Fail to plan, plan to fail. You must've heard of this a thousand times before. But do you believe it? I'm still on the fence. There were many times when I had detailed, well thought-out plans, including backup plans (and backups for the backup plans) but the outcome of those plans were
I can't get over the strange coincidence of how this week's pick - Swedish Visiting Cake by Nancy of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs happens to fall so close to Hakan's (my husband's Swedish colleague) farewell. Hakan's assignment in Northern California ends this week and he will be heading back to Sweden on Friday. I didn't have the chance to welcome them with a Swedish Visiting cake, so with lots of warmth, best wishes and much blessings, this is my Swedish Farewell Cake for Hakan, his lovely wife AnnaLianna and beautiful daughter Christine
I woke up to a pleasant surprise this morning: 20 March 2010!!. My iPod Touch cake is today's Top9 on FoodBuzz, a leading online food blog community. Woohoo!! Totally flabbergasted! It's a first for me - what an encouragement and such a thrill! Thanks for all your kind comments. Now let me continue to bask in this glory, however short-term it may be......
*my iPod Touch cake featured in box #7
Do you have a celebration coming up? Do you live in the Bay Area California? Want a special custom cake? Please email me at jencrafted@gmail.com for further inquiries!Brown Butter Banana Coconut Cupcakes - don't ask me why but this is just one of those spur-of-a-moment urge that I had when I woke up this morning. I was simply feeling adventurous and without any recipes in hand, just eye-balled the ingredient ratios then whipped up a batch of these. So liberating to not follow any recipes for once!!
I really love to bake. I just didn't realize how much of a comforting and healing impact baking has on me until this weekend. What seemed like a dreary weekend that somewhat "depleted" me suddenly turned around and came to life again once I started the Kitchen Aid mixer, looked at it churned, whipped and frothed the heavy cream for the topping of my cupcakes. Once I immersed myself into decorating these light and airy blueberry cupcakes (Martha's page 42), the dull and dreadful feeling just seemed to dissipate. Surprisingly powerful antidote!
This was a very special bake for me. Somewhere several thousand miles across the oceans, in a different country, a very special friend was also baking on the same day (well, just several hours apart), from the same book, same page, the same recipe. A very dear friend whom I've known for two decades and just got reunited recently via a social networking site. It has been almost a decade since Tina and I last met or sat down to have a chat, hardly imaginable back during those days when we would chat over the phone every other day. I still remember the time when she took the long drive from Iowa, all by herself, just to spend a weekend with me in Kansas. Ah, the good times we had and things that we'd share - the laughter, silly girly giggles, the fun as well as the tears, the heartaches, the growing pains.....
Today. Over a decade later. Several thousand miles apart. Separate lives in different worlds. We've both grown and changed, but the beauty of friendship is just this: it transcends geographical boundaries, race, religion and even time. I'm truly glad Tina and I remain friends and now, we have one more thing in common to create new memories for our friendship.
Tina posted pictures of her blueberries-and-cream cupcakes online and they were just plain lovely. They look just like the pretty cupcakes on Martha's book! I wished I had the link; I will try to post some of the photos here.
Bake on, my friend!
Update: let's try this link to Tina's gorgeous cupcakes.
Have you ever had a Burnt Almond Cake?
I had my first Burnt Almond Cake back in 2007 and I still remember that experience vividly. It was a cold December day in San Jose.
For my niece Nicole's 3rd birthday, I've opted to bake a simple, less sweet cake for the adults. That child already has sugar overload and unfortunately, needs to stay off cakes & icecream for some time. So much for the anticipation of baking a Disney-themed cake for her.
Excellent recipe for chocolate fudge cake from Sylvia Weinstock's Sensational Cakes. You can find it here.
I needed about 8 cupcakes for my cake decorating class so I baked a batch of couple dozen Lemon Yoghurt Cupcakes with made-from-scratch Lemon Curd filling last week. 
Just can't seem to get enough of RVC. We had to bring a baked cake, frosted, ready to decorate for our cake deco. class.
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