-office now since Friday, in Hougange Avenue 3. A good friend of mine encouraged me to join the Love Cycling Singapore Group http://www.lovecyclingsg.com/ and for the last couple of months, I have been following their online postings but not any of their outings. I do not feel competent enough to join their long distance rides, which averages around 25-35km each time.

Last week, I saw their posting about their Lelong Day cum Fund Raising event taking place on 24 June. After much hesitation and encouragement from the group, I decided to join them for the event at West Coast Park. I have never brought my foldable bike around as it is kind of heavy for me and I never seem to figure out how to roll it around folded. This time, I am not only required to bring it onto the MRT and travel some distance, but also need to change train at different interchange. Wow, I must be crazy to get myself into this, especially when I still haven't figured out, till this point to fold down the handle stem, which equates to not passing the requirement size to bring the bike onto the train. Nonetheless, I went ahead to bake some muffins for the group as promised.



Have always used Banana and Chocolate combination for my chocolate cakes, but this is my first time for muffins. Fluffy and moist, love it myself!




First time using these cupcake cases, which don't look that big when I bought them, but I have to fill them up to 110g each for a nice fitting and end up having only 24 big muffins... minus one for my tasting and photo shoot, so 23 left for the group :(

 The muffins turned out great and wonderfully moist and fluffy. I am also glad that I added the crumble topping to give extra texture. My usual sugar reduction level for the recipe is however a tad over done, as the bunch of banana I bought is not the usual over-riped type for baking use. It was however the best I could find among the 6 fruit stalls at the market. Nonetheless, I love the end result and hope the LCSG people would find them nice too.

Blessed 21st Birthday!

One day, my colleague J came to me and asked me whether I could help her with her birthday cake for her upcoming celebration. As I talked to her, I realised it would not just be a normal birthday, but her 21st! She is interested in my cupcakes, after seeing the posts on my blog.

Her birthday theme is rustic country and I had a hard time coming up with her cake's theme. I finally decided it has to have something to do with fruits and flowers and initially suggested a white and green theme with apples and daisy flowers. However, as we discussed further, we narrowed down to a orange and brown colour theme instead. Why? ... I couldn't quite remember actually, but I suggested the cakes would be orange with chocolate, and also chocolate with orange. Oranges because I kept having images of bountiful harvest from the orchards in country farms since the party theme was revealed to me. As for chocolate, well, simply because it goes wonderfully together with oranges and the pairing can never go wrong. Also, the duo wll fullfill the colour theme we want as well.

As J like the display of cupcakes on my cake stand, I decided to make exception to loan it to her. For those of you who has read my blog on how the cake stand came about, you would know how special it is to me. All the more so now as the 3 tier design is hard to come by these days. As it would be a special celebration, I decided to make a 6 inch small cake for the top layer of the cake stand, instead of a display of 3 layers of cupcakes. However, I also left it to J to decide on the actual display as it can be versatile.

For the light cloured jelly layer to stand out, I had added a thin layer of orange white chocolate mousse as a last layering for the mousse making it a total of 8 layers for the small cake. 

For the cupcakes, I also made two variations, one with orange butter cream and the other, orange infused chocolate butter cream. I really love the end result and hope they add special moments to the birthday girl's special birthday celebration.

Orange buttercream icing with dark choclate orange infused sponge cake.

  

I wanted to give the orange slices a shiny layer and hence dipped them in sugar coating syrup. Unfortunately, our humid weather here just doesn’t make it ideal for this and the coating just kept melting. In the end, I had to peel them off. 

Pretty Cupcakes

I have long resisted using icing that is loaded with lots of sugar and colouring. However, two recent requests for those ever popular pretty cupcakes from friends have made me give in. The reason? My usual wholesome no nonsense chocolate and fruit glazes just won't fit the bill for the occasions!

The first was to a friend's request. She wanted some cupcakes to give away to her colleagues on Valentine's Day. I did some planning and decided that I really would want a pink colour theme for this. Also, the cupcakes really won't look nice without the swirl of icing topping. But instead of using the usual butter and icing sugar, I decided to go for Italian butter icing, which would give a smoother and lighter mouth feel. Besides doing my own special tags, I was also fortunate to find heart-shaped strawberry marshmallows for decorating.

All pink coloured Valentine's Day Cupcakes

The latter was for my neighbour's two daughters, who were celebrating their 1st and 5th birthday together. I duplicated the valentine cupcake, minus the tag and did another light orange design, with jelly beans representing eggs sitting atop the cakes. These were then carefully displayed on my tiered cake stand, which I couldn't resist using it for the occasion.

