Happy Valentine's Day 2011!

Here is a poem (not written by me but I wish it was) dedicated to my wonderful husband Khoa:

Valentine Treasures Valentine treasures are people who
have often crossed your mind,
family, friends and others, too,
who in your life have shined
the warmth of love or a spark of light
that makes you remember them;
no matter how long since you’ve actually met,
each one is a luminous gem,
who gleams and glows in your memory,
bringing special pleasures,
and that’s why this Valentine comes to you:
You’re one of those sparkling treasures! - Joanna Fuchs
These love cakes are red velvet with whipped-cream cream cheese frosting! These are made for Kenny for his girlfriend Chi, and for An for his girlfriend Linda! I hope you guys enjoy these along with your chocolate covered strawberries and I hope you guys have the sweetest day with each other! =) All the decorations are made of fondant with gold luster dust and edible pearls painted gold. I also wanted to say happy Happy Valentine's Day to my sweetie Khoa, I love you and thank you for making me feel special even when you don't have to! =)

So are you stuck on what to write on your valentine's card? Well here are some cheesy but witty quotes that you can use to help put a smile on your love's face! Enjoy!

- To the world, you might be one person, but to one person you might be the world.
- Love me and the world is mine.
- Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
- The most beautiful view is the one I share with you.
- Love is friendship set on fire!
- Come live in my heart and pay no rent.
- Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
- Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine!
- Love is the master key which opens the gates of happiness.
- Love is the greatest refreshment in life.

Chúc Mừng Năm Mới!

Happy Vietnamese (Tết) and Chinese New Years everyone! This Lunar New Year is going to be the lucky year of the rabbit, so everyone please go pet and adopt our cute cuddle long-eared critters now! Or...just don't eat them haha. So my office had this awesome New Years party and they totally went all out with decorations and food and really got into the spirit of things, and they asked me to make some cupcakes for this special occasion! So, I decided to make red velvet cupcakes with whipped-cream cream cheese frosting! I used some chocolate gold coins for money cupcakes, and the bunny rabbits, Asian boy and girl, flowers, oranges, and lanterns are made out of fondant. i also used metallic pearls for the center of the flowers and top of the firecrackers. I added some gold lucky luster dust for added shiny details as well. Biting into one of these sweets will definitely bring you good fortune... for your tummy at least! I want to give special thanks to my sweet loving hubby Khoa for helping me get to the supplies and ingredients for these cupcakes. I cannot have a happier new year without him! Thank you for always supporting me, loving me, and making my life wonderful!

Now some words of wisdom for your soul:

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.
Aspire to the principle, behave with virtue, abide by benevolence, immerse yourself in the arts.
A life with love is happy; a life for love is foolish.
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.
A conversation with a wise person is worth of ten years' study of books.
A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without imperfections.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
A bad word whispered will echo a hundred miles.
Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.

Now for some light-hearted Chinese Proverbs:

Passionate kiss like spider's web, soon lead to undoing of fly.
War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.
Man who run in front of car get tired.
Man who run behind car get exhausted.
Man who drive like hell, bound to get there.
Man who live in glass house should change clothes in basement.

Chúc mừng năm mới & Gong Xi Fa Cai/Gong Hey Fat Choy everyone!! =) I wish everyone good health, great happiness, and prosperity for this lucky year of the rabbit/cat!

Kristin's Birthday!

Happy Birthday Kristin!! These are also banana cupcakes with banana pie cream filling topped with whipped-cream cream cheese frosting! (Thanks Chi Hai for the frosting recipe!) My tip got jammed while piping, so it just became a mess...but at least I know it tastes good!!! All the decorations are made out of fondant and lightly brushed with gold luster dust and added some edible pearls as well. Also, I wanted to give a shout out to my hubby Khoa for making the nice fancy text! Kristin is such a great person and a very good friend of mine and I'm always so happy to be able to create something for her to enjoy! Happy Birthday Kristin!!!

Chess Champion Birthday!

