Chocolate pear cupcakes

Following my adventures of trying new cupcake recipes I've decided to try a combination that I've never had before. Chocolate and pears. I was a little uncertain about how it will taste as I've never eaten two of them together before! Infact, I hardly ever eat pears and thought who else would eat pears?? Anyway, I thought to myself if it's in a book it must be good so I did it!

Results: The connect group really enjoyed it and it was finished quickly! This cupcake is definately a keeper!

Tropical cupcakes

I wanted to try out a cupcake that brought in the summer fill and found this recipe in one of my borrowed books with pineapples in it and cream cheese frosting and so I tried this out for my connect group. Guess what?? It was a hit! The cupcakes were moist because of the pineapples and the cream cheese frosting went well with the cupcakes - maybe the cupcakes were tiny too so it went like hotcakes! I will definately make these again as they seem to disappear quicker than chocolate cupcakes!

Albees

Here's another malaysian eat out in Campsee you can check out with it's many variety and the dishes definately brings you back to Asia.

Curry puff with egg inside $2.5 per piece and it runs out fast:

Char Kuey Teow (one of the best i've tasted in Sydney):

Sotong Kangkong:

Kuching Laksa which was not what I expected as it did not look or taste like the one I had in Kuching 3 years ago. I was pretty disappointed with this dish and probably would not order this again as it tasted just like any curry laksa dish.

cupcakes with love

I've been experimenting with simple cupcake decorations and I made this for a friend who is getting married early next year with the colour of lavender as her theme.

It was fun and definately alot to learn but here's to a simple start of hopefully many more cupcake decorating in the future =D

Puppies cupcakes

I've recently had an urge to decorate cakes and cupcakes but am scared to do it because it "looks" hard. So, I thought i'll start easy and begin with cupcakes and got myself some books from the library and bought some neccessity from the cake store! I never knew the cake store had so many different icing, cutters, glitters, cupcake cups, and the list goes on...and if I could honestly spend more $$ than needed getting different things to make one piece for the cake!

So, here are my first cupcakes I decorated for a work mate's 30th birthday and why puppies you may ask?? It's because she has a little pup that she talks so much about and love =D I got this idea from a cupcake decorating book I borrowed.

This is my favourite with the puppy digging his head in the grass:

The final product placed in the box ready to give away:

It was fun but definately time consuming and I think I have to read up more about drying the fondant so that it doesnt go soft or perhaps use a mixture specifically for making models. Nevertheless I'm happy with my first attempt lol!

Lemon cupcakes

I had lemons in the fridge to make lemon and honey drink while I've been sick for the last few days and decided to bake lemon cupcakes! I love the smell of lemon and I've decided to not put any icing sugar on this because it smells sweet enough =D

I got this recipe from Rachel Allen's Lemon Cupcakes:

Ingredients

125g (4½ oz) butter, softened
125g (4½ oz) caster sugar
Finely grated zest ½ large lemon (keeping the zest of the remaining ½ lemon for the lemon icing)
2 eggs, beaten
150g (5oz) plain flour
¼ tsp baking powder

For the lemon butter icing (optional)

75g (3oz) butter, softened
125g (4 ½ oz) icing sugar, sifted
Finely grated zest of ½ large lemon
1-2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC Line a 12-hole cake tin with 12 paper cases.

2. Cream the butter in a large bowl or in an electric food mixer until soft. Add the sugar and grated lemon zest and beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.

3. Gradually add the beaten eggs, then sift in the flour and baking powder and fold into the mixture

4. Divide the mixture between the paper cases and bake in the preheated oven for 7-10 minutes, until risen and golden. When cooked, the centre of each cake should be slightly springy to the touch. Remove the cakes from the tin and place on a wire rack to cool before you ice them.

5. To make the lemon butter icing, cream the butter in a bowl with a wooden spoon or hand-held electric beater until very soft. Gradually add the icing sugar and beat into the butter, along with the lemon zest and enough lemon juice to soften the icing, to a spreadable consistency.

6. Ice the cooled cupcakes!

Youranuse??

If you haven't heard of Adriano Zumbo, he appeared on Masterchef Australia with his macaron tower, his disel cake, and the amazing ginger bread house!!! He is very creative in his macaron flavours and if you ever go there especially during the weekend, the queue is always out the door and the macaron flavours often run out in the Balmain store!

If you go to the Rozelle cafe, it's small but there were more macaron flavours there when we went. Hubby and I went for a day trip to Manly and happened to park next to Adriano Zumbo new store that opened in December 2010! We were unaware of this new outlet but was thankful that we found a new place to buy macarons and his amazing looking patisserie! They also had a little small place that you can order coffee and sit next door but like the other outlets, it's pretty crammed!

Out of all the "wierd" looking gateaux delight, we chose "Youranuse" which consist of mandarin mousse, tonka bean brulee, almond ginger crunch, sour cream jelly, fig sable, orange toffee creme and pain d'epice.

The many layers of wonders inside this small little precious delight:

hmmm can't wait to go back to try another of his creation..

Location:
Manly Pâtisserie:
Shop 1a/40 The East Esplanade, Manly

Hours:
Monday to Friday
7:00am till 7:00pm or until sold out
Saturday & Sunday
8:00am till 5:30pm