Cupcake Craving

Kids Birthday Cake;

2011-05-16T00:03:00.001-07:00

My first real venture away from cupcakes, this aeroplane cake was made for a 3rd birthday party. The chocolate mudcake was iced with vanilla buttercream and candy decorations.

Cookies and Cream;

2011-05-15T23:56:00.000-07:00

Recent order of cookies and cream cupcakes, consisting of vanilla cake base, dark chocolate ganache, white chocolate ganache and miniature oreo cookie topper.

Made to order; chocolate fudge raspberry tower....

2011-04-20T07:05:00.000-07:00

I recently made this cupcake tower for a 60th birthday party, the tower consisted of chocolate mud cake on top, filled with raspberries and whipped cream, iced with chocolate ganache and decorated with chocolate shards. The cupcakes were a mini version of the cake itself, chocolate mudcake filled with raspberry cream and topped with fresh raspberries.

A close up of a cupcake, MmMMmmm!

Katarina's 21st Birthday Giftbox

2011-04-12T04:18:00.000-07:00

An order for a 21st birthday party. The cakes were vanilla, with a pink buttercream icing. Each cake was filled with either peanut butter frosting, lemon butter or raspberry jam. Handmade white and milk chocolate shapes topped each cupcake.

Happy Birthday Ryan!

2011-04-03T07:34:00.000-07:00

To mark our friend Ryan's Birthday, we went to celebrate at the Belgian Beer Bar. Many drinks and many cupcakes consumed! Fun times!

Here they are, dairy free chai cupcakes with chocolate fudge frosting.

...and of course, a picture of the birthday boy (please don't hate me Ryan #1 HK) :)

Last day of Work Experience Cupcakes;

2011-04-03T07:30:00.000-07:00

To mark the last day of my work experience block and to thank the people for having me in their workplace, I made a batch of miniature cupcakes. Classic vanilla spongecake with vanilla buttercream and sprinkles. Super cute.

Australia Day Cupcakes

2011-04-03T07:26:00.000-07:00

January 26th marks Australia Day, which for our group means the annual BBQ at Iain's house. I am always in charge of dessert. Here are this years cupcakes. Green and gold marble cake with buttercream icing and green and gold lollies on top...

Quick Mix Double Chocolate Chip Muffins

2011-04-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

I'm not normally one to make muffins, I prefer making iced cupcakes, but this recipe was in one of my new recipe books and one I wanted to trial. Double choc chip cake with a hersheys kiss on top. They were so easy to make (under 10 minutes mixing plus 15 minutes baking) and super yum! :)

Cupcakes for Renae

2011-04-03T06:56:00.000-07:00

An order for a gift box of cupcakes, consisting of 4 strawberry, 4 peanut butter and 4 lemon cupcakes.

Cupcake Factory;

2010-12-15T02:54:00.000-08:00

As an early christmas present, Mum bought me a cupcake factory machine, to test it out, I decided to make a batch of miniature cupcakes to see how the machine fares against the conventional oven.

Needless to say, I still prefer the oven, but this little appliance is pretty neat, it cooks the cupcakes super fast! I whipped up a batch of vanilla cupcakes, and filled them with the usual fillings; lemon butter, raspberry jam, nutella, and peanut butter frosting. I made basic buttercream frosting and mixed it with white chocolate ganache, coloured wildly with food colouring, then covered the cupcakes with different sweets, including jellybeans, hersheys kisses and kool fruit chews.

The weather was extremely humid that day, so everything was melting and misbehaving. Regardless, they turned out okay, and everyone seemed to enjoy them :)

Summer;

2010-12-15T01:18:00.000-08:00

Coming into the warmer weather, my friend Nathan threw pool party and korean BBQ at his house. I forgot to take pictures of the lovely bonfire we had going and all the delicious food, but anyways, he'd been speaking of his love of raspberry and chocolate muffins, so I decided to make him a version of his favourite muffin. These cupcakes are vanilla and white choc chip cake, with a raspberry jam filling, topped with a vanilla buttercream. The boys basically inhaled them, which was amazing and scary to watch at the same time!!

