Bakericious

Oreo Chiffon Cake

2011-08-08T09:30:00.000+08:00

When I saw this Oreo Chiffon Cake at Table for Two or More, I know I need to lay my fingers on it. Firstly cos I always wanna try baking chiffon cake again. Secondly is Oreo, one of my favourite baking ingredient (Wendy ever teased me that I should get sponsorship from Oreo heeheehee...). Especially when looking at Wendy's photos making me drooling, and of course also her comment on the cake.

Recipe adapted from Table for Two or More and Cherry Potato

Ingredients :
(A)
65gm oreo (half a regular tube), lightly pulverized together with cream

(B)
5 egg yolks
50gm sugar
60gm milk
60gm corn oil
100gm cake flour, sifted

(C)
5 egg whites
½ tsp cream of tartar or 1 tsp lemon/lime juice
60gm sugar

Method :
1. Preheat oven at 160/180C.
2. Mix yolks and sugar together. Then put in the oil and milk. Then the sifted flour. Combine with a whisk until smooth. (Do not whisk or beat but just combine)
3. Beat egg whites until frothy, put in cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks. Put in sugar gradually and beat until stiff.
4. Fold ¼ of egg whites into (2) and then another ¼ of egg whites.
5. Pour egg yolk batter into the remaining egg whites and fold (no need to be too thorough).
6. Put in pulverized oreos and fold until well combined.
7. Pour into a clean ungreased tube pan (22 or 25cm will be fine) and bake for 45 minutes.
8. Invert immediately upon removal from oven. Wait for it to cool down totally before removing cake from pan.

Verdict?
I need to improve my folding skill, guess I over folded the batter again that caused the bottom part of the cake to become compact. However the upper part is soft and fluffy, indeed very nice.

Lemon Chocolate Muffin with Strawberry Chocolate Chips

2011-08-01T09:30:00.000+08:00

It is quite unbelievable that I have been missing from blogsphere for more than 3 months, time flies. My blog is fulled of dust and spider web, I am feeling bad for neglecting it. Even though I have been keep telling myself that I have to "pull" myself up to do some "spring cleaning" but the tiredness just always overrule everything :P.

I am getting tire easily, everyday back to home from work, I will just want to lie on the bed to rest and do nothing, I have stopped baking for nearly 6 months. I will even feel sleepy in the mid of working during the past 2 month, sometimes as early as 11am that I will need a nap for 20 - 60 mins. Luckily my boss and colleagues are very understanding, they are so receptive on my napping that no one will come and disturb me :P.

I am feeling especially guilty towards dear daughter, I have been neglected her during this period. Although she understands due to my tiredness, I cannot provide her my full attention and she is very welcome and look forward for the new member that is joining our family on October. But no matter what, she is still just a 7 year old kid, it is not easy for her to adapt to the changes. She started to behave like a baby, talk like a baby, even her tuiton teacher noticed her changes. She always forgot to do home works and recently, I even received a call from her form teacher that she didn't bring her work book to school for almost a week :(. Had a good talk with her and I will also trying to pay more attention on her, hope things will be back to track soon.

I still have some baking backlogs done before CNY that I will be updating in the blog when I am available. I am definitely still be inactive for the next few months but I will try my best to keep this blog "alive" :P.

Recipe adapted from '爱'生活 My Life with modifications since I want to get rid of the lemon chocolate and strawberry chocolate chips.

Ingredients : Makes 6 big muffins
120g unsalted butter
125g lemon chocolate
10g castor sugar
120g milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
200g self raising flour
60g strawberry chocolate chips

Method :
1. Cream butter and sugar with electric beater till light and fluffy.
2. Melt the lemon chocolate and add into (1) and mix well.
3. Add in milk, eggs and vanilla extract, mix well in high speed.
4. Fold in the Sifted flour and mix well. Lastly stir in the strawberry chocolate chips.
5. Scoop the batter in to the muffin paper liners to about 3/4 full.
6. Bake in the preheated oven 180C for 25 minutes or till the tester comes out clean.

Verdict?
The muffin is soft, moist and fluffy, taste more like a cake. It is full of the lemon chocolate fragrant and not too sweet. The pink chocolate chips complement the muffin so well, although a bit sweet when you bite into it. Definitely a keeper.

Banana Walnut Sour Cream Cake

2011-04-25T10:00:00.001+08:00

I had very ripe bananas at home that no one is eating, so I decided to bake my favourite banana butter cake. As I still have some sour cream to clear off, I replaced it with milk to see will there be any taste and texture difference. I added in some walnuts on the top of the cake to decorate but the walnuts created some obstacles during slicing of the cake.

Recipe adapted from Jthorge's Kitchen with modifications.

Ingredients: ( for one 8" x 3.5" x 3")
125g salted butter
150g caster sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp sour cream
3 banana, mashed (I used Malaysian pisang belangan)
110g plain flour (sift together with 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda and 1/2 tsp baking powder)
some walnuts

Method:
1. Cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl.
2. Add in eggs, vanilla essence / extract and sour cream and mix well.
3. Add mashed banana into the mixture and mix well.
4. Finally add in sifted flour and mix well and pour into a cake tin.
5. Sprinkle some walnut on the cake top.
6. Bake in preheated oven at 160 deg C for 50 to 60 mins or until a skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. If the top layer turns brown after 15 minutes, cover it with a piece of aluminum foil.
7. Cool cakes in the pan then remove.

Verdict?
The cake is moist and soft, tasted a bit sweet due to the bananas but still as delicious. I cannot detect much difference on the texture between milk and sour cream, probably need to taste both at the same time to spot the differences?

Pandan Cotton Cake

2011-04-18T10:00:00.005+08:00

Time flies, I have not been baking for about 3 months, luckily I have some backlogs so still can keep this blog alive :P.

I am feeling much better now but still not good enough to go back to kitchen, my family and friends have been missing my bakes hahaha.... I miss it myself too :). I am missing my days of baking, cooking and blog hopping, wish I have more engery now.... Well hope this day will arrive soon!

This cake was baked before I am unwell when dear daughter made her requested for a pandan cake. Even I wasn't in mood of baking but still have to fullfil her wish since she never ask for cake for a long period (except talking about her birthday cake). So I looked through my recipes folders trying to find one easy recipe and found this.

Recipe adapted from Jane's Corner with modification.

Ingredients : (8" x 3.5" x 3" cake pan)
30g butter
40g cake flour
40g fresh milk
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites
35g caster sugar
4 pcs pandan leaves - cut into small pieces, blend and squeeze out the juice (mix well with fresh milk)

Method :
1. Melt the butter, mixed in the sifted flour while the butter still warm.
2. Beat the egg yolks lightly and add in pandan juice + fresh milk slowly, mix well.
3. Add in 1/3 of egg yolk mixture to the butter mixture and mix well, pour in the remaining egg yolk mixture and mix well.
4. Whisk egg whites until frothy, add in sugar, continue to whisk till stiff stage.
5. Fold 1/3 of the egg whites to the egg yolk mixture till incorporated, pour in the remaining and mix well.
6. Pour in the batter to the cake pan, lightly bang the cake pan on the table to reduce air bubbles.
7. Bake in pre-heat oven at 170C for 8 mins using water bath, reduce to 150C and continue to bake for another 20C.
8. Invert cake onto a cooling rack until completely cooled. Remove cake from pan and serve.

Verdict?
Like the name, the cake is as soft as cotton, moist and light with hint of pandan taste As what Jane had described, this cake tasted like light cheesecake without cheesy taste, you will like it if you are the fan of light cheesecake. Dear daughter happily ate 3 slices at one go, she told me the cake is very nice. The cake was finised within 2 days, mostly by her.

Oreo Dulce de Leche Mini Cheesecake

2011-04-12T10:30:00.000+08:00

Wanted to make some cheese cupcakes for my department gals so looked through my To Bake List and decided to bake this oreo mini cheesecake. Why? Because one of the ingredient caught my attention, condensed milk, yes I can replace it with dulce de leche since I have a few cans in stock :).

Recipe modified from Table for 2 or more.

Ingredients : (for 6 big muffin casing)
250gm cream cheese
150gm sweetened condensed milk (I changed to dulce de leche)
2 eggs, separated
1 small pinch of cream of tartar
1 Tbsp sugar 18 pcs oreo cookies

*everything be at room temperature when u're ready to start.

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #6 : Say Cheese! (April 2011) hosted by Jean of Need More Noms.

Method :
1. Separate Oreos, leaving 12 pcs w/o cream intact and round. Put the rest of the biscuits together with the filling into a food processor and pulse til fine. Remember to preheat ur oven (150C) and boil water after this.
2. Line big muffin tin with paper cups. Place 1 heaped teaspoon of oreo crumbs onto paper cups and smooth out with a teaspoon, lightly press the crumbs to flatten.
3. With a mixer, beat egg whites until frothy, add in cream of tartar continue to beat until soft peaks. Add in sugar and beat til stiff (as long as egg whites don't fall when overturned, it will be fine, no need to be pointy stiff). Set aside, and quickly do the next step.
4. Cream cream cheese on low speed until smooth (a minute or 2), put in condensed milk (or DDL) and egg yolks and continue to beat on low speed for another minute until well combined. Fold in egg whites.
5. Spoon (4) into prepared paper cups. Top with an oreo biscuit or u can break it up and put it where ever u like (middle, top)
6. Bake for 20 minutes in a waterbath.
7. Leave to cool in oven, door ajar. Cool completely before chilling.
8. Best chilled for 3 hours or more before serving.

Verdict?
This cheesecake is cheesy and creamy with nice fragrant of dulce de leche, yummy. My department gals like the cheesecake a lot, they wished to have more but I only made 6 cupcakes :P.

I had received surprises recently, there are 5 bloggers shared this lovely award with me during almost the same period:). Thank you Baking Library, Cherry Potato, Cosy Bake, Muimui25 and Yummy Bakes , I am very happy and honored to receive it and your kind gesture has given me a lot of motivations and encourgements. Once agin, thank you very much!

Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March (March 2011) - Round Up

2011-04-01T10:00:00.000+08:00

Thanks to all for supporting Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March event and also Small Small Baker for giving me this wonderful opportunity to be the host of the March event. I got to know more and more talented blogger friends through this event and the entries that I had received are all so fantastic. Beside busying consolidating the entries, I was drooling when looking at all the photos, deciding which to go into my To Bake List and I was overwhelming by too many choices. In total, I received 187 entries (hope I didn't count wrongly :P) and a lot of the blogger friends are being so so supportive that submitted multiple entries, a BIG THANK YOU again to all of you! I also feel so apologetic for not being able to drop any comment in their posts to express how awesome are their bakes/dishes/desserts, thank you all for being so understanding.

Here are the entries for Aspiring Bakers #5 Fruity March, listed in the order of the date submitted. Enjoy!

Green Tea Souffle Swiss Roll by DG of Tested and Tasted

Strawberry Chocolate Cake by BH of Blessed Homemaker

Lemon Swiss Roll by Zhuo Yuan aka Baker Tan of Baking Library

Banana Oatmeal Muffin by Vivian of Vivian Pang Kitchen

Chocolate-Bottom Banana Squares by Jessie of Hearty Bakes

Pear Tart by Wai Fong of Fong's Kitchen Journal

Banana Muffin by SCP of Love To Cook And Cook To Be Loved

竹炭花纹蛋糕卷 by Esther of 我的厨房乐园

Chocolate Banana Muffins by Jess of Bakericious

Banana Cake with Sour Cream by Agnes of Agnes Bakes

Blueberry Pie by Ann of Anncoo Journal

Banana Cream Cheese Pound Cake by Jane of Passionate About Baking

Fruit Terrine by Wai Fong of Fong's Kitchen Journal

Orange Cranberry Shortbread by Zhuo Yuan aka Baker Tan of Baking Library

Pineapple Delights by Wai Fong of Fong's Kitchen Journal

香蕉巧克力蛋糕 by Esther of 我的厨房乐园

Banana Chocolate Bites by Edith of Precious Moments

Banana Chocolate Cake by Edith of Precious Moments

Fruity Lemon Ice by Coraine of Life is like a Long Journey

Stewed Banana & Jackfruit In Coconut Milk (Kolak Pisang) by Alice of I Love I Bake

Fruit Custard Tart by Hundred Eighty Degrees

Her blog is still under construction so I shall help her to post the recipe here :

For the base : 200g digestive biscuits 100g butter, melted

For the Base 1. Place biscuits in a zip-lock bag, roll over with a rolling pin 2. Mix the biscuit crumbs with melted butter. 3. Press it firmly with the back of a spoon onto a 8" loose-bottom tart pan. Refrigerate it for use later.

For the Custard : (recipe adapted from rhid-baked.blogspot) 2 cups whole milk 6 large egg yolks 1/2 cup sugar 1/3 cup corn starch (sifted) 1.5 tsp. vanilla extract 3.5 Tbs unsalted butter at room temp and cut into bits

Method:

For the Custard 1. Bring the milk to boil in a small saucepan. 2. In a heavy bottomed saucepan whisk the egg yolks together, as well as the sugar and cornstarch until it is well blended and slightly thick. 3. Still whisking stir in around 1/4 of a cup of boiling milk (do this slowly - always adding a small bit whilst you whisk). 4. Keep whisking and pour in the rest of the boiling milk. 5. Put the saucepan over medium heat and bring the mixture to the boil while constantly whisking. 6. Keep boiling for around 1 min, then remove from the heat. 7. Whisk in the vanilla extract. 8. Let sit for 5 min. 9. Add the butter and whisk in until it is well Incorporated (the cream should be smooth and slightly shiny).

To Assembly 1. Pour the custard onto the biscuit base. Smooth the top with a rubber spatula 2. Decorate with desired fruits 3. Keep refrigerated until serving time

Tirimisu by Jasmine of The Sweetylicious

Blueberry Cheesy Muffin by Hundred Eighty Degrees

Her blog is still under construction so I shall help her to post the recipe here :

Recipe adapted and modified from Agnes Chang “I can Bake”

Ingredients A : 250g plain flour 1 tbsp baking powder ½ tsp salt

Ingredients B : 60g castor sugar 90g cheddar cheese, grated ( I use mozzarella cheese )

Ingredients C : 1 egg, lightly beaten 250ml fresh milk 60ml corn oil

Decoration :

50g cheddar cheese, grated ( I use mozzarella cheese)

Some blueberry ( not included in original recipe )

Method : 1. Sift A into a mixing bowl and stir in B 2. Beat C in a bowl for about 1 minute till well-mixed. Pour into flour mixture and mix till just combined (do not over-mix, it should remain lumpy) 3. Spoon into muffin moulds lined with paper cups, till ¾ full. Sprinkle top with more grated cheese (mozzarella cheese) as decoration 4. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200 degree C for about 20 minutes till cooked and golden brown 5. Remove and serve warm

Strawberry Long Bus Cake by Quizzine of Baking on Cloud 9

Strawberry Cream Puffs by Spear of My Baking Milestone

Blueberry Banana Bread by Hanushi of Simply Hanushi

Strawberry Yogurt Jelly by Ming Fung of Cherry Potato

Coconut Cupcakes by Jess of Bakericious

Apple Dream Pie by Edith of Precious Moments

Kiddy Fruits Bento with Chocolate Dip by Wai Fong of Fong's Kitchen Journal

Apple Chiffon Cake by Li Ying of Happy Flour

Mango Light Cheesecake by Bee Bee of Honey Bee Sweets

Banana Oreo Muffins by Jasmine of The Sweetylicious

My Kind of Apple Tart by Zoe of Bake For Happy Kids

Apple Pie by Jane of Passionate About Baking

Passion Mango Cake by Veronica of Peng's Kitchen

Amercian Sour Cream Cheesecake by SCP of Love to cook and cook to be loved

A Blossoming Bun by Ah Tze of Away Of Mind

Chewy Lemon Sugar Cookies by Crust A Bakes

Dark Fruit Cake by Tracie Moo of Bitter Sweet Flavours

Mango Mousse Cake by Jasmine of The Sweetylicious

Mango Mousse Cake by NEL of The Batter Baker

Mochi by Cheah of No-Frills Recipes

Fruit Soy Aga Aga by Veronica of Peng's Kitchen

Apple Pineapple Cake by Vivian of Vivian Pang Kitchen

柠檬杯子蛋糕 by Esther of 我的厨房乐园

Strawberrt Cheese Cupcakes by Jean of Need More Noms

Wholesome Buckwheat Muffin With Black Grapes by Kristy of My Little Space

Strawberry Sunburst with Almond Cream by Ann of Anncoo Journal

Fruit Salad Yummy Yummy by Alice of I Love I Cook I Bake

Raisin Loaf by Cathy of Cathy's Joy

Mandarin Orange Chiffon Cake by Sotong of Sotong Cooks

Apple Muffins by Stephanie (Musketnuss) of I Really Take The Cake

Lychee Coconut Cupcake by Experimental Cook of Cook With No Books

Passion Fruit Swiss Roll by Quizzine of Baking On Cloud 9

Apple and Blueberry Cake by Agnes of Agnes Bakes

Ultra Soft Banana Cake by Ah Tze of Away Of Mind

Banana Walnut Chocolate Chip Cookies of Zhou Yuan aka Baker Tan of Baking Library

Velvety Mango Cheesecake by Nancy of Bake For A Queen

Pineapple Upside Down Cake by Cheah of Non-Frills Recipes

Blueberry Lemon Cake by Hanushi of Simply Hanushi

Non Bake Durian Cheesecake by Jess of Bakericious

Orange Almond Cake by Ah Tze of Away Of Mind

Perfect-Oh-Perfect Blueberry Muffins by Jasline of Food Is My Life

Thai Coconut Sticky Rice with Mango by Gertrude of My Kitchen Snippets

Durian/Avocado Sago Gula Melaka by Ellena of Cuisine Paradise

Avocado Cheesecake with Gula Melaka by Wai Fong of Fong's Kitchen Journal

Macaron Fever VII- Big Mac by Nancy of Bake For A Queen

Strawberry Tart by Janine of Not the Kitchen Sink

Chocolate Bottom Banana Cake by Chris of YummyKoh

Banana-shaped Chocolate Banana Cake by Janine of Not the Kitchen Sink!

