Double Chocolate Cupcakes

Finally, I baked again. I baked 30 over very tasty cupcake last wednesday. They are called Ddouble Chocolate Cupcakes, but I feel that it should be called triple chocolate cupcakes, since it has chocolate chips, chocolate milk and melted chocolate.

Tasty they are, no doubt, but they don't look nice at all because I have them filled up too high, thou it is stated 3/4 full on the recipe, but I think my 3/4 is too much, thus all of them erupted like volcanoes. I have the ONLY near perfect one here.

I like this recipe because it doesn't add baking powder or soda (so called "artificial" ingredients), but of course, the self raising flour would have raising agent inside. I do not like this recipe because it uses alot of butter. Anyway the cupcake is so tasty and soft and fluffy right after bake that my girl ate 3 in a row. I ate quite a few myself *grin*. So in 3 days, all the cakes are gone.

However, this cake is a bit sweet (feedback from mother and brother). I replaced a certain portion of caster sugar with brown sugar since the teacher from the workshop says brown sugar gives better fragrance but brown sugar is sweeter, so I reduced the sugar by 50g and it is still sweet.

So here's the recipe. You got to try to believe it. Hehe.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes

80gm melted chocolate

180gm plain flour

230gm butter (salted)

350gm caster sugar

4 eggs

200gm chocolate milk

1 teaspoon vanilla essence (optional)

100gm chocolate chips

Procedures :-

1. Cream butter and sugar until creamy. Add in melted chocolate and continue to cream.
2. Add in vanilla essence and continue to cream until well mixed. Add in eggs, one at a time and cream until well combined.
3. Mixed in sifted flour alternating with milk until all ingredients are evenly mixed Lastly, fold in chocolate chips into batter.
4. Scoop the batter into baking cups until 3/4 full and bake at 190 degree Celsius for +/- 20 minutes.

Now go bake and enjoy the cupcakes. :-)

Beading challenge #2

What has Earth Day got to do with my hobbies?

After the flower theme, I suggested to my friend about having Earth Day as the theme. She accepted. However, after 3 weeks, I still has nothing to show on the day of the deadline. I can name 101 excuses, but the most valid one is "my son is sick". He has fever for 3 weeks, on and off thou. But I did not slack. I think of ideas frequently. The day after the deadline, I finally got my hubby to tend the kids and try out my ideas. I spent almost half a day.

I started with wanting a mix of beads, chained inside a circle. The circle will be "earth", with brown chips as land, blue teardrop as water and green bicones as trees ... but I find that the beads just don't match. So I give up. Anyway kiddish idea isn't it?

Then I zoom down to only using blue teardrops as water for the design, since earth is 70% water. I quickly try ways to put the "water" together, in chain, in wire, but none is satisfactory .. and the headpins always break upon bending. Wasted alot of time here.

At last, for the sake of submission, and also a proper closure to this challenge, plus rushing time (to go kiddo's music lesson) I ... ended up ..... there .. silly piece of work .. "love the earth", blue heart and a brownish round ring (You should be able to guess why blue and brown, right?).

I think I am really not creative, and I really dislike this work. Not nice! Look at my friend's, gorgeous!

Now got to brainstorm for #3.

Flower Pendant

Finally .. I can finally post, this time for my beading work.

Last week, I am thinking about motivating myself to touch my beads. Finally, I proposed to my friend who learnt beading recently, to challenge each other to make something weekly. She agreed to the proposal and we decided that we should do something with flowers since 清明節 is round the corner. Ha ha ha.

I usually do not do bead weaving, because it takes up alot of time if the pattern is complicated. This time round, I did bead weaving, because I came across this pair of earring. They look so pretty and they look like flower. I decided to copy this item (I am not creative, remember?). However, there are no instructions, or rather, no FREE instructions. So I spent 2 hrs yesterday afternoon trying to figure out how to thread the flower, draw up the pattern and tried to weave it. I tried 3 times (not nice result) but then I need to cook dinner, so I stopped.

The challenge is due today (Friday), and finally after half hour of weaving I got the flower done up.

I find it too big to be earring, so I am going to make it into a pendant. This is my result, but its only the motif because the jumprings I have are too small to be used to connect this pendant to the necklace. Perhaps I will make one myself.

How does it compare to the original? :-)

See my friend's end product here.

Before I decided on the above, my original plan is to do a pair of earring with a bead that has flower on it. I wanted to make use of a wiring techinque found in a library book that I am currently holding. However, the print on the bead doesn't seem like a flower, so even though I went ahead to try out the wiring technique, but I did not submit it for the "challenge". Here are parts of the earrings, one with wiring done over the bead, one without.

Which is nicer? Blue with silver or golden brown one ?

Look at the loop at the top of the bead, it is totally handmaded by me.

Ok, I am tired. It is 4.30 am now. Let's wait till the next challenge.