Living around cupcakes

Hi all, i'm back after what seem like ages.
For the past month, being unemployed has allowed me to dive into the baking business for abit. Thankfully there are people out there who actually trusts me to fulfill their cupcake orders. :)
I had a couple orders for red velvet cake, chocolate brownie and tarts as well but cupcakes being the most.

So here are some of the photos I would like to share.



















Voila!

Most of the cupcakes that I did were either vanilla or chocolate flavored cake with buttercream frosting. Although there were a few orders of red velvet cupcake with cream cheese frosting and also a coffee cupcake with coffee flavored buttercream frosting.

I really enjoyed the short amount of time that I had to experience the life of having a cake business, even tho it was a very small one I would say. Sadly, I have to stop for now because I'm starting a new job tomorrow.

However, I strongly believe I'll be back in business in no time.

Till then keep in touch and stay tuned! :P

Much Love,
Lovanilla

Cake, cake and more cake

Greetings...

Here's more update from school... :P

Today i will introduce you to some pretty cakes with layers comprising of three or more elements. Feel free to ask me for recipes as it is too much for me to write all of it here. Enjoy!


Three chocolate bavarian cream cake
Starts with a ladyfinger sponge cake at the bottom and then layered with dark chocolate, milk chocolate and white chocolate bavarian cream. Finish with cocoa glaze.



Fraisier
Combination of genoise sponge cake in two layers and mousseline cream. The sides and middle were filled with whole strawberries to give a nice effect before and after cutting. Finish with fondant.



Opera
The classic cake of all time. Comprising of layers of jaconde sponge, coffee buttercream, dark chocolate ganache and finish with dark chocolate glaze. I learned that a true Opera has seven layers and it should be in this order. Jaconde-buttercream-jaconde-ganache-jaconde-buttercream-glaze.



Jamaica
Why jamaica? I don't know, maybe because of a tropical feel this cake has. Consisting of a chocolate jaconde sponge as base, walls and separator between the two mousses. Inside of the cake is filled with coconut mousse with bits of poached pineapple and rum. Topped with mango and passion fruit mousse and jelly glaze.



Royal chocolate cake
This cake calls for a thicker and moist sponge which we just call chocolate biscuit. :P Over the first biscuit goes a rocher layer. It's simply made out of milk chocolate incorporated with almond praline and feuilletine. Basically it tastes similar to those ferraro rocher chocolates only mooshed. Obviously a royal chocolate cake has to have chocolate mousse and also glazed with chocolate.



Pleasure
This cake is supposedly created by Lenôtre. I would say it's a simple and elegant cake with good taste. You couldn't go wrong with it. It's a sandwich of jaconde sponge with a vanilla supreme and chocolate mousse. The top of the cake is brushed with a little egg yolk and sugar and then caramelized with a blowtorch.



Chestnut mousse cake
The name says it all. The whole cake is chestnut mousse, layered inside with hazelnut dacquoise and bits of candied chestnuts. After the cake has set, unmould and cover the outside with chestnut cream making a thorny effect by using a spatula. The dome shape is just an option to show that cakes are versatile and the same recipe could be adjusted to fit just any sort of shape mould.



Raspberry and passion fruit cream cake
Here we increase the elements by using two types of 'biscuit'. The wall is made out of jaconde sponge and the base and separator layer are coconut dacquoise. The filling inside is passion fruit cream and followed by a light raspberry mousse on top. Finish with raspberry jelly glaze.



Apricot almond milk cake
Similar to the previous cake above, this cake uses two different types of 'biscuit'. For the walls, pine nut ladyfinger sponge and for the layers inside, pine nut apricot dacquoise. Dried apricot cut into small cubes and grounded pine nuts were used to incorporate into the dacquoise batter. Creamy apricot filling for inside and topped with an almond milk pannacotta mousse. The same mousse is used to pipe decoration around the sides on top of the cake.



Blackcurrant vanilla cake
I call this a ribena jelly cake...hehe because the blackcurrant tastes similar to ribena and the filling for this cake is a jelly layer instead of the normal cream or mousse. Only ladyfinger sponge is used here for both walls and layers. Followed by the blackcurrant jelly and topped with vanilla supreme mousse. We decorated the tops by piping a design or image using leftover mousse and then filling the gaps with more jelly.



Caramel hazelnut mousse cake
Lastly, a caramelie cake..hehe. Very simple and straight forward. Using ladyfinger sponge same as before with a hazelnut chantilly cream as filling which is basically whipped cream with icing sugar sprinkled with toasted hazelnuts. A caramel mousse of course that goes on top covering the cake with piping around the border edge (any design) to create like a shallow 'pool' in the middle. Fill the 'pool' with caramel glaze.

