Labour Day Makan-Fest!

Mornin' peeps... *yawn*

What a slow Thursday morning it is today... I'm not really sure whether its because the lack of food a.k.a. morning coffee intake this morning (I'm attempting to fast today), the overdose of milky substance last night or the fact that I'm STILL recovering from downing too much good food on Labour Day 2 days ago. Ah... good ol' Labour Day. I must say I haven't had so much fun lazing about the house as last Tuesday...

Well my Labour Day makan-fest started earlier than most. Late Monday night I was busy in the kitchen experimenting on a new cupcake recipe that Mr. Hubster found -- Hostess Cupcakes. Its basically a chocolate cupcake with mascarpone cheese filling topped with chocolate glaze. The thing that got Mr. Hubster interested in the first place (he's not really a desserts fan, being a health-enthusiast and all) is the fact that these cupcakes are actually HEALTHY cupcakes. Yes, boys and girls... I kid you not. These are Gluten-Free cupcakes. Mr. Hubster was so excited for me to try this, he even helped me find the special flour it requires. And as usual, anything healthy or good for you is never cheap.. A box of 500g gluten-free flour costs almost RM20!! But for the sake of healthy-eating... we bought a box anyway. ;)

So I followed the recipe as best as I could, with a few tweaks here and there. I followed the recipe for the cake batter exactly, but for the filling, I substituted the mascarpone cheese with cream cheese simply because mascarpone is ridiculously expensive here. I also halved the measurements coz I'm super stingy with my cream cheese haha. As for the chocolate glaze, I used plain ol' butter instead of corn syrup. I figured it'll be less sweet that way anyway :)

Guilt-Free, Gluten-Free Hostess Cupcakes

So this is the result (well, the better looking ones at least haha). I managed to make about 20-odd cupcakes altogether. Even with the halved recipe for the filling, I had leftovers... so I used it to decorate the cupcakes by making psychedelic swirls on top of the chocolate glaze.

Come Labour Day morning, while I added the finishing touches to the cupcakes, Mr. Hubster was busy with the main course of the day: Grilled Lamb Chops & Chicken Chops and shitake mushroom-infused black pepper sauce. He is the masterchef of BBQ. I blame it on watching too much of Robert Rainford's License To Grill shows.. hehe. While I let the cupcakes chill, I started on the potato salad. But this is not the usual potato salad... its a Warm Baby Potato & Sausage Salad that I know my daughter loves. Only this time I cheated abit and put less sausages and added in an extra ingredient: Celery sticks! Masked in creamy sauce, none would be the wiser... *rubs hands with glee* ;p

The Spread

Come lunchtime, we set the tables. We had a guest over so we brought out the good tableware. We even toasted some garlic butter baguettes to complete the meal. Everybody, my little family, mom, sisters and guest crammed our cosy little dining area and ate to our hearts' content. Even little Delea was enjoying the little gathering. We placed her baby chair right smack in the middle so she can get everybody's attention. Clearly both my kids are attention-hoggers. I wonder who they got that from hahaha.

Inside the cupcake...

Then came the much-awaited cupcakes. For everybody else, desserts has always been the highlight of almost every meal, but for me, I'm just curious what would be the response to these healthy cuppies. And the verdict -- a runaway success! Nobody even noticed the slightly different texture to the cake (it is slightly heavier with a tad wholemeal-ish taste.. to my tastebuds at least). Apart from that, the cakes turned out rich, moist and very chocolatey.The only improvement I need to make if I ever make these again would be to dig out a slightly bigger hole to pipe in more filling... hehe.

Ossum Cranium!

Full to the brim and sated by the yummy heavy meal, we decided to play a board game to avoid from falling asleep on super full stomachs. My sister brought out what could possibly be the most awesome board game ever created thus far: CRANIUM. For those who've never heard of it, this game is a cross of monopoly, charades, pictionary, win-lose-or-draw, trivial pursuit, scrambler and play-doh all in one. Add in funky little game pieces called humanoids and voila! Cranium. Not to toot my own horn, but me and Mr. Hubster happen to rock at this game, making it an instant favourite of ours. Not to mention the bucketfuls of side-aching laughter that ensues throughout the game... fun fun fun!

All in all, it was a really great laidback day for me and the clan. We wiped clean whatever grilled chops and salads at dinner. Altogether, that's 16 pieces of lamb chops, 8 pieces of chicken chops, a big bowl of potato salad, 2 whole baguettes, and almost 15 cupcakes finished in one day, feeding exactly 7 adults and 1 kid. A feast? I definitely think so. I most definitely wanna do this again and I recommend you do the same with your family too! ;)