Remeber Good Old Cakes

At last, my hubby got his wish, butter cakes, for a long time, he has been waiting and hoping that I will bake this for him.

Just feel like baking and wanna made some simple cakes and I surf the net and came across this website and was tempted to bake marble butter cake. I follow the recipe and the cake was good, he tasted and he liked it and ate a huge chunk. I have noticed that most guys they loved butter cake more than other cakes

Below is the recipe from the website cut and paste. Have a try

Marble Cake
makes 1 tall 8 inch square cake – mine is 3 inches high- do not attempt to make this in an 8 inch round pan – you were warned.

330g (about 3 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened

240g granulated sugar (less 10 gms)

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla

300g cake flour

6 large eggs

2 tbsp milk (I use condensed molk)

1 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp hot water

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a medium bowl, dissolve cocoa powder with hot water. Set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, on medium speed, cream butter and half of the sugar till pale and fluffy. Using a large rubber spatula, scrape bottom and sides of bowl, add rest of sugar and vanilla and beat until fully incorporated and all sugar has dissolved.

On low speed, add eggs one at a time, making sure mixture is smooth before adding the next one. After all the eggs have been incorporated, increase speed to medium and beat for 10 seconds.

Remove bowl from mixer, sift flour, baking powder and salt into bowl, and fold by hand with a large rubber spatula until almost fully incorporated. Add milk and fold until just smooth.

Add half of batter to lined cake pan, gently smoothing to the sides. Add half of remaining batter to cocoa bowl and mix gently. Add dollops of chocolate batter to pan, alternating with remaining white batter. Swirl gently in pan to create marbling effect.

Bake for 80-90 minutes, checking at the 70 minute mark with a toothpick or skewer, which, when inserted, should come out clean.

Cool in pan for 5 minutes before removing cake. Cool completely on rack.

Xmas

First a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone and may the spirit oif christmas brings you adundance of Joy, Peace and love and the most imnportant is in the pink of good health.



Last few days ago, I have baked 4 loaves of fruitcake, given one to my mom, neighbour, cousin and I leave one for myself. This time round, the fruitcake, I have used Grand Marnier liquor to soak and dab a layer of liquor after baking.
The 3 fruitcakes given away, I only dab it's once, only for my fruitcake, I have dabbed it twice and I have tasted, I found that it's too strong a liquor taste, but this time round, I liked the look of the fruitcake than my previous one, most probably it's the amount of fruits that is put inside.



Yesterday, I bake a chiffon lemon roll and assemble into a logcake to be given to my cousin. I always appreciate my oousin and his wife for showing so much love and concern my parents, it just my small thought to show my appreciation to them. It may be not in my best of art and this is my first time making logcake and glad that using the fork to scrap the lines and actually hide alot of flaws.. hee! hee! Hope they like it.

Lemon ...vitamin C

Try out this recipe, lemon rollcake, intend to do this as a Christmas Logcake for my sister-in-law where she invited us to her house.

I feel that some sourness will be quite refreshing after all the food we ate.

I rolled with some cream cheese filling where I put some lemon zest and lemon juice, I tasted the roll and I quite like it, my husband was saying too sour, asked me next time put in some salt to ease the sourness, my "adviser" leh....

Follower

Trying to bake Cake Lapis again with my oven, never did I get a perfect lapis... chez... this time round, the lapis is cooked but the bottom layer is dry.. Any tips for me? The other time, my lapis is wet and oily.

I am always a follover of eggplant10's blog and I loved all goodies she baked and they are beautiful.

This time round I pick her Kek Lapis pandan to try, even though I weigh the batter for each layer, I still have uneven layers, dunno why.. .

