Baking for a small event

I baked for a small event (20 people) yesterday.  The first time I baked for DS a few weeks back, I made mini pizzas and American carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  Since she requested for my mini pizzas again, I decided to go with two kinds of miniature cupcakes, Coffee with chocolate chips and cream cheese frosting (most people love this frosting) and "Resistance is Futile" cupcakes which is my triple chocolate recipe.

I used two kinds of fresh sausage meat, three colours of capsicum and two kinds of cheeses for the mini pizzas.  Here's one ready for the oven.

Halfway through cooking in the oven, the cheeses are nicely melted and the pizza looks good!

Packed in the box!  Colourful, aromatic and simply yummy!

The Coffee and chocolate chip miniature cupcakes turned out well.  I added a mocha chocolate coffee bean on top to complete the look.

Don't they look cozy all together? 

If you have a small event (maximum 30 people)) and need a few varieties of desserts (the only savoury item I make now are mini pizzas) let me know and I'll see if I can help.  Prices start from $4 per person (2-3 miniature items).  I will need at least a week to plan and prepare since I don't stock everything at home. For orders above $100 I will send the cakes to you.

For larger events, I will need even more time to block out my schedule, plan and prepare.  The largest group I've baked for is 140 people.

Come October I'll be baking 4-5 types of desserts for 50 people. It's going to be fun planning the taste, texture and colours for this event.

Now I'm off to bake some cream puffs!

Married Couples' Mini-workshop

Last Saturday about 17 couples from our church came together for an evening of food, fellowship, fun and a short inspirational talk given by my dear husband.  Since it was going to be a hectic day with a few errands to run as well as worship band rehearsal in the afternoon I quickly baked a chocolate sheet cake (Chocolate Delight), frosted it, cut into pieces and left them in the fridge for the dinner meeting.  Sorry I didn't manage to take photos of the process because I was in a hurry. 

I decided to bake the cakes lower than normal since it's a rich cake and people nowadays enjoy smaller helpings.  The cakes contain butter, cocoa powder, sugar, eggs, buttermilk, flour and a little baking soda.  While the 3 cakes were in the oven, I went ahead and made the frosting which had butter, icing sugar, cocoa powder, milk and vanilla essence. I poured the frosting over the warm cakes and left them to cool.  I also added Hershey's chocolate chips on top of the frosting.  Two hours later, I used the Wilton cake cutter and cut perfectly rounded edged rectangles.  Very nice bite sized pieces.

The frosting doesn't really harden but keeps the cake moist and tender.  I brought 48 pieces and they were all eaten with great relish!  I had very good feedback and needless to say some had more than three pieces!

I've a baking order this Wednesday and will probably bake Chocolate Delight, coffee cupcakes and my mini pizzas (by special request).  Will post photos when I'm done.

Universal Studios Singapore

After a wait of more than six months, we managed to find a weekend to go to Universal Studios Singapore to celebrate Ethan's 18th birthday (6 months late!) and Alethea's 15th birthday (10 days early).  Everyone was in high spirits and we made it to the Studios when they opened at 10am.  We spent the day trying out the rides (just the three of us because someone didn't want to get "dizzy"), catching the shows and of course, eating!  Which is why I'm blogging about that today.

Alethea wanted to buy popcorn because the smell was just so alluring!  However, she exercised self-control and had her photo taken instead.  So proud of her!

Since it was a birthday celebration, Alethea chose Mel's Drive-In for lunch while Ethan chose Louis' Pizza Place for dinner.  They had the LARGEST pizza we'd ever seen!  Not only was it huge, it was also the BEST pizza we'd ever tasted.  Moist, meaty, not too much cheese and a crispy thin crust.

This is just ONE slice!  Check out the meaty slices... generous!

We managed to find the Hershey's store outside of Universal Studios and everything was INDUSTRIAL size!  Check out the syrup!

Oh my goodness...

Suffice to say we had a great time.  Next week will be occupied with a couple of baking orders so I hope to post some photos for you.  Till then, have a great weekend!

Marshmallow M & M Brownies!

Hubby and I were away for three days attending an Emotional Freedom Technique workshop, hubby's 40th school reunion and a funeral.  We were glad to be home knowing that our teenagers would have torn the house down and rebuilt it into another shape!!  Fortunately my mum came to keep a close eye on them.  Thanks, Mummy!

Anyhows, my son's Ultimate Frisbee team had a party yesterday and I had promised to bake something for him to bring along.  I made coffee cupcakes without the frosting and Marshmallow M & M Brownies.  Since I've posted photos before on my coffee cupcakes here's the Brownie photos:

I used M & M Crispy candy

and the milk chocolate covered candy for the topping.

