Splattt!

Boredom at its best?

Eid Mubarak

As we bid adieu to Ramadhan and welcome the new month of Syawal (and endless invitations to open houses!!), we'd like to wish our readers Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Fitri as well as thank you for supporting us here @ T.I.C

Have a good celebration everyone!

Best wishes, T.I.C

Posh Bunny

Breaking news folks!

Posh..exercising (GASP!!)...daily four-mile runs (SHOCK!!)...eating more (DOUBLE SHOCK!?!)

And even more horrific, she's giving up shopping!! *Sudden silence*

Just when you (and I) thought there's nothing this useless person wouldn't do or say to stay in the spotlight. This is just too good to be true *hahahahahahhaha*

For more

Lazy Sunday

...and to Kake too

Congratulations ladies!

ONE

The birthday cake!

My Boy Wonder is 1 today. Though unaware about all the fuss that was going on earlier this evening, the birthday boy still managed to make the most of his big day, particularly when he opened his presents!

H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y
WITH LOVE FROM Auntie Kitty and everyone at T.I.C

Best wishes Cupcake

Today we celebrate and welcome Cupcake into our Club ** (purposely withheld, but for the sake of our other readers, let's just put it as "21") . Cupcake, hope you'll have a happy happy birthday filled with lotsa goodies and happy memories. Here's to many more cupcakes, double chocolate muffins (still waiting...), brownies, banana-date muffins, carrot cakes and plenty more goodies from your oven!

With love from all @ T.I.C and beyond

Cupcakes galore

Vanilla Buttercream Colors

I'm officially declaring this week as Cupcake Week!

Thanks to Cupcake for posting those mouthwatering pictures of her creations as well as the countless photos currently circling around in Facebook of friends either sharing their own creations and wishlists, I thought it's about time I introduce the ultimate cupcake of all cupcakes.

Introduced by a cousin 2 years ago during my summer holiday in NYC, Buttercup Bake Shop makes these divine cupcakes which will make you forget all the cupcakes you've eaten all this time. Freshly made daily, they come in various kinds, from good ol'fashioned vanilla with chocolate frosting to German Chocolate to Spicy Sour Cream to the sumptuous red velvet - courtesy of F who, upon my recommendation, brought back and introduced me to probably the best-tasting cupcake out of all the Buttercup cupcakes I've tasted. Definitely not for the faint-hearted!

So if you're ever in NYC, do check it out. As the saying goes, "don't miss out on what life has to offer", or in this particular case, what Buttercup Bake Shop has to offer!

Assorted Cupcakes

Are you drooling again?

Photos courtesy of Buttercup Bake Shop

Baking spree - response

Cupcake, speaking on behalf of our readers,

*drooooool*

*sluuurrrrrrrrrrpppp*

How could anyone NOT resist those cupcakes and muffins??!??

TPC on a baking spree : my signature Pink Cupcake

this has to be my signature cupcake. everyone loves these.

TPC on a baking spree : Banana Date Muffin

also from the recent girlie get together, at the request of Hannan's papa, his favourite muffin.

TPC on a baking spree : Blue Iced Chocolate Cupcakes

at a recent get together with the BFF's , cupcakes need to be made. i am usually a pink cupcake kinda girl. but i decided to go for baby blue this time. also to show off my brilliant Wilton Cupcake Stand.

TPC on a baking spree : Mini Double Chocolate Muffin

i know i have been neglecting to contribute to the blog. sorry kitty! as you know, i have been distracted! hehehehe! anyhow, had the nieces over today and they requested this. presenting..... Mini Double Chocolate Muffin.
from the top, fresh from the oven and paper peeled off, then just to show the dark inside, then going....going...and GONE!!!

Sign O' The Times

As the global economy faces a rather unsettling future, you'd think everyone would be tightening their belts by now. The price of oil continues to rise much to our dismay which means the rich are only getting more richer while the rest of us have to put up with dishing more for rice, fuel and flour just to name a few.

Just to add to the gloomy outlook, Starbucks recently announced it was going to close 600 stores in the US. For a country as big as the US, 600 seems small considering how there's practically a Starbucks store within a couple of hundred yards within each other! Just take New York City as an example. I recall seeing one Starbucks store after another or within a block of each other, either as a stand-alone store or a store inside, say Barnes and Noble. Basically if there's a long queue in one store or fully-packed, don't fret 'cos all one has to do is walk a hundred yards and voila! another Starbucks store. However for a well-known company, closure shouldn't be an option unless the company is in serious trouble or a takeover has been proposed. What's that saying...too much of a good thing is never a good thing? Having said that, we shouldn't really be bothered too much with this - Starbucks or no Starbucks, our locals will still pick the C.A Mohammads, Happy Deans and Coffeezones that have grown to be a staple in our lives.

