Strawberry hearts cheese cake

As mentioned in my last posting, I have just gotten the recipe for strawberry cheese hearts and was going to attempt it. The first attempt was badly done as the instructions or my understanding of them were not accurate. The layer of jelly sunk straight into the cheese layer and the whole effort was ruined beyond repair.

Upon reviewing the recipe and making some amendments, I managed my first successful creation of strawberry hearts,just in time for the children's birthday. Am now confident enough to attempt this but in nicer shapes like circle or heart shape for my next attempt. I am also contemplating to use this technique on other fruit as well as type of cakes. Might be getting interesting now.

flowers and bugs on rosettes

I bought a really nice cake stand over the weekend and wanted to see how the cupcakes look on it. Whipped up some lavender cupcakes and decorated them with pink rosettes icing and atached royal icing daisy and bugs or mini flowers on them. The results was the above.

Just finished an order for white rosettes cupcakes for a boy's first holy communion. I think it's such a wonderful and meaningful event and am so proud to be part of the celebration.

A chef who is ordering 300 cupcakes has given me some tips to make my chocolate cupcakes more yummy and moist. I want to give Charlene credit now for helping me reach another milestone. Will work extra hard at making her wedding cupcakes more special on her special day in August.

Fondant hearts with mini flowers

Have decided to experiment with fondant besides using it to make flowers for decoration. That birthed heart shaped fondant which are stronger and more versatile than white choclate shapes in our humid weather. Quite happy with the attempt. Wonder what else I can start. Planning to to attempt fodant coverings with icing flowers mixture next when I can find some time.

Have just gotten hold of the recipe for Jelly Cheese hearts and can't wait to try it out. Wish me luck!

Flower in royal icing

Someone asked about my cupcake designs in royal icing so I ended up doing one of each sample for her to view. She was planning for an event for 300 pax.

I like mini rosettes so could not resits placing an edible butterfly on top(yes, the entire thing can be eaten including the wings).

Am particularly happy the way the white daisies turned out.

Almond Pecan Pie

A friend gave me a recipe for the above the other day and since I have not done anything with nuts before, diecided to give it a shot. Here the outcome.

The texture of the pie is moist and the crust soft (the way I like it).

Flower theme cupcakes

As you can tell by now, I am such a romantic at heart. Decided to do flower themed cupcakes. Roses are featured predominantly in these cupcakes even though the only type of roses I like are the big, red America long stems. The ones we have just are not quite the same even if they declare it is the same thing. For some contrast, I did rosettes using butter cream icing instead of just the gum paste roses you saw above.

I also added in mini flowers made of sugar and sprinkled some edible silver pearls.

Of course with flowers, I could not resist a butterfly (which I feel did not turn out as well as I would have wanted but hey, it’s my first attempt) as well as ladybugs.

Final picture of all the cupcakes I did tonight. One of the two and half boxes I did tonight

My first simple fondant cupcakes

I walked into a baking store over the weekend and laid my hands on the latest Wilton fondant cutter, which is not even featured on their spring collection yet. Just had to get it to try out. Immediately baked myself a batch of choclate cupcakes and tried to do my very first fondant cupcakes.

The cutter is easy to use but feel that the normal Wilton 'cookie cutter' type of flower cutters might have worked better. This is fanciful but use wise, not fantastic. It is hard to remove the fondant from the cutter. Have to say that the cutter does assist in embossing the fondant with some pattern which was interesting. Outcome of the cupcakes as seen above.

I am happy with the cuteness of the designs but feel that I can do better. Just need to think of some more ideas to play around with.

With left over frosting from making Mother's Day cakes, I pipped purple swirls for a colegue whose last day at work was Monday. Packed the cupcakes in a tray to facilitate her bring them home.