Practicing for Halloween =)

Hey Guys, so I finally finished my exams thus I can finally start to bake and do more nail art designs (some from magazines and some from my imagination) for you guys. To start of, its the month of October and that means Halloween is coming. So I decided to practice baking halloween treats, I started with the pre-made stuff that I found in my local market. I got this cool pumpkin cookie sandwich kit and a brain cupcake making kit.

The pictures I took while baking these is below. *ps. not as tasty as it looks*

1. Chocolate Sandwich Cookie Kit (Pumpkin shaped) it comes with the free cookie cutter

The dough.. after adding 4 Tbsp of butter, and one egg with the pre-made cookie mix. Yes I know it doesn't look appetizing. I would say it looks like (inappropriate word). You guys shall imagine on ur own what it looks like.

Once ur dough is ready, just lightly dust ur work table with flour and roll out the dough and cut it out using the cookie cutter like I did so. The number of cookie sandwiches you make depends on the thickness of the cookie 

Bake it in a preheated oven for 9 to 11 minutes at 180 Degrees. The bad part about using dark coloured dough. You are not sure when it is done. Here is where you use ur own eyes to see if it has finished baking. 

Make the icing, 1 cup of icing sugar, powdered sugar which ever you have in your country, 4 Tbsp of butter and their orange icing powder mix. Ps, the smell is terrible, I had to add more icing sugar to neutralise the smell. 

Finished product. Put it in the fridge for awhile to let the icing harden.

Tasting Meter:
The icing -> Really sweet  - 3/10
The cookie -> The taste further reinforces my dislike for chocolate cookies. *tastes really bland* 3/10
Conclusion : I prefer making it from scratch. next time i will try my own cookie recipe but with orange coloured dough and black icing =) Look out for it soon.

2. The Brain Cupcake Kit
The process is similar to the Betty Crocker Cake mix.

 In the Oven

 One of my best cupcakes ever. Perfectly cooked through with slight browning =)

 Icing. Smell's terrible and had to neutralise it with vanilla extract and more pink gel food colouring to get this nice pink.

Well my Icing Skills are terrible but it is not bad for a first timer. Does it look like brains to you?

Anyone wants to eat Brains?? 

Tasting meter : 
The icing is overly sweet. 3/10.
The cupcake is small and not so sweet. 6/10
Conclusion : I make them from scratch is so much better than these pre-made stuff

Stay Tune for more baking dis month. Next week I will be using fondant to decorate cookies =).    

manual sandwich makers not your machine kind

Hey, this is an impromptu post.. I just wanted to share with you my ratings for different japanese imported sandwich makers. I have a total of 4 sandwich makers that i bought over a course of a year. How well the sandwich is made depends on whether you got the correct size of bread. and since those bread from your common supermarket are all standard sizes. it can become difficult to achieve a perfectly good sandwich. =) The best Sandwich maker so far that I have gotten was from japan and it ain't cheap. I gotten mine from Jbox <-- click the link to go there. I recently bought the panda shaped sandwich push style maker. and it worked perfectly better than my other sandwich makers from japan... my country's bread shape is perfect for it =) and it is not messy to use.  Here are the pictures.. enjoy =) I did not want to eat it at first because it was too adorable but i decided to eat it in the end because i would be wasting bread. These is good for kids or adult who are kids at heart to bring along for lunch or a picnic. 

I filled my bread with Nutella and decorated it with wilton's black icing. 

Disney Shaped Sugar Cookies

Hey Guys, I know I told u guys, that I would only post after my exams which is in the month of October. I was not actually lying. I seriously wanted to study first and bake later but as most of my friends who know me would know, when I am under  a lot of stress, I either buy things that I don't need known as stress shopping =D or I turn to my hobbies of either doing my nails which I have already done in the previous post or baking thus I am doing this post. I recently bought disney shaped cookie cutters from gmarket. They are in the shape of pooh bear, tigger, chip and dale, mickey and minnie mouse. As for the batter, I used betty crocker's pre-made sugar cookies. After my exams, I promise that I would do the batter from scratch. Here are the pictures. ENJOY=).

My new bought cookie Cutters - Chip, Tigger, Winnie the Pooh, Dale, Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse

 Ingredients:
1. Betty Crocker's Pre-Made Sugar Cookies *Comes in a packet*
2. One Egg
3. 1/2 Cup Butter (I prefer unsalted butter)
4. Plain or all purpose flour (the recipe stated 2 tablespoons but don't believe it unless you want your dough to be oily. Good for drop cookies though) For me I used the flour as I see fit, if its too runny or oily, I added more flour.
Utensils:
Big Mixing Bowl
A Whisk
tablespoon and 1/2 cup measuring cups.
Instructions:
Simple : Mix everything together to form a soft dough. then put it in a cling wrap for awhile to firm up the dough. 

 Using the cutters. Can you guess which Disney Character this is?? 

 First Batch all ready for the oven.

As you can see from the picture.. My first batch was not exactly a failure but my Winnie the Pooh Cookies fatten up and became out of shape. Why? I have no idea. But if you have the answer do comment =)

Second Batch.. I kind of over baked these because I was so into my third batch. so I won't show the pictures. I will let you imagine how they turned out.

For the last batch. I decided to change my way of cutting, Instead of cutting out the shape first then pressing the face stencil on later. I decided to do them together. The plus side, it was better looking than my previous batches. But the down side, it was a really slow process.

 Third batch. *my pride and joy* it looked so perfect. 

 Tigger

 Winnie the Pooh

 Mickey Mouse

 Minnie Mouse 

*remember I asked you guys if you could identified the character that was cut out without the face? Well, Yes, the answer is Minnie Mouse. 

 Chip

 Dale

 In the oven baking for quite some time. you can already see the golden brown colour.

Perfectly Golden Brown

 Tigger & Pooh

 Mickey & Minnie Mouse

 Dale & Chip 

*actual cartoon is called Chip and Dale

 Out of all my cookies. these were the best onces =)

 Chip

 Dale

 Minnie Mouse

 Mickey Mouse

 Tigger

Winnie the Pooh

Panda Emotion Nail Art to Welcome Pandas to Singapore

Hey Guys, though I am in the middle of  mugging for my exams. I got a little distracted and did my nails instead =) Yesterday, Two Pandas from China arrived in Singapore. Kai Kai & Jia Jia, and so i decided to do my nails panda style but of course again it is not my design but I thought it was extremely  cute so I decided to try it out for myself.  The Design Came from IHaveACupcake. Click the Link to go to the design to try it out yourself -> Panda emotion Nail Art. Because she did hers on one hand with five emotions. I had to improvise the other five fingers so here are the picture. Enjoy, though it is not that perfect as i used nail polish instead of acrylic paints

Items I used in this nail art:
Posh Strengthening Base Coat
Northern Lights Holographic Top Coat "Gold"
OPI - Alpine Snow and Black Onyx
Posh Fast Drying Top Coat
Dotting tool and paint brush <-- depends on the size of your nails
A piece of paper 

 Designs on my Right hand =) 

 and Designs on my Left hand (including the thumb)

Thats about it. My next post would be about my new Disney Cookie Cutters. But it will only be after my exams which is in the month of October.