. Citrus Cream Cheese Frosting topped Lemon Tea Jello filled Earl Grey Cupcakes.

(My first picture upload in years yay!)

This is this
Everything was lovely, but I'll need to cut a big hole in the centre of the cake instead and fill with the jello. Also, I'll need to chill the cakes first before I fill. Perhaps even freeze them slightly. And perhaps I'll also need to chill the jello slightly so they're slightly solid.

The frosting was

1 pkg cream cheese
1/5 (or so) unsalted softened butter
Orange and lemon zest
2 cups sugar

Next time, a pinch of salt.

. ...Some Cake with Peanut Butter in it .

So maybe a Reese's cup inspired cupcake?
A chocolate cake with a peanut butter centre, and a peanut butter cream cheese frosting.
The peanut butter will be home made. Ground peanuts (till creamy) with salt and honey/sugar/maple syrup/palm sugar and maybe vanilla?

Method 1

Enclose a dollop of pb in melted chocolate then freeze? So these are made maybe the day before.
After making chocolate cake batter, put a dollop into each cupcake wrapper and push a piece of home made Reese's piece into e relative centre and cover with another dollop of batter.

Method 2

Dollop cake batter, dollop pb into centre, fill the rest with batter. Bake. Cool. Frosting.


Frosting
Not sure if I can combine this home made peanut butter with cream cheese
1 1/4 cup smooth, creamy pb
1 pkg cream cheese
Vanilla extract
125g softened unsalted butter
4 cups brown or palm sugar (well-blended)
2-3 tbs milk or heavy cream.

or
Two Chicks from the Stick's
6 tbs unsalted butter
1/2 cup creamy smooth pb
4 cups brown or palm sugar (well-blended)
Pinch of salt
6 tbs heavy cream or milk

(Frosting for 4 dozen cupcakes. So maybe we can take it down a notch eh?)

After!

. Recipe Idea - Lemon Tea Jello Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting .

Here's another reason why I absolutely love my cousin (not that I've ever mentioned it here before, but he is one of my favourite persons in the world). Brainstorming recipes with him tonight, about what I'm going to make for him when he gets back (he has a standing order, unlimited use, to request any baked goods and I will make em for him because he is darling).

He wants something with peanut butter and something with jelly but not pbj haha
So I asked him what flavour jello and told him I'm thinking of flavour combinations. And bless the dear! Lemon Tea he throws out! And of course I exclaimed as my brain juices started flowing! Lovely hot tea to mix with lemon jello. This will be poured into an Earl Grey tea cake ridden with holes (nice big ones made fr a straw perhaps or a big fork twisted, not poked to the bottom). A cake or a cupcake....haven't decided. And then he said and a cream cheese frosting! Genius! The flavours will go together perfectly! And I shall add lemon zest to the cake as I have done before....or orange zest to the cream cheese, ala my Earl Grey cupcakes (which is another story I haven't written about. Hmm long story short, I don't take to having many kitchen helpers very well). Probably the cream cheese.
And yes! They shall be cupcakes (cos easier hahaha)! In my ducky wrappers! Or my floral ones (cos *affected accent* Earl Grey cupcakes Sir?).

. Brown Butter Cupcakes .

Note to self: don't use yoghurt as a substitute. Sour taste overpowers the browned butter. Perhaps mascarpone next time. Recipe follows kiwi cupcakes. However, half of the butter is taken to be browned while half is creamed with light muscovado sugar. Is there a dark one? If so, next time I'll try that. Maybe caramelise the sugar while browning the butter. Also as with all recipes now,  yolks and whites are separated.

. Hello! Buttermilk! .

Well, it's been a while.

I've moved back home and it's taken a while for me to get used to equipment and humidity here re: baking. I believe I'm getting back on my feet.
Baked 2 cakes recently, from the Little Teochew's blog. I bought buttermilk on a whim and also because I was craving pound cake and had the idea of possibly trying buttermilk out in cake. So Google led me to the Little Teochew's links below:

http://www.thelittleteochew.com/2012/03/lemon-buttermilk-pound-cake.html
and
http://www.thelittleteochew.com/2012/04/chocolate-buttermilk-cake-again.html

I know I didn't follow the recipes to a T (as I usually do, out of habit), and can't really remember what I changed up (cept subbing 1/4 or so cup of  Bailey's for the rum in the latter cake; and increasing the measurements of everything but the sugar, to use up ingredients) but they both turned out pretty magnifique. So I believe the cat might have finally landed on her feet.

Tomorrow, I find out if the chocolate cake managed to stay soft, moist and luscious.

No pictures because I really suck at doing justice to the food, and also I'm lazy.

Update: The cakes were absolutely luscious. The chocolate chunks which I added also gave lovely solid little chocolatey velvety crunches. Big brother chided me for him just absolutely having to gorge his face on cake because he just could not stop himself. Lovely =)

. Honey Cupcakes/ Cookie Batter .

