OF COURSE NOT!

Just a few slight hiccups/exams in my life and now i'm back in the kitchen. Hehe

Since Christmas is literally less than a month away. I've decided to do something special for our family and friends since i will not be around!
For those of you that do not know, i'm off for a month in Malaysia and Japan! Yay for me. I still can't believe that i'm actually travelling out of usual Australia-Malaysia trip. I reckon Japan would be awesome (minus the language barrier and minus the really really cold snowy weather)

I made some Christmas Vanilla Cookies, decorated them and placed them in my AWESOME! cookie jar that i found of IKEA for $4.99 each! What a bargain huh?
Well, to me, the jars are just irresistable, and when i saw them on the catalogue, i just couldnt help but went straight to IKEA and bought like 2 dozens.

Here's a little tutorial on how to prepare the jars.

Materials:-
1. A medium size cookie jar (like mine)
2. Red and Green satin ribbons
3. Vanilla Sugar Cookies
4. Some colour tissue paper

5. Christmas cookie Tags/labels

6. Craft glue

You can download my cookie labels which i print an A4 size mailing labels. Another option is to have them printed on thick colour paper and punch a hole at the top to put through your ribbons. (Its like a christmas ornament :)

DOWNLOAD LABELS HERE

Here's my favorite jar i bought. Clean it throughly and soak it in hot water if necessary to remove any labels on the jar.

Measure your ribbons to the waist of the jar. Squeeze some craft glue on the ribbons and immediately wrap them around the jar

See these labels? I made them myself! I'm so proud. I love how they are round. I use as extra large round hole puncher (you can get them at any craft stores) to get the shape. Imagine trying to cut like 30 little circle with a scissors! NOOOOO

Use the label as a front cover for where the ribbon starts and ends. If your ribbon keeps falling off, try using a large rubber band to secure the ribbons and the labels. Like this

Leave the jar for about 10 minutes and there go you! A jar ready to be filled be sugar cookies (yum yum yum) *The coloured tissued papers are to fill the top of the jar later.

Now to the section of Decorated Sugar Cookies. I cannot technically post the recipe here but if you want, you can definitely make ginger cookies or butter cookies.

Here are my freshly baked sugar cookies

Here's a whole heap of sugar cookies waiting to be decorated!

Half decorated ones. Don't you just love the christmas tree?

I use flooding icing to do the decorations. Basically its just 1 egg white and about 2-3 cups of sifted icing sugar (flooding icing is very watery royal icing and if your mixture is too thick, add a couple of droplets of water till it goes watery. And if the mixture is too watery, add more icing sugar.

Remember to add you favorite color to it too!

I went with red, green, white and yellow. Very Christmas-sy!

The pile of decorated cookies

Lastly fill the jars up with the cookies and add some colour tissue papers at the top to make it look extra pretty.

FINALLY, MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Hope you guys will have a good one this year and not to forget

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Yes you got that right!

Chocolate Rum.........

More like fresh Bundaberg Rum..........

and sinfully chocolate

:)

With decorations of sugar red and beige roses.

One of my chocolate slabs broke on the way to the reception venue. :(

Lesson learnt: Make more spares and finish the slabs at the venue!

Makes about 96 1-inch

(*recipe from Smitten Kitchen)

This is my first time making these marshmallow and the results are G-R-E-A-T and Y-U-M-M-Y!!

Go ahead and try it and no baking is required!

About 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
3 1/2 envelopes (2 tablespoons plus 2 1/2 teaspoons) unflavored gelatin
1 cup cold water, divided
2 cups granulated sugar (cane sugar worked just fine)
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 large egg whites or reconstituted powdered egg whites
1 tablespoon vanilla (alternately: 1/2 of a scraped vanilla bean, 2 teaspoons almond or mint extract or maybe even some food coloring for tinting)

Oil bottom and sides of a 13- by 9- by 2-inch rectangular metal baking pan and dust bottom and sides with some confectioners’ sugar.

In bowl of a standing electric mixer or in a large bowl sprinkle gelatin over 1/2 cup cold cold water, and let stand to soften.

In a 3-quart heavy saucepan cook granulated sugar, corn syrup, second 1/2 cup of cold water, and salt over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon, until sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to moderate and boil mixture, without stirring, until a candy or digital thermometer registers 240°F, about 12 minutes. Remove pan from heat and pour sugar mixture over gelatin mixture, stirring until gelatin is dissolved.

With standing or a hand-held electric mixer beat mixture on high speed until white, thick, and nearly tripled in volume, about six minutes if using standing mixer or about 10 minutes if using hand-held mixer. (Some reviewers felt this took even longer with a hand mixer, but still eventually whipped up nicely.)

