More Disney Princess cupcakes ...

Another year, another set of Disney Princess cupcakes. This year for Mini Mousey's 6th birthday, she decided she wanted Disney Princess cupcakes again. But this time, she wanted Queen Elsa and Princess Anna, the characters from Disney's latest movie Frozen, to be a part of the collection. 

Being the obliging Aunty that I am (and by “obliging Aunty” I actually mean “push-over Aunty”), I agreed. Working on three hours sleep over two nights, I managed to whip up 30 Disney Princess cupcakes. 

Mini Mousey was stoked when I delivered the cupcakes to her class. You could simply not wipe the grin off her face. It almost made the lack of sleep worth it … almost!

Her favourite cupcakes were unsurprisingly, Queen Elsa and Princess Anna. 

Happy birthday my Princess Mini Mousey! xx

Cupcakes fit for a princess!

My little Mini Mousey turned five years old yesterday! She is a little pocket rocket - little person with a BIG personality. I love the little person that she has become, partly because she is a mini ME! She is a high maintenance girly girl that knows what she wants and is not afraid of dishing a bit of attitude when needed. She cracks me up on a regular basis!

Given that it was her birthday yesterday, we had (yes HAD) to bring cupcakes into her class to share with her classmates.  About a week ago, I had Mini Mousey choose which cupcake design she would like for the cupcakes she is to bring into her class to share with her friends. I was pleasantly surprised that she chose a simple design that we had made a few weeks ago, rainbow cupcakes!

Making these rainbow cupcakes is relatively easy because you basically don’t need to make too many toppers - huzzah. The only difficulty is getting your hands on the rainbow sour strap candy as not all supermarket stores stock it. But once you get your hands on the rainbow sour straps, you'll be laughing! Not literally, but most likely metaphorically.

So how do put the rainbow cupcakes together? Firstly, make some clouds out of white fondant. If you are feeling too lazy to make the cloud fondant topper, then just make some clouds out of mini white marshmallows. Once you have the clouds under control, bake the cupcake bases and ice the cupcakes with some blue icing (preferably pipe the icing on). Cut the rainbow sour straps in half or thirds, and stick each end into the icing. Make sure the rainbow sour strap form an even convex shape on top of the icing. Stick the clouds at each end of the rainbow sour strap and you’re done! If you want to go all out, sprinkle a few little white 100s and 1000s on top of the icing to resemble rain.   

So as you can imagine, I was thrilled when Mini Mousey wanted to bring in the rainbow cupcakes to share with her friends. However, in a state of delirious happiness this past Monday, I decided to show Mini Mousey some cool cupcake designs I saw on the internet of Disney Princess cupcakes. Her face lit up once she saw the Disney Princess cupcakes, she turned to me abruptly and said “Aunty Tina, I have to have these cupcakes! Can you PLEASE make them for me to bring into school for my friends?” How could I possibly say no to my Mini Mousey?! So as expected, I said yes, stayed up to 3AM on Wednesday night (or should I say Thursday morning) and made the Disney Princess cupcakes. Eight princess designs and twenty-five cupcakes in total!

Needless to say, Mini Mousey LOVED the cupcakes. She looked so chuffed when she saw them and even more chuffed when her classmates sang her happy birthday and enjoyed the cupcakes! 

Happy birthday Mini Mousey! I love you muchly!! xx

Also, special thanks to cupcakes_yuyu for the cupcake inspiration. 

Bad Aunty Tina!

The last couple of weeks I have been absolutely chocker block with work, my real full time work that is. I feel as though I have been operating at 1,000 miles per hours (not that I actually know what 1,000 miles per hour would feel like as I am based in Australia and we measure speed according to kilometres)! Nevertheless, I am sure you get the point I am trying to get across – I have been busy! But never too busy to bake, just too busy for everything else. 

Two weekends ago, was the second birthday of my little niece Olivia (from Brendyn’s side of the family). I honestly cannot believe she is already two! My goodness time flies. Livy’s parents organised a lovely picnic at the park with family and friends to celebrate this wonderful occasion. As I am sure you probably would have guessed, I volunteered to bring cupcakes. Being the lover of themes that I am, I requested a theme to work with and the theme I was given was “animals”.

