Springtime is here and Valentines day is on it's way!

The holiday got me so busy with a bunch of STUFF, that I was taken away from all the cupcake baking. Annie used to do a lot of the blogging and since she's moved away it's been tough. I baked some chocolate and pumpkin cupcakes for her going away party in October last year. I had Ji, my boyfriend, help me out with some of the frosting and placement of sprinkles and spiders...LOL!

I lost some motivation to bake, but I started up again because I got an order...and now that the weather is nice and all the craziness with the holidays is over, I'M BACK!!!!!

I got an order from my loan officer to bake some cupcakes for her son's class, and it was chef's choice. Here's what I made: Chocolate with Italian Meringue Butter Cream (IMBC)

Is there such a thing as too much chocolate?

It's 3am on a Friday night and I'm starting to feel tired now. I just got back from dinner with friends - Jenn, Liv, Asahi, Dave, and Steve. We celebrated Asahi's birthday at La Mediterrane in the Castro - always a great time.

Today I baked a Chocolate cupcake with Chocolate cream cheese frosting. It was definitely a very chocolate rich recipe that I found on someone else's blog. There were mixed reviews - too rich, too sweet, or excellent. Those who loved chocolate loved my cupcakes and those who don't love chocolate thought it was ok. Can't satisfy everyone. I thought it was a chocolate lover's dream come true. It semi-sweet chocolate pieces made the cupcake much more richer than any other cupcake bather I've made. It was very dense and thick.

Presentation wise, I think the frosting looks like a big dookie on a cupcake. Chocolate on chocolate just doesn't make the overall presentation pop. There's no contrast in colors. I tried using different color sprinkles, but that didn't work.


So far I've been making frosting with cream cheese and it's very difficult to decorate with that type. I need to start making more buttercream frosting, especially swiss merengue (suggested by Stephanie).

Cake balls for Dara's Birthday!

It was last Christmas when I first had one of these so called "cake balls". My cousin had made red velvet ones for our family Christmas party. They were quite yummy. I didn't think of making them until recently when my friends and I were at a bar and someone had brought a nice display of these chocolate cake balls and I told myself I had to make them. They were soooooo good! Just thinking of them makes me drool! Bite sized chocolate cake covered with chocolate! It doesn't get any better than that! So with my friend, Dara's birthday coming up, I told her I'd make them. I had to experiment the first round though, just so I could get the technique down. I had some Funfetti cake mix laying around and some leftover cream cheese frosting that I had made for another baking session. Here's what I got:

They didn't look so good after I covered them in chocolate. Most recipes just called for you to roll the chocolate covered ball off the spoon or fork onto parchment paper. These balls didn't look so good. I couldn't get the balls to roll off the fork or the spoon so that the chocolate on the outside would look smooth and round. They were just sorta deformed looking and where some parts of the cake was exposed, it would ooze out because as the cake defrosted, the only way it could go was out.

I brought them into my office and it took less than an hour for over 60 balls to be devoured!

My first time making these ever, turned out kinda bleh to me. Perhaps that just because I'm quite critical of my own baking. The Funfetti cake was a bit too moist and sticky to begin with and most recipes that you find online will have you mixing the cake with a whole container of frosting. Don't do that...it's wayyyy too much. I would probably start with half a container if you're going to buy it and work more into the mixture if it's not sticky enough to form a ball.

Dara's birthday party was this past Saturday and I had to make sure these balls looked a bit more pleasing to the eye. Dark chocolate cake with milk chocolate coating...and ta-da!
They tasted yummy too!