Chocolate Cake

I made this chocolate cake for someone's birthday last weekend. I opt to coat them with whipped cream to give them a light taste.Then I sprinkled some chocolate chip between the layers, and frosted them with more whipped cream.

Somehow, I managed to make my cake looks cheap than it appear to be. And I really, really, really need to improve my writing skills. (And I forget to dry the maraschino cherries before putting them on cake!! What am I thinking??) I think I like them without any coating and decoration. It looks nicer that way. 

To whoever that received the cake, pardon me for my bad handwriting and cake decoration technique.

Chocolate Cake

250g butter
350g castor sugar
75g cocoa powder
175g cake flour
1tsp baking powder
100ml buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
3# eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 175 degree Celsius.

2. Sift cocoa powder, cake flour and baking powder in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Beat butter and sugar in another bowl until it's fluffy. Then, add in eggs one by one. Beat in vanilla.

4. Alternately beat in flour mixture and buttermilk into the butter. Mix just until combined.

5. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

6. Let it cool and serve. You can have it plain, frosted with whipped cream, chocolate ganache or chocolate butter cream—anyway you like.

They look nice as cupcakes too! :)

My Culinary Moment #2: Colored Vanilla Muffins

Last week, I was really busy with baking vanilla muffins. An ex-schoolmate ordered 1600 muffins for her wedding - as a door gift to the guest. Making 1600 muffins on your own was not easy. So, I started making these muffins a few days earlier. I made these muffins into a few colors - red, orange, pink, purple, blue and peach. And these muffins comes with a few designs too - spiral, polka dots and marbled. I think, marbled muffins looks the best!

Working with lots of muffins isn't as easy as I thought. You have to work quicker with muffins. You need to pop them into the oven once you mix the ingredients and scoop them into the paper cups to prevent loss of volume. So, I figured that I should be preparing the muffin mix in advance. I weighted the dry ingredients, sifted them and portioned them into 250g each packet. I figured that I couldn't work with large volume of muffins all in once as I was working in the kitchen by myself. There's no way that I could scoop the muffins into the pan, checking the muffins in the oven, cooling the muffins and arranging them on the table all at once.

Fortunately, my family helped me a lot with packaging (my customer requested me to package the muffins into individual packaging). Folding the small boxes and packaging those muffins were time consuming. So I am really glad that they help me with packaging and counting those muffins. THANK YOU! :)

Engagement Cupcakes

Engagement cupcakes! Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting topped with white fondant. They look pretty simple and pink. I was aiming for red, but turned up with pink fondant instead. Oh well...

This is how the engagement cupcake box looked like. And sent to the girl's family as a hantaran, or gift. What do you think?

Order: Chocolate Moist Cake

I made this for my brother's friend. A chocolate moist cake with vanilla frosting, and topped with chocolate glaze. I had fun experimenting with transferring sheet for that chocolate too.

Pastillage: turquoise basket weave

I made another pastillage box last week. The customer requested for turquoise box with chocolates. This time, I decided to try and make a round shape box. It was a little bit tricky than the usual square or rectangle box. But, I had fun experimenting with this.

I asked the customer if I could make the box a little bit different than I usually did. I told her that I wanted to make a basket weave around the box, and she agreed. The basket weave pattern was piped with royal icing. 

And this is how the lid looks like.

And I made some chocolate truffle and chocolate orange truffle for the box. What do you think (of the box, I mean)?

Cheese Tartlets

Made these cheese tart for a friend. She wanted to have them for a birthday and requested a mix of blueberry and strawberry fillings.

Teddy Cupcakes

I received an order of a box of chocolate cupcakes the other day. As the cake was prepared for kids, I was told to add a bear on top of the cake.

I was working for KLIBF 2011 for the week, and preparing the cakes as soon as I got home is definitely a challenge. I have to make the mise-en-place for 4 days earlier to get the job done. I guess, the hardest part was to make the teddy figurine.

I was kind of lazy to make any fondant. So, I asked my brother to buy me some prepared fondant instead. Apparently, there's only purple fondant left. That's explained why the teddy were purple!

What do you think of the cupcake?

Chocolate Fudge Cupcake

I wanted to test out a recipe of chocolate fudge I got from my practical training. I remember the cake to be really good, not so sweet and seriously chocolaty. But when I read the recipe, I could sense that there were something wrong with it. The recipe used 900gm butter, and 200gm sugar. There's too little sugar!

I increased the sugar to 300gm and mix the cake anyway. It turns out to be really, really bland. Thank god, I could use the frosting to cover the bland taste of the cake.

When my brother brought the cake to his office (we had another cupcakes giveaway!), someone from his office decided to order some of the chocolate cake. I thought it would be an opportunity to correct the recipe.

