Cupcake bakeries ~ is taking over the world and your bank balance not going hand-in-hand?

I love baking (obviously) even though I don't have that much time to do it nowadays.

Anyway, who in the baking world does not know of the cupcake phenomenon? Or is it a cupcake fad? Personally, I can't see it much as a fad because cupcakes to me translate as "portion control" for the sweets lovers. Besides, you can pick many different flavours in small portions rather than one cake with one flavour.

However, it scares me to read that the famous US cupcake bakery Crumbs made only $34,400 profit in the latest quarter after a turnover of $9.7 million. In the year before, it made $219,500 on a turnover of $7.1 million. Huh?!!

Read it here.

Crumbs Bakery Peanut Butter Cup Cupcake.....hmm....looks good.
Reason given is the rising overhead cost due to their expansion. So, is it worth it to have your brand name/branch everywhere? Sometimes, maybe it is not. It is difficult to maintain standards in mass production (Trust me, I'm a factory worker).

Chocolate Chip Cupcake with Peanut Butter Frosting from the Coffee Beans & Tea Leaf cafe. Yummy too. The cupcake is dense like soft cookies.

Maybe good things really should come in small packages :-)

My first Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes

I did it! I did my first Vegan baking on Friday night. It's Vanilla Soymilk Cupcakes. Totally vegan. Not that I'm a vegan but I've always been curious about vegan cakes. How good could they get without the eggs?

Here is the recipe I did.

Vegan Vanilla Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup soymilk (I actually used sweetened commercial soymilk in a bottle)
1/2 tbs sugar cane vinegar (you may use any type of clear vinegar I think)
1/4 cup vegetable oil (all I had was cheap palm cooking oil)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Mix together the dry ingredients in a bowl. I like to use a whisk here.
2. Pour the vinegar into the soymilk, stir a little to mix it and let it curdle.
3. Pour the oil into the soymilk mixture and stir well.
4. While still stirring the soymilk/oil mixture, pour it into the dry mixture.
5. Carefully mix it all together till there is no lump.
(I am scared of over-mixing because of previous gluten disaster cake batter)
6. Fill up your cupcake liners of choice.
7. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 deg C or 340 deg F for about 15 mins.

I managed to yield 9 cupcakes on a Standard-size Cupcake liners. About 3 1/4 oz size.

The texture is pretty fluffy for an eggless cuppie.
It will never be a sponge cake but not as dense and heavy as I expected it to be.

How did it turn out?

1. The milk thing

I think the kind of milk you use will affect how this cupcake will taste. My cupcake tasted like soymilk. I know some vegans avoid any soy which I will never understand why. It's one of my favourite drinks since I was a kid along with chrysanthemum tea, sugar cane juice, lychee, grass jelly. I haven't yet tasted almond milk or rice milk but I'm sure what those taste would greatly define the final cupcakes if you want to eat unfrosted.

2. Light sweet tooth

There is something that feels really light about this. There is no rich taste of the normal recipe with eggs and cow's milk. The egg and dairy cakes are rich and delicious but to an average person, after 2 or 3 cupcakes, you have to stop. It gets too much. With this vegan cupcake, I found myself easily putting 4 cupcakes into my mouth and not feeling this was too much. They were like sweet bread to my tongue. Meaning it will be much easier to pair this cupcake with any frosting you want.

3. Texture and all

What happened when I tried to peel off the cupcake liner right after baking.
The cake got peeled off too. Ha..ha!

Look at the cake ending up on the liner!
The cake is moist. Very moist. The oil and soymilk must have done it good :-)

4. Better after they cooled down in a few hours or the next day.

This is the cupcake the day after.
The cake did not come off like it did when peeled off hot.

The inner texture. Better than some of my non-vegan cupcakes.

I think I have made something non-vegan similar to this .
If I can achieve the same result minus the eggs, then I think I would rather go for the Vegan version. More convenient and less calories.


It looked and tasted better the next day. Soft and moist.

5. Why vegan baking appeals to me?

Eggs are tricky to keep fresh if you don't have a fridge. I would rather fill up my mini fridge with fruits. Butter is too expensive and also take up space in the fridge but we have plenty of cooking oil in stock everyday. I haven't yet tried things like Canola Oil and the likes but other than Peanut Oil , I think most oils are pretty much tasteless.

