Old MacDonald ain't got nothing on me!

Old MacDonald may have had a farm, but I bet his farm didn’t taste half as good as mine! After all, my farm is made of cupcakes and cake pops!

Yesterday was the baby shower of a good friend of mine, Ebonee. The theme of the baby shower was farm animals as Ebonee is a lover of all things nature, in particular farm animals! To help her celebrate this wonderful occasion, I made a farm animal themed cupcake arrangement and cake pops.

As you can see from the photos above, sitting at the top of the cupcake arrangement is a two tier fondant covered chocolate cake. It was an absolute nightmare covering the cake! I was rushing to get the cake done as I was running late for dinner with Brendyn’s friends. I wasn’t paying attention and accidently rolled the fondant out too thin and when I went to cover the cake, the fondant kept tearing and cracks were appearing everywhere! The more cracks that appeared, the more frustrated I got! It got to the point where I just stormed out of the kitchen in a huff and went to dinner. I nearly did a Lonely Island and “threw it on ground”. When I got home, I decided not to start the cake from scratch, but instead covered the dodgy fondant work with decorations such as the red barn, grass and trees. And it turned out ok – life is not that bad after all! I have definitely learnt my lesson though. Firstly, do not be stingy with the fondant and secondly, not to rush the process!

The cupcakes were my usual vanilla cupcake recipe with buttercream frosting and chocolate frosting – nothing too exciting. I decorated the cupcakes with six types of farm animal fondant toppers: cow, dog, horse, pig, rooster and sheep. As you can see, I also cut out little brown fences to decorate the cupcake stand and cake pop holder. As you know, I am a lover of themes and when someone gives me a theme, I just have to do everything in my power to adhere to the theme as strictly as possible. After all, consistency is cool!

Overall, despite the cake hiccup, I am pretty happy with this baking adventure! Ee-i-ee-i-oh!

Dora is so hot right now!

It was my little niece's, Emily, second birthday a few weeks ago and for her birthday I made her a Dora the Explorer cake and cupcakes. She is currently obsessed with Dora. Everything has to be Dora, from her shoes to her toy guitar. From what I can gather, Dora is so hot right now with all the kiddly winks.

It was a mammoth effort as those Dora characters were really hard to cut out! Not only were the Dora characters difficult to replicate, but my baking skills were really lacking that morning for some bizarre reason. Perhaps it was because I had no sleep as I was busy making those tricky Dora characters! Actually that is a lie – I had a hour’s power nap across my dining room chairs for an energy boost at 4AM. Anyway, there was something very wrong with my baking that morning. I burnt my vanilla cupcakes and could not get my buttercream frosting to work. My frosting was cluggy and had all these unnecessary lumps in them! To this day, I still do not know the reason behind this. I had sifted the icing twice and the butter was at room temperature. But nevertheless, there were lumps! Bah, it makes me furious just thinking about it.

The cake and cupcake arrangement was okay. It was nice. It sadly was not amazing though! I have had a long time to think about it, but I think I know the reason behind it. The Dora character colours are quite dull and pale and since the fondant toppers were placed on white buttercream frosting, the cupcakes did not POP as much as I would have liked. So lesson learnt, tears have been shed, and now I know, if your toppers are pale in colour, make sure you use colourful icing or sprinkles! 

Hope you had a lovely second birthday baby Emily!

"Swiper, no Swiping!"

Baking melt downs

As I am sure you have already guessed, I am very passionate about baking. I get extremely upset when things don't go well in the kitchen. I have been known to cry a few times and spit the dummy many times. To make it worse, when I bake I generally think in Vietnamese and speak to myself (yes, out loud) in Vietnamese. So, when things don't go according to plan in the kitchen, I tend to yell at myself in Vietnamese! If you haven't heard Vietnamese spoken before, it can be quite confronting. It tends to be quite loud and sharp, and extremely fast paced. Brendyn always thinks I am having an argument with my mum when we talk - most of the time we are just talking about our day... the rest of the time we are fighting! I joke, I love my mummy dearly.

Anyway, this post isn't about my Vietnamese heritage. It actually isn't about cupcakes either. It is about the extent of my passion for making baked goods, and my obsessive compulsive, perfectionist nature!

Last year, a few weeks before Brendyn and I got married, I volunteered to make our two good uni friend's birthday cake (for their joint birthday party). We decided to make a Babar cake. Anyway, Brendyn hates being late for events and I hate things not being 110% perfect. As always, I didn't give myself enough time to bake and so we were running terribly late to the party. Once I had cut the slab of cake and put the fondant icing on top, Brendyn wanted to leave. I asked him (perhaps I might have yelled, kicking and screaming ... perhaps...who remember these things honestly?!) to clean the board that the cake was on because it was smudged. He found it too difficult and said "darling, it's fine. No one will notice the smudge any way"! OMG! FML! Not LOL! I went bonkers, bridezilla crazy! Was it entirely rational? Probably not. But you see, I just love baking so much, and want every baking creation to be perfect, and if things don't go according to plan, I lose my marbles and have a melt down. Poor Brendyn - he has to deal with it every time. Every baking adventure of mine is an adventure for him, in which his challenge is to avoid the objects I've just thrown at him.

Ah, he chose to marry me and all my wonderful characteristics and multiple personalities.