On the other hand, if you're wondering what the rich are getting up to with all the money piling up, the latest craze to hit the Middle East is prestigious license plate numbers. How 'nice' it must feel to be able to throw away $millions for a license tag simply sporting "1" ..while the rest of us simple folk are slogging away just to earn and save for the future, or worst case scenario, simply trying to get by..

$14 million for this!?!

*SIGH*

The great cupcake project

When Cupcake wrote as her Facebook status that she was involved in this "great cupcake project", I knew she was in her baking mood. However little did I know that her project involved springing this lovely, not forgetting mouthwatering, surprise on moi..

Cupcake, merci beaucoup and have fun in jolly ol' England!

Overheard

Woman (to husband? or boyfriend?): Jangan sigup sana. Karang kana tangkap.

Could this be true? This was an actual scene over at KFC last night as I was queueing up behind said woman..to which I could only manage a smile. A secret smile to be exact. If only she knew...

Sweet 18?

Thank you Mr & Mrs Z for an enjoyable afternoon..and if any of you are wondering whether the divine looking chocolate ganache is as mouthwatering as it looks, let's just say if mozart and I weren't on the verge of exploding, we'd have seconds as well as thirds!

vanilla butterscotch cupcakes

(DROOL ALERT!) specifically, it's vanilla cupcakes with butterscotch icing. i have always loved the taste of brown/burnt sugar, ie caramel, toffee, butterscotch, gula melaka, gula anau etc. recently i was gushing over the butterscotch eclair at Saffron, hence the inspiration to marry two of my favourite flavours. i made up my own icing recipe, using my usual cream cheese icing with less butter mixed with butterscotch sauce i had made up earlier (again, a lets-just-toss-things-in-and-see-if-it-works recipe) . the result was a medium consistency icing, with the slightest tinge of caramel colour, and a delicate butterscotch taste coming through. i am quite proud of this creation. i finished it off with a sprinkling of brown sugar. from top, my bald bare vanilla cupcakes, then smothered in icing and lastly sprinkled with sugar.
nice, isn't it?

my latest obsession...Wilton Cupcake Stands!

i am in love. well, maybe just obsessed slightly. i am well into my Cupcake Fixation. therefore in my recent galivanting in KL and Singapore, i managed to find my ultimate dream, the Wilton Cupcake Stand. actually, i am so bad, i ended up buying FIVE of them. hahahahaha! okay, it is a bit over the top, but i couldnt help myself. due to baggage constraints, i made them send it over to Brunei for me, hence i am still waiting for the precious things to arrive. tried explaining my latest love to Medulla and Kitty but they cannot visualise it. so especially for you two, this is what i have been waxing lyrical about. and once i go into full baking mode, it will look this gorgeous too. now, i just need a good reason to make countless cupcakes. any suggestions?

p/s i only bought two of the bottom two and one of the middle one. i was sorely tempted to buy the big one which holds 38 cupcakes, but i resisted....for now. but now looking at the top pic, i am now inspired to make Rocky Road Cupcakes....God help me!

J Co Donuts

the cupcake has been off on holiday recently, galivanting off to KL and Singapore for eight days. since i was in the vicinity, i decided to wander down to The Pavillion, KL's newest shopping mall, specifically to check out J Co Donuts. they are an Indonesian company set up in 2005, with 16 outlets in Jakarta alone and another 21 scattered in the main cities. they expanded to Malaysia recently, opening two branches, the one in The Pavillion and another in Sunway Pyramid. they have been such a hit that queues at the Pavillion branch usually average one hour of waiting! (although i only waited for 15 minutes! guess i was lucky. after i joined the queue, another twenty people joined me...) back to the products, the donuts. yes, they are worth it. i am a simple girl at heart so i love the Glazzy, a sweet honey glazed donut. similar to the Original Glazed Krispy Kreme but not as teeth-meltingly sweet. their best seller is actually the ALCAPONE, belgian white chocolate with slivers of californian almonds on top. the list is endless, you can go crossed eyed while choosing your dozen or so (hell, if you have to queue that long, you might as well grab a few dozen!) my verdict...Love it!!! in the end, i picked up 2 Glazzy with 4 others. they were all gorgeous. if you are ever in KL, do drop by and grab some for me!

The start of something 'new'..

It was one of those rare Sundays where we made the extra effort to get up early. Our first effort in holding a garage sale. Though we still need to work on our PR skills, nevertheless our debut effort had a reasonable turnout with everyone ranging from Medulla (with her endless boxes of kiddies' stuff) to Cupcake (who'd spent 7 solid hours the day before making her infamous brownies (yumm), carrot cake (yumm yumm) and mini cupcakes (triple yumm esp those vanilla cupcakes which is now my second official favourite Cupcake creation after her brownies) with her newly-minted oven) to Greenie (another compulsive shopaholic who simply cannot resist buying for her mini-me daughter!) to mozart (who could forget that rare Jason Donavan CD she had lying in her room??) making some pretty good dosh..so much so that we're itching to do this whole garage-sale business another go.

Kudos to everyone involved, particularly to mozart for lending us the space.