Berry berry quite contrary

             Children's day is upon us and what better way to show my appreciation for these little ones by baking. After being told by my 6 year olds that the best part of my butter cupcakes was the frosting when I last baked for them, I decided to teach them about the wonderful flavours that a cake can have. After taking a massive poll, the top flavours that emerged were strawberry and chocolate.

           Which brings me to today's post. I have never made anything strawberry before and this posed as  somewhat of a challenge. I'm a chocoholic and alcoholic. I've probably run the gamut of chocolate during my experiments, white, dark, milk, 60% coco to 90% coco, ganaches, chocolate frosting, fudge, covurture, confectionary.
          
          In fact, I own three cookbooks dedicated to chocolate. You name it, I've probably done it or have the recipe. Strawberries on the other hand, are rather intriguing. The closest I've come to working with berries( other than jams) were raspberries, which were epically difficult to work with seeing how I pureed them and was left with delicious raspberry snowskin mooncakes and a broken blender.

      Broken kitchen equipment is probably the biggest turn off I reckon. Nonetheless, I love these children enough to want to perfect this.
  
          I decided I wanted a light, fluffy cake filled with strawberry jam that creamed    screamed lightness yet at the same time create a sensation equivilant of a strawberry field.
     
         I modified my favourite butter cake( one with a nice sugar crust, good crumb and melt in your mouth texture) to create what I call strawberry cupcake BETA. Beta because I have yet to reach perfection. I was relatively pleased with the results, since it was moist, dense and had an explosion of flavour, plus pretty to boot. Downside was that the parts without the jam were rather lackluster.
               
           I shared them with my colleagues and they all loved it. My closer friends gave honest ratings and I one said, I quote, " Its fantastic until you get to the bottom. It tastes like flour when you get there" Hahahah. But you live and learn, and I intend to chart my culinary journey via this blog, both triumphs and failures.
    
          The wonderful thing about jam filled cupcakes is that the longer they sit in jam, the more moist and flavourful they get. I just had a bite and after 24 hours, they were reallly delicious. But I still think it needs a tad more sugar.

           Are you ready for the shape of my heart?

After they cooled, I dusted the cupcakes down with icing sugar and then used a cookie cutter to hollow out the center and piped jam into them. WARNING: The icing sugar melts so I suggest dusting the sugar on the day or just before serving and piping the jam.

This time, I actually bothered to take some process shots so lets take a look

                   

         

                      Battered and ready for the great bake. After 35minutes...

                                     

The spirit of randomness overcame me and I just had to make one that looked like this:

       

                      

Its a duck in case you's all wondering.

Here's the recipe, suggested improvements in red:

Strawberry Jam filled cupcakes, adapted from allrecipes.com

Makes 8 large cupcakes

Ingredients:

110g (175g) of all purpose flour

2 teaspoons of baking powder

125g  of butter

200g (225) of white sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

(1 teaspoon of strawberry emulsion?)

3/4 cup of milk flavoured with 1/4(1 tsp) teaspn of strawberry emulsion (or strawberry milk)

250g strawberries(diced)

250g of strawberry jam

Icing sugar for dusting

Method:

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C( 145 for fanforced).

Sift together flour and baking powder

Cream the butter and blend in the white sugar, eggs and vanilla. Beat until light and fluffy. Add the sifted dry ingredients to the creamed mixture alternately with the milk. Stir until just blended. Fold in strawberries. Fill cupcake liners until 3/4 full.

Bake at 175 degrees C (145 for fanforced) for 35mins or until skewer comes out clean. Cake should spring back when lightly touched.

Once cooled to room temperature, dust cupcakes with icing sugar and hollow out centers with cookie cutters of your choice. Using a small sharp knife, gently dig out the cake that's within the cookie cutter.

FIll piping bag with jam and pipe into hollowed center.

I love culinary experiments. They thrill me to no end.

Cupcake Madness

Cupcakes. It seems the whole world has become completely enraptured with them and everywhere you go, everyone is offering these little single serves like the latest must have.

Initially, I could never get my head around them. You see, I've always been a giant slice of cake person, always the first to say, "Forget the plate, just pass the tin around and let's spoon the bloody thing already." Spoon to cake, cake to mouth and mouth to pleasure center.

