Showing posts with label Buttercream. Show all posts

Sirap Bandung Cupcakes (Recipe)


Sirap bandung. How do I say that in English? Rose milk? Rose syrup? Somebody help. Hahaha. It's basically a popular Malaysian drink made up of rose syrup and milk. It's pink, too. It's really common to see this drink on the menu of the local restaurants here. I had to google up how this drink originated and apparently, this drink is an adaptation of the rose milk served in India. Okay, new knowledge! There's even bandung-flavored soy milk sold in the supermarkets. Now that Ramadhan is approaching, I'm pretty sure it's easier for you to find it on the shelves of the supermarkets near you. 

Anyway... this recipe was made out of curiosity. I knew it was possible to create another new recipe from the good old vanilla cupcake recipe, but I wasn't sure if sirap bandung would work. So I tried. Since the vanilla cupcake recipe required milk as one of the ingredients, I tried substituting it with rose milk instead. It worked and I never felt so good! Here's how you can make these lovely sirap bandung cupcakes.

Cupcakes
Ingredients:
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup plain yogurt (or sour cream, either one)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/4 sirap bandung (rose syrup, condensed milk, water)
If batter is not pink enough, add in a drop of red food coloring. Not too much!

Directions:
1. Preheat your oven. Go.
2. In your mixing bowl, beat sugar, vegetable oil, eggs and vanilla extract until the eggs and oil are well incorporated. Keep mixing until the batter gets lighter in colour.
3. Mix in the yogurt and beat until well combined.
4. Add half the flour into the bowl together with baking powder. Beat on low speed while pouring half of the sirap bandung until the mixture starts to incorporate.
5. Add the remaining flour and continue mixing while pouring the remaining milk. Beat until all of the ingredients are well combined.
6. Divide your batter evenly into your cups. Be sure not to overfill them. Stop trying to taste the batter with your finger too 😛
7. Bake for 17-20 minutes at 160 degrees C. Once done, let them cool completely.

I once participated in a cupcake decorating competition with my friends and won third place. One of the judges told us that the reason why my team didn't make it as the champion was because our cupcakes weren't frosted properly (refer photo above). The right way to frost your cupcakes is to make sure that your cupcakes are fully covered with your frosting. 


However, as you can see, whatever he said didn't change my way of frosting my cupcakes. I like my cupcakes the way I like them to be. I'm not doing it professionally, so I don't need rules. #rebel 🙊 And yes, those are mint leaves.

Yup. You figured. It's buttercream frosting! Nothing different, except for the fact that I added a drop of rose extract into it. If you don't have it, you can totally proceed with the regular buttercream frosting. 

Buttercream Frosting
Ingredients:
 125g butter
250g powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon rose extract (optional)
Directions:
 Beat butter. Add powdered sugar gradually and mix until fluffy. Add rose extract into mixture and mix until well combined. If you want it colored, drop your desired food coloring into it.
Okay, that is one lengthy post. If you made it up to this point, you're the best! 
Ramadhan Kareem to everyone ðŸ’—
p/s: leave a comment and tell me what you're planning to bake, i'd love to get to know my readers hehe

Moist Coffee Cupcakes (Recipe)


Like, really moist! I was so infatuated with the nice coffee scent, the soft texture, and how amazingly moist they are with not even a hint of dryness. Might even go as far as suggesting that you should skip your daily morning coffee routine (or cancel your expensive Starbucks trip) and pop these babies into the oven instead. What's amazing is that you get to taste a perfect balance between both chocolate and coffee in these cupcakes. I love this recipe because not only there is a high possibility that you have all the ingredients in your kitchen, they are so easy to make too. Nothing expensive, nothing time-consuming in terms of preparation.

CUPCAKES
Ingredients:
Bowl A:
1/2 cup of brewed coffee
1 1/2 teaspoons coffee powder (I used Nescafe Classic)
1/2 cup fresh milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Bowl B:
1 1/3 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2  teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
Bowl C:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 egg

Directions:
Preheat the oven. Come on,  you know the drill.
Bowl A:
Mix the coffee powder into the brewed coffee until dissolved. Add in milk and vanilla extract and set aside.
Bowl B:
Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
Bowl C:
Beat butter, sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and beat until nicely combined. Add flour mixture (Bowl B) into the egg-butter-sugar mixture in 3 additions, alternating with 2 additions of coffee mixture (Bowl A) until well incorporated. Flour-coffee-flour-coffee-flour. 
Lastly, pour the mixture into your cups! Bake for 20 minutes at 160 degrees. Cool completely before you frost the cupcakes. Be patient, please.



