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.