Cupcakes - For Kathy's MIL

I made these for my neighbour, Kathy's MIL's birthday, the design is exactly the same as the cupcakes I made for the girls' school party.

And glad she liked it.

Vanilla Cupcakes - The Girls' Joined Birthday Cupcakes

Cupcakes are easy to make, if you burnt one or two in the process, you still have the rest of the lot to fall back on. Unlike a cake, if you burnt it, you'll have to make them all over again.

I always make mine using butter vanilla flavour. My hubs and I like them plain. My girls love them decorated; here is the recipe :

♥Vanilla Cupcakes♥
Makes about 12 muffin size cupcakes, and 30 mini cupcakes

You'll need :

225g butter
225g castor sugar
225g self raising flour (sifted)
4 eggs
1tsp vanialla essence

Method :

1) Heat the oven to 180C
2) Cream butter and sugar until pale.
3) Beat in the eggs one by one, making sure it's well beaten and mixed before adding the next.
4) Add in vanilla essence.
5) Stir in self raising flour.
6) Spoon batter into cupcake casing.
7) Bake cupcake for 20minutes in oven or until done.

(You can also bake a 20cm round cake using the above recipe, but the baking time will be ~55mins).

For my daughters' recent joined birthday celebration in school, I made sixty over cupcakes, and that's double of the above amount, and I used store bought sugar flower (which tasted rather corn-starchy) for decoration.

Mermaid Cake for Zara's 5th Birthday

My 5 year old is very into mermaids these days; ask her who her favourite princess is, and she'll say it's Ariel; and she always pretends to be one by 'swimming' (more like slithering actually) around the house with a cloth over her legs (that's her tail).

For her 5th birthday, I decided to make her a cake with mermaid figurines and undersea creatures using fondant. This is my first attempt doing figurines and it took me a while to get the mermaid done. Unfortunately, the 1st mermaid figure that I made melted, I blame it on the hot and humid weather. This did not dampant my spirit, and I made a replacement, but I wasn't confident in making any sea creatures.

This is her cake covered in fondant and topped with a mermaid, surrounded by cupcakes for the children.

I used Pettinice ready to roll fondant, and it tasted much much better.

Fairy Cupcakes For Zara's 4th Birthday Party

Cupcakes are great for parties; as the individual cake makes serving convenient, even more so when there are children among the guests.

For my daughter's 4th birthday, I was looking around for someone who could make nice looking cupcakes for a reasonable price. I needed about 60 of them, it would cost me a lot if the cupcakes were priced RM5 or RM8 per piece.

Eventually, I decided to make them myself, and decorate them using butter cream frosting.

(Btw, I prior to this, I made a batch of cream cheese frosting just to try out the taste, but no one in the family liked it, so butter cream frosting it was.)

Here is the recipe for butter cream frosting :

You'll need :
240g (1cup) butter
300g (3 cups) icing/confectioner's sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
1 to 2 tbs whipping cream

Method :

1) Whisk together sugar and butter on low speed until well blended then increase speed to medium and beat for another 3mins.
2) Add vanilla and cream and continue to beat on medium for another minute or more, adding more cream for spreading consistency.

There's no raw egg (salmonella?) nor shortening (composition is close to plastic?) involved, but just butter and sugar, and hence the frosting is a little more sweet than those you find in shops.

My daughter called them her fairy cakes.