Freshly Baked Cupcakes!

Few things make me happier than a kitchen filled with smells of freshly baked goodies. I love baking and most my girlies know that so it’s no surprise that I’ll jump at the chance to do a cupcake workshop with Paisley and Cream.

In a beautiful wide space kitchen with some glamourous Hollywood starlets looking down upon us as we begin our baking with Le Cordon Bleu Chef Puja Pawa to show us and guide us each step of the way.

There were some awesome cakes and decorating that I would die to learn but it’s good to head back to the basics and perfect it through practice. So the agenda of the day was to bake and decorate cupcakes!

Unlike some cooking schools that just does cooking demonstrations, Paisley & Cream is a full hands on experience. So be prepared to get down and dirty!

Puja is an excellent teacher and the steps were really simple so no one had any difficulty at all! Even those who were stepping into a kitchen for the first time were able to create beautiful cupcakes!

We made 2 types of cupcake bases that day. Vanilla cupcakes and Chocolate cupcakes.

Even though I’ve home baked cupcakes a dozen times on my own previously, there is always something new you can learn when there’s a professional around. Here’s a new tip I gleaned from this experience : You can make the whole scooping of cupcake batter into the cupcake paper cups a lot less messy if you use a ice-cream scoop for the job!

After making the vanilla and chocolate cupcakes, the next step was to make the toppings! First up was the all time favorite chocolate ganache.

We were using specialty 55% dark chocolate chips which tasted heavenly! I could probably just make a batch to consume with bread and it’ll be like a super rich chocolate spread. Irene and I were joking that we should abandon the cupcake decorating and just enjoy cut fruits with the chocolate ganache.

The next topping we were going to make is the Italian meringue buttercream.

While chocolate ganache tastes better, buttercream allows you to create as many colors as you would like from it so it’s a lot more versatile if you want to make pretty cupcakes.

The teacher Punja showed us how to decorate with one or two samples (above) and then we had free rein to decorate our own cupcakes! This was probably the most exciting section of the baking workshop and I couldn’t wait to get down to it!

All the cupcakes you see below is decorated by yours truly and incredibly fun!

I decorated 6 cupcakes in all! What do you think of it?

It probably cannot be compared to professional bakers but I think nothing is better than self-baked and self-decorated. I brought this over to my office after my cupcake workshop to cheer up my co-workers and I believe that sweet goodies can help lift spirits!

I think this workshop would make a great girly session for birthday parties and girly meetups. I love how the classes here are designed to be really small with only 6 in one session so you get the individual attention. It’s perfect for first timers.

Even if you are a season baker, you’ll appreciate a well designed kitchen, good company and not needing to clean up after a massive baking session.

Thank you Chef Puja Pawa for the awesome session!

If you are keen on giving Paisley & Cream a try, their charges are $250 for 2 days of workshop or  $100 for 1 day. There is no minimum participants needed so there’s a chance you could be even have a one-to-one session with her!

Paisley & Cream

2 Veerasamy Road

2nd Floor

Singapore 207305

http://www.streetdirectory.com/paisleyandcream