6. Would I make them again?

YES! Definitely.

Just when I thought I was a cake wrecker, I saw Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa cake....

Just when I thought only an amateur like me can wreck a cake, I recently discovered this lady from the Food Network who actually gives me hope that anyone can have a cooking show. Ha...ha...funny is I read that she attended the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu. None other than Sandra Lee!

Of course her show is not aired in my country but hey, that's the beauty of the Internet. Thanks to so many people on blogs on video sites, I was able to see the cake that made her famous in the wrong way. Anthony Bourdain referred to it as a "TV atrocity that can burn your eyes" or something like that.

Sandra Lee's notorious Kwanzaa Cake!
Despite her good intentions, sticking the big candles directly into the cake like that just make me think .....eeww

From what I understand Kwanzaa is an African-American celebration and the word comes from a Swahili phrase "matunda ya kwanza" which means "first fruits". Hmm....so that explains the red and green candles to me. Ok. WikiAnswers states that "the colors are of the African flag (bendera): black for the people, red for their struggle, and green for the future and hope that comes from their struggle." So that clears it.

The cake is basically an Angel Food Cake baked in a Bundt pan. So, Sandra poured in Apple fillings in the middle because Bundt cakes have holes in the middle. She also covered the cake with Chocolate Frosting. Since she used ready-made stuff, I am sure the Chocolate Frosting must have been super sweet the way Americans usually make theirs. I normally halve the sugar content in a typical American frosting recipe. It's that sweet. Then, she sprinkled around some nuts and grains. I'm not sure what those were really. Looked like peanuts to me.

A Bundt pan
(Picture: Wikimedia)

In all honesty, I don't think the cake would taste bad especially if one has an awfully sweet tooth. As for me, I do love Apple fillings very much. However, the way she puts things together is really odd to me.

Anyway, I've seen quite a volume of her work after I stumbled upon that Kwanzaa cake and I have to agree with many that her recipes are certainly not something I am looking forward to trying at all.

However, to give her justice, I do find something I like about Ms. Sandra. Her kitchens!

Isn't the kitchen fabulous? So girly and cute in pinks and lime green.


This one is fab too! Pastel candy like a life-size Barbie kitchen set.
Thanks to foodnetworkhumour for this.

Ms. Sandra Lee. She may make unappetizing recipes but I'd love to be in her girly kitchens any day. Ha...ha..!

Hello Kitty buttercream cake for my niece

As my baby niece was approaching 1 year old, I was quite excited to try to make a girly cake. She has shown a lack of liking for dolls and figurines, so a Barbie cake was out.

Then, I saw this video from this Portuguese cake decorator I subscribe to on YouTube. Looked simple enough. So, I thought I'd give it a try. A Hello Kitty cake.

This pro makes it look easy!

In order to just concentrate on the cake decorating part, I decided to buy a ready-made cake from Giant supermarket with durian flavour. If the deco turned out a failure, at least the cake wouldn't.

I knew that my buttercream piping skill is a novice level at best but what I ended up with was downright abysmal xD

This was what I ended up serving for my niece's birthday.

It was my first try at using the frozen buttercream method.

Put coloured chocolate buttons to cover the bad "smoothing" on the surfaces

Oh....just look at that awfully distorted Hello Kitty.
Good thing is at least it's not as ugly as my Ben 10 cake for my nephews xD

Anyway, everybody enjoyed the small celebration. My niece got sleepy right after tasting the cake. Oh, well.

The birthday girl!

Famous Amos finally opened in Melaka.....yeah!

I got a nice surprise when I stopped by at a shopping mall on my way back home late last month. As I walked approaching a Pizza Hut outlet and an MPH bookstore, I saw a familiar stall I had mostly seen at airports or shopping malls in the Capital City.

Famous Amos cookie stand! Yeah!!

I think many chocolate chip cookie lovers know how good and delicious Famous Amos cookies are. It's the benchmark I judge ALL cookies against. Seriously.

However, that evening I decided to try something else now that Famous Amos is within easy reach. I decided on the muffins instead. Mainly because it was the cheapest set on display at less then MYR6.99 compared to MYR8.70 for 100g of cookies.

