Apple Sauce & Cinnamon Cupcakes

Aren't they so cute? The tiny donut-shaped cakes are made with the same batter as the cupcakes. They are made with a simple recipe which my sister-in-law gave me long ago. She has been eating my bakes and she wanted to share this really simple recipe with me.

It's really simple, equal amounts of sugar, self-raising flour and butter; with some cinnamon, 2 eggs and a bottle of apple sauce (I used baby food!). Beat all together till smooth and bake. I didn't have a particularly easy time trying to fill the donut tray, though. Next time, I'll try piping definitely.

I suspect that I could have over-compensated for the slightly "old" flour as the cupcakes turned out a little too wet for my liking. However, my friend S said they were perfect and she liked the texture of the cupcakes! Well, since these were done especially for her, that should be considered a success. Besides, my children kept popping the mini donuts into their mouths. If I didn't stop them to take photo of the mini-donuts, they would have been gone in under 15 minutes. I hope S tries to bake it ...

Mini Chocolate Muffins

I won't claim that I am proud of this batch of mini muffins, especially since it's for my girl's cca party (finally). The original item just won't cooperate and due to the late notice ... "mummy, the party is tomorrow (8 Aug), what are you baking for me?"

"Omigosh, tomorrow? That's like how much notice?" I thought. The poor girl didn't know as they kept postponing the party, which was also a farewell party for the teacher-in-charge. I was planning to try this recipe out that night as I was looking around for something interesting and found this on Happy Home Baking.

Muffins are supposedly "easiest to bake" but somehow, I still have not gotten the hang of doing it right. This is my archilles' heel and I tend to over-mix most of the time. I can't seem to be able to accept that small lumps of batter is FINE. While I had long stopped stirring/mixing, I could have inadvertently "stirred" the batter some more as I scooped the batter to till 40 mini cups.

My girl said they looked "normal" as, I guessed, she was hoping to dazzle her friends with some extraordinary items baked by "my mummy". ("So good, your mummy bakes everyday!") I felt so lousy for not being able to live up to her expectations. I read somewhere, that women tend to want to please everybody. As (working) mothers, we have even more people to please, don't we?

After I had finished packing these into a box for her, I realised that I had planned to make these. Rei's little girl had such a good time decorating them. When I told my girl about this, she said "then you should have!" My heart fell further and I knocked myself for not remembering them. I told her that I will make them for her next party.

That's why this post is so late ...

Cream Cheese Cupcakes

This is one recipe that I would use again and again, especially after several failures with the chiffon cake. Besides, since it is a public holiday today, I had promised some friends that I would bake something for them. Not that I don't enjoy baking for my family, it's just that they could have grown sick of sampling all the bakes.

Back to my "comfort" bake for today. I first baked it in March when I saw the recipe on Peony's blog. The recipe came from a book which I had borrowed before, Tempt by Betty Saw. Several recipes in this collection caught my attention and I went about looking to buy the book. Having borrowed the same book on two occasions, I took that as a confirmation of interest :D

I used the juice and pulp of one passionfruit today, in place of the lemon juice. As I had a pumnet of blueberries in the fridge, I simply washed them and dropped two into each cupcake. I had read about how the juicy blueberries will give off juices during baking and could not wait to see the results. Boy, was I impressed.

I had a slight scare after adding the eggs to the cream cheese mixture. The recipe indicated 2 medium eggs of 60 to 65 g each, and I had used 80% of the recipe. I could not decide as I had eggs of two sizes, 55 to 60 g and 60 to 65 g. So, I estimated 1.5 eggs would be needed, and used one egg of each size, how ingenius right? Anyway, when I saw the mixture curdled, I stopped adding eggs. I didn't want to introduce too much liquid as I was going to add the passionfruit pulp and juices. After adding the flour, I kept stirring it, hoping that the curdling will disappear. I could have overdone the sitrring.

Phew! All's well that ends well, I hope. The cuppies are as soft as the picture above. An absolute winner in terms of taste and versatility. The flavour I baked last time was lemon. Oh yeah, I used cream cheese spread for this as well.

