For Valentine’s Day this year, we decided to prepare our very own home fine dining at the comfort of our own home. We have gotten ourselves some sort of wine, wine glasses and napkin way before the V day. Hubby never really like V day as he feels it’s too commercialize. As he is more of an expressive and emotional person, he prefers to celebrate love when he feels like it rather than on a fixed date. Adding on, he always like to be different. On the other hand, being myself, just like every other woman out there who enjoys being showered with love on the V Day, hubby still makes every effort he can to celebrate it with me. Dear, if you are reading this blog, thanks for all the little things you do as well as for a memorable 2010 Valentine’s Day. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I do.
Guess I am getting too much into telling our own stories. Let’s move on to stories on baking for the week. As it was V Day, I wanted to bake some sweet stuff for the desert and at the same time, I want to apply some icing/deco. Cupcakes have been something that I always wanted to give a try but keep postponing it. Probably I was put off by the fact that it’s not unique as everyone is hyped over cupcakes over the past few years. Like hubby, I always like to be different too! Anyhow, I see things from a different perspective this time. The challenge with cupcakes can come from successfully decorating the cupcakes with an evenly smooth icing and nice deco. I love all the cute and lovely cupcakes that are decorated for all different occasions. Since it’s V Day, I thought of using some homemade vanilla butter cream frosting and decorating the cupcakes with some heart-shaped candies and chocolates.
While browsing for recipes, I came across this simple vanilla cupcake recipe from Cupcake Creation that came along with the recipe for frosting. I couldn’t believe that it was so simple to make cupcake. Basically, you just need a few ingredients. As I do not have self raising flour on hand, I substituted it with all purpose flour, baking powder and salt.
Ingredients:
- 2/3 cup butter – softened
- 2/3 cup superfine (castor) sugar
- 3/4 cup all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- a pinch of salt
- 3 eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Steps:
- Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F.
- Line a 8 medium cup cake pan, with cup cake papers.
- Crack the eggs into a cup and beat lightly with a fork.
- Place all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix until light and creamy.
- Divide the mixture evenly between the cake cases.
- Bake for 20 minutes until risen and firm to touch.
- Allow to cool for a few minutes and then transfer to a wire rack.
- Allow to cool fully before icing.
Vanilla Butter Cream Frosting
Ingredients:
- 1/3 butter – softened
- 1/2 cup confectioners (icing) sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (for vanilla frosting) or 1 tablespoons cocoa powder (for chocolate frosting)
- 2 teaspoons very hot water
Steps:
- Beat together the butter and sugar until well mixed.
- Once well combined, add the combined cocoa powder and water. Beat until smooth and creamy.
The cupcakes turn out well and hubby loves it. I love it too as the texture resembles my favourite “ma lai koh” (standard steam egg cake). Probably I should replace the white sugar with brown sugar in the future to turn this recipe into the “ma lai koh” recipe. Overall, I am very satisfied with the cupcakes and will definitely bake it again. I should be more adventurous with the icing decoration next time. Hmm…next on my shopping list is a set of equipments for making icing :-)
Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
No comments:
Post a Comment