Besides, cupcakes have always been deceptive. Yes, under that plethora of icing, frosting, glaze, cream and rainbow sprinkles lies a very dry and boring cake. The seduction often ends in an anti-climax, leaving one want for more. Often times, I find myself feeling cheated, like the morning after an impulsive night time tryst with a stranger. But I digress.

This cupcake sojourn of mine all started when a male colleague decided to upstage the bakers and cooks of the fairer sex in the department by turning up with beautiful cupcakes for a company get together. Cupcakes so beautiful that I ignored the little voice in my head and allowed myself to be seduced. Picking it up, I peeled the parched white wrapper off, took my first bite and waited. My body tingled. I was hooked. It was lust, love and obsession at first bite. This single serve of butter cake covered in chocolate ganache was not only delicious but stunning to behold. Yes, one night stands, I mean, cupcakes can be good.

Fired by this revelation, the mad artist in me took over. For days and nights I researched on how to decorate a cake. You see, despite being an avid baker and cook, my food constantly bore this mutant gene I like to call "The Ugly Chromosome or T.U.C". Compelled by the urge to purge this genetic defect, I launched myself into the daunting task of cake decorating. The perfect opportunity came when my favourite aunt's birthday came about and I embarked on a cupcake adventure. I made four different types of cupcakes and then launched on creating four different ways of decorating. Okay, maybe five.

Warning: The following scenes might containt explicit material.


Butter Cupcakes with Marshmellow Flowers

Yup, you read right. I used marshmellows cut up and dipped in coloured sugar for the flower petals. I cut little stems from the remaining marshmellows and arranged the petals to resemble flowers on a bed of piped whipped cream. I personally am not a fan of buttercream. Whipped cream gives an ice cream like consistency when chilled and is light and just delectable. Underneath that whipped lightness is a rich buttery cake that contains more eggs than your daily required amount. Cardiac arrest might ensue.





Gula Melaka( Palm Sugar) Coffee Cupcakes



A heady aromatic cupcake that combines that delectable sweetness of palm sugar and coffee. To me, gula melaka is probably the molasses of the east. Topped with a classic sugar frosting and sprinkled with hundreds and thousands. Looking deceptively playful and sweet, it'll shock with its depth of flavour.

Gula Melaka Coffee Cupcakes 2: Swirled and dangerous


Same cupcake swirled with dark chocolate ganache. Might as well play with my left over chocolate ganache and dirty up these pristine looking cupcakes. They look like inkblot cupcakes to me. Quite a cool way to carry out the ink blot test I reckon.


Triple Chocolate Cupcakes

Seriously, if you're going to sin, do it in style.
Imagine a dense moist chocolate cake made with coco then studded with dark chocolate chips and finally doused with a dark chocolate ganache( topping made with chocolate and cream). Then topped with a red rose because nothing screams seduction like a deep red rose.Very Freudian I know. I could go on but nobody needs to read my stream of consciousness.
I used those gum paste ones from a baking shop. Next time, I'll make my own with fondant.



Pretty In Pink aka Bandung Cupcakes


Pretty in Pink aka Bandung Cupcakes:
For those who don't know, Bandung is a popular milky drink made with rose syrup and evaporated or full cream milk, mostly found in South East Asia. Its sweet and rosy and to some, an acquired taste. To me, this is heavenly. This baby is a product of many experiments. Introducing a Bandung Butter cupcake frosted with a lightly Bandung flavoured whipped cream frosting and decorated with silver sugar dragees.



And finally, an overview :

THE CUPCAKE TOWER

Yes, I had to. Without the money to buy a fancy cupcake tower, I had to create an alternative. Since I've laboured over the art work, I might as well have a display that screams the same. This was made by my equally creative pet gorilla who used a kitchen towel roll, toilet roll and various sized cake boards. He picked a pretty wrapper from Borders and got to work. Nifty eh?



I apologise for the blurry shots because after frosting the last cupcake, it was pretty much pack and go to my aunt's house. After displaying the cupcakes, there was this urgency to eat them and nobody wanted to wait for me to be done trying to get the perfect Food-nographic shot. Ah well.

So who would have thought that something so small and simple could capture one's imagination so vividly? I take it all back. Cupcakes can be good. I'm not cheating on the good ole slice of cake, I'm merely exploring my options.