Blueberry Bran Muffins

I made this for my friend, Christina, since she once told me that she liked this cafe that served really great Blueberry Bran Muffins and asked if I can make her some. So on the quest I went to find the recipe...but it was somewhat difficult since I never tasted what she was talking about let alone know what the muffin should take like. But I made it anyways...and the outcome was good and moist. Has tons of blueberry in it. Send some off to her house so I'm dying to know what she thinks of if. Hopefully she will comment on the blog and let us all know. I brought the left overs to work and I think it's not a big hit here since it is on the healthier side of sweets. They are spoiled with the sweeter stuff in life....hhahahha....

First Cupcake Orders

I made my own labels......heehee.

Even made my purchase order....hhahahah.

As the title goes, my very first order!!! Thanks to my friend, ZC, for believeing in me and got the balls to order them and sharing it with her co-workers at work. Not even once she had doubt if the end products would be good or not....she just placed the orders....(she never really tried most of my recent products...think only once or twice). Sooooo...I have to give her big credits for that! She even just let me make whatever cupcakes I wanted. But of course, I played it safe and made my yummy Carrot cake cupcakes...and the other batch was Chocolate cupcake with buttercream frosting. I think the Carrot cupcakes were a big hit....but the other batch.....still good but not as quickly eaten as the Carrot cupcakes!!! I should had made peanut butter frosting instead but I was afraid that since peanuts can give allergic reactions to some, I hestitated. Now I'm regretting.......hopefully next time, ZC will get to taste them. I'm just so EXCITED because it shows that someone believes in my product. Not in for the moola (yet)...more for building up my cliente.

Many thanks to:

• Zella C.: Just want to say a big THANK YOU for believing in me and my products. You know you didn't have to do what you did for me. But I really appreciated all your support that you had given me since I started this venture. Thanks as always!
• Christina L.: I also want to say THANK YOU for wanting to order some for Renzo's birthday. I really appreciated your support and for believing in what I do since I started this venture. Thanks again as always!

Much love to you both!

A Quest for the Perfect Chocolate Cupcake!

Second batch: looks like rubber balls???



First batch: more like cupcakes but dry!

So I'm like obessed with finding the perfect chocolate cupcakes!!! So far I had baked three different recipes of chocolate cupcakes and none has turned out perfect! The outcome is either too dry.....not cohesive....too rubbery looking....too too dense....deflats...ahhhhh...arghhhh! But regardless of the texture, the taste was great though . Because of these recent fall out of the baking, I've became anal to find the right recipe for my chocolate cupcakes! Everyday, I'm on the net, surfing to find that perfect recipe and reading the reviews to which, honestly, it's driving me nuts! My mind is like a blur with reading all these different recipes out there for the perfect, moist....chocolate cupcakes that I just don't know where to start anymore!

But.....I'm not going to give up! I'm going to keep trying out different recipes just to find the ONE! So far, I got two from my bro's GF that I'm going to try.......and another one I found on the net. Don't know how most people feel...but to me, it's very frustrating when you thought you got something down and it only comes out as a dissapointment! That's how I felt towards these chocolate cupcakes! Everytime I whip one of these recipes up, the process turns out good.....batter looks goods....smells good.....put it in the oven......look at the oven and see how it is perfectly baking......take it out of the oven....waiting patiently for it to cool down...and then when you think you got it down.....you taste it!!! And that's when it just tears you down.....the cupcake sucks!!!! Most most frustrating! BUT, like I said.....NOT GOING TO GIVE UP! I'm going to master these chocolate cupcake battles!!! Stay tuned...............

Good enough to buy?

My husband work place had a baby shower party and he had to sign up to bring something. So he signed up for cupcakes. These were Carrot Cake Cupcakes with cream cheese frostings to which half of it I tinted it blue since it will be a baby boy that his co-worker will be having. I needed something to transfer these cupcakes and so I went searching for these containers a few weeks before the event. I would like cardboard boxes with a window but then they required a purchase of 100s to which was too many boxes for me. So I came across these plastic ones that looks like the cupcake boxes that you see at the supermarket (i.e., Albertsons, Ralphs, etc.). I figure it would be good for now since I'm still an amateur in my quest to start my own business. I also thought it would look nicer since it's see through and you can see the cupcakes with all the decorations. Although, I would like to had done more with the decorations but didn't have enough time. Next time. But I'm super excited to use these boxes to give away or for my cupcake orders since it displays nicely my cupcakes!