So I made the usual animals (nothing out of the ordinary): butterflies, cows, dogs, elephants, giraffes, horses, lions, penguins and polar bears - you name it and I made it! At first I was a little nervous that the “animal” theme was not specific enough and that the cupcakes would not all come together and make a specky display, but I was wrong. Once all the cupcakes were arranged together in the cupcake display, it looked pretty darn good (if I don’t say so myself). And at the top of the tower, sat a personalised Princess Livy cupcake!

Given how busy I have been lately, this was an extremely last minute bake job. I felt like a terrible Aunty Tina leaving such an important bake job to the absolute last minute! On the morning of the party, I was STILL making fondant toppers. Some toppers didn’t even have time to dry. Insert ashamed face here.

Today is the birthday of my little baker Amelia, she turns four today! And sadly, I am not in Perth to celebrate her birthday or to make her birthday cupcakes. This not only makes me terribly sad but makes me a terrible Aunty Tina. I am hoping to make it up to her by baking cupcakes for her to bring into school and share with her kindy friends next week. She has also asked me to volunteer at her school, to run a cupcake decorating class with the kids in her class. Of course I said yes but I must admit I am a little fearful of 40 plus kids with cupcakes, icing bags and fondant! I am sure I will have loads of funny stories to share, so watch this space.

Happy Birthday my Mini Mousey!

Been and gone

Christmas has been and gone! And now all I have left to show for it is a few extra kilograms around my waist and wonderful food memories.

This year, Brendyn and I spent Christmas down south with his family where my sister-in-law (who is a self acclaimed Perth based food critic and blogger, The Fat Cow, check out her blog when you get the chance) dished up an amazing breakfast and my mother-in-law cooked a mouth watering turducken (turkey stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a chicken). Four words: yum to the yumma.

We then celebrated Christmas with my side of the family a few days later. Every year my uncle's employer gives all their employees a turkey amongst other goodies and every year he kindly contributes it to our Christmas meal. Although I am not the only 'cook' in the family, I seem to have inherited the role of cooking the traditional Christmas meal for my family. I guess since we are all Asian (my family that is) our preference is Asian cuisine and this is reflected in our style of cooking. As I married a whitey, westerner, caucasian or whatever you like to call him, I seem to be best suited to cook a traditional "white" Christmas meal. Although my sister, Gina, also married a fellow whitey, her cooking abilities are some what limited. However, she is a fantastic cleaner though - sorry for selling you out Gina!

So my traditional "white" Christmas menu consisted of the following:
Entree - Bacon and cheese potato skins
Main - 4.5kg turkey with apricot and pistachio stuffing
         - Roasted pork belly and veal
         - Grilled mango chicken and couscous
         - Capsicum and cashew pasta salad
         - Simple humble garden salad
Dessert- I decided to take a risk and only make cupcakes as a plan B, if my risky plan A was a complete disaster. Plan A was a 6 tier zesty strawberries and cream almond sponge cake. I worked from a Gourmet Traveller recipe that I varied a great deal. The almond sponge cake was almost like a macroon inspired cake using the likes of almond mill, sugar and egg whites. The strawberries were soaked in lemon and lime juice for a few hours to create a zesty tang. And finally the cream was a combination of lemon, lime, cream cheese, sugar and whipped cream! It was delicious - although I do think the 6 tiers was a little excessive. I think I will vary this recipe into a cupcake recipe in the near future. So watch this space.

A few weeks ago Gina made bonbon Christmas crackers with Zac and Mini. Zac and Mini wrote their very own jokes. My favorite joke of the evening was Mini's joke and it went a little something like this:

Question - What do get when you cross a cup and a cake?

When the family heard this we all sighed and said the obvious "cupcake" but Mini sheepishly smiled and said no.

Answer - An Aunty Tina Cupcake.

When the answer was read out Mini just smiled with glee. A smile that nearly brought me to tears!

Letting go

Zac and Mini Mousey love to bake. To foster their interest, I try to have them over to my place every so often to bake either cupcakes or cookies. Baking with the kids has forcefully taught me to “let go” of my perfectionist ways and let the kids do what they will in the baking process. This includes adding all the ingredients into the mixer, spooning the mixture (which always prove to be a messy affair) and pipping on the icing (equally as messy affair, if not more).

A few weeks ago, I not only had the pleasure of having the two kids over to bake, but Zac brought along a little helper, ‘Pocket Bear’. Pocket Bear is a little blue bear from Zac’s school that each student takes turns to take home for the weekend. The students are asked to take photographs of the activities they do with Pocket Bear and share it with the class the following Monday when they return to school. So I was lucky enough to not only have my two gorgeous monkeys to help, but Pocket Bear to assist in the baking process as well.