Hummingbird Cake

Now I've tried it too but honestly, I'm not impressed. Perhaps the problem lies with my baking skills. I much prefer the taste and texture of my American Carrot Cake. I suppose for those who haven't tried the carrot cake, this cake is fine. I only frosted one loaf, which was given to a very good friend of mine. Hope that the cake tastes more exquisite due to the frosting. I won't know and probably too shy to ask ...

I followed the original recipe quite closely, and for frosting, I used kwf's recipe. For my next try, I may use 100 ml of milk instead of pineapple juice. I believe the milk will give a better bite. I am somewhat dissappointed with the two cakes using bananas, not sure why these two cakes didn't work out.

I may try Aunty Yochana's Steamed Soft Banana Cake as I have another 5 very riped bananas left. Or I could try this recipe again, but cinnamon goes better with carrot, not bananas.

American Carrot Cake

I didn't think I would be baking this cake, I was never really a fan of it anyway. I had tasted a few really good American Carrot Cake in the past and imagined that it would be a tough cake to bake.

I came across a thread on KC with the recipe from Aunty Yochana. I know from experience that Aunty Yochana's recipes are always winners, though some can be challenging. I've had my share of not so successful bakes, so with a prayer in my heart, I proceeded with this attempt.

Recipe called for eggs to be beaten with sugar till creamy. Now, I was wondering when it would be creamy enough :P My old gf told me her carrot cake recipe did not require the use of a cake mixer. I had done some research on the internet and narrowed down my choices to 3 recipes, with Aunty Yochana's right on top. Both the other 2 did not require any beating. I felt more secure with beating of eggs. The only thing I did differently was leaving out the vanilla essence and added 1 tsp of ground nutmeg. I gave the walnuts a miss and added crushed pineapples.

It's also the first time I used the mixer up to mix in the flour. I used a pair of chopsticks to stir in the carrots, crushed pineapples and raisins. I am sure I can improve on this for my next attempt. The raisins were all at the bottom of the pan and some cupcakes did not have any raisins.

I'm convinced that recipes that use cinnamon are most aromatic in the oven. With nutmeg, that becomes even more aromatic. The fragrance of the spices kept me near the kitchen!

Then it was time to taste it. To be honest, I didn't wait for it to be cooled. When I bit it, it was still warm and the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg made the cake so alluring. The cake is sooooh light! I can't say that it is close to the real thing, but it is a lighter version. I honestly can't put my finger to what is lacking but I love this version! I like the lightness of the cake, and in future, I would use diced pineapples instead of crushed pineapples. On the whole, this recipe is a keeper! I may also use brown sugar for my next attempt though, the cake is a little, erm, light (in colour, that is).

15 April: Wow, this recipe is an absolute winner! I've even received compliment about it's authenticity by a true blue US citizen. The cake was also given an almost "two-thumbs-up" rating. I am very happy with this cake, and it would be a good choice as a gift. Besides, I shall be experimenting with soy milk and may be even soy flour in an attempt to make it a healthier choice :D

Egg White Cream Cheese Cupcake

This is what I baked tonight, after a weekend of mood-less-ness :P Perhaps the weekend was too action packed, which resulted in fatigue and so lack of mood to bake. I told myself, weekend was the only time to play with the pullman pan, but lazy bones just won't get moving. No matter how I pushed myself, gosh!

As usual, seeing everybody's blog and visiting Kitchen Capers' forum got me all charged up again. Then I remembered reading about aunty yochana's egg white cream cheese cupcakes, and thought I should give it a shot, and I did tonight.

I realised it was a mistake when I put the batter into a disposable loaf pan. Memories of a certain failure came flashing to my mind... I was worried that it would turn out the same way but my boy specifically said he didn't like cupcakes. Perhaps I should have transferred the batter into cups but what's done cannot be undone. I did not put shredded cheese on top but anyway, the top was crumpled. Luckily, I overturned them to cool them. That helped to maintain the cupcakes' height. It helped to keep the loaf "tall" but after unmoulding, it flopped. I was worse when I cut it, it was kueh like. Totally like what happened to the cotton sponge cake. The cupcakes, though, didn't fall. It was rather soft too.

Although the bake didn't turn out well tonight, it tasted quite good and light. Perhaps I would revisit this recipe again after attending Gina's chiffon class later this month. Oh, I did beat the egg whites till stiff peak, I dipped the mixer in and lifted it for a look, just to be sure. I must have over-mixed the chesse mixutre, butter and flour.

