Pinks and Hearts

Merry Christmas!

Cupcakes Anyone?

Here's my Vanilla Cupcake with Caramel Filling topped with Vanilla Buttercream. Goes very well with coffee too!Comes in minis also! These bite size mini cupcakes also comes with Caramel Filling and Vanilla tops.

Dainty Cupcakes

I was never a fan of Sex and the City and I have not heard of Magnolia up until yesterday. I knew Sprinkles Cupcakes in Beverly Hills, but I never knew that Magnolia in NY is a bigger deal! Magnolia is a cupcake-only bakeshop in NY and was once the hangout of the girls in Sex and the City.

Anyway, what brings my interest to cupcakes is that I wanted variety. I dream that someday I would be giving patrons options if they would like just real huge cakes or if they wanted a small cutting/blowing cake with cupcake towers for the guest. :) Hehe nice!


For this week, I tried making Chocolate Cupcakes topped with Chocolate Buttercream and some frosted with Vanilla Buttercream. These cupcakes are for purists. Just some good old moist cupcakes and plain frostings on top. Photos below are cupcakes ready to be served. These are very yummy! They go very well with coffee!

To make the cupcakes look dainty, I just swirled the frostings on the cupcake, added sugar flowers on top (violet for vanilla and pink for chocolate) and placed silver dragees on top.

Now I'm inspired to create a cupcake menu. :)

Vanilla Mantecado For A Birthday Cake

I have another order for a birthday cake this week and I did a Vanilla Mantecado. It is a normal vanilla sponge cake, but what makes it special is that it is brushed and drizzled with Tres Leches Sauce making it very moist and tasty. I made some Caramel Glaze to fill and crumb frost the cake, and then finally covered it the Chocolate Buttercream made from bittersweet chocolates. The buttercream also had some chocolate bits. I smoothened the top for some decorations, and left the sides a little ruffled. I have also piped some more of the buttercream on the bottom and top border of the cake. I topped it with some sugar flowers and dragees. I left some space for writing, but I never had the courage because it might ruin the cake! :) I hope they would enjoy the cake, as much as I had fun making it!

My First “Paid” Cake

And my first customer is Jon! He asked me to make a cake for a friend’s birthday and immediately, I knew what to bake and how to ice it. I baked 2 8-inch Ultimate Butter Cakes and it turned out perfectly. I was creating Vanilla Mantecado for personal consumption and I used the extra ingredients for the “paid” cake. I brushed it with Tres Leches Sauce, and then drizzled with a little Arequipe Sauce. Then I frosted the cake with a Caramelized Meringue Frosting. I left it overnight to crust and was planning covering it with rolled fondant the next day. I mixed the ingredients for the fondant, rolled it and covered the cake. However, I ruined the fondant when I covered the cake. I still cannot figure out until now what went wrong with the rolled fondant. I used the same ingredients and same amounts the last time and I had it correctly. I still need to find the root cause! :) Anyway, I need a plan B! I was thinking if I could just whip up a regular buttercream icing, or cooking up a poured fondant. I opted for the second. I cooked poured fondant and colored it pink since the one who will blow the cake is a girl. When we were ready to pour it, Manny place a plastic plate at the top of the cake so that we will not accidentally pour fondant on it. The idea is to drizzle the fondant and let it drip on the sides of the cake. After a few tedious minutes of drizzling and turning the cake around, we finished with the fondant and transferred it to the box. I added some chocolate dragees on the top of the cake. Here’s the cake all boxed up. I have a cupcake from the same batter of the cake and it tastes awesome! And I think they liked the cake because I have another order next weekend. :)

My Homemade Pizza

Having been relocated in Israel for so long, I have scoured all places that I possibly could in search for the perfect pizza. Well I'm kinda shallow, my definition of a perfect pizza is a Shakey’s-Like Pizza. Thinking about it right now, I also miss Round Table Pizza’s! and In-N-Out burger! That’s totally another project. After having been baking for the last two months, I ventured in creating my own pizza crust (thin crust!) and creating my own pizza.
Creating the crust easier than I thought it would be. All I needed was some dry yeast, all-purpose flour, salt and sugar! After kneading, I created a 12-inch thin crust dough which I covered with tomato/meat sauce, parmesan cheese. Then I topped it with ground meat, shrimps, calamari, pepperoni, garlic, onion, oyster mushrooms and then covered it again with parmesan. It was so good, we finished the pizza for dinner!