Wow, that's alot of cakes!

I realize my post this time around is kinda boring. Just straight forward information. I guess it has to do with the fact that i'm feeling kind of blue today but felt the need to blog. Now isn't that weird? Haahhahaa...well i'll be back with more posts soon. I feel my vibe on blogging is coming back...3 posts so far in less than a month. That's progress!

Till then, see ya and Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri to all those celebrating in a couple days time. Maaf Zahir + Batin to all readers and of course my babes here at virginredvelvet.

Salam xx

Big Apple Donuts & Coffee

This new place just opened in The Curve @ Mutiara Damansara. First look at it and you say to yourself, "wow looks impresive, good crowd, and even just the signage and name somehow makes to think it must be a franchise from well NYC." But after sitting down for awhile and tasting the product, you somehow beg to differ. Hhhhhmmm well i still don't know for sure where this outlet originated from because i googled it and nothing came up.(maybe Ummi could confirm this for me once and for all) BUT IN MY OWN OPINION...i think it just started from here and then they decided to just use the name Big Apple AND use The Empire State Building for their logo??? Maybe the recipe is from NYC? I donno...


So anyway like i said first impression was good right? You're walking towards the open concept kitchen/counter/cashier with a smile on your face full of excitement and the second you step into the boundary of the queue line, all that dissapears.

1. No signs whatsoever for indicating types/flavours of doughnuts. Just a board with several random doughnut pictures in the background and then it just says : Doughnuts or was it Donuts RM2 each....and that's all...like WTH??? so fine.

2. Turn your head down towards where the dougnuts are displayed and you see many empty trays and what luck i had NO MORE CHOCOLATE....as in nothing with chocolate when they are suppose to have chocolate coated ones, chocolate with banana cream ones, choc with nuts, choc with rice krispies ones......and TAKDE....when i asked, they just replied with a selamba "finish". So like wtf??? finish?? i still see you guys making hundreds of doughnuts behind you and the most important chocolate finish???? what it's a thing to not carry stock now?? whatever la...

3. So i decided to get a box of 6 (btw forgot to mention i was with Z and our friend K) and guess what hahaha there were only 6 flavours at that time when there was suppose to be 16 or 17... sheesh.

4. Peanut Butter, Strawberry Filling, Blueberry Filling, Green Tea, Mango with Cream Filling and Vanilla Cream.

5. The drinks had to wait like forever...mintak hot bagi ice....mintak ice bagi hot. Then they said they will send it to us when their concept was suppose to be self-service. Don't even see any of their staff outside of the working counter. Waited and waited and waited....then i realised they had a condiment counter similar to the ones at Coffee Bean, Starbucks...etc. So i thought if they did ever send the drinks over, i still would have to get up and get my own sugar syrup and what not. SO WTH...walked all the way over and demanded my drinks...while they were ever so busy, queue is getting longer....sigh...sabarjelah....

6. Since they're new they were very generous in giving away free doughnuts. Can't remember how many different offers there were but i know there's a buy a drink and get 1 doughnut free and buy 1 dozen doughnuts and get 1/2 dozen free. Yeah, but the free doughnuts are only the plain ones which means it's their basic doughnut with original glazed sugar. You can't choose. So where is the logic in that? If all the doughnuts cost the same then why free ones are only the plain ones? Just imagine beli 1 dozen full of flavour and colour...and then dapat 6 plain doughnuts in a box... sedihnye...

7. Since there was Z,K and moi therefore we had 3 drinks and therefore dapat lagi 3 doughnut biasa...we ended up just bring those home.

8. Tell me, am i being to critical with this new place? Cause i realise i'm usually nice but not here :P

SO basically the doughnuts were okay...it's a total different texture from Dunkin. This one is lighter and somewhat weightless and fluffier. It depends on individual preferance how a dougnut texture should taste like.The thing is that there is no variety unlike Dunkin their doughnuts itself are different where you have chocolate or plain, then proceed to the topping. At Big Apple all the doughnuts are the same ONLY toppings vary. I think because it's still new that people just flock over there non-stop...most are by word of mouth. When someone starts saying it's the best doughnut ever then habis lah...majority will just follow blindly...will see how they do in a few months time. There also might be a chance that people might actually like it and it's just me who had the bad experience. Well can't blame them la, just imagine the only doughnut place we ever knew was Dunkin...now there's Big Apple and people will ALWAYS want something different.

I'll stick to my Dunkin's for now because there ain't no Krispy Kreme in Malaysia :)