Orange Honey Bread by Ah Tze of Away Of Mind

Peach Swiss Roll by Cathy of Cathy's Joy

Blueberry Orange Muffins by DG of Tested and Tasted

Mango Pamelo Dessert by Jess of Bakericious

Fruity Donuts by Jasmine of Sweetylicious

Mango Basil Chicken by Veronica Chia of Peng's Kitchen

Pitted Prune Mixed Fruit Cake by Angel of Cook.Bake.Love

Awfully Strawberry Pudding by Angel of Cook.Bake.Love

1-ingredient Chocolate Ice-cream by qiting93 of Misadventures of Fat free Baking

Apple Crumble by Alice of I Love I Cook I Bake

Strawberry & Red Bean Mochi by Jane of Passionate About Baking

Pineapple Cheesecake by Sherlyn of Sherlyn's Hobbies

Stone Fruits Tea Cake by Vivian Pang of Vivian Pang Kitchen

Blueberry Chiffon Cake by Aimei of My Baking Cottage

Fresh Berries Pavlova with Lemon Curd by Lena of Frozen Wings

Low Calorie Soy milk Strawberry Jelly by Coraine of Life is like a Long Journey

Caramelised Banana Chocolate Brownie by Weng of I heart My Bakes

Orange Cupcakes by Jean of Need More Noms

Pikachu Mango Swiss Roll Cake by Bee Bee of Honey Bee Sweets

香橙蛋糕卷 by Joceline of '爱'生活 My Life

Raisin Bread by Treat and Trick

Tropical Ice-Block with Yogurt by Ellena of Cuisine Paradise

Mad about Mango by Wai Fong of Fong's Kitchen

Mango Mousse Cake by Allie of Sweets And Loves

Apple Chocolate Crumble Tart by Jasmine of Sweetylicious

Lemon Rolls by Edith of Precious Moments

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies by Edith of Precious Moments

Fruity Yogurt by Ann of Anncoo Journal

Blueberry Lemon Chiffon Cake by Wendyywy of Table for 2 or more

Red Berries Tray Bake with Cheesecake Ripple by Wendyywy of Table for 2 or more

Berrylicious Yogurt Ice Cream by Wendyywy of Table for 2 or more

One Bowl Blackberry Cake by Wendyywy of Table for 2 or more

Blueberry Yeasted Sugar Tart by Wendyywy of Table for 2 or more

芒果客拉布 Mango Kerabu by Abbymonster of Abbymonsterの歇息站

草莓在来米粉戚风 by Abbymonster of Abbymonsterの歇息站

Viennese Plum Cake by Gertrude of My Kitchen Snippets

Rainbow Lemon Cheese Cupcakes by Jess of Bakericious

Sicilian Orange Cake by Jess of j3ss kitch3n

Fruity Bread by Li Ying of Happy Flour

One Bowl Blackberry Cake by Siew Hwei of 简单生活，随心所欲，快乐充实

香蕉杯子蛋糕 by Siew Hwei of 简单生活，随心所欲，快乐充实

百香果戚风蛋糕 (Passion Fruit Chiffon Cake) by Esther of 我的厨房乐园

Strawberry Ice Pop 最适合炎炎夏日的草莓冰棒 by Angel of Cook Bake Love

Soft & Spongy Banana Cake by Wendy of Wen's Delight

Mango Kerabu by Myme of My Me Loves

Chocolate Phyllo Tart with Flambeed Bananas and Hazelnut Caramel Sauce by Swee San of The Sweet Spot

Fresh Fruit Tart by Happy Home Baker of Happy Home Baking

Chilled Mango Cheesecake by Pink Lady of Lucky Inn

Strawberry Milkshake Bread Buns with Dried Cranberries by Bee Bee of Honey Bee Sweets

Chocolate Banana Cupcakes by BH of Blessed Homemaker

Bunny Pineapple Tarts by BH of Blessed Homemaker

Blackberry and Apple Bread with Streusel Topping by Lena of Frozen Wings

Fruit Pastry Cake by Jessie of Hearty Bakes

Citrus Almond No-Bake Cheesecake by Joyce Ang of Chunky Cooky

Pierre Hermé's Ispahan by Alan of Travelling Foodies

Stone Fruit Tart by Vivian Pang of Vivian Pang Kitchen

苹果蛋糕 by 茄子 of 袅袅烘焙香

Orange Almond Cake by 茄子 of 袅袅烘焙香

水果泡芙 by 茄子 of 袅袅烘焙香

Berry Cheese Tart by Jasmine of The Sweetylicious

草莓瑞士卷 by Esther of 我的厨房乐园

Mango Mille Crepe by Sonia of Nasi Lemak Lover

还好坚持下去之 '蔓越莓杏仁面包' Almond Cranberry Bread by Min of Min's Blog

不是一般的‘低脂香蕉蛋糕’Low-Fat Banana Bread by Min of Min's Blog

Apple with Dual Fungus Soup by Ellena of Cuisine Paradise

Almost 30% Wholemeal Apple Bread by Coraine of Life is like a Long Journey

Stone Ground Berry Rye Bread by Ah Tze of Away Of Mind

Orange Butter Cake by SSB of Small Small Baker

咖啡可可北海道戚风蛋糕 by Esther of 我的厨房乐园

香蕉核桃蛋糕卷 by Joceline Lor of ‘爱’生活 ~ My Life

Fig Rolls by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours

Oreo Durian Butter Cake by Wendy Han/Wen of Wen's Delight

Pandan Durian Chiffon Cake by Wendy Han/Wen of Wen's Delight

Apple Yeasted Sugar Tart by Cathy Ng of Cathy Joy

Mango Muffin by Winter Pooh Bear

Lemon Lust Cake by Jane of Passionate About Baking

Raspberry Almond Cake by Gertrude of My Kitchen Snippets

香蕉全麦戚风蛋糕 by Joceline Lor of ‘爱’生活 ~ My Life

Jackfruit Ice Cream by Jess of Bakericious

Blueberry Butter Cake by Chris of Yummy Bakes

Mango Peach Mousse Cake by Abbymonster of Abbymonsterの歇息站

Lemon Chicken by Lena of Frozen Wings

Fruity Homemade Pizza by Agnes of Agnes Bakes

Pork Chops in Orange Sauce by Ming Fung of Cherry Potato

Fruit Tarts from Alice of I Love I Cook I Bake

Banana Treats by Wai Fong of Fong's Kitchen Journal

Golden Bird’s Nest in Hawaiian Papaya (金玉燕窩满堂) by Black Swan of Luxury Indulgence

Chocolate Banana Swiss Roll by Allie of Sweets and Loves

Apple Pie by Jessica of Jes's Deli Corner

Mango Delight by Yvonne Lee of Muimui25

金柑甘露煮 Candied Kinkan by Alan of Travelling Foodies

Blood Orange Confiture by Alan of Travelling Foodies

Light & Refreshing Orange Sponge by Jessie of Hearty Bakes

Zwetschenkuchen or German Plum Flan by Lisa H. of From My Lemony Kitchen

金橘/Golden Orange Chocolate Truffles by Seok Cheng

Seok Cheng do not have any blog so I shall help her to post her modified recipe here.

Original Recipe taken from: Hand-formed chocolates [videorecording] / Culinary Institute of America ; produced by Philip E. Mill; Originally produced in 2002

Ingredients: 516ml Cream 1020g Dark Chocolate 85g Butter 4 Dried Golden Orange(金橘) [which i bought from Taiwan]

Method: 1. Boil cream together with the dried golden orange (split open into half or more). when boiled, cover and let the cream absorb the orange flavor. 2. Repeat boiling the cream with orange twice or even 3 times depending on how much you would like the chocolate to carry the orange taste. 3. Strain over the finely chopped chocolate. Cover and let sit for 2 to 3 minutes. 4. Whisk gently until cream and chocolate combine (cannot see trace of the cream) 5. Add room temperature, softened butter and whisk to combine. 6. Let the mixture cool in bowl for some time. 7. Using a small size ice-cream scope or melon baller to make small balls of chocolate truffle. 8. You can coat the chocolate balls in some cocoa powder or melt/temper some chocolate and dip the truffle balls in for a hard coating (you can use dark chocolate or milk and white chocolate for a sweeter taste, which will balance the bitterness of the truffle). allow the truffles coating to solidify (if coating with melted chocolate) before storing in air tight containers. 9. Store in cool dry place or in the refrigerator (do not freeze).

Mini Pavlova with Honey-lavender Cream and Poached Strawberries by Swee San of The Sweet Spot

Apple Oats Truffles by Cathy Ng of Cathy's Joy

Cough Remedy by Cheah of No-Frills Recipes

Lemon Chiffon Cake by Jean of Need More Noms

Chocolate-Bottom Banana Squares by Siew Hwei of 简单生活，随心所欲，快乐充实

Banana-patterned Chocolate Swiss Roll with Caramelized Banana by Janine of Not the Kitchen Sink!

Black Forest Cake by Zhou Yuan aka Baker Tan of Baking Library

Coffee, Chocolate and Raisins Muffins by Jasline of Food Is My Life

Rich and Sweet Berry Scones by Esther of x3Baking

香蕉巧克力蛋糕 by Myme of My Me Lovers

Individual Apple Cakes by Jess of j3ss kitch3n

Orange Heart Jelly Cheesecake by DG of Tested and Tasted

Sadaharu Aoki’s Valencia by Alan of Travelling Foodies

Fruit Pastry Cake by Sonia of Nasi Lemak Lover

Mango Yogurt Ice Cream by Alice of I Love I Cook I Bake

Durian Cream Puff by Jasmine of The Sweetylicious

Vanilla Chiffon with Mango Cream by Angel of Cook. Bake. Love

Velvety Chocolate Cake with Banana Butter Cream by Angel of Cook. Bake. Love

Banana Blueberry Chiffon Cake by Angel of Cook. Bake. Love

Here again, I thank you everyone for making this event so successful, please continue to support Aspiring Bakers! And for the theme of April : Aspiring Bakers #6: Say Cheese! (April 2011) will be hosted by Jean of Need More Noms The closing date is : 30 April 2011. All entries will be complied and posted by 1st May 2011. For more details please go over to her blog here.

p/s: If you have submitted your entry(s) but it is not shown here, do leave me a comment so that I could check it out. Thanks.

Jackfruit Ice Cream

2011-03-28T09:00:00.002+08:00

Jackfruit is one of my favourite fruit, I have been buying it almost every Sunday, 1 kg per time and will be finished within a few days, dear daughter love it a lot but I do restrict her intake since this fruit is heaty. And for the seeds of the fruit, my MIL will boil it with little salt, is her favourite. I saw this jackfruit ice cream recipe from one of my books collection, I decided to try it out since the steps seem simple and easy. I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March (March 2011) hosted by myself. Recipe adapted from Yummy Cold Desserts Made Easy 冷冻甜品 by Kelly Tang. Ingredient A : 165g jackfruit (I increased to 200g) 120g evaporation milk Ingredient B : 50g caster sugar 100g condensed milk 200g coffeemate powder 280g evaporation milk Ingredient C : some jackfruit cube Method : 1. Put A into a food processor and blend well. Add in B and mix well. 2. Pour the mixture into container and freezer overnight. 3. Remove and beat until fluffy. (I repeated this step for 3 times to reduce the icy texture) 4. Stir in C and freeze until firm. Verdict? The ice cream is only with hint of jackfruit, next time I will increase at least another 50% of jackfruit to have thicker jackfruit taste. I personally think that the coffeemate powder is too over power that I do not quite like this taste, either I will reduce half or totally omit. The ice cream is creamy and not icy type, nice if not of the over power coffeemate taste.

Rainbow Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcake

2011-03-22T13:00:00.000+08:00

These cupcakes were baked sometimes ago when dear dear daughter requested for rainbow cupcake, she had been asking for cakes during that period as she needs some snacks to fill in her stomach in between meals.

Although it is not good to use food coloring but since is once a long long time so shouldn't be great issue.

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March (March 2011) hosted by myself.

Recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients: (Makes 11 cupcakes)
130g cake flour
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp baking powder
130g cream cheese, at room temperature
135g butter, at room temperature
100g castor sugar
2 tsp grated lemon rind
2 eggs, at room temperature
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp milk
7 coloring

Method :
1. Preheat oven to 170C and line muffin pan with paper cups.
2. Sift cake flour, baking soda and baking powder into a mixing bowl. Set aside.
3. Cream butter and cream cheese until light and creamy for 8-10 minutes.
4. Add castor sugar and continue to mix until light and fluffy.
5. Beat in eggs, one at a time.
6. Stir in lemon rind and lemon juice.
7. Finally, fold in sifted flour into mixture.
8. Divide batter evenly into 7 bowls and mix in your desire coloring in each bowl.
9. Scope 1 tsp of batter from each color into paper cups. Bake for 20 – 25mins or till an inserted skewer comes out clean.
10. Remove the pan from the oven. Rest for 10 minutes before removing the cupcakes from the pan. Cool on wire rack.

Verdict?
The cupcakes are soft and moist, cannot taste much of cream cheese but full of lemon aroma, really yummy that my dear daughter ate 3 at one go.

Mango Pamelo Dessert

2011-03-17T11:00:00.001+08:00

My health isn't in good condition for quite sometimes since Feb that badly affected me and my daily activities. On top of that, my work has been extremely busy due to one man power down, luckily I managed to get the replacement fast so at least free me from all the interviews which also occupy a lot of my times. So now I am counting down on the day for the new staff to come on board which is next month.

I would like to thank all the blogger pals who sent me your kind greetings and concerns on my health, really appreciated your nice gesture. I am feeling better this week, hopefully the improvement will be continued so that I can regain my energy to resume back my favourite activities - baking and blogs visiting which I have been neglected for quite awhile.

As the recent hot weather, it is best to make cold dessert and since now is mango season which can find lots and cheaper mangoes everywhere, is perfect time to make this easy, refreshing and delicious mango pamelo dessert.

I used my old and regular recipe for this mango pamelo dessert which is different from the one I made previously.

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March (March 2011) hosted by myself.

I forgot where I got this recipe from as I scribbled down the recipe on my note pad many years ago.

Ingredient :
600g mango (abt 2 mangoes)
1 bowl (250ml) mango juice (use marigold brand or any packet mango juice)
1/2 bowl (125ml) evaporated milk
300g pomelo (spit into small pieces)
1 bowl (250ml) water (cooked cool water)
1 bowl (250ml) water
50g sugar

Cornflour mixture
1 tbsp cornflour + 1 tbsp water

Method
1. Bring 1 bowl of water and 50g sugar to boil until sugar dissolve, add in cornflour mixture, stir in slow fire until the mixture is smooth then off fire and leave it to cool down.
2. Cut the mango from both side, and cut the mango fresh into cube. Then the remaing mango put in a bowl, add 1 bowl of water (cooked cool water) then send to blend. Then put aside.
3. 300g of pomelo, split them into small pieces.
4. When the pot is cold, add the grinded mango juice, cube mango, mango juice, evaporation milk, then stir, lastly add in pomelo to stir, if too thick, add water.
5. Chill it in fridge and serve as cold dessert.

Non Bake Durian Cheesecake

2011-03-14T16:50:00.000+08:00

This cake was made quite sometimes ago, when my health still have not deteriorated till current stage that most of the times after office hours, I only wish to lay on bed, sleep or do nothing.

The cake was the dessert after our dinner, I invited dear mum, sister and brother and of course, their partners over to my place for Laksa Steamboat.

I decided to make this non bake durian cheesecake from Kitchen Corner that I had bookmarked long time ago since non bake is much easier for me to manage and also I still have one big tub of durian pulp in my freezer.

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March (March 2011) hosted by myself.

Ingredients :
Biscuit Base:
100 gm Digestive Biscuits - crushed with roller
40 gm melted butter

Mix them together and press into an 8" springform tin. Bake at 200C for 5 mins and chill it once cool.

Durian cream cheese filling adapted from Kitchen Corner with some modification.

