Spring/Easter Treats Baking Workshop: Cupcakes, Cookies & Sugar Cases

Happy Easter!

This is a long overdue entry which was supposed to be posted immediately after I attended Joycelyn's Spring/Easter Treats Baking Workshop on 2 March at Shermay's Cooking School. I guess today is a good day to blog about it since it's Easter. Easter celebration doesn't seem big in Singapore, or so I thought? Perhaps the Christians do celebrate (I'm not Christian so not sure about it). My only impression is of colourful Easter eggs and cute chocolate bunnies that are sold in some hotel confectionery and supermarkets.

I'm not into the Easter theme but more attracted to the recipes and toppings. Before the workshop, I was drooling over the photos in her blog :d~~~

Demo recipes:

• Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean Cheesecake Cupcakes with Tart Cherry Topping
• Super Moist Carrot & Orange Cupcakes with Walnuts topped with Valrhona White Chocolate & Cream Cheese Frosting
• Rich Chocolate Cookies

Bonus recipes:

• Simnel Cupcakes with Marzipan Centres
• Rasberry & Dark Chocolate Cupcakes
• Rasberry & Dark Chocolate Ganache

Besides the demo cupcakes and toppings, Joycelyn also showed us various Spring/Easter cupcake decorating ideas that can be applied on cupcakes and cookies; and even a Sugar Egg Case.

Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean Cheesecake Cupcakes with Tart Cherry Topping

The richness of Philadelphia Cream Cheese, based with buttery digestive biscuits, flavoured with Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean and topped with Wild Cherries. Just the ingredients sound seducing enough!

Super Moist Carrot & Orange Cupcakes with Walnuts
topped with Valrhona White Chocolate & Cream Cheese Frosting

One cupcake - many decorating ideas. Marzipan can be tinted to different colours and rolled into various figurines such as bunny, chick, robins' egg, carrot... it's all up to one's imagination.

Robins' eggs on bed of grass

Cream cheese frosting tinted green and piped to look like grass. Marzipan tinted tiffany blue to look like robins' egg and dusted with bits of coffee grounds to create a realistic speckled effect.

A basket of pretty pastel eggs

Tinted royal icing (soft peak consistency) piped onto sides of cupcakes (remove cupcake paper) using basketweave tip and topped with Cadbury mini eggs or candy coated almonds - an elaborate and stunning decoration.

Rich Chocolate Cookies meticulously decorated with royal icing and marzipan

Look at how amazing a simple cookie can turn into - just by varying the royal icing consistencies and piping techniques! Definitely requires a lot of patience.

Cookie Pops and Cookie Pop Bouquets

Cookies-on-sticks! A good idea as party flavours, can be presented individually or as a bouquet.

As a bonus, Joycelyn demonstrated how to do sugar moulding which can be decorated with royal icing to create a delightful holder for chocolates or candies!

Where more can we ask for? We get to bring home 2 cupcakes - the Carrot & Orange Cupcakes with Walnuts topped with Valrhona White Chocolate & Cream Cheese Frosting, the Rasberry & Dark Chocolate Cupcakes and the Rich Chocolate Decorated Cookies.

I TOTALLY LOVE the carrot cupcake! It is really super moist and tender, flavourful with spices and crunchiness of walnuts. I must say that white chocolate cream cheese is the most compatible topping choice. I'm not a huge fan of chocolate cupcake but this cupcake made me go 'wow'. The tartness of rasberry complements the chocolate cake really well; hence not so sweet and heavy on the palate. As for the cookie, I couldn't bear biting into it because of the sweet decoration!

Shall attempt the carrot cupcake and cheese cupcake one of these days :)