Say HEY for all the bakers out there, especially for those who love to bake cupcakes! Guess what, here's something for you! There's such an easy-peasy online contest for you, Celcom Cupcake Challenge in conjunction with our country's 55th anniversary of independence and also the upcoming Malaysia Day celebration on 16th September. Good news is this contest is opening to all Malaysians and not just for Celcom customers! This is certainly something different as the winner is not judge by how yummylicious the cupcakes are, but how creative the decorations of the cupcakes are! Challenging much?
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| Celcom Cupcake Challenge @ The Cooking House |
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| The tools |
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| Yours Truly! |
Yours truly has never bake any cupcake before and have never thought I actually had to wake up as early as 7am on the Saturday morning to attend the cupcake challenge at 9am at The Cooking House! Despite of the sleepiness, I was pretty excited to know that we are going to bake some vanilla cupcakes! =D
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| Ms Nadia |
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| Mr Zalman |
The lovely emcee, Ms Nadia did the welcome speech and followed by Mr Zalman Aefendy, Chief Marketing Officer of Celcom telling us more about the Celcom Cupcake Challenge as well as the contest mechanism. They also have chose Facebook as the contest channel to allow more and more participants come on board and share their love for the country and experience the power of personal connections even while at different corners of our beautiful nation.
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| Chef Lu Soo-Chee |
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| Chef Soo-Chee's creation |
As for the day, the class was hosted by Lu Soo Chee, resident cake artist in The Cooking House and a member of ICES (International Cake Exploration Societe) and the British Sugar-craft build, who has more than 10-years of baking and cake decoration experience and also has worked with professionals around the world. She has presented us with her cupcakes creations with the idea of collage and all the cupcakes combined to present the Malaysia's flag! How creative? And that's also the challenge that we have to face on that day!
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| The ingredient to bake cupcake |
Without further ado, let me share with you my experience to bake and decorate the cupcakes! The ingredients needed for Vanilla cupcakes are pretty simple and easy to get - 110g of plain flour, 1 1/2 tablespoon of baking powder, 125g of butter, 100g of sugar, 2 eggs, 1/2 tablespoon of Vanilla essence and 2 tablespoon of milk.
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| Ready to bake! |
It was yours truly first time to bake cupcake and so glad that we were grouped as team to bake it. Just so you know, I was with
Mei and
Charmaine and none of us are cupcake baker expert! To be exact, we are all just the beginners and let's see how we did it. =D
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| Smile! |
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| Beat the sugar and butter together |
Firstly, you have to sieve the flour with baking powder. Next, cream the butter and sugar until white and fluffy. Before I continue, I have confession to make - OMG! So much energy used in the second step! Alright yes, I just had to agree with Mei when she mentioned that it's just like work out and it needed muscle energy to do it.
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| Pour the eggs |
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| Stir it well |
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| Pour the Vanilla essence |
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| Pour the flours |
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| Pouring the milk |
Third, beat in the eggs, pour the Vanilla essence and fold in flour carefully. We were told to pour in half packet of the flour and stir it before pouring in another half packet of the flour. It followed by pouring the milk into the mixture and continue to mix it carefully. And oh, remember do not overmix it!
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| Creamy mixture |
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| The mixture |
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| Filling it |
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| Fill the paper cup 2/3 full |
Lastly, fill in the paper cups about 2/3 full and bake at 180C (160c with fan) for about 13 minutes. See, very simple one huh? All of us were so excited to see how's the outcome and can't help but wondering how our cupcakes would be!
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| Umei, Yours truly, Charmaine and Hanie with the cupcakes! |
Once the cupcakes done, it's time for us to do the butter cream frosting for those cupcakes! Again, all ingredients needed for this are easy to get too - 95g of salted butter, 260g of icing sugar, sifted and also 1 1/2 tablespoon of milk.
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| The ingredients for butter cream frosting |
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| Wishing we have the machine instead of by hand. >.< |
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| Beat the butter...! |
First, you need to beat the butter until creamy and seriously I wish I could have the machine instead of using my hand to do it as it requires lots energy to do it! =( It took quite sometime for it to turned creamy.
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| In the process of making the buttercream frosting |
Next, add the sifted icing sugar and milk into it and beat until everything combined together. Ohmy, it was harder than beating the butter! You could not have any chunks of icing and everything must be mixed well and you could see it slowly turned from white to yellowish.
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| Perfect frosting |
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| Finally |
When I finally managed to do it, the amazing feeling of achieving it was so great! You have to take note that your frosting can not be too hard or too smooth, and that's the reason for you to better pour the milk last. You may add more powdered sugar as needed to get piping consistency.
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| Gel Food Coloring - Blue |
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| A drop of blue color and mix! |
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| Mixed the color well |
Before you start with the piping, add few drops of food coloring for your desired colors and put the mixture into the piper bag! Last but not least, it was the part that everyone's waiting for - to decorate the cupcakes! Perhaps, that was the most enjoyable part for me!
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| Ready to do the decorating |
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| Managed to start it quite well |
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| Piping the blue frosting onto the cupcake |
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| Happy girl! |
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| Blue frosting cupcake by yours truly <3 |
Yeay! I managed to decorate my first blue cupcake! =D I was so excited and kind of overwhelmed with how I did it and somehow get addicted with it! So, I actually continue with other colors that is more challenging in piping it on the right place.
I love the teamwork in the group am in and they are definitely the awesome ones!
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| Checking out how Chef Soo-Chee doing it |
I found it quite difficult for the yellow part as it must be matching with each and another with the collage arrangement. We were lucky enough to be next to Chef Soo-Chee and get to know what's the trick to place the yellow part.
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| Doing the yellow part |
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| Finishing the moon part of the flag |
It was really challenging and yet we did it! Although it's not up to the perfection we seek for, but it is definitely right. Mind you, it was our first time so it still consider not bad at all aye!
Look at our cupcakes!
Satisfied with our effort! =D
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| The Winner Team! |
What surprised us was we're not aware it was also contest for us! And when our group was announced as the winner for this challenge, nothing can describe how happy we can be! *YEAY* We made it!
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| Snap and Upload! |
See, the beginners like us also did it! What are you waiting for? All you need to do is just bake simple cupcake and
decorate it in your creative interpretation of national pride, snap and upload the photo to
www.facebook.com/cupcakeschallenge to be in the running to win prize worth more than RM100,000!
Contest Mechanism
Contest Period : From now until the final submission date of 23th September 2012
** 55 participants with the most "Likes" on their entries will be chosen to go on to the grand finale on 29th September 2012.
Prizes : 1st Prize- Brand new Samsung Galaxy SIII smartphone worth RM2199 and RM10,000, 2nd Prize- Brand new Samsung Galaxy SIII smartphone worth RM2199 and RM5,000, 3rd Prize- Brand new Samsung Galaxy SIII smartphone worth RM2199 and RM2,000. The rest of 52 finalists will receive a stylish LG Prada mobile phone for their achievements.
** Psst! Celcom is giving out FREE cupcakes on 16th September 2012, check out the location for the free cupcake and the challenge here --> www.facebook.com/cupcakeschallenge !
GOOD LUCK FOLKS!
