Priscilla’s Favourite Recipes

There seems to be a craze over the baking of cupcakes. With home-based baker taking orders through the internet baking it for customers and personally I know of a couple of such stay at home mums who use their home to run their small enterprise. And over here in Vancouver, there are some bakeries specialized in just cupcakes.

Instead of buying from the bakery, we tried to bake them at home.

Ingredients:
1½ cup All-purpose Flour
2 tsp Baking powder
A pinch Salt
¾ cup Sugar (I used raw unprocessed sugar)
½ cup milk
2 eggs
⅓ cup Canola oil
½ tsp vanilla

Methods:
1. Preheat oven to about 375°F (190°C)
2. Sift flour, baking flour and sugar together into a big mixing bowl.
3. Add in the sugar, milk, eggs and vanilla essence. Mix well until smooth for a minute.
4. Scoop into prepared baking cupcake tray with paper cups till 70% to the brim of the paper
cup.
5. Baked in preheated oven for 10-12 minutes.

(Note: that different oven, the timing might be different so check occasionally while baking to find the most optimum timing for your oven.)

There are two ways of making icing, I rarely make unless it is a party as we do not fancy so much fats.

Classic Butter Icing
1. Cream ½ cup soft butter with 2 cups icing sugar.
2. 2 tsp vanilla, 2 tbsp milk and 1cup of icing sugar into mixtures.
3. Gradually add 1 to 2 tbsp milk into icing sugar until smooth and of desired spreading
consistency.
4. Add food colouring to the icing to make desired colouring.
5. For chocolate icing, add ⅓ cup sifted cocoa icing sugar.

Vanilla Buttercream Icing
Ingredients:
1 cup soft butter
5 cups sifted icing sugar
½ cup whipping cream
½ tsp vanilla

1. Beat soft butter in a large bowl till light and fluffy.
2. Alternately beat in sugar and cream, and add in 2 additions of sugar.
3. Beat in the vanilla.
4. Refrigerate in airtight container for up to 24hours.
5. Let it come to room temperature about an hour and beat slightly before using.

Seafood, Baby Corns and Snow Peas

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Ingredients:
1 packet fresh baby corns, half
1 packet snow peas, remove the ends
300g of seafood-prawns, squids and scallops
1 clove garlic, sliced
some onion, sliced
1 tsp canola oil
1 tsp light soy sauce
45 ml chicken stock
1 tsp cornstarch to 1 tbsp water

Method:
1. Heat up the oil. Add in the garlic and onion, fry till golden brown or fragance.

2. Add in the seafood and stir-fry for a while.

3. Add in the corn, snowpeas and mix well. Then add in the chicken stock and shimmer for a while.

4. When the fluid begins to boil, pour in the cornstarch mixture and mix well. And serve.