Morning, bring to office, collegues tasted and like the taste of it even though the cake is a bit dry. I will try again. Thanks 茄子 :)

PANDAN CAKE LAPIS (http://eggplant10.blogspot.com)

Butter Egg Yolk Batter Baking Tin: 8” x 8” square

450 Gm Unsalted Butter (room temp)
180 Gm Fine Sugar
21 Nos Egg Yolks
4 Tbsp Condensed Milk
4 Tbsp Cocomut Milk Powder (Kara)
270 Gm Flour
½ Tsp Baking Powder
1 Tsp Vanilla Essence
Some Salt
2 Tsp Pandan Essence (to be added when batter is divided)

Egg White Batter

10 Nos Egg Whites
140 Gm Fine Sugar
½ Tsp Cream of Tartar

1. Sieve flour, baking powder, coconut milk powder together.
2. Use “K” beater and beat butter,condensed milk & sugar till creamy and fluffy. Halfway through add in some salt and vanilla essence.
3. Add in egg yolks one by one at a time.
4. At slow speed mix in the sieved flour mixture.
5. In a plastic bag, mix in the cream of tartar and sugar together.
6. In another mixing bowl, use whisk to whisked the egg white till frothy.
7. Add in 1/3 of sugar mixture and whisk till almost soft peak, add in another 1/3.
8. Add in the last 1/3 sugar when soft peak and whisk till it’s is stiff and smooth.
9. Fold in 1/3 whisked egg white into the butter egg yolk mixture. (this part can use hand whisk)
10. Use spatula and fold in 2/3 of whisked egg white. Divide into 2 portions. Fold in pandan essence into one of the portion.
11. Grease tin and line greaseproof paper at the bottom only.
12. Bake first layer at 180ºC with top and bottom fire till cooked. Once it’s cooked, switch oven temp to Grill mode and let the top brown before putting 2nd layer. Each layer takes at 4-6 mins ( I use 1/3 level up in oven)
13. For last layer bake at 180ºC for 15 mins. (Grill to get top colour)

Pandan Paste

Today went of Bakery Mart at macpherson to buy some things, enquire whether do they have pandan paste, indeed they have and they sell at 1 kg bottle form.

I use ieatihootipost's recipe to bake pandan chiffon cake without using pandan leave, I use this paste instead. I still have half packet of coconut milk in the fridge and short of some amount, I just add water. For me the most important is the pandan paste itself, so that if it is fragant, I will not have a hassle of blending pandan leaves.

Overall, hubby and collegues love it, especially the texture, soft.

Big n Small...

Long ago, wanted to do Charlotte Fruit Roll, I was not confidence enough to pipe the batter into strips, for fear of batter get soft/melt halfway through piping.

Did the first tray, cut too big a hole ar the end of the piping bag and the batter was not enough to cover the whole tray, I cut out a small rectangular and roll a small charlotte fruit roll.

Try again, this time round cut a smaller hole and it was enough to cover the whole tray but full of holes, did some covering up with the balance of some batter.

Beat up some yogurt cream and roll with cut strawberries and kiwi. Although it's not so perfect, I was quite satisfied.

coffeeee........

Try out a recipe on coffee swissroll. did not have instant coffee, use my coffee machine to make some coffee for the nmaking of swissroll.

Although, my coffee sponge did not rise as much, but it is still soft. I also made some buttercream too. I found that the buttercream is too much for my liking, need to twitch the recipe for my next doing.

My future son-in-law liked it.

Never Give Up

Last few days, have been trying to do macarons, result fail.. no feet.. reason... didn't wait for the skin to dry.... impatient....

Talk to my buddy, she say she has confidence in me (really look me up), encouraged me to try again... surf the website and saw a recipe from here, the recipe says you don't even need aged egg white and can even do on raining days... yay! it's a bonus if it works.

I pipe the macaron and there's a tip, I knock the tray and still there's the tip, can't be bothered, I just want to see whether the recipe works for me. After finish piping, left it on the table with my ceiling fan on to let it dry, half an hour later, it's was still damp to my touch, from learn't from my previous lessons, on the aircon, "ta ta" 15 mins later, the skin is formed. In to the oven.

Well, at least I have some result, the next time, I will do a neat job on this...

too soft,,,:(

I have a habit of not reading the details of the recipe, normally, I just glaze through, too confidence, that's why sometimes, I did fail in attempting in what I am making. Serve me right.......

I use the water portion meant for the skin dough and put into the rice, result - too soggy... No doubt, the failure of the rice but overall the taste is nice. Will do it again.

Out of Practise

Bake a Durian Cream Cake today, and I use the frozen durian flesh, in which my friend help me to purchase from one of the fruit stall in Ang Mo Kio, @12 a Kg, not bad and it's worth a buy.

