A business idea?

I was quite pleased with my first crafts of cake pops. Although the decorations were not perfect and there were many flaws due to the bad handling of chocolate and coating... my friends were still very amazed when they saw the cake pops.

        

I came up with the idea of making them when I was thinking what to bake for my colleague's birthday party.  Having known that other friends are going to buy cakes for them, I decided that I shouldn't bake any thing extra as there would be too much cake for everyone! Instead, I came up with the idea of making birthday pops.  I loved them!! Although I was a bit lazy and due to time constraint, I made the cake inside with cake mix, I still spent a lot of time shaping the cake and decorating the cake.

My efforts paid off as my colleagues were very very impressed and they loved it.  I was so blessed and happy that I could bring joy to them. Thank you God, for giving me a pair of hands that could bake and decorate.

And I do realize that in Hong Kong, cake pops are not that popular.  But this is such a cute and pretty sweet for parties!! Maybe I could specialize in that.. if I would ever open a shop in the future...!

Inspried by Bakerella.

Fruit Pastry Cake

Recently I was very attracted to making a fruit pastry cake, as it seemed sooo appetizing and delicious.

Finally, during the first week of October, I made it! It smelled sooo fruity and good when it was in the oven. And I was quite satisfied with the outcome and outlook of the cake. Everyone loved it and one of my colleagues even said she wouldn't mind eating tens of it. I felt so blessed I have the gift to make good cakes and share the enjoyable moments with my friends and family.

Yes. This cake is so addictive that I am going to make it again, again and again!

It actually reminded me of Maxim's pineapple cake.  But my colleague said they were way better than Maxim's cakes. :P and on second attempt, I made it with cake flour and brown sugar. It still tasted fantastic! Wow!

The only thing I was dissatisfied was that I shouldn't have added the raisins and cranberries on top. Cuz after baking, they went really hard and wasn't quite delicious anymore!

Little fruity cakes!

With peach and kiwi

Fruit Pastry cake in fisheye!

In my present boxes hehe

Cinnamon rolls

I have been reading a lot of baking blogs lately, especially excited about seeing the round ups of Aspiring Bakers #11 Mid-Autumn Treats for September, hosted by Happy Home Baker.  There were so many nicely decorated and baked/ iced festive treats and I was also happy to see my own submission in the blog.  This is indeed a very fun and meaningful activity for those who loves to bake.

In fact, in the past two weeks I have been baking sometime too. But I was too busy to update what I have baked.  Anyway, most of the times they were just easy stuff like cookies and muffins.  I have long awaited for this Chung Yeung Festival (which we get a day off from work) to bake something that is pretty time consuming.  And, I decided to do what I did with Marianne, my flatmate back in Copenhagen when I was off to exchange studies, Cinnamon Rolls, recipe following that of Happy Home Baker.  I read some reviews and thought it was quite easy to make.  But things didn't turn out exactly what I have hoped for, haha. The dough was much more moist than I thought it would be and I had a really hard time rolling it out and shaping the roll. I sprinkled a lot of flour already, and I really want to know what was the problem.  Also, I was stupid enough to buy cinnamon stick, thinking that it would be so easy to extract cinnamon afresh.. but I had a super tiring time scraping the cinnamon stick to the grater (which was the only thing I had to extract cinnamon)... then mom told me to use the electric mixer.. so we chopped the cinnamon sticks into little pieces and put it in the mixer.  Just when I thought it was successful, because I saw the sticks turned into power-like products, then I realized that I have broken the mixer because the plastic stub under the mixer was too hot and it kind of melt and broke...:(

Anyway, I was able to extract fresh cinnamon.. and the cinnamon rolls that I made were very small and cute. My sister ate two and she said it was really good.  I hope so.. but the bread became hard after a few hours.  I decided to put it into the freezer, and I think we could still eat it whenever we want by reheating it in the oven again.  It was a nice try though, I had great fun making the rolls :) And I really missed the times in Copenhagen when me and Marianne made like 4 dozens of cinnamon rolls in one go!!

I had a really hard time rolling out this dough.. it was very sticky :(

but the cinnamon were sooo fresh!! I added some raisins too

Just before baking. In fact, they are very small rolls only! hhehe. Less than the size of my palm.

And here is the completed cinnamon rolls :) Not too bad!

Crazy me and marianne 

And these were the cinnamon rolls I made with Marianne back in Copenhagen!

And now I am so looking forward to the weekend! I am going to try a fruit pound cake, hopefully!