1 1/3 cup plain flour minus 2 1/2 tbsp

2 1/2 tbsp corn flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

125g butter

1-2tbsp honey

2/3 cup sugar

2 eggs

1/2 cup sour cream

Dash of coffee essence

Vanilla essence

180deg....

Timing = ??? Maybe about 20 mins or so

Makes a crusty cupcake but might've been the semi unmelted butter chunks

Might make good cookie batter

Excellent topped with Betty Crocker Chocolate Fudge Icing

. Housemate's bday cupcakes...sorta .

Same recipe as the lemon kiwi cupcakes which were turned into the honey grape ones
but sub half a pack of cream cheese for the fruits.
And 1 and a half tbsps of honey

. reviews! .

So far 2 people have eaten my honey strawberry greengrape cupcakes

1st person said
"But I won't lie to u. These are the best cupcakes in the world. So good I ate the paper too... Omg u should start ur own bakery. omg. I'm leaving cause I won't be able to control myself."

2nd person said
"Mmm these are good. Omg they're seriously putting a huge smile on my face. Man I rate them 5/5"

. honey, strawberry and green grape cupcake .

same recipe as kiwi-lemon cupcakes but i subbed the kiwis with some strawberries and some green grapes. left out about 1/16th of the sugar and added 2 heaped tsps of honey.

while the cupcakes were baking....my god....the aroma of the honey was unbelievable. it was heavenly! Almost cloying (i was wondering if i'd put too much honey but it was just right), almost tangible
honestly, the smell was almost intoxicating and i have no idea how to describe it in a way that wud do it justice. one of those, "you had to be there" moments

and now my hair smells lovely =)

the cake(s) i ate was sooo moist and fluffy and the honey added such a lovely delicate crust. mmmmmmm

gotta thank my housemate for suggesting honey
in a moment of temporary amnesia, i wasn't wanting to add it in at first cos i wasn't sure of the measurements, then remembered who i really am and did it the usual 'just whack' way

. strawberry creamcheese earlgrey cupcakes with lime creamcheese frosting .

:D

. raisin & mint choc bits cookies .

125g butter
1 cup of brown sugar and granulated sugar mix (mostly brown sugar)
1 large egg
¼ cup milk
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 ¾ flour
½ tsp bs
½ tsp bp
½ tsp salt
1 ½ tsp instant coffee
1 cup raisins (or however much you want)
1 ½ cup choc chips (or however much you want. I didn’t have choc chips so I cut up a block of some couverture chocolate and the remaining cubes of mint choc that my housemate had lying around
Optional:
Almond essence
Cinnamon sugar for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Sift flour, bs, bp and salt.
3. Cream butter wi sugars till fluffy approx 30secs
4. Beat in egg and vanilla extract for another 30 secs till well combined. Stir in milk/
5. Beat power into butter about 15 secs low speed till just combined. Stir in rest of ingredients.
6. Roll heaped tbs of batter into balls or drop batter onto baking sheet about 3 inches apart. Press down gently with back of spoon to spread out into a 2 inch circle (if you want)
7. Dust with cinnamon sugar if you want your cookies to come out nice n crunchy/crispy on top.
8. Bake for about 15-20 mins till nicely browned.





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I HAVE to say! The mint choc made a really really nice touch!

On another note, I made earl grey cupcakes with orange buttercream icing a coupla weeks ago. Good stuff. A little drama also heh cos a whole slew of people wanted to help me and I'm usually a 1 woman show when it comes to baking so I had to think of stuff that they could do and got a little distracted. Also, my butter didn't soften as much as I'd hoped it would (darn u cold weather!) so it was really hard to cream. Whilst my fren's bf was creaming the butter with his MANLY STRENGTH I decided to try a little trick of Mummy's by separating the yolks and the white and beating the whites till stiff.
So after I mixed everything together, the batter looked a little not runny which was strange, but me being a little harried n stuff went "meh" and put the cupcakes into the oven. Then realised I didnt mix in the damn whites -_-
Thank goodness there was some left over batter waiting to be distributed into my pretty pink disney princesses cupcake liners (which I bought for my fren's bf hahaha...pwetty pink for u sir!)

ANyhoo!! Despite all the drama, the cakes turned out really yum! Coulda done with more earl grey. Might try it out again next time. Who knows? The only recipe I've done more than once was the lavender cookies.

And Lyshe, I'll try to bother to put up pictures. But they're really nothing to look at. They kinda look like mini steamed Chinese egg cakes. The kind you see at Chinese New Year.

. Chocolate Strawberry Yoghurt Lime Cupcake .

