My failed attempt to bake Matcha Green Tea Cupcake

This Matcha green tea cupcake is among the very first recipes that I've tried when I started baking 3 months ago.  I was a newbie, still is now. It was a failed attempt but a fun one nonetheless. My recipe is from BakingMad.


Ingredients for the cupcakes:

175g unsalted butter
175g self raising flour
175g caster sugar (feel free to halve this if you don't like overly sweet cupcake)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 vanilla extract
1 tbs matcha powder
3 eggs 

But as you can see here, I cut the ingredients to suit my needs. Which later I found out is a big mistake.

It is a must to sieve the dry ingredients especially the flour because it helps your cupcake to rise when baked.

Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. This took roughly around 5 minutes at medium speed.

This is my another mistake. Adding the egg and dry ingredients at the same time.

Although the recipe says adding the rest of the ingredients together into the butter and sugar batter, I suggest that adding the egg first and whisking it together until it is well incorporated. Only then you can add in the dry ingredients little by little while whisking at slow speed to avoid the flour creating mess. 

Once your batter is ready, scoop into the cupcake case and bake for 20 mins at 180 degree Celcius.

Ingredients for the icing:

300g icing sugar (I halved this)
175g butter
1 tbsp water
1tsp matcha powder
1 tsp vanilla extract

Beat the butter until smooth and add the icing sugar little by little. Lastly, add in the rest of the ingredients. And there you have it.

Lucky I have the buttercream icing to cover my ugly cupcakes. I didn't beat the cupcake batter well and it ended up crack and rupture in the middle. So I covered it generously with buttercream. Taste wise it was okay but I could have done better.

I once read that baking is different from cooking. In baking, you have to follow the ingredients closely if compared to just wing it in cooking. Well I learnt my lesson through my failed cupcakes. Now that I have enough practice, my cupcake is close to perfect, if I may say so myself. Next I have to work on my buttercream and piping skill obviously.

Lemon Drizzle Cake

I have tried cupcake many times before and now I wanted to step up my baking game by making cake. As a starter, I picked the easiest recipe from my favorite baking side BakingMad. I looked through the site and found Lemon Drizzle Cake to be the easiest one. Only need 5 main ingredients that readily available in my kitchen.

The recipe is here. I however omitted the cornflour and ground almonds because I don't have any. It doesn't compromise the taste of my cake because it is still delicious.

My ingredients. I halved all of the ingredients because I wanted a smaller cake. 

I think the most important step in the whole process if sieving the ingredient especially the self raising flour because I skipped this step in my cupcake when I made it first time. My batter was clumpy :(

Tada my lemon drizzle cake. I overdone the lemon drizzle with caster sugar and it was too sweet. Hence I only drizzled a little bit. And my cake cracked at little bit when I took it out of the tin because I didn't greased it properly.

I super love how simple yet delicious this cake is. I'm not one to brag but I've nail it down for this one. Now I'm off to make banana cake. Bye!

Healthy lifestyle and new hobby

This post has been sitting in my draft for quite some time because I want to finish my Bali post. I still have one or two more posts on Bali but I wanted to blog about what I have been up to lately. I was browsing the internet one day and randomly Googled cold pressed juice after seeing so many posts of cold presses juices in Instagram.

So, that's how I joined the healthy juice bandwagon. I'm not ashamed to admit that I started to do my own juicing because the color of the juice and the cute glass bottles. It is so cute and Instagram-worthy. But the icing on the cake, it is healthy.

This is my one week of juice supplies. I love pineapple, oranges, green apple, red apple and ginger in my juice. When I first started, I copied the juice recipes from Crazy Vegan Kitchen. I can't believe I didn't start this earlier because it is so easy. Basically, you just mix together fruits that you fancy or if you want a specific health benefits, you can search some recipes online. 

My recipes are varies based on what I have in my kitchen or what I can get from the supermarket or Sunday Market (Farmer Market). Sometimes it depends on my budget too because some fruits are crazy expensive.

Oranges, blueberries, apple and beetroot. I only bought beetroot once because I don't like the taste of it.

Leftover beetroot, apple and oranges. Sometimes I use grapefruits which is amazing for weight loss.

My favorite are pineapple, oranges and apples because it taste naturally sweet and refreshing.

This was my first ever juices. From left to right is dragon fruits+apples+oranges, carrot+oranges+ginger and pineapple+oranges+green apple.

This was recently when I was experimenting with other fruits such as blueberry, beet root and strawberry. The verdict, I prefer the cheap fruits one because 1) cheap 2) taste good 3) ingredient easily available.

Since I started juicing, I am suddenly very interested in glass bottles. I have at least 8 glass bottles in different sizes and I got them all at Super Save which is ridiculously cheap at RM2.80 each. Above is my loot sometimes ago and I spotted the cute cupcake case and icing nozzles which started my another hobby.

Which is baking!

The above was my first try. Taste wise it was good but a little too sweet but the icing was super sweet till I had to scrape it all off because eating the cupcake. It was Oreo and chocolate cupcake and the recipe is from CupcakeJemma. 

Before frosting. It looks rather ugly but really yummy. 

If you are a long time reader of my blog, you will know that this is not my first attempt in baking. I baked cupcake with my sister back in 2010 and it is a total failed attempt. You can read it here. This time I followed the recipe closely and with the visual aid from Youtube, I finally  made it. Hahahaha I make it sounds like a big achievement. 

It is to me anyway!

Seriously, I'm so happy that my cupcake is a success. Sigh, look at the things that excite me these day. This is what happened when you reach mid twenty. Since the cupcake is a big success, I feel like I'm up for another challenge.

Baking my own white bread loaf!

This recipe is from BakingMad which is my new favorite site. They have thousand of recipes for baking and desserts. I even made my own ice cream from the recipe there. 

The white bread loaf was alright. If I left the mixture to rise according to the recipe, I'm sure it will be soft and fluffy. But I was too excited to wait for 4 hours for the yeast to rise. Moral of the story, there is no shortcut in making bread. 

My loots from Jaya Grocer in KLIA 2 when I came back from my work trip last month. You can tell that I'm serious about baking when shopping for baking supply is on top of my priority now.

The pre mixed gluten free red velvet cupcake. It came out good but the taste is so bad. Not sure whether it has something to do with the gluten free or not but we don't like it.

I bake almost every weekend but of course not every attempts are success. 

Look at my failed Oreo and chocolate cupcake.

I used the same recipe but I didn't pay much attention in mixing the ingredients therefore the catastrophe. Lesson learnt, must pay attention next time.

Continue from my juicing experience, I also started to make overnight oats too. A small step to my healthy lifestyle.

The only downside to healthy eating is the cost of it. My loots above costs me more than RM150 and the fresh produce can only last me for a week. Why so expensive T___T

My overnight oat.

It is super easy to make. Literally less than 5 minutes. Just layer everything and toss it in the fridge, All ready to eat the next day. Ingredients are rolled oat, yogurt (preferable Greek yogurt), milk and fruits. Can use blueberry, strawberry, mango or even dried raisin. Then top it off with chia seeds. Only need to drizzle a bit of honey before consuming. 

I love the convenience and been having it most morning. It is more filling than smoothie for me. 

Hopefully this healthy eating thing will become my habit in the near future.