Cookie Design Practice #2: The Little Blue Shoe

Second attempt at designing cookies. More description later.

Happy weekend everyone!

Aikko

Cookie Design Practice #1: The Little Black Dress

I attended a friend's wedding last month and I saw one of her friends, a girl wearing a pretty black dress. Cielo and I wondered how the skirt beautifully ballooned. My guess is that she's wearing a petticoat under it but... hindi a uso ang petticoat ngayon.

Anyway, this inspired me to do a "cookie version" of the dress.

I don't like how the it turned out but I guess you won't always get it right the first few times.
For my first attempt I made to piping the dots. However, I got so impatient I checked in on it every few moments or so. What happened then almost made me throw the cookie to the garbage bin... I got clumsy I nearly dropped it. Good news is that I didn't drop it. Bad news - it broke into two and many dots got rearranged! Aaarghhh, I have to do it again!

The dress as I remembered it didnt have shoulder straps but I think it adding the straps would be a nice deviation from the original design.

After baking the cookie I prepared the black royal icing so I can pipe the borders.

Then comes the fun part - flooding the cookie. Here, I added a bit of water to the royal icing to make it "runny" and poured some into the cookie. Using a toothpick, I gently made round strokes to fill the empty spaces.

Polkadots!!!

Lastly, I added the belt. I nice contrast to black and white.


Still happy cupcaking! (But currently on cookie mode)

Aikko

Pinoy Cupcake: Maria Clara Cupcakes

This is actually a red wine cupcake.



But instead of using red wine, I used Maria Clara, a locally produced sangria. First tasted this when I was in college on the way home from a trip to Mt Banahaw for our PI 1oo class. Love the taste, fruity and not that strong.





The sangria is made by the oldest distillery in the Philippines (it says so in the bottle) :)

Since December 30 just passed, this is also my tribute to Pepe's 113th death anniversary. I've been meaning to bake this months ago, but since I got busy, I wasn't able to find time till now.

Happy Cupcaking!

Aikko

ps. this is the second to the last post for my Pinoy Cupcake series. Masarap maging makabayan pero it's also nice to try other things :) Tagay!

Our New Year Cake

This is the cake I made for our New Year Celebration - a healthier version of the peach cake I recently learned to make.

Instead of canned peaches and table sugar, I used grated carrot and Splenda and no cream cheese frosting. It's drier than the usual result but still as yummy. Made me appreciate sugar more.

Happy cupcaking,

Aikko

My Baking Books

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

Earlier, in preparation for the New Year, I gathered all my bakings books from all over the house in the hopes of gathering them in one place. I didn't realize I have accumulated quite a lot over the years.

Some were purchased years ago... little did I know I would really apply some of the techniques I learned from them. Some where purchased recently... It seems so nice to know that I could just grab some of the books and see that what I want to know is already there.

Here's to more Caking and Cupcaking adventures in 2010!

Happy Cupcaking!

Aikko

New Year Cakes for Auntie Fely and the Gang

Basket weave design lovingly piped for Auntie Fely and the gang

Top design looks like a white christmas wreath

Happy New Year! :)

Since we won't be spending the new year with the aunties, I decided to send cakes over. Apparently, they didn;t get to taste some last Chirstmas... Naubos kasi agad :)

Happy Cupcaking!

Aikko

Cakes for Christmas

Red Velvet Cake

Merry Christmas!!!

Whew! If Jonny Depp is the new Mad Hatter, I was the Mad Baker. Two nights before Christmas, I baked a red velvet, coffe, chocolate and carrot cakes. Since I need to transport them to the venue, I just made the cake at home, then just brought my tools offsite.

Happy to announce that the people loved it! The cakes vanished 2 hours before Christmas! How I wished I baked more!!! Oh well, there's always the next Christmas.

Happy holidays everyone! ;)

Happy Cupcaking!

Aikko

Cinnamon Carrot Cake with Rhum Soaked Raisins and Gingered Cream Cheese Frosting
Coffee Cake with Chocolate Drizzle and Sugary Walnuts

Best seller of the night, Auntie Fely's Chocolate Cake