valentine's and other misc updates

My cousin took some "nice" pictures of my goodies on valentines (you know, the kind that uses like a realllllyyy fancy camera with some awesome lens to take small aperture pictures, and makes it all artistic?) ... But i feel like i should share some of my mediocre pictures anyways

i had an order of cupcakes for saturday, and i did a swirl for the frosting instead of my normal spatula frosting technique. i've been worried that i wouldn't have enough frosting to do it, but alas, it does sufficiently frost 24 red velvet cupcakes ... just not hopeful for the carrot cupcakes (where the batches vary depending on how much apples and carrots i decide to slice and shred). I used some sort of Ateco Tip (I have a mix of wilton's (due to michaels, sur la table) and ateco (crate and barrel, william's sonoma).

oh and it took me 10 hours of slaving baking/chocolatiering to prepare for valentines ... i love my boyfriend so.

my white chocolate shell for my chocolate ganache and milk chocolate bottom (i ran out of white chocolate to complete the shell.. hahahahahaha oops! actually i later found out that i had a stash of white chocolate set aside for this, instead i forgot and used milk chocolate -te he he he :[

my brownie pop: bittersweet chocolate and milk chocolate (i liked my first trial better, i used white chocolate and milk ...) GUITTARD'S CHOCOLATE FTW!

truffle making, it is MESSY (left: ganache ball, right: milk chocolate to coat)

dipped brownie pops in milk chocolate and YELLOW sugar sprinkles but it does not show up at all .. but gives this nice texture when you're eating the brownies, a crunch!

truffles in cocoa nibs(valrhona) and cocoa powder (whole foods)

u know macarons are a pain, and when you ACCOMPLISH such a masterpiece, who wants to think about the cream filling, i sure don't. instead i improvised: whipping cream, powdered sugar (to stabilize) and NUTELLA. who doesn't love nutella? TELL ME! but its tricky, must be eaten within a day or two of being put together, otherwise ... its a disaster, just kidding - eatable but not the best it can be.

aren't they so chubby and cute? ... fyi, as i started to whip the cream, i THEN realized that this will fall flat after a few hours! so i frantically searched online to find ways to stabilize it ... turns out you can do gelatin (which i had, but no time to do it, since i already started whipping), or the cornstarch from powdered sugar can help. so thats why my consistency is off, overbeaten, overloaded, and not prepared :/

voila - the basket. don't judge the cider, we love apple cider only because we don't have a developed wine/champagne/alcohol taste yet ... YET! (the boxes with pink bows: my individual macarons)

cousin and his wifey working their magic. she said the cloth shes holding is about a pound ... she had to hold it up for awhile, working out and working - what a great concept

intermission: my mom loves floral arrangement. we got a deal on these, $3 a branch, yes $3 a branch. HA!

done and complete (if you're vietnamese, you will notice the CHA on the right ... it was tet on sunday(feb 14)!

don't they look just lovely? *swoon* so soft and fluffy ... CHOMP!