Chocolate Nutella Cupcakes

Think of a word to describe a chocolate cupcake.

Moist.
Fluffy.
Light.
Soft.
Chocolate-y.

This cupcake ticks all the above boxes.

 Chocolate Nutella Cupcakes

Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

It's going to sound repetitive. But these were made for a friend's birthday. Ha. What can I say, a baker loves to bake, and it's just what I do especially for those whom I hold dear to me. I could say that, if I offer you a homemade goodie, you're probably someone special? ;)

 Irish Car Bomb Cupcakes

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

A while ago, I was, for some weird random reason, in a cupcakes phase. I was dreaming about cupcakes non-stop, googling for recipes, and fretting over which flavours I should make first to satisfy that urge. I know. It's really weird yeah. I've never been much of a cupcakes person - I'm more of a cake girl (or rather, an entremet girl) most of the time.

I stumbled upon the loveliest sunshine yellow cupcakes at Shirley's site > here. And I knew I just had to make it. I absolutely love all kinds of citrus, especially lemon. And though I'm not a fan of meringue in general, I knew I had to make these. Oh yes, I must. And yes, I did.

 Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

S'mores cupcakes

I made these S'mores cupcakes a while ago for my gathering with some friends (the same one where I made the crab rangoon pastry spoon shells). I had cleared out the refrigerator and used the leftover graham cracker cookie dough and was thinking of incorporating them into a dessert. Thus, the S'mores cupcakes were born.

 S'mores cupcakes

French buttercream for macarons and cupcakes

Oh wow, and it's now the last day of 2010. Thank gosh. I must say that it hasn't been a very good year for me...but oh well, as long as I'm well-fed (too well-fed in fact), healthy, alive, I really shouldn't be mumbling or grousing much...

2010 has been a tremendously busy year for my oven, and sadly, it finally gave up on me (or was it the other way round hmmmm...), so we replaced it with a new one! I must say that I'm falling more and more in love with the new one day by day. It takes only 10 minutes pre heating time (compared to 20-30 minutes for the ol' one!), the temperature is reasonably correct (the ol' wonky one was off by 10 degrees higher!), oh oh oh, new things always seem so much better, shinier and prettier, don't you think so? (:

Coconut mango passionfruit macarons

Rain rain go away

The world's weather clock is totally screwed upside down. Rainy weather in March in hot sunny Singapore? That's just wrong! Rainy season (technically) should have been in late October till December. We are supposed to be facing hot dry spells in our tropical island here now in March. Alas, I have no idea what went wrong and it has been raining so frequently this week that our water tanks are all full with rain water.

This is not necessary a bad thing, the rain I mean. It cools down the temperature and makes sleeping at night so good cos I can snuggle among my warm bedsheets. However, it's bad cos that means I can't exercise outdoors cos it's pouring like crazy. We gave Muay Thai a miss on Friday cos it was raining that night. Boo. And over the weekend, I was going to make up for it by going jogging. It rained on Saturday AND Sunday. Sulks.

Here's some oreo cupcakes I made in last month before I left SL. I made kahlua cupcakes too but I didn't think they were pretty so I didn't bother taking pictures of them haha.

Oreos; Chocolate cupcakes

Chocolate cupcakes topped with Oreo whipped cream and Oreos

The above picture was taken when they were still intact and looking pretty at home. The Oreos turned a bit nua after being smooshed on the Oreo whipped cream for the better half of a day inside the company's fridge. They were looking a bit sad too after I carried them to the office via public transport. So I had to make touch ups to ensure they didn't look too bad. Oh whatever, they are still edible hey? Haha.

Birthday cupcakes

Time is sneaky. Sometimes it goes by so slowly you reckon that it is unmoving, still as the air. Yet, you look at the clock and see the minutes ticking away ever so slowly. Then again, at other times, it gallops past you, almost akin to a sprinter racing the way to the finishing line. You bat an eyelash and a whole day is gone.

Just like today, time FLEW by so much today. I blink and it's lunch hour. I blink again and lunch is over. The next time I blinked, it's already 4pm. Then  I blink again, it's 6pm, time to knock off but I don't cos you know, whenever it's nearing end of the day, suddenly there's like a multitude of tasks to complete. I leave at 7pm instead. It feels like today, I blinked and blinked, like I'm blinking in terms of hours. pffft.

Time comes and goes as it pleases, not caring if anyone wants it to go slow or hurry. And we all blow the candles once a year every single year - which reminds us that we are stealthily growing older and older. pui. Anyway, speaking of birthdays, I made these cupcakes in November for an aunt's birthday.

I wanted contrasting colours and flavours. No boring plain old (but scrumptious of course) chocolate. I decided to remake the ispahan (minus the lychee as it was a last minute decision and I used what I had on hand). To complement the colour tone of the pinkish ispahan, I wanted something citrusy bright. Lemon was akin to chocolate, yummy but just a tad overdone. So I decided on orange cupcakes (I secretly clapped my hands in joy as you know, I do have a bottle of Grand Marnier...that really really goes well with orange-anything.).

Piped cupcakes. I know how ugly they look. I mean, I did try my best...

Finally finished backlog. (:

Here's all the remaining backlog of food pictures! This is for the month of April. The previous post was end Feb/Mar baking. Finally. I almost feel a sense of relief that I've uploaded all the pictures. (: Now, there's the bento pictures to tackle...haha. But then I think I like to mass upload a month's worth of bentos at a shot, so I'll only post bento pictures up at the end of each month.

Omg. My eyes are drooping so badly now that it's 3am. I'm supposed to go gym tomorrow morning. So I better head off to bed lest I wake up late and then decide that I'm lazy to walk to Fitness First. Ha.

Ingredients to make?

Quiches. It's my first attempt and I even made the pate sucree from scratch! It was wasy, but it took time rolling the dough out and cutting it to fit into the pan. I wanted to experiment with two flavours so I went with spinach for one, and mushrooms bacon for the other.

Waiting to go into the oven.

Ingredients for making homemade soup.

Vienna mini bread rolls.

The roll on the far right is from Woo Aa! She bought this Korean premix sesame bun pack and tried it out. It tasted pretty chewy and unlike a bread, but it was nice though.

Homemade beef barley vegetable soup. Bread + soup during cold weather is simply the best.

Uber mini burgers. About three mouthfuls each and they're gone. ;)