Coconut & Mango Cupcakes

These two cupcakes were packaged for my friend to try

Left side: Chocolate Cupcake w/Strawberry frosting

Right side: Coconut & Mango Cupcake w/mango frosting

So I had some Mangos in my fridge and what do you do with them when you can't finish them??? Make them into cake...in this case, cupcakes!!! But unfortunately, the Mango taste did not come out after baking it...=(. Instead, it tasted more like coconut cupcake then anything. On top of that, the texture of the cake was different from your usual cake. It was very dense and spongy like. Maybe it was the cake batter that I made. It was just simple white cake batter, but I personally did not like it. As for the Mango, don't know what happened to it.....it became kinda like "lost in translation" during the baking. I used 3 big mangos and pureed it and it was so sweet already thinking "cool, the mango flavor will come out". Boy, was I wrong. Luckily, I added the shredded toasted coconut in the mix because if not, it would just be a plain cake!!

The toasting of the coconut pieces were awesome!!!! It was so easy to do and it made my whole house smell so tropical. Will definitely use these toasted coconuts again for another recipe!

The frosting this time was somewhat different too. It was more of an icing than a frosting. Again, mango pureed was used but no mango flavors were evident. I read somewhere that if you want to have that mango flavor, I should use artificial flavorings...a.k.a....pure mango extract! So, with that said, these cupcakes were definitely not my cup of tea. Would I make it again???.......hmmmm....maybe but with some major alterations tho so I can have that mango taste and smell!

Chocolate Cupcake (or Brownie?) with Peanut Butter Frosting

These cupcakes were made as a favor for a friend. It's chocolate cupcakes but somehow the texture was not like a cake. More like a brownie cupcake! It was pretty dense and feels heavy. Didn't know why but supposedly after talking to some people that bakes, they said that chocolate cakes/cupcakes are usually heavy and dense. It didn't rise as much as I thought it would be but some say it's because the recipe was missing "baking soda"??? Maybe that is the case. It was pretty weird too that in the oven it was all nice and puffy with a dome....but after the cooling period, it just deflated! Oh well, need to work on this chocolate cupcakes more and find out what's going on!

As for the frosting, it was yummy! Creamy and fluffy with a hint of peanut butter! Can't complain much on that frosting tho. I think I'm pretty confident with my frosting mixtures nowadays. At least less trouble then my cupcakes...hahahah. Overall, this was a good trial on a last minute request. Hopefully the people eating them will appreciate it as well!

SPRINKLES Strawberry Cupcake with Strawberry Frosting

Ok...so here's a cupcake recipe from SPRINKLES bakery. Yes, the owner's own recipe that she shared with the world.....Strawberry Cupcake with Strawberry Frosting. The famous (and overrated) cupcake bakery that supposedly so good has finally shared their inside secrets in making "oh...so good" cupcakes! Alrighty, so how did they turn out??? Well, in my opinion, they were blah...nothing so grand about it! The frostings were better than the cupcakes! It was just like an average cupcake if you ask me and it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg to get one! I hope other selections of cupcakes SPRINKLES offer is better than this one.

I never really tried a SPRINKLES cupcake before but I heard grand things about it. How it's so good, so dense, blah blah blah. So when I heard that SPRINKLES owner was giving out their recipe, I was super excited to make it to see what they hype was about! To my dissapointment, nothing spectular that I can think of. Maybe I don't have a sweet tooth for this kind of things where I can't tell what's great or not. But my taste buds don't lie....maybe this is why this recipe was shared since it was just an OK cupcake. You figure, would a renowned bakery share it's secret in making great cupcakes like their Red Velvet and Chocolate?? I think not!

So let's see, making these cupcakes was fun tho cuz I got to learn new baking techniques. I know now that by cooking down the fruits (i.e., strawberries, blueberrie, etc), it can add much sweetness to the flavor when you pureed it and use it in your batter. The cupcakes turned out moist and had a good taste to it. Not too sweet or to bland. But it was not as dense that I thought it would be since I heard SPRINKLES makes their cupcakes dense. The frosting was really good...my son loved it so much that when he had a lick of it...he said "mmmm....yummy!!!" and wanted more. The only strange thing is that after frosting the cupcakes and putting them in the fridge in a sealed container overnight, the next day when a friend bite into it (after 30 minutes out of the fridge), she said the cupcakes were a little dry???? My husband ate it last night and it was not dried at all before it went into the fridge. When a co-worker ate it after an 1 or so, it was fine with her too. Maybe the cupcakes needed to thaw before eating one???? Oh well, either way, the frostings was the bomb!!!!!!