Fellow baker - pumpkinmumycupcakes

I've recently had some craving of pretty cupcakes. Although I love sweet stuff, since I was little, I never liked cake with icing. I think icings are too sweet for me. But with the current cupcake craze with many people decorating pretty little cakes in cup, I kinda lured by the beautiful designs of these cakes.

This fellow baker was my senior in our residential college when we studied in UM few years ago. She started her business quite a while back and I always visited her blog, pumpkinmumycupcakes.blogspot.com to look at the pretty cupcake pictures. Finally I can't resist the temptation anymore so I decided to try them. She had a better idea and suggested why don't we trade our stuff, I get her cupcakes and she gets my cookies. Fair enough I said. So, today I went to pick the cuppies and here there are! Lovely aren't they?

I like the way the cakes are packaged and the tag!

The cakes are orange cakes with vanilla buttercream frosting. Initially I ordered a mocha cupcake with chocolate ganache frosting because I thought that I can't take the sweet icings. But I think she was super busy that she forgets and made me these instead. That's ok for me because we are trading anyway, it's not like i ordered for some occasion or something. Despite my dislike towards icings, these cuppies' taste is good! I thought I never gonna like icings but her buttercream frosting is just nice, not sweet at all. Love them, kak sue :)

I didn't expect her to write kakicookie on top, so when I found out about it, I decided to post it here :D



I highly reccomend her cupcakes if you have occasions like weddings or birthdays because I think her decor are simple yet lovely. If you would like to have a look at her other works on cupcakes, visit her blog: pumpkinmumycupcakes.blogspot.com

Local Chocolate Cheap?

Another story on why my chocolate chip cookies a bit more expensive than others. I have been baking chocolate chip cookies since I'm 18. Since then I have used many types of chocolate chips. Each brings a different taste for the cookies.

In Malaysia, it's rare to have different types of chocolate chip sold in shelf dedicated to chocolates only. The semi-sweet, bitter-sweet, milk choc chip, peanut butter chips...Well, maybe you can find them in commercial hypermarket but I bet it's Hershey's which is expensive and maybe I have to sell my cookies RM15 PER 100gms? I don't know. Well, I always found Hershey's at Jaya Jusco supermarket and they have the 2 types only, semi-sweet and milk. I have only found Vochelle normal chips and no semi-sweet. Van Houten too! But for selling purpose, I thought it's not practical to use commercial brand chocolate chip as the price will increase tremendously. I've read some American blogs that say the Ghiradelli chips are the best but we can't find those in Malaysia.

At the place where I usually get my bakery supply, there are two types of normal chocolate chips. Local Chocolate Chip and Imported Chocolate Chip. The local chip is half the price of the imported one. BUT they taste too sweet! I have baked using those before and I don't like the sweetness. Previously, in the place where I was working, I have brought cookies using these chips for some office parties. But, those who doesn't like too much sweet complaints that the cookies are too sweet. I agreed too.

From my personal view, the local ones taste more sweet than chocolatey. For me, chocolate chips should taste chocolatey, NOT sweet. They also get burnt easily when baking and becomes hard in the baked dough. I think this is because more sugar is used rather than cocoa in the chips. To add to this story, last week I found a new addition: a LOCAL coffee chips. Being a coffee lover, I decided to try the chips in my cookies. How frustrated I am when the cookies turn out so sweet rather than coffee. The chips is sugary, there are smell of coffee but the taste is really sugary. I guess the local baking chips maker is pouring too much sugar in their products...maybe to cut cost?

So, for kakicookie products, I decided to use the imported chips eventhough they cost double than the local ones. This is maybe one of the reason why my cookies are more expensive than other traders.

However, a customer told me that my 'previous' (the one I brought to the office) taste sweeter and she like it like that rather than the new one which is too bitter for her. I think some people still prefer sweet over bitter-sweet. So, I wonder should I have another version of my choc chip cookies which is sweeter but cheaper? What say you?

