Summer is here…

Posted on May 24, 2012 by

Summer (almost) officially begins as school ends (for Kindergarten in our city) and Memorial Day weekend is coming up!

Truth is, it has been around 80-s already in our city these few weeks, with exception of this week and possibly early next week, where we might get ‘water spit’.  That’s right!  ’Water spit’.  You’d wonder why I call it ‘water spit’.  See, we live in Columbia Basin area, where we scarcely get REAL rain but ‘spitting’ from the sky.  Now, we’re “good” with wind that many people who come to Richland, WA for works were/are not too excited about it and would leave because they can’t handle such “wind” that we have a term of “Termination Wind” (though the economy and job opportunity is good here:)lol).  Plus there will be tumbleweeds and sagebrush running around everywhere, including on the highway, trying to scratch your smooth car or just hitching underneath your car!  Really, it would make you feel the real “Wild-Wild-West” ambiance.

Okay, need to stop talking too much about the weather but the main objective:)  This time, my yellow roses inspire me for a cake project.  Summertime, English Ivy and yellow roses, are just my dreamy thought when I designed this…

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Green Tea Vanilla Cake

Posted on May 17, 2012 by

As I planned, I want to share the green tea vanilla recipe, plus sharing my own modification of vanilla cake recipe.

Most of the time, I love mixing my cake batter on simmering water to help enhance the incorporation of the mix and the softness/moist of the cake. But for this recipe, I just copied the way Hershey’s does to its famous chocolate cake recipe: using hot water.  Now, when you are going to do “Green Tea Vanilla Cake” (pictured in that post), just add two to three tablespoon of shifted matcha (Green Tea powder).

Ingredients:

2 C of cake flour

1 C very-fine sugar (Baker’s sugar)

3/4 C well-shifted buttermilk

1 tsp double acting baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

2/3 C + 2 tbsp canola oil

1/2 C hot water

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 325 degree F,

In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt

In mixer bowl, whip eggs on high speed until white-ish yellow (about 1 minute).  Gradually spoon sugar to egg, waiting until each mix incorporates well before adding next.  Keep mixing until it’s white and fluffy (about 3 minutes using stand mixer), then trickle vanilla and oil while keep mixing it until well-blended.

Reduce the mixer speed to medium, gradually add dry ingredients, alternate with buttermilk, spoon by spoon, giving chance to mix well before next pouring.  When it’s all mixed nicely, then trickle hot water (not too fast or the water will splash outside).  Continue mixing until the batter is perfectly mixed.

Pour into pans or lined cupcake pans, bake for 12 to 13 minutes (depends on the oven) or until no batter stuck on the stick inserted into the cakes.

Cool on the cooling rack before serve or decorated.  Enjoy!

Note: add the shifted green tea powder (matcha) to the dry ingredients, to make green-tea vanilla cupcake.  You can also reduce the buttermilk into half a cup instead of 3/4 cup if you wish less buttermilk-y flavor cakes. Then instead of using vanilla extract, add a teaspoon of coconut flavor extract into the batter together with oil.

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Mother’s Day Cupcakes

Posted on May 13, 2012 by

After I finally found the most satisfying vanilla cake/cupcakes recipe that yields to a fluffy, rich and moist but not too sweet cake, I made my Mother’s Day vanilla cupcakes with it.  Reading and studying many-many vanilla cake recipes (as well as some white wedding cake), I came to the decision to make my own version, to add to the ones I already know, with consideration to some customers who crave for the same kind of fluffy cakes as I do:)

They look so awesome and took me only exactly 12 minutes per 12 cupcakes to bake (1 standard cupcake/muffin pan) and came out perfect!

When they are cool, I brushed with vanilla syrup to add moist and flavor and decorated them for all Mothers…

Happy Mother’s Day!

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Early of the Year’s Sum Up

Posted on May 3, 2012 by

I have not been very active lately.  Plenty excuses (as always).  First off, we went for travel to Asia for few weeks and when we got home, not only cleaning and “recuperating” that took the time, but mostly because of sickness.  Yes, icky-cold/flu and cough, starting from my darling hubby and kiddos, then myself.  Each of us took quite several weeks to recover.  Boy am I glad we are through with those!