I'd also like to mention the amazing cupcake papers, which were given to me for my birthday, they look amazing!

A dinner party with friends;

2010-12-15T00:39:00.000-08:00

I love dinner parties, if I had my own place, I am fairly sure I would host one every week. Our dear friend Jordan hosted his triennial dinner party recently, there was an abundance of food and liquor, and I contributed my Lemon Meringue cupcakes into the mix (any excuse to get the kitchen blowtorch out!).

The artsy side of Jordan comes out, Specials: Gluttony with a side of inebriation and your choice of a hangover or salad

The table of goodness.

Lemon Meringue Cupcakes; vanilla sponge cake with lemon butter filling, and an italian buttercream frosting browned with a kitchen blowtorch. Delish.

RSPCA cupcake day

2010-12-15T00:01:00.000-08:00

As previously mentioned, this year I participated in RSPCA cupcake day, my fundraising was extremely successful, however this would not have been possible without the help of my amazing friends, who not only bought so many of the cupcakes, but helped me decorate them all. My house was transformed into a mini-bakery for a day, and I loved it making the cupcakes and just hanging out with my friends for a good cause. Combined with the generous donations, almost $500 was raised!

Here are the cupcake pans filled and ready to go in the oven, this process was repeated 24 times!!

Here are the cupcakes baking in the oven.

Cooling cupcakes, almost ready to be filled, iced and decorated!

7 flavours of cupcakes were made:
Frogs - Vanilla cake with mint buttercream filling and icing.
Lions - Vanilla cake with lemon butter filling and lemon buttercream icing.
Dogs - Chocolate cake with chocolate fudge filling and icing.
Pigs - Strawberry swirl cake with strawberry jam filling and strawberry buttercream icing.
Chicks - Chai cake with vanilla buttercream.
Sheep - Vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream filling and icing.
Cats - Vanilla cake with peanut butter filling and peanut butter flavoured icing.

Mass production of cupcakes, cupcakes coming from my ears. The smell was divine. Bring on RSPCA cupcake day 2011!!

Apology;

2010-12-14T23:58:00.000-08:00

I'm a terrible blogger, I know. So very slack in posting regularly. I have a 4 month backlog of bakings to be posted, so I apologise in advance for the bombardment of cupcakes about to take place...

My 20th Birthday.

2010-08-14T04:03:00.000-07:00

For my birthday, I wanted something simple, but special, so I created this rainbow cupcake tower. I seem to have a love of rainbow cakes, but these cakes were simply vanilla cupcakes filled with jam. The vanilla buttercream was then coloured wildly to create this masterpiece. All up there were about 52 cupcakes, and they were devoured well before the end of the night :)

Forgive me for the lack of pictures, but in the whirlwind of organising a birthday party, I forgot to take some close ups.

RSPCA Cupcake Day.

2010-08-14T03:53:00.001-07:00

So this year, I am again participating in the RSPCA cupcake day.

I have a donation page where you can make donations, please be charitable!

http://www.fundraise.rspcacupcakeday.com.au/kimberly_nguyen

Orders so far have been so very overwhelming, but it is something I am glad to see!!

I will be making exactly the same cupcakes as last year, with some new additions such a peanut butter flavoured cupcake! I can't wait, although, baking 200+ cupcakes in my little oven is going to be a task.

Bring on August 16th, RSPCA cupcake day!!

Black Forest Inspired Fudge Cake

2010-06-15T08:10:00.000-07:00

I promised a friend a cake a LONG time ago, and I finally came up with my end of the deal. There is A LOT of love put into this cake, I'm not normally one to make full size cakes as I've had some bad experiences, but this one turned out okay! There are two layers to the cake, made with my special sour cream chocolate fudge cake recipe. I then brushed the cakes with a sour cherry syrup reduction that I made. I then coated both layers of cake with a dark chocolate ganache and waited for them to dry. To assemble the cake, I topped a layer with lots of whipped cream and cherries. I dusted the layer with some dutch cocoa and put the other layer of cake on top. Cream was piped on the edge of the cake for decoration and topped with more cherries.

