(ADV) Exclusive Cupcake Baking Workshop For National Pride by Celcom

In conjunction to our country 55th Independence Day and also the upcoming Malaysia Day celebrations at 16 September 2012, Celcom had organized an exciting online contest to every Malaysians. This is the Celcom Cupcake Challenge. For this occasion, I was invited to the their exclusive baking workshop hosted by Lu Soo Chee, resident cake artist at The Cooking House in Sri Hartamas

Well, initially I was expecting to cover the event and not to take part in it. But then, seeing so many familiar faces around put me at ease a bit.

Celcom Cupcake Challenge @ The Cooking House

Mr Zalman

We are being briefed by Zaiman Aefendy, Chief Marketing Officer of Celcom Axiata Berhad regarding the purpose and also the contest mechanics of the Cupcake Challenge. To me, this cupcake challenge is sort of a huge mountain to climb for people who have zero knowledge in baking. Heck, I couldn’t even cook as well since most regard cooking an awesome bowl of instant noodle with egg as not cooking.

Chef Lu Soo-Chee

After Mr. Zaiman’s speech, the workshop was taken over by Lu Soo Chee, the resident cake artist in The Cooking House and also a member of ICES (International Cake Exploration Societe). She has more than 10 years experience in baking and cake decorating and had worked with professional around the world. So it is safe to say, this class is idiot proof since we are in the very good hands of some experts.

There are 50 bloggers present at the workshop and all of us will learn the basics of baking and cake decorating and also the opportunity to submit their cupcake creations to the Celcom Cupcake Challenge Facebook page. In another words, bloggers not only have the upper hand of being taught by experts, we get to upload our entries first to get a head start in gathering likes. So let me share some of the fun-filled sessions of cupcake baking.

Caroline with Celcom Banner

The emcee – Ms Nadia

Chef Soo-Chee’s creation

The bloggers are given a sample that they had to follow for their creation. But there are a lot of bloggers who went out of the way to showcase their creativity. That’s definitely gonna win them some creativity points once their pictures are up on Facebook. On the side note, the group with the best cupcake creation which was judged by the neatness and color will given some small prize.

The ingredient to bake cupcake

For those who wanted the ingredients for the Vanilla Cupcake, these are the following ingredients.

. 110g of plain flour

. 1 1/2 tablespoon of baking powder

. 125g of butter

. 100g of sugar

. 2 eggs

. 1/2 tablespoon of Vanilla essence

. 2 tablespoon of milk.

The following instructions are summary of what done by Caroline as I did not take part in this cupcake baking session. Please do visit her blog for further and detailed instructions.

Beat the sugar and butter together

Pour the eggs

Stir it well

Pour the Vanilla essence

Pour the flours

Pouring the milk

Creamy mixture

The mixture

Filling it

One important thing you have to note is that, beware of overmixing or the dough will not turn out right.

Fill the paper cup 2/3 full

Umei, Caroline, Charmaine and Hanie with the end results of the cupcake base.

The cupcake base is done and decoration is needed. How do you get the icing decor needed for the cupcakes? Here are the ingredients.

. 95g of salted butter, 260g of icing sugar

. 1 1/2 tablespoon of milk.

The ingredients for butter cream frosting

Beat the butter…!

In case you are wondering, I did not took part again in this decorating session. They realized my superiority and hidden talent in it, they decided to appoint a very important task to me.

My extremely important task

Yeap, I was in charge of supervising the team. Only those with incredible credibility, talent and experience are allowed to handle such important task. Which is done by yours truly. Ladies, hold your screams and I shall sign those autographs later.

In the process of making the buttercream frosting

Perfect frosting

The final result of the icing dough

Once the dough is done, some gel food coloring is added to achieve desired colors. Once that is done, it was placed into a plastic pipe for decoration purpose. One of the hardest thing here which requires concentration and patient.

Gel Food Coloring – Blue

A drop of blue color and mix!

The piping process of the blue frosting

Finishing the moon part of the flag

The final creation of the group’s cupcake. And when the winner was announced, they are thoroughly surprised and overjoy for it. Reason being their cupcakes are neat in terms of arrangement and also color. Well done, I must say.

The Winner Team!

Snap and Upload!

Once done with the cupcakes, they decided to upload a snapshot of the cupcakes and send it to the Celcom Cupcake Challenge Facebook page. AND let the voting process begins!!

So in the end, the team that I SUPERVISE won. Ah, so proud of my leadership and achievement right here. I do have another important task actually.

My second important task

Ah, so many important tasks in a day and I felt such an VIP right here.

For those who are wondering, the winners of the Celcom Cupcake Challenge would walk away with a brand new Samsung Galaxy SIII with cash prices RM10,000, RM5,000 and RM2,000 in cash for the top 3 finishes. Not only that, the rest of the 52 finalists will be given a LG Prada phone for their achievements. Talk about being generous. Do note that Celcom too will be giving away free cupcakes this coming Malaysia Day at selected malls.

For more information, you can visit the links below or call the provided number.