Oooohhhh, Toffee is GOOD!

A little food porn before bedtime:

Buttery vanilla cake, topped with vanilla bean-dotted buttercream, then drizzled with rich, I mean, RICH, toffee sauce.

See the vanilla beans again? I am obsessed with them.

Cakes for Cousin Song

I have so many fanciful cupcake recipes - rosewater cupcakes with lychee buttercream, green tea cupcake with azuki-swirled buttercream, for instance - in my repertoire but I find that what people like, what they crave for, are the ones they are most familiar with, the ones that are straightforward and simple, like vanilla cakes and of course, chocolate ones.

I asked Cousin Song what she wanted for her wedding and she said without a pause and a big smile, "The simple nice ones." And the lovely bride got what she wanted - Nutella, raspberry and chocolate cupcakes. I was a little worried about people getting sick of eating the same old thing again and again but to my surprise, they all enjoyed the cakes and even went back for seconds.   :)

Love the way the vanilla-dotted cream looks and love the taste even more. Nothing beats the real thing. The little brown blot on the cream was the result of my clumsiness as I arranged the cakes on the Wilton stand.

Two Cakes for Two Types of Dessert Lovers

I am sure you have heard variations of this before: there are two types of dessert lovers in the world - one who loves chocolate and one who loves citrusy stuff.

To satisfy the two types of dessert lovers, I baked not one but two types of cakes for my grandmother's birthday: a deep dark chocolate banana cake for the cocoa-philes and not exactly a lemon cake but an equally tart and sweet mango-passionfruit cake.

The chocolate banana cake has a base of crispy-crunchy milk chocolate royaltine, followed by a layer of sour cream-muscovado sugar chocolate sponge (yum! if I may say it myself!) and layers of chocolate mousse laced with banana slices. I contemplated soaking the chocolate sponge with a rum syrup but eventually decided against it as children and of course, my granny would be eating this.

Much as I love chocolate, I would never say no to fruit based cakes. Passionfruit cake is my absolute favourite as the aroma of the wrinkly purple fruit is just intoxicating. I layered this cake with passionfruit mousse and added mango cubes to the mousse for some bite. The top is made from swirls of luscious mango slices. The taste is sweet and slight tart at the same time. Simply refreshing!

Cakes for a Sweet Little Girl

I made these lovely chocolate cupcakes for a sweet little girl's birthday.

Cupcakes are such comfort food. I will never get sick of them! :)  No matter how chic the presentation is, behind the fanciful designs and colourful (that include some dreadful artificially-coloured ones) cream, it represents what we love most as a child - a cute cake, complete with frosting, petite and neat enough to fit into our hands yet big enough to satisfy the sweet tooth.

These cakes were made with my favourite Valrhona cocoa powder and vegetable oil which yielded wonderfully moist but fluffy crumb. I topped it with ganache and a little marzipan bee.

These are Nutella cupcakes. Basically, a buttery vanilla cake filled with oozy Nutella and topped with vanilla bean-dotted buttercream and crunchy Valrhona chocolate beads. Yum!

The pink one peeping out from the top right hand corner is a raspberry cupcake. I personally love love love this one as the pink raspberry buttercream balances the rich cake PERFECTLY.

Here's another picture. Don't you just love the vibrant pink cream, tinted only by raspberry puree and absolutely nothing else!