First, I microware the frozen durian flesh, add some gelatine and add some whipped cream. Assemble togher with a sponge cake and covered it chantilly cream. I don't have anything to decorate and I just leave it plain.

Glad that I did it, I am really out of practise on creaming the cake, must tell myself to do it more often or not my skills will get rusty... hope not.... sometimes, I am just lazy.....

It's not what I wanted

Few years ago, I have made this, and my husband has been craving and I ignored him in making. Last few weeks, has been crazy doing flaky skin pastry and decided to do this again.

Haiz! the overall product is not what I expect in taste, what went wrong? I dunno. I have complete trust in the recipe, maybe it's not my day and my hubby is totally disappointed. Will try again.

Practice Till Perfect

Last night, did Cotton Japanese Cheesecake again, the previous time, when during baking, the top of the cake cracked tremendously. My friend taught me to line the tin with paper higher than the baking tin.

And this time round, I lower the temperature of the oven to 150 degrees instead of 160 degrees as stated in the recipe (I use the same recipe). It takes a long time to get brown but towards the end of one hour timing the centre of the cake started to crack, but not like before "huat ah". Why? I can't get the same texture as the others (bloggers). Hope, one day I can get what I want. Any advise?

At least I am satisfied, there's is some improvement in it, but not 100% satisfied. I will try again.

King of Fruits

Years have been craving after one of my buddy's sister-in-law made Durian Fudge Cake during one of our outings and it has been always on my mind, have the thought of doing it every now and then, but doesn't have the will.

Finally, my friend has been talking about durian cake, maybe this is the motion that inspire and decided to do it.

The original recipe called for optima flour for sponge cake, I doesn't want to use this, So I bake a simple sponge chiffon cake with some durian essence added.

Ar first, when I looked into the recipe, it called for 1200ml of coconut milk, I hesitate for a moment and finally, I made up my mind to follow the recipe, in order to know the truth taste and outcome of the recipe. For me the sponge is not important, what I want was the custard itself.



Surprising and by the grace of the lord, the cake turns out beautifully, I have made two 7" sq cake and given one to my parents, they loved it, so is my husband. In no doubt, there's is about 4 coconut milk in one cake, the combination together with durian flesh is just fantastic, and it taste like kaya and creamy. Thanks Meng.

Left some fresh durian, I bake some cream puff. I was using my old recipe, sad to say that I failed the attempt, I throw the whole thing again. In actual fact, for this recipe, when you cooked the dough, you have to beat until is warm, then add in the eggs, for me, I add the eggs, when it is hot..... maybe this is the case of failure. (act smart, but too smart is no good) :)



Dig out the book bought from Taiwan, and I follow the recipe, I was so happy, It works and all puff up




recipe from the book - cream puff (even the custard in the book is good)

50 gm Milk
50 gm Water
50 gm Butter
50 gm Cake Flour
A pinch of Salt
2 Eggs

Boil milk, water and butter together till butter is melted, remove from stove.
Add in the flour and mix well, and at low heat, cooked till dough leave the side of saucepan. Remove from fire,
Add in one egg at one time.
Pipe and bake at 190 - 200 degrees

Hooked On

Really hooked on to Lao Po Bing, after favourable results from my previous batch and as well as my friend encouragement. It really spur me on.

As well on my curious side of me, and I have been surfing internet on Lao Po Bong, most of the recipes have ingredients of winter melon more than Kao Fen, wherelse, my previous batch of Lao Po Bing, have ingredients of Kao Fen more than winter melon.
I have to try in order to have a perfect one.

Someone gave me a BITC recipe and I tried, my husband and I prefer the previous one, but one of my collegues like the pastry, the pastry is good that I agreed. So far, I have tried various types of oil and water dough, use all vegetable oil, one dough oil, one dough shortening and both dough shortening. What I can conclude is that there's is a difference in texture. Talk as if I am a expert.. Nay!!!

cream cheese bread

First time, try Barcook's raisin cream bread, find that it's quite special, whenever, I was around the area, I would patronise the shop.

I,myself would like to do bread, still not a expertise on this, but have improved on my rounding skills, look up recipes and decide to raisin cream cheese bread, and after soaking the raisins, found that I didn't like the taste of the soaked raisins, I use cranberry instead.




