Red Velvet Cupcakes & Frosting

To me, sometimes writing a blog is like writing a diary. Mine is a food diary. I am sharing some mistake or fun that I have learn through my "culinary" journey. I have fallen in love with kitchen because I have always believe in nurture my kid with good nutritions make them a better person - healthy & mentally. Desserts are just part of it. Every mum feel proud when their kids tell them : "My mummy is the best cook in the world!!" .Besides, I seriously need to de-stree myself in the kitchen.

I love sharing my baking goods with the neighbours, nanny & friends. Let me tell you something funny happened in this 2013 Chinese New Year.

Amanda was  telling me that she has these new year cookies taste very good & asked us to try. Then, she asked her son where did they bought the cookies because she just couldn't recall where she bought it. The son answered it was from the neighbour's bakery. She was not awared that the cookies was from me.  I handed over to her son while she is not around. I will share the recipies with you later. It is the "fruitcake cookies", which taste really good. My ex-nanny love it too. Kinda miss her also.

Today, let me share with you the RED VELVET CUPCAKES recipies.
Red velvet is a chocolate based cake with cream cheese frosting. Kids & adult love red velvet.
For the cake recipies, pls refer to my previous post:

Rich Chocolate Cake
http://fabulouscake.blogspot.com/2013/04/rich-chocolate-cake.html

Red Velvet Frosting/ Cream Cheese Frosting:

Ingrediants:
1/2 cup of salted butter
6 oz cream cheese
0.5 tsp vanilla extrat
3.5 cup of icing sugar
(Optional) 1 tsp of milk depends on your liking on the frosting consistency.
Some decorative silver balls or food colouring

Method:
1) Mix cream cheese with butter, beat until fluffy. About 4 mins on medium speed.
Do not over mix because the mixture will become grainny. Never overmix when there is cream cheese.
2) Add icing sugar (pls shift before use),beat until smooth & fluffy.
3) Add in vanilla extract. Use pure vanilla extract which taste so much superior.
4) You can separate the icing into a few bowl, add in food colour (one or two drops will do), spread the colour icing on the cupcake & decorate colour sugars.

These are gifts to friends & colleugues for special occasion, my mind tell me..."Christmas".
Haha....now is too early for Christmas.

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Peanut Butter Cupcakes

These are the magnificent homemade peanut butter cupcakes. Love the crunchy caramel peanut butter toppings. This is the adult friendly cupcakes.

For more inquiries, please contact us @ 012-3813896.

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Carrot Cupcakes

Carrot cupcakes with cream cheese topping is all time favorite. Normally, these are served for dessert as an alternative to pumpkin pie after Thanksgiving feast & through out the harvest season. Children or adult like these.

For more inquiries, please contact us @ 012- 3813896.

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Lemon Cupcakes

This is our house specialty. It is a zesty lemon based butter cupcake with moist lemon cream in the middle & lastly a piece of lemon slice. For those who enjoy the lemon tart flavor, this is definitely delicious.

For more inquiries, please contact us @ 012- 3813896.

We have another option of the lemon cupcakes- with meringue on top.
These lemon meringue cupcakes will add an elegant touch to the dessert when serving it to your guest. It is a combination of zesty lemon butter cupcake, moist lemon cream in between & meringue on top.

This is one of my top 5 personal favorite cupcakes.

Lemon meringue cupcakes in gift boxes.

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My Christmas Roast Chicken

I would like to post this article "My Christmas Roast Chicken" as the last blog in year 2010. My family love this roast chicken so much & we had a wonderful Christmas celebration. I managed to take leave from work on the Christmas eve. It belongs to the family.

As this is the 1st time I am roasting a chicken, it is actually quite easy. In fact, if you are busy, you should roast a chicken. Just simply marinate the chicken & put it in side the oven for 1-1.5 hours. The oven will get the job done. You just need to serve it.


Simple Ingredients:
1-1.2kg Chicken
50g unsalted butter (melted)
1 ea orange
2 big clove of garlic (keep skin intact)
2 cup of water or beer
Salt & pepper

Onion, carrot, celery, potato
- cut all these into big chunk , oil it & salt + pepper it

Method:
1) Heat oven 180'C
2) Marinate the chicken inside salt & pepper
3) Rub the butter on the chicken skin outside. Premium butter will bring great taste.
4) Stuff slices of orange inside the chicken & not forgetting some garlic.
5) Lay all the big chunks vegetable on the tray, then lay the chicken on top of the big chunk vegetables.
6) Pour 2 cups of water inside the roasting pant & start roasting @180'C for 80 mins
7) You can also use beer instead of water. It taste even better. This is to keep the roast chicken moist. You can add the water again if the water is dried up during the roasting process.
8) To make the brown sauces, it is easy. Just put a knob of butter into the roasting pan together with all the juices (from the chicken), 2 tablespoon of flour. Then, cook all these on the stove, scrapping the roasting pan clean. Salt & pepper it.



