Baking Project

Earlier on I had given a recipe for cupcake, the ingredient was :

The cupcakes made using this recipe is really delicious, it’s moist and had a full butter flavour. However, there are times when I made this recipe, I encountered problems with the cupcakes not sticking to the cupcake paper/ liners. This is quite frustrating sometimes. The cupcakes came out nice and fluffy, but after it is cool, the papers start slipping off. I have tried to reduce the butter content and the oven temperature, but I still get this problem now and again. 

So, today I tried a different recipe. I got this from Wilton’s website. It’s a basic yellow cupcake recipe.

• 3 cups sifted cake flour ( I use all purpose)
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 3/4 cups sugar
• 2/3 cup butter or margarine
• 2 eggs
• 1 1/2 Pure Vanilla Extract (vanilla essence also can..)
  
• 1 1/4 cups milk

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Grease bottom of two 8-inch round cake pans and line with waxed paper or parchment paper.
3. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside.
4. Cream sugar and butter together until light.
5. Add eggs and vanilla to creamed mixture and beat until thoroughly mixed.
6. Add flour mixture to creamed mixture alternately with milk, beating well after each addition.
7. Continue beating one minute.
8. Pour into prepared pan.
9. Bake 20-25 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.
10. Cool 10 minutes in pan on rack; remove and cool completely before decorating.

The cupcakes do rise a bit, so I only put about 3/4 full coz I didn’t want a high dome shape. I’m happy with the results. The colour is slightly pale due to the low butter content. I must admit it doesn’t taste as rich and moist as my first recipe. But if you are making a big batch, this recipe is really reliable. The cupcake liners doesn’t come off easily and the texture is quite firm (doesn’t shrink once it is cooled). Perfect for decorating. Since I’m baking a lot of cupcakes for my classes, I think I will stick to this recipe from now on.

Anyway, if you have any tips on baking cupcakes, I would love to hear from you. I bought an electric oven recently, and am still in a trial and error mode, to figure out the right temperature and so on. I find that baking cupcakes in the electric oven takes longer than my gas oven. I wish I had bought a gas oven instead . I guess both have its pro and cons.

I’m off to Sungai Petani tomorrow, that’s like a 4 to 5 hours drive from KL… will be there until this Thursday, to accompany my hubby on his outstation duties. I will miss my cake decorating but I’m really looking forward to having the Mee Udang at Sg. Dua ! Dieting to see my students on Friday the 6th.

I baked some cupcakes yesterday and was thinking of different ways to decorate them. Instead of putting a layer of fondant on top, why not wrap the whole cupcake with fondant ? So I decided to make some cactus in pots. Search the internet for some pictures of cactus and I started making these at 7.00 this morning, finished around 10.00 am. Quite time consuming considering I only made 3 pots. Anyway, here’s how I did it.

First, cut the bottom of the cuppies to resemble a pot shape. Then, wrap them with strips of fondant to make the pots.

Once done, cover the top of the cuppies with round green fondant.

Start making the first cactus.

For the white spots and thorns, I piped some buttercream using a round tip.

Coloured the pot using some piping gel to create the glaze effect. (the outline of the flower should have been much thinner).

For the second species of cactus, I made this shape and then poke some holes on it.

Use the same technique to create the thorns. Added two cute flowers. Below are the completed projects.

I don’t think I’ll be eating these cupcakes.. The middle one looks more like Aloe Vera, isn’t it ? It was not supposed to be Aloe vera.

Anyway, hope this lesson has been useful. Take care & bye for now.

Glace icing is the simplest form of icing. Very handy if you don’t have enough time to decorate your cake or cupcakes. I made some cupcakes yesterday and decorated it with glace icing. Here’s the recipe.

Ingredients

2 cups icing sugar, sifted

2 to 3 tablespoon of warm water or fruit juice

food colouring

Method : Sift the icing sugar. Use a wooden spoon, add the warm water and stir until the icing is smooth. The consistency should be similar to that of a whip cream. Or it should coat the back of your spoon. Add the colouring and it’s ready to use. This recipe is enough to cover an 8 inch round cake or for 24 cupcakes.

However take note that glace icing will harden quickly, so you have to work fast. I also find that my cupcake doesn’t look very nice the day after. Some of the icing started to crack. So it’s best eaten on the same day. There’s a few variety, you can add coffee powder, cocoa or fruit juice to flavour the glace icing, in place of the water.

All beginners should try this icing. A no-fail recipe !

My brother called yesterday and announce that he’s taking us for lunch to celebrate my dad’s belated birthday. I had always wanted to make a nice birthday cake for my dad, but was waiting for him to come to KL from our hometown in Perak. My dad had just arrived in KL yesterday. Due to the short notice I only had time to bake some cupcakes and decorated with whatever fondant / gumpaste decorations I had in store. And thank God I’ve also made extra icing the day before, so that really saved me some time.

Here are the cupcakes, it says ‘Happy Birthday Wan’. ‘Wan’ means grandfather in Malay language. My daughter and nieces call my dad ‘Wan’.

Somehow, I think the decoration looked a bit too much, too crowded..

Anyway, since I made the basket weave pattern, for those of you who don’t know, here’s my note on how to create one. The tip I’m using is this :

The rope border was made using a star tube. I brush the inside of my piping bag with yellow colouring and then fill it with white icing. When I press out the icing, it will have a tinge of yellow.

Hope this information is useful.

Ok, take care. Tara luv !