Cream Cheese Filling:
350g cream cheese
40g caster sugar
450g durian flesh
350 whipping cream (I used dairy)
1 tablespoon gelatin
3 tablespoon water

Method :
1. Measure water into a bowl and sprinkle in the gelatin (without stirring with a spoon). Set aside to allow the gelatin grains to swell (10 mins) before setting the bowl over a pot of simmering hot water. Stir with a spoon and once the gelatin melts, remove the bowl from the pot and set aside to cool to room temperature)
2. In a mixer, whip the whipping cream until thicken but not over whipped. (I whipped till like mousse.)
3. In a mixer (no need to wash after whipping cream) , cream the cheese and sugar on high speed till smooth, beat in the gelatine mixture.
4. Stir in durian flesh until well combine.
5. Fold in the whipped cream until well combine.
6. Pour the mixture into the biscuit base and chill or freeze in the fridge for mininum 4 hours or overnight.

Verdict?
As I freezed the cake, it tasted so much like thick and tasty durian ice cream. Although everyone were so full after the steamboat dinner, but still managed to finish the big slice of cake, including dear daughter. Everyone raved about it, yum yum.

Coconut Cupcake

2011-03-07T11:00:00.001+08:00

When I 1st saw these coconut cupcakes from 鲸鱼蓝蓝小窝居, I know I am going to bake it. I can imagine the fragrant of coconut for these cupcakes and with coconut flakes, coconut lovers definitely cannot resist the temptation.

Some bloggers have asking me what is coconut powder and where to get it. Here is the photo of the coconut powder, this is the brand I have, there are some other brands selling in supermarket and provision shops.

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March (March 2011) hosted by me.

Recipe adapted from 鲸鱼蓝蓝小窝居 and 平平凡凡,简简单单

Ingredients : 25 cupcakes
200g butter (soften)
120g caster sugar
4 eggs
6 tbsp milk
200g cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
100g coconut powder
40g desiccated coconut
80g raisins
some dessiccated coconut (to drizzle on the cake)

Method :
1. Beat butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy
2. Add in egg, one at a time, beating thoroughly after each addition.
4. Add in milk and mix well.
5. Fold in sifted flour, coconut powder using spactula.
6. Add in 40g dessiccated coconut and raisins and mix well.
7. Scope the batter into the cupcake case 80% full, drizzle dessiccated coconut on the top and bake in pre-heated oven at 180C for 15 - 20 mins.

Verdict?
The cupcake is full of the fragrant of coconut, really very very nice. The outer layer of the cake is a bit dry due to my over baking but the inner is very soft and moist. It tasted great especially when you bite into the coconut flakes and it complement so well with the raisins, O really yummy. I had baked some to give-away and I received a lot of compliments, another keeper.

Chocolate Banana Muffins

2011-03-03T11:00:00.006+08:00

Since I am hosting for Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March, no doubt that I must give myself extraordinary support (ok ok I know I am exaggerated again :P.) Hmmm... then I shall make this "Fruity March" as the theme of my blog for March too. Thus, all my posting on March will be related to fruits, let's hope I am able to make it happening and post as many as possible.

Let's start with the chocolate banana muffins that I saw at Cuisine Paradise. The muffins look as tempting as the one that I baked previously so I decided to give it a go.

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March (March 2011) hosted by me.

Recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients: (makes 7 big muffins)
110g butter, soften
100g caster sugar (I reduced to 70g)
120g plain flour
10g cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs (medium size)
2 banana, mashed with fork (medium size)
100g chocolate chips (I mixed with strawberry chocolate chips)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract / essence
1/4 tsp banana essence, optional (I omitted)

Method:
1. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking power together and set aside.
2. Cream butter and sugar with electric beater till light and fluffy(about 3 - 4 minutes on medium speed).
3. Add in egg one at a time and beat till the mixture is well combine without any egg trace.
4. Add mashed banana and vanilla essence into the butter mixture and give it a quick whisk.
5. Lower the mixer speed, add flour mixture and blend the mixture till smooth.
6. Stir in the chocolate chips till combined, scoop the mixture into prepared muffin cups to 3/4 full.
7. Top the muffin batter with some extra banana slices and chocolate chips, bake them in preheated 180 degree oven for about 15 - 18 minutes or till a toothpick inserted in the center and comes out clean.

Verdict?
The muffin is tasted more cakey texture which is so soft and moist. It is indeed true that chocolate and banana are great combination, it is just like you are eating chocolate cake with flavour of banana fragrant, yummy.

Aspiring Bakers #5 : Fruity March (March 2011)

2011-03-01T09:15:00.006+08:00

Hi all

I am hosting the Aspiring Bakers #5 for March 2011, do join in the fun and give me some support by participate in this event :).

If you are interest to find out what's on the previous Aspiring Bakers #4 - "Love In The Air" enteries, you can refer to the link HERE which is host by Ellena from Cuisine Paradise.

The theme for the month will be Fruity March.

Who can join?
Everyone! (if you do not have a blog, just send me a photo and recipe of your bake)

How to join?
Step 1:
You can use any fruits in your baking or cooking, or using any fruits to prepare desserts, appetizers, salad or beverages.

Step 2:
Post it on your blog between 01 March 2011 to 31 March 2011.
All entries will be compiled and post by 01 April 2011.

Your post must include the recipe or link to the original recipe. If you are using a recipe from a book, please include the title of the book too.
Any entries that are posted outside the date range will not be accepted.
Any entries that do not include a recipe or link to the original recipe will not be accepted too.

Step 3:
Please mention that you are submitting your post to Aspiring Bakers and provide a link to the announcement of the theme by the host of the month HERE.
Entries will not be accepted if the above is not included.

Step 4:
Email to bakericious@gmail.com in the following format:

Your name or nickname:
Your blog name: (omit this if you do not have a blog)
Name of your bake:
URL of your post:
Attachment of your photo in your email (one photo for each entry, preferably less than 500kb).

Please email for each and every entry. Put "Aspiring Bakers" as your email subject. You can submit more than 1 post.

Non Bake Blueberry Cheesecake

2011-02-23T09:00:00.001+08:00

For the whole month of February, I didn't do any baking, my energy level is super super low that I just wanna rest on bed or sofa doing nothing, not even read books or watching TV program. I wanted to give some support to Ellena of Cuisine Paradise since she is hosting Aspiring Bakers for February, however is just seem 有心无力 (have the heart but no strength to do it).

Although how restless am I, I know I can't excuse myself for not making birthday cake for my mum which her birthday is 10 days after mine :). So I decided to make a simple cake for her, non bake version that easy for me to manage. Although I do not have a heart shape cake pan, I decided that I can do a simple heart shape deco to show some support to Ellena.

My initial plan was making a non bake green tea cheesecake, however after adding the green tea powder in a small portion of batter, I tasted it and found that the green tea taste is very very mild, almost can't taste it and tasted bitter, not nice at all. Cracking my head, looking for the stock that I have and I found 1 can of blueberry pie filling that I bought sometimes ago. So plan changed, I decided to change the cheesecake flavour to blueberry :).

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #4 : Love In The Air (Feb 2011) hosted by Ellena of Cuisine Paradise.

Recipe modified from 我爱乳酪蛋糕 by 福田淳子.

Biscuit Base:
100 gm Digestive Biscuits - crushed with roller
40 gm melted butter

Mix them together and press into an 7" springform tin. Chill it.

Cream Cheese Filling:
250 gm cream cheese
50 gm Icing sugar
50g yogurt (I replaced by sour cream)
1/2 lemon, squeeze out juice (I dun have lemon so I replaced by 1/2 tsp vinegar)
200 ml whipped cream - whipped till medium peak
1 tbsp gelatine powder + 70 gm water
250g blueberry pie filling + 20g water (blend into puree)

Method:
1. Measure water into a bowl and sprinkle in the gelatin (without stirring with a spoon). Set aside to allow the gelatin grains to swell (10 mins) before setting the bowl over a pot of simmering hot water. Stir with a spoon and once the gelatin melts, remove the bowl from the pot and set aside to cool to room temperature)
2. Beat cream cheese with icing sugar till well combined.
3. Add in fresh milk and mix till well combined. Add in gelatine mixture and mix well.
4. Fold in whipped cream and divide mixture into 2 portions.
5. Fold in blueberry puree and mix well.
6. Put into the fridge to let it set for 2 to 3 hours.

Topping: Adapted from HHB.
75ml water
1.5 tsp gelatin powder
60ml Ribena blackcurrant juice cordial

1. Measure water into a bowl and sprinkle in the gelatin. Set aside to allow the gelatin grains to swell (10 mins) before setting the bowl over a pot of simmering hot water. Stir with a spoon and once the gelatin melts, remove bowl from the pot and stir in 60ml of Ribena. Set aside to cool.
2. When completely cooled, pour mixture over the cheesecake slowly and freeze for several hours or overnight until set.

Verdict?
This cake is light cheesy and refreshing, tasted so much like ice cream since I freezed the cake, everyone given thumbs up.

Chocolate Ice Cream Philadelphia Style

2011-02-16T10:00:00.006+08:00

There are many things happened during this period that making me feel extremely busy. Moreover my health isn't in good condition that I hardly want to do anything :(. Hope life can get back to normal soon and I will regain my energy to do some baking and do regular blogs visiting.

I have not planned to post this up soon, or rather post anything up due to my low engery level. However, I received comment from a memeber that I know through a forum. She tried 2 of my recipes that I posted up in my blog, chocolate ice cream and walnut banana ice cream, both are ice cream and she raved much that given me a lot of encouragement, same like others who left good words in my comment box. So, I am posting this chocolate ice cream for her, gguppyy, hope you will try this recipe soon :).

I always thought that I need to have ice cream maker in order to achieve creamy and non icy texture for ice cream. Even though I know that I can use mixer to whisk a few times to break the ice but I had once tried on the banana walnut custard ice cream cake, the birthday cake for my grandma (I had lost the photos so not able to post it up ), even though I had whisked thrice but I still felt the icy texture. Thus, I never cross my mind to make ice cream at home until I saw this Sicilian Chocolate Gelato and so nice of Angie to provide me with the link on "how to make ice cream without a machine" by David Lebovitz. Since dear daughter has been asking for ice cream after her every swimming session, this triggered me to give it a try on homemade ice cream. Instead of using recipe of Sicilian Chocolate Gelato, I picked the recipe from The Sweet Spot as I need to clear the whipping cream.

One down side about homemade ice cream, it melt much faster than commercial ice cream, probably due to no stabilizers added? I believe that freezing the ice cream in long hours will helps to harden the ice cream more and delay the melting take place. However I dun have chance to keep this ice cream in long hours, dear daughter finished it real fast. Anyone has any other tips to prevent the homemade ice cream from melting fast?

Recipe adapted from The Sweet Spot and originated from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop.

Ingredients : (make about 1/2L)
250ml whipping cream
20g unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Valrohna)
85g unsweetened chocolate, chopped (I used Lindt milk chocolate since I need to clear off)
125ml milk
45g sugar (You may increase to 90g if you are using unsweetened chocolate)
1 tbsp kahlua (I omit since this was made for dear daughter)

Method :
1. Whisk together cream, cocoa powder, sugar and salt in a large saucepan. Heat the mixture, whisking frequently, until it comes to a full, rolling boil (Beware of burnt, make sure you get to the bottom and sides of the saucepan)
2. Remove from heat and whisk in the chocolate until it’s completely melted. Then whisk in milk. Add in Kahlua (optional).
3. Pour mixture into a blender and blend for 30 seconds, then pass through a strainer.
4. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. (as I do not have ice cream maker, I just freezed and whisk the ice cream for total 3 times. Troublesome but worth it.)

Verdict?
The ice cream tasted rich and creamy like commercial branded ice cream. The sweetness is just nice for me, yummy! I actually wanted to whisk another one or two times to see any difference on the texture but, dear daughter finished the whole tub of ice cream within the next day, she dun even bother to leave some for me, her poor mum only got to tasted a few spoons after the photo shooting :(.

Oreo Chocolate Butter Cream Cake

2011-02-09T09:00:00.001+08:00

My husband received a birthday invitation from one of his good friend for his daughter, he checked with me whether can I make her a cake, of course I won't say no to him since he rarely ask for it.

The request for the cake : chocolate cake base, prefer pink in color and 1.5 to 2 kg cake.

Wendy, I know you are going to say OREO AGAIN? Hahaha.... I just love to use oreo cookies in my bake :).

Chocolate Sponge Cake : (for 10" cake pan)
7 eggs (50g each averagely)
150g caster sugar
29g golden syrup
1/4 tsp salt
44g oil
44g cocoa powder
146g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
29g milk

Method:
1. Put the pot on the fire, pour in the oil immediately to heat up and off the fire when the oil start to warm.
2. Add in the cocoa powder and stir well to dissolve the cocoa powder with oil and set aside.
3. Mix eggs, sugar, salt in the mixing bowl and whisk in high speed till thick and creamy, increase the volume unitl the color turn pale.
4. Add in golden syrup and whisk in medium speed until ribbon stage.
5. Mix in the sifted flour and baking soda, whisk in low speed for 3 circles to let the flour mix into the egg mixture. Then turn to medium speed and whisk for about 20 circles (about 20 seconds) to mix well.
6. Fold 1/3 to 1/2 of the batter into cocoa mixture and mix well. Pour the mixture back to the remaining batter, add in milk to mix well.
7. Pour the batter in the cake tin till 60-70% full.
8. Bang the cake tin on the table lightly to reduce some air bubbles
9. Bake at lower heat 160 degree upper heat 180 degree for 35 -45 mins or until skewer comes out clean.
10. Invert cake onto a cooling rack until completely cooled. Remove cake from pan and serve.

Recipe for chocolate butter cream adapted from the flower shaped cake that I have made previously.

Chocolate Butter Cream :
450g butter (soften)
58g sugar
200g melted chocolate
3 packet oreo cookies - crushed

Beat butter and icing sugar till light. Then pour in melted chocolate and mix till evenly mixed and pour in crushed oreo cookies.

Frosting :
250g whipping cream
some pink coloring

Beat whipping cream and pink coloring until stiff.

Assembly :
1. Slice cake into 3 and apply chocolate butter cream onto each layer.
2. Frost the cake with pink whipping cream.
3. Decorate the cake as your desire.

Verdict?
The cake is soft, fine and spongy and the chocolate butter cream sweetness is just nice, tasted greatly with oreo cookies. This cake had received great review from the guests, most of them given me an impressive look when the host announced I am the cake maker. I felt shy but at the same time, proud and satisfaction heeheehee...

Pineapple Tarts

2011-02-01T14:45:00.001+08:00

If not because of Wendy of Table for 2 or more, I will never think of baking pineapple tarts myself. I never fancy pineapple tarts, I used to enjoy eating pineapple tarts but not recent years. Dunno why I just lost interest in pineapple tarts, probably because I need to keep my stomach for other more interesting CNY goodies :). I do still eat some during each CNY but only for homemade, those offered by colleagues that baked by them or their mum, must entertain a bit mah heeheehee...

When Wendy was baking her 1st batch of pineapple tarts, she told me about it and shared with me which recipe she was using. Next day, she MSN me and raved about how good were the pineapple tarts and she is going to bake more. I was tempted by her, she was so convincing that making my heart and hands so itchy, thinking that since I never bake pineapple tarts before then I should give it a try.

I was planning to get store-bought pineapple jam but Wendy kept assuring that it is actually easy to make the jam, her jam was done within an hour. I was thinking, since this may be the 1st and only one time that I will bake the pineapple tarts myself, then must well make it from scratch.

I went to hunt for the Morris pineapples that recommended by Wendy at a few supermarkets but not able to locate, I told myself to give a last try at wet market, if still not successful in hunting means I am fated to use store-bought jam. When I was in the fruits store, I immediately spotted the Morris pineapples, thanks to the picture that Wendy has provided in her blog. I asked the store keeper to choose two most unriped pineapples and so nice of him trying to look for the biggest for me. When he helped me to deskin the pineapples, I saw the pineapples were so pale in color, near to white color rather than very light yellow. Suddenly I felt very uncertain, I checked with the store-keeper and his replied was these type are better if meant for pineapple tarts.

Wendy is 101% correct, cooking the jam is not difficult at all, and best is dun even need to keep watching like hawk or keep stirring it, like she mentioned, I just need to stir it only once every 5 mins. This is unlike what I heard from others, it is tedious to cook the pineapple jam as you need to keep stirring and stirring and stirring. Wendy's notes are so detailed, if you read and follow her notes, you do not even need to throw a single question and the success rate is 100%.

My two pineapples weighed 1.5kg after deskin, much lesser than Wendy's, the store-keeper was so "generous" when deskin the pineapples, skin with lots of fresh :(. Since the pineapples are lesser so I reduced the sugar accordingly for 1.5kg pineapples.

