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 :)