Did some baking for my Family Christmas Dinner, a small contribution on my part. I've baked for Christmas Gatherings before, but that was a long time ago when I haven't really gotten that interested in baking yet, my skills at that time were mediocre at best and if the end product came out looking like a cake, even if it was hard as rocks and tasted like cardboard, I would still deem it a success.
Fast forward a few years later, I've got to admit, I am actually quite proud of how this cupcakes turn out, putting them side by side in a box looked so professional, like I should be heading to a bake sales instead of sharing it with my family, but share with them I did because it's Christmas, the season of giving and it's very rare for me to find so many mouth that are willing to consume the cakes I bake.
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| Salted Caramel Cupcakes |
I had actually made a batch of caramel sauce a few days prior to Christmas, spiked it with a bit of rum because alcohol makes everything taste better, it was pretty good, I kept taking it out of the fridge every once in a while, stuck my fingers into the jar and sucked on my salted caramel coated finger, and I liked to jazz things up by sprinkling a little sea salt on that finger before enveloping the whole thing in my mouth.
The cake base is chocolate cake, the recipe I got from the bakery, slightly tweaked, taste the same as the the chocolate cake from Awfully Chocolate, which is really good, frosted with Salted Caramel Swiss Meringue Buttercream (SMBC), topped with chopped up sneaker bars, drizzled more salted caramel sauce followed by a healthy sprinkling of sea salt. There's actually a caramel core as well but the core was so thin I could hardly pipe any caramel in it so that was a fail.... I was trying my best to make the cupcake as caramel as possible, but it didn't work because I still have half of jar of salted caramel sauce in the fridge and no ice cream to pour it on.... although, I could always shove my finger in and then roll that finger in sea salt.
This was actually my favorite flavor out of the three I made because of the successful batch of caramel sauce that was pretty much drenched onto this cake, but apparently, my family members didn't think so because they kept taking all the other flavors.
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| Cookies and Cream Cupcake |
Next up is Cookies and Cream cupcakes.
The cake base is malt cake, the recipe is a combination of the one I got from my bakery and from the Cake Book by Cupcake Jemma which I wasn't really a fan of, I mean I like watching her Youtube videos but the recipes in the book just doesn't work for me, at all. One thing I did managed to get from her book are the cupcake flavor combinations though,so that's good I guess, can just adapt her recipes to the my own one, recipes I know that will actually work in this crazy humid country.
Frosted with some Oreo White Chocolate SMBC, drizzled with more crushed up Oreos and topped with half a mini Oreo that's not shown in the picture. I wasn't really a fan of this flavorful, the Oreo buttercream didn't really have a very strong cookies and cream flavor, probably needed more crushed up Oreo, I was quite stingy with the crumbs because I like my cookies and cream buttercream looking white dotted with pieces of Oreo bits in it instead of just being a grey lump.... but grey lump taste yummier.
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| All the flavors in one box |
I didn't take a picture of the red velvet on it's own because it was the first one I frosted, I had to quickly stash it in the freezer afterwards because I was afraid the SMBC would melt, damn weather in Singapore, but I have a picture of the 3 cupcakes together.
The red velvet cupcake recipe is also from the bakery, honestly, the red velvet cake recipe at my bakery calls for a fruit vinegar and that fruit vinegar really brings out the flavorf of the cake, but sadly because I don't have that particular fruit vinegar, I had to settle for cider vinegar instead, which really didn't do much in terms of flavor., had I had the correct vinegar, this cake would have been amazing because back at the bakery, the red velvet cake was probably my favorite flavor to have, it really wasn't an authentic red velvet taste, but it was delicious. All the red velvet connoisseur would probably go ape shit crazy should I go let them taste the cake and tell them it's red velvet.
I thought the cupcakes would be finished by the time the dinner was over, I was expecting my relatives to bring home some left over to have as breakfast the next day, but no one did and I had about 15 cupcakes left at the end of the day, I had made a total of 36 and only slightly more than half was consumed. My relatives had nothing but praises for it, but I guess it wasn't good enough for them to want to bring home and eat the next day.
Despite all that, I had fun baking it, my Mum took the leftover cupcakes and shared it with our neighbors, so I had 3 left for myself and I really enjoyed the salted caramel, but not so much the red velvet, still have the Oreo flavor one left in the fridge that I will probably only eat when I am super hungry.
On a Gaming note.
One of my online friends recently got me a game off Steam, Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition. I was actually contemplating to get it because it sounded a lot like Monster Hunter, but after realizing I didn't really have a lot of fun with Monster Hunter, I decided to save my money and get DmC instead.
It was a good thing that I didn't buy the game though because that shit is hard. I've barely played for 2 hours and I've been killed so many times it's ridiculous, half the time it's by the skeleton mobs that aren't even supposed to be that hard to kill.
Total play time is slightly more than 2 hours, it's just very hard to enjoy a game that forces you to repeat the game every single time you die, mobs come back to live and your experience drops back down to zero if you don't spend it before you die, this game is brutal and I'm too much of a casual gamer to find this kind of torture remotely enjoyable. When a game presents me with an option to choose a difficulty setting, I always go for the most insulting ones like Pussy mode, there's a difficultly setting lower than Pussy mode that sounds even more insulting? Alright, I will choose that one. I don't always go for normal settings unless I have completed the game once and find the game play to be very enjoyable like Dishonored and Heavenly Sword, actually I don't think I'VE played anything but easy on Dishonored, but I did play it twice to get a different ending and that's about as uncasual as I get.
I think for someone to be able to enjoy Dark Souls, they must be invested in the game and I'm obviously not invested in that game, the closest genre I've played to Dark Souls and enjoyed is Monster Hunter, and that game already made me want throw my PSP on my bed in rage so many times, I have my nerd rage under control... I will only throw my PSP on soft things, the floor and someone's face is a big no no.
Might uninstall the game pretty soon, at this point it's just taking up memory space on my laptop because I'm hardly playing it, I appreciate the Christmas present from my online friend but not this kind of game, I was actually contemplating whether or not to get this game in the past, but decided not to for good reason and now having own a copy of the game and actually played it for 117 minutes has just reinforced that decision I made so many months ago.
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