Website

I'm really bad at updating. I've said it many times that I'm going to try and be active on this blog again, but then.... My last update on Foodies by ai is in February. It has been months. Anyway... Have you checked up the new website? I'm selling cupcakes and other foodies stuff. But I'm not sharing any recipes on the website. If you're searching for recipes, you'll have to find it on my blog. 

The website is currently on construction (again). But you can check it out anytime.

Here's the link: http://www.ai-foodies.com/

My wedding cake adventure

It seems like I have been abandoning this blog again and I'd like to apologize for that. I've been having this thing called laziness. It was hard for me to focus on both my food blog, and book review blog.

Anyway...

Last month, I was super busy with a friend's wedding. Since she's one of my closest friends (I've known her for 20+ years!) I told her that I wanted to make her a wedding cake (for practice purposes) and some decorated sugar cookies as the door gift.

Let's talk about the wedding cake first.

I sucked at cake decorating. And I have not much experience with fondant. I didn't even know how to cover a cake with fondant. So, I took a class on fondant cake decorating a few months ago. And it was super easy to cover a dummy cake. And with the help with the amazing instructor, I managed to make my fondant cake looked as amazing as the picture below. 

As you can see, the pretty roses was done by the instructor. I managed to make only one of them, and they didn't resemble rose very much. I need practice!

I was confident that I could perhaps make a cake that resemble something like this again. My friend (the bride) loves black, and gray. I thought that I could probably make a presentable cake. But this is what my cake looks like...

I know.

I'm so disappointed with what I did to my friend's wedding cake.

If you look closely (at the top tier), you will notice how I didn't have much skill with fondant or cake decorating. It was a good thing that I have those store bought gum paste roses. And it's a good thing that I was planning to make cupcakes and put them on a stand like the picture above. I'm not so sure if I can handle a 3 tier fondant cake. And people didn't really care about the cake on the top tier once they saw the mini cupcakes. Ha!

Oh! And those are chocolate cake with salted caramel buttercream.

Let's take a look at the sugar cookies I made for the door gift.

First, I have to draw the black section, and let it dry. Then, the white section. After the white section dried, I have to draw the lace with the white icing. It was a good thing that I got an amazing set of lace stencils from an art store. I was planning to buy some stencils from Wilton, but they are too expensive for me. When the white lace, dried, I have to paint them with AmeriColor' air brush gold color.

Frosting these cookies took so much time. But the bride requested some black and gold. And I decided not to frost them all with black as I was afraid that people might freak out with the color. I'm glad that I frosted them with a bit of ivory. They looked much nicer, sweeter.

I have a few extra sugar cookies and decided to make them into this:

The extras look pretty good. I googled a few pictures and decided to try them. Frost the black section, draw some flowers with white icing, dragged them with brushes for the texture, and painted them with gold. I really like this one!

Now I'm done with my wedding cake & sugar cookie adventure. I'm not sure if I'll be updating this blog as frequently. But will try my very best as I do have some photos of cakes I haven't shared, and recipes I haven't posted yet.

Until then...

Pomegranate Cupcakes

Baking different kinds of cupcake flavor can be fun! When my mum bought a few pomegranate from a farmer's market, I decided to take a few of those pomegranate, and turn them into cupcakes. I love the taste of pomegranate as juice. I've seen a few pictures of pomegranate cupcakes, and they are super cute with the little seeds topping! I thought it would be great to experiment with pomegranate cupcakes.

All I did was to add a bit of pomegranate juice and seed in my vanilla cupcake recipe, frost them with cream cheese frosting, and sprinkle a bit of pomegranate seed on top. The cakes are a bit yellowish, and a bit pinkish. You can add a bit pink coloring to your batter if you want it more pink.

Pomegranate Cupcakes

125g butter (softened)
2 eggs
3/4tsp vanilla essence
180gm self raising flour
1/2cup pomegranate juice
170gm castor sugar
1/4tsp salt
1/4cup pomegranate seed
Cream cheese frosting
More pomegranate seed (to decorate)

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius.
2. Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and beat until smooth with an electric mixer.
3. Place mixture into lined cupcake trays using a spoon, filling each until 3/4 full.
4. Bake for 15 minutes.
5. Cool completely before decorate.

Vanilla Cupcake with Rose Buttercream & updates!

I'm such a bad blogger. I abandoned this my food blog for a while without updating, even though I did promise I was going to update. It's not that I haven't been cooking or baking. I guess, I've been lazy to write up a post. There are, however, a lot pictures of food on my desktop/SD card waiting to be uploaded. It's just like I've said, I'm being lazy.

To make up for my laziness, I've baked these cupcakes to apologize. (Ok, that's a lie. I baked these for mother's day months ago, but was too lazy to write up a post).

I've seen people making these cupcake bouquets before and wanted to try them. Instead of buying my mom a bouquet of roses, I've decided to bake some cupcakes, and presented them in a bouquet. And instead of having real roses, why not replace them with vanilla cupcake with rose buttercream? They taste (a bit) like roses, and smell like roses.

These cupcakes bouquet was really easy to make and assemble. They're super cute and fun! Perfect as a gift, don't you think?

Melon Salad

The first time I've heard about this melon salad was during my diploma. I have to look for a few dishes from South Africa and this melon salad was one of the recipes for their dessert. They were easy to make and absolute refreshing treat to have during summer. The original recipe I found in the internet years ago contains some alcoholic drinks. But I'm not drinking. So I've altered the recipe a bit to my liking and convenience.

To make this melon salad, you need is a few types of melons. Watermelon and honeydew are two of my favorite melon to use. But you can always use the yellow melon, rock melon, sunlady melon, any melon that you like. 

The fun part was to scoop the melon with a melon baller. Then you will need some mint leaves, lemon juice (or orange, or lime) and just a little bit of plain syrup (or mint syrup). Toss the ingredients together and there... You have it. Store them in a container for a night before consuming for a better result.