I made sure to close the ends of the dough tight after wrapping the cream cheese mixture, but after baking, two of them, the fillings seep out. I have to be more careful the next time , when i decide to do this again.

Recipe:

400 gm Bread Flour
100 gm Cake Flour
100 gm Sugar
20 gm Milk Powder
10 gm Yeast
100 gm Butter
250 gm Water
1 Egg
5 gm Salt
60 gm Dried Cranberry

Put in 2 types of flour into the mixing bowl.
Add in sugar, milk powder, yeast.
Use dough hook and mix the dry ingredients.
Add in egg and water and beat till it becomes dough.
Add in butter and beat till smooth and elastic.
Add in salt and beat for a while.
Add in dried cranberries.
Let it proof till triple in size.
Cut and weight, round up each individual pieces. rest for 10 mins.
Flatten and put in the fillings and wrap tight and let it proof till double in size.
Bake at 190 ~ 200 deg.

Fillings:

250 gm cream cheese
100 gm icing sugar

Beat till soft and creamy, froze the mixture before use.

Lao Po Bing

Ages ago, wanted to do this, but never come around. After making fllaky mooncakes, confidence is back + mood + balance Kao Fen, pushed myself to do it.... yay! finally 51 pieces in 3 and a half hrs job.

My husband, family and friends loved itand am glad my effort was not wasted.

festive fever

Yesterday, today I made the last batches of mooncake, sambal flaky mooncake and pandan snowskin.

Made 5 types mooncake this year, traditional baked lotus and red bean mooncake with 2 egg yolks, flaky skin flaky mooncake, flaky sambal mooncake and pandan snow skin mooncake. Wow! maybe it's the fever of everyone that's motivate me to do so, glad I did. I myself don't eat so much of mooncake and I have receive some, took a long time to finish but most of it, I have given away.

My indian neighour has given me a box of mooncake, say that I always give her goodies, I told her that I will made sambal mooncake that I have learn't and in actual fact is for my practice, hee! hee! I made besides giving her, I pass some to my buddies, they like it. When I mentioned sambal mooncake, they have weird feelings about it, I happen to have this feelings too. When there is a workshop for this, I and my friend signed up, I told her, I wanted to taste it just out of curiosity. Surprising, when taste, the combination in taste is just right, a bit spicy, salty and sweet. I hape no regret in attending and in fact that I use same skin recipe to do flaky red bean mooncake, my family likes it. Yay... I am going make this for next year.



Left pandan lotus paste, I made some pandan snowskin mooncake for my daughter's boyfriend and some for my neighbour's children.

Not so Flaky

Have balance red bean paste in the frig, after making a batch of mooncakes last week, I have decided to try my hands on flaky skin mooncake.

Prepare the water and oil dough, using simple steps to roll the skin. Hardly do this and quite poor in wrapping up, it's looks presentable, but the inner dough after baking certain parts looks damp, taste is cooked.

I consider myself not bad to have this stage, my husband loved it and said taste like tau sar piah, bought some to office and to my mum. Hope they liked it.

Copy cat

Seeing so many bloggers have been doing cartoon rollcake. Today, have time, try my hands on it. No doubt, I have the book, but is in chinese, and I can't read it very well and I choose the simplest pattern to do.

The sponge cake turns out to be soft, but the only setback is that I have bubbles holes in the sponge. Glad that I try and I loved the outlook of the roll.


recipe adapted from the book

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees.

Egg Yolk Batter

3 egg yolks
35 gm sugar
40 gm oil
60 gm water
70 gm flour
10 gm cocoa powder
some vanilla essence

Beat egg yolks, vaniila essence and sugar till creamy and fluffy.
Add in water, mix well.
Add in oil, Mix well
Fold in the flour
Remove 1 tablesppon of batter into a small bowl for diagram.
Lastly fold in cocoa powder.

Egg White Batter

3 egg whites
30 gm sugar
1 tsp cornflour

Mix the sugar and cornflour together,
Beat the egg white till foamy and add in the sugar cornflour mixture.
Beat till it peak.
Fold in 1/3 into the egg yolk batter. Mix well.
Fold in the rest of white white batter.
Pour on top of baked pattern and bake for 15 to 20 mins.

