Christmas is HERE!

I love December.

Even though the weather can sometimes be cold and damp, I can't help feeling warm and fuzzy inside when I hear cheery Christmas songs. I love the month also because of all the activities and excitement happening in my kitchen.

The Christmas season is the season to be generous and my dad had always make sure that our Christmases are sweet with log cakes, fruit cakes (despite the mockery some make of fruit cakes, I love my dad's fruit cakes. They are generously studded, loaded with rum-soaked dried fruits and when sliced, they look like a piece of colourful stained glass, with the cherries and raisin and peels... mmmm...) and stollen! Yum!

I can't remember when I started to assume some of the cake baking duties. I made fruit cakes some years ago and though they tasted okay to me, they just lacked that certain je ne sais quoi which my dad's cakes have. I baked stollen another year and let's just say that I will let my dad continue with his stollen baking.

This year, I dragged my dad into the kitchen and we made log cakes together for the first time. I have baked log cakes before by myself but never with the REAL baker himself. The one pictured above is the classic chocolate log cake - chocolate sponge roll with whipped cream and covered generously with dark chocolare ganache (seriously dark as I whipped out my 73% dark chocolate).

It's old-fashioned but just the way I like it - with real solid good ingredients and nothing gimmicky. And it is the act of sharing something sweet that makes it taste even better!

Presenting... the Gula Melaka Cake!

The six words which I had been hearing everyday at work, ever since I innocently accepted a gift of oh-so fragrant gula melaka from Malacca - "where is the gula melaka cake?!"

I jokingly endured months before I could finally find the time to bake the cake. I was let off the hook when I presented my food-crazy colleagues with my version of Alice Medrich's  (oh, how I love love love Alice!) fabulous coconut palm cream cake.

As I am not genetically programmed to follow instructions (well, not even Alice's sometimes), I decreased the amount of white sugar and instead of 3/4 cup of milk, I used 1/2 cup of coconut milk and 1/4 cup of milk. The smell emitting from the oven was amazing when the cake was baking. The taste was even more incredible. It was oh-so fragrant, moist and did I mention, it smelled and tasted amazing!

As the cake was rich by itself (the recipe did require 180g butter!), I presented it plain as a loaf cake with no cream filling which I felt, would complicate the rustic taste of the cake.

Everyone raved about this cake and told me that this should be my signature cake! Haha... Maybe!

Cupcake Decorating Class for a Birthday Party

I conducted a cupcake decorating class for a bunch of 4-7 year-olds last Sunday at Sol Restaurant. A great friend of mine, J approached me to do the class for her son's 6th birthday. I must say when I heard that there were 18 kids at the party, I was half expecting the theme of the party, Colour Zoo, to come alive! Well, you know, rowdy kids + cakes and fondant = chaos and mess. 

To my pleasant surprise, the children were polite, orderly and some of them were so sweet. I had the most fantastic and rewarding time, and I definitely look forward to doing this again!

Each of the child got to decorate two cupcakes. They would choose the animals they would like to make from the sample display I had (created by my talented best-est friend, SM), and would mold and roll out the fondant with my guidance. They would then eat one of their masterpieces at the restaurant and take the other home. I love it when the children looked so proud and excited as they showed their parents the finished product.

Of all the animals I had made, I love the pig and lion best. The kids, on the other hand, loved the blue elephant and most of them choose to "make" an elephant cupcake.

Here's a pic of the birthday boy, getting ready to blow his candles. Happy 6th birthday, Xiang!  :)

Deep, Dark and Sensual

With tender, fluffy and moist chocolate cake, and satiny, glossy ganache, these chocolate cakes were seriously, SERIOUSLY, dark and deeply chocolaty. 

They tasted so decadent but I felt only half the guilt when I devoured two at one seating! You see, they were vegan cupcakes, made without diary and eggs. The silky, yummy ganache was made with silken tofu and a dash of soy milk. The recipe was taken from a wonderful book called "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World".

A more discerning palate would pick up the hint of soy but other than that, the ganache was thick, fudgy and delivered a mighty hit of chocolate.

I dare so after trying this, there is no reason to go back to regular chocolate cupcakes again. Just imagine, feeling half the guilt and getting a protein dose when savouring a cupcake! What can be better than that!? :)

Little Blue Elephant for K's 1st Birthday!

One look at the picture and it would be clear that the theme of the party is blue polka dots! I love polka dots in all sizes and colours! They are whimsical and childlike but at the same time, oh-so sophisticated.


K's first birthday celebration took place at the Botanic Gardens on a Sunday. Mummy and Daddy K put in a lot of effort to organise a lovely afternoon for all the guests. There were little beautiful handmade windmills, nostalgic toys for the children to play with and a bunch of colourful balloons which my son had accidentally released into the sky. That was quite a hilarious incident!


I was not sure about the birthday boy, but I was sure that Mummy K, my colleague loves polka dots and elephant!   :)   I made this little blue elephant out of marzipan and due to our hot and humid weather, the elephant has spent a couple of nights with me in my air-conditioned room.  In line with the theme of the party, I made the polka dot cupcake stand and loved it so much, I wanted to make the same thing, except in pink polka dot for my girl's first birthday.

Like I mentioned earlier, the most simple flavours are always the most popular. For K's birthday, I made chocolate, raspberry and Nutella cakes, and decorated the chocolate ones with my favourite marzipan bumble bees.

That's the birthday boy in orange and white stripes. He was a wee bit grumpy that day as I guess he was not familiar with most of the people around him. 


Happy Birthday K! I hope you grow up strong, healthy and happy!  :)

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!