The dough is definitely not easy to handle, quite sticky and took me sometimes to do the wrapping. As my estimation is lousy, Wendy asked me to use a tsp of pineapple jam, a tbsp of dough. However I think I used bigger portion of tsp and tbsp, ended up the pineapple tarts are quite big, I weighed the pineapple jam balls, roughly 8g each and dough, 15g each. I also do not know what went wrong, is it because the tarts are too big? My tarts actually went out of shape during baking, not round as Wendy's. Those tarts in the photos are most rounded and presentable among all :(.

Ingredients :
for pineapple jam :
2 Morris pineapples (weigh 1.5kg total)
330g
1 small cinnamon

For step to step method, notes and photos, pls refer to here. I got about 650g of pineapple jam after cooked.

for dough :
250gm butter (salted) - I used unsalted
75gm caster sugar
170gm dairy whipping cream
50gm cream cheese
3 egg yolks
400gm cake flour
30gm corn starch

One more yolk for glazing

Method :
1. Cream butter, sugar and cream cheese together.
2. When it comes together, pour in cream and whip on medium speed (I used speed 2 on my stand mixer) for 10 minutes. Scrape the sides from time to time. It may look lumpy, don’t worry, later it’ll turn all creamy.
3. Beat in egg yolks for 1 minute.
4. Sift both flours and pour half of it into buttery mixture. Mix on low speed until it comes together and pour in the remaining flour and beat until it comes together. Do not over mix.
5. Let dough sit for 10 minutes minimum before you start wrapping your jam with it.

For step to step photos and notes, pls refer here.

Verdict?
Like what Wendy has described, the tart is not very fragile and does not crumble in hands but still, melt in mouth type. It tasted good that once out from oven, I popped one after another, total 3 pineapple tarts in my mouth. However for my taste bud, I would prefer if it has more buttery taste, may be next time should use another brand of butter. For the pineapple jam, the sweetness is nicely sweet with some tartness, truely a thumbs up.

I may be busy again for the coming week so would also like to take this opportunity to wish all my baking buddies, friends and readers

Happy Lunar New Year, Gong Xi Fa Cai!

新年快乐, 万事如意!

Dried Shrimp Cookies and Award

2011-01-27T10:00:00.001+08:00

When I happened to chance upon this dried shrimp cookies at Daily Delicious, I immediately know that I am going to try this recipe. I love cookies that are salty sweet and since dear daughter love dried shrimp, she can eat it even before cooking so I assumed she will like these cookies too.

Tell you, the pipping of the dough is not a joke, dunno is it my problem but to me, it was so so tedious. It was not like pipping out whipping cream or butter cream, smooth and easy, I need to use a lot of strength for squeezing and pressing the dough in order to pipe it out. It took me so long to pipe out just a small amount of the dough, I need to rest after every each session as my hands were way too tire. The pressing and squeezing of the dough also caused the oil to seep out, my hands and the pipping bag were so oily. Argh, I almost gave up half way, to be exact, one quarter way :P.

If you are interested, you may refer to Daily Delicious for the step to step photos.

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #3 : My Favorite CNY Cookie (Jan 2011) hosted by Jess of i3ss kitch3n

Recipe adapted from Daily Delicious where she adapted from from Thai Cookbook: ครัวหวานบ้านป้าเจี๊ยบ

Ingredients : Makes about 75 pieces (I didnt count mine)
75g Dried shrimp
1 Egg
75g Sugar (I reduced to 65g)
165g All purpose flour
115g Unsalted butter
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract
A dash of salt (I omit it)

Method :
1. Preheat oven to 180°C and line the baking sheet with baking paper or silpat.
2. Combine the flour and dried shrimp in a bowl, and put in the food processor, process until fine. Set aside.
3. Beat the butter and sugar until blend, add a dash of salt (Note: you have to taste the shrimp first, if it's very salty, you might omit the salt here - for me I omitted it).
4. Put the egg into the bowl and beat until combine, then add the vanilla.
5. Pour the flour mixture into the bowl, mix with the spatula until combine.
6. Put the dough into the piping bag fit with 1 cm round nozzle.
7. Pipe the dough into 5cm small finger.
8. Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown.
9. Let the cookies cool on the wire rack.

Verdict?
The cookies are salty sweet, tasted hint of dried shrimp, very addictive snack that once you start, is hard to stop snacking. When I popped one into dear daughter's mouth, her eyes opened wide immediately when she munched the cookie. She kept munching and at the same time nodding her head, gave me a thumb up and asked me for some more. However, I dun think I will make it again, although it is yummy but the pipping is really back me off, too time consuming and tedious.

I would like to thanks The Art to Being Perfect for being so generous to share this Stylish Blogger award with me, I am so happy and felt so honor to be able to received this award from her. Thank you so much, I am really very appreciated.

Oreo Chocolate Cheesecake

2011-01-24T10:00:00.002+08:00

During one of the outing, dear brother was looking at the leaflet from Coffee Bean and eyeing on the oreo cheesecake. I told him I will bake one for him, I fulfilled my promised and baked this oreo chocolate cheesecake for his birthday.

I love the rich, creamy and chocolatey chocolate cheesecake that I baked previously so I decided to bake it again and add in oreo cookies.

Recipe modified from here.

Ingredients : (for 7" cake pan)
100g Oreo Cookies (minus the creme), crushed
30g unsalted butter

375g cream cheese, room temperature
100g caster sugar
2 eggs
75g chocolate, chopped (I used Valrohna 66%)
75ml whipping cream
30g cocoa powder (I used Valrohna)

10 pcs oreo cookies, crushed

Chocolate Ganache:
100g chocolate, chopped (I used Valrohna 66%)
60g whipping cream
20g butter

Method:
1. Melt the butter and mix together to the crushed oreo cookies. Press the mixture into the cake pan base and chilled for later use.
2. Heat up the whipping cream and add in the chopped chocolate and stir till mix well and smooth.
3. Preheat the oven to 160°C. Pour some water to the base of the baking tray to create a water-bath. Wrap the base of the cake pan with aluminum foil to protect the water from sipping in.
4. In a mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese and sugar till fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat again till combined.
5. Add chocolate mixture and stir well. Lastly, sift in the cocoa powder and crushed oreo cookies, and combine till mixture is smooth.
6. Pour the cheesecake batter into the prepared cake pan with the cookie base. Bake in the oven for 45 to 50 minutes (I baked the round cake for 35 to 40 mins. Make sure not to over bake, the center of the cake should still be a little "wobbly" when done.
7. Remove from oven and let cool for awhile.
8. Boil the chocolate, whipping cream and butter until mix well and smooth.
9. Pour onto the cake and let it cool completely before refrigerating. Chill for at least 4 to 6 hrs before serving.
10. Decorate the cake as your desire.

Verdict?
The cake is rich, creamy and chocolately, tasted so heavenly especially if you are using premium chocolate. The chocolate ganache tasted slightly bitter but it complement so well with the chocolate cheese layer. A non cheesecake person like dear husband, praised so much on this cake and even serve himself 2nd slice.

Caramel Mud Cake

2011-01-20T10:00:00.002+08:00

I have a packet of white chocolate chips to clear off so was looking around for bakes with white chocolate, I then remember I had bookmarked this caramel mud cake from Almost Bourdain. Since I have all the ingredients at home, I went ahead to bake this cake and of course, my cake dun look as nice and delicious as Ellie's but the taste definitely is as good :).

Recipe adapted from Almost Bourdain which is from Taste.co.au.

Ingredients : for 8" to 9" round cake pan
200g butter, cubed
200g white chocolate, chopped (I used white chocolate chips)
200g (1 cup, firmly packed) dark brown sugar (I reduced to 115g)
180ml (3/4 cup) hot water
1 tbps golden syrup
2 tsp vanilla essence / extract
2 eggs, at room temperature
150g (1 cup) plain flour
150g (1 cup) self-raising flour
Icing sugar, to dust (I forgot about it)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 160C. Grease and line base and side with non-stick baking paper.
2. Place butter, chocolate, sugar, water, golden syrup and vanilla essence/extract in a heavy-based saucepan. Stir over medium-low heat with a wooden spoon for 5 mins or until chocolate melts and mixture is smooth. Set aside for 20 mins to cool.
3. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. Sift combined flours over chocolate mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined.
5. Pour mixture into pan and bake in preheated oven for 50-60 mins or until a skewer comes out almost clean.
6. Stand cake for 20 mins before turning onto a wire rack to cool.

Verdict?
The cake is dense and moist, sweetness just nice for me and the taste is great, it has the fragrant taste of white chocolate and caramel. I recieved compliments on this cake and especially dear brother likes it lot.

Flower Shape Chocolate Oreo Butter Cream Cake

2011-01-17T10:00:00.000+08:00

After the both attempt of barbie doll cake, big and smaller version, I have more confidence to bake another better and improve version for dear daughter's birthday celebration during her actual birthday. However, I was surprised that she actually rejected to have barbie doll cake. When I asked her why, her replied was she doesn't want to dirty her barbie doll again, she doesn't want her barbie doll to take "shower" again :(. Gosh! she is really so "niao " (fussy)....

When I asked her what cake she want then, she requested for flower shape cake and she named all her requests. I was having headache when hearing that, trying to persuade her to look at barbie doll cake but she was very persistance on her choice. Well, what a mum can do since can't convince her daughter so I gave in and promised to give her a flower shape cake she want.

I cannot find flower shape cake pan in Phoon Huat and do not want to waste $ and storage space to the equipement that hardly will be used. Thus I decided to bake a 10" round cake and trim the edge into petal shape. However things didn't work out as my plan, when I trimmed the cake, I realised the cake will be too small and insufficient to feed 15 mouths, the no. of guests that will be celebrating dear daughter's birthday.

I was panic and headache, squeezing all my brain juice and finally, decided to bake some cupcakes to put around the round cake to act as petals. The cake became so huge after adding the cupcakes but more better than less that insufficient to serve the guests.

The cake didn't come out nice after I frosted a layer of whipped cream , the petals dun look equal and balance and the whole cake just dun look exactly like a flower. Especially the side of the cake. I just can't frost it smooth due to my lousy frosting skill so I had no choice, use the back of a spoon to create the spiky look.

I felt so stressed and depressed, I really cannot imagine presenting such an ugly cake to the guests :(. But I consoled myself that the cake might look alright after I pipe the star patterns to cover the surface of the cake. True enough, piping of patterns really can cover most of the flaws of the cake :). At least, I felt so relief and can smile throughout the day heeheehee...

Dear daughter also requested to have stem and leaves for the flower shape cake, so I used flour + water + some green coloring to make dough and shaped a stem and two leaves.

Dear husband said the cake look beautiful and dear daughter love the cake. Sshe said it is exactly what she want, she was so happy. When I shown the cake photos to my friends, all of them were so impressed.

I like Aunty Yochana's chocolate marvel cake that I used for barbie doll cake, so I used the same recipe again.

Ingredients: (for 10" cake pan - I baked twice so I got one 10" round cake and 12 big cupcakes)
Chocolate Cake :
5 egg white
5 egg yolks
150g sugar
94g cake flour
38g corn flour
2 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
1.25 tsp baking powder
63g canola oil
1 tbsp chocolate milk

Method:
1. Sift cake flour with cornflour, baking powder and cocoa powder.
2. Whisk egg white until soft peak forms and then add in sugar gradually and whisk till sugar dissolved and mixture is thick and glossy.
3. Drop in egg yolks, one at a time, making that it's evenly combined before the next addition.
4. Fold in 1/2 of flour mixture and mix well.
5. Pour in oil and milk, mix well, fold in the balance flour mixture and mix till well combine.
6. Pour the mixture into round cake tin and bake in pre-heat oven at 175C for about 45 mins or till skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
7. Leave cake to cool on a wire rack.

Chocolate Butter Cream :
500g butter (soften)
60g sugar
250g melted chocolate
10 oreo cookies - crushed

Beat butter and icing sugar till light. Then pour in melted chocolate and mix till evenly mixed and pour in crushed oreo cookies.

Frosting :
350g whipping cream
some pink coloring
some blue coloring

Beat whipping cream and pink coloring until stiff.
Take out a bowl of pink whipped cream and mix in blue coloring to become purple whipped cream.

Assembly :
1. Slice cake into 3 and apply chocolate butter cream onto each layer. (As I had trimmed the cake initially for the petals, I just trimmed the whole cake into 8" round shape)
2. Slice the cupcakes into half and apply chocolate butter cream.
3. Place the 12 cupcakes surrounded the 8" round cake.
4. Frost the cake with pink whipping cream.
5. Decorate the cake as your desire.

Verdict?
The cake is soft and fluffy, tasted really delicious with the oreo chocolate butter cream. My elder SIL likes the crunchiness of oreo in the chocolate butter cream, she said the oreo given the extra "bites" and added marks to the cake. Dear daughter loves the cake, she ate 2 slices of the remaining cake the next day and even asked for it for the next few days. However the cupcakes tasted a bit dry, probably I had slightly overbaked.

Coconut Butter Cookies

2011-01-14T10:00:00.004+08:00

When I saw the posting from Jess (Ya another Jess :p)that she will be hosting for Aspiring Bakers #3 for January 2011, although the lazy bud still cling tightly on me, I told myself I must bake some cookies to give her support. I did not have hard time thinking of what cookies to bake for this event, my priority definitely goes to the coconut butter cookies that I always wanted to bake since the 1st time saw it at Dodol & Mochi.

Pei Lin misread the recipe and used coconut cream powder instead of dessicated coconut called by the original recipe. For me, I intended to use both dessicated coconut and coconut cream powder but during the preparation of ingredients I then realised I had used up the packet of coconut ceam powder so left me only with 25g of dessicated coconut from my other bakes for this round of baking.

My cookies are not as flat as Pei Lin's cookies, the color of the cookies also not as golden and attractive as hers. I guess my oven's temperature is higher that the base of the cookies are much more darker, nearly look charred :P.

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #3 : My Favorite CNY Cookie (Jan 2011) hosted by Jess of i3ss kitch3n.

Recipe adapted from Dodol & Mochi which orginated from《孟老師的100道手工餅乾》。孟兆慶著

Ingredients : makes about 13 x 15g and 6 x 10g cookies
(A)
100 g cake flour – sifted once
10 g cornstarch – sifted once
20 g coconut cream powder – sifted once (I used 25g dessicated coconut)

* The original recipe calls for desiccated coconut. You need not sift this. *

(B)
75 g unsalted butter – softened at room temperature
50 g powdered sugar – sifted once
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Method :
1. Whisk (A) together thoroughly, then set aside for use later.
2. Place (B) into a medium-sized mixing bowl, then blend the ingredients together slightly with help from a rubber spatula. Now, with an electric hand mixer, cream them up on high speed till pale and fluffy (i.e. buttercream-like consistency).
3. With a rubber spatula or sturdy (wooden) spoon, gradually fold to mix the flour mixture into the creamed mixture, in two or three batches, till a dough has just formed – DON’T overwork the dough as you may risk getting tough cookies in the end.
4. Wrap the dough up in plastic film, then let it chill and rest in the fridge for about 30 minutes. (I left the dough in a bowl and cover with cling wrap and kept in the fridge for about 2 hrs)
5. Remove the dough from the fridge. Then, scoop out 15 or 10 grams of dough for each cookie and roll it into a ball. Place the shaped cookie dough on parchment-lined baking sheet(s), leaving about 4 centimeters apart in between the cookies. The dough will spread during baking. Repeat till the dough is used up.
6. First, bake at 160°C for about 25 minutes. After that, turn off the oven and leave the cookies inside, with the oven door shut, for about 10 minutes.
7. Remove the cookies from the oven, and transfer them to cooling rack(s) to let cool.

Verdict?
The cookies are crunchy and crispy, I might have overwork the dough that the cookies are a bit hard, nevertheless they are still delicious and addictive. The only down side of the cookies are the coconut taste is very very mild which I will prefer to be stronger but I love the crunchiness of dessicated coconut during the munching of cookies. Next time, I will definitely use both coconut cream powder and dessicated coconut and probably increase the amount to try it out again.

Barbie Doll Black Forest Cake & 1st Blogoversary!

2011-01-11T09:00:00.004+08:00

Happy New Year to my readers, friends and fellow bloggers, sorry for being late cos it has been hectic weeks for me due to the festive celebration and gathering, I was very busy with work too due to the year end closing and on top of that, there was an exciting event, a "Big" day of dear daughter on 4th Jan 2011, the 1st day of her primary school life! I was on leave for her 1st 3 days of school, sent her to & fro school, visited her during recess time, attended the parenting talks that organised by the school, these 3 days were so jam packed but just gone within blink of eyes, so fast! I am glad that dear daughter can adapt to her new school life and enjoying herself in school :).

I am kind of lazed out too during this period, lazy to log on to computer after work, have not been doing any baking too :P. Frankly speaking, it took a bit of effort for me to post this up, if not because today is the 1st anniversary of my blog, I guess I may continue to laze heeheehee... Happy 1st Blogoversary to Bakericious! I am really glad that my passion of blogging is able to "survive" and last for a year and hope I will be able to keep it on-going and regularly although a lot of efforts needed especially for lazy person like me :P. I would like to thanks all the readers and followers of my blog for visiting reguarly and leaving lovely and encouraging comments that always motivate me to keep posting and also keeping this blog alive. Thank you for all the support!