For Diagram or Pattern (prepare this first)

I tbsp of egg yolk batter
1/8 tsp corn flour
1/2 tsp of flour
1 egg white

Add in 1/2 tsp of flour into the egg yolk batter, mix well.
Beat the egg white till foamy, sprinkle the corn flour and beat till peak.
Fold in the egg yolk batter.
Pipe patterns onto a tray lined with parchment paper and bake for 2 mins.

Chatilly Cream for Roll

200 gm Fresh Cream
20 gm Sugar

Beat together till soft peak.

Playing

My youngest niece, kendra, who is 6 years old, always wanted to come to my house to bake cakes, made arrangement with her last sunday, I invited Nicole (my first student) to come along too.

Together, we bake red velvet cakes and small butter cupcakes and I teach Nicole on the basic of making fondant cupcakes. As usual, they say they always help me to bake, but I am always the one to do the baking. Luckily, they like to mold the fondant paste and I leave it to their creatively. I just provide some pictures for them.

They have a fun day and they are always welcome anytime, so far, I have not refused any of their request, they always have my priority.

Chiffon

Did a lemon chiffon today and the taste is great, not so sweet. Instead of adding cream of tartar to the egg white, I add some cornflout as stated by the chiffon book bought from Taiwan.

Nowadays, was totally immersed with ordering books from taiwan, I was even cntented in looking at the pictures.

Next round,maybe I will try and bake cartoon rooll like some of the bloggers. Really admired them to have so much patience in doing it.

My First Student

One of my angels wanted to do cupcakes, I asked her to come to my house. She arrived at 7pm yesterday. I teach her how to do the blueberry yoghurt cupcake and the recipe was taken from internet.

After baking, she tasted one of the cupcakes and she like it, said it's has a sweet and sour taste and I liked blueberries. Luckily, I picked the right fruits.

I teach her on how to make buttercream and show her how to do fondant, since time constrain, I only show her a little bit of fondant, tell her, she has to give me a longer time and I can teach her properly.

After this, I teach her how to bake chocolate cupcakes, for this I did not take the pictures.

Happily, she carried the baked goodies home and said she shared with her family and friends.

Below is the recipe for blueberry yoghurt cupcake and the recipe is from here
Ingredients:

175g soft butter
225g self-raising flour
175g caster sugar
3 large eggs
60ml sour cream - I use yoghurt
1 tsp baking powder
1½ tsp vanilla essence
180g blueberries

Recipe:

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius.
2. Sift flour, mix together with baking powder in a bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, beat butter, sugar and eggs.
4. Add sour cream and flour mixture, beat until smooth.
5. Stir in bluberries.
6. Pour batter into muffin tray.
7. Bake for about 26 mins or until skewer comes out clean

Banana

I took some leftover bananas home from office and did not want to waste it and cannot keep, decide to do something about it. Search the website and came across Lily's Wai Sek Hong's blog, I do not know her and I found her recipe feasible and give it a try. I did not alter the recipe except the sugar, I use dark brown sugar and did not omit the spices.

Overall, the baked muffins are good and my collegues loved it, thanks Lily.

Below is her recipe -

Ingredients:

75g/3oz vegetable oil
250g/9oz self-raising flour or 250 g all-purpose flour + 3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
½ tsp ground cinnamon(optional)
½ tsp ground nutmeg (optional)
115g/4oz caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp banana essence
2 large, ripe bananas
2 large eggs
125ml/4fl oz milk
10 walnut kernels (optional)

Method:

1. Heat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5.

2. Mash the bananas well. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a large bowl, add caster sugar and stir through.

3.With a fork, beat together the eggs, vanilla extract, banana essence, oil and milk in a second bowl. Add the mashed banana and stir through.

4.Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and add the egg mixture, fold in with a biggest spatula (don't over mix) until it is a lumpy paste.

5. Set paper cases into the moulds, or grease the moulds well with a little extra oil or butter and using an icecream scoop, spoon in the mixture until almost full. Top each one with a walnut kernel if you like.

