Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Last time I baked a cake with this recipe (the one decorated into Rilukkuma teddy bears in Japanese hot springs bath) it became a big hit. Also I myself wanna eat more :D So I baked it again but this time in form of cupcakes.

The cake texture was incredibly soft. Both the sponge and the frosting smelled and tasted fantastic. Thinking that peanut butter should taste good when pairing with chocolate, I melted some and drizzled it on top -- they did make the cupcakes taste better! I could never stop at just one piece each time I started nibbling those yummy cuppies :)

The recipe is from Martha Stewart. I must say I really love it and will definitely bake them again.

Rilukkuma (リラックマ) Peanut Butter Cake

This is my second time making Rilukkuma-themed cake. The first one can be found in this post

The sugar model cake toppers were made 2 days in advance to ensure adequate time for it to dry. Cocktail sticks were inserted in each bear to serve as the bears' "spines." The eyes and mouths were diluted gel paste coloring, drawn with drawing brush. (Yes, I was very nervous when doing it.)

The cake itself is 2 lbs. peanut butter cake, Martha's recipe.

The 'spilt water' is made from blue fondant. I decided to leave the side of the cake naked because the color of the peanut butter buttercream itself, plus the vertical stoke by spatula, could resemble wooden bathtub. It turn out to be my lucky choice because I just realized after the cake is frosted that the cake was so soft, a bit too soft, and high ratio of peanut butter in the frosting made it melt too easily. It would be difficult to hold a shape for fondant covering.

Anyhow, everyone was so excited with the cuteness of the characters. More importantly, the cake itself was very delicious too! It was a true crowd pleasure. Thanks again to Martha's recipe -- always reliable.

To see my first Rilukkuma cake, please go to this post.

Updated on May 2012:

The cupcake version of this peanut butter cake are shown in this post. You can also click on the link on that page for the recipe. 

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.

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...

 

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 :)

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.

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.

Rilakkuma (リラックマ) Double Chocolate Cake

My nephew would turn 1 this month. I wanna to make a special cake for his very first birthday.

I chose Rilukkuma (リラックマ) as the theme. It is Japanese cartoon character. The name 'Rilukkuma' derives from Rilak (relax) + Kuma (bear) hence meaning bear in relaxing mood.

via (clockwise from top-left) : {1} {2} {3} {4}

For the cake, I went for chocolate cake with airy texture which would be a compliment to milk chocolate ganache. I used milk chocolate instead of my usual dark chocolate for the ganache to give light brown color to match the color of the bear. Also its sweeter and creamier taste should be more kid-friendly than dark chocolate ganache.

Then it's time to cover the cake. I decided to leave the texture unsmooth so that it looked like stuffed toy bear. At first I made a yellow circle from tinted white chocolate ganache at each of its ears but it was too runny. So I took it out and just left the ears plain brown. The white section at the nose was made from whipped cream. The eyes, nose and mouth was made from melted dark chocolate.

Now he's ready to wish the boy a very happy birthday!

Everyone especially the birthday boy's parents were so excited. Lol. They also enjoyed the double chocolate cake. Hope my nephew will be happy too when he grow up and see the picture of his first birthday.

I really love the vanilla moment a cake can bring to a special occasion :)

Great-grandfather was giving the boy a piece of cake.