Cupcakes with Sparkle

Why be plain and boring ... when you can Sparkle!!

The Cupcake Gallery - 2D Workshop

I was going to hand this one over to my better half, the W, as she experienced this first hand. But she prefers to stick with her crocheting and baking, and left the blogging to me. Since I got to do my photography workshop a few weeks ago, it was the W's turn to pursue her passion in the form of cupcake decorating.

As big fans and long time admirers of The Cupcake Gallery's (TCCG) work we were both very excited to find out that they are starting cake decorating workshops.

When the dog bites, when the bee stings...and it's freezing cold!

Steamboat or hotpot has got to be one of my favourite things of winter (the other being the chance to wear luxury woollens)! Nothing like having a crowd of favourite people around 2 or 3 portable gas stoves or electric hotpots full of chicken or abalone stock and lots of nice things to dip into them, taking hours to cook and eat slowly and catch up with the gossip!

This one took 2 full days to organise - cleaning and decluttering the house (happy reading to the lucky person who picked up 2 years worth of Empire magazines), buying 101 ingredients, making sure all food groups (including dessert) were covered and reconfiguring every table and chair to ensure all could sit around the food!

Chicken stock on one side, abalone on the other

Thinly sliced lamb, wagyu beef, chicken, pork, calamari -

Sweet Belem - Portuguese Egg Tarts

Since moving to nearby Leichhardt, I was given a 'seek and digest' mission in Petersham to find the local Portuguese community's favourite local cake shop and eliminate a Portuguese egg tart with extreme prejudice.

Sweet Belem, named after the 'suburb' of Lisbon where these tasty treats originated, produces an array of pastries and cakes, but it is the traditional egg tarts that has everyone flocking here. Inside the shop, reminders of the motherland are abundant, including photos and paintings of Belem tower. I instantly recognise the tower, and to my horror, realise that on a trip to Lisbon years before, I had failed to locate and sample a tart from its original source.

I scan the cake display for the tarts and there is only two left on display. There is a lady in front of me and I start to get anxious. Will I miss out again? Thankfully, she is a regular and knows that there are still plenty more cooking out the back. She orders a dozen! The new batch arrives with the top layer of tarts stacked face down on top of the bottom layer.

Crazy/Wacky/Dump Cake

This one's for the allergy crew!

Our family seems to suffer from lots of allergies .. Allergies to eggs and dairy being too common which is unfortunate, as it rules out quite a few sweet things and I am all for the sweet things! Sadly that means less cake for the afflicted - though not necessarily more cake for me.

Since sharing is caring, I went in search for a cake recipe that someone with these allergies could eat and came across the recipe below. Alternately called crazy/wacky/dump cake, this cake was thought to have been developed either around World War I or perhaps the Depression, when households were subject to rationing and ingredients such as eggs and dairy were rare. Not quite sure why the cake is crazy/wacky but dump cake kinda makes sense because mostly the recipes call for the dry ingredients to be 'dumped' and mixed in the tin the cake is supposed to be baked in.

There are lots of versions of this cake on the internet - some have the occasional egg or dairy - but the recipe listed below has neither.

MiniB turns One ... and Two!

As the good Doctor says, it's all "wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff..." which is how we come to be posting MiniB's first and second birthday together! For some reason we didn't get around to posting the little one's first birthday last year but the cake and the food was so good and inventive that when we recently celebrated her second birthday we decided to do it all together and promise to be more organised in future!

Who's on First?

Playschool's Jemima and generic Butterfly Cakes

Mini Hotdogs and Mini Hamburgers

If you can't do what you imagine, then what is imagination to you?

The Opportunity: Bring in a plate of food at work in celebration of Chinese New Year.
The most prominent thing for me about Chinese New Year is colour. From red envelopes to red dates, the tear-jerking gold joss sticks, the reddish brown suckling pig, the loud fireworks and elaborate costumes of the prancing lions bursting the senses with vibrant sights, tastes and sounds. So red and gold it is.
The Evaluation: Proceeding with Mah Lai Go which is an Asian version of a sponge cake but steamed and golden. My friend's recipe's pictures looked good, but I am missing ingredients. A couple of hours were then wasted trawling through the Internet for easier recipes, even stumbling upon some aproned woman on YouTube. But seriously, who's got 2 oz of lard lying around?
Finally stumbled onto a recipe with only 3 ingredients - authored by none other than Poh from Masterchef. Her grandmother's recipe consists of self raising flour, eggs and sugar, in equal amounts. The pictures presented a snow-white cake with a bread-like texture. Am slightly worried but appearance is secondary and Poh always messes around with recipes anyway.

The Execution: The recipe was simple enough, 1 cup of each: eggs (~5), self raising flour and sugar. Probably best not to experiment with 5 eggs at a time...

Batch 1: To try achieve a more darker/golden coloured cake, I substituted with dark brown sugar first. Using an electric blender, once the sugar was added, it went everywhere. Which of course, lead to the discovery of an ant posse invasion, taking another 15 mins for them to vacate the premises.

Back to baking, home made self raising flour (also documented in the recipe) was added along with red dye then poured into silicon moulds and into the steamer with fingers crossed.

Batch 1 Result: Definitely red in colour, except they're dense... like rubbery dense...? Fail.

Batch 2: Now using caster sugar as stated from the original recipe. Also changed over to a whisk. Simon on The Cook and The Chef made stiff peaks by hand so it's definitely possible (one imagines)!

20 mins later, the eggs have multiplied in volume; more than Batch 1. Mixed in remaining ingredients and added dye to the bottom of the moulds for a change. Stick the next batch in to be steamed.



Batch 2 Result: Urgh, STILL too rubbery and wow, even uglier than before. Epic fail. It's time to admit defeat.
The Post Implementation Review:

1. Silicon moulds don't work for steaming, the moisture stays with the cake.
2. 1 egg probably doesn't equate to 1/5 cup of sugar...
3. The iPhone camera under this lighting sucks.
4. If these for whatever reason happen to fall on the floor, how high will they bounce?
5. Have never witnessed people jumping from their seats demanding Mah Lai Go at Yum Cha, why would colleagues be any more interested now?
6. Bakeries selling fresh egg tarts open early enough before work starts.

The conclusion: I imagined there was a genius baker lurking within. Failing that, following a recipe seemed simple enough. Even though what we dream and what actually eventuates may not always align, keep on experimenting.

Congratulations on the first 100 posts and here's to many hundreds more!