Jojo & Leroy's Wedding

Jojo & Leroy

Some of the cupcakes

I wrote a few sentences to this post and forgot about it until someone reminded me that I have not yet posted pictures up of what I had made for Jojo & Leroy's wedding!

The wedding was on 5th May and it has taken me this long to remember and finish the post! How slack of me.

I baked over 300 of these mini red velvet cupcakes for the church reception - I still can't believe I actually baked over 300 of these mini morsels. I was lucky my mum & sister came over to help me assemble the cupcakes and put them into boxes for delivery. The flowers were done a few nights before after a late decision to make the flowers all one design and just have 2 colours. As usual, I had other grand plans of making roses to go with the cupcakes but I had only made 30 or so by the Tuesday so I knew there was no way I would be able to make it all in time unless I took a whole week off work and just made roses all day. This only highlights that I need to work on my time management skills - hehehe. I'm sure my husband couldn't agree more with this admission!

Enjoy!!

Caramelicious

I finally decided to try out a new caramel cupcake recipe this weekend. I made most of it in the mini size and some in the regular size.

The caramel didn't quite go 'wow' with this recipe - back to the drawing board to look for another caramel cupcake recipe. Perhaps I could add a few drops of caramel extract to add more flavour to it - make mental note to get some of the extract.

I was also going through my cupboards in the kitchen and decided to use up 'leftover' cupcake liners so I ended up with these orange coloured ones - I really don't like the colour, hence why they were the 'leftovers'. Wish I had photoshop to change the colour of those cupcake liners. The colour of the flowers are new to my lil' collection, as you can see I have a thing for pastels. I was thinking perhaps a blue rose - I'll get onto that as soon as I have coloured my freshly made flower paste from a recipe given to me by Miss J.

Enjoy!

A Beach Party

I know I know! I've been slow with updating of any sort.

Truth be told that I have not baked much in the month since I have been back. When I finally had an order for some Hawaiian beach theme cupcakes my beloved Kitchen Aid decided to throw a tanty. The paddle attachment was stuck and I couldn't get it out to wash and make the cream cheese icing to go with the red velvet cupcakes. I tried with all my might for about 30 minutes, cursing my bad luck. I gave up and my Kitchen Aid is now at the local Kitchen Aid Hospital awaiting surgery. I ended up borrowing mum's trusty Kenwood - 22 years old I might add.

It's got me thinking, maybe I should get a Kenwood to replace my Kitchen Aid. 22 years and mum has never had to take it in for repairs. 3 years with my Kitchen Aid and it's packed a sad.

All this drama was a little too much for lil' old me.

Anyway, back to the original story of these cupcakes. Miss M ordered these cupcakes for a Hawaiian Beach theme party for Ms K's 29th. Her actual birthday is tomorrow but they're having the party today. I hope the weather holds up for their BBQ. I made a sunbed and added a cocktail umbrella to one of my designs, the next is a stylised hibiscus flower and you can't go without a surfboard at the beach, so that was my third design.

Enjoy!

Happy Chinese New Year! 恭喜發財!

Happy Chinese New Year to all my family & friends! May the year of the water dragon bring you an abundance of luck, wealth and good health!

恭喜發財！ 龍年快樂。祝各位 身體建康，心想事成，萬事如意。

Less reading and more gawking. Here I present my Chinese New Year cupcakes.

I'm about to head back to my parents place for dinner tonight so I thought i'd squeeze in this little post first before I run out the door.

Enjoy!

Fire, Fire, Fire

It's little Jack's 4th birthday today and his mum had asked me to make some fire engine themed toppers.

Jack is right into his fire trucks and police cars. For his dad's birthday last year, Jack got him a police car toy to share. How cute!

My first attempt at the fire truck looked more like a caravan! I'm not brave enough to put those pictures up - I'd be mortified if it ended up on Cakewrecks.

As you can see, I got a little side tracked by this project and my Chinese New Year cupcakes have yet to make an appearance. Don't fret - I will get them done this weekend as it is Chinese New Year on Monday 23rd January.

Enjoy!

