I’ve received many requests for chocolate muffins in the last few weeks, but since I wasn’t completely satisfied with the recipe I had, I was very reluctant to make them, much less put them up for sale.

I finally found some time this week, not only to tweak my chocolate muffin recipe, but to try out the oft-recommended flavour marriage of orange and chocolate.

These orange dark chocolate muffins contain Valrhona Manjari (64%), a generous splash of Grand Marnier and orange zest. While the domes here are not as dramatic as the blueberry muffins, I love how the crisp, chocolate chip studded tops give way to a delicate cake-like crumb. My favourite part about these little pillowy treats is the aromatic citrus overtone.

I’m really pleased with the results and even more delighted that I won’t have to say “no” the next time someone asks for chocolate muffins.

Available for purchase: 12 Orange Dark Chocolate Muffins made with Valrhona Manjari @ a Price of $25. Chocolate Only Variation @ a Price of $24.

My client, C, had originally approached me about miniature sugar paste cakes. They were for a young lady celebrating her birthday at the Bukit Timah Saddle Club.

Since fondant, the humid weather and I don’t seem to agree with each other, I suggested a cake with a royal icing pony instead when C told me that a pony ride would be part of the day’s events.

I went ahead and designed a trial royal icing pony. I soon realised that it would not be an easy task getting the pony on to the cake without breaking it and the only thing I could think of was using fondant as a support as I’d done for the giraffe. I guess I couldn’t escape fondant after all!

As expected, the fondant was only semi-dry. Still, I think the chocolate cake turned out pretty cute. I only hope it survived long enough for the birthday girl to cut the cake!

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a really adorable royal icing giraffe in one of my mum’s old cake decorating books. I thought the idea was cute and that it’d be cool to make a long cake. Since my sister’s birthday was coming up, I had the perfect excuse!

The royal icing piping was a lot of fun and the giraffe was really cute, except for one major problem. I hadn’t thought of how I could remove the sugar art from the cellophane without breaking it. But just in case things didn’t work out, I made a little royal icing rooster as well, all the while hoping that the giraffe would stay intact. Sadly, the giraffe did break (into several pieces), but I thought I could still salvage it by assembling the pieces on a long piece of fondant.

Little did I realise that I’d just created another problem. The fondant stubbornly refused to dry, despite the hot weather. All it did was dry a little in the day, but turn into a soft mush in the evening. This I attributed to the awful humidity that we’ve been experiencing lately. In the end, I turned to air-conditioning for help. The fondant did dry somewhat, but only if I kept it in the air-conditioned room.

In the end, I managed to get sugar paste and royal icing on to the chocolate cake (sandwiched with raspberry jam and chocolate ganache), but this experience has further convinced me not to put fondant cakes up for sale. At least for now. As beautiful or adorable as the end results usually are, the drying process is just too annoying and is most definitely not worth running the air-conditioning for days on end.

* NOT FOR SALE *

My fridge is overflowing with a huge giraffe cake (more about that in a later post) and you’ve guessed it, macarons! Some of these miniature confections were my own, but some were from various famed pâtisseries around Europe, brought back by very generous friends who’d travelled there recently.

3 weeks ago, my husband and I met up with a friend at a party. He mentioned that he was leaving for Zurich on a work-related trip the following week. We suggested that he visit Sprüngli in his spare time there and try at least one of their popular luxemburgerlis. 2 weeks went by and I’d completely forgotten about the conversation that we’d had about Sprüngli, which was why I was completely surprised to receive a message from him last week, telling me that he’d got us a box of (close to 40) luxemburgerlis! Thank you, CR! We really enjoyed them.

Today, I met up with another friend for lunch. She’d just got back from Paris on a work trip last week and had bought me a box of beautifully packaged macarons from Ladurée! I was really touched that she’d gone out of her way to get me these “cookies”. Thank you so much, HL, for the macarons and for everything else that we’ve shared in the last few months!

I feel really blessed to have such wonderful friends! Wouldn’t you?

This post is a little late, but here it is anyway:

Mad Baker was featured in an article about “online bakeshops” in the weekend edition of a local newspaper, Today, on 22 - 23 September 2007.

I didn’t have time to make macarons for Audrey (Phoon), the really sweet executive writer from Today who interviewed me, but I did manage to whip up a few blueberry muffins for her. I’m really glad that the review was good.

I’ve received more orders for muffins (and macarons) since the article was published. Many thanks to Audrey’s friend who told her about my blog!