About 1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 cup strawberry yoghurt (I used ski)
Lime peel chopped (however much you want...I chopped till I was tired)
About 1/5-1/4 cup of milk. (Um I used quite a big mug so maybe 1/4)
2 eggs
125g butter
1 cup self-raising wholemeal flour (or plain or normal wholemeal flour with about 1 tsp baking powder and a pinch of salt)
Dash of vanilla essence

Usual steps for baking stuff.....
preheat oven
sift flour n cocoa powder (that's what i did)
cream sugar and butter
add eggs 1 at a time to creamed butter, mix after each
fold in flour/cocoa
add milk, mix mix mix
add yoghurt, mix mix mix
add vanilla essence, whenever you feel like it
add in lime peel chopped....if u have lime juice, maybe u can add a dash or 2? i dunno, i haven't tried that. cos i'm not at home and i've nowhere to store the remaining juice.
empty into cupcake liners or whatever
Bake for about 20 mins in 170-200 deg c oven or till fork/stick comes out clean
stare at clock impatiently
fish tray out of oven
stare at tray impatiently
grab a friend and something hard and fan the cupcakes furiously.
stare impatiently some more
grab a fork, grab cupcake, try not to burn your hand put cupcake on table.
eat

SUPER SOFT MAN!!!
super soft and moist! mmmmm

. note to self .

when baking with cinnamon, 1 full tsp and a big dash is not enough
probably 3 full tsps and a generous few dashes would be better.
also, maybe just 1 smal tsp of chilli will do

. more food .

In between making the black cherry mocha and the kiwi lime cupcakes, I made a batch of black cherry yoghurt muffins with chocolate chips and 1 had a face on it!! hehe...

I also borrowed my friend's soya bean milk maker thingamajig (which by the way, is a BITCH to clean!!!!!!!!!) and did my very own batch of home made soy milk. Awesomeness I tells ya! I made a few batches. Thing about home made soy milk is that you'll get this residue thingy which the Japs call okara. It's awesome stuff....full of nutrition -> protein, fibre, and all that jazz. Also, it's a superb ingredient for breads and baked goods.

While I was making the kiwi lime cupcakes, I made a mistake and sifted my sugar with my flour (sugar shuda been creamed wi e butter) so I kept that bag of mistake for future use. I don't deal with wastage very well see...

So I used that, added the okara, choc chips and yoghurt and...I dunno maybe 1 egg or something. I wanted to make something scone-like, bread-like. Also I was lazy so I just plonked the whole bowl of batter down into a loaf shaped thing on my pan. I topped it with cinnamon sugar so it'd be all crispy crusty like.

It came out kinda cake like, kinda scone like, kinda bread like, kinda awfully yummilicious as my friend put it. =)

Check the texture out...slightly chewy.....very fluffy......

Mmmness

. black cherry mocha .

. kiwi lemon cupcakes .

I made 2 batches.
Well actually I didnt have enough space on my rack for all so the last 2 had significantly less batter than the others. Added vanilla essence and amarula.
The others rose like a souffle and fell like badly done souffles as well.

(Badly done souffles)

(Perfecto)

The 2 were perfect.
The differences were the other 2 had less batter, were refrigerated before being baked and had frangelico in them. Hmm...
Also at the end, I turned up the top burner to like full blast to brown the tops. Shiok man
They all taste like the seiyu cheesecake. And with the browned tops like damn yummy crust. Next time I'll add more frangelico and see what happens. Sorry no pics. Lazy to upload the souffle ones... Maybe next time... and the perfect ones were gone too quick. Heh

Her recipe also includes a strawberry and kiwi cream cheese frosting (sounds yummy) but obvi I'm too lazy for that. And the cupcakes are delish on their own anyway. Very delicate flavour with bursts of sourness fr the kiwis. DAMN GOOD LA! I might wanna wolf down another but that'd be 3 of em and it's mdn hehe. GAH NO! NAUGHTY!

Recipe as follows thanks to Couture Cupcakes
Lemon Kiwi Fruit Cupcakes

125g / 1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1 ¼ cup SR flour
1 tsp finely grated lemon rind
1 tbs lemon juice
1/2 cup sour cream
2 kiwi fruit finely diced
1. Preheat oven to 180 (350).
2. Line a muffin tray with cupcake liners.
3. Cream butter, lemon zest and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
4. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
5. Beat in the flour until just combined, add the sour cream and lemon juice and beat until well incorporated.
6. Fold in the finely diced kiwi fruit.
7. Evenly divide the batter into cupcake liners and bake for 20 - 22 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
8. Allow to cool completely before frosting.
Makes 12 cupcakesIt says makes 12 but I'm quite sure if you fill the cups like you're meant to (ie 3/4 stead of 5/6 hehe) you'll def be able to make at least 15, maybe even squeeze out an extra 16th.

. Recipe .