Finally, we end our meal with these outrages caramel peanut cupcakes. What a fatty meal ;).
It is OKAY to indulge sometimes.

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Classic Muffin - Variety

Muffin is good for breakfast & tea time. The texture is something between cake v.s. bread. The best thing about muffin is the fat content is lower than regular cake because it is made of vegetable oil (liquid form) instead of butter. I like to make it because it is so simple & you don't really have to spend a lot of time watching the batter....mixing it proper to ensure it can be baked successfully.

Here is a recipes that it never fails. Anyone can do it. Simple.

Mix all the below in a big bowl ( see below).
500g flour
250g sugar
4tsp baking powder
1tsp salt

Mix all the below in another big bowl ( see below).
Eggs - 150g
Milk-350g
Vanilla- 12 g
Oil -200g

Option:
100g raisin or
100g chocolate chips or
100g chopped prune or
100g cranberry or
100g nuts (any nuts that you like)
- More is less . Just add 100g of choice of yours from the above & add in the the batter mixture.


Method:
Just pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredient. Mix mix mix with a whisk.
***DO NOT OVERMIX*** mix until it is just in-cooperated. Scoop the batter into muffin case & bake at 175'C for about 20-25mins.

I baked those muffin with jam & fresh fruits-strawberry/blue berry.
It was awesome!

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Pat's Kid Cupcakes Party

Last week, I have got an order to make some cupcakes for Pat's kid party. What I need to do is to prepare the plain cupcakes & some icing. The children will have fun decoration those little cakes with sugar flower or confectioneries.
I have prepare 2 types of cupcakes: vanilla cupcakes & chocolate cupcakes.
Recipes refer:
http://www.joyofbaking.com/VanillaCupcakes.html

There are tonnes of recipes on cupcakes, just choose any recipes to your liking. It is quite difficult to fail when you bake a cupcakes. You can google "cupcakes" & there are lots of recipes out there waiting for testing.
http://www.marthastewart.com/food
http://www.foodnetwork.com/
http://www.nigella.com/recipe/recipe_result.aspx?keywords=cup~cakes

Honestly, I do not have time typing long details recipes in my blog. However, I will try to paste the link here so that you can refer to the original recipes that I used. Sometimes I do alter the recipes a little bit to my liking. This is what most advance baker did. A little personal touch on their very own recipes just like your mum/grandma recipes. I would like to quote Chef Michael Smith saying, he always says: Try or experiment on different ingredients. I totally agreed with him. Sometimes, I feel like I was doing some experiments in my home test kitchen.hehehehe...

As requested, I prepared the colourful icing in the triangle tube for cake decoration.

Not forgetting to make extra cupcakes for my 6 years old & myself. You can see the little fingers building some icing on the little cakes.


Some cupcakes for myself. Not to mention I am having fun too.

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Floral Christmas CupCakes

It is Christmas.Good food must share with good friends. I have made 2 dozens of these gorgeous cupcakes to share with my family, friends or neighbors this coming Christmas. Wish all of you a very Merry Christmas & Happy New Year ahead. :)

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Baked Red Snapper & Strawberry Cupcakes

This is quite luxury dish. It has the 'wow" factor. The most important thing is that the fish must be extremely fresh. In this case, I am using a 1kg red snapper because my sister was coming over for dinner. It was a pleasant surprise for her.

Recipes:

2 eggs white

4kg of coarse salt

1 kg of whole fish cleaned & gutted. Skin on. Do not make any cut on the fish. Rub the fish with olive oil.

A bunch of rosemary & a bunch of thyme & basil to stuff each cavity

Actually, it is quite simple. Just give it a try. Whisk the eggs white till soft peak & mix with all the rock salt. Lay the rock salt on the baking tray put the fish in the middle of the tray. Then, cover the whole fish with the rock salt. Bake the fish at 200’C for about 35 minutes. That’s simple, isn’t it? By the way, it is absolutely delicious.

You can serve this fish with green salad & bread. Nice~

Of course, you can’t end the dinner without any dessert. Ta-da, this time I have served up some fresh cupcakes made with Cameron Highland Strawberry. My 5 years old plucked the strawberry herself. She was kinda proud of her contribution.

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Lemon Fairy Cake

Fairy cake is actually a British term for cupcakes. The frosting for fairy cake is slightly different from the America cupcakes. It is less icing sugar with more butter, no milk.

What I like about this Lemon Fairy Cake is they are so easy to make yet so delicious..tangy. My hubby even says, this taste like the fairy cake in the 80s made by the grandma. This is not the 1st time I got this comment. Sometimes ago, I shared some cakes with my friend, she brought home & his son thought that was baked by a very old or aged grandma....And that was me, I am not that old yet.....


For delicious recipes: Pls refer to
http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/276270/Rachel-Allen-s-lemon-cupcakes

Anyway, I also did some experiment. I poke some fresh California black raisin into the batter before baking it. It turns out fantastic. Each of us pop one cake into our mouth after it rest for about 30 mins .How I wish I have some fresh strawberry, blueberry or raspberry on hand..

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