To make Pocket Bear feel welcomed, I woke up extra early that morning to make personalised Pocket Bear cupcake toppers!

When Zac saw the Pocket Bear toppers, he informed me that my toppers were missing a critical element – Pocket Bear’s frowning mouth! :( So we sat down together and using my edible marker we drew on a frowning mouth on all the toppers.

So I may not have been entirely honest when I said earlier that baking with the kids has taught to be “let go”. I do let go in certain respects and not so much in others. An example of me letting go was allowing Zac to spoon in the shifted flour during the beating process. To contrast this, an example of me not letting go as such is when Zac asked if he could pipe the icing on the cupcakes that will be photographed and I said no because I wanted the photos to be perfect! I know, I am a horrible, horrible, horrible aunty!! For what it is worth, I feel terrible about it now. Yes, I am a control freak perfectionist who deprives their nephew of his fundamental right to pipe icing. For what it is worth, I did let him pipe the icing on the remaining cupcakes. See, I am not all bad and besides it was for the greater good.  The greater good being me and my pride! Nevertheless, look at how great the photo turned out (I may or may not have used a little Photoshop to enhance the photograph)!

Bake-a-berry-licious!

I was presented with the opportunity to baby sit my little Mini Mousey yesterday and as you could probably have guessed, I jumped at the opportunity to do so! Brendyn and I took her to the markets with us for our weekly shop and then we dropped off Uncle Brendy to watch the football at his friend’s house. I asked Amelia how she would like to spend the day and she said “I want to make a cupcake!” I managed to convince her to bake a batch of cupcakes instead of one! While at the markets she told me that she liked blueberries, so we brought a small punnet of blueberries. I suggested we make blueberry cupcakes and she happily agreed, until she realised that we had to crush up all the blueberries. She explained to me that she wanted to keep some blueberries for home time, i.e. to eat at home, and suggested we crush some blueberries and strawberries together instead. And that is what we did – we crushed some blueberries, strawberries and raspberries together to make mix berry cupcakes!

After receiving numerous suggestions from my sister Gina, Ameila and I made a vanilla cupcake base to complement the mix berry frosting. It was quite berry-licious. Hence, the blog title: bake-a-berry-licious! Gina likes to rank my cupcakes and I think this might take the number two spot in her list! Pity she did not get to try one! Amelia is very independent and she demanded to do everything herself – from shifting the flour to licking the beaters to piping the icing. Her piping techniques needs a little work but she is getting there. She pipes the icing in a circular motion but tends to get a little too excited and places too much pressure on the piping bag. So after Amelia pipped the icing on the cupcakes, I had to wipe half of it off with a knife and spread the icing around the cupcake. To which she then placed ample sprinkles on top of! I don’t think she has quite got the idea of ‘less is more’ just yet!

I managed to save three cupcakes from death by sprinkles and took a few happy snaps of the cupcakes while Amelia was passed out asleep.

When Brendyn returned home, he was amazed by the mess that Amelia and I managed to cook up during the few hours he was away. He just sighed and started to clean the dishes (What a man, what a man, what a mighty fine man ... back vocals: mighty fine man). Was it worth it? Well he ate three cupcakes yesterday and another three this morning! So yes, I would say so.

"Happy Lion King!"

My goodness, it has been a crazy busy week. I am exhausted. But given my lack of blogging, I knew I just had to blog tonight. So why has my week been so crazy? Just the usual work stuff got in the way and, oh yeah, it was BIRTHDAY!

As it was my birthday, I had to bring in something to share with my colleagues. My natural inclination was to bring in cupcakes of course. Given that it was the night before my birthday, Brendyn did offer to make the cupcakes for me. Although this may be a nice gesture to some, I was mortified by the offer. Did he realise what he was suggesting? My colleagues eat my cupcakes on a regular basis and they have now come to expect a certain cupcake standard. And if Brendyn made my birthday cupcakes, PEOPLE WOULD THINK I ACTUALLY MADE THEM! I am sure that Brendyn’s cupcakes would be nice, I just doubt it would be as nice as mine. Sorry darling!

The night ended with me making over 100 cupcakes – cumquat, coffee and strawberry flavoured cupcakes. I didn’t end up taking a photo of all the cupcakes because I didn’t think they look special enough. Having said that, I do regret it slightly. Personally, I wasn’t a fan of the cumquat cupcakes as they were somewhat dense. But everyone else seemed to have enjoyed them, so I guess that is the main thing.

