iPhone / iPad Devils

October is the birth month of two of my very close family members: my father and my husband's big brother. The challenge is that their birthdays are very close to each other, say 2 days. Thus, if I set up 2 separated cake projects, there wouldn't be adequate time to bake & decorate both cakes properly. So let's combine them into one then!

I {HEART} decorating cakes. So, for birthday cakes, I always try as much as possible to customize them according to the birthday persons.

Good that these two persons, in spite of all their differences, clearly have one thing in common: IT savvy. The picture of amazing, cute little iPhone cupcakes I've come across years ago then popped up in my head. At that time I could even barely bake. Now as I'm learning cake decoration, I'll give it a shot.

As usual, I started out making sugar plates. You might notice that there're many plates than needed. Because it takes time to dry sugar plates, spares needed to be prepared at the first place. You don't want to end up having 11 usable plates for 12 cupcakes 2 hours before the delivery. Once they were completely dry and harden, I decorated each one with sugarpaste and royal icing.

How colorful they are!

For the cake, I baked Nutella devil's food cupcakes. Such a safe choice. Nutella and chocolate are hard to fail :)

I decided to serve it in the cupcake pan to mimic the iPad / iPhone actual case. In fact, that's because I didn't have time to make a proper background. Anyhow, it turned out perfect to me. Easier for the delivery also. Great!

Somehow, when serving, these cakes were apparently not practical for holding candles, or I'd have to put it through the sugar plates! No way. I wouldn't do it definitely. So I placed the candles on the sides instead. Wasn't it nice?

Though it took me so many hours to make that my palms hurt, it does worth it. Everyone were so excited with the decoration and enjoyed the cake, including my 2 year-old nephew :)

For the recipe, please see this post.

Strawberry Marble Cupcakes

I like marble swirls, especially of those marble cakes, and been wondering whether it'd look nice through cupcake paper cups too. So I baked some.

Is there a spy among us? Lol :D

I picked the recipe from Martha Stewart in the book "Martha Stewart's Cupcake". In the original recipe it is suggested to serve these cupcakes 'naked' with a lightly springkle of icing sugar. But I'd like to utilize leftover strawberries. So I made extra strawberry buttercream to give those cuppies a little 'icing on the cake' ;)

Nutella Devils

Who can resist the aroma of the hazelnut and chocolate paste called Nutella? Even only the name can provoke our test buds :)___ ....And what if Nutella becomes devil's food cupcakes? A double dose of pleasure, I think.

These cupcakes are a combination of Martha Stewart and Hummingbird Bakery creations. The base cake is Martha's devil's food cupcakes. But I adjusted the amount of sour cream to see how it would affect the finished goods. For the frosting, I took the recipe from "The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook." But I reduced the amount of icing sugar to control the overall taste not to be too sweet.

Nemo for Nephew

Last year I made a teddy bear cake for my dear nephew for his first birthday. It's been a year. Time does fly. Now he seems to love all kind of fish. I then decided to make him something in under-the-sea theme. But this week, I didn't have enough time to do both cake baking and figurines sculpturing for decoration. So I did only the sugar models to top a store bought ice cream cake.

I picked the famous cartoon fish to be the theme: Nemo & Dori. The reason is that I also wanted to focus on number '2' since that's the age of the birthday boy. The two cartoon characters always appears as a couple buddies.

Making the sugar paste. Preparing working space. Then (loooong hours of) kneading and sculpturing....

And here we go...

 

Tiramisu Charlotte #2

This is my second time for tiramisu charlotte. I made the first time at my mother's birthday. It turned out that my grandmother who usually doesn't have cakes loved it.

The most important thing needed to be concerned when making tiramisu is to use ONLY the FINEST quality (of every) ingredients, as far as your budget allows. Tiramisu is uncooked dessert. Every ingredient contributes to taste and texture of the dessert just as they are.

Tiramisu charlotte at grandma's 70-something birthday party.

Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

Its name is 'pie' but actually it is cake. I love Boston cream pie for two reasons: chocolate and pastry cream. Well, that's two out of its three elements already :D The cake is a combination of 3 things: plain vanilla cake + pastry cream filling + chocolate topping.

As many other cupcakes, Boston Cream Pie is originally made as layer cakes. In this version, they are baked into little cuppies.