So, here are the muffins:

Famous Amos make the best cookies but the ugliest muffins. The taste is far from ugly though. I shot this picture after demolishing one muffin. xD

The flavours as I remember them are Blueberry Vanilla, Streusel Top Vanilla, Chocolate Almond and Vanilla Walnut. All jumbled in my mind but those things are there in this set.

The muffins are good. You can trust Famous Amos for great taste of anything they bake. The muffins are a bit on the tiny side which is expected and they do not place these in normal muffin cups. Rather they look like crumpled muffin cones with a blob of muffin batter accidentally dropped onto them.

I hope this cookie stand will stay for a long time unlike my beloved Cinnabon.....sob...sob... :-( Whatever happened to that franchise? Maybe they want me to fly all the way to Seattle, USA to find one.

Lunch Hour at a US Pizza outlet

My car insurance and road tax will expire within several days. So, I took one day off to renew them and thanks Heaven, everything went smoothly unlike last year. It seems like there is an insurance company that is sympathetic enough to accept my 1992 car.

Since I didn't have any breakfast, I thought of getting a brunch in one of the many fast food outlets in one of the nearby shopping malls. After much contemplating, I walked into a US Pizza outlet mainly because they displayed "WiFi Access here".

The reason I wanted a WiFi access is to debut my birthday present I bought for me, the Samsung N150 Netbook for its first public Internet experience.

Here it is! Proudly presenting my new "baby". Tiny and mega cute Samsung N150 with a matte screen which is a BIG plus for viewing at any location. No glare.

I bought it simply because it has a matte screen. I can't stand the glare type so extensively featured in most of today's laptops and netbooks in this country. It's annoying to see the light fixture on the ceiling behind you so prominently "displayed" on your monitor.

This is what I had for lunch. Hawaiian Pizza, Mushroom Soup, Iced Tea and Spicy Chicken Salad.

They have a lunch set of a Personal Pan Pizza, Mushroom Soup and a glass of Iced Tea at MYR7.95. So, I added in a plate of Spicy Chicken Salad because I saw Pineapple chunks in it in the picture. The pizza choice for the discounted lunch set is limited to 3 types only. I chose Hawaiian because I LOVE pineapples on my pizza. Sorry I don't remember the other two.

The pizza! The picture in the menu has scatterings of chicken pepperoni but I couldn't see them here. Fear not, they were buried under the cheese. Phew!

The Spicy Chicken Salad. Yum! I'm glad I chose this. Chicken cuts, Letuce, Mayo, Thousand Island and sweet Pineapple Chunks.

The chicken was cold which is the way it should be for a salad. You can't go wrong with Thousand Island either. I am glad they didn't put carbonated drink in the set as the usual practice of many fast food outlets. I don't really take carbonated drinks. Too sweet and it gives me gas, literally xD

Verdict:
US Pizza lunch hour promo is SO value-for-money. The food is pretty good too. I'm happy with my salad and the serving portion is pretty satisfactory for my tummy.

Vanilla Soymilk Cupcakes

It's been awhile since I posted any recipe here. Basically I do that to chronicle my kitchen adventure which sometimes produces disastrous results. Hey, that's why it's called adventure.

This is another of my experiment. Saw a recipe with soymilk instead of fresh cow milk. It's not vegan. It still has eggs and I had adjusted the sugar quantity a bit to suit me.

Here goes:

Vanilla Soymilk Cupcake

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup margarine or butter
2 eggs
1 tbs vanilla extract
1 1/2 cup al-purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup soymilk

Method:
1. I used creaming method for this because it is the one I'm most familiar with since childhood.
2. Beat margarine/butter with sugar.
3. Add eggs one by one.
4. Add in vanilla flavour.
5. Add in salt as I find it easier to incorporate saltiness into a wet mixture.
6. Sift together flour and baking powder in another bowl.
7. Using a hand-held spatula, alternately add in the flour and the soymilk.
8. Slowly and carefully mix it all together.
(*I've always been extra cautious when using all-purpose flour as I don't want to develop the gluten)
9. Spoon the batter into paper cups.
10. Bake at 180degC or 350degF for around 15 to 20mins depending on your cup size or oven type or till a skewer in the centre comes out clean.