Sweet Beginnings

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Raspberry Icing on the Red Velvet Cupcake

Honey Icing on the Red Velvet Cupcake

Salted Peanut Macaron

Cream Cheese Icing with Red Velvet Cupcake

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone has had some time off to unwind & relax and spend some time with family & friends before the year kicks off. I am hoping this year will be the year of many great things to come...from my kitchen. :)

We had some friends come over this afternoon for lunch and desserts. I kept to my department of baking & decorating while my better half made all sorts of yummy pizzas to serve up - We've still got lots of ingredients leftover so guess what is for dinner tomorrow night?! YUMMMM

I baked a batch of red velvet cupcakes and made 3 different flavour of icing to go with it - Honey, raspberry and plain ol' cream cheese. I didn't end up serving the cupcakes with honey or raspberry as I had some 'unwanted guests' flying around the house and taste testing it before I could serve it to my friends. Just as well I had not yet pulled out the salted peanut macarons I made as well or there would only be red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing! Thank goodness for Miss B's fruit platter - I needed the fruits more than the sweets after all the over indulgence over Christmas.

Here are the pictures of the red velvet cupcakes I took before they went down the gurglers.

I'm in the middle of designing cupcakes for the Chinese New Year which falls on 23 January 2012 - watch this space for more news!


Enjoy!!

Banana Toffee Cupcake

There's a surprise farewell morning tea tomorrow for a colleague who is moving to Taranaki at the end of the week so I whipped up a batch of banana cupcakes topped with toffee buttercream for tomorrow.

I still have a bit of the buttercream leftover but not for long! Yummy for my tummy.

I was also making a tulip from scratch for another project but my tulip just doesn't resemble a tulip! So frustrating - I might go buy myself some tulips to 'study' before I make my next one.

Apple Crumble

Here's what I did with the left over apple from my apple & honey cupcakes for SPCA Cupcake Day. Apple crumble with custard - the perfect mid week treat.

Before I continue on, thank you to all those generous friends & work colleagues who bought cupcakes off me to help raise money for the SPCA. With their support, I raised $175 for the SPCA. Those animals are going to love them so much!

Onto another story about the SPCA Cupcake Day fondant animals I made. A friend of mine kindly gave the fondant animals from her cupcakes she bought to her colleague to put on her daughter's birthday cake. It took a good minute for me to work out that those fondant animals on the cake were made by me. I initially thought "OMG, did I just create the exact same animals as someone else?". Time to start popping those fish oil capsules.  I'm happy that my animals were used more than once.

SPCA Cupcake Day

I did not post this last night because it was far too late at night and I was exhausted from making fondant animals all weekend. I knew procrastination would catch up with me! I was a little lucky when a friend popped by to return some cutters she had borrowed and ended up helping me cut bits and pieces out to assemble Miss Chickie.

There was an unfortunate accident of a bunny rabbit losing it's head and was relieved that I had actually packed an 'emergency repair' kit into my bag today.

These little cuties sold out in about 45 minutes of me sitting down at my desk at work and I had to turn some people away. I wish I had made more as I hate turning people away but I only have so much time in a day to make these little animals.

Another Addition To The Family

Mr & Mrs Piggie

Procrastination must be my other name, given that it's taken me this long to create another animal for my SPCA cupcake day collection.

Only 2 more to make and the 'family' is complete, although I can't quite decide which other 2 animals to make. I've already decided that I'll only be making 36 cupcakes for the SPCA cupcake day this year, these little cuties are quite time consuming to make.

If you would like to get your hands on one of these (or a few) of the cupcakes which I will be making for the SPCA cupcake day please e-mail me [claudia at prettytemptations.co.nz]. Cupcakes will be $5 each and all the proceeds will be going directly to the SPCA.

Any suggestions anyone for the last 2 animals?!?

Home Sweet Home...

I got a little side tracked over the weekend and did not finish my intended project of making animals for the SPCA cupcake day. *smack my hand*

I ended up baking cupcakes - coffee for mum and a mixture of red velvet & caramel for T&C. Mum rang at 3 pm to say she needed some cupcakes urgently for a birthday do she was invited to so I frantically went about baking and icing a dozen cupcakes by 5 pm.