You can see how moist and soft they are just by the look of it. Did I tell you how much I've missed doing food photography? I felt like my skills and creativity have deteriorated during the times I have not held my camera. Really loved how the pictures came out for this recipe, though. My mood boards on Pinterest really helped me a lot. #photographytips 😂 Aaaa, I need to shop for more props. I've been using the same props in almost all of my photos. It gets boring.


The good old buttercream frosting. Don't tell me you have no idea what buttercream frosting is unless you're new to baking. YOU. MUST. KNOW. THIS. It's the only thing that can save you when you are clueless of what to frost your cupcakes with. All you need are butter and powdered sugar. If you want it flavored, PUT ANYTHING YOU WANT. Chocolate, mint, lemon, caramel, butterscotch, and even coffee... You can always keep it in the fridge for the times you're not using it. For its long shelf life, I can say it's a lifesaver.

How to make coffee buttercream frosting?
Ingredients:
125g butter
250g powdered sugar
1 teaspoon of brewed coffee 
Directions:
Beat butter. Add powdered sugar gradually and mix until fluffy. Pour coffee into mixture and mix until well combined. 
** you might wanna check the consistency of your frosting to know when you should stop mixing. If it's still too soft and runny, piping will be a hard work. Try mixing a little bit longer until it becomes stable!


Anyways, I have a lot of things to be done for my final year project. I have yet submitted my draft to my supervisor. I have yet started writing for my chapter 3. I am so behind the schedule. SEND HELP. 

Pandan Gula Melaka Cupcakes (Recipe)

(What do you think about this GIF that I made? Hehehe)

PART A - Pandan Juice
Ingredients:
About 10 pandan leaves
3-4 tablespoons of water

Directions:
1. Wash clean the pandan leaves and cut them into small pieces.
2. Grind the pandan leaves and add 3 tablespoons of water to the ground leaves.
3. Squeeze (as much as you can) the juice out and sieve. Set aside.

PART B - Pandan Cupcakes (About 24 cupcakes)
Ingredients:
2 eggs
200g cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (if you use the normal salted butter, leave this out)
125g unsalted butter (softened)
150g castor sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
65g coconut milk + 25g water
2 1/2 tablespoons pandan juice (from Part A)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. 
2. Sift cake flour, baking powder and salted into a bowl. Put aside.
3. Mix (as in stir) well coconut milk, water, pandan juice and vanilla extract and set aside.
4. Beat butter and sugar at medium speed until creamy and fluffy.
5. Add eggs, one at a time until the mixture is incorporated.
6. Add flour mixture from step 2, alternating with the coconut+pandan mixture from step 4, in three additions. Mix until the batter is incorporated. Make sure not to overbeat the batter.
7. Bake for about 20-22 minutes. (I normally go with 20.)


PART C - Gula Melaka Syrup
Ingredients:
50g gula melaka
3 pandan leaves
2 tablespoons water

Directions:
1. Place together gula melaka, water and pandan leaves in a saucepan over low heat. 
2. Stir until all sugar is dissolved and mixture comes to a boil.
3. Set aside and let it cool completely.


PART D - Gula Melaka Meringue Buttercream
Ingredients:
3 egg whites
50g castor sugar
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
150g unsalted butter (softened)
5-6 teaspoons gula melaka syrup (from Part C)

Directions:
1. Place egg whites, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl over a pot of simmering water. (Like the double boil method)
2. Whisk continuously until the sugar is dissolved.
3. Transfer into a mixing bowl, and beat the mixture at medium high speed until stiff peaks are formed and until the mixture has cooled to room temperature. You can check by touching the bottom of your mixing bowl.
4. Turn your mixer to medium speed and add butter, piece by piece. Beat until mixture turns creamy.
5. Add gula melaka syrup 1 teaspoon at a time, until incorporated. Now this is really up to you. If you don't really fancy sweet frosting you can add maybe around 3-4 tablespoons of syrup.
6. Frost the cupcakes any way you like and drizzle the leftover gula melaka syrup over the frosting!


Pheeewww that is one long recipe. IF you're not a fan of sweet desserts (really sweet) you should cut down the sugar for the cupcake batter or maybe you could leave out the syrup drizzle over your frosting. The syrup alone is already so sweet!! But the cupcakes, I promise you they're really moist. Anyway, good luck and have fun trying! (If you ever wanna try.. Hehe)
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