Note:
Since I used commersical soymilk in tetra pack, this recipe is the one of which the sugar is reduced as the commercial supermarket bought soymilk is already sweetened. The original recipe calls for 1 1/2 cup sugar which is too much for 1 1/2 cup flour for me. Maybe the original recipe doesn't use sweetened supermarket soymilk. I doubt it though. Maybe the original recipe writer has an awfully sweet tooth.

I still get those air tunnels! Why oh why?

Taste:
There is certainly something different with the taste compared to conventional recipe with cow milk. Something a little more fragrant about it. Not too rich or heavy compared to cow milk.

Look at the texture. Judging from the "wetness" of the cupcake top surface, I think they can stay moist even to the next few days.

Take a closer look.

Texture:
Mine was quite crumbly. I'm not sure whether it was because we all ate them while they were still quite hot and fragile. Normally, if left cold till the next day, the sugar would have moistened the cupcakes and they would hold themselves together better.

Appearance:
This isn't a high-domed recipe as mine turned out. They did rise a little in the middle but still easy enough to frost for those who prefer frosting a flat cupcake.

Verdict:
Decent. Moist enough. Don't know whether the moistness will last the next day as mine were finished up within 1 hour. I don't like things too sweet and this one is just right for me. I mean 1 1/2 cup sugar to 1 1/2 cup flour is overkill.

I think the secret to the success of this recipe is the quality of soymilk. I used a cheap brand and the soymilk seemed diluted. Next time, go for good quality soymilk.

Rice Crisps by Mister Potato Review :-)

Got to tell you all. I have a weakness to fried potato either in the french fries form or the crisps. Oh, who needs a diet when there are those around?

I can certainly sneak in some french fries or crisps into my eating plan via a drive-through or even a necessary stop at the petrol station :-) and say hello to an ever expanding waistline. You can also always find a packet of crisps in my mini fridge for daily nibbles. So, when Mister Potato announced a "reduced" version for guilt-free munching RICE CRISPS, I was more than curious to know. Would the taste be up to par with the real thing?

Available in 4 flavours. Original, Sour Cream n Onion, BBQ and Hot n Spicy.

First of all, I have to say that the packaging really stand out from other "crisps in upright container" on the supermarket shelves to me. Cheery colours with the dominant lime green against white background. I'm a sucker fro anything in lime green. They were also noticeably higher taller than the rest.

They even printed Extra Tall on the packaging.

So, what do I think as an eater?

Packaging look:
5-star! Lime Green sure is a winner to me. Extra tall is certainly a welcome feature :-)

Lime Green is a cheerful "sunshiny" colour :-)

Packaging "ease-of-opening" factor:
This is important to me as I normally hop into my car after buying my crisps and open the package immediately. I can't do that with this packaging though. It's so strongly sealed that I risk ripping apart the container if I continue forcing the foil top. I have to go home and use a knife to poke through and then carefully peeling it off. The good thing is, you are assured of your crisps being fresh upon opening :-)

The sealing was so strong, I almost ripped apart the container.

So, I had to do what I had to do. Poked it with a knife.


Aahh! The crisps were alright despite the bumpy ride in my car on the way home :-)

Texture:
Thicker and crunchier than potato crisps. How to say it exactly? Potato crisps are sometimes delicate to touch and they break easily. Heaven forbid that your crisps container falls to the floor while you're eating. The crisps would break into pieces. The rice crisps are sturdier and maintain the shape better. I know because I accidentally dropped mine xD

So, let's now talk about the taste....

The Original & the Sour Cream n Onion

Original:
Reminds me of tapioca crisps. Really. Yes, folks. I think about our own"kerepek ubi" everytime this enters my mouth.

Sour Cream n Onion:
I tasted this second to follow its potato equivalent and the likely Western equivalent. This one actually tastes more like potato crisps. My sister would approve this as she is a big fan of the Sour Cream n Onion flava.

The BBQ & the Hot n Spicy

BBQ Grill:
Next I tried was this. Of all the flavours, this one is actually the one with the strongest flavour. It has the spices of the BBQ sauce, salty, sweet and savoury at the same time. The colour was a little darker than the other flavours too.

