A Travel Themed 30th Birthday

A good friend of my turned 30 last week and we celebrated with dinner at Bel Mondo at The Rocks. It was such a lovely place and the service and food was incredible. My main meal was soooo good, the gnocchi was absolutely amazing, it was like eating fluffy creamy balls of potato that had just been pan fried to perfection. They were solid, but just melted in your mouth. It's not usual for me to rave more about the main meal than the dessert but in this case although it came very, very close, the main meal won me over. (Dessert was amazing by the way, warm oozy chocolate fondant and creamy panna cotta - me and the boyfriend went halfsies)

The birthday girl is very much into travelling and is currently doing lots of research in African and South American adventures. She has lots of plans, the first one being to win the lotto. And I think she actually has a better chance at it than me (she occasionally buys a ticket and I never do).

So I thought a travel theme would be most appropriate for this occasion, I hope it will bring her some 'travel luck' :)

Travel themed cupcake tower... can you guess all the flags? Even though I made them, I forgot what a lot of them were on the night!

Rich moist chocolate fruit and nut travel packages.

Cupcake Flags

Canvas for everyone to stick their photos and to write birthday messages.

Everyone gets one :)

The birthday girl and her cake.

Vanilla Bean Cream Filled Eclair Anyone?

I baked over 500 chocolate chip cookies last week so I'm taking things a little bit easier this week. :) How long does 500 chocolate chip cookies take to make...? oh, about 3 nights worth of baking and 6 hours worth of bagging and ribbon tying. The boyfriend and my friend both got suckered into helping me out. A big thank you to you both!

A while ago I made some mini eclairs for a dinner at my friends place and now I'm finally getting a chance to post the recipe :) I took a whole tray full of these and between 7 people (and the boyfriend sneaking some in the car) they were gone pretty fast.

The choux pastry for the eclairs is not hard to make... the only downside is that you have to make it on the day to keep its texture. I find that if I keep it overnight it tends to become soft... but you can place them in the oven for a bit to firm up if that happens.

Choux Pastry Recipe

250ml Water
60g Butter
1 teaspoon Sugar
125g Plain Flour
3 eggs

Preheat oven to 220 degrees (200 degrees for a fan forced oven).

Place water, butter and sugar into a saucepan and bring to boil. Remove from the heat and quickly add the flour. Mix rapidly with a wooden spoon until well combined.

Add the eggs one at a time and mix well after each egg. Fill a piping bag and pipe small lines onto a baking paper lined tray.

Place in the oven and bake for 15 - 20 mins until they are golden brown.

When they are ready, remove from the oven and let them cool on a rack. While they are still warm, use a nozzle (the one you are planning to pipe your cream filling with) and gently poke a hole on the bottom of each eclair.

Vanilla Bean Cream Filling

1 1/2 cups Thickened Cream
1/2 cup Icing Sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

Beat the cream until it thickens, then add the icing sugar slowly and finally add the vanilla and mix it in on a low speed.

Wait until the eclairs cool to room temperature. Fill a piping bag with the vanilla cream and insert the nozzle into the eclair hole you made earlier and fill the eclair.

Chocolate topping

100g Dark Chocolate
2 tablespoons Cream
1 tablespoon of Nutella (optional)
3/4 cup Flaked Almonds

Melt the chocolate and cream together (in 30 sec blasts in the microwave) and mix well.


Dip the top of the eclair into the chocolate and let it sit. While the chocolate is setting toast the almond flakes in a pan over the stove.

Toast on low heat until the flakes become golden brown and you can smell the delicious toasted almonds.

Remove from the heat and sprinkle ontop of the eclairs. Let it sit for awhile before you dig in. Yuuuum :)

Inside My 4th Cupcake Workshop

Summer is coming and I'm excited by the warmer weather and the fact that I am still able to make it home in time to see the sun set :)

I know I have not updated my blog in weeks and I just want to let you guys know that I have not forgotten! I have gathered lots of photos and recipes to add on here but I just haven't had the time :(

The last couple of weeks have been busy but the next couple of weeks will be some what chaotic - filled with lots of cookies, classes and cakes. So I will try and blog all about it but bear with me :) The boyfriend is always in the background piping 'update your blog!', 'update your blog!' so no doubt this will be the first thing I do when I get a chance to breathe :)

For now, I'll leave you with some pictures from my last cupcake workshop with the lovely Mandee and Michelle. The girls were such naturals at it, have a look at what they achieved :)

Brainstorm and sketching up some ideas
Colouring the icing to match the swatches
Covering the cupcakes
Making the little decorations!
Everything coming together….