I thought I would go “back to business”.  But then my faithful little laptop hung up on me.  After some years of use and abuse, it gave up.  Shot dead!  Poor thing!  Right in the middle of my work, too! Arrghh… so I had to wait few days until we got this new ‘buddy’ of mine.  Then my big PC “showed off”.  It’s been acting like that since first year we bought but I never thought that a two-and-half year old would do crazy stuff that I lost some datas on it! Then I WAS in troubles.  I had to bring it to Geek Squad then they told me it would took several weeks to find out.  Arrgghh… Can’t work without any computers and I felt I was back in the “dark ages”.  I wish we did not give away our other PC just yet, even though it’s a ten-year old one, as I bet it would give me some relieve even for two hours work or something.  Once again, I (almost) inched up to get things back in order including re-installing softwares I needed to work with.  Hopefully things will get organized back from now on.

Now, ’nuff said about these troubles and stuff, let’s talk cakes here.  Here are some pics of cakes I had made recently (minus those I did not have time to capture).  Any visit anywhere is always inspiring.  So did the visit to Asia.  Some of the inspirations is green tea.  Yes.  How tasty (and healthy) to add it into your food.  So I made green-tea vanilla cake with coconut extract as additional flavor.  I really hope I can get back tomorrow to add the recipe of vanilla-green-tea cake here.

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Flower Power

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

These cakes were ordered by my aunt for her two girlfriends who share the same birthday.  They are white wedding cake and cupcakes with strawberry filling and rich chocolate cake and cupcakes with chocolate cream frosting.  As always, when customer request certain or specific flavor, I’d love to honor his/her wish and make it as delicious closest to their taste as possible. So, since my aunt requested an almond flavor on both cakes, I added amaretto liquor to substitute the flavoring on the frosting as well as brushing 3 tablespoon of the liquor on the cake layers and on the cupcakes. Yumm… I love the flavor and the smell… liquor always brings that certain delicious aroma to cakes and not to mention the taste!

Now the decoration was based on my aunt’s request as well.  I bet just like me, she’s so into the mood of spring (who doesn’t).  So, we’re doing pretty flowers (thank you AT for making me doing these:)!) with gum paste, fondant and  buttercream frosting.

Another thing I am excited to share about is the fact I’m now officially hooked-on to my Cricut Cartridge Cupcake Wrappers!!  I just love monkeying-around with that stuff and now I’ve found the right size for mini cupcake, regular size cupcake that uses regular liners or cupcakes that use the snack cup.  My kids got too much fun that they wanted to cut all of my scrapbook papers available for making cupcake liners:)lol.  On my previous cake-cupcake set (Life’s (not) Black n White) I also used the Cricut cartridge cupcake wrapper design to make those pretty black and white liners.  How fun:)

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Life’s (not) Black and White

Posted on January 28, 2012 by

The simplicity and beauty of monochromatic colors…

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Jammin’ Fruit Jellies…

Posted on January 18, 2012 by

It’s snowing outside and the best therapy to keep me off of the ‘whitish winter-blues’ is by doing something fun. Right now my toddler is still up so it’s kinda hard to do ‘serious’ work in the kitchen, so I decided to just sit in front of computer while ‘watching the news’ on FB:)

I was thinking of what to put here since I’m not yet done with my baking project for the week. Then I remember that I haven’t put up my Canning project that was done last Fall.

The apples we got from a nearby farm that allows you to “pick-yourself” and got bags of them. It’s fun to go there anyway. My son got a ride, both of them could run around and helped picking the apples and ride on the farm’s tractor. With these we could make Apple Pie Filling (that I gave as Christmas presents to friends and relatives) and Sparkling Apple Jelly as well. I also made Grape Jelly which some of them we got from someone at church then the rest was the surplus (frozen) from our previous home backyard harvest.

In December, I also made two jars (pint) of Spiced Pineapple Jam which I needed for my pineapple cookies filling (Nastar). Half of one jar was used and I still have half for next project and I could store the other jar safely to be used later on (Yay! Don’t have to make it for several projects!:)) I will post the recipe for the Spiced Pineapple Jam later on…

Below is my scrapbook of some of pics I took at the orchard/farm using Beeclip.  I love using this feature, especially when you haven’t got chance to scrapbook your latest pics or you just decide you want to forget the traditional way and want to go digital.

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