16 April 2009

Breaking the chain

If you have been following my blog, you would have known that I haven't got much success in my baking recently, especially with bread. So I decided to bake something again today, just to break away from the chain of not-so-successful bakes, so that I can "rest in peace"...lol...

I had recently acquired two new books to be added into my recipe books collection. I chose a steamed cake recipe to try out today. This is not the first time I've done a steamed cake. In fact one of my favourite chocolate cake is a steamed cake.



Steamed Rainbow Cake (recipe adjusted)

Ingredients
250g butter
100g condensed milk
5 eggs
120g sugar
250g cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

Method
1. Beat egg and sugar until fluffy and thick.

Mine looked like this after beating for a few minutes


2. Sieve flour together with baking powder into egg mixture and stir well.
3. Beat butter and condensed milk until fluffy.
4. Add butter mixture into egg mixture and stir well.
5. Divide mixture into different parts and add colors of your choice. I had 5 colors altogether including the original batter.
6. Grease and line a 8" round mould. I had used a 6"x6" square mould.

7. Spoon over different colored mixture alternatively until mixture is used up. Cover mould with aluminium foil.


8. Steam for 1 hr 30 mins. I used medium-low heat.


The recipe looks like a typical butter cake recipe with condensed milk added. Hmm...interesting. Although I've seen a few fellow baking kakis done pound cake with condensed milk, I haven't tried one myself. So I make use of this opportunity to try it.



The result was not too bad. It was not really dense and oily like a normal butter cake. In fact mine was a bit on the dry side (but not really that dry). Or could I have overmixed the batter and deflated it?

Another right thing I did was to greatly reduce the amount of sugar. The sweetness is just right for us. Can't imagine if I had follow the original amount used.

The kids were very happy to see the end product. To them, the rainbow cake was appetising because it looked pretty.

I'll probably have to stop all this baking craze for a while. I'm churning out things faster than we can finish them. Hubby was commenting there was still lots of bread left when I was making the cake earlier. But more importantly, DS's oral exams start next week! Time to get back to my Project MI.


Mood: peaceful

9 comments:

Cookie said...

what a pretty rainbow cake!

Jackie said...

rainbow cake, very colourful, hope it will give u a good start in yur baking again.

KWF said...

Thanks Cookie and Jackie. I will get back to baking when I have more time on hand.

Anonymous said...

I like the colors of your rainbow cake. Thumbs up!

chumpman said...

NO wonder your kids like the cake, it's really nice in color. I like it too

ABC said...

It looks little bit dry.... someone should make it juicy.... :D

A Full-Timed Housefly said...

So beautiful ! I've never seen a steamed cake so colourful... good job !

KWF said...

ABC, you're quite right. This is not as "wet" as a butter cake.

Anonymous said...

I know this is an older post, but-- if you reduced the sugar, that's likely what made the cake drier. More sugar in a recipe results in a more cakelike texture while less sugar makes it more breadlike. At least that's what I was taught.