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Words from Before It's Too Late by Goo Goo Dolls.
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02 December 2013
Baking Expeditions
Over the past year or so, i've moved on from cookies into more sugary stuffs. Which i don't think is very healthy, but it's still very fun to make :D
I've made quite a few frostings' this year, with my very first (Buttercream Icing) being of dubious outcome haha. Mainly because there was no icing sugar so we used caster sugar instead which lead to a very grainy texture :X Oh, and the frosting melted pretty fast (but that might also have been due to the temperature of the cupcakes because we were rushing to get it done before meeting Eliezer)...
Afterwhich I attempted Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe here) for my cupcakes which flavour I can no longer remember. (I think it was chocolate) And this time, while quite yum, was a bit to much for the cupcake to frosting ratio :X The frosting also melted pretty fast D: Which made it look a bit icky...
And then I found this simple recipe for Sugared Doughnut Holes which is really easy and yumyum, and so I made it twice in a short span of time! Hahaha! OH it was for Sherri's farewell chalet and first, and then afterwards because I couldn't sleep. But it's pretty unhealthy and I haven't made it since :X haha! Maybe this December i'll do it again!~
Next, i attempted a Hazelnut Chocolate Cake with Hazelnut Chocolate Buttercream Frosting which was not too bad i think...though kinda too sweet. Not to mention that i think the chocolate cake with it was a bit too sweet too, and so it was like sugar overload x.x Once again, problems with fast melting frosting that made the overall attempt to frost the cake icky :( So my first frosted cake was pretty much a mess :S And ugly...lol
One wonders why I keep using buttercream as my base when i'm not a fan of butter and the butter obviously makes it melt fast in Singapore's hot and humid weather -_-...
After that I made a Durian Cake for my dad's birthday, with Durian Cream Frosting (here). The cake was just a vanilla sponge cake which I think tasted more like a butter cake than a sponge cake, but was still pretty yummy :P And the frosting was easier because it's basically just mushed durian with whipped cream and a teeny bit of sugar - diabetes friendly for once ;D haha! And although i should have strained the durian mush so it wasn't so stringy, it was still yum ^w^ Unfortunately, my cake frosting skills still suck real bad, and so it looked really lumpy and weird. And of course i had to do weird stuff like try and ice happy birthday with writing icing that's been left in the nice humid room temperature...So the red icing basically spread like soup on top of the cake and looked like the cake was bleeding OTL /fail. (But the taste is what matters right? :P)
Oh, oh! Some time before this or after this (I can't remember, oh no going to get alzheimer's D:), i attempted macarons and they succeeded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! woohoo!~~
So i did macarons with milk chocolate ganache (which is really just chopped choc, a bit of butter, cream, melt-mix-refrigerate), because the chocolate chips bought were semi-sweet u_u...which meant that my ganache was really sweet haha! But still, yay!~ Pretty good first attempt and was really happy with them! :D
After which, i think after too much cake and sugar and whatnot, i hiatus-ed from baking for a while. Probably also because of projects due haha!
Then came Peg's 21st where Brenz and I colluded to make a Chocoholic Cake :D
Ambitious me being ambitious, decided that i wanted to try my hand at making fondant because online recipes made it look easy and fondant cakes are ever-so-pretty!
So I tried a basic marshmallow fondant recipe :O And believe me, the goo went from fun, to gross, to eek i'm not eating this! haha... the amount of icing sugar that goes into a piece of fondant is sick. And after making it, i don't think i'm ever eating fondant again, much less making it...(maybe once in a blue moon for fun hehe) I have photographic evidence of the horrendousness of it all :O and the stunning pink bubblegum colour did not help at all... Not to mention that instead of rolling it out thinly and cutting out pretty shapes, we made fat sausages of "PEGS" "21st" instead hahaha! Really diabetes inducing xP
But moving on to the cake~
I don't know much about the cake, it was pretty okay, but the Milk Chocolate Buttercream Frosting was delish! (Cake & Frosting recipe here) Finally! A frosting that I super loved, and didn't melt like crazy to look like goop on the cake!!!!!! (perhaps because i learned to cool the cake down, but whatever~) It was pretty good looking, and finger licking good! (Despite all the icing sugar that went into it :X) So yay!~ Finally found a frosting that I will reuse ^.^v
And now, after the horrors of Finance is over, i'm gonna bake macarons again :D this time more, so hopefully I can give them out to more people as exam/post-exam welfare ^^
But it's late (I like baking when there's no one around to hover around me haha) and so i decided to make the macaron filling first and chill overnight. This time i didn't want to do a chocolate ganache, because it's really killer sweet and i'm trying not to give myself or others diabetes :X
So I was thinking of doing a vanilla flavoured filling. So i went about looking for recipes, and found a French Buttercream base which i added vanilla essence into. And wow...the egg yolks in the french buttercream really gives it an awesome texture so it tastes delish! I think i didn't really add enough vanilla, but it's okay, because it still tastes pretty good! I'm not sure how it'll go with the macarons, because buttercream is pretty heavy in my opinion, but we'll see how it goes (:
Update back tomorrow with macarons :D Or maybe just on instagram haha!