The cupcakes sitting pretty on my tiered cake stand

Pink colour theme which is both the birthday girls' favourite

Trio of jelly beans representing eggs sitting on top the cakes

Cupcakes Workshop for Children at The Little Arts Academy

Some months back, a friend introduced me to the Little Arts Academy. I paid them a visit and decided to volunteer some time with them to conduct children workshop for their Little Chefs Unite! programme. The first session was on 13th Aug and I did cupcakes with the children.  

As I was worried that the 2 hours session would not give me enough time (my usual workshop are 2.5-3hrs), I did some extra preparations from home. The children were wonderful, giving me full attention and did everything pretty well. Everyone was also very cooperative and took turns to do every thing, from measuring ingredients, mixing, stirring, carrying trays and even cleanup! As with any workshop, little incidents would cropped up along the way and I am very glad that past experiences from teaching the homeschool group came in handy. J from LAA also gave me assistance during the workshop and though I was initially worried that we couldn't finished in time, we actually finished a quarter hour earlier.

   

Little Chefs Unite! cupcakes workshop at Little Arts Academy.



The children's creative work in cupcakes decorating.

My next children workshop with LAA will be 29 Oct, doing cookies pops and I am looking forward to that already! For parents who are keen to sign their children on the workshop, please contact LAA through their website at:
http://www.thelittleartsacademy.com/category/workshops/

Eggless, Dairy and Gluten Free Cupcakes

My success with mixing my own gluten free flour mix makes me want to experiment more with this mixture. Unfortunately, it is currently limited to chocolate sponge cake only. For some reason, without the addition of cocoa powder, the taste, texture and end result is very disappointing for a eggless, dairy and gluten free vanilla sponge cake. My guess is that the fat content in the cocoa powder somehow enhances and improve the overall result. Either that, I need to readjust the ratio of all the other ingredients. It is definitely something that I will continue to work on, so that I can create more cake flavour combination.

For these cupcakes, I also tried something new - making a chocolate ganache icing without cream. It is somewhat less tasty than the dairy version but on its own, I would say it is very good, especially for people who can't enjoy the regular version. For easier spreading, I left the ganache to set outside at room temperature, rather than in the chiller.

Dairy, Egg and Gluten Free Cupcakes! Due to the low rise of the cake mix, I needed to put more in order to have a decent height for the cake. This resulted in 8 cupcakes per recipe, instead of my usual 12.


The overall verdict? They not only looked good, but tasted yummy too! I ate one and the rest, I was very happy to give to the Angels.

Cupcakes

Cupcakes is all the rage now, you see them online, you see them at cake shops and you see them in bookshops (books about them). They are not difficult to make, but if you want special styling, they can take up a lot of time, much much more time than I had expected actually.

I had my first experience when an ex-colleague sms me if I wanted to help create something special for her son's 5th birthday. All she wanted was 25 cupcakes, to be collected on the morning of her son's birthday for a teabreak celebration in his school. I checked for some reference online and gamely took on, thinking that they shouldn't take up too much time and shouldn't be too difficult. As it turn out, I was wrong!

Perhaps the difficulties lies in the all chocolate ganache icing that I used, instead of the usual buttercream icing. But then again, our warm and humid tropical weather is not the same as the cool and dry temperate weather where all these cupcakes ideas originate. I also do not have the luxury of an air-conditioned kitchen or room to work in. This experience now makes me understand fully why an ex-colleague said she had to blast her air-con at 15 deg in one of her bedroom for the whole duration whenever she wants to make sculptured cakes.

The chocolate sponge in the cups baked pretty effortlessly, using my usual recipe. In wanting to avoid using colouring, excess fats and sugar, I opted for dark and white chocolate ganache for the decoration. As mentioned, due to the warm environment, I had a hard time making the ganache hold it's shape. As I spend more time working on it, I also lost the shine of the glossy ganache, and as a result, more time had to be spent to rectify this as well. Being the meticulous me, I also spend more time in selecting similar size chocolate coins and placing them as ears on the cakes. At one point, I started to panic as I barely had enough time to do the finishing touches for the eyes, noses and mouth. This can be seen in the photos, not all the drawing were consistent, but it created a unique look for each individual piece.



The 25 cupcakes, all nicely lined and stuck securely to the cakeboard using flour paste.

 


A closer view of the design, personally I like the panda one better.

  I love these cupcakes for their cute looks and delicious all chocolate taste. My friend has also feedback that the 17 kids ate up all 25 cups within minutes and absolutely love them. Would I make them again? Well... for all the time needed, 18hrs in total, not unless it is a very special child!

Here's the link to the Wilton website reference where I got the ideas from

http://www.wilton.com/idea/Panda-monium
http://www.wilton.com/idea/Bear-Hug-for-One

Meantime, if there's any request cupcakes, I am most happy to offer this much much simpler to decorate version and just as delicious no less - banana sponge with chocolate glaze and topped with  fruits. 




Easy to decorate cupcakes. The cake is baked below the rim so that the glaze and topping can be protected within the cup.