Boldly Going Where I've Never Gone Before

I've been egged on by Adeline to attempt baking cupcakes because, in her words, "it's so easy to do".

Ok, I'll give it a go. Since I am quite averse to kitchen-related challenges, I figured if it's really that easy then surely even I, the kitchen-challenged one, can do it. By that evening, I was dreaming up various designs to do on my soon-to-be-baked cupcakes.

When I was about to start, suddenly I felt a bit intimidated. Measure the flour? Clean the weighing scale? Separate those itty-bitty little cupcake paper cups? Alamak, is the butter soft? Ok, ok, I psyched myself: I CAN DO THIS. IT'S JUST A DAMN CUPCAKE.

Once I started, it suddenly did become easy! Wonders what a standing mixer can do (something we already had but obviously not used). When the batter was done, I looked around for another suitable mixing bowl to make the icing. I think the fancy name for it is "Butter Cream Frosting" but, really, it's just butter and icing sugar.

After the mixing was done, we all headed to Atok's house for the baking because their stove has a working oven with a fan! Wow! Ours... well... ours, um, has an oven, but who knows if it works. Anyway, we inherited it from Atok's house when we moved in here 7 years ago and by that time it was already 100 years old and we weren't too fussy.

Abang very kindly offered to help (see my definition of "help") with the separating of cupcake cups and spooning the batter into the individual cups. Once they were cooked, I let them cool down before attempting to spread icing on them.

That's the real challenge, isn't it, the decoration on the cupcake. (Or, as Daddy would say, the "value add".) As my first attempt, I just tried doing some simple stuff.

Second attempt - nantilah, let's see if I'm a bit braver. The fact that I'm not giving up is good news in itself!