When we had first decided to bring cupcakes to the orphanage, I was just planning to buy a load of cupcakes and be done with it. But then this girl with a bright idea suggested we should BAKE it, do it together as a group activity, have our own little playgroup. Good idea, no? Luck be had, the orphanage changed the date of the orphanage visit so my two baker sidekicks could no longer be involved but we’d already bought all the ingredients so what the heck. I called upon my family, my dearest family, whom I can ALWAYS depend on – rain or shine, night or day and I mean that from the bottom of my heart. So firstly, let me thank each and every one of you who helped me with this baking adventure……….
Paik Ling – for buying the cake boxes
Shireen – for offering to help
Uncle Ben – for babysitting the cheeky minx
Uncle Ben’s girlfriend – for helping measure ingredients and mix
Kakak – for washing up
Nana – for professional advise and allowing us to thrash your kitchen
T1 – for participating fully
T2 – for your kind spirit to help (and make more of a mess!)
Aunty SY – for daring to try our rejected cupcakes (hope you didn’t get a stomach ache!)
See? It takes a whole TEAM to bake 200 mini cupcakes in a day. It took us exactly 5-6 hours with all that help. We did not use an electronic cake mixer till much later when we discovered Nana had an electric whisk so mostly it was done by hand. Pure hard work and blisters. Nana was asleep most of the time so her professional advise came a bit late. But we still succeeded! As when the cakes were delivered, they were finished in a flash. We even got feedback that the cupcakes were NICE!!!
So we set to work. T1 insisted on making vanilla cream cupcakes AND chocolate cupcakes so we had to bake both. We made 60 vanillas and 120 chocolates though we actually made more……
T1 trying to break up the 1st batch of butter…..
T2 doing her bit too……..
And because we did not know how Nana’s oven worked, our first batch turned out like this……
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LAUGH UNTIL I DIED!!!!!!!!!!
Fail baking class.
But as we progressed, we got better and better. And when Nana finally woke up, she kept shaking her head. She is such an experienced baker that every single move has to be done to perfection. There is a correct method for everything. And we were doing it all wrong.
Just look at this chocolate goodness below………when I was a child, I used to clean up Nana’s baking bowls by polishing them clean. Now my T1 does exactly the same thing.
Here is Nana helping with the icing when she woke up. Just look how frail she is now, my beloved mother, weighing a mere 35 kilos……..danger zone for an Anorexic patient. She is so sick and there is nothing we can do but pray and be with her as much as we can.
T1 applying the hundreds and thousands……
Then folding all the cupcake boxes……..
Uncle Ben lovingly caring for our little minx. He loves them and they love him. Like REALLY. She didn’t last very long with our cupcake baking expedition…….
Tadaaaa!!!!!! I know they don’t look like Bisou but my dearest T1 made them!!!
And with the rejects, she was allowed to get creative!!!
After all that, we balanced 6 boxes in my car and drove home only to be faced with oh, shit. Where would be store them for the fridge wasn’t large enough!!! And if we left them out, the ants would get to them!!! For sure!!!
Thanks to Kakak who thought of a brain wave and did this…….
Actually, my Mother-in-Law has an entire kitchen cabinet on stilts with trays of water on all four legs and that is her sugar cabinet. It’s GREAT. Anything and everything that is sweet goes in there without worry.
The next morning, we balanced those boxes again in my car and set off to the orphanage.
Cupcakes baked with love.
Thank you for that brilliant idea, Aunty Paik Ling 🙂
**************************************************************************Who is Mamapumpkin?
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next time.. call me in too… I think I will have fun, and so do my girl with T1 & T2.. LOL! great work babe!
Oops sorry for bailing out!! At least now if I ever need 200 cupcakes, I know i can count on YOU for sure 🙂
*burp* got so many rejects, why you give me only so few? huh? huh?