Happy Birthday Princess!

Ok, the "big" party was today - she had one in school yesterday but today was with the family.

I'll post up the pictures lately, but I think I am quite done with baking for a little while. The next cake for Sunday would be a cheesecake / cakelettes, so it wouldn't be such a "pain" (due to lack of storage, I have to empty out my oven everytime I bake).

For her school, it was quite experimental - the good, the brownie recipe kinda worked but I had to add at least 50g of cocoa to it to make it taste chocolately. The butter cake recipe ... well it worked but I didn't like the taste. And I should have bought the cupcake cups *darn* I ended up with 4 different sizes of cupcakes for her class and school mates. It should be a "success" since all the containers came back empty :P I also decorated it with some help from Vanessa, but it was a "hack" job and I just did it like a mad artist out of creative ideas :P One of the major bloopers was the buttercream icing - let just say one big tub (over 1 kg of icing) went to waste because the recipe didn't say to add when the chocolate is cooled *sigh*

For today's party, I went back to the basic, my favourite pound cake recipe which has never failed me. I tweaked a little by making it a chocolate pound cake too. So one batch was "spiced" up with orange zest and some chocolate chips (for those who didn't want chocolate or chocolate overdose), the other batch was overdose on chocolate. All in all, I made 60 cupcakes and 1X7inch cake. Would I have saved money by ordering the cakes instead? I might :P since I bought new "kachang" to use but it was FUN :P

I still had my good buttercream icing from the day before so it saved some time to make more icing. I only made 1 batch of glaze for the chocolate cupcakes since the chocolate cupcakes were way too *short* to do much.

I actually managed to complete decorating her cake and cupcakes without any disaster so I am quite pleased with myself. I just hope the hubby has some nice pictures since I didn't take any!

Using the sugar butterflies and flowers from BIY was a breeze and time-saver! One of my nieces liked it so much she swiped 4 of the figures from the cupcakes before it even started! I think at the end of the party, she had 10 of them, in her tummy!

At the party, one of the daddies liked the cake so much he ate mostly cake and nothing else. It was so funny, because everytime I saw him, he was eating a piece of cake. His wife actually sampled all the different variations I had. I'm glad I found some fans for my baking!

We didn't cater in this round but we made most of the food:

1. Laksa (enough for 30 bowls)

2. Vegetable Thai Green curry

3. Ngoh Hiang

4. Chicken soup with fishballs (for the kids)

5. Chocolate dip with fruits and marshmallow

We bought some packed chicken nuggets/ fish fingers and baked them (healthier choice!) and ordered in satay and bee hoon.

It was crazy doing all the stuff but we survived. Now everyone is sleeping to regain their energy while I am doing my usual mummy duties.

I'll post up recipes with the photos!