Learning to make creative cakes is something I’ve always wanted to do. Having only a couple hours of a sugar craft course, I did made a few creative cakes like a Batman cake and Spider-man cupcakes I made for my son’s birthday.
Vanilla and White Chocolate Choux Buns
Dr. Oetker wants everyone to celebrate the great and good about chocolate and get experimental by trying new chocolatey bakes you have never attempted before. To get everyone excited, throughout March, Dr. Oetker is running a Twitter competition to encourage everyone to have a go at baking their own yummy chocolate cakes and bakes. To enter, simply Tweet @DrOetkerbakes a photo of a chocolate bake you have made and tell them who you will be sharing it with using the hashtag #evenbetterbaking for the chance to win a deluxe hamper of Dr.Oetker chocolate products! What are you waiting for!
We are a huge fan of chocolate and I frequently bake chocolate cakes or cookies to share. Chocolate always tastes better if it’s shared with your loved ones and friends. I tried baking traditional chocolate profiteroles recently, but this time around, I decided to make a creative linked heart effect pattern on the Choux buns. This chocolate recipe can be found on Dr. Oetker’s website where you can find lots of baking inspiration for chocolate cakes and bakes.
Chocolate and Vanilla Marble Cake
I have never tried to bake a marble cake from scratch as it is often easier to use a pre-mix to bake with my children! We all love marble cake for its chocolate swirls in the cake! But there isn’t much choice of marble cake pre-mixes on the market.
Anyway, recently The Happy Egg Co have kindly sent me a signed copy of Eric Lanlard’s Totally Chocolate cookbook, which features all his favourite chocolate recipes! I was so excited when I saw this chocolate and vanilla marble cake recipe which also happened to be his first listed recipe. I was thrilled to make it from scratch!
The fabulous chef, Eric Lanlard also created Peanut Butter & Chocolate Egg Cups for the Happy Egg co which can be found on their website.
Valentine’s Day Whoopie Pie
Recently, I was browsing in a bookshop and found a whoopie pies cookbook. I had no clue what a whoopie pie was but the photos looked great. So I decided to give it a try since the book only cost £1!
If you have not heard of whoopie pies before, they taste cakey and originated in the US. It is made of two round mound-shaped pieces of cake, filled with a filling or frosting sandwiched between them.
Caramel Almond Crisp
Caramel Almond Crisp is a cookie recipe from The Secret of Cookies by Gu Huixue. I absolutely love this book my friend bought for me in Singapore and have been trying out many of her recipes!
Edible Tea Cup – Cupcake
Over the years, I have grown from amateur cook to a mom to three kids (including a massive old one). During my free time, I enjoy looking at Pinterest for ideas, baking Chinese cakes, learning piping etc.
I always find working with good food brands really rewarding. So when I was approached by Gü Puds, the purveyors of decadent desserts, to make an edible tea cup, I was very excited! Gü is famous for its chocolate puds and have recently launched a new, ready-to-heat, hot chocolate (or chocolate milk if you prefer it cold). Now I have seen edible tea cups that you can pour hot chocolate into, but the techniques required here are beyond my skill set and I’d be worried of it leaking. I believe it requires a really thick cookie base with a thick fondant icing. So instead, I made an edible tea cup cake to go along with the Gü Hot Chocolate instead.
Colourful Cookies Recipe
I’ve always wanted to bake colourful cookies whenever I saw the picture on Pinterest. So last week, I managed to spend some time with my daughter to bake them. This is a very easy recipe but it does require time to bake and is a workout for your arms. To mix the dough with four different food gels took me a long time to get the perfect colour. My daughter did get quite impatient with me mixing the food gel into the dough so I had given her a plastic glove to help knead the dough too.
To make the cookies colourful, I opted for food gel rather than food colouring liquid. Gel is much easier to mix than liquid and liquid may make your dough too wet and soft. This is my first time I bought the gel and the colour is not too bad. I had also used the food gels for my icing when I made my gingerbread house.
Christmas Gingerbread House Tutorial
This December, OXO Good Grips set bloggers an ultimate Christmas challenge to bake a gingerbread house, letting our imagination run wild with all the possible ways we can decorate it. They have also teamed up with Stork to provide us this challenge. We have received a baking bundle including Stork margarine, OXO’s new bakers 8 piece silicone decorating set, compact food scale, measuring spoon set, 11” whisk and a medium silicone spatula.
Last year when I tried to bake my gingerbread house, the whole house collapsed with cookies breaking off as I didn’t have the proper tools and maybe because I used too thin icing. So this year, I am challenging myself again to make a house that won’t crumble!
Nick Jr Craftmas Post Twitter Party
Yesterday, we all had such a great NickJrCraftmas party with UKMumstv and Nick Jr on Twitter. It was very manic and I had to reset my laptop once as I was unable to tweet photo. Also I was in Twitter Jail for tweeting too much in a short period of time.
Anyway, we did quite a lot of crafts over the weekend! Firstly, I had used the given reindeer template to cut it out and play Pin the Nose on Rudolph. They were all very close to pinning the nose! Well done to them. If you have notice their eye masks, it is in fact toilet paper! I could not find any blindfold so I used toilet roll to cover the top half of their heads!
Creamy Chicken Pie
OXO Good Grips is setting us yet another interesting blogger challenge! This time around they are challenging us to do a winter warmer recipe. I had so many ideas running through my mind like cooking Fish Head curry, Tom Yum soup, chicken stew and many more. Then I thought to myself that I like baking and making my own pastry. Recently, I had learnt how to make Choux pastry. So I am very keen to learn how to make a nice pastry for a pie and make creamy chicken pie. It is one of those simple but delicious foods that is ideal for this recent inclement weather.
Stained Glass Window Cookies
I have regularly seen many sun catcher craft linkys on our weekly Tuesday Tutorials. So when I saw the recipe for stained glass window cookies (Christmas Cookies book from Parragon), I couldn’t wait to bake them!
The stained glass, made by boiled sweets, looks absolutely gorgeous but crushing boiled sweets is not very easy at all! I tried using a mallet, rolling pin and a knife! Also after baking the crushed sweets, it seems to reduce to nothing that I had to keep adding more sweets into the holes of the cookies.
These cookies are quite sweet and taste lovely. If you prefer less sweet, do reduce the amount of caster sugar.
Choux Cygnets
Last weekend, we went to Honda Colliers opening event at Birmingham as Brendan Lynch, Series 3 #GBBO finalist was there to teach baking! Of course, at the same time, we also looking for our next new car.
Brendan showed us how to make Choux Cygnets. I was so happy to be able to speak to him and at the same time, I was also able to practise making it too.
Spider-Man Cupcakes
To make these Spider-Man cupcakes, I applied quite a few shortcuts. I bought ready-mixed cupcake mixture, vanilla icing, white and black coloured icing pens from the supermarket. Also not forgetting fresh strawberries. The bigger the better but the stock in the supermarket were quite small.
Batman Cake
Last weekend was my son’s birthday and just days before, he requested to have a batman cake for his birthday. So I thought long and hard. I did google it but I found that they are just too difficult for me to even attempt it. So I opted for a small and simple Batman cake that only required minimal effort. It still took me over 3 hours.
Tuesday Tutorials Week 42 Baking
A huge welcome to Week 42 of the Tuesday Tutorials Pintorials Pin Party! Last weekend was my son’s birthday and I have been very busy baking.