Well, back to my bakes. Last year when I made a princess castle cake for dear daughter's birthday, SK requested one for her birthday as well. So I had foreseen that SK will request for a barbie doll cake for her birthday if she see the barbie doll cake that I made for dear daughter and true enough :). I accepted her order forgetting I will have a very hectic schedule during that week. Well, since I had made my commitment, I will have to fullfil it by hook or by crook.

Due to space contraints for storage and also SK do not need a big cake, so I need to make a small version of barbie doll cake for her. I had headache on how to make this cake as even I can bake a smaller cake but I can't reduce the height of the cake, the cake need to be tall enough to cover till the waist of barbie doll. In order to store the cake in the fridge, I need to remove 2 shelves from the fridge which is not possible cos MIL had bought a lot of food that need to store in the fridge, the most I can remove is one shelve. I kept thinking of a lot of alternatives but seem not suitable until I found out that dear daughter has a "imitation" barbie doll that dunno who bought as a gift for her, which is shorter than original barbie doll.

After I inserted the doll in the cake and put it in the fridge, I then realised the cake was still too high to store in the fridge. Gosh! What should I do? I removed the doll, trying to bend the legs of doll then I realised the lower part of the body can be dismantled. I was so happy, dismantled it and left only the upper part of body, insert back to the cake but the hole of the cake was too big due to my earlier adjustment so the doll actually sunken in that caused the gown looking like a high waist gown heeheehee... dear daughter said this barbie doll look so fat hahaha... Luckily Sk still very happpy and love this cake :).

Ingredients:
For Chocolate Sponge Cake : (yield 6" round cake pan and a mini chiffon cake pan)
5 eggs
100g caster sugar
2 tbsp golden syrup
1g salt
32g oil
21g cocoa powder
106g cake flour
1g baking soda
21g milk

Method:
1. Put the pot on the fire, pour in the oil immediately to heat up and off the fire when the oil start to warm.
2. Add in the cocoa powder and stir well to dissolve the cocoa powder with oil and set aside.
3. Mix eggs, sugar, salt in the mixing bowl and whisk in high speed till thick and creamy, increase the volume unitl the color turn pale.
4. Add in glucose and whisk in medium speed until ribbon stage.
5. Mix in the sifted flour and baking soda, whisk in low speed for 3 circles to let the flour mix into the egg mixture. Then turn to medium speed and whisk for about 20 circles (about 20 seconds) to mix well.
6. Fold 1/3 to 1/2 of the batter into cocoa mixture and mix well. Pour the mixture back to the remaining batter, add in milk to mix well.
7. Pour the batter in the cake tin till 60-70% full.
8. Bang the cake tin on the table lightly to reduce some air.
9. Bake at lower heat 160 degree upper heat 180 degree for 35 mins.
10. Once done, remove from oven and turn the cake tin upside down on wire rack for it to cool down.
11. When the cake is cool, press round the top side of the cake and push up the bottom plate to remove the cake.
12. Press round the bottom of the cake to remove the cake from the bottom plate.

For Filling and Frosting :
300g whipping cream
1 can dark pitted cherries
some purple coloring

Whip the whipping cream with the purple coloring till stiff.

To Assemble :
1. Slice the cooled cake into 3 layers.
2. Place one layer on the turntable/cake board and brush with some cherry syrup.
3. Spread whipped cream and scatter pitted cherries over it.
4. Place the second layer and spread the whipped cream and scatter the pitted cherries.
5. Set the third layer of sponge on top of it and spread top and sides of cake with remaining cream.
6. Insert the doll in the center of the cake.
7. Decorate the gown cake as desire.

Santa Claus Boston Cheesecake

2010-12-27T11:00:00.010+08:00

It seem to be quite awhile that I have not baked anything for dear husband's colleagues. Since is festive season, I decided I should bake a cake for dear husband to celebrate advanced Christmas with his colleagues since his office will be shut down from Christmas Eve until after New Year.

I gave options for dear husband, cheesecake or american carrot cake. To my surprise, his choice is cheesecake (I guess he has fell in love with cheesecake after the cheesecake I had made for dear brother's birthday recently which I have yet to post as I need to jump queue for Christmas bakes).

I wanted to have another entry to the Christmas Giveaway hosted by Swee San of The Sweet Spot to give her more support. And at the same time, I do not want the cake to look simple and plain, so I decided that I should use whipped cream to pipe out some design on the cake to have more Christmas feel :).

Ho.Ho.Ho. Have you known my identity already?

Do you think the cake look like Santa Claus face? Dear husband and dear daughter and friends asked me why the hat is pink instead of red? SK even said I "forced" the Santa Claus to change his hat to pink cos dear daughter likes pink hahaha... Not that I want it to be pink but no matter how much red coloring I added to the whipped cream, it just turned out to be dark, darker, darkest pink, I just wouldn't get red color :(. And I was so lazy to mix another color for the face, so I just use the cake as the face. So lthis cake ook more than a sun tanned girly Santa hor? heeheehee....

The sliced cake looks very messy, cos I "dig" the cake out from the mini chiffon cake pan, just want to show you the inner look.

Dear husband took photos of the cake after sliced.

I am submitting this entry to the Christmas Giveaway hosted by Swee San of The Sweet Spot.

I am also sending this to Aspiring Bakers #2 Christmas (Dec 2010) hosted by Jane of Passionate About Baking.

Recipe adapted from 愛在廚房.

Ingredients : (for 9" but I used 8" round cake pan and a mini chiffon cake pan)
Sponge Cake Base :
2 eggs
60g castor sugar
48g (4.5 tbsp) cake flour
32g butter, melted (I burnt the melted butter so I replaced with canola oil)

Cheese Layer :
150ml milk
20g castor sugar
3 eggs
20g constarch
250g cream cheese, room temperature (I increased to 300g)
1/2 lemon zest
130ml whipping cream
2 tbsp cake flour
60g raisins (I increased to 80g)
60g sugar
1 tsp lemon juice

Method :
For Sponge Cake :
1. Line and grease 9" cake pan, pre-heat oven to 180C.
2. Whisk eggs in the mixing bowl, mix sugar in a few additions.
3. Whisk till ribbon stage - when you lift up the whisk, the marks will disappear in about 3 counts or you are able to write the number "8" on the batter using the dripping batter and the "8" will only disappear in 3 counts.
4. Pour the batter into the cake pan and bake for 20 mins or until skewer come out clean.
5. Remove the cake from the cake pan immediately and set the cake a side till cool.

For Cheese Layer :
1. Pre-heat the oven to 150C.
2. Seperate egg yolks and whites.
3. Pour 100ml milk and 20g sugar into a small pot, heat up and stir until the sugar has dissolved, turn off the fire.
4. Add in the balance 50ml milk and stir well, add in egg yolks and mix well, add in cornstarch and stir till well mixed.
5. Turn on small fire and cook till the egg & milk mixture become slightly thicken (just for a while if not the mixture will turn to custard).
6. Off the fire, sift the egg & milk mixture and set a side to cool.
7. In a mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese until fluffy, pour in the egg & milk mixture in a few additions, mix well.
8. Add in the lemon zest, whipping cream and mix well.
9. Sift in the cake flour, mix well and add in raisins.

10. Whisk the egg whites and lemon juice till foamy, add 60g sugar in 3 additions and whisk till soft peak.
11. Add in 1/3 of whites to the yolk mixture and mix well.
12. Pour in the yolk mixture into the remaining whites and fold gentle till well combine.
13. Place the sponge cake on the cake pan and pour in the cheese mixture.
14. Bang the pan on a flat surface to get rid of those big bubbles trapped in the batter.
15. Bake the cake in water bath method for 2 hours.
16. Cool the cake in the wire rack and chill the cake for 1 day or at least 6 hours, unmould cake and serve.

Verdict?
The amount of cream cheese used in this recipe is more towards light cheesecake. However this cake is special, the texture is between light and heavy cheesecake. It tasted rich, creamy with light texture but not as heavy and solid as amercia cheesecake. The lemon zest and raisins have definitely make the cheesecake more flavourful. This is my review based on the cheesecake baked in mini chiffon cake pan without sponge cake base that I kept for myself. As for the comment from dear husband based on the 8" cake, he said the sponge cake layer is dried (not sure why cos this is the 1st time I used sponge cake as cheesecake base, mostly I used cookies base. And the sponge cake looked soft and moist and spongy before I sent in for baking with cheese layer), cheesecake layer has hint of cheese taste, not thick but still delicious.

Christmas Light Fruit Cake

2010-12-23T11:00:00.000+08:00

JQ, a closed colleague of mine, likes fruit cake, he has asked me a few times whether I know how to bake a nice fruit cake. Whenever I brought my bakes to office, he will ask me when am I going to bake fruit cake. However he is the one and only one in my office likes fruit cake. However, I have in mind to bake one for just for him but as I have a long baking list, this has been pending for quite a while.

Until 1 months plus ago, I told him officially that I am going to bake him a fruit cake to return his flavour - he helped me brought back some baking books from Taiwan :P. However this has been delayed again due to our schedule, when I am available to bake for him, he was not in town. When he was in town, it was my turn to fly. This year is going to be over, I do not wanna drag it any longer so even I have tight schedule recently, I still squeeze out time to bake this fruit cake for him.

The cake looks nicer with dusting of snow sugar right?

I am submitting this entry to the Christmas Giveaway hosted by Swee San of The Sweet Spot.

I am also sending this to Aspiring Bakers #2 Christmas (Dec 2010) hosted by Jane of Passionate About Baking.

I used the recipe from Aunty Yochana that I had baked before and recieved good comments. I baked a 6" cake for him and balance in cupcakes for dear husband as fruit cake is also his favourite.

Ingredients: (for 6" round cake pan and 6 cupcakes)
400 gm currants/sultanas/Raisins/glaced cherries/mixed peel
3 Tbsp rum
230 gm Butter
190 gm sugar
finely grated rind of 1 orange
finely grated rind of 1 lemon
4 eggs
50 gm chopped almonds
50 gm ground almonds
230 gm plain flour

Method:
1. Soak currants, sultanas, raisins, cherries and mixed peel with rum. (I soaked for months)
2. Prepare an 8" round cake tin and lined the side and base with double layer of greaseproof paper.
3. Cream butter and sugar till creamy. Add in orange zest and lemon zest and continue to beat till light and fluffy.
4. Add in eggs one at a time till thoroughly mixed before adding in the next egg.
5. Mix 2 Tbsp of flour into the soaked fruits.
6. Fold in soaked fruits. Fold in sifted flour to make a soft dropping consistency.
7. Pour batter into prepared cake tin and bake at 160C for about 1.5 hour or until centre is firm to touch until skewer comes out clean. For cupcakes, I baked for about 25 mins.
8. Let the cake cool in the tin for 20 mins. then remove it onto a wire rack and leave it to cool completely.
9. Leave the greaseproof paper intact and remove it only when you want to serve so as to keep the cake moist while stored.
10. Drizzle some rum onto cake once a while to keep cake moist.

Wishing all my friends and readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Award and Surprises

2010-12-22T09:00:00.001+08:00

Recently, I have received a few surprises. I truely appreciated the nice gesture of these baking friends, they have brighten my days especially I am in my down period on my work recently.

I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to them, in 1st come 1st serve basis :P.

Firstly, I would like to thanks Elin of Elinluv's Sweet Delights and Elinluv's Tidbits Corner for sharing this award with me, I felt so honor and happy to recieve it. I do not have time to select the blogs (gosh, this is really a very tough and headache job, definitely is a hard time for me) that I want to pass this award to so I would like to share this award with all my readers and baking friends, each and every of you deserve it.

Take a look at my new collections of cupcake casing, very pretty and cute right! I want to thank Esther of 我的厨房乐园, I was so surprised when recieved her email saying that she had posted out a parcel for me. She is such a nice and sweet lady.

Another nice and generous lady is Ann of Anncoo Journal. She gave me another surprise by sending me a packet of dried osmanthus and a pretty doggie key chain. She is making me feel so paiseh, I just gave her a can of Dulce de Leche and she is returning so much more...

Ladies, again thank you for your generous and nice gesture, I am glad that I started blogging and I am receiving so much through blogosphere. Beside knowledge and information that had helped me improved on my baking and cooking, I am able to get to know a group of hobby alike friends, this is really precious to me. I love you friends!

Chocolate Clear Water Sponge Cake

2010-12-20T11:00:00.001+08:00

When I 1st saw this clear water sponge cake at The Little Teochew, I was immediately got hooked by the look, her cupcakes turned out to look alike of little mushrooms, so cute. Unfortunately, my cupcakes didn't turn out to be cute, the taste is far beyond better than the look :).

This recipe has been pending for quite awhile due to my super long baking list. Until recently, dear daughter requested for chocolate cupcakes and I remember I saw the chocolate version of clear water sponge cake at here. I am not sure why these cupcakes named as clear water since there is no water use in the recipe.

As I wanted to give some support to Jane of Passionate About Baking since she is the host of Aspiring Bakes # 2 for Dec 2010, Christmas theme. Thus, I made some Christmas cupcake wrappers for these cupcakes and dig out a mini Christmas tree for photo taking.

Thank you Ann for sharing with us how to DIY cupcake wrappers, if you are interested to do some yourself, pls hop over her blog for detail instructions. I had miscalculated the size so my cupcake wrappers are way to high for the cupcake cases.

I am sending this to Aspiring Bakers #2 Christmas (Dec 2010) hosted by Passionate About Baking

Recipe adapted from 爱'生活 My Life.

Ingredients : for 10 to 20 cupcakes depending on sizes
3 egg yolks
1 whole egg
50g corn oil (I used canola oil)
18g chocolate (melted)
50g low protein flour (I used cake flour)

3 egg whites
40g castor sugar
1g salt

1/3 cup chocolate chips

Method :
1. Beat whole egg + egg yolks + oil with egg beater till well mixed.
2. Add in melted chocolate and mix well.
3. Sift in cake flour and mix well.
4. Whisk egg whites till frothy, add in castor sugar and salt and beat till stiff peaks.
5. Fold in the egg white mixture to egg yolk mixture in 3 additions, mix till well combined. Scoop the batter into paper cups till 80% full and drop some chocolate chips in the batter.
6. Bake in preheated oven at 170C for about 20 to 23 mins (18 mins for me)

Verdict?
The cake is moist, soft and spongy and light. Dear daughter likes the cupcake a lot, she told me she ate 6 cupcakes within a day :).

Barbie Doll Cake - My 1st attempt

2010-12-13T13:00:00.002+08:00

This Barbie doll cake was made for dear daughter to celebrate in her school at Mid November but was delayed until now then I managed to post it up :P.

Dear daughter's birthday is at mid December but if she is celebrating her birthday in school, she has to do it in advance during November before school shut down for school holidays. Dear daughter always requesting for changing of her birth month, she doesn't want it to be December, she wants a much earlier month so that she can have a birthday celebration faster rather than wait till end of the year, she has not much patience as usual :P. She will always come to me with different birth dates, telling me she wanna change to this and that date for her birthday hahaha...

After I promised to bake a barbie doll cake for dear daughter to celebrate her birthday in school, I was regretted that why am I inviting for trouble. Looking at the barbie doll cakes that I surf from internet, I started to get panic, it seem to be quite complicated and challenging that I was fear that this is beyond my capability. But since I had promised, I have to keep my promise so die die I must come out one for her. I was thinking, the most I will get is a barbie doll cake with not so nicely frosting and decorating, and not so rounded gown. Guess dear daughter and her classmates should not be so "sharp" and "smart" to spot the flaws :P. Thus, all the self consoling thoughts making me still went ahead for this challenging project.

Well, compared to the 1st birthday cake - 2 tier Princess Castle Cake that I made for dear daughter last year, the making of barbie doll cake was actually quite smooth, it was very time consuming but not as difficult as what I think of. I baked 3 chocolate cakes in day 1, day 2 done all the slicing, layering, trimming, frosting and decorating of the cake and day 3 early morning, sent the cake to the school for the celebration.

Although there are a lot of flaws on the cake but I am very happy and contented with the end result, dear daughter was very happy so mission has accomplished. What's more, everyone who saw the cake were so impressed and seem unbelieveable that I am able to churn up this cake heeheehee...

The height of the chocolate cake was about 5.5" with 10" base, after the layering of chocolate butter cream and frosting of the whipping cream, the cake was about 7.25" tall with 11" base. I forgot to weigh the barbie doll cake but reckon should be at least 2.5kg.

Recipe adapted from Aunty Yochana's chocolate marvel cake :

Ingredients: (for 10")
Chocolate Cake :
5 egg white
5 egg yolks
150g sugar
94g cake flour
38g corn flour
2 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
1.25 tsp baking powder
63g corn oil

Ingredients: (for one 9" round cake pan & one 8" chiffon cake pan)
Chocolate Cake :
8 egg white
8 egg yolks
300g sugar
160g cake flour
64g corn flour
4 1/4 tbsp cocoa powder
2 1/8 tsp baking powder
106g corn oil

Method:
1. Sift cake flour with cornflour, baking powder and cocoa powder.
2. Whisk egg white until soft peak forms and then add in sugar gradually and whisk till sugar dissolved and mixture is thick and glossy.
3. Drop in egg yolks, one at a time, making that it's evenly combined before the next addition.
4. Fold in 1/2 of flour mixture and mix well.
5. Pour in oil and mix well, fold in the balance flour mixture and mix till well combine.
6. Pour the mixture into round cake tin and bake in pre-heat oven at 175C for about 45 mins or till skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
7. Leave cake to cool on a wire rack.