Terence & Christy had asked me a while back to bake some cupcakes for their neighbours - I finally did it with some bad luck with flowers falling apart when I was packing them into boxes... :( but everything worked out fine in the end!

Now, back to my previous project - fondant animals.

A Red Velvet Present

It's been a hectic last couple of weeks - hence the silence from the resident bakeaholic.

I had one of those weeks where nothing I did went right. I attempted to make lemon cupcakes but it turned out to be rockcakes. So, to right the wrong I made a batch of red velvet cupcakes as a present to console myself that the week can't get any worse.

We went to the Food Show today and it was foodie heaven! I thought I'd be there for maybe 2 hours - I ended up spending 5 hours there and it almost cleared my piggy bank out BUT I did get to watch 2 demonstrations which made me really hungry and left with bags of goodies.

Before I forget - Do you like the new look of my blog?! I certainly do and it is all thanks to Myla - the Blog design whiz from Design Me Pretty. She did an awesome job and if I could send her some cupcakes I would!

Chocolate Vegan Cupcake

Choccy Vegan Cupcakes

My new toys

I borrowed a book from the local library and found a chocolate vegan cupcake recipe. The recipe was quick and easy to make plus the icing was...let's just say finger licking good. My next mission is to make it look a wee bit nicer than the quickie job I've done tonight.

My new butterfly plunger cutters arrived this morning so I ripped open the packaging and tested my new toy out.

So much for my list of cupcakes to bake from my previous post. I have all these recipes I would like to try out but there is only so many hours in a day and so many my guinea pigs can take before they have a cupcake burnout.

Animal Kingdom

These cute animal cupcakes were made about a fortnight ago and they're all gone now. The cupcakes were a delicious vanilla with chocolate fudge icing.

The long weekend

My first ever gumpaste shoe

The oh so divine Malteser Cupcakes

Honey & Pear Cake with Honey Cream Cheese Icing

It's Monday night - the end of what was a nice and quiet long weekend.

I was on a mission to try out some new recipes I had found. I now have malteser cupcakes and pear & honey cake with honey cream cheese icing sitting in the kitchen.

The icing - one word - DIVINE!!! I'm going to try this on some vanilla cupcakes.

I had also spent some time to try making a gumpaste shoe - it was alot easier than I thought it would be except I need to have a few more goes at making the heel.

a pretty present for you

I couldn't resist it...I had to go into the kitchen!!! 

Here is my very first attempt at decorating a cupcake using fondant. This wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be.


The chocolate cupcake is covered in a thick layer of chocolate ganache before I prettied it up to look like a gift.

a pretty delectable gift for you

Yellow gift parcels

It's been a while

I can't believe it's been more than a month since I last posted anything...I have been busy at work - yes I do have a day job though I wish that my day job would be creating pretty yummy things rather than sitting in front of a computer all day long. And I've just been on a quick trip to attend a girlfriend's wedding - amazing wedding and an embarrassing one at a certain point. 


Just so you know, I won't have time to bake anything for wee while as I will be away in a place without a kitchen which I could use to bake cakes and cookies - not that I will have the time anyway. 


I made more butterfly cupcakes about a month ago - I was attempting to use all the butterflies I  had made the previous week. For the swirls, I decided to use 2 tones to be a little different but they're still very girlie pastel colours.

More cupcakes...

It's starting to get a little repetitive with cupcakes but I've made more of them.


I made these for a friend's workplace...It's the flourless orange and almond cupcake yet again. I put in too much of the cake mix into the cupcake papers and I ended up having to cut the tops off which made the decorating challenging. Lesson learnt here to NEVER over fill the cupcake papers. Such a disappointing project for me personally and this has been bugging me all day yesterday and today.


I made use of the bumble bees I made the previous weekend. I still one wee lil' fella left...guess I'll be creating more again soon.

Bumble bees

Butterflies in white & purple

Sunny days

Black Forest Cupcakes

Here's some nice black forest cupcakes topped with freshly whipped cream for you to drool over - there's cherries below the whipped cream. I was short of cherries to top it off with so I just grated some chocolate on the top.


My other half decided to break up a bar of Cadbury flake and put it onto the cupcakes. Full marks for him!!


I'm feeling a little peckish writing this entry...time for me to have one of these treats now.