6.Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the muffins come away from the side of the pan when touched. Rest the muffin tray on a wire rack for five minutes then remove the muffins and leave on the rack for another five minutes before serving.

wrap & tie

All along, I loved my mum's Bak Changs, both hokkien and nonya. I pester her to made, she said no. After a few days, she called me to collect the rice dumplings, I was so happy. After, tasting both types of dumplings, I was disappointed, because, this is not her usual style of making the rice dumplings. She has added red bean paste in both type of her dumplings, both my brothers did not like this batch also.

I have decided to give a hand in making this, I have always loved my beautician's Bak Chang , and I asked her how to do. For her, she used estimation, cook and try and not enough, add... and this is what I do...



Days before, I soaked and washed the bamboo leaves and keep in the freezer as taught by the community centre PA instructress, where I learnt how to wrap and made the dumplings, I did not follow her recipe but my friend's.



Two days before, I soaked the dry chestnuts for a while, took some toothpicks to remove the membranes that stick onto the nut, and I got blister on my thumb.. poor me.. teach me never help my mum to do housework, now have to suffer with cuts and burn..now plus blisters... :(

Total I made 84 pieces of rice dumplings, all by myself, quite tedious for my maiden try... Thank God! my efforts is not wasted, family and friends loved it, even though, it missed a little Oomph..... I have jotted down notes and for my next try, it's going to have that Oomph.. hope so....

An invitation

My ex collegues invited few of us to her new house for a gathering, she cooked porridge for us and each of us doesn't wanted to go empty handed, we got balestier tau sar piah, hakka soon kueh, egg tarts, baked pau, keropok...

We are a group, so called "makan kakis" and we meet up every few months and this has been going on for about 15 years... whew! times really fly...

Actually, I bake a chocolate truffle cake for her and used my balance converture chocolates, the finished product, I was not satisfied on the taste of the chocolate mousse, I threw the cake away. Sharon was worried for me, I told her I sleep over it, tommorrow then see how.

6.30am - hubby wake up and goes for his remote plane hobby, I woke up as well and decide to do a swiss roll, luckily, I still left a bit of cream and a tinned of pitted cherries. It took me less than an hour to bake and roll the cake and put in the frig.

After breakfast, I went to the supermaket to buy a packet of chocolate chips, just in case, if I remove the paper and if the skin stick on to the paper, I can do some covered up. Just like a woman, must look beautiful outside.. ha!ha! dressing up to hide the flaws. True enough, the skin stick to the paper.

My friends was impressed with the cake and say it looked like store bought, my head swell.. yay! Overall they like the taste, say not sweet. I personally like the sponge.

Chocolate sponge if your wanna try

4 eggs
11g cornflour
70g flour
15g cocoa powder
85g sugar
45g melted butter

Sieve the flour, cornflour,coca powder.
Beat the eggs and sugar till ribbon stage
Fold in the sieved mixture into 2 batches
Fold in the melted butter.
Line tray with parchment paper and baked ofr 10-15mins at 200 deg. (12"x12")

Over the weekends

2 blocks of cream cheese lying in my frig for a long time, knowing the shelf life is short and seeing that it is going to expire, trying not to waste it, decide to bake a caramel and cherry cheesecake.

Made my own caramel and bought a can of pitted cherries from phoon huat. The outcome of the cake is that I put too less a caramel, that I hardly can taste it, but luckily, the cherries help to enchance the taste of the baked cheesecake.

Cut out 2 piece and gave it to my buddies who is having a cake learning session with me on Monday and the feedback is that they liked it.. Heng Ah!!!



Organising a baking session with Chef Amy and requested her to teach us 3 cakes. Proposed cakes Green Tea Lychee Confit Cheesecake, Passion Chocolate Bananaia Roll Cake and Strawberry Shortcake. It's a demo and it took us four hours to accomplised 3 cakes. Well! worth it.. the most tedious one is the passion Chocolate Bananaia where there is a swissroll with passion fruit cream and banana filling embedded with chocolate mousse and flourless cake.. Whew! don't know whether will I made this.

I like the Green Tea Lychee Confit Cheesecake too and the strawberry shortcake is different from what I have learnt before, the previous one is with chantilly cream, wherelse this is with cooked custard with strawberry puree and whipped cream.

One a Penny, Two a Penny...

One a penny, Two a penny, hot cross bun....... this, I wanted to do a long time, never came to do it, even though I have recipes...