Happy Birthday Octavio! It's my coworker's birthday today and my boss came up with this brilliant theme for the cupcakes! Octavio use to be a state chess champion when he was younger (now retired), so my boss suggested I make cupcakes with chess pieces on them! Awesome idea! I and a big advocate for surprises, so I must share with you this story related to these cupcakes. So whenever there's a work birthday, we always try to surprise the birthday star with something, and so this time around it ALMOST got ruined! My coworker pretty much emailed all of us about how these cupcakes were going to present on this day, and updated everyone saying he'll be coming in for these, INCLUDING the birthday boy!! I quickly emailed him back saying "Oh em gee cameron!...the cupcakes were a surprise for octavio!!" And he emails me back saying "Oh em gee jackie!!! I'm sorry!! I didn't know!! =(" So I went Michael, our a super stealth IT man, and he was able to delete the email to Octavio before he was able to read it since he hasn't come into the office yet, and the surprise was salvaged! woohoo!! What an eventful start to a typical Tuesday =P. Anyways, these banana are banana cream pudding filled banana cupcakes with white chocolate and dark cocoa molded chess pieces for the decorations. I also printed out the chess board myself and cut it up and put it together for the complete image! The frosting is basic buttercream frosting. Does this looks fun to play and yummy to eat??? I'm up for anyone who wants to challenge me to a game of chess, or race to eat the most cupcakes as well =P.

My husband Khoa always tell me how nerdy I am, and I feel these next lines of humor only prove him more correct, and I'm darn proud of it! =) Here's one for thought, can you buy a complete chess set at a pawn shop? What is the name of the only moving castle? A rook! Someone once said "I can see why she likes the game - 'the king is stationary, the queen has all the power'". hehehe. OK, last one. Three retired International chess grandmasters were playing chess in the park. The first grandmaster said, "it is windy today." The second grandmaster said, "no, it is Thursday today". The third grandmaster said, "me too, let's go back inside for a drink" hahaha! =) I hope these cupcakes were a checkmate to your sweet tooth! Happy Birthday Octavio, chess ya later!

Happy Birthday Mike!

Happy New Year 2011 everybody!! Here's my first cake for the new year! Di Anh (Anna) requested that I make a red velvet cake with raspberry mousse filling for Mike's birthday so here it is! It's a baseball themed cake because he loves baseball! All the decorations are piped on with basic buttercream frosting as well. I made the baseball by making a huge cake ball by crumbling the red velvet cake with some frosting, formed it into a ball and then frosted it with some more frosting. I then finished it off by piping on the red stitching on the ball. I shall now leave you with a couple corny awesome baseball humor! So, what did the glove say to the ball? Catch ya later! Why was Chewbacca so good at baseball? He was "wookie" of the year! Enjoy and once again, Happy Birthday Mike!

Alvina the Medical Examiner Investigator!

Congratulations to Alvina Chow, the newest Medical Examiner for the county of San Diego! I am SOOOO proud of her for landing this career and am so excited she found some thing that truly makes her happy. I know she can do whatever she puts her mind to it, and she just proved me right, again! So watch out people of SD and more, Alvina's gonna make sure nothing gets by her and help solve crimes and innocent people safe! woohoo! So to celebrate, instead of making her usual red velvet with chocolate chips in it, I decided to mix it up and made chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate chips! =) The taped body, footprints, "Do Not Cross" tape, and blood splatter evidence are made of fondant and the blood splatter itself is made from red food coloring! Shout outs to my wonderful assistant, my sister Jennifer for painting the awesome wording for the yellow "Do Not Cross" tapes!

So Alvina, to prepare you for your new job, this "stories" is something you might wanna read. =) A police detective was investigating a homicide. As he questioned the on-scene officer, he learned the body was that of a young woman. The body was found with a bowl over her head and a spoon stuck in her back.The on-scene officer asked what the detective thought had happened to the woman.The detective responded, "I think it's obvious. A cereal killer got her!" Hehe. Ok, once again, CONGRATULATION Alvina!

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies!