Hot n Spicy:
I tried this last as this one is obviously for the Asian taste buds. It is spicy but it certainly isn't hot at all. Your little kids would be fine with this. They wouldn't complain about it being burning their tongues for sure.

Overall:
I was expecting the Hot n Spicy to be the spiciest one but as it turned out, the BBQ was the one. I'm happy with the texture and I certainly like the fact that these crisps are sturdier than their potato counterparts. Less worry about your crisps smashed to smithereens if you accidentally drop the container. Not that the rice crisps won't break at all but not as "crash-happy" as the potato :-)

Now, since these are cholestrol and trans-fat free with 20% less fat, you can be assured that these will be adorning my mini fridge looking pretty and satisfying my the guilt-free craves when I need to.

Big Fish Moment with Pizza Hut....!

It was one of those days when I actually had the time to check my Gmail and saw a message from Nuffnang about this new "fish pizza" from Pizza Hut. I was like....hmm.....fish pizza? Frankly, I was skeptical as I never felt that fish and pizza really could go together. So, I got curious about this one. How would Pizza Hut pull off this one.....for me?

On a visit to Pizza Hut website, I found out that the fish they're using is called Alaskan Pollock. OK. I didn't know how this fish actually looked like but I was sure not like our "cencaru" or "kembung"..... xD

Oh, fishy! Fishy! Fishy!
OK people. This is NOT how Alaskan Pollock look like xD

Like most edible fish, they have grey skin. However, these are their colours after Pizza Hut serve them for us :-)

I was hoping to get the dining experience at a Pizza Hut restaurant but me being the working girl that I am, I could only leave my office at 8pm. So, dine-in was out of the question. For this working girl, take-away or delivery was the only answer.

The girl taking the order was friendly and told me that the take-away set was different from the dine-in set. Oh, really? There was no set for a single person. Well, fine by me as most of my family were not home. Only the little nephews and their mum and my brother. So, a regular size pizza was perfectly ok. Guess what, I was also told that by the girl at the counter that only regular size was available as the other sizes were completely SOLD OUT. So, that alone basically made the choice for me.

Upon opening the packaging, I fell in love with the set ♥
The Fish King Pizza on the left and the BBQ Chicken on the right there!

The overall take-away set of the regular Fish King Pizza. The Fish King Pizza, the BBQ Chickens, the coleslaw and two cans of Pepsi.

The BBQ Chickens were recommended by the girl taking the order and I thank her for that. They were delicious :-)

I just HAVE to give kudos to whoever invented the "Hot Pouch" as my chickens arrived home hot and crispy.
Hey, you can even "top" your pizza even more ;-)

I was initially worried the heat from the chicken would cause "condensation" in the pouch and make my chickens soggy. I had an experience of Pizza Hut Chilli Chickens delivery before. For that recipe, a little moisture is fine. How about this recipe? No worry people. Your BBQ chickens would be fine in that Hot Pouch.

So, how about the Fish King Pizza?

Here it is!
This is regular size. Divided into 6 with a fish stick for each portion. Nobody will be left out. There are also scatters of cut crab sticks, capsicum (pepper), onion slices and sweet pineapple chunks.....yummy!

Let's have a closer look, shall we?
See, I told ya. The colours of the fish are just what I told you at the beginning of this post.

You can see the crispy skin of the fish sticks, the little chunks of crab sticks, pineapple and red capsicum (pepper).
The most distinct feature of this pizza is it doesn't have the tomato sauce which is one of the 3 most prominent ingredients of a basic pizza i.e the base, the sauce and the cheesy top. This actually suits the Fish King Pizza in terms of taste.

This is how I would say about it in terms of taste. It was probably an idea of combining Italian, Hawaiian and Scandinavian. The Italian part is the pizza itself. The Hawaiian is the pineapple chunks. The Scandinavian is the fish itself being paired with what tasted like mayonnaise/tartar sauce to me. That's the taste of the "sauce" used to replace the Italian pizza tomato sauce for the Fish King. Not a trace of oregano in this pizza which is great for me. Somehow oregano as its taste and aroma always remind me of our "daun sireh". I wonder if we can actually replace oregano with finely chopped daun sireh xD. The irony is in these day and age, the imported oregano is more easily available to us than "daun sireh"!