This cake took me AGES to make! I think I'll just stick to the cupcakes!! =)

P.s. I'm told it was absolutely delicious though!!

Pink Party

2010-06-15T07:58:00.000-07:00

I was helping my friend Kylie make cupcakes for a charity event she was attending. She loves pink so we had a girly day making and decorating a bunch of these cupcakes. The cake is a basic vanilla cake, with strawberry flavoured pink batter marbled through it. The icing is a royal icing coloured pink and flavoured with strawberry essence. We finished them off with some shaved white chocolate. Simple, but yummy! Also, sorry for the backlog of posts, but I take these pictures and I forget to post them until I'm clearing out my camera!

Sandwich Style Miniatures.

2010-06-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

I made these miniature cupcakes inspired by different sandwiches. Bizarre, but it just came to me and I had to try it.

So there are:

Peanut Butter and Jelly Cupcakes, where the cake is vanilla, there is a strawberry jam filling and peanut butter buttercream.

Lemon Butter Cupcakes, where the cake is lemon, filled with a lemon curd and a lemon flavoured buttercream.

Fairy bread cupcake, where the cake is vanilla, topped with chocolate icing and hundreds and thousands.

Nutella Cupcake, the cake is vanilla, filled with nutella and topped with a nutella flavoured buttercream.

These would be perfect for a picnic, but I wrapped them up as a gift for a birthday.
Keen to try these again some time!! I think I'm onto a winner =)

Twenty.

2010-04-17T02:28:00.000-07:00

For a friends 20th birthday recently, I made these chocolate vanilla cupcakes.
I made these '20' cake toppers which were made from melted chocolates. The cake was vanilla and the vanilla butter cream icing was tinted with a tiny bit of chocolate.

I'm still a bit new to working with and piping chocolate so some parts look not so great, but I guess it will look better with practise.

A False Alarm.

2010-03-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

So I haven't made any cupcakes in a very long time, life has just been so hectic I haven't had time. I finally mounted my Hello Cupcake! Calendar today though (yes, I am aware that it is now nearing the end of March) and felt inspired to make some, so perhaps this weekend?

Another sign that it has been too long, I received an email from amazon.com that the new cupcake book by Karen Tack and Alan Richardson is out. For those of you that don't know, they wrote the Hello Cupcake! book, and it is amazing. I haven't made any from the book yet as american candies are quite hard to come by and expensive in Australia, but I love just flipping through it. So as financially unstable as I am, I ordered the book straight away, and it should be in my hands in 3-6 weeks.

MUST. BAKE. CUPCAKES. SOON!

Reindeer cupcakes!

2009-12-20T18:12:00.000-08:00

So we recently had a Christmas party with just our friends, I thought I'd make some festive cupcakes, so I googled "Christmas cupcakes" for some ideas...

I was inspired by these reindeer cupcakes, they are just so cute!

So I made a basic vanilla cupcake, added some rum to make it more christmassy, I'm not sure if the flavour came through though, I could definitely smell it when it was baking, they made the house smell awesome!

Anyways, I covered them with royal icing mixed with chocolate for the brown colour. Jaffa for the nose, two mini m&m's for the eyes and a pretzel snapped in half for antlers. voila, simple as, and they look so cute!

Apple Pie Cupcakes.

2009-12-20T08:12:00.000-08:00

Apple flavoured cupcake, filled with cinnamon buttercream and topped with apple pie filling and a cinnamon buttercream lattice piped on top.

Nerd theme;

2009-11-26T06:29:00.000-08:00

I found this picture of cupcakes I made earlier this year,
A friend was having a nerd theme dress up party and I catered the cupcakes!

They were a vanilla sponge cake with lemon curd filling, topped with a lemon flavoured buttercream. The equations were piped on with some icing coloured dark blue.

Caramel Crazyy Special Birthday Cupcakes!

