Win RM10,000 The Celcom Cupcake Challenge

Over the weekends, I had the honor to hands-on cupcakes baking from scratch at The Cooking House, Desa Sri Hartamas. It was a fun-filled 1Malaysia cupcake baking class hosted by Celcom for bloggers and media representatives.

It was a historic event as it was the first time for a mobile telco provider to host an exclusive cupcake baking class for the Celcom Cupcake Challenge, an online contest in conjunction with Malaysia’s 55th anniversary of independence and for the upcoming Malaysia Day celebrations on 16 September. And here I am, honored to be part of the exclusive event thanks to Celcom.

This is my first time at The Cooking House. I’m very impressed with the venue chosen. It’s a very classroom style like with the main counter in the front well equipped with baking facilities.

Everyone gets an apron and cook hat. Ingredients and tools for cupcakes baking were all prepared on the table.

Before the baking class began, a welcome speech was given by Chief Marketing Officer of Celcom Axiata Berhad, Zalman Aefendy Zainal Abidin. In his speeech, he mentioned that “Celcom is opening this contest to all Malaysians, not just Celcom customers, as a chance to put their patriatism and creative skills on display. We chose Facebook as the contest channel so that even more Malaysians can come together, share their love for the country, and experience the power of personal connections even while at different corners of our beautiful nations.”

A group picha of bloggers and media representatives with Celcom before the class began.

Because the group was too big for a class, we were divided into two smaller groups for the cupcake baking class. One class was hosted by Lu Soo Chee, resident cake artist in The Cooking House, and the other by Chef Rose.

As we were in the second group, we were hosted by Chef Rose, a Chef host for Selera TV3. *proud*

Some #takepicha moment before we start.. beware of .GIF overload.

My baking partner, Eunice and Derek in peekaboo effect.

 

We were a bunch of excited high adrenaline rush bloggers who can’t wait to start baking. The thing is, this is quite a cupcake challenge. Little did we know that we have to beat butter, sugar and eggs with a wooden spatula. No cheating with cake mixer! *arms sore*

Our challenge didn’t stop there. We also have to convert the mixture into these beautiful 1Malaysia interpreted cupcakes:

It was truly a fun-filled experience and we get to learn the basics of baking and decorating cupcakes with a patriotic twist.

Here’s the recipe for the cupcake:

[amd-recipeseo-recipe:3]

Methods:

1. Add butter and sugar into the bowl.

2. Beat butter and sugar until you get the mixture creamy and fluffy and also looking pale in color.

Here comes the challenge. To cream the butter and sugar! Quite a soring moment for the arm. Luckily we were given a team each, so we could take turns with our partners to share the soring moment. LOL

Finally done with the butter and sugar! #successkid You’re supposed to get the mixture into this pale cream.

3. Add in egg, vanilla essence and milk. Mix well.

Cracking eggs into the mixture with one hand *supreme skills*

Thought the beating was over, but it all started again after eggs were added.

Need to mix the batter well until it looked something like this. Like scrambled egg soup!

4. Fold in flour carefully. Do not overmix.

With tender, love and care, fold in the flour gently like the above. Make sure to do it in one direction. We don’t want to waste all those efforts beating air into the mixture and then you release it when adding flour >:[

The final look Perfect. Even Chef Rose praised us :3

5. Fill up the paper cups 2/3 full.

 

6. Bake the cupcakes in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 13 minutes.

 

While waiting for the cupcakes to cook, we start off making the Buttercream Frosting ffor the decoration. Recipe as follows:

[amd-recipeseo-recipe:4]

Methods:

1. Add butter into the bowl.

2. Beat butter until creamy.

*gawk* Thought all beating was over! Anyway, abidingly we still beat the butter until it is creamy like above. The reason being, when the butter is soft and creamy, it is easier to mix well with the icing sugar.

3. Add in the sifted icing sugar.

4. Beat the mixture until you get the piping consistency. You can also add milk or powdered sugar to get the result.

5. Divide the mixture for colorings to be added.

6. Add colorings into the frosting.

7. Mix well.

8. Pipe away! Start decorating your cupcakes.

There was an internal cupcake decorating challenge between the teams in each groups. We are to compete against each other for the best interpreted 1Malaysia cupcakes. I’m pretty sure we had a great chance to win the internal cupcake challenge! *High Determination*

Bok, Yvonne, Hilda and Henry won the best 1Malaysia cupcakes decoration. *piff*

This is what their winning cupcakes look like:

This is how ours looked like:

Not much different except that our crescent look like Gua Musang only. Hahahaha..

And also some other teams’ works:

We also had the opportunity to submit our creations to the Celcom Cupcake Challenge Facebook page as our entries.  The Celcom Cupcake Challenge is a very simple online contest and it is open to all Malaysians to submit photos of their creative cupcake designs in the spirit of 1Malaysia. All you need to do is just design a cupcake with your own creative interpretation of national pride and upload the photo to www.facebook.com/cupcakeschallenge to be in the running to win prizes worth more than RM100,000! The submission date is from now until 23rd September 2012. 55 participants with the most “Likes” on their entries will be chosen to go on to the grand finale on 29th September 2012.

The top three winners will walk away with a brand new Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphones (worth RM2,199 each) and RM10,000, RM5,000 and RM2,000 in cash for the first, second and third places respectively. The rest of the 52 finalists will receive a stylish LG Prada mobile phone for their achievements. The public is also urged look out for free Celcom cupcake giveaways this Malaysia Day at selected malls.

So many prizes to be won!! So, Get Baking Malaysians!

For more information, visit the Celcom Cupcake ChallengE Facebook page at www.facebook.com/cupcakeschallenge or www.celcom.com.my or call 1-300-111-000 or 1111 from a Celcom mobile.