A twist in cupcake version: instead of spreading the cream between cake layers, core cupcakes and fill in the pastry cream. I followed the the recipe from Une Deux Senses, except the cream filling because it's hard for me to find instant French vanilla pudding mix. I used this universal pastry cream recipe from Raymond Blanc instead. Turn out that it tasted fabulous together!! As other sweets with pastry cream, these cupcakes are best to be served chilled. I'll definitely make it again :)

Sugar Cookies

There are moments when we browse through online shopping websites that those dazzling goods widen your eyes and make your heart racing. Then your head starts to imagine yourself equipped with them and how good your life with those goods could be.

Lately I'd seen a set of cookie cutters despite the fact that I'd never made sugar cookies nor planned to do soon. But then those cutters seems too cute to pass. I finally got one :P

They had been sitting in my cupboard for several weeks until an occasion pop up. One of my cousins's got a scholarship at Harvard. I was so pround of him. Also, his birthday was coming up. Here come an opportunity for me.

After chilling overnight, the cookie dough was cut up into pieces.

When out from the oven. Ehhhh... looks like they're overbaked, losing their edges and letter print. Need to cover it up!

So I decided to paint over them, ignoring all the letter press.

Some sources for sugar cookies recipes:
~ Ideal Sugar Cookies by Martha Stewart
~ Sugar Cookies from Gourmet Magazine via Epicurious
~ Basic Sugar Cookie by SweetSugarBelle
And a complilation of recipes on
~ Delish.com

Tiramisu Charlotte

I've always wished to make my mom a tiramisu cake. It's her #1 favorite dessert of all time. We seriously fell in love with this luscious dessert in our first trip to Italy when I was young. I think we even finished almost all of our meals (except breakfasts) with it!

During years of baking practice, Tiramisu has always been my reliable hero. Since it's kinda no-bake dessert, there's no nail-biting moment during the 'oven' stage. In any occasion I brought them; they always proved to be real crowdpleaser :) Thanks to my best friend (the one mentioned in this post) for inventing the recipe and publishing it in her recipe book. She had tested and tried it soooooooooo many ways and many times until finding the perfect one. 

Mostly, tiramisu is served in transparent mold/cups or as a pile. Anyhow, this time it is meant to be a gift to a neat person like my mother. Beside being possible to be delivered without losing it shape, it should be presentable as a centerpiece rather than in its usual shapeless appearance. So I end up with a charlotte.

And this time, as before, everyone loved it! Yehhh :) 

Plus, my grandma, who is not fond of any western desserts & sweets at all especially those creamy, told me she loved it a lot. (She loves coffee.) I'll made it again for her birthday, next 3 months.

Happy Birthday Mama :)

Angry Birds Ice Cream Cake

One of my cousin is 22 years younger than me. Yet we share one thing in common: the addiction to Angry Birds game. On his birthday this year I surprised him with an Angry-Birds-themed cake.

I started it out by making Angry Birds characters sugar models. They need time -- from hours to overnight -- to set, thus have to be done ahead. It took me 3 nights to finish the figurines. Phewwww!

For the cake, due to the hot weather of summertime, I decided to try making an ice cream cake instead of a baked one. It'd be a big challenge for me. Not only because it's my first ice cream cake, but yes the temperature of 35 C (104 F) degree here could make it much more harder.

One of the birthday boy's favorite ice cream flavor is cookie & cream. Good. The appearance of this flavor would well mimic the cross section of the ground as it appeared in the game. So I picked cookie & cream ice cream for the lower layer of the cake, then topped with green tea ice cream. The background of these little Angry Birds must be a field of grass to mimic the game. Moreover, green is my cousin's favorite color :)

Layers (from base to top of the cake) :
Oreo cookie crust + cookie & cream ice cream + green tea ice cream +
matcha buttercream

Because of the hot weather, filling the ice cream into the mold cake pan (I use a springform one) must be done quickly. Once each layer was filled and leveled, the cake must be frozen for at least 30 minutes to set.

However, the green tea ice cream melted too easily to be piped and hold its shape as grass on the cake surface. The grass then had to be made of buttercream instead. Since matcha is like espresso of green tea, I made matcha buttercream to enhance green tea scent of the cake.

