Crissa's Cake Corner!: Club-100 Cookies, Cupcakes, Cake Pops and Chocolate-covered Oreos

I was so so excited to make these desserts for the North West CDC Club-100's annual fundraising dinner, held at the Parliament House. The event's Guest-of-Honour was Mr. Khaw Boon Wan, Minister for National Development, and was hosted by Dr. Teo Ho Pin, Mayor of the North West District. Every year, the dinner raises over half a million dollars for the North West Food Aid Fund. This fund is used to assist an average of 800 needy household per month. I feel honoured and am grateful to Sugarena for asking me to sponsor the desserts, as a collaboration with her sponsorship of the dessert table for this event! I am so glad to be given this opportunity to do my small part for the community.

classy black, white & gold desserts

It would be a classy, swanky dinner party, with the colour scheme of black, white and gold, as per Club-100's logo. I wanted to keep the design of the items on the dessert table simple, yet elegant, while incorporating all three colours in every single cookie, chocolate-covered Oreo, cake pop and cupcake. I got to make 50 of each item!!

"Chanel"-like cookies

Now, gold is a tough colour to decorate desserts with. Gold lustre dust can be dry brushed on, or can be mixed with a little vodka and then be painted or airbrushed on, but it's hard to get it a bright, shiny metallic colour. Of course, one can always apply 24K edible gold leaf on the desserts (an expensive option!) I decided to go the less complicated route and use gold sugar dragees & gold star edible glitter accents.

classy cookie design

For these "Chanel-like" vanilla sugar cookies, I decorated them with a thin layer of fondant, and used a patterned press to indent the criss-cross lines on the cookies. Then, I added the gold dragees where each line intersected, using some royal icing. I love how they turned out!

black, white and gold cookies

The chocolate-covered Oreos were also in black and white. I used chocolate Oreos inside the white chocolate-covered cookies, and less-sweet regular Oreos in the dark chocolate-covered cookies. I added black Americolour candy oil to melted dark chocolate until I got the colour nice and dark. I was surprised to find that this actually caused the melted chocolate to thicken considerably, something that doesn't happen with the use of Wilton's candy oil. I was actually concerned that the surface of the black chocolate would not come out smoothly because of how thick the melted chocolate was, but everything turned out fine.

plastic mold for chocolate-covered Oreos

black and white chocolate-covered Oreos

To decorate the chocolate-covered Oreos, I moulded some gold fondant roses and added three gold dragees on the side, off-centre for that abstract, yet elegant look. To give the roses a little more shine, I dry-brushed some gold lustre dust on them. I usually paint the lustre dust on, mixed with a little bit of vodka, but these desserts had to be kept alcohol-free.

silicone mold for roses, and gold lustre dust

gold embellishments, up close

Now, for the cake pops, half were dipped in white chocolate, and the others in black-coloured dark chocolate. They would've looked great just like that, encased in small gold foil candy cups, but I wanted to give them that extra sparkle, by rolling them in sanding sugar. I looked high and low and under every small rock to find black sanding sugar. And this stuff ain't cheap!! But I'm so glad I finally got my hands on some.

cake pops in progress

The white cake pops were red velvet cake swirled with vanilla buttercream, while the black ones were strawberry cake swirled with strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream. After crumbling the cakes and mixing in some buttercream to get a nice texture, they were rolled into balls and then frozen, before being dipped into melted chocolate and covered in sanding sugar. For more tips on how to make cake pops, please visit my cake pop basics page.

roll the still-wet cake pop into sanding sugar

decorate with a dainty daisy

To add the gold element on these cake pops, each one was placed in a gold foil candy wrapper. Little black and white flowers embellishments with a gold dragee in the centre were also added to make these little guys more fancy. The glittering sanding sugar really has a nice effect on these cake pops, and it provides a nice textural crunch too.

glittery black and white cake pops

ready for a black-white & gold dessert table

Last but not least, were the cupcakes. These cupcakes were egg-free, chocolate cupcakes, frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. I used luxury French margarine instead of the usual butter for the buttercream, because I wanted to keep the frosting as white as possible. Butter gives it an off-white hue.

lotsa chocolate cupcakes

To decorate the cupcakes, I added a generous swirl of vanilla buttercream, using a 1M piping tip, and then sprinkled on some gold star edible glitter accents, using some tweezers to distribute them. It doesn't look nice when all the stars clump up and land in one place on the frosting!

sprinkled with gold star edible glitter accents

a generous swirl of vanilla frosting

Now that all the bakes were ready, it was time to pack everything and transport them to the Parliament House! I was pretty excited about this, since it would be my first ever visit. As expected, there were a considerable amount of security checks before I was allowed to step into the building, with the officer in charge making sure I was dressed appropriately according to the dress code (no sandals, slippers and shorts!).

the Parliament House

Working as a team, Sugarena and I set up the dessert table, making sure each and every dessert item looked their best. Visual appeal and taste go hand in hand. We tend to "eat with our eyes", so we have to make sure everything not only tastes great, but also looks great! Sugarena's keen eye for styling, fancy tableware, and props never fail to make my desserts shine. From the tall apothecary jars, elegant cake pedestals and beautiful plates, to small details like gold stars sprinkled all over the table cover, the dessert table just fit the classy gold-black and & white theme perfectly. The Club-100 logo, framed in black, behind glass, was a brilliant idea to use as a "plate" to display the cake pops on, front and centre of the table!

visitor's sticker

Now, we had to leave our cameras at the security desk so we couldn't snap any pictures of the finished dessert table! We had to eagerly wait the few weeks for the official pictures to be sent to us. Are you ready for them? So excited to be able to share these with you!