At work this year we had a cookie exchange party, so I decided to make one of my favorite type of cookies from scratch for the 1st time ever! So here's how my experience went. With my first batch, right away I knew it wasn't that great because instead of smelling like cookies out of the oven, it smelled like flour. Also, when my hubby Khoa tasted them, his expression wasn't so enthusiastic, so I knew I had to try again. Second time around, I sough help and advice from Chi Hai, and boy was she a great help! This time around, I used her recipe for her chocolate chip and swapped it out for white chocolate chip and macadamia nuts instead. I chilled the drop dough before baking them this time too, and man, what a big difference!! My trusty cookie tasters (Khoa and Jennifer) confirmed this =P. Chi Hai also showed me some Martha Stewart cookie package designs, so I made the packages myself as well. It's always fun to turn little projects like a cookie exchange into a crafty one! These were so much fun to make, I learn a lot for my first cookie experience, and I'm so glad it turned out to be a success! Yay! Props to my sis Jennifer for properly showing me how the cookies should be spaced out (spared me from making 1 giant but still yummy cookie) and for Khoa's transparent expressions =P.

Alright, so those who read my blogs know what time it is! Time for some more awesome corny but wittily awesome jokes! =P Why did the cookie go to the doctors? Because it felt crummy! Why did the cookie cry? Because his mother was a wafer so long! How is a cookie like a computer? They both have chips! What kind of cookie makes you rich? A fortune cookie! hehe. So for any cookie personality, these will surely put a smile on your face! Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Eric!

Happy Birthday Eric! These are Red Velvet Cupcakes with buttercream frosting! Eric's son is in his high school football team and Eric cannot be more proud! So we thought it would be perfect to make his birthday cupcakes to be football theme to represent this! All the decorations are made out of fondant except for the grass, that's buttercream of course! I think next time though, I'll probably make the decor out of flavoured tootsie rolls since those taste yummier! Hey so what did the football say to the punter? "I get a kick out of you!" hehe.

Also, happy first day of Hanukkah!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

Happy Birthday to Kristin and Ryan's Grandpa! Kristin asked me to make a French Vanilla Cake with Bavarian Cream filling for her grandfather who's turning 87, and she asked me to incorporate the following into the cake. She wanted me to include her grandfather's 3 wishes which are: 1) going to Disneyland, 2) going to the Chinese Garden at the Huntington Library (to see the flowers and lake), 3) spend an hr with only the grandkids and eat dessert (apple pie and vanilla ice cream). So I did this with the present tags, and made a symbol to represent each wish. The Mickey Mouse icon for Disneyland, flowers and a pond for the Chinese Garden, and a slice of pie to represent the last wish. His favorite color is blue, so I made the cake frosting blue. Also, Kristin told me that USC is very important to him as well since all the kids and grandkids went there so I made the Trojan symbol to represent USC as well. Now for those of you who know me, you know that I'm a Bruin, but USC is great, that's why I incorporated this list of all the wonderful things about USC (per Khoa's request), ready?
Here it is:

Great list right? Hahaha, all jokes aside, the greatest thing about USC are my friends and their families who went there! =) Anyways, all the decorations I made are made of fondant, and the cake is frosted with buttercream. This is a very personal and meaningful cake for Kristin's grandfather, and that's what makes it even more special. Happy Birthday Grandpa! This is definitely a special one =).

Thanksgiving 2010!

Happy Thanksgiving! So I decided to have an nice intimate thanksgiving dinner with all my close friends this year at my house, it was our first home cooked thanksgiving in our house and we're pleased to say it was a major success!! So, of course for this awesome dinner event, I made pumpkin cupcakes with bavarian cream filling, and buttercream frosting on top! All the decorations are made of fondant as well. Also, thanks to google search for all your inspirations! =)

There's truly a lot to be thankful for this year, so first off, I want to say thanks to Joey for making such an amazing 22.2 lb turkey and gravy! Thanks Master B for helping him and making the garlic bread and washing so many dishes! Thanks Jennifer for helping with the deviled eggs, and prepping the salad, ninja chopping the yams and cleaning the house! Thanks alvina for the garlic mashed potatos, and Linda for bring the pumpking pie, and An for bringing the whipped topping! Most of all, thanks to my husband Khoa for buying me flowers, doing all the dirty work and being such a wonderful husband! I am so thankful for having such a loving family both imediate and extended, and for having such great wonderful friends! So what are you thankful for this year?

Here are some thanksgiving jokes to entertain you over the long holiday weekend! If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims! Why did the turkey cross the road? It was the chicken's day off! Can a turkey jump higher than the Empire State Building? Yes - a building can't jump at all!! What kind of music did the Pilgrims like? Plymouth Rock! hehehe. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!