Oreo Cupcakes

Oreo Cupcakes

Assalamualaikum. Last Friday Aina took her IGCSE Spanish Oral Exam in the afternoon. I was the one who was panicking… for 2 straight days I had a severe headache… it must be the pressure anak nak exam he he he. I send her to school 15 minutes before the oral starts just to make sure that she remain calm before entering the room but climbing the stairs set it off. She said it took her 5 minutes to regain her posture but alhamdulillah everything went well and she managed to converse well with the examiner without stuttering. Well…1 down and 23 more papers to go. So, between now and 13 June 2012, I’m officially in “stress mode” he he he.

Okay…. lets talk about this simple cupcakes pulak…. I made them last week rasanya but have no time to post it due to you know what la. So, here is the recipe taken from Rima’s blog. I only made 1/2 of the ingredients and it yield about 40 small cupcakes. Hope you guys like it because the girls loved them very much! Enjoy!

Ingredients

• 250g butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups self rising flour – sift
• 1 tsp baking powder – sift
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 8~10 Oreos – crushed together with the cream

Super duper easy cupcakes

Method

1. Whisk butter, sugar, self raising flour, baking powder, eggs and vanilla essence for 2 mins.. dont overbeat ok..
2. Stir in the crushed oreos and thats it..
3. Pipe batter into cupcakes casing
4. Baked in preheated oven of 170C for abt 10 to 15mins

Soft and yummy

Ebru Art

Ebru Art

Have you heard of Ebru Art before? Well, I didn’t know this kind of art ever existed and I was so impressed when I saw this guy creating this beautiful painting on water and then transfer them onto a piece of paper.  Yes… that’s right… painting on water. Me and my other half said that this is truly a water painting… So impressed by this we decided to stick around and talked to the guy. He told us that he was invited to do this art demonstration for 3 days as part of Mother’s Day celebration at the Avenues Kuwait (This was a couple of weeks back).

Artist demonstrating Ebru Art in Avenues Mall

Ebru is another name for Paper Marbling and it is one of the oldest Turkish arts. Paper Marbling  is the art of creating colorful patterns by sprinkling and brushing insoluble paint over dense water and then carefully transferred to an absorbent surface, such as paper or fabric.

Ebru Art - Flower and birds

If you look at the photo above, you can see that the background of the painting has some sort of marble effect. This can be obtained by dabbing your desired colour of paint in the water so that it creates blobs of paint on the top of the water and then used the other end of the brush to drag through the water and create the marbling effect. Well… same technique used to create marble effect on your cake really! Drawings or patterns can now be added onto this background. Flowers, birds, geometric designs and calligraphy are common choices for the Ebru Artist. The brushes that are used here are made from horse-tail and rose wood. Once the artist is satisfied with his painting, the absorbent paper is gently laid onto the surface of the water. Then the paper is lifted off and hung up to dry.

The artist - Garip Ay

Completed paintings on that day...

These are some of Garip Ay paintings that I took from his blog. Beautiful….

Garp Ay painting from his blog

Garip Ay Kervan

Garip Ay collection

Tish Boyle’s Rich Marble Pound Cake

Tish Boyle's Marble Cake

Kids are having their Easter holidays for 1 week but unfortunately for them, this holiday is a working holidays. Why? Well, right after the holidays Sofea will be taking her Year 7 Entrance exam and Aina’s first paper (Mathematics!!!) for her IGCSE exam is on 8 May.. just 4 weeks away, so this means study, study, study for everybody including me. As usual, when kids at home, my blood pressure goes up especially when the exam is just around the corner. At times I think that I am more nervous than them about these exams…. may be that’s how our parents felt during our exam time dulu dulu.

Anyway, today Sofea and Jasmine have a Birthday Party invitation at Ice Skating Rink, so I decided that both the kids and me really need a break… we were out since 10 am this morning and by the time we arrived home tadi, it was 5 pm. We picked up Sofea and Jasmine from Kimberly’s house about 3:30 pm , while we were at her house, her mum (May Yeen) showed me her vegetable garden at the roof top… it was lovely. She had strawberries, potatoes, tomatoes, chilies, celery, serai (lemongrass) and few other vegetables on her roof top… I’m so jealous… may be I should start gardening too. I wonder whether I have “green hand”…. anyway, she did gave me small lemongrass tree, so we’ll see if this tree will survive or not under my care kah kah kah. Below are some of the photos that I took from her garden.

Strawberry....

Tasted this strawberry.... sweeeet!

Potatoes...

Tomatoes...

Chili and mint...

My favourite.... serai (lemongrass)

Celery

Watermelon... baru tumbuh!!!

Okay…. back to the recipe for today. This cake I baked last night and it was delicious… soft and moist. As usual, I took the recipe from Rima but I only made 1/2 of the ingredients below. Happy baking!

Marble cake in loaf pan

Ingredients

• 340g Unsalted butter
• 342g Cake Flour (I used normal flour)
• 2tsp Baking powder
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 500g Castor sugar (Please reduce this to 300g- original recipe is too sweet)
• 1.5 tsp Vanilla Extract
• 5 large Eggs
• 120ml (1/2cup) Whole milk
• 20g Natural cocoa powder
• 90ml Water

Method :

1. Preheat oven to 325F/ 190C. Grease the inside of a 10′ bundt pan and dust with flour.
2. Sift Cake flour, baking powder and salt and set it aside.
3. In a mixing bowl fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter at medium speed for 2 minutes until creamy.
4. Add sugar and continue to cream for 4 mins at medium to high speed.
5. Add vanilla extract. Add eggs one at a time and mix at medium speed until well mixed.
6. Add sifted flour mixture in 3 additions and alternating it with 2 additions of milk.
7. Mix cocoa powder with water in a small bowl. Add 3 cups of the batter to the cocoa mixture and stir until blended.
8. Spoon 1/3 of plain batter into the prepared bundt pan and smooth it to an even layer. Spoon 1/3 of the chocolate mixture over the plain layer and smooth to even out. Repeat until all batter is used up finishing with the chocolate layer.
9. Bake at 190C for 60-75mins or until the skewer comes out clean.

Need to improve on creating marble effect...