Chocolate Butter Cream :
750g butter
130g icing sugar
300g melted cooking chocolate

Beat butter and icing sugar till light. Then pour in melted chocolate and mix till evenly mixed.

For Frosting :
550g non-dairy whipping cream
some pink coloring

Beat whipping cream and pink coloring until stiff.

Assembly :
1. Slice cake into 3 and apply chocolate butter cream onto each layer.
2. Chill in the fridge for 15 mins to harden the butter cream slightly and trim the cake to your desire shape - dome shape.
3. Frost the cake with pink whipping cream and chill the cake in the fridge.
4. Frost another layer of pink whipping cream for bette coverage and insert in the barbie doll.
5. Use some pink whipping cream to cover up the waist area of the barbie doll for touching up.
6. Decorate the cake as your desire.

Verdict?
This cake is soft and moist, even chilled it didn't affect the texture. It tasted delicious with the chocolate butter cream, luckily I had reduced the sugar for the butter cream, the sweetness is just nice. Dear daughter told me she had 2nd serve of the cake and one of her classmate, ate 3 servings. She said the cake finished by her class, 29 students and 3 teachers.

Korean Fried Chicken (KFC)

2010-12-08T11:00:00.004+08:00

I was attracted by this Korean Fried Chicken at Almost Bourdain, I am a korean food lover and these drumsticks look so mouth-watering that I hardly can resist the temptation. I went to the Korean minmart to get hold of the gochujang (red pepper paste) - a savory and pungent fermented Korean condiment but I didn't have chance to cook it at home since FIL can't consume food with beans. So I passed this recipe to dear sister and she was immediately drawn by it too and volunteered to cook during Saturday, my visiting day to dear mum's place :P.

Although this chicken was not cooked by me, I still decided to post it to share the delicious dish. Pls excuse for the poor lighting as this dish was ready after sunset and the lighting in my mum's dining area is quite dim.

this is Gochujang that I bought from Korean minimart.

Recipe adapted from Gourmet Traveller Magazine Sept 2010 issue through Almost Bourdain.

Gourmet Traveller - "This chicken is fried twice (or if you like, thrice) to become extra crisp. Toss it through the sauce after it's fried - thoroughly messy, but seriously good.

Ingredients :
Vegetable oil, for deep-frying
2 kg chicken pieces (drumsticks and wings)
Thinly sliced spring onion, to serve

Batter:
115 g plain flour, sieved
2 tbsp cornflour
1 eggwhite, lightly beaten

Chilli sauce:
2 tbsp each soy sauce and rice vinegar
1 tbsp honey
2 tsp sesame oil
2 tsp sugar
10 g ginger (about 2 cm) piece, finely grated
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
65 gm (1/4 cup) gochujang

Method :
1. For chilli sauce, combine ingredients in a large bowl, season to taste with freshly ground pepper and set aside.
2. For batter, whisk flours, eggwhite and 170 ml cold water in bowl. Season to taste and set aside.
3. Preheat oil in a deep-sided saucepan to 180C. Dip chicken pieces in batter and deep-fry in batches, turning occasionally until light golden (5-6 minutes). Drain on absorbent paper until cooled slightly (10-15 minutes).
4. Deep-fry chicken again, in batches, until crisp and deep golden (6-8 minutes), drain on absorbent paper, then add to sauce, toss to coat and serve hot topped with spring onion.

Verdict?
These are truely finger licking good although was salty, dear sister added a pinch of salt to marinate the chicken as she afraid the chicken might taste bland but ended up, too salty hahaha.... However, none of us can stop at one, we kept going back for more as the chicken is simply unresistable good, truely a keeper.

Sponge Pancake & Awards

2010-12-02T07:00:00.004+08:00

Hi Hi I am back! Do you miss me? I guess so (hahaha...thick skin again) cos I missed all of you a lot especially my favourite blogs and the blogs that I always visit. And I would like to thank you my dear readers and friends that kindly left so many messages in my blog during my absence. For those enquiries, I promise I will try to reply ASAP.

I was back to Singapore last Thursday but my schedule was so jam packed after touched down. There are so many things to clear, works and even personal stuff. Worst of all, dear daughter has been sick since the day of departure to Japan, until back to Singapore and now, still in the midst of recovering :( . I brought her to consult paediatrician 3 times just within 2 weeks, spent S$300+, 1/2 of my kitchen aid gone *sob sob*. Then followed by me, I was unwell probably due to lack of rest, busy schedule but luckily, my recovery was fast.

To keep my promise for submitting this sponge pancake to the contest from Table for Two or More which the dateline is 2 Dec 2010, I had to jump queue (I have too many backlog to clear) for this posting. I cooked it during my medical leave (that's why the sponge pancake looks like from Africa, pls excuse a patient :P ok ok I know is a lousy excuse heeheehee... but I promised, the look doesn't affect the taste at all), set an alarm to wake up at 6am to write this post so that I can submit before the deadline :P. Wendy, are you touched by me? Although my sponge pancake is not creative at all and won't be giving you a "WOW", but my sincerity of supporting your contest is as high as sky (hahaha... ok ok I know I am too exaggerated)!

I made 2 versions. One is bak kwa (BBQ pork) with pork floss.

Another one is ham & cheese.

Ingredients :
2 eggs
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp all purpose flour
A bit of butter for frying

Method :
1. Separate the eggs and beat egg whites until frothy and add in sugar and beat until medium stiff peaks (egg whites has a very droopy hook and doesn't slide off the bowl).
2. Put in egg yolks and mix.
3. Sift in flour (just use a coffee strainer) and fold into the eggs.
4. Heat a 9 inch pan on medium and put in 1/2 tsp butter. Swirl it around to coat and pour the excess into batter.
5. Lightly fold the batter to incorporate.
6. Turn heat to medium low (very small fire on outer ring or just use low) and pour in all the batter. Put toppings as desired.
7.Cover with lid and cook until sides look golden, and center of pancake is cooked (doesn't stick to fingers)
8. Flip into half or just flip onto plate.

Verdict?
Even I didnt use full 2 tbsp of sugar, I still felt the pancake was a bit too sweet for me, will definitely need to reduce the sugar slightly in future. Dear daughter initially said she likes the bak kwa pork floss version more, awhile later she changed her mind that she prefer ham & cheese version. For me, I love both version of the sponge pancake, both are simply delicious that I cannot decide which to be my favourite.

There is a good news waiting for me when I vet through the comments left in my blog. Zoe, thank you so much for sharing the 2 awards with me, I felt so honor and happy, and of course greatly appreciated!

Orange Butter Cake

2010-11-25T14:30:00.001+08:00

This was baked quite sometimes ago. I have been thinking of baking this orange butter cake, and since I need a flavour from my maid agent to counsel my helper so I took this opportunity to bake this cake for her as a gift :).

Ingredients: (for one 8" x 3.5" x 3" and 12 cupcakes)
225g butter (softened)
200g castor sugar (if you prefer to have sweeter cake, you may increase to 225g but I reduced to 180g)
225g self raising flour (sifted)
4 eggs
1 small orange (I used medium size naval orange)

Method:
1. Wash a whole orange, cover with water in a small pot, bring to boil and then turn fire down to simmer orange slowly for about 20-30 minutes.
2. Cut cooked orange and remove the seeds and blend it, set aside to cool.
3. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.
4. Add eggs, one at a time to beat till well blended
5. Add the orange pulp, mix it well
6. Fold in flour and gently mix it. As oranges and eggs vary in size, if you feel that the final batter is too soft (ie, not dropping consistency per normal butter cake), please don't hesitate to add 1 or 2 more tbsp of sifted flour to bring it to the right consistency.
7. Pour batter into a greased and lined 8 inch cake tin.
8. Baked in a preheated oven at 170C for 40-45 mins or till skewer comes out clean.
9. Let cake cool in the pan for about 5mins before turning it out on a cooling rack

Note:
1. If the cake turn brown before cook, then use aluminium foil to cover and continue with the baking
2. The orange puree MUST be room temperature when you add it to the cake mixture, so you can prepare the orange puree in advance, does not have to be necessarily just before you start baking (I did it one day in advance, I chilled the orange puree in the fridge and brought out to room temperature).

Verdict?
The cake is soft and moist, I ate once when the cake was just cooled, the texture is so fine like melt in my mouth kind. The cupcakes were shared among my family and colleagues, all given thumbs up. The only "negative" comment for the cake was a bit too sweet, probably due to the sweet orange.

Japanese Dark Pearl Chocolate Chiffon Cake

2010-11-22T11:00:00.005+08:00

Chiffon cake is a cake that I am low in successful rate and I would like to have much more improvement so that I can bake a nice chiffon cake confidentally any time I like. So I decided to practise again and at the same time, I can submit this bake to Aspiring Bakers to give Small Small Baker some support again.

I first saw this Japanese dark pearl chocolate cake in Aunty Yochana's blog but this recipe went into my To Bake List was only after I saw it again at Honey Bee Sweets, her descriptions of the cake was tempting me so much then.

I expected to have some access batter to bake into cupcakes since the recipe stated for 23" to 25" chiffon cake pan and the size I using was 20". My heart sank when I pour the batter into my 20" chiffon cake pan and was filled just nicely. This means that I might have deflated the batter that's why yield lesser batter. I was disappointed but I popped the batter in the oven, thinking that even if the cake turn kuih alike texture, it will still taste nice.

To my surprise, the cake was rising high in the oven, I was a bit relief when seeing that. I was anxiously waiting for the cake to cool down, used big fan to blow on the cake to speed up the cooling process. Firstly I can't wait to see the cake after unmould, another reason was I need to catch the last daylight before sunset for photo taking. The top of the cake was a bit cracked but I was so delighted when seeing a nicely baked chiffon cake after unmould. The cake was almost perfectly baked and nicely unmoulded, the texture was so spongy that it will bounched back after I pressed hard. Horray! Finally another success on chiffon cake after banana chiffon.

Recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients :
Cocoa Batter:
150g chocolate - chopped
90ml water
100g corn oil
25g cocoa powder
65g cake flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
115 g egg yolks (I used 7 egg yolks)

Egg White Batter:
225g egg white (I used 7 egg whites)
100g castor sugar (I reduced to 90g)
a pinch of salt
1/8 tsp of cream of tartar

Method:
1. Melt chocolate and stir till smooth. Add in cornoil slowly, stirring all the time till smooth. Fold in the rest of the ingredients and stir till smooth.
2. Whisk egg white with cream of tartar till frothy, then pour in sugar gradually and then add in the salt. whiks till a soft peak is formed.
3. Fold egg white into the egg yolk mixture and then pour into a 23" to 25" round chiffon cake pan. (I used 20")
4. Bake at 175C for about 45 mins or till cooked.
5. Invert cake onto a cooling rack until completely cooled. Remove cake from pan and serve.

Verdict?
The cake is soft, moist, rich and chocolaty, taste even more heavenly when I spread with nutella. Next time, I will coat this cake with chocolate ganache, definitely a keeper.

Cream Cheese Chiffon Cake

2010-11-19T15:30:00.003+08:00

I had baked a few chiffon cakes previously but not all posted out as I am too shameful to share my failure hahaha....I always wanted to bake chiffon cake again, despite failure for most of my chiffon cakes but I believe I need to practice more to achieve better result. So, this is my another practical for chiffon, my department girls love cheesecake so I chose to bake a cheese chiffon cake for them.

As my fear came true, the cake didn't come out successful. There was a hollow at the left side of the cake, you can actually view from the top surface of the cake.

But this was still much better than my previous bake that had a gigantic hollow in the cake which collapsed the whole cake :P. Tata... here are the photos of my previous bake, despite the failure and ugly look, the cake still tasted soft and nice.

So comparing both, I am considered the latter one near to success!

p.s. I have just baked another chiffon, stay tune for the result :D.

Small Smaller Baker is hosting a monthly baking event - Aspiring Bakers and November challenge will be chiffon cake. Although this bake was not successful but I will still submit to SSB to give her some support. If you are interested to find out more about Aspiring Bakers or would like to join in the fun, pls hop over here.

Recipe adapted from Baking Mum.

Ingredients : (for 20" chiffon cake pan)
A:
60g milk
40g cream cheese
25g butter

B:
65g flour (sifted)

C:
4 egg yolks

D:
4 egg whites
90g sugar
pinch of salt
1/8 tsp cream of tartar

Method
1. Preheat oven 170˚C.
2. Cook (A) over double-boiler until well blended and thickens. Remove from double-boiler and let it cool down.
3. Add (C) into cooled down cheese mixture and mix until well combined.
4. Fold in (B) and mix until smooth.
5. Beat egg whites until frothy, add cream of tartar and beat till soft peaks. Add salt and sugar and beat till stiff peaks.
6. Fold 1/2 of the egg whites into cheese mixture, gently with a rubber spatula until just blended.
7. Pour cheese mixture (step 6) into the rest of egg whites, fold it gently with rubber spatula until blended.
8. Put batter into a 9-inch chiffon cake pan, bang the pan on a hard surface to release the bubbles and bake for 35 - 40 minutes.
9. When the cake is cooked, invert the cake to cool. Remove the cake from the cake pan when it is completely cool

Verdict?
The texture of the cake is pillowy soft with very mild cheese flavour, my department girls likes the cake a lot.

Elvis Presley's Whipping Cream Pound Cake

2010-11-17T15:00:00.002+08:00

This is the cake that I had bookmarked immediately when see it at Honey Bee Sweets. Some may realised that I baked a lot of recipes from Bee Bee, yes I admitted cos I find that we have similar taste bud so for those bakes that she raved about it, I have no hesitate to give a try.

This recipe has been in waitlist since I 1st saw it on July 2010, reason being I was hunting around for Horizon whipping cream which highly recommended by Bee Bee. However I have no luck of finding it, I went to a few cold storage and even market place but I can only found Horizon sour cream so I gave up, I just used the whipping heavy cream that I bought from one of the bakery supply store.

Recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients: (for 9" x 5" cake pan)
1/2 cup (113.4g) quality unsalted butter, room temperature
1.5 cups (145g) Hong Kong flour, sifted (I used cake flour)
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (225g) caster sugar (I reduced to 180g)
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup (236.6ml) quality heavy whipping cream

Method:
1.In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy.
2.Sift the cake flour and salt together and set aside for use later.
3.Preheat the oven to 180 and grease a loaf pan (9" by 5") and line with parchment.
4.Crack an egg in to the butter mixture one at a time and mix well before adding in another.
5.Add vanilla extract and mix well again. Then add 1/4 of the cake flour in and mix well. Now add in 1/3 of the whipping cream and mix. Repeat this, alternating flour and cream till all is mixed in.
6.Pour the batter into the prepared pan and place in the oven to bake. Bake for at least 30 minutes or till the tester comes out with moist crumbs. DO NOT over bake as it will make the cake slightly dry.

Verdict :
I believed I had over whipped the batter that caused the compact and wet look texture. However the cake still tasted very delicious, dense, moist, fine, tender and melt in your mouth but a bit too sweet for me even I had reduced the sugar, next time will need to reduce further. The cake finished very fast, I think within 3 days. Definitely a keeper.

Chocolate Dulche de Leche Mousse & Lemon Cheese Cake

2010-11-15T10:00:00.005+08:00

This birthday cake was made for one of my department gal, she gave birth the next day (2 weeks in advance of her EDD (estimate delivery date))after got the cake from me. Glad that she was still on time to taste the cake and love the cake. I combined all her favourites to come out this cake, she was craving for sour food, cheesecake and chocolate.

Ingredients : (for 6" cake tin)
For Base:
80gm digestive biscuits - blended
30gm butter - melted

Mix all the biscuit base ingredients together and press into a 6" springform tin. Baked at preheated oven at 200C for 10 mins and cool aside then chill in the refrigerator while preparing the filling.

Lemon Cheesecake : adapted from here
250g cream cheese, room temperature
50g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g lemon cooking chocolate, chopped
60g whipping cream
30g cake flour
1 tsp lemon extract

Method :
1. Preheat the oven to 160°C. Pour some water to the base of the baking tray to create a water-bath. Wrap the base of the cake pan with aluminum foil to protect the water from sipping in.
2. In a mixing bowl, beat the cream cheese and sugar till fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and beat again till combined.
3. Add chocolate mixture and stir well. Lastly, sift in the cake flour and combine till mixture is smooth.
4. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan with the cookie base. Bake in the oven for 35 - 45 minutes. Making sure not to over bake, the center of the cake should still be a little "wobbly" when done.
5. Remove from oven and and set aside to cool.