Decide to do today, went to buy bread flour from my place area, went to 2 supermarkets, surprising no bread flour on the shelves, luckily went to the 3rd one, manage to get but not golden syrup.. hmmm... did all the bakers going for the same thing?

One thing sbout hot cross bun and stollen, they have almost the same thing, spices and fruits. My husband never did like cinnamon, but I like and I was wondering why he like indian food so much where else the spices are stronger... weird person.

Just now, went to distribute baked bread to my neighbours, hope they like it...

A Happy Easter Day and God Bless.

Trying to Remember???

After flicking my old jotter book which is over 20 years old, came across my auntie recipe on pandan chiffon cake, which I have written down. I remember that I have loved her chiffon.

One thing is that, at that time, when I wrote the recipe, I was not keen in baking, just out of curiosity and the notes jotted are not proper. 50 cents coconut in some 20 years back and now 50 cents coconut are different. Headache!!! :( how much to use, cake flour is what flour during that time.. chez.. called my auntie, said she long time never bake and forgot most of the things....



Anyway, I tried the recipe, and this is how it's turn out, don't mind about
the tears on the chiffon, I was using different knifes to remove. For this chiffon, I got a lot of holes "compression" on the side and internally there's is big gaps, don't know what happen, don't know whether it's the way, I pour in the batter.

The outcome, feedback that the chiffon is very soft, got pandan smell but got no pandan taste, can taste the coconut. Will try again, and this time, I am going to put in some pandan essence.

Puffing Away

My friend has been talking about putting almond and sugar on top of cream puff and she said very nice.

Curious back home, took out my books and do some reference and decided to do the recipe from Okashi book. It's looks simple and decide to give it a try. Don't know what is pastry flour, decide to use cake flour and so glad that it's workable.

Remember when the first time when I learn how to bake cream puff, is that after cooking the dough, have to use the mixer to beat till the cooked dough is slightly warm or cold before adding the eggs, but this recipe you don't have to and was so much easier.

After piping the dough, I give a spray of water and sprinkle chopped almonds and sugar, it's works, stick we4ll.



Was satisfied with the result and overall the taste is nice. I prefer to mix more custard ande less whipping cream.. next time, I will try some other flavours, now I was thinking about taiwanese polo puff

Change of Mind

In my mind, Actually I planned together with my niece to made a birthday cake for her elder sister, what I want to do is a fondant cake.

Yesterday, went to three shops to source for my supplies, manage to get what I want, and was too lazy to go the Sunlik for my Valhorna Chocolates, just need to do with the belgium chocolates that I have in hand...

Late in the evening, I baked two cakes, dark chocolate mudcaake and white chocolate mud cake.

Today assemble the 2 types of cakes together with ganache, don't know whether it's the effect of the weather, hot and warm, the ganache is hard to handle, keep on putting in the fridge to cool and harden. Seeing that the ganache is quick to be soften in room temperature today, decide not to do fondant, just in case, my nieces are not at home early. I just pipe the edge and put some chocolate pearls.



Delivered the cake to their house, as what I expect, they are not at home, wherelse, one of them suppose to help me, said that she's busy, just as I expected. Hope they like the cake :)

Planet cakes recipe

White Chocolate Mud Cake
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Size: 9" round cake or 8" square cake
Makes: 1
Serves: 50 people coffee portions


250g Unsalted Butter
70g Vegetable Oil
320g White Chocolate Buttons
280ml Water
400g Sugar
320g Plain Flour
190g Self-raising Flour
4 Eggs lightly beaten
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 tsp Salt

Preheat fan forced oven at 140°C
Greased the tin and lined with baking paper.
Place butter and water in a saucepan over medium heat until melted, turn off the heat and add chocolate, stir until the chocolate melted and well combined. Leave to cool slightly.
Sift plain flour and self-raising flour together into a bowl.
Add sugar and salt mix well.
Make a well in the centre.
Pour over the chocolate mixture in the centre, then add vanilla and egg.
Mix with a wooden spoon until well combined.
Pour over the mixture to the tin and bake until the cake is golden brown and skewer comes out clean when inserted in the middle.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin before removing from tin.
Store in an air tight container in the fridge.

Nb Ingredients equal best result at room temperature.