Matcha buttercream

When the whole cake was completed, I wrapped it up with cling film and froze it overnight. Meanwhile I made some dark chocolate ganache for decorating the eyes of the sugar birds. I also kept some spare of the ganache to be used as 'glue' when putting these sugar models upon the cake.

The birthday boy requested to decorate the cake by himself. It was a bit awkward. As soon as the cake was brought out of the freezer, it started melting quickly. But finally he did it and was so excited about his cake.

Chocolate Mint Cupcakes

Though not a big fan of chocolate mint, I couldn't resist the color of its minty green frosting. Too cute. Thus, Chocolate Peppermint Cupcake was the first recipe I baked after I'd got the recipe book by Cupcake Carousel Bakery.

March of the {Royal} Swine Troop!

One of my BFF since childhood loves baking and making desserts, in fact it's been her life. She's been into it since at very young age. Almost every birthday celebration she's the one who baked. Everyone knew, without any actual agreement, that if she was invited, just left the cake issue on her. She would be the one responsible for it -- yet impressed us every time. Now she owns the phenomenal dessert cafes, with 4 branches in Bangkok and still growing.

Sadly, on the birthday of her who baked us decent cakes, we could only order some store bought cakes for her. So this year, as I'm climbing up my baking ladder, another friend of mine suggested I bake 'pig-theme' cake for the birthday gal.

At the beginning, I planned the theme would be a combination of piggy (her fav creature) + royalty (she's the dessert "princess"). Somehow at this point, I think it might be wonderful if I can personalize the cake to be more spoken -- to be hers, and hers only.

That further touch could be but her beloved famous dessert cafes. But the addition must harmonize with the main theme. Think.. think.. think.

Logo should be the most obvious element to stand for the brand. So I'd play around with it. The original one is ram head in scallop border. So I made a mimic one featuring a pig head in the same gesture ;)

 Let's see the work

The {mimic} logo and the heads

The crowns for little piggies

Here they come!

 

 The base cupcakes were Maple Walnut Cupcakes and Monkey Devil's Food Cupcakes (Devil's Food cake with bananas). You can see the recipe on my earlier posts.

• Maple Walnut Cupcakes
• Monkey Devil's Food Cupcake

Monkey Devil's Food Cupcakes

Airy texture, intense flavor

 i L-O-V-E chocolate. It was almost impossible to me to pass this recipe without try it out. Besides, seeing people raved over it in reviews, I was curious how sour cream would make differneces in chocolate cakes. However, as I love the combination of Banana + Dark Chocolate, I added banana into the recipe. So these cake should rather be for 'monkey' devils. Lol.

Whenever working with chocolate recipes, use only the FINEST chocolate / cocoa powder you can find. Trust me, the results form different qualities are distinct. 

Maple Walnut Cupcakes

The original recipe can be found on Martha Stewart's website. Somehow I think coffee might complement the rich flavor of maple syrup in the frosting. So it was added into the milk required in the cake recipe. Also, I added more nuts than in the original recipe.

 { Bear in mind }

* Nuts should be gently heated in the oven before use. The heat releases the oil in nuts, enhancing their flavor and aroma. I like to 'roast' them either when preheating or cooling the oven. But be careful. Nuts can get easily burnt. Do not leave the oven unattended when roasting. Take them out once you smell the aroma.

* Frost buttercream less than usual, for this given recipe, due to its strong flavor especially the sweetness.

Barbapapa Cake

March is the birth month of my hubby. After listing the cake themes I wanna try out, I ended up with Barbapapa. Why? Because the characters are so adorable. Besides, the free-form look of their shapes seem attainable for a first-timer fondant "cakerator" like me. Brilliant. I'd go for it.

Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcakes

Scent of lemon is charming to me. It brings the sense of freshness and delight, brightening up those around them. So I decided to make birthday cupcakes of something lemon for my sister-in-law to reflect her being optimistic and gaily.

Lemon Zest // Butter & Cream Cheese

I paired lemon cream cheese frosting with cream cheese cupcakes. The subtle tang and creaminess of cream cheese goes well with lemon scent as well as lemon zest. Cream cheese cupcakes also taste nice on their own. So I made it more than needed to have it without frosting later. Hehehehe :P

The birthday girl, with her beloved son, at her vanilla moment