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I finally have a bit of time to sit down and continue blogging. Been so busy for the past 3 days that I've been sleeping at 3:30am each day!

Wed
Made the Hokkaido Milk Loaf since I ran out of bread for breakfast. I decided to use my Vita-mix machine to experiment it on this recipe not specifically tailor made for the machine. The original recipe was a breadmaker recipe from Florence's blog.

I didn't read the recipe carefully. Did not realise the whole process needs at least 3 hours. I only started making the bread after 10pm. By the time I finished, it's already 3:30am! The result was very satisfying though. The bread smelt wonderful and tasted even better.



Here's my adapted version of the recipe.

Hokkaido Milk Loaf

Ingredients (1 loaf about 500g)
220g bread flour
30g cake flour
3g salt
3g dry yeast
35g sugar
40g egg white (about 2 eggs)
100ml Hokkaido milk (I use normal milk)
45ml whipping cream
15g melted butter

Method
1. Mix whipping cream with milk and warm. Set aside.
2. Put all dry ingredients into the VM and mix for 10sec using variable speed 4 or 5.
3. Add in all wet ingredients and mix for 5 secs at low speed.
4. Change to high speed. Knead dough by quickly turning the machine ON and OFF a few times. Stop the machine and use a wet spatula to scrape the dough from sides of container, pulling the dough toward the center of the mixture. Remove spatula and repeat the kneading process until the dough form a rotating ball on top of the blades.
5. Invert the container over a slightly oiled bowl to remove the dough. Hand knead the dough for another minute or two. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth or cling-wrap and leave it to proof in a warm place till double its size (about 1 hour).

* The rest of the steps are the same as the original recipe.
6. When proofing is completed, punch down the bread dough to release the air and let it rest for 10 minutes.
7. Divide dough into two pieces, each about 250g and roll it up swiss roll style.
8. Put the 2 pieces of dough into the loaf tin and cover it. Prove for 50 minutes.
9. Brush some milk on the surface of the bread dough.
10. Bake at 175C - 180C for 35 minutes if using a covered loaf tin. Bake at 170C for 30 minutes if using uncovered loaf tin.


Thu
I had to prepare cupcakes for Olina's birthday goodie bags to be brought to school on Friday. I did a simple butter cake recipe, but added colours to different portion of the batter so that I can create a rainbow cupcake, beautiful even on its own. It's easy, but very time consuming.



I also did another batch of Perfectly Chocolate cuppies. These are not well baked. I still do not manage to bake these well after several attempts. They do not look presentable on its own, unlike the rainbow cupcakes. I tried to decorate them by adding a big star cutout using pink marshmellow fondant. The result is not too bad. I tried to create something special for the teachers by covering the whole cupcake in fondant.



It looked presentable, but it was extremely difficult to handle with the super soft and moist cake. So I learnt that fondant covered cakes are best to have certain "volume" for easier handling, at least for a beginner like me. This served as a good lesson for the birthday cake I was planning to bake on Friday.

Mood: lethargic