I used my favourite brownie recipe and baked it for 10 minutes.  Then I added these cut marshmallows (I was supposed to used miniature marshmallows but they didn't have them at Fairprice where I went) before popping them back to the oven for another 10 minutes or

until they look like this, golden brown and all puffed up.

I then took the pan out of the oven and quickly added the candy on top.  The marshmallows would flatten out when it cooled.

I added a chocolate syrup to finish it off.  It's colourful, appetizing and best of all, simply yummy!

I tried making miniature brownies in my mini cupcake silicon pan.  I felt it took too long since I only had one pan and had to wait until everything cooled before de-panning it so I gave up!  But the size is really good.  Maybe I will get another pan...

I've got a large baking order for October when I have to cater desserts (4-5 varieties) for 50 people.  I'm looking forward to planning for this occasion and trying out new ideas in the meantime.  Will post photos as and when.  Meanwhile, do check out my jewelry blog at http://www.rebeccayam.blogspot.com/ and have a great week ahead!

Pillow Cookies

One of my favourite websites on baking is http://www.bakerella.com/.  She was featured on Martha Stewart's show and has just completed her first cake pops book!  I simply love her practical cake decorations.  Today I tried her pillow cookies.

First I used my favourite brownie recipe.

After baking, cut into small squares.  The missing pieces?  Oh, I was making sure the brownie was okay...

Then I used my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Since the brownie is to be put inside the cookie, I had to use quite a bit of dough.  I flattened the cookie dough and placed a piece of brownie on top.  Then I covered the brownie over with the cookie dough.

Here's what it looked like before hitting the oven.

Out of the oven!  Smells wonderful!  I placed a dinner spoon next to the cookie to show you how huge it is!  Definitely not for the fainthearted.  Beware of extreme sugar rush!

Doesn't this look simply wonderful?  Will I sleep after eating this (after all it's called "pillow cookie")?  Definitely not!  The first reason is because of the sugar rush I'll probably not sleep the whole night and secondly, it'll probably be wise of me to hit the gym immediately for the next one week!  Excuse me while I indulge...

Weekend bake

I started LN's order last night when I put together the American carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  Since I'd posted photos of the carrot cupcakes on my blog previously I decided not to blog about it again.  This morning I started work on her coffee cupcakes with butter cream and am quite pleased with the results.  LN ordered 24 coffee cupcakes but I gave her 25 to fill up the box.  Since it would have been SO boring to decorate all 25 cupcakes the same, I decided to have a little bit of fun!

The coffee cupcakes contain a heavy dose of real coffee (for coffeeholics!) and Hershey's chocolate chips.  For the butter cream, I used pure butter, icing sugar, my "secret" ingredient as well as real coffee with no artificial flavouring.  I used mocha covered coffee beans, M & M peanut candy and giant Hershey's kisses for the topping.  From my experience, not everyone likes butter cream, so some cupcakes have more cream and others, less.

LN just picked up the cupcakes.  I hope she and her friends will have a lovely catch up time after 22 years!  Now back to my jewelry studio...  have a wonderful weekend to my dear friends!

Creating Health

The day for Dr Shara's talk had finally arrived!   About 20 people were expected to be there.  My main consideration was how to transport the cupcakes and pizzas with minimal damage and keep everything fresh since I had to be at the clinic by 4.30pm and the refreshments was going to be served around 6.30pm.  I also wanted to make it easy for the people to eat without having to handle a mess.

I started the morning by baking my little American carrot cupcakes.  I had originally wanted to make mini cupcakes but thought they may be too tiny and the regular sized ones may be too big since I was also baking mini pizzas.  So I settled for medium sized, which turned out to be the perfect size.

Don't you think they look lovely?  I piped on a cream cheese frosting (less sugar of course) and topped the cupcakes off with mini Hershey's chocolate chips.  Yummy!  Juicy, moist and not too sweet.

My container could only take 20 cupcakes so that was what I brought.  A few more would have been better...

For the pizzas, I decided to use regular spiced fresh pork sausages and three colours of capsicum.  Attractive, don't you think?

Here are the mini pizzas, ready for the oven.  I baked them in these aluminium cups to get the round shape.

Out of the oven and waiting to be paper cupped.

I also made ham and cherry tomatoes with 2 kinds of cheeses just for variety.  My favourite is the sausage pizza.

Anyway, the talk was really great.  Dr Shara shared with us how we can create our own health by taking control of what we do and eat.  She gave practical illustrations to make her point. 

  Feedback for the cupcakes and pizzas was very good.  So glad the folks enjoyed it.  I truly enjoyed making the snacks.  Thanks, Dr Shara, for your talk and for giving me an opportunity to share my "experiments!"