Passionfruit or Lemon?

Ok, these are supposedly Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcakes. I saw them from My Culinary Journal and remembered that there was still a tub of cream cheese bread in the fridge. As I am tired from baking bread, (also not sure how we are going to finish the chocolate milk buns) I wanted to bake cake. Not that I am very good at it, but it is something so familiar to me. I started baking cakes as a teenager, although not very often then. That's why I can pick up a recipe and just bake.

While taking the butter and cream cheese out of the fridge, I saw that there were still 2 passionfruits left. I told myself to try adding some of the pulp to the cupcakes just to try. I like the result, very much. The tartness of the passionfruit balanced out the sweetness of the cupcakes. And boy, was the cupcake soft and fluffy! Guess with so much egg in so little flour, that somehow guarantees softness.

I am so grateful that I attended Gina's baking class last month. At that lesson, the butter cuddled when eggs were added. This happened for ALL the different mixing bowls. We just added flour and the cakes turned out well. The good thing about that happening in class was that when cuddling happens to me, I can still stay calm. I would simply add flour and mix, remembering not to overmix. The mixture, and the cake eventually, turned out alright tonight, like they did previously.

It's another recipe worthy of repeated attempts. It's really much faster baking cakes -- from the time I started till the time I kept the cupcakes, it took a little less than 2 hours!

Oh, only put passionfruit on 3 cupcakes. The rest are original flavoured Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcakes. This is how they look, the cake dropped a little when they were removed from the oven. While in the oven, they were as tall as the cup.

Apple Cinnamon Cupcake

In exchange for the strawberry sweetheart recipe, my SIL shared her favourite Apple Cinnamon Cupcake recipe with me. Since she swore by using baby food, I thought why not? Saved me the trouble of making my own apple sauce, besides, there isn't instructions on how to do that, as well. Finding a can of apple sauce at Sun Lik didn't change my mind to get the baby food. In all, it was my first success at making moist, soft and delicious cupcakes! Guess the proporation of butter and flour has to be almost equal to yield a succulent cupcake huh?

As I was browsing through Alex Goh's Fruity Cakes, I found a simple apple cinnamon cake recipe! With it, there is also instructions to DIY apple sauce. Although deep down I suspected that Granny Smiths should be the right ingredient, I didn't bother getting any. I used 2 Royal Gala and a Red Delicious to make the apple sauce. Let's just stick to gut feeling in future, will have to try using Granny Smith before I can conclude. The red apples took a long while to be tender and didn't yield much apple flavour in the cake. The sauce gave off a wonderful fragrance of apple and cinnamon, though. I also had to blend the apples as they refused to be mashed. But it was well worth the effort and I do need more kitchen gadgets, such as the handheld blender, yes!

I gave away more than half of the two days' bakes, and whoelse but SIL got one of the apple cakes. She just has to try this one, the texture is really good too. I hope I won't make a mess of this wonderful recipe like I did with the banana cake. I used canola oil in place of melted butter, either I had over-mixed tremendously, or oil is just not good for banana cake. So much for trying to get a healthier version.

Lusciously Moist Longan Muffins

This is a wonderful recipe, smells and taste gorgeous, if that word can be used for food. What's lacking is the taste and smell of longans. My girl commented that there wasn't enough longans in the muffins. You can find this wonderful recipe from Delicious Asian Baked Treats. I shall be making more of this, definitely.

I got the verdict for the cocoa puff cream cake today. It tasted like ice-cream cake, and I was encouraged to take orders for it. Wow! May be I should make another mango peach charlotte cake as sample also. I am sure I have enough whipping cream for these. Am I in business yet?

New Toys!

Went to Chong Trading at Adelphi yesterday and took a really long time to browse. Let's say it's NOT Pantry Magic and leave it as that. Look at what I bought though!


Heart-shaped silicon cups

Since it will be my colleague's bday tomorrow, I took the chance to bake some cupcakes. Thought I would just use the pineapple upside down cake recipe since that received good review early this week. As it turned out, I forgot to add milk and the cupcakes aren't as moist :( Hope bday girl likes it tho, I know my family could not stop eating *could be just due to novelty*