Fresh Strawberry Cupcakes

This thing about myself where I tend to overbuy ingredients, just in case.....and this has served me well. Imagine, in the midst of mixing up ingredients, sometimes the eggs purchased are not fresh or sometimes in my blur moments, I accidentally knock over my baking pan and there goes all the batter. Yes, these are more than good enough reasons to stock up on ( non-essential)ingredients, more than I ever need. So over a couple of days, I had a couple of orders for cakes that require strawberry as toppers and in my quest to find the biggest juiciest US strawberries, I find myself purchasing more than 1 punnet, more than necessary. So what do I do with the remainder? Chuck them into the freezer with a plan - strawberry smoothie? strawberry puree? strawberry cupcakes?

Yes! finally found a strawberry cupcake recipe that I thought was worth sacrificing my frozen strawberries for. I baked the cakes first and thought I'd better try them before blending more of my frozen strawberries for the icing. Moist, but the flavours of the strawberries were not coming through as much as I'd like them too. So decided to plonk on the icing, wow! they were yummy! of course the buttercream had a decent amount of strawberry puree so it did taste like strawberry. Yums!

Funky Cuppies

Some funky cupcakes for a birthday celebration.

A tall order

Everynow and then I do get request for cupcakes for VIPs. I must admit that most of the time, the stress level shoots up and suddenly coming up with a design takes a different level. I am happy with how these batch turned out. A little vintage-y, a little laura ashley, kinda old school.

Kiddie cupcakes

I had a last minute request for some cuppies for an orphanage. Was glad that I was given the chance to do this. Too often am too caught up with daily life that I forget about how priviledged I am to have loving and supportive parents and sisters. I need to contribute more in ways that I can.

Cupcakes for Lizzie with a different flower

Apologies as these pictures were taken in a rush. These are modifications to a batch of cupcakes which I had earlier made. Done in a rush but I think they turned out pretty nice.

Cupcake Bouquet : Blue, cream and buttercup yellow

I usually try not to post too many pictures of the same item. But could not resist as I love the yellow on these cupcakes.

Hannah Montana

Hannah Montana - sounds simple enough but this was really difficult not to mention labour intensive. I did a google search for "Hannah Montana" cupcakes and did not get very far with it. Most of the cuppies had stars, and icing photos which I really don't like. So painstakingly did the designs with royal icing. I think they look pretty good. It took me a long time to get the "Hannah Montana" logo right.

Hi-5

A fun children's cake with the Hi-5 theme. Wanted to make it as colourful as possible.

Buttercream and Batter

Again, too much buttercream and batter from the past 2 baking stints. So decided to make some cuppies for the office. EB my colleague took this picture. I really love.

Clowns

CUpcakes for a little girl's birthday party. Clowns was the theme. Seems simple enough but it took me a long time to decide on the design. Did not want the usual clown cupcakes with a plastic-ky clown head stuck onto some buttercream. Decided to do royal icing plaques again. Think they look nice enough.

Flowers and handphones

Flowers and handphones, cupcakes for a friend's mother's birthday. Hope she likes them. Was thinking of doing an elaborate looking handphone but somehow, sometimes, simple designs are charming.

Vanilla Bean Puffs

These were excellent! Since young, one of my all time favourite desserts was simple cream puffs, not the ones filled with fresh cream but the ones filled with custardy pastry cream. A good friend recently got me some really fresh vanilla pods from Indonesia and quickly jumped at the chance of making my own pastry cream. What a tremendous difference the vanilla seeds made. Beautiful vanilla scent and even better tasting puffs.