Blooming Garden Cupcake – luscious devil’s food cupcake frosted with slightly sweetened whipped cream and decorated with marshmallow flowers. Price available upon request.
my sweet, edible flower garden
Wow, it’s been a while since my last post as I had been busy with projects here and there. And with the holidays creeping around the corner, the days ahead will no doubt increasingly turn hectic.
This is actually the very first decorated cupcake I made. In our house, chocolate rules so I baked my foolproof devil’s food cake into cupcakes. I saw the decoration in a magazine and I decided to adapt it as well. Since I dislike powdered sugar-based buttercream, I used slightly sweetened whipped cream tinted green. The flowers are made of snipped marshmallows and the life-like butterflies are made of wafer paper—entirely edible, as I want all my cupcake decors to be. You can either print them on wafer paper with a special printer using food colors as inks or you can buy printed designs from a cake decorating supply store. However, I had a bad experience with the store from where I got my butterflies so I will not be revealing which store this is. Sorry!
Notwithstanding the unpleasant shopping episode, the cupcakes are wonderful to look at and divine to eat!
November 14th, 2008
New York Style Blueberry Cheesecake(lette) – bite-sized silken cheesecake with lemony notes and a dollop of blueberry topping. Price available upon request.
my blueberry nights
I had these bricks of Philadelphia cream cheese that I had been intending to use for a green tea project. I was deep in my tests for green tea cupcakes and I was thinking what icing to use. I decided on a green tea cream cheese frosting. It tasted ok but the flavor of green tea completely dissolved the next day. With this result, I put the project on hold. I just didn’t realize that only a few days were left before my cream cheese reaches it’s “best before” date.
On the brink of the dreaded date, my pediatrician sister C._ mentioned to me that she needed to bring food for their meeting. What perfect timing! I volunteered to bake a cheesecake for her—New York style cheesecake with blueberry topping. To avoid the fuss of cutting the full-scale cake into portions, I baked the cheesecake in a lined cupcake pan. And instead of the usual graham cracker base, I used rosquillos, those round crisp biscuits that Cebu is famous for.
I wanted to add whipped cream rosettes on top of each miniature cheesecake but I felt that would have been too much. With or without the whipped cream, these are darling gems—creamy smooth, not too sweet and with a hint of lemon. I baked these again and substituted some butter cookies for the rosquillos as it was out of stock in my local supermarket.
C._ said her colleagues gobbled up the cheesecakelettes in no time. And it helped that they were just the perfect fit for any hungry mouth!
November 14th, 2008