PME 5

Today is my last lesson in PME Sugercraft, we learn to do wedding couples and most of us longer time to do the couple.

Tedious, a lot of details to be done, Was happy at least the couple that I made is presentable, needs a lot of practising to perfect it.

chiffon

Yesterday did have some time after last few days glue on to korean drama and long time did not do chiffon cakes, time for practise.

Take out the chiffon book that I bought last year and start flipping, saw yoghurt cranberry chiffon and it so happens that I have the ingredients, defrost the eggs, catch up korean drama, finished one episode and there's go starting on the chiffon cake.

Study the recipe in the book and noticed that the recipe is for 17cm and 20cm, now in dilemma, I have 25cm, whether to double the 17cm or do the 20cm by 1.5 times.
Tried to consult my friend, so happen she was inside the cinema. Well! made up my mind, double the recipe for 17cm. Luckily it's turns up fine... Heng Ah!

After baking, I realised that the recipe for this cake got no baking powder and cream of tarter... hmmm... well! it's good lor! no extra chemical....

Bring the whole chiffon cake this morning to office, my collegues says it's nice, texcture is soft.moist and not so sweet, but I feel that if I have added some lemon zest inside, it would be better in flavour, Overall, I liked the cake.




Below is the recipe from the book

Cranberry Yoghurt Chiffon Cake

Ingredients: (25cm tube pan) (recipe from Chiffon Book)
- 6 egg yolks
- 160g sugar
- 80ml oil
- 2 tsp lemon juice
- 160g natural yogurt
- 160g HK flour + some extra flour to coat the cranberries
- 120g dried cranberry
- 8 egg whites
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 180ºC
- Hand whisk egg yolks and half portion of the sugar until smooth or sugar dissolve. Add in the oil, lemon juice and yogurt and continue to whisk until combined.
- Sift the flour into the yolk mixture, whisk until smooth.
- Beat the egg whites until foamy, Gradually add the other half portion of sugar in batches, beat until egg whites are shiny and stiff.
- Fold 1/2 egg whites into flour mixture, then pour the mixture into the remaining egg whites, mix until smooth.
- Coat the dried cranberries with flour and fold into the cake batter. Pour the batter into tube pan.
- Bake about 40-50 minutes until the surface is golden brown. Remove from the oven and invert the pan to cook the cake completely

PME 4

Last Sunday, we are learning how to do animal figurines, for this we need to have nimble fingers and a pair of good eyesight, this is what I am lacking..

With a clumsy hands, my animal figurines, keep on dropping eyes and ears, must have a lot of patient and all the time in the world. Best do before hand, when the sugarpaste is dry and the fixtures are set.



What I did that day, I baked a Chocolate Mud Cake, in which I retrieve the recipe from one of the websites. My daughter comments that the cake texture and constituency is not bad, but prefer the chocolate brownies that I have baked before, that was a long time ago..... Oh! I remember, BITC recipe. I have tasted the cake and it tasted almost like moist chocolate cake, what is the difference??? also got water added or is it just another name! I did not put in chocolate ganache, it could be the missing link to the Oomp Oomph taste. I have no confidence yet to cover the sugarpaste with chocolate ganache, I just brush the cake with apricot gel.



Attached is the link for the Chocolate Mud Cake and I have added some expresso coffee and chocolate liquer for a punch



Chocolate Mud Cake
350 grams dark chocolate pieces
225 grams butter
600 ml water
3 eggs
400 grams castor sugar
400 grams self raising flour
Grease and line a 23cm/9" round cake tin. Preheat oven to 170C/325F.
In a saucepan over low heat, heat chocolate, butter and water. Stir frequently until melted and smooth. Remove from the heat and cool slightly.
In a large bowl, lightly beat eggs. Gradually beat cooled chocolate mixture into eggs.
Whisk sugar and flour into chocolate mixture, continue beating until smooth and well blended.
Pour mixture into cake tin. Bake for 45 minutes or until skewer inserted into centre of cake comes out clean.
Turn cake onto wire rack to cool.
*Please note: This mixture is quite runny, use a solid cake tin not a springform tin.

*Tip: Line tin with baking paper, this will make the cake easier to remove from the tin, no sticking to the sides.