The finished set :)

Vanilla Bean Wedding Cake

I think vanilla is underrated. When most people think of vanilla they think 'plain', 'boring', 'common'... and I must admit that's what I used to think too. Vanilla flavoured desserts never really seem to excite me. Until I discovered that the vanilla I thought was boring all along was flavoured with vanilla essence. Vanilla essence is basically the least flavourful of all the forms of vanilla. It's commercially modified so while it does flavour your sweets and make it smell nice, it really does lack that special oomph.

I didn't really understand the difference good/pure vanilla made until my patisserie course early this year when we cooked all our desserts with vanilla bean paste. Of course the richest flavour would come from using vanilla pods and scraping out the beans, but if you don't have that available or don't want to spend the extra cash, vanilla bean paste is just as good (in my humble taste bud's opinion).

Vanilla bean cupcake with creamy vanilla bean buttercream

Vanilla bean flavouring really turns desserts into something special, they give it a sweet, fresh smell and make it taste simply deletable. Vanilla will no longer be 'plain' or 'boring'! :)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not turning my nose up at chocolate (I love chocolate!). I'm simply saying, give vanilla a go :) Vanilla bean anyways... I challenge you to use vanilla bean paste instead of essence in your next baking adventure and really taste the difference :)

It's interesting how chocolate mud is my most popular flavour (i guess because there is just something about a decadent chocolate cake that makes people feel a bit naughty for indulging... and plus, hardly anyone ever turns down chocolate!) but when people come for cake tastings, my vanilla bean cake always steals the show.

Last weekend I made and delivered my first wedding cake - in vanilla bean flavour of course! The lovely Elva contacted me, her sister was getting married and she was so kind to be helping her sister plan the cake. They were unsure of the colours of the cake initially, but after debating over colour swatches and a bit of brainstorming, they decided to go with a deep pink and light pink for the base with silver ribbon detail. Simple but very pretty :)


The cake gods must have been smiling down on me when I delivered it. It was the most hassle free + traffic free delivery ever! It was however, a bit hard explaining to the staff at the Chinese restaurant in my very (and I mean VERY) broken Mandarin about how to cut the cake. In the end, with a lot of stuttering, hand signaling and a few people translating bits and pieces, we all understood each other.



The couple bought their own topper and it was a sweet finishing touch. Congratulations to the happy couple and I hope they have years and years of sweetness ahead of them :)

Everyone say Woof

In the last couple of weeks I've been pushed closer to the truth - that my 2 separate lives, one as a working professional and the other as a cake artist can not continue to co-exist without either driving me crazy or one of them going pear shaped.

So what do I do? I know what I truly want, and that is to design and create sugar art. People always ask me how I can manage to run this business on the side but honestly when I put the long hours into my decorating, it does not feel like work. Even when things go wrong, when I am frustrated or finishing off a cake at 5am in the morning, hardly being able to keep my eyes open, I still feel a sense of accomplishment and excitement when I see the finished creation.

My professional life is pretty exciting (at times) too. But I guess it just does not compare to the passion that I hold for my sweet creations. It's times like these that I dream about what I would do if I won lotto. Which is pretty unlikely to happen considering that I don't even know how to buy lotto! But I'd like to dream about getting myself enrolled into Le Cordon Bleu's Patisserie course and then maybe setting up my little cake empire :) Not before I go travelling around the world of course!

I suppose everyone would be doing their own thing if they won lotto so I shouldn't really be relying on lotto to make my dreams come true. I know one of my friends would definitely spend it all on travelling and exploring the world, and the other will unselfishly use it to make the world a better place.

I guess for now I can just continue to day dream :)

I have been thinking about making a dog cake for awhile. I always like to push myself into the deep end and this creation was no different. It was for my cousin's fiance's birthday and I think it's so great how my friends and family are always happy to be at the receiving end of my experiments.


I'm pretty happy with how it turned out for my first attempt. The head was a little too big for the body but I suppose it gives the dog a 'cute' look. It was meant to look like my cousin's golden retriever but I don't think it really did. On the plus side, it did look like a dog!

Good dog! *pat pat*

Everyone say Woof!

Anyone want a slice of dog's butt?