#1 Pistachio Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting and Pistachio Pralines

If there’s one thing that I absolutely love, it’s cooking and baking. I just want to share a recipe that I made a few weeks ago. It’s absolutely delicious and is such a winner.

I adapted my recipe from Mary Ann and Mariel. This cake is moist and super yummy. I don’t have cake flour and I don’t know where to get it in Melbourne so I substituted them with 3/4 cup of plain flour and 2 tbs of corn flour. But instead of using buttercream frosting like they did, I used cream cheese. Personally, I’m not a fan of buttercream frosting as I find them rather sweet. I like using cream cheese frosting instead unless my cupcake flavour doesn’t suit it.

For the cream cheese frosting, this is the measurement that I normally use:

250g cream cheese (about 1 box of Philadelphia cream cheese)

100g unsalted butter

2-3 cups of icing sugar (I just add little by little until I get the consistency that I want)

You can adjust this recipe according to the amount of frosting that you make.

And for a little crunch and texture, I made pistachio pralines.

I heat up sugar and water (2:1) in a saucepan until it turned golden brown. You don’t want it to be too dark or too light so always make sure that you are watching it. To be completely honest, I am not sure about how much pistachio I used because I always just adjust as I go. Just have about 1/2 cup of pistachios ready. I lined a board with baking paper and scatter my pistachios there. When I’m done making the caramel, I pour them onto the pistachios. Actually, make sure that the first thing you do is prepare the pistachios so that you can pour the caramel straight away. After it cools and hardens, just break them into smaller pieces and pop them into the food processer. I think mine is a little too grainy. I suppose you would want bigger chunks to add better texture.

And that’s it! I really love this cupcake flavour. Definitely making them again soon!

Happy trying!

Hi for the hundredth time

I’ve never been very loyal towards my blogs. I would have one for a year, a couple of months… sometimes even a couple of days and then I’d delete it. No reason. I’d get stuck, or I’d think that my writings are lame. Or I just stop updating.

Shows a lot about my character, huh? Negligence. I would say it leans more towards nonchalance?

People say that we “create” our own lives. We are our own instruments and life is the music. But no, i don’t believe that. At times, life just gets complicated out of our control. Things happen around us and there’s nothing we can do about it. We can try ignoring them, but subconsciously we are absorbing every single detail of our surrounding.

We are all fucked up. I am fucked up. You are fucked up.

There is no sane person in this world.