Given the hectic work week, we had my birthday celebration today! Both sides of the family got together for a spectacular day of eating. A few weeks ago, Ameila said she wanted to throw me a surprise Lion King party, where she could wish me a “Happy Lion King”. Not wanting to let her down, I made a Simba cupcake topper. I had intended on making all the Lion King characters, but time did not permit.

All in all, I had a fabulous birthday. Having said that, my gosh, I am glad this week is over!

Babies, baking and buttons!

I had two of my babies, Zachy and Mini Mousey Amelia, come over today for some baking fun and buttons! We made cupcakes (surprise, surprise) and by the end of the day, we not only had two dozen cupcakes but buttons all over the living room! The babies found my button collection and thought it would be fun to play with the buttons while the cupcakes were baking in the oven! Although, it was fun to play with the buttons, it was not so fun cleaning them up.

Mini Mousey has taken quite a liking to baking and has come over to bake on a number of occasions. I am still trying to learn to let go and let her do things herself. But being the control freak that I am, I always feel the need to guide her through each step. By guide I mean do everything and have her hold my hand. Today, I actually let go and let her do things herself. And Mini did a great job! Although, she is still learning to pipe icing perfectly, she is most certainly getting there. She won’t be needing her Aunty Tina soon enough. After all, she is only 3! I guess there is still plenty of baking years of training a head.

We made raspberry cupcakes and they were YUM! All cupcakes were topped with a fondant topper and sprinkles. The babies decorated the cupcakes all by themselves.

“Ohhhh! My Little Pony Teeeeeee!”

My little niece Amelia (Zachary’s sister) is growing up so fast! Every day she is becoming more and more like a girly girl much to her mother’s dismay (as her mother was quite the tomboy growing up, she too hoped for a tomboy). Amelia is the most adorable little person, she has such spirit and character, and she has only recently turned three! She is a real all or nothing type character, and when she wants or likes something, she is determined to get it.

We first noticed her girly nature developing when she showed an interest in Minnie Mouse between the ages of one and a half and two years old. She was fascinated by Minnie Mouse – I think it was the polka dot dress and headband and the pink high heeled shoes that fostered this fascination.

Also, at this stage, Zachary being three was unable to pronounce Amelia, so he called her Mini. Soon enough Amelia’s nick name became Mini Mousey. So on my little Mini Mousey’s second birthday, I made her Minnie Mouse cupcakes while she took her afternoon nap. When she woke up and saw the cupcakes, she was completely shocked and speechless. But this didn’t stop her from getting stuck into the cupcakes!

These days, Amelia, although she still likes Minnie Mouse, has developed a new fascination with My Little Pony. She is absolutely obsessed with all things pony, but My Little Pony in particular. This came as a bit of a shock to me one day when we were out shopping and she saw a My Little Pony quilt set. She exclaimed with delight “Ohhhh! My Little Pony Teeeeeee!”. I didn’t even realise she knew what a pony was, let alone My Little Pony. Anyway, being the sucker that I am, I brought her the quilt set and then proceeded to Big W and brought her a My Little Pony toy (minor details).

That year for my birthday, she begged that I make myself a My Little Pony cake, specifically a Rainbow Dash cake. So what did I do? I made it of course (Did I mention I was a sucker?)! As when she first saw the Minnie Mouse cupcakes, she was completely shocked and speechless. However, she did manage a little “Ohhhh! My Little Pony Teeeeeee!”  When it came time to cutting the cake, she was eager to get stuck into it. I, on the other hand, was a little reluctant, after investing six hours into making the cake I wanted it to last forever.

Alas, we sang happy birthday and Rainbow Dash got cut up and served for dessert.

This year leading up to Amelia’s third birthday, she knew exactly what she wanted. Surprise, surprise, it was a My Little Pony cake. But not just any My Little Pony cake, a carousel My Little Pony cake! In the months leading up to the her birthday, I googled various carousel cakes and I decided to attempt making a three dimensional carousel cake using My Little Pony as the horses surrounding the carousel. In order to do this, I had to make two cake bases, one cake to be the base of the carousel and one cake to form the pointy top of the carousel. Also, I had to make the inner carousel part as well, where the horses are housed. It was yet another late night in the kitchen baking and rolling out fondant. But we got there in the end.  

What was Amelia’s reaction? “Ohhhh! My Little Pony Teeeeeee!”