After reading through the recipe book I bought, the one with the recipes that don't work, I kinda did a bit of tweaking to make it work with the recipes I had gotten from the bakery I worked at.
As a professional baker, or as someone who has worked at a professional bakery before, I feel like I should point out that the items I bake in the bakery always taste different from when I bake them at home, so maybe her recipes do work for her and some people, and they probably taste good when made in the right environment with the proper ingredients and proper equipment... but for me, none of the recipes work and that's why I had to do some tweaking to make them work for me.
So the first thing I made was the chocolate salted caramel cupcakes, the only thing here that's from the book is the butter cream, which I made and accidentally mixed in doubled the amount of caramel sauce that was required, once again, it's because the instructions weren't very clear.
The recipe was.
For the Buttercream Icing
300g unsalted butter, softened.
535g icing sugar
1 x salted caramel recipe.
I don't read the instructions, so I poured the entire 1 x salted caramel recipe into the mix, only to realize I needed just half of it and the other half was meant for filling. I mean reading it straight from the ingredient list, it's only natural for me to assume she meant that the entire caramel sauce was meant for the buttercream because it's as she stated... "FOR THE BUTTERCREAM ICING".... not "For the buttercream icing & CUPCAKE FILLING"
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| Salted Caramel Chocolate Cupcake Drizzled with Chocolate with A Pinch of Sea Salt |
It didn't really make much difference though, I guess, it just didn't crust like I thought it would, probably because of the extra dosage of caramel sauce I introduced into the butter cream mixture. The cupcake base itself was made using the recipe I got from my bakery and it was a good cake base, taste very much like the chocolate cake sponge from Awfully Chocolate, sprinkled a bit of sea salt on the top.
When I made this salted caramel buttercream, I was hoping to achieve a buttercream that was similar to the one at Plain Vanilla in both flavor and taste, but sadly it didn't work out that way. The buttercream was just sweet, that was it, couldn't really taste the salted caramel part of it.
Yesterday night, I did some actual tweaking to the oreo cupcake recipe and changed the vanilla cupcake recipe from my bakery to one that was close to the oreo cupcake recipe in the book and it came out really well.
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| Cookies and Cream Cupcake |
Was originally planning to make Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but I didn't have any sugar left, only had icing sugar so just followed the recipe in the book and made their cookies and cream buttercream. It was alright, I guess because american buttercream is so sickly sweet, the oreo cookie taste couldn't really cut through that whole sugary diabetes taste as opposed to whipped cream with bits of oreos folded in. I can taste the cookies and cream in the buttercream, but not as much as I would have liked to.
So the cake recipes themselves don't really work for me, but the buttercream icing I guess are usable.
Went to Wheelers Yard a few days ago with my ex-colleagues from the bakery to do some catching up, like proper catching up and not a 5 minute small talk session.
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| Lunch at Wheeler's Yard |
I am close with one of them, the other two I wasn't very close with, but they were really friendly so the lunch meet up wasn't awkward at all like I had imagined it would be. The food itself was alright, I decided to have the breakfast platter for lunch because who doesn't love eating breakfast for lunch? Apparently everyone else I was with.
The food was definitely better than the place I visited at Yong Siak Street where all I was served was 3 type of sausages with scrambled eggs and a sad pile of salad on the side, at Wheeler's Yard, there was more variety in the platter, I had bacon, mushroom, eggs, baby potatoes and a slice of bread with SCS Butter served on the side, the brand of butter I loath the most because it smells really really bad, although there were more stuff on the plate, I still found it a bit expensive.... almost $20.
I wasn't feeling much for coffee so I ordered Elderflower Soda, which was really dumb because when people go to Wheelers Yard, they go for the coffee, but sadly because I already had a Double Chocolate Frappe earlier at McDonalds that day, decided to have something lighter to drink. I'm not even sure if there's coffee in Frappe but for the sake of having a reason not to get a coffee that day, I'm gonna assume there is coffee in it. (I really don't think there is any coffee in it but it was rich and i needed something lighter)
After lunch, we went to take a look at the bicycles, was pretty interesting to see all the different types they had, from mountain bike types to the the hipster looking ones to those that didn't even have a handbrake.
Took a cab afterwards to Creamier for ice cream, place was packed to the brim but we managed to get some seats outside and ordered individual ice creams as well as a waffle with ice cream to share. I really wanted to try out some weird flavours like Chocolate Peppercorn, but the only non-traditional flavour I could find was Orange and Cranberry Vodka, so I got that instead. Nothing too fancy, guess because I ordered a flavor I didn't really liked and then we headed home.
It was a nice meet up. I enjoy meet up with a small group of friends, that's why the only time I enjoy meeting up with my secondary school friends is when majority of them can't make it... and probably because I am not very close to the people who can't make it.
Oh and update on my working life.
Now I am working for my Dad, the other companies did not work out,I also assume SFIC, the institute that was helping me look for jobs has given up on me after successfully finding me 2 shitty job positions.
The architect firm got back to me about a week ago, 2 weeks after my first interview, asking me to go for a second round of interview, decided it wasn't going to work out so I turned them down because the location was too far away and also because after seeing how everyone there was doing AutoCAD, I kinda got reminded why I left the industry in the first place. It's like a desk bound job but instead of crunching numbers, you are doing AutoCAD forever.
Took a 3 years course in Interior Design so I can end up working in a desk bound job that has nothing to do with design. I mean it has to do with Interior Design, but there's really no designing for me to do as an individual, all the "conceptualization of ideas" I learned in school, I can throw them out the window because all the designing is done by the higher ups, all I will end up doing is following their instructions and do the boring part of the process, the drafting part.
And so, instead of sticking with Interior Design, I will use that diploma and look for a degree course that's design related, but in another field. Get out of the Interior Design Industry for good, an industry that's pretty horrible in Singapore to be honest. You either find a established interior design or architect firm and work as a drafter or 3d redener forever OR you become a sales designer and mingle around with your sales designer colleague everyday, colleagues who will remind you of the 3 years you wasted getting your diploma because they don't have one and they are still able to get the same job as you and even worse, be able to earn more money than you.
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