In separate medium bowl with cleaned beaters beat egg whites (or reconstituted powdered whites) until they just hold stiff peaks. Beat whites and vanilla (or your choice of flavoring) into sugar mixture until just combined. Pour mixture into baking pan and don’t fret if you don’t get it all out (learning from my mess of a first round). Sift 1/4 cup confectioners sugar evenly over top. Chill marshmallow, uncovered, until firm, at least three hours, and up to one day.

Run a thin knife around edges of pan and invert pan onto a large cutting board. Lifting up one corner of inverted pan, with fingers loosen marshmallow and ease onto cutting board. With a large knife trim edges of marshmallow and cut marshmallow into roughly one-inch cubes. (An oiled pizza cutter works well here too.) Sift remaining confectioners’ sugar back into your now-empty baking pan, and roll the marshmallows through it, on all six sides, before shaking off the excess and packing them away.

Do ahead: Marshmallows keep in an airtight container at cool room temperature 1 week.

Here is the end result pics

Since i do have some time today (being sick), i've decided to post another random post to catch up on what i've missed all these months.

I made these buttercream cupcakes ages ago, just didn't have time to update them on my blog :p

These cupcakes were for a dessert table i was planning with Sharon. We will be launching something new pretty soon, probably early next year we will announce the good news but till then enjoy some pictures of these yummy buttercream cupcakes i made.

Love ya all xoxoxo!

Royce and Fiona held their engagement party last weekend and i'm glad to say that i was appointed to be their cupcake baker :)

Fiona chose to have red velvet, chocolate and baby vanilla cuppies. They expected about 500 guest so we allocated to have 150 large chocolate cupcake, 150 large red velvet cupcake and 200 mini baby cakes. Instead, i think i over baked the mini cupcakes and ended up using a whole pack of 500 mini cupcake liners. I guess we had 500 mini cupcakes?

Of course i did not make all these cuppies by myself, it was with the help of Royce and Fiona's and her brothers and sisters.

Here are some freshly baked cuppies shot

Vanilla Baby Cakes

Red Velvet Cupcakes

Chocolate Cupcakes

The final shots of the decorated cupcake, dessert table and venue

Fiona's sister, Melinda made this wonderful photo album of Fi and Royce as their guest book.

Updates: I am now back in Sydney down with a horrible flu. Not to worry, it's not swine flu. :)

But this flu is making my work load pile up.

Sigh, looks like i need a secretary soon to help to catch up with all my blogging

HELLO HELLO!

I'm glad to be back in the blogging world.

I'm now officially on my one week holiday!! Yippie yippie

*jumps for joy*

I will now dedicate myself to a whole week of baking and decorating! so beware and i shall be posting some of my new recipe adventure :)

Remember my post back in April? Baby Alexis is now turning one! I was given the pleasure to make her christening cake back in April and now I'm once again been given the pleasure to make her 1st birthday cake.

Here's some picture of the finished product.

Note: baby blocks are made of little cakes too. YUM!

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

*amazed*

I bought myself a new caking toy! and it's finally here!

This has been on my "want" list for a loooong time. Even before my wants for my SLR and my Kitchen Aid but it's the fact that, i have to import it from the US, that's been stopping me from making this purchase. (the exchange rate, the shipping cost)

Recently I've been having bad luck with my cake cutting skills and that caused more cake wastage for me. Also NO more buying expensive serrated knife that doesn't work and yada yada yada. So i've decided to break the bank. :)

Now that this little baby is here, I'm saved!

Here a little story about me, manuals and AGBAY

KNIFE CHECKED!

METAL BAR CHECKED!

MEASURING STAND CHECKED!

RECEIPT CHECKED!

MANUAL CHECK!

ok, now to put them all into one piece. I presume this goes here, that goes there, tighten the screws and WOALAH!

errrrr. This doesn't look right *scratches my head*

See how the knife is at the bottom and the metal bar is at the top?

Mine turned out the other way around ???

OH NO!

Now, for manual rescue. I briefly looked at the manual pictures (i hate reading manuals) and thought to myself, why do i have a funny feeling about this? At that time, i still did not realize that it was the other way around.

When it came to cutting the cake with the AGBAY, i was like "How on earth can i cut the cake with that metal bar at the bottom???"

So then, i decided to youtube "How to cut a cake using AGBAY"

AHA!

I then realize silly me fixing it upside down :p

Now, its all good and i tried it today and my my it does work wonders!

Today's mission: Happy me, leveled cake, money well spend on AGBAY!