But yay! After a year of playing with frostings, I think I have two favourites that i'll definitely reuse given the opportunity! ^^v
I've made quite a few frostings' this year, with my very first (Buttercream Icing) being of dubious outcome haha. Mainly because there was no icing sugar so we used caster sugar instead which lead to a very grainy texture :X Oh, and the frosting melted pretty fast (but that might also have been due to the temperature of the cupcakes because we were rushing to get it done before meeting Eliezer)...
Afterwhich I attempted Cream Cheese Frosting (recipe here) for my cupcakes which flavour I can no longer remember. (I think it was chocolate) And this time, while quite yum, was a bit to much for the cupcake to frosting ratio :X The frosting also melted pretty fast D: Which made it look a bit icky...
And then I found this simple recipe for Sugared Doughnut Holes which is really easy and yumyum, and so I made it twice in a short span of time! Hahaha! OH it was for Sherri's farewell chalet and first, and then afterwards because I couldn't sleep. But it's pretty unhealthy and I haven't made it since :X haha! Maybe this December i'll do it again!~
Next, i attempted a Hazelnut Chocolate Cake with Hazelnut Chocolate Buttercream Frosting which was not too bad i think...though kinda too sweet. Not to mention that i think the chocolate cake with it was a bit too sweet too, and so it was like sugar overload x.x Once again, problems with fast melting frosting that made the overall attempt to frost the cake icky :( So my first frosted cake was pretty much a mess :S And ugly...lol
One wonders why I keep using buttercream as my base when i'm not a fan of butter and the butter obviously makes it melt fast in Singapore's hot and humid weather -_-...
After that I made a Durian Cake for my dad's birthday, with Durian Cream Frosting (here). The cake was just a vanilla sponge cake which I think tasted more like a butter cake than a sponge cake, but was still pretty yummy :P And the frosting was easier because it's basically just mushed durian with whipped cream and a teeny bit of sugar - diabetes friendly for once ;D haha! And although i should have strained the durian mush so it wasn't so stringy, it was still yum ^w^ Unfortunately, my cake frosting skills still suck real bad, and so it looked really lumpy and weird. And of course i had to do weird stuff like try and ice happy birthday with writing icing that's been left in the nice humid room temperature...So the red icing basically spread like soup on top of the cake and looked like the cake was bleeding OTL /fail. (But the taste is what matters right? :P)
Oh, oh! Some time before this or after this (I can't remember, oh no going to get alzheimer's D:), i attempted macarons and they succeeded!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! woohoo!~~
So i did macarons with milk chocolate ganache (which is really just chopped choc, a bit of butter, cream, melt-mix-refrigerate), because the chocolate chips bought were semi-sweet u_u...which meant that my ganache was really sweet haha! But still, yay!~ Pretty good first attempt and was really happy with them! :D
After which, i think after too much cake and sugar and whatnot, i hiatus-ed from baking for a while. Probably also because of projects due haha!
Then came Peg's 21st where Brenz and I colluded to make a Chocoholic Cake :D
Ambitious me being ambitious, decided that i wanted to try my hand at making fondant because online recipes made it look easy and fondant cakes are ever-so-pretty!
So I tried a basic marshmallow fondant recipe :O And believe me, the goo went from fun, to gross, to eek i'm not eating this! haha... the amount of icing sugar that goes into a piece of fondant is sick. And after making it, i don't think i'm ever eating fondant again, much less making it...(maybe once in a blue moon for fun hehe) I have photographic evidence of the horrendousness of it all :O and the stunning pink bubblegum colour did not help at all... Not to mention that instead of rolling it out thinly and cutting out pretty shapes, we made fat sausages of "PEGS" "21st" instead hahaha! Really diabetes inducing xP
But moving on to the cake~
I don't know much about the cake, it was pretty okay, but the Milk Chocolate Buttercream Frosting was delish! (Cake & Frosting recipe here) Finally! A frosting that I super loved, and didn't melt like crazy to look like goop on the cake!!!!!! (perhaps because i learned to cool the cake down, but whatever~) It was pretty good looking, and finger licking good! (Despite all the icing sugar that went into it :X) So yay!~ Finally found a frosting that I will reuse ^.^v
And now, after the horrors of Finance is over, i'm gonna bake macarons again :D this time more, so hopefully I can give them out to more people as exam/post-exam welfare ^^
But it's late (I like baking when there's no one around to hover around me haha) and so i decided to make the macaron filling first and chill overnight. This time i didn't want to do a chocolate ganache, because it's really killer sweet and i'm trying not to give myself or others diabetes :X
So I was thinking of doing a vanilla flavoured filling. So i went about looking for recipes, and found a French Buttercream base which i added vanilla essence into. And wow...the egg yolks in the french buttercream really gives it an awesome texture so it tastes delish! I think i didn't really add enough vanilla, but it's okay, because it still tastes pretty good! I'm not sure how it'll go with the macarons, because buttercream is pretty heavy in my opinion, but we'll see how it goes (:
Update back tomorrow with macarons :D Or maybe just on instagram haha!
But yay! After a year of playing with frostings, I think I have two favourites that i'll definitely reuse given the opportunity! ^^v