Salaam.
So starting Monday next week, I'm gonna go back to being a student again insha Allah. My semester break was spent well I think, alhamdulillah. I mostly baked, cooked and looked after my nephew, Nuh (he's gonna be 2 months old in 2 days time insha Allah!).
So I found this amazing recipe for chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting which is such a win win situation for me because one, it is delicious beyond words, so moist and so chocolatey and two, it doesn't require hard work. It's easy peasy. Trust me. You can whip this up in less than 20 minutes, excluding the baking in the oven process. I made loads of these, everyone seemed to love it and although I'm not a fan of anything cheese, but this cupcake is just subhanAllah, out of this world (the chocolate taste trumps the saltiness and sourness of the cream cheese! yay!).
I made chocolate brownies. Which seemed to be mediocre now after I've tasted the wonderful cupcakes lol.
Also, I found out that I've been interchangeably using icing sugar and caster sugar. I know it's hard to believe that I didn't know the difference between the two but yea, I really didn't. It was such a funny process because I didn't know what went wrong and I started doubting my baking abilities (the only thing I can get right in my life sometimes Allahu akbar) and got a bit depressed, until one day, Faruq did a bit of research and found the truth which after that, led us to many more baking activities haha.
I'm still quite bad at piping but hey look! It does look like those frostings you see in cupcake shops! *sheds tears*
I also made a birthday cake. My cousin's son turned 2 on the 3rd February alhamdulillah and for the birthday party, they requested a cake for me to make. It was the week of Chinese New Year so a lot of shops were still closed or they weren't ready to accept cake orders so my cousin (bless her soul) asked me if I would do the honour. She showed me this picture
and I thought, "Well okay, I think I can manage this."
Bahahahahaha I'm so funny sometimes. And delusional.
Okay I got the stories in a mixed up order but this was actually how I found the recipe of those cupcakes, I wanted to make that yellow icing and they wanted chocolate cake so I googled exactly that. Okay now let's move on to the depressing part.
Because this was a relatively new recipe and all that, I didn't know how much to make to achieve the correct height of the cake. The baking process took longer than I anticipated and the worst thing is, I had to bake three of the normal sized ones and stack them up, and because it was getting late, I combined 2 cakes in one pan and I thought I could just half the cake later on so it would still look like a three layered cake.
That's where I went wrong. Although I checked the cake by inserting a stick in the middle of the cake and I saw I could pull it out clean, it turned out that it wasn't thoroughly cooked. I didn't do the 'finger test' and I think that's the important step I skipped.
So okay, we have this undercooked cake and remember how I didn't know the difference between caster sugar and icing sugar? Yeap, how could anyone forget. So my cream cheese frosting turned out to be too runny. And I didn't know why! I went to bed that night hoping that somehow my cousin would tell me, "Oh someone donated a cake for the party, you can keep your cake okay?"
But that didn't happen. I got up very early in the morning, dreaded the party the whole morning and hoping no one would kill me at the party, and I continued to ice the cake. So the height turned out okay. Now it's just the icing and the newfound information that morning (while I was layering the cake), that MAYBE the cake was undercooked. All that work and worry, came down to this.
Yeap, I was right. The cake on the bottom was undercooked, the frosting was a bit runny but above all that, the cake was still edible. Alhamdulillah, no one died and no one gave me the evil eye. In fact, everyone was so nice about it, saying only good things about the cake *sobs*. Oh and my cousin (bless her soul) paid me more than the price we both agreed on *sheds more tears*. May Allah increase her rizq, ameen.
And because there wasn't enough excitement, I also accepted my uncle's order of a German chocolate cake. Which he wanted it ready on the same day my cousin needed the big yellow birthday cake. Have I told you that part of me being a bit delusional? Yeah we're all nodding our heads now aren't we, it's a unanimous thing don't you worry.
After all that, Faruq and I with our newfound confidence (after knowing the about the sugar thing) decided to give macarons another try. We failed 3-4 times and I'm not lying when I say that they looked like amoebas. And praise the Lord, we did it! That choice of colour because Faruq was channeling hulk's spirit into the macarons.
Tadaaaah! And before everyone starts thinking this is such a happy ever after story, let me be one of those authors who destroy it for you.
We made another batch of macarons, went a bit ambitious with two colours and doubling the recipe and all that (lol losers) and we failed. Yet again.
Although amoebas weren't produced this time, our macarons turned out to look like whoopie pies haha what laaaa.
Wanted to post a photo and tell a lie about how we wanted to make whoopie pies and woo hoo we succeeded but that would cause a certain someone on my left shoulder to be busy writing so I decided against it. Alhamdulillah for conscience.
So that's my baking journey and here's hoping to more delicious, joyful and successful (please oh please) bakings, insha Allah!