I called my friend to find out the exact amount of sugar used. It turns out to be 2000gm instead of 200gm. So, that's why my cakes turns out to be really bland!

Chocolate Fudge 

900gm butter

2000gm sugar

16# eggs

450gm cocoa powder

1600gm flour

80gm baking soda

2 liter milk/water

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

2. Beat butter and sugar till creamy in a bowl.

3. Then, add in eggs one by one.

4. In another bowl, sieve the flour, cocoa powder and baking soda together.

5. Add in flour mixture to butter, and mix well.

6. Pour in milk/water into the mixture.

7. Bake the cake for 25minutes.

Pastillage: Pink Chocolate Box

Jah ordered this pink pastillage box. She originally wanted this box to be filled with 12 cupcakes. But decided it was too expensive (the box would be really, really big!). So, she decided to fill the box with chocolate instead. This box measurement are 17cm x 15cm x 4cm. The lids and base are 20cm x 18cm. I measured them using a chocolate box.

The last time I made a turquoise box, my friend Qila said it would be better if it were in pink. So, this time, Jah ordered a pink box! She wanted me to write 'congratz' on top of the box. After all, this box would be presented to congratulate someone.

Anyway, I got some extra pastillage dough left! So, I decided to play around and make this small box. The base and lid were made using a cookie cutter!

My brother thought my roses looks cartoon-ish. They were ribbon roses which I learned from youtube, and I was too lazy to make the petals. I was quite happy with how they turned out too. What do you think? Am I getting better in this?

Pastillage Box: Purple Ribbon

Last week, aimi from burp! le festin avec moi ordered a pastillage box for chocolates. She wanted white box with violet ribbons, and I came out with two tomes of violet.

I actually draw the plan of the box while I was in class.

The box came out good. Although I had some problem to dry the pastillage as it was raining and the air was damp. Anyway, it come out good. I think it looks better than the last one too. 

Thank you, aimi :)

Pastillage Box for Engagement.

Last Wednesday was definitely very tiring. I've received an order of 30 pieces of chocolate from a friend of my brother. Plus, a box for the chocolate. The customer actually wanted a box made of chocolate, but I explained that I didn't have the mold for that, and suggested a pastillage box instead.

Well, I've made the box before while I'm in my advance pastry class. I thought it might be a good idea to practice again. After all, practice makes perfect ;)

The customer asked for a white box with some orange ribbons. I've never made any ribbons before. So, I searched on youtube on how to make ribbons. I purposely add a bit of pink butterflies and love all over the box too. Well, my lecturer did mentioned that tricolors looks more appealing.

But then, the customer think that those love and butterflies are a bit crowded. So, I removed the side decoration and some decoration on top. I think it looks pretty this way too. And I had to agree that the box did looked overcrowded with those butterflies and love. Well, what did you guys think? I think I definitely had to work more on my piping. They're sloppy, right?

Handmade Chocolate

A few months ago, I bought myself  some new chocolate mold. I've only get the chance to try them out when a friend of my brother ordered some from me. I've made some dark chocolate with chocolate ganache and hazelnuts. My favorite would be the leaf mold as the chocolate shine compared to the others :)

I tempered the chocolate using seed method, one of the method which I think is quite easy as compared to the other. It's a technique you could actually practice at home! And no marble slab or tempering machine needed too. It's a method where you melt 75% of chocolate as weighed, and add in the remaining of 25% chocolate to cool the chocolate. You could read how to do this method Cooking for Engineers.

Chocolate Cake

My brother sent me an e-mail to me. Actually, it was forwarded. It was from his friend, asking if I could make a birthday cakes. He opt for a chocolate cake. This cake was frosted with chocolate glaze. Well, I always like chocolate glaze as compared to chocolate fudge. It was easier to pour and it looks neat. I decorate the cake with some strawberry and chocolate pocky, strawberry, sprinkles and Oreo's truffle.

Order: Birthday Cake Pops

 Happy Birthday Ayah & Ibu <3

This is some of the birthday cake pops for Jajah's parents birthday~ I definitely need a larger platform.

Order: Cake Pops

My first order of pop cakes!! (*≧▽≦) My neighbor ordered these Cake Pops for her grand daughter's birthday. I made them chocolate cake. The cake was coated with dark chocolate and strawberry chocolate. Some was sprinkled with rainbow jimmies, and some was drizzled with strawberry and chocolate.

What do you think?

Order: Chocolate Cheese Cupcakes

A few days ago my brother asked me if I could make some cupcakes for his friend. I'm not really good with cupcake decorating. So, I did my best experimenting for this one. The theme for the cupcakes was black and red. But I added in some white icing too o(>< )o ｏ( ><)o I thought that that would make it more interesting

So, how does it look? Seems like I need to work on my decoration technique, eh?