2009-11-20T04:15:00.000-08:00

So it was a friends birthday today, and he absolutely adores caramel. I stumbled upon this recipe quite some time ago, in the Crabapple Cupcake Cookbook, and have kept it in mind for him ever since! I made a few adjustments to personalise it a little, and it turned out quite well! Just need to keep in mind, its not the best thing for you, health wise!

Caramel Lovers Cupcakes:

First you need to make "Real Caramel Sauce" which is basically a mixture of butter, cream, brown sugar and golden syrup. You need to melt the sugar down on a low heat, and then turn the heat up and boil it for 5 minutes.

It will end up looking somewhat like this after you have boiled it! Leave it to cool to room temperature. Once it has cooled, take 1 and 1/2 cups of this, and whisk it wit 3/4 cup of water to add to the cake mix later.
Next is the actual cake mix itself. Cream the butter, and then add the caster sugar. I used less caster sugar than the recipe stated, basically because the caramel sauce is so sweet, i don't really fancy me or any of my friends getting diabetes. So once the butter and sugar are well creamed, at each the eggs one by one, beating thoroughly after each addition. Add 1/3 of the flour, and then 1/3 of the caramel mixture and fold into the mixture lightly. Repeat until all the flour and caramel are mixed in. Don't mix too much at this point, apparently the cupcake will become tough if you do.

So your mixture is ready, just spoon into cupcake pans (I used those fancy foil ones, because it was a special occasion). Only need to fill the pan halfway, this mixture rises a lot, trust me!

Put them in the oven for 18 minutes at 170 degrees, and voila!

So for the icing, basically use the rest of the "real caramel sauce" and add sifted icing sugar to it. I didn't follow the recipe, I kind of just winged it, to get the right consistency, if you add too much icing sugar, you can add more cream until you get the balance right. Then basically just frost the cupcakes, top with some cut up rolo and you're done! I added a few candles and whatnot to make it a bit more birthday-ish! But yeah, they're pretty damn tasty. Caramelicious!

Carrot cupcakes.

2009-09-29T06:53:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I have been really busy with uni and whatnot, but I'm on break at the moment so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to try these carrot cupcakes.

I used the recipe from 'The Crabapple Bakery Cupcake Cookbook' for Church Picnic Carrot Cupcakes.

They were really moist and not too sweet, I'm a big fan of Carrot Cake and for me this one is a winner!

Here they are, freshly out of the oven!

I topped them with cream cheese frosting of course!

I used a recipe from the same book, but changed the quantities slightly to suit my own taste;

70g softened butter
200g softened cream cheese
A good splash of vanilla essence
A squeeze of lemon juice
3 cups of sifted icing sugar

So basically, beat all the wet ingredients together really well for a few minutes, then slowly add the icing sugar, don't over beat or else the icing will go really sloppy! If it goes too soft, just pop it in the fridge for a few minutes for it to set a little bit.

You can use this icing straight away, so here it is on the cake!

I thought it looked a bit plain, so I decided to crush some roasted walnuts, brown sugar and cinnamon in a mortar and pestle as a topping. Sprinkle this on top and voila, delicious delicious carrot cupcakes!

Banana Muffins;

2009-08-27T06:51:00.000-07:00

Not that pretty to look at, but they taste oh so good! =)

Chai Chick Cupcakes!

2009-08-25T04:52:00.001-07:00

Animal Cupcakes made for RSPCA cupcake day!

2009-08-25T04:42:00.001-07:00

Turtles (back row) - vanilla
Dragonflies - Chocolate
Tiger stripes - Choc vanilla
Lions - Lemon filled
Pigs- Strawberry filled
Frogs - Chai spiced

Vanilla Sugar Daisy Cupcakes

2009-08-25T04:13:00.001-07:00

Jaffa (Choc-Orange) Cupcakes

2009-08-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

Strawberries and Cream Butterfly Cupcakes.

2009-08-25T03:45:00.000-07:00

CUPCAKE CRAZY!

2009-08-25T03:43:00.000-07:00

My name is Kimberly, I am currently 19 years old.
I am basically obsessed with making cute, delicious cupcakes.
This blog is just me documenting them, and sharing any cool ideas I may stumble upon!
=)