Friday, August 31, 2007

Raspberry chocolate cupcake with white chocolate whipped ganache for teachers day. The white chocolate didnt stabilise the cream enough for these cupcake to be stored at room temperature though. And in the fridge the cake turned dense and fudgy.

Today assembly was bizzare. We forgot to go downstairs, faced the small flag in class at attention to make up for our mistake. Turned the clock backwards and discarded watches, hahaha it was really funny. But other than that today was blah, me and cheryl ended up watching the clouds to save us from direct sunlight.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Chocolate Banana Peanut Butter Cupcakes, for xls. I shouldnt have added chopped dark chocolate into the cupcakes, it made it too chocolatey.

Im really sick of school, and everything else at the moment.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Friday, August 24, 2007

17 eggs, 5 cups of sugar, and 50 cupcakes later.

Baking cupcakes for wesley food fair. Its a first for mass baking, I've never done a so many cupcakes at one go before. It was a much larger project than I had expected. Brownies was the original idea, my aunt finally agreed to cupcakes, she thought they wont sell.

Valrhona dark chocolate cupcakes with vanilla bean buttercream. I didnt want to use up my only stock of good quality vanilla beans, so I used one bean plus vanilla paste. The cupcakes were one of the better ones, smbc is really heavenly(:

But mass baking gets me so exhausted though. Carrying trayfuls of cupcakes up and down the hill to my aunts house at midnight, where she was still baking her way to her 50th loaf cake. Loaf cakes must have been much worse, it takes alot of batter and lots of baking time. Haha I got more Valrhona and a huge jar of poppy seeds to last my as a lifetime as a gift.




I lovee the vanilla flecks in the frosting(:


With bittersweet chocolate curls.


Outtakes, the next day.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Lemon cupcakes by Joycelyn shu, I ate these! Haha, they taste quite good too, they are so pretty and very very detailed.

Joycelyn shu's having another cupcake (christmas) class at shermays(: My aunt was talking about the cookie class though, and only someone like Jaime is qualified to make such elaborate detailed piping designs.

Im exhausted. I think I shouldnt attempt to bake and fill macarons at one go, macarons take alot of time to make. And its not like breadmaking when alot of time is waiting for the dough to rise, macarons need alot of active time. It wears me out.

Anyway today is a good day, I went with my aunt to shop for Wesley's church fair bakesale. She bought enough ingredients that could have lasted in my kitchen for a year, and more baking pans and equipment. Haha I snuck some stuff in (hazelnut extract!) (:

Valrhona Dark Chocolate Macarons and Chocolate Macarons with Nutella buttercream. I used my valrhona araguani dark chocolate in the swiss meringue buttercream, its so expensive though. I heard that theres a cheaper source for $30 a kg. I also made Nutella buttercream to fill half of the macarons, because Liana likes Nutella. I think.

Friday, August 17, 2007

Chocolate orange cupcakes with orange chantilly. Cupcake base is flourless and butterless, but with one whole orange in it(: Orange chantilly made with reduced orange juice until it was a really thick syrup. I think the acid of the orange curdles the cream slightly so it tastes like buttermilk. But I could just eat the chantilly, its tastes like orange ice cream.




Topped with orange peel and bittersweet chocolate curls.

Passionfruit macarons. I am a bit disappointed with the colour, I added far too litte food colouring in the macaron shell, so its a very pale rose orange. The passionfruit meringue buttercream, involved making of the passionfruit curd as well. Its good, but reminds me too much of lemon curd.







SMBC!(:

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Mango white chocolate cupcakes. Not the best cupcake base, too sweet dense and mango flavour isnt very pronounced. I added 3 whole mangoes to the meringue buttercream, which made it hard to pipe.

Island cremery later with tricia gabby liana maisie. Sze wing couldnt go): Yeah and liana chek wants me to upload every. single. picture. ):

"I feel creamy!'' (:

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Chocolate banana macarons. I experimented with banana buttercream, surprisingly wasnt soft yet banana-ey too(: Of all macarons I'm most pleased by these.

Saturday, August 04, 2007

Dark chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate cream cheese frosting, topped with dark chocolate clay roses. The chocolate clay roses were really difficult to make, I spent hours on it. The chocolate clay kept melting in my hands, so I couldnt make thin petals. They're pretty, but its so tideous I cant imagine making more than a bunch of them.







My great grandfather passed away this morning. He lives next door, and my parents are rushing everywhere today. I'm not as close to him, but it feels so strange now. I used to love visiting his old house and sit on the rusty swing and pluck ixora flowers. He could still walk then. I never imagined this day to come, even though I knew it would.

Friday, August 03, 2007

Im thoroughly exhausted. Macarons can do that to you sometimes. You spend hours in the kitchen and come out finding they arent actually very pretty.

Pistachio macarons, 3 different ways. Chocolate ganache, raspberry meringue buttercream, pistachio buttercream. Pistachio macarons are the worst of the lot, you need to carefully shell and skin hundreds of pistachios and your food processor refuses to grind them into nut dust. So anyway they arent very green. But maybe the aroma of roasted pistachios while the macarons are baking more than make up for it. Its also very nice to eat.

One batch got really big feet, but some had hugee feet on one side, and none on the other. The other batch ran into each other due to my non-existant piping skills.





Passionfruit raspberry gelato, its a bit icy due to the lack of butterfat. I love passionfruit, I went crazy at the supermaket and bought a dozen passionfruit of them.