Rainbow Candy Theme Birthday

The birthday girl had change ofmind from Pirate Princess party to Rainbow theme. My sister was crazy enough to make those bright colorful circle fans for the backdrop for the entire night after we finished with the cake. Cray cray but I guess we will do anything to make our children happy even if we lose our sleep.

I would make more sweeties for my niece but with less than a month baby and breastfeeding timetable, I didn't want to be ambitious to volunteer to the job. My sister found a talented baker, Sugarbites Bake Shoppe, to do the ombre cake, caupcakes and macarons.

Joie 100th Days! Best Yellow Cake + Hazelnut & Milo Frosting

Followed Yellow Layer cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen and I have to say this is really really good! Yum yum...

hazelnut spread

Usually I make 2 types of frosting - the regular icing sugar buttercream and Swiss meringue buttercream. The icing sugar is overly sweet and for Swiss meringue, I usually use Wilton's pasteurized meringue egg white powder and it has a fake smell that I don't favor even if I add Madgascar vanilla paste. I wanted a sightly better option and I decided to try the buttercream with flour. 

It looked easy. I tried with the all natural, unbleached, gluten-free Bob's Mill AP flour. I failed. Lesson learnt- follow the instructions for first tries.

Whipping the new batch of frosting to a good consistency, I cheated with this - sublime hazelnut spread, added Milo and Hersey's cocoa powder. Ohhhhhh.... it taste great!

Best Yellow Layer Cake

Yield: Two 9-inch round, 2-inch tall cake layers, and, in theory, 22 to 24 cupcakes, two 8-inch squares or a 9×13 single-layer cake 

4 cups plus 2 tablespoons (480 grams) cake flour (not self-rising)
2 teaspoons (10 grams) baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon (5 grams) table salt
2 sticks (1 cup, 1/2 pound or 225 grams) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups (400 grams) sugar
2 teaspoons (10 ml) pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups buttermilk (475 ml), well-shaken
Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter two 9-inch round cake pans and line with circles of parchment paper, then butter parchment. (Alternately, you can use a cooking spray, either with just butter or butter and flour to speed this process up.)
Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well and scraping down the bowl after each addition. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined (mixture will look curdled). Add flour mixture in three batches, mixing until each addition is just Incorporated.
Spread batter evenly in cake pan, then rap pan on counter several times to eliminate air bubbles. (I like to drop mine a few times from two inches up, making a great big noisy fuss.) Bake until golden and a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes. Cool in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then run a knife around edge of pan. Invert onto rack and discard parchment, then cool completely, about 1 hour.

Frosting Ingredients

• 5 Tablespoons Flour
• 1 cup Milk
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 cup Butter
• 1 cup Granulated Sugar (not Powdered Sugar!)

Preparation Instructions

Bake your favorite chocolate cake and let it cool.
In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens. You want it to be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix is. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. (If I’m in a hurry, I place the saucepan over ice in the sink for about 10 minutes or so until the mixture cools.) It must be completely cool before you use it in the next step. Stir in vanilla.
While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. You don’t want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. If it and fluffy. You don’t want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. If it looks separated, you haven’t beaten it enough! Beat it until it all combines and resembles whipped cream. Grab a spoon and taste this wonderful goodness. If there is any left after your taste test, spread it on a cooled chocolate cake.
Cut yourself a piece and put it on a pretty plate. Grab a fork and prepare to experience the most divine pairing you can imagine. This frosting on chocolate cake is to die for. Sure, the recipe sounds strange — it has flour in it — but it’s sublime. Try it, you’ll see. You’ll love it so much you won’t go back.

 

Baby K 1st Birthday - Travel Around The World Party

Its all in the details and my sis love doing all the decor details by herself. Here's my niece's, K's 1st birthday pictures and the theme is Around the World

Welcome table decor

Globe, framed world art map, family pictures, party hats, and a mini luggage

Candies for little guest

3d and balloon decor by Fairy Floss

My sis own decor. Cake stands, candy jars, and other decor were sourced online. The vintage balloon can be sourced by FB sellers, such as Shiori. Cake and cupcakes by Cupcake Moment.

Crayola goody-bags for the little guests

Manye (Full Month) Hamper

This is part of 2011 images that finally I get to post them up on this blog now.
From a lovely lady and friend - Cupcake Moment

A cupcake tote bag

Look at the cuties! 2 rabbits (for year of rabbit)

More goodies inside...

Jars of cookies and sweets, scented candle, and cupcake

Gotta Snap a close-up pic before my kid snatch it up

A Korean 1Year Old Birthday

This was my niece's birthday in Seoul and it took place in 2010 December. The Koreans celebrate their 1 year old birthdays festively and my niece's birthday was done elegantly in hotel ballroom with close family friends and relatives. We had sit down dinner and it proceeded with the career picking items before my brother-in-law, his wife and baby, cut the cake.

Reception table

Baby pictures on the reception table

Goody bags for guests to take home after the event

Proud parents

Birthday cake and sweets

A tray for the baby to choose before cutting the cake.

The item she picks will determine what career path she will be in during adulthood. The items placed (clockwise) banker, designer, cook, teacher, lawyer, or doctor.