Chocolate Dulce de Leche Mousse : adapted from here.
200ml whipping cream, cold
100g dulce de leche, cold
100g dark chocolate, chopped (melted the chocolate over double boiling method)
1 tsp gelatin
1 tbsp water

Method :
1. Measure water into a bowl and sprinkle in the gelatin (without stirring with a spoon). Set aside to allow the gelatin grains to swell (10 mins) before setting the bowl over a pot of simmering hot water. Stir with a spoon and once the gelatin melts, remove the bowl from the pot and set aside to cool to room temperature.
2. Put dulce de leche into mixing bowl and put in a bit of cream. On low speed, mix to combine, adding more gradually. When all the whipping cream has been added in, turn to high speed and beat until soft peaks.
3. Turn to low speed. Add in gelatin mixture slowly while beating, and beat until stiff.
4. Fold in the melted chocolate and mix well.

Assembly :
1. Pour the chocolate DDL mousse onto the lemon cheesecake. You may reserve one cup of the mousse for decoration purpose.
2. Chill the cake in the fridge for at least 4 hours, unmould the cake and decoration as desire.

Banana & Oreo Muffins

2010-11-11T14:30:00.008+08:00

I will be flying away for holiday during this weekend and back a week later, need to fly again immediately for my business trip. I had quite a nos of scheduled backlog so you will still seeing my postings during the period of my absent but I won't be responding to the comments and visit your blog. Hope you won't miss me much hahaha.... thick skin me leh :P.

Dear daughter is so excited about this holiday, she has been counting down on the day of departure. When she got to know that we are going to Disneyland Tokyo, she went around to tell her classmates. I was so surprised to know that they as 6 yrs old kids, already know how to share among themselves about the holidays. Dear daughter told me that some of her friends are going to Hawaii, Australia, Korea etc. I was thinking, gosh, when I was their age, my peer don't talk about all these, anyway during my time traveling was not common at all.

Back to my bake, I received sms from S, a mother of dear daughter's ex schoolmate, dear daughter was invited to join their family for an outing. So in order to thank her for bringing dear daughter out, I decided to bake something for the family. I took this opportunity to try out this banana & oreo muffin that is in my To Bake List :).

I would like to thanks 我的厨房乐园for sharing this award with me, I am very happy and greatly appreciated. Again, my dear friend, thank you so much for awarding me.

Recipe adapted from Cuisine Paradise and I doubled up the recipe so I can bring some to office too.

Ingredients: (make 16 muffins cup size 5.5cm wide and 4cm height)
220g butter, soften
180 sugar
220g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
4 egg
4 tbsp condensed milk
3 medium banana, mashed with fork
12 - 16 pieces of oreo cookies
1 tsp vanilla essence / extract

Method:
1. Sift the flour, baking power and baking soda together and set aside.
2. Remove the cream from the cookies, place the cookies in a ziplock bag, use a rolling pin, crashed the cookie into fine crumbs.
3. Cream butter and sugar with electric beater till light and fluffy(about 3 minutes on medium speed).
4. Add in egg one at a time and beat till the mixture is well combine without any egg trace.
5. Add mashed banana, vanilla essence and condensed milk into the butter mixture and give it a quick whisk.
6. Lower the mixer speed, add flour mixture and blend till the mixture become smooth.
7. Stir in the oreo cookies crumbs till combined, scoop the mixture into prepared muffin cups to 3/4 full.
8. Top the muffin batter with oreo cookies (or some extra banana slices if you like to), bake in preheated 180 degree oven for about 20 - 25 minutes or till a toothpick inserted in the center and comes out clean.

Verdict?
Like what Ellena had described, the muffin is rather soft and moist that resemble cake like texture. Banana goes very well with oreo too. S sms to tell me that the muffin is very delicious, my colleagues shared the same view and the muffin tasted great even when it is cooled.

Chocolate Nutella Dulce de Leche Mousse Cake

2010-11-08T11:20:00.003+08:00

This is the birthday cake I made for my nephew, I do not want to make him a usual chocolate mousse cake so I combined both recipes that I had used before and came out this.

Ingredients : for 7" cake
For Base:
80gm oreo cookies - blended
30gm butter - melted

Mix all the biscuit base ingredients together and press into a 6" springform tin. Baked at preheated oven at 200C for 10 mins and cool aside then chill in the refrigerator while preparing the filling.

Dulce De Leche Mousse : Adapted from here
200ml whipping cream, cold
100g dulce de leche, cold
1 tsp gelatin
1 tbsp water

1. Measure water into a bowl and sprinkle in the gelatin (without stirring with a spoon). Set aside to allow the gelatin grains to swell (10 mins) before setting the bowl over a pot of simmering hot water. Stir with a spoon and once the gelatin melts, remove the bowl from the pot and set aside to cool to room temperature.
2. Put dulce de leche into mixing bowl and put in a bit of cream. On low speed, mix to combine, adding more gradually. When all the whipping cream has been added in, turn to high speed and beat until soft peaks.
3. Turn to low speed. Add in gelatin mixture slowly while beating, and beat until stiff.

For Nutella Chocolate Mousse : adapted from here
1 egg yolks
15g sugar
40g melted butter
50g dark chocolate
100g nutella
150ml whipped cream
1 tsp gelatin powder + 1 tbsp water

Method :
1. Measure water into a bowl and sprinkle in the gelatin (without stirring with a spoon). Set aside to allow the gelatin grains to swell (10 mins) before setting the bowl over a pot of simmering hot water. Stir with a spoon and once the gelatin melts, remove the bowl from the pot and set aside to cool to room temperature.
2. Melt dark chocolate and nutella over a pot of simmering hot water and stir till mix well and set aside to cool down to room temperature.
3. Whisk the egg yolk and sugar on a double boiler until pale in color and thicken. Mix in the melted butter.
4. Add the melted dark chocolate & nutella to the egg yolk mixture, mix until well combine.
5. Add in the gelatin solution and mix well.
6. Fold in the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture.

Chocolate Ganache Topping :
100g chocolate, chopped
60g whipping cream
20g butter

1. Boil the chocolate, whipping cream and butter until mix well and smooth. Set aside for cool slightly.

Assembly :
1. Alternate scoop the DLL mousse and Nutella Chocolate Mousse onto the cookie base until fill up 3/4 of the cake tin. Left one cup of DLL mouse for decoration purpose if desire.
2. Chill the mousse cake in the fridge and about 4 hours.
3. Bring the mousse cake out from the fridge and unmould the cake.
4. Pipe the DLL mousse at the edge of the cake and pour in the chocolate ganache and chill the cake until serving.

Roasted Chicken

2010-11-04T12:35:00.002+08:00

I have been cooking for some of the Sunday dinners, one of the dishes that I love to serve will be roasted chicken. This recipe is the roasted chicken that you can find in the chicken rice store, original recipe is using oil frying but I used oven to roast it. I am trying to minimize deep frying in my house (even though my helper can help me to deep fry but I just dislike the feeling of the whole house is so oily and smoky after each deep frying.

I am also trying to "convert" my MIL to use oven to bake the fried chicken wings instead of deep frying. Although the result is not as crispy as using oil to deep fry but still crispy and tasty, more healthy too. I love seeing the oil dripping down from the chicken when baking in the oven, feel so happy that the oil didn't go into my body :P.

Back to the roasted chicken, I used the sauce to braise some hard boiled eggs since dear daughter and myself love braised eggs. Dear daughter is crazy over hard boiled eggs, one of her tea break will be hard boiled egg if she is hunting for food. Sometimes she can eat as many as 3 eggs per day but only the whites, she will discard the yolk since is too dry for her (she is so alike of me, I dislike the egg yolk of hard boiled egg too :P). I cooked the chicken rice using ready-mix sauce to go with the roasted chicken, easy and fast and yummy :).

Recipe Adapted from Kitchen Caper

Ingredients :
1 Chicken about 1.2kg

Marinate
1/2 cup dark and light soya sauce
1 tbsp chopped ginger
1 tbsp chopped garlic
2 tbsp 5 spice powder
3 tbsp honey
2 tbsp hua-tiao wine
1 tbsp sesame oil
3 tbsp salt (cut to 2 tbsp)
1/2 tsp pepper
1.5l water

Method :
1. Bring to boil all the marinate
2. Add cleaned chicken and boil briefly for about 2 mins, turning the chicken to ensure that all parts are marinated.
3. Off the fire and leave chicken in the pot to soak, turn it once in a while. Season for about 2 hours.
4. Drain the chicken and leave to dry for a while.
5. Roast chicken at pre-heat oven at 180C for 40-50 mins or knife goes in to the thickest part of thigh and water from chicken comes out clear.
6. Let it cool before cutting & serving with a mixture of soya sauce, sesame oil and water.

Verdict?
The chicken is too salty, I will definitely need to further reduce the salt to 1 tbsp or less if I am going to cook it again. The meat is quite tender even for breast meat but the skin is not as crispy as the oil fry version and in all, still quite delicious.

Baked Durian Cheesecake

2010-11-01T11:00:00.004+08:00

I have been very busy for the past few days, guess this busy period will be continued for the next 3 months as one of my department gal has gone for maternity leaves since last week so one manpower down.

I hardly have times to visit blogs for the past few days, I can only read/scan through the blogs while I was in public transport using iphone, totally no time for me to leave comments. I was too tire after reaching home and now almost sleep throughout the night. As usual, my weekend are always jam pack, full of visiting, outing and also sending dear daughter for her classes so when I have times, just wanna lay on the sofa or bed to rest or take a nap.

I am also getting quite lazy recently, no time plus no mood to bake, I didn't bake for about 3 weeks, luckily I still have some backlogs that scheduled for posting.

This durian cheesecake was for my MIL's birthday that I just baked last week. I have 2 boxes of durian meat in the freezer so I decided to use it for my MIL's birthday.

I had reduced the ingredients to fit into 6" cake pan and did some adjustment but the batter was too much that almost filled up the 6" cake pan. Due to the insufficient space to leave for the topping, my durian cheesecake yield a thin layer of topping which is ok for me since I love the filling much more than the topping :P.

When I whipped up some durian cream for decoration, I forgot that there will be a lot of fiber from the durian meat. It was so difficult to pipe cos the durian fiber kept stuck in the pipping tip, the cream that squeezed out from the pipping tip cannot form a nice pattern, next time I will sift the blended durian meat 1st before mixing into the whipped cream.

The cheesecake was soft when sliced and actually quite messy even I had chilled the cake overnight, probably due to I have increased the amount of durian meat and reduced slightly the cream cheese. For the sliced cake that looked so neat, because I freezed it and sliced it next day for photo shooting.

Recipe adapted from Aunty Yochana.

For Base:
80gm oreo cookies - blended
30gm butter - melted

Mix all the biscuit base ingredients together and press into a 6" springform tin. Baked at preheated oven at 200C for 10 mins and cool aside then chill in the refrigerator while preparing the filling.

Filling:
350gm durian meat
250gm cream cheese (soften)
55gm sugar
25gm cornflour
120ml coconut milk
70ml whipping cream
2 eggs (beaten)

Topping:
100gm durian meat
40gm fresh milk
30gm whipping cream
15gm sugar
1 egg

For Decoration :
100g durian meat - blended
150g whipping cream - whipped

Mix both together until well mixed.

Method for Filling:
1.Cream cream cheese and sugar till well combined. Add in corn flour follow by the rest of the ingredients. Mix till smooth.
2.Pour cream cheese durian mixture onto the chilled biscuit base and then steam bake at 160C for about 50 to 60 mins.
3.Mix the topping ingredients together and pour on top of the hot baked cheese cake. Bake for about 15 to 20 mins.
4.Leave to cool on a cooling rack and then chill for at least 4 - 5 hours before serving.
5.Decorate as desire and chill for at least 2 hours before serving.

Verdict?
The cheesecake is rich and creamy, full of durian flavour. The topping tasted like durian kuih, the durian cream tasted good only if you tasted it 1st before the durian cheesecake and topping, if not it will tast too bland. Even the oreo cookies base also tasted great, a bit crunchy since I baked the base.
If you are a durian and cheesecake lover, you will definitely fall in love with this cheesecake. I asked dear husband how is the cake, he answered "I am serving myself 2nd slice, so what do you think?" :D. Those that tasted this cheesecake given a thumb up excluded dear daughter, she wants a ice cream cake :(.
Definitely a keeper but only can indulge once in a long period cos the smell of the durian is so strong that stay long period in the fridge and even in the house.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Muffins

2010-10-29T10:00:00.004+08:00

When I saw this chocolate cream cheese muffin at 人生加油站, I was convinced by her raved about this muffin and decided this must go into my To Bake List.

Recipe adapted from 人生加油站 and 平平凡凡，简简单单.

Ingredients : for about 6 muffin
80g butter
50g brown sugar
2 eggs
60ml fresh milk
140g cake flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder

Cream Cheese Filling :
80g cream cheese (soften)
1 tbsp icing sugar

Method :
1. Sift cake flour, cocoa powder and baking powder together and set aside.
2. For cream cheese filling, use spoon to mix well the cream cheese and icing sugar till soft and smooth.
3. Cream the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.
4. Add in egg one at a time and beat till the mixture is well combine without any egg trace.
5. Add in 1/2 of the flour mixture into the egg mixture and mix well.
6. Add in fresh milk, mix well and add in the balance of the flour and mix well.
7. Scoop the chocolate mixture into prepared muffin cups to 1/2 full, scoop a spoon of cream cheese filling and scoop the chocolate mixture till 80% full.
8. Bake in preheated 150 degree oven for about 20 - 25 minutes or till the skewer comes out clean.

Verdict?
As I baked the muffin late at night, I only got to eat the muffin the next day morning. I tasted when it was cooled which I wasn't quite impressed with the taste. However I changed my mind when the muffin was eaten when warmed. The muffin is soft, moist and chocolaty, taste delicious when every bite with melted and soften cream cheese, in my opinion this muffin definitely must eat only when is warmed. I think the cream cheese filling was a little insufficient but my department girls thought it was just nice, they like it very much and gave a thumb up. But I will still increase the amount of cream cheese filling if I am going to bake this recipe again.

Chocolate Chips Sour Cream Marble Cake

2010-10-25T11:00:00.005+08:00

This is not a donut, if it is, it will be a 10.5" gigantic donut :P.

When I saw this chocolate chips sour cream marble cake from Honey Bee Sweets, from the way she described the cake I know that I just have to bake this cake.

If you are a loyal reader of HBS, you will definitely know that she loves and uses a lot of Valrohna chocolate. She kept mentioning how good is valrohna chocolate, tempting me to buy it . Yes the temptation is great but it still took me a while to finally decided to make the purchase. Firstly of course is the price, it costs much more than other baking chocolates. Secondly, the baking supply stores that I always frequent (nearby my house and office) do not carry Valrohna.

My resistant of temptation finally came to the end after seeing this chocolate chips sour cream marble cake post, Bee Bee had reminded me again on Valrohna. So I went straight to the baking supply store that carry this brand to make the purchase, I bought both 1 kg chocolate block and cocoa powder (despite I still have 4 boxes of Hershey cocoa powder stocked in my cabinet :p) and some other baking ingredients, I left the place with a "hole" in my pocket but fully satisfied :).

Recipe adapted from Honey Bee Sweets, I reduced the ingredients to fit my 10.5" bundt cake pan.

Ingredients :
Chocolate Paste
2.5 tbsp cocoa powder (I used Valrohna, feel free to use any brand you prefer)
2.5 tbsp hot water

Cake Batter
210g unsalted butter, room temperature (I used salted as I took the wrong one)
275g caster sugar (this amount of sugar had slightly reduced from HBS's recipe)
4 medium eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
175g sour cream
350g all purpose flour
2 1/3 tsp baking powder
1/6 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt (I omit since I used salted butter)
1/3 cup chocolate chips (I used 55.5% cocoa)

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C. The generously grease a 10.5" bundt pan.
2. In a small bowl, mix the cocoa powder and the hot water together to make a smooth paste.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Blend in the eggs and then vanilla. Then add in the sour cream, and scraping the bottom of the mixing bowl to make sure it is evenly combined.
4. Fold in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and blend well. Lastly, mix in the chocolate chips into the batter and mix well.
5. Remove 1/3 of the batter and mix in the chocolate paste in to it.
6. Spoon in big scoops of vanilla batter into the bundt pan and alternating with some spoons on chocolate batter as well to create the marble effect. Repeat till all the batter has been put in.
7. Place in the oven to bake for 35 to 40 minutes (I should have baked for 30 mins since I used reduced the ingredients to fit 10.5"), depending on your oven. Bake till golden brown and the tester comes out clean. If the top of the cake browns too quickly, cover with foil first until done.
8. Once baked, remove from oven and let cool on rack for 15 minutes, then remove from pan and let cool completely.

