Cupcake Central @ Melbourne Central

These tiny little morsels make it slightly easier for people to practice self control. Well, not really,  if you see all the flavours available at Cupcake Central. I've tried as many cupcake flavours as the number of years I've been on this earth! I guess that shows how much of a glutton I am or how much I adore their cupcakes. 

Their cupcakes are moist and delicious, perfect with a glass of milk or maybe a milkshake from their milkshake & soda bar? Plus, they look amazing! And if that doesn't make you want to run there and get one now, they have babycakes which are essentially mini cupcakes (extra points for cuteness). My personal favourites are the red velvet and salted caramel, which are available every day of the week. They also have a gluten free option every day for the allergy prone individual.

Cupcake Central is also my go to place for gifts. If I need a gift for a birthday or any occasion, I know Cupcake Central has my back. It just keeps getting better! You can get a gift box of 4,6 and 12. You would be so lucky to get a box of these lovely cupcakes.

Here's their Cupcake Calendar so you can see what flavours are available in store. The Cupcake Calendar changes every season, so try every flavour before they disappear! And did I mention that they have surprise flavours on Fridays?

Food Foundry Mille Crepe Cake

Always heard about Food Foundry located in Section 17 famous for their western food and their desserts, particularly their Mille Crepe. Have been dying to try Mille Crepe for a while now and finally had the chance to. Mille Crepe isn't very easily found around Malaysia, only a few bakeries actually make this heavenly dessert!

For those who are unaware, Mille Crepe is a French dessert. Crepes are very thin layers of pancakes and Mille means thousand when translated. Therefore, Mille Crepe is a cake made of Many layers of crepe that are delicately placed on top of each other, with cream or custard fillings in between in the form of a cake.

At Food Foundry, they have a few flavours of Mille Crepe; Vanilla, Chocolate, Strawberry, Durian and Mango as well. All for RM9 for a slice but RM 10 for the Durian and Mango slices.

The first time I opened the little, cute Food Foundry box, I took a deep breath and was pretty amazed by the many layers of the cake. When I put it in my mouth, it was even more breathtaking! Ah, smooth, soft and fluffy, it's like.. eating clouds, if that were even possible. We tried Vanilla and although this was our first try at Mille Crepe, this has definitely set standards!

Cute packaging and instructions on how to care for your cake!

Food Foundry's Vanilla Crepe Mille.

Food Foundry

BG-8, Happy Mansion,

Jalan 17/13,

Petaling Jaya,

Malaysia.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Freshly baked Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Raisins and Pineapple topped with cream cheese. Using the same recipe over here. This time by adding the pineapples to it, it has a slightly crisp top but with a moist, chewy centre. Simply toothsome!

Kaya/Jam Swiss Roll

After watching several reruns of Rachel Allen's show, Bake! we spontaneously decided to make a swiss roll on a very hot,sunny Wednesday afternoon. Apparently, even after watching the same episode on reruns of Rachel Allen teaching her students make a swiss roll -I'm pretty sure it was at least four times, I don't think it stuck with us. 

Our first try was the Kaya Swiss Roll and placed the wet towel over the freshly baked layer of cake which, didn't work quite well. Let's just say that it was a disaster. Then after rolling that one, we realized that maybe, just maybe the towel was supposed to be at the bottom of the cake instead! Definitely easier to roll after we changed our strategy. It cracked just a tiny bit but hey, it's our first try and there's always room for practice! (:

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 125g sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp warm water
• 125g plain flour

Instructions: 

1. Put parchment paper on the bottom of the swiss roll tin and butter and flour the sides.
2. Whisk the eggs and the sugar with a mixer for 5 minutes.
3. Add in the vanilla and water. Mix well.
4. Lastly, fold in the flour. 
5. Pour into a flat swiss roll tin and bake for 10-15 minutes at 150C.
6. Put a damp cloth on a table and put the swiss roll bottom side up. Let it cool.
7. Put the desired filling and start rolling but not too tight cause you'll end up getting cracks.

 ❤

For days when you need a little pick me up

Secret Recipe's Moist Chocolate Cake.

Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

It is summer once again! (Even if it isn't much of a difference here in tropical Malaysia.) Anyway, I like the idea of summer, you know, the warmth of the sun on your skin, rays of light glimmering on the surface of the water..Most importantly, summer holidays! What's better than baking a lovely carrot cake to satisfy that hunger in the heat, even if you can't stop eating it and cause you a minor bump on your bikini bod? Well, if that's what matters to you; how much your bones stick out, how bulgy your stomach is, how small your arms are..then you're on the wrong blog site buddy!

On Monday -a very hot Monday afternoon, I sat in the living room watching reruns on the television set which I eventually got bored of and so, decided to make a carrot cake. With the help of one of my favourite food blogs, smitten kitchen, I looked up a recipe and started working on it right away in the kitchen. Yes, I think you should realize that I've got quite an addiction to cream cheese frosting, it's just so..cheesy (:

Here's the funny thing, half way measuring everything, I realized I only had about a tea spoon of cinnamon which led me to drive out to the little indian grocer and buy some cinnamon. To my dismay, they only had cinnamon sticks so I had to do the extra work of pounding my own cinnamon!

'Rehydrating' the raisins in water.

Sugar and oil, and egg.

I grated carrots until my fingers turned orange.

Dry ingredients. (And yes, those are a bag of almonds that I wanted to add into the cake but decided not to in the end cause after pounding and grinding hard cinnamon into powder form, I was far too tired and gave up on the idea of pealing and blending the almonds)

Mix away, then add the carrots and raisins.

Freshly baked carrot cake from the oven (:

To be honest, it wasn't as moist as I would like it to be --I like my cakes really moist--but I still couldn't have enough of the cake! In the morning, during the afternoon and even at night! Yeah, you get where I'm going. I would say a carrot cake is easy to make so try it (: Oh yes, I do realize that the carrot on the cake is pink, well that's simply cause I didn't have orange colouring. Hehe. Since I have my lovely dslr now, be patient and better pictures will come your way when I get used to this complicated gadget. (:

Edited from Smitten Kitchen.

For the original Smitten Kitchen recipe, click here.

Cake:

2 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 cups sugar

1 1/4 cups canola oil

4 large eggs

3 cups grated peeled carrots

1/2 cup raisins

Basic steps to follow: Add sugar and oil into a bowl and mix. Add eggs one by one while slowly mixing. Put all other dry ingredients into another bowl and mix. Add the dry ingredients bit by bit into the bowl of mixed sugar and oil and incorporate them together with a spatula. Add in carrots and raisins, mix and put on baking tray lined with parchment paper.

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Cream cheese topping:

400g Cream cheese

220g powdered sugar

115g unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

Enjoy!