Decorating cupcakes

I haven’t had time for much craft but realized I’m slowly channeling my need to create towards food!

It was my mother-in-law’s birthday a while back and I tried my hand at making cupcakes. I’d always wanted to try my hand at making fondant decorations and this was a good opportunity. After all I figured it’s just like clay, no?

fondant flower Okay, turns out it’s dries much faster than what I was used to, but the cracks also make it look more natural (or maybe I’m just creating excuses)!

I made the flower in the same way I make paper flowers – start with a small bud piece around a toothpick, then create slightly larger pieces to wrap around the bud in a clockwise or anti-clockwise manner (it doesn’t matter as long as you keep it consistent). There are probably a lot of tutorials around, but feel free to let me know if you need more directions in the comments below ;)

For the small flowers with the orange centre, I got them in a pack at the local baking store and sprinkled them randomly around the cupcakes.

yellow fondant flower cupcakes It was definitely far from perfect – it being my first time baking cupcakes in over a decade, and my first time EVER working with fondant and icing! I probably should have done more research but it was a last minute decision to make it. But practice makes perfect I guess!

For those who love baking and decorating, here are some of my favorite places for inspiration:

I am Baker – Simply perfection when it comes to beautifully decorated cakes and cupcakes and lovely recipes too.

Detoxinista – My husband tries to eat healthy (and thus me too, by default) and there’re lots of yummy but healthy recipes here.

Chef in Training – Simple, easy-to-follow recipes with lots of useful tips.

I probably haven’t done these sites enough justice with my short descriptions, but click on and you’ll see!

Have a great one ;)

Celebrating the lunar new year with some koi jelly

For everyone celebrating the lunar new year, here’s wishing you a year of abundant grace, love, wisdom and growth.

The eve of Chinese New Year is when we have reunion dinners with our families and I decided to contribute some agar agar and konnyaku jelly for dessert. (This is after my siblings pretty much vetoed a lot of food suggestions I offered to bring for the meal – as it turns out, no one ever says no to dessert!)

My mum had a koi fish jelly mould and so I decided to try my hand at making these jelly desserts in the shape of koi fish. I ended up going to get smaller moulds too just for fun!

It was a bit scary as I was making jelly for the first time ever and half kicked myself for deciding to take on a more ambitious project instead of making regular agar agar jelly in a container with no additional colours.

Thankfully it all worked out… Phew!

This was the large koi jelly:

koi jelly agar agar But I really loved the smaller ones:

koi jelly agar agar
koi jelly agar agar
koi jelly agar agar … 

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