Verdict?
The cake is just as delicious as what Bee Bee had described, it tasted soft, velvet, moist except a little bit dry at the edge that probably I had slightly over baked the cake. The cake tasted even better the next day, this cake can only survived in my and dear mum's house until the next day :).
Valrohna cocoa powder indeed gives the deep, dark, intense chocolate flavor to the cake. It tasted a little bitter to me when bite into the 55.5% cocoa chocolate chips but it still tasted good. Consider I am a milk chocolate lover that never fancy on dark/bitter chocolate, I am starting to love bitter chocolate in my bakes, it balance off the sweetness of the cake that tasted simply irresistible. My family loves this cake a lot too, even my mum also kept praising on it, definitely a keeper.

Dulce de Leche Cheesecake

2010-10-20T11:00:00.003+08:00

I feel like baking a cheesecake since dear sister likes cheesecake a lot, I wanted to bake something with Dulce de Leche so went to search my DLL recipes folder and got this DLL cheesecake.

Recipe adapted from My Kitchen Snippets with minor modification.

Ingredients : (for 6" to 7" cake pan)
Biscuit Base:
80g oreo cookies
30g melted butter

Filling :
250g cream cheese
4 tbsp of sour cream (I used 2 tbsp sour cream since I left with only 2tbsp)
4 tbsp of sugar (I reduced to 2 tbsp)
3 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla extract
4 tbsp of light cream (I used whipping cream)

some dulce de leche

Method :
1. Prepare a spring form pan and greased it with some butter. Pre-heat oven to 160 degree.
2. Blend the oreo cookies finely in a food processor and add in melted butter. Press firmly to the baking pan and set aside. (I used roller to crush the oreo)
3. Mix all the filling ingredients and blend until smooth. Pour the filling on top of the crust.
4. Drizzle some dulce de leche over the cheesecake filling then use a skewer to swirl the DDL around. (mine all sank in the bottom)
5. Bake in the pre-heated oven at 170C for 50-60 minutes or until the center of the filling set.
6. Cool complete and drizzle more dulce de leche on the top before serving.

Verdict?
The cake tasted creamy and smooth, lighter version of chicago-style cheesecake. The dulce de leche topping gives extra flavour to the cheesecake. All given thumbs up on this cake, dear sister and brother likes the cake a lot. My department gals were so excited when eating the cake, kept telling me is very yummy. One of the girl even wanna lick the plate, she said how she wish that I am selling the cake so she can order another slice immediately hahaha...

Cook and Feed with Love @ Peace Connect - My 2nd Blogger Meet Up

2010-10-18T10:00:00.003+08:00

Edith had suggested to us during our 1st blogger gathering that we can make our next blogger gathering more meaningful, cooking for the needs.With great responses from us, she went ahead to organise this event - cooking and feeding for the old folks near her place - with committee members of Josephine, Shirley and Zhouyuan. Through words of mouths, more bloggers and even friends and relatives of bloggers participating in this event.

These are the participating bloggers including the committee members :
Edith @ Precious Moments
Shirley @ Kokken69
Josephine @ Sugar & Everything Nice
Zhuoyuan (Baker Tan) @ Baking Library :
Jane @ Passionate About Baking
Judy @ A Busy Gran's Kitchen
Wendy @ Wens' Delight
Doris @ Tested and Tasted
Winnie @ Winnie Bakerz Corner
Christine @ Yummy Koh
Esther @ Baking on Cloud 9
Sheryl @ Sweet and Happy Ending
Eelin @ The batter Baker

Please hop over the blogs for for more photos and write up if you are interested.

The committee members had meeting, discussed and came out these low salt, low sugar and healthy dishes and churned out with the help of volunteers for the elderly @ Peace Connect :

Edith's Taukwa with Beansprouts
Josephine's Stir Fried Mixed Vegetables
Shirley's Braised Mushroom with Meat Sauce
Jane's Fried Bee Hoon
Zhuoyuan's Red Bean Soup

When Edith asked me which dish I would like to cook, I told her of course dessert since I can't cook well :P. I am afraid I might over cook the dishes, green veggie become yellow, tender pork become hard like rock hahaha...

I cooked pulau hitam (black glutinous rice dessert) and tau suan (split green beans dessert) before but not red bean soup,when I have craving, I simply request my mum to cook for me :P.

According to ZY, the red bean may need to cook for up to 2 hours or more to soften, soaking the red bean overnight will helps to fasten the process. I soaked the red bean overnight, woke up at 6am to cook the red bean soup since I need to leave the house at 9am plus. I put a porcelain spoon in the red bean soup to cook with it, this method can fasten the cooking too, the red bean soup was ready in about one hour. When I asked my mum to try the sweetness of the red bean soup, then I realised that I used the wrong red bean, instead of the small red bean that commonly use, I used the bigger version :P. Well, size doesn't matter, as long as it is still delicious heeheehee...

I am a lucky sister that having wonderful and helpful sister and brother. Both my late" wakers' sister and brother, one who volunteer to drive me there and one to look after my active daughter so that I can concentrate helping in the center, woke up early despite they only slept for little hours. However I was still late for the event, the time to meet up was 10.15am to 10.30am but I reached at about 10.45am when all the volunteers were inside a small room for the briefing from the Center Manager, Lucy. The journey from my mum's place (oh ya I stayed over at my mum on Fri night) to the center is about 20 mins but we took about an hour to reach. Beside the traffic jam due to car accident, dear brother's GPS failed to perform that took us more than 15 mins to hunt for the centre :(.

Beside cooking the dishes, we were helping to serve the elderly with the food. The elderly enjoyed the food so much and they were so happy, our effort were being appreciated as I can kept hearing the elderly saying thank you to us. I believed beside enjoying the food, they appreciated our accompany and effort too.

I am really glad that I was able to be part of this event, contributed a tiny bit of my effort to these needy elderly. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you Edith for her initiative to organise this meaningful event, thank you the committee members and the volunteers. And also happy to meet up again with blogger pals and also get to know some new friends - bloggers and non blogger. Looking forward for our next session, hopefully a yearly event and also our next gathering.

Peanut Butter Biscuits

2010-10-15T10:30:00.001+08:00

I woke up at 5am, having urge of baking something easy. I flipped through my To Bake List, I selected this peanut butter biscuits, only required 3 ingredients, simple and easy. I can start making it immediately unlike other recipes that I need to wait for the butter to soften.

Recipe adapted from Corner Cafe.

Ingredients : makes 40 biscuits of each weigh about 9-10g
260g (1 cup) smooth peanut butter
170g (3/4 cup) caster sugar (I reduced to 100g)
1 egg

Method :
1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Line baking sheets with baking paper.
2. Combine peanut butter, sugar and egg in a mixing bowl and mix well.
3. Roll dough into balls of about 10g each (or 20g each for bigger biscuits, about 1 tbsp).
4. Place balls onto lined baking sheet about 5cm apart, then flatten each ball lightly with a fork.
5. Bake for about 15 minutes or until browned lightly. (my biscuits still looked a bit pale after 15 mins baking so I baked additional 5 mins but the biscuits turned a bit charred after 3 mins of baking so I quickly removed the biscuits from oven.)
6. Stand biscuits 5 minutes before lifting onto cooling racks to cool.

Verdict?
When I sent in the biscuits to the oven to bake only for a few mins, the strong peanut butter aroma immediately filled up the whole house, smell really very nice! The biscuits tasted delicious and addictive, I brought more than half portion to my mum's place and was finished in mins :D, mostly by dear brother. This is an easy and simple recipe that yield fantastic result, definitely a keeper.

Steamed Glutinous Rice

2010-10-11T10:00:00.008+08:00

My family loves the steamed glutinous rice that I cooked for them. As glutinous rice is not easy to digest and dear husband has sensitive stomach, so I seldom cook this dish (well, in fact I seldom cook also lah, I bake more often instead heeheehee...).

We went Giant supermarket for groceries shopping on Sunday morning after sending dear daughter to her enrichment class. We had our breakfast at the food court, I dunno what food to eat so finally, I bought a small packet of steamed glutinous rice. I let dear husband tasted some and he told me that the steamed glutinous rice that I cooked previously was so so much better :D.

Since dear husband is craving for it, of course I need to cook for him right :). So I cooked the steamed glutinous rice using the same recipe for our Sunday dinner and on top of that, I cooked additional for him to bring to office for his staff next morning as per his requested. I brought a small portion to my office for my department gals as well.

Ingredients: (for 15 to 20 pax)
6 tbsp chopped garlic
15 shallots (sliced)
250g dried shrimps (washed) - I soaked for 1 hrs + to soften the dried shrimps a bit
1.5kg Glutinous Rice (soaked overnight) -I soaked for about 13 hrs +, I woke up at 5am+ so I soaked it and cooked at 6pm+)
15 pcs preserved Chinese mushrooms (washed and soak overnight to soften, discard stems and sliced thinly) - I just soaked for 2-3 hrs
5 chinese sausage (sliced thinly)
5 taiwan sausage (sliced thinly)
400g chicken fillet (sliced into stripes)
250g pork belly (slice thinly)
3 cup water (I used the water soaked with mushrooms)

Seasonings:
6 tbsp Dark Soya sauce
6 tbsp Oyster Sauce
3 tbsp Dark Sweet Sauce
6 tbsp Sesame oil
3 tbsp Chinese Rice Wine
6 tbsp chinese cooking wine
some pepper

Garnishes:
choice of toasted peanuts, spring onions (chopped), red chili (sliced)or fried shallots.

Method:
1. Wash and drained the soaked glutinous rice.
2. Heat up a wok, add in oil, followed by garlic and shallots. Fry for about 2minutes till fragrant.
3. Add in dried shrimps, fry for another 3minutes till nicely golden brown. (I fried till the dried shrimps became cripsy, gave crunchiness when eating the rice, yummy)
4. Add in the meat, sausage and mushroom.
5. Add in Seasoning, followed by rice. Mix.
6. lastly, add in water, Mix and remove wok from the flame.
7. Scoop rice mix into a dish for steaming.
8. Steam over high heat for 30 to 40 mins, depending on how u prefer your rice, (soft or chewy)
9. Garnish and serve.

Verdict?
This dish is well recieving by all, those that have tasted it. My husband said the glutinous rice is so addictive that he kept craving for more. All his staff and my department girls gave thumbs up, said is no. 1 yummilious lol. Some even suggested that I should open a stall and sell it and some commented that a lot of "liao" (ingredients). Both me and dear husband think that the glutinous rice tasted even better the next day, more sticky and chewy.

Lemon Yogurt Cake

2010-10-08T10:00:00.001+08:00

This cake was baked when my nephew came to my house to stay over weekend. He was very interested and persistant to try out baking so I decided to pick one easy recipe for him . Since I had many lemons to clear, this lemon yogurt cake fit nicely into my requirements.

I used the 8" x 3.5" x 3" cake pan that yield shorter cake. If you prefer taller care, feel free to use smaller cake pan.

Recipe adapted from 橘色陽光下.

Ingredients :
Wet Ingredients :
4 eggs
115g yogurt original flavour (I used 1 bottle which is 140g)
1 lemon zest (from 1 whole lemon)
1 tbsp lemon juice
110g butter (soften in room temperature)
110g castor sugar (I reduced to 100g)

Beat all the above ingredients till welll combined.

Dry Ingredients :
150g cake flour
1.5 tsp baking powder

Sift the above dry ingredients.

Lemon Syrup :
1 tbsp icing sugar
2 tbsp lemon juice

Stir to mix well and set aside for later use.

Method :
1. Fold in the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, careful not to be overfold.
2. Pour the cake batter to the cake pan and bake at pre-heat oven at 180C for 35 - 40 mins.
3. Remove the cake from the oven and drizzle with lemon syrup.

Verdict?
The cake is refreshing, light, moist, soft and compact. Tasted much like lemon butter cake that I baked sometimes ago but for personal preference, I will prefer lemon butter cake for its buttery taste and crumb, fluffier texture.

Zebra Butter Cake

2010-10-04T10:00:00.002+08:00

My parents-in-law are not cake lover but they love butter cake, if I bake butter cake it will finish real fast.

When I saw this zebra butter cake, I immediately told myself I must try it. The butter cakes that I baked previously mostly call for milk but this recipe calling for milk powder which made me curious how the cake will taste like.

Recipe adapted from 萍水相逢 and 平平凡凡，简简单单.

Ingredients :
( A )
200g butter
160g castor sugar
210g eggs (about 4)
250g all purpose flour
10g milk powder
1 tsp baking powder
5g salt
50g water

(B)
7g cocoa powder

Method :
1. Beat butter and sugar till white and fluffy.
2. Add in egg one at a time and beat till well combined after each addition.
3. Fold in sifted flour, baking powder, milk powder and salt, alternate with water until well mixed.
4. Seperate batter into two portions. In one portion of the batter, add in the cocoa powder and mix well.
5. Then spoon in plain and chocolate batter in the cake pan alternately until finish.
6. Bake at pre-heated oven at 160 degree for 45 - 50 mins or until skewer comes out clean.

Verdict?
The cake is moist and very soft, very fragrant with the buttery and milky smell. It is so addictive that I cannot stop at one slice, I wanted to have more but I had to control since I need to take care of my waist hahaha... Just by looking at the photos, I am missing this cake, wish I can have a slice now :P. Definitely a keeper.

Crispy Oatmeal Raisins Cookies

2010-10-01T10:00:00.007+08:00

Dear husband recently has gastric problem that he cannot let his stomach empty for too many hours. Thus, I decided to bake him some cookies for him to munch as snacks in the office. This cripsy oatmeal raisins cookies caught my attention cos of the words "oatmeal" which is sound much healthier :P and "crispy". Although I still like chewy cookies but crisy texture is my preference :).

However, the cookies finished during weekend before he can bring to office and I was so lazy to bake another batch, so dear, next time ok :P.

Recipe adapted from My Baking Cottage.

Ingredients:
8 tbsp rolled oats
120g plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
125g butter
120g granulated sugar (I reduced to 100g)
1 egg
3 tbsp raisins
1 tbsp milk

Method:
1. Sieve flour and baking powder.
2. Put oats, flour and baking powder together in a big bowl, add butter and mix together using the rubbing-in method or blend with pastry blender.
3. When mixture resembles breadcrumbs, add in sugar and raisins. Stir in egg.
4. Add 1 tbsp milk, continue mixing (The mixture should not be too wet. It should drop from a knife if shaken very sharply.
5. Drop the mixture by teaspoonful onto baking tin, allowing space for the cookies to spread.
6. Bake for 12-15 mins at 220°C (preheated) near the top of oven. Remove cookies while still warm.

Verdict?
The cookies turned a bit soft when cooled down, so I popped all back to the oven and baked for another 3 mins. Dunno why, the sugar didn't melt away, probably I need to use castor sugar instead but I find that not bad too as it gave the cookies extra crunchy bite. According to Aimei, the original name of this cookie is called butter oats cookie, she suggested to use the best butter for best result. Indeed, the cookies are crispy, fragrant and, a very delicious treats that I was not able to stop at one or two.

Sugar Roll

2010-09-27T10:00:00.001+08:00

Despite the failure of my 1st attempt of swiss roll, I didn't intend to give up. It took me quite a while to finally decide to give another try, I know I have to do it or else I will need to "out-source" if I have craving for swiss roll :P.

I love the sugar roll from Polar so this time round, I set my target at this.

The sponge cake layer was thin and more layer than Aunty Yochana's so I guess it was due to I was using bigger cake tray (11" x 14").

I believed I might not have handled the battle well enough during the folding process, the texture is not very fine although still spongy when I pressed it.

Both Butter Cream and Sugar Swiss Roll are adapted from Aunty Yochana.

Butter Cream
Ingredients : (yield about 150g butter cream)
33 gm sugar
14 gm water
35 gm egg white (from 1 egg)
100 gm butter

Method :
1. Boil sugar and water till thick but flowy.
2. Whisk egg white till fluffy, then pour in the hot syrup.
3. Continue whisking the egg white till cool.
4. Slowly add in the chilled butter and let it beat till thick and fluffy.

Sponge Cake :
Ingredients :
4 egg white
80 mg caster sugar (I reduced to 60g)
4 nos. egg yolk
1/4 tsp vanilla essence/extract
100 gm. cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
40 gm corn oil

Method :
1. Whisk egg white for awhile, then add in caster sugar gradually.
2. Drop in the egg yolk one by one into the beating egg white until finish and continue beating for another 3 mins.
3. Stop the machine, fold in the cake flour and baking powder.
4. Fold in corn oil and pour into a 11" x 14" tray or 10" x 14" tray (I suggested to use small tray than 11" x 14" size) and bake at 200C for about 10 mins.
5. Take out from tray and leave on the wire rack to cool.

To Assembly :
Ingredients :
1 sponge cake
150 gm butter cream
invert sugar - very fine sugar (I don't have invert sugar so I replaced by castor sugar)

Method :
1. Spread butter cream onto the cooled sponge cake and roll into a swiss roll.
2. Sprinkle some sugar onto a greaseproof paper and roll the swiss roll to and fro until evenly covered with the help of the greaseproof paper.
3. Slice and serve.

Verdict?
Despite the thin layer of sponge cake and was not as soft and fine as Polar, the swiss roll still tasted delicious. The sweetness is just nice for me, overall I was very satisfied with the result, at least, I got a decent swiss roll during my 2nd attempt.