So I've finally gotten an oven. =) Table top one, but it'll have to do.
And I realise that I really enjoy baking (my neighbours also apparently enjoy me baking too...I wonder why.....)! I can't wait to go home now because making do with minimal equipment and a temperamental oven while baking is not as fun as messing around with all that crap Mummy has at home. Although, I keep telling myself that mixing by hand would at least be burning off some of the calories I'll no doubt be ingesting at the speed of an inhalation later.

Oh wow what a ramble.

What I was going to say was that obviously, while enjoying baking, I'd have to have recipes to bake. So I found this website (as shown in my last post) (one of many anyway..I get a bit obsessive with googling) and it has a recipe for loove which I've been kind enough to share.

Moroccan Majoun

By Aliza Green from The Santa Monica Farmers' Market Cookbook

Cannabis is mixed with dried fruits, nuts, and spices to make the Moroccan candy called majoun, love potion in Arabic. Marijuana is considered an essential herb in Jamaica’s Rastafarian cooking. Cannabis seeds may be toasted and used as a condiment, ground and brewed as a coffee substitute, made into cakes, or fried. In Japan, the seeds, called asanomi, are one of the ingredients in the spice mixture Shichimi Togarashi.

INGREDIENTS

• 1/4 ounce marijuana tops
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon ground anise
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup water
• 2 tablespoons butter

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Remove stems and seeds from marijuana tops, then dry and crumble the leaves. In a dry skillet, toast the leaves over very low heat until the aromas are released.
2. Mix the leaves with raisins, walnuts, nutmeg, anise, ginger, honey, and water, adding more water if the mixture is too dry and crumbly.
3. Simmer together until the mixture is soft and thick. Mash by hand or transfer to a food processor and blend, using several short pulses.
4. Stir in butter, spoon into a jar, and refrigerate for storage. Spread on crackers or plain cookies, or use as a filling for stuffed cookies. Majoun will keep for 2 to 3 months refrigerated.

. Cooking with Mary Jane .

Cannabis is all right as a cooking spice, says the Indonesian vice president.

Here’s a story that’s been lighting up blogs for the past month: Back at the end of June, the vice president of Indonesia—a country that has some of the most draconian drug trafficking laws in the world—told reporters that it was acceptable for local chefs to use crushed marijuana leaves as a cooking spice. Specifically, he said:

It is all right to use it as a food seasoning, but it should not be fully legalized.

The comment’s context was a recent study recommending that Indonesia review its antimarijuana laws. Cannabis is a traditional cooking spice in many places, such as Indonesia’s Aceh province (where it is reportedly used “just like coriander”), Bolivia, Jamaica, and Morocco.

Pro-pot bloggers have been all over the story, some seeing in it a new argument for legalization. It’s the so-called Martha Stewart defense. So, who’s on board? Gourmands? Brewers? Salad-lovers?

Taken from Chow.com

. Recipe for the perfect Norwegian Mocha Cake .

Attempt 1

Wrong ingredient. Baking powder and baking soda are NOT the same thing. Baking soda tastes DISGUSTING. Remember to check!
Also don't be over enthusiastic about beating.

Attempt 2
Experience helps make things go quicker.





So does a fair amount of alcohol.
Also makes for less but sillier pictures.





Also we got lazy so we didn't line the bake ware so half the cake fell out and half got stuck.
Oh well.
It tasted awesome though.
And the birthday girl loved it.


And we had fun.



And that's all that matters.



Yup. That's all that matters.

. Cuppycakes .

Plenty many cuppycakes
We made almost 100 of em
well....about 96 I think
And we ate a few...test drive ya noe :D
And then there were 88
But my fren wanted to try the new batch of icing that we made
so there were 87
But there was one crappy lookin one...so we ate that one too
then there were 86

Oh yeah...we made them for her super duper belated bday party last weekend
which we celebrated in Melbourne with her friend Wesley
Oh by the way... RIP Wayne Seah Show em what thunder's really like in that big rock concert in the sky.

I have a science essay to write. It's driving me nuts
Discuss in 1000 words, the dopamine hypothesis in schizophrenia. What do treatment studies tell us about the aetiology of the condition.
At least 15 references.

Then there's the sociology test
Essay and test on the 30th of May
Another 2000 word essay due on 4th of June
But Pingo's gonna b down fr the 1st to the 5th
So I'm gonna have to be in Melbourne
So I have to get EVERYTHING done by the 30th and the 1st
And do well
Why oh why do I suck so bad in time management? It's like my brain jus sits there in a vegetative state and refuses to work till I'm a short way away from the deadline, whether or not I actually wanna finish on the deadline or before the deadline. Doesn't matter.
That means, I've been trying to do my essays for a month and my brain is only jus starting to work now
That means I'm really highly stressed.
Oh the things I do for you Ping
hahahahahaha
*faint*