To date, I'm yet to try Hershey's chocolate chip in my cookies and wonder will it taste super great? (this is because i am stingy to myself, lol). I've only seen 2 types of Hershey's chips, the semi-sweet and the milk ones. I will definitely try the semi-sweet soon, but not for sale...unless you are willing to pay more. Sorry :p

Here, I quote the Choowy Goowy cookies chain owner on why their cookies are expensive than others. I read this on a blog that review Choowy Goowy cookies and found it interesting.

The owner (Choowy Goowy owner) sent me a message saying that the reason the cookies cost more then your average cookies is because they are made with the best quality ingredients. He also stated that in Fifth Avenue New York there are some places that sell a dozen cookies for $50 and they are always sold out. Finally the cookies are also trans fats free.

Edited and quoted from this blog:
http://www.248am.com/mark/kuwait/review-choowy-goowy/

Note the lines which I highlighted red. I seriously agree with those and really-really hope that my cookies will reach that level in the future. The level when people would pay USD50 for a dozen of my cookies! My gosh, that's seriously one irresistable cookie huh?

Choowy Goowy cookies is a really unique cookies brand in Kuwait that have an interesting concept in marketing their cookies. I just found out about it 2 days ago in the abovementioned blog. The blogger said the cookies are the best she had ever eaten and I believed her just by looking at the way the cookies is packaged. I visited Choowy Goowy website and see the cookies for myself and I'm so impressed by their uniqueness. I will rant more on Choowy Goowy cookies soon and I'm already immersed in researching and quite crazy about Choowy Goowy cookies since the last couple of days. You can tell by how many times I repeated saying Choowy Goowy...see I did it again :P

Their website is quite slow to load but they have a facebook fanpage if you wanna look at the cookies.

A Butter-ing Story

Previously, I set up a poll in KakiCookie to get opinions on my cookies price. Some people voted 'quite expensive' which I agree although some of my friends and voters said the price is reasonable.

For the price, I meticulously calculated each sen spent on the ingredients, electricity, my work effort and other costs such as petrol to and fro the bakery supply shop, the packaging etc etc. At first, the price I came up with is so expensive that I thought that if I continue with that price, nobody would want to buy my cookies. So, I chipped in here and there, reducing some cents that I thought I should. Finally I came up with the current price.

Still people find it expensive.

So, I did some survey on others who sell cookies and their price. I wonder how come some traders get to sell their cookies cheap?

Luckily, my mom opened a booth in Pameran Kerja Kahwin at Kompleks Kraf Jalan Conlay this week. Opportunity for me to survey the price and sample some of the homemade cookies sold there. Well, some are quite expensive and some are cheaper than mine.

Then, I tasted the cookies. Some are good and some are just so-so. There's this one tasty chocolate chip cookie that I taste and the price was quite cheap! I wonder why. So I bought a jar. It was so tasty that I ask everyone to eat it and I myself eat quite a lot.

Then, came the aftertaste. This cookies left some annoying feel on the teeth. You know the feeling as if your teeth is covered with sand paper. I know the cause of this as I've taste something like this before. These kinds of cookies use shortening instead of butter as the oil. I knew because when I was new to baking, I tried this recipe I found on the net that calls for a combination of butter and shortening . At that time I didn't knew that shortening has the same function as butter in baking cookies. This means, you can use either butter, shortening or any types of vegetable oil for your cookies. Each has their own pro and cons.

• Butter will give more flavour compared to the other two.
• Vegetable oil such as canola or corn oil is a healthier options for those who is a calorie-counter but it has less flavour so the cookies will not taste the same as cookies made with butter. They are also more expensive than butter.
• Shortening is a cheaper option than butter. Cookies may taste the same but as I mentioned earlier, it left an after taste which I found annoying. But it is an option for those who are lactose-intolerant and can't eat dairies.

For me, I'd rather pay more for cookies to have those sinfully fatty butter flavor rather than an annoying aftertaste on my teeth. However, if I use the more expensive option - vegetable oil, my cookies would be much more expensive than the current price. I think this is not viable in Malaysia especially for a newcomer cookies' baker like me.

My conclusion: maybe, my cookies are more expensive than others because I'm using totally butter in my batter, no shortening substitute or using half-butter-half-shortening to cut price or even using butter oil to bring out the flavour. It's always customers' choice: to buy or not to buy :D

Salam and Cheers!