The fish sticks are nicely "flaky". They're real fish fillets as finger-food cuts. You can determine the size by comparing to my hand there (a woman's hand).

I had reservations about "fish sticks" at first as you know how fish sticks from supermarkets are. No worry people. The fish sticks were all fish with delicious crispy coating.

I was surprised as I wouldn't call myself a pizza person much and I was a tough one to please here. I was skeptical about it at first. Pizza Hut might have won me over with this one. I'm very specific about what I want in a pizza. It has to be Hawaiian with the pineapple chunks. Western food has always been a bit too rich and heavy for my Asian taste. To me the tangy sweetness of pineapple balances out the richness of the cheese. Replacing the oregano tomato sauce with the mayo/tartar-like sauce is a good decision. Since the fish sticks have this crispy coating, the best direction to go in terms of flavour has got to be the "fish and chips" way. The sweet and sour mayo is the better pairing for the fish. Traditional oregano tomato sauce would kill the taste of the fish.

Look, the missing slices all went to my tummy :-)
If it wasn't for my thoughts on my nephews, their mother and my brother, I would have finished 3/4 of it in one sitting.

Even as I'm typing this, I keep thinking of how the Fish King Pizza tasted. Really good....yummy. This is the first time in my lifetime experience in pizza-eating that I can actually eat more than half of a regular size pizza. Normally, I have problems finishing two slices. Not because it doesn't taste good but because the richness is a little heavy for my Asian taste buds which had been brought up on rice, vegetables, noodles, chicken and fish. Cheese and cream were out of my reach at the time.

My verdict. This one's a winner. This is no lip service as I once gave a bad review for another dish Pizza Hut promoted on this blog. The Fish King Pizza is worth my hard-earned money. Balanced taste. Sweet, sour, savoury in one. Not too rich yet not light or bland. The crispy texture of the fish sticks' coating gives the pizza a crunch factor too. Hey, we're Malaysians. Our crispy fried food is part of our gastronomic life :-)

Go people. Sink or swim. The Fish King is waiting ;-)

A 3-D Day Out with the Little Darlings :-)

Treated my nephews to a day of 3D experience at the Golden Screen Cinemas (GSC) yesterday.

I blew MYR100 on movie tickets alone!

3D movies cost a lot more. They added MYR5 for each ticket. *Sigh*That's for the privilege of wearing that pair of special 'glasses'.

The bonus thing is the 3D movies have NO subtitles. Yeah! I hate those subtitles that take up the entire bottom half of a movie frame. Unfortunately, that's what we have to put up with here. Why can't there be a rule that limits the size of subtitles font? Besides, a good movie can tell a story without the audience having to understand each word. A good storyline and strong characters will communicate to the people who see them.

What we had for lunch. BBQ Chicken Rice.

Since I had splurged on the movie tickets, I had to save on lunches. Local dishes would be cheaper than going to a McDonald's.

My nephews.....the little darlings :-)

We went to see How To Train Your Dragon and Alice in Wonderland. Alice has been on showing for quite some time but Dragon is new. In fact, its official US release would be 26 March but Malaysians got it a week earlier. Yup, the fact that we had secured a place in the international spotlight as the 'pirated movies' capital of the world had resulted in that. Well, despite how humiliating that is to me as a Malaysian, I can at least say there's something good coming out of it.

Did we enjoy the movies? Yes, we DID. Most importantly, my nephews were happy. I just wanted them to experience things I didn't have the opportunities to get as a child because these things weren't around back then.

The Dragon movie was a beautiful surprise to us :-)

Ok. At first I did want to write about those movies in the same post but I changed my mind as they deserve special dedication to them especially the Dragon one. Everyone already know Alice and it's dominating the Box Office already as we're reading. Thanks to the long-deserving appreciation of people and new young fans for the mega-talented Johnny Depp.

Oh, btw, my brother was the designer for the Alice opening event at Mid-Valley Megamall in the capital city. As a privilege, he got to wear the original Mad Hatter hat worn by Johnny Depp which was 'loaned' by the movie studio. So, it's a good reason for a family celebration.

Yes, my brother got to wear that hat!

Who cares that I blew that $$ for the tickets? It's the memories that count :-)