My Baking Diary - Dad's Birthday Cupcakes & Buttercream

It's been a really tiring weekend! I used pretty much half the Saturday baking cupcakes (and decorating them!) for my dad's birthday, which was yesterday. The baking part wasn't really tough, but the decorating was extremely time consuming *sigh* It's the lack of technology that slowed & tired me down...

Anyway, I still owe this blog some recipes :) In my previous blog post, I mentioned about my 1st attempt in making fondant & it was actually quite simple! The only set-back is that this recipe of fondant melts terribly fast, especially in the heat & when the icing gets in contact with water. Bummer. Here's the recipe: How to make fondant. All that I had to get was egg white, liquid glucose/honey, & icing sugar. This particular sugar-packed fondant is VERY sweet!

On Saturday itself, I attempted the buttercream icing. It was also quite easy to make EXCEPT for the beating part. As I didn't have any electric cake mixer, I had to use the whisk to whip up the buttercream - and it was a PAIN! I had NO idea how to do so properly & had NO idea how to pipe the cream onto the cupcakes as well. But thank goodness for Youtube videos! :D

Here's how I got my cupcakes & buttercream done ;)

For the cupcakes, I basically followed the instructions on the packet since I bought the Bake With Yen's pre-mix to save time. The only difference is that I used melted butter instead of oil:

Pre-mix is quick fix!

If you wanna save time & don't want to buy so many different ingredients, this is the way to go...it's not expensive as well ;)

I used melted butter instead of oil...

This is an experiment & risk that I took...the cake turned out fine *phew!*

The mini cupcakes

I decided to make mini ones, but it turned out that I have almost 100 cupcakes (or more) to consume/bake! Gosh, it was a real challenge to do all these alone.

The baked cupcakes :)

As for the buttercream, I followed a simple recipe from the same website where I got the fondant recipe:
Buttercream recipe.

All you need are the ingredients below:
125g (4oz) butter (room temperature)
1 1/2 cups icing sugar (room temperature)
2 tablespoons milk

Directions (as taken from the recipe):
1. Place butter in small bowl of electric mixer and beat until butter is as white as possible.
2. Gradually add about half the sifted icing sugar and 1 tablespoon of milk, beating constantly.
3. Beat in the remaining icing sugar, and milk, if necessary.

My always-faithful "hand mixer" - my bf, AP

Thank God for him! I had no idea how to beat my butter 'til it turns white! He has done this before for his mum a long time ago (and he has more strength than I do!) :D

My buttercream looked like this in the end

Birthday cupcakes done!

After learning from the Youtube video on piping the cream, here's my packed cupcake, ready to be delivered the next day :D I bought the box from Bake With Yen in PJ as well. It's just RM1.50/box.

After a long day's at work in the kitchen on Saturday, I was satisfied with the end results. However, as I've mentioned, the fondant icing that I used for the wordings melts really fast (and it took me more than an hour to pick up my relatives & get to the restaurant), so my cake upon delivery looked ruined :( Boohoohoo...what made it worse was the cake box toppled & all the cupcakes got "mashed" *sigh* I had to spend 15-20 minutes repairing them & ensuring that they still look presentable. Wergh.

 My poor babies :(

AP was quite crossed with what happened in the end. He felt that I shouldn't have spent so much time on the cake (like everything was wasted). It was too much effort although the gesture & thought was really nice. He ended up saying that he wouldn't want me to bake any cakes for his birthday 'cos it's just too time consuming & I end up feeling so tired. "You don't need to bake me a cake for my birthday. Cook pasta can d..."

Hahaha...oh well, perhaps no more next time, eh? I guess baking the cake is okay, but the frosting is the challenge & I may not want to be too ambitious next time.


Slightly disappointed with the delivery damage,