Traditional rice cakes for guests

Decorative cupcakes

Birthday Party Dessert Table Setting

Setting up the table and using whatever I have to display: cake stands, mixing bowls to elevate plates, pop corn machine (went kaput), music box, photo frame and cupcake cookie jar.

Inviting only family, the dessert menu is small- raspberry peach tart, strwaberry-chocolate cupcakesm chocolate ice cream cake, which was not pretty as it melted but its a great ice cream cake from Rose Levy's Rose Heavenly Cake book. Scroll down for basic Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe.

The top green and pink was just a practice dummy cake (styrofoam base). The rest are: White Peach and Raspberry Tart with Pistachio Frangipane, Mini Devil's Food Cupcakes with vanilla cream, and Strawberry combo Devil's Food Cupcakes were given away as favors.
The pink cupcake boxes are from RM Boxes which I had them shipped from Philippines. I have no problems with local made cupcake boxes but I wanted pretty colors which RM Boxes makes.

White Peach and Raspberry Tart with Pistachio Frangipane can be found here.

A fantastic Devil's Food Cupcake with Cream Filling, a favorite amongst friends who tried, can be found here.
Strawberry Cupcakes- I wanted to use fresh strawberries for both frosting and cakes and found this recipe here.
I wanted to surprise the little ones with the cupcake flavors, so instead of getting just chocolate, they get strawberry plus vanilla filling. Since the Strawberry cupcakes recipe calls for a longer baking time, it goes on the bottom layer then the Devil's Food recipe. I made the frosting out of scratch using fool proof recipe by own instinct.

Basic Vanilla Buttercream Frosting
Working with 1/2 C butter at room temperature, whipped it till a little fluffy, add about 1C sifted icing sugar (it will be easier if you sift big batch of icing sugar and work as you go) till the frosting looks firm, add about 1/4 C whipped cream to soften the frosting, another 1/2C icing sugar, strawberry sauce, about 1 tsp of pasteurized egg white powder, and more icing sugar to have a consistency for piping.

Basic Vanilla Ice Cream
We love ice cream and there's not an affordable ice cream maker to be found in Jakarta. I bought mine in Pantry magic and it is a big investment, which I have to make full use of. The recipe book provided in the Cuisineart Ice Cream maker was not satisfying so I searched one that I like and adopted the recipe with slight changes.
My Ice Cream Recipe:
2C whipping cream, 2C full cream milk, 3 egg yolks, 1/2C sugar, generous drizzle of honey (optional), about 1 tsp or more of vanilla paste

1. Simmer the cream, milk and half of the sugar.
2. In a large bowl, beat the yolks with the rest of the sugar till lighten in color. Slowly pour the hot cream into bowl and whisk it with vanilla. Pour back the cream and egg mix into the pan and warm it in medium heat, till it thickened or coat the back of the spoon. Add honey to taste. Be careful not to boil the custard.
3. Strain the custard into a big bowl and place the bowl in ice bath to cool down the custard. Occasionally whisk the custard about 5min.
4. Churn into ice cream machine accordingly.

options:
For Yogurt Ice Cream, add Greek Yogurt into the custard after cool down from ice bath and before pouring into the ice cream machine.
For Chocolate Bits Ice Cream, drizzle in melted chocolate (melted from double boiler) when the ice cream is almost done.
For Strawberry Bits Ice Cream, chopped the strawberries into small bits, and toss the strawberries in sugar and lemon juice and leave in about 15min to marinate. When the ice cream is almost done, pour in the strawberries in.

Chloe's Birthday Cake

Making Chloe's, my very good friend's child's birthday cake was fun for me, even if it was time consuming, I love how everything turn out to be. I tried to draft out how I wanted the cake to be but I just went with the flow and decorate with whatever I had in my cabinets.


Used alphabet cookie cutter for Chloe's name on fondant, painted them with petal dust and glitter. Added fondant daisies (bought China made daisy cutter; fondant cutters and decoration tools can be really steep investments) and glued crystals (again its China made crystals - less than $5 for 144pcs) leftover from Baby J's manyue cake. I really like the effect of little daisies on the alphabet.
The daisies on the cake were first glued using edible glue but after being exasperatingly gluing them, I resorted to use UHU. The hot pink large ribbon was used to cover imperfections of the fondant base and I added more crystals and glued them using double tape.

Oh, I forgot to mention- the fondant cake base is styrofoam so no kids or anyone is eating the cake. Happy Birthday candles were bought from Daisho.
The fondant butterflies are time consuming- dry the cut out butterflies, paint the colors and coat/line the edges with gold dust, then finalize it by putting each butterfly above hot water steam so the colors set and doesn't stain the cupcakes.

Devil's Food Cupcakes and flower petal icing technique learnt from YouTube's goodtoknowcouk. Americolor food gel coloring purchased from Singapore's Bake It Yourself store.

Purchased white cupcake boxes from Loyang or you can try Arkenzy Box.

Cupcakes

Baking is a joy, decorating is something that requires practice and making nice cupcakes for family and friends is something I just picked up. There's so many wonderful blogs with beautiful pictures and great recipes and I am still testing out both recipes and decoration too.

Easy decoration with sprinkles

Piping with 104 Wilton petals and fondant butterflies

Mini Oreo cupcakes with mini Japanese Oreos