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.

Last minute Mother's Day cake

Someone called up to request at the very last moment for 2 simple Mother's day cake. She wanted fresh cream instead of icing as the elders have not acquired the taste of icing.

With short notice, the best I could come up with was butter cake with blueberry filling. Manage to create a few pink roses for decortion with fresh cream and as the request was simple, added a marzipan piece of well wishes.

Giant Sable Cookie

Finally got my hands onto some dough for baking. Had to create 2 different texture dough. Hard cookie base dough for base and pipping soft butter cookie dough for making the top designs. Cut the dough to required shape and baked it till it's ready.

Added in strawberry mousse and jam (with bits of crushed strawberry) in the centre for contrast and taste. Glazed the top front of the cookie and it's done. Pretty straightforward.

Triple flavour mousse cake for Mother's Day

As mentioned last, am still deciding between an icing cake or a mousse cake for Mother’s day this weekend. Tried my hand on a mousse cake with a twist yesterday. Created a mousse cake with three flavours – kirsch cherry, mango and sour sop. The last flavour was an unusual choice as I wanted something special since mango mousse is rather common in the market place.

The kirsch cherry mousse was the only one created with mousse powder which I got from the food and hotel asia exhibition. This is currently not on sale in the market as yet. It smelled heavenly and has bits of cherry in the mixture. Produced a nice shade of pink. I added some glaze it to give it a shine before putting it on the top of the cake as part of the decoration.

The mango and sour sop mousse is made using real fruit puree.

Taste wise, it has a complimentary contrast – sweetness of mango and marginalized tartness of sour sop. Texture is smooth and sponge filling is just adequate so one does not feel like one is consuming pure cream. Don't get to taste the soursop much but the mild flavour of the mango goes down well.

Decorated the cake with chocolate lady bugs, sticks and shavings.

Still feeling dissatisfied somehow. Would like to consider perhaps a cookie since I have been doing cakes for Mother’s Day for the last few decades! Perhaps a giant cookie? This might be my next project.

Flora Theme Cakes

Have always thought to try my hand at cake decorating but have never gotten around to it despite baking cakes for years. The inspirational push to do so came after the twins came along. Realised it is hard for children to share and thus the urge to learn cupcake making came. With that, the need to decorate those little crowns became unbearable. The birth of my cake decorating attempt came.


I first tried my hand at butter cream icing before proceeding to royal icing. Started with the easier attempt of piping stars and borders before moving to roses as seen on left. Had lots of fun and the kids love it.

The hard part came from trying to create flowers from royal icing as those are really time consuming and not for the faint hearted. Royal icing dries faster than butter cream and require more "strength" to push it out of the piping bag, at least for the novice that I am. With practice came close to perfection and it gets easier as more attempts are made.


The flowers above took me 2 hrs to create in a full air conditioned room so that they dry faster. They could only be attached to the cake after they have dried completely. Was planning to do this for Mother's day this Sunday for my mummy dearest but we shall see if time permits for that many flowers. Final output as seen on left.



In the next few weeks, I will try to make some cakes that are not conventionally round to see just how far I can go for the children's up coming second birthday in June. May just end up sticking to cupcakes as they have a long celebratory weekend up to their actual birthday party with play group and sunday school celebrations.