Mini project

It's been a while since I last did some serious cake decoration. The last was the Barbie doll cake for DD's 5th birthday.

This year I had the honour to be in charge of the cakes for my little niece, Charis' birthday party. She will be turning 4 in a few days time. The party was held earlier this Monday since it was a public holiday. My dear cousin (her mum), K, has chosen princess theme for the cakes. She wanted cupcakes instead of a whole cake (save the trouble of cutting). After discussion, we decided to use pink and purple as the main colour scheme. Charis especially requested for rainbows in her cakes. She's a little princess who adores rainbows. She'll include them in all her drawings.



I didn't have much proper planning this round (what's new, right?). I was glad I manage to deliver my promise in time for the party as I had only started on the decoration after 11pm the night before the party!

I hope the little princess was happy with the cuppies. Every little girl at the party was eyeing for these limited edition "click clock high shoes". LOL...There were only two of them.



Picture speaks louder than words. You'll see from them that my piping skill has lots of room for improvement.



















And these were what I did earlier on but never find a chance to post them up.

Chocolate pancakes (yes, I've finally tried to make them from scratch)


Vanilla cupcakes



I have at least 2 more projects down the road this year. Time to get some serious planning done.

All things yogurt

I always have problem catching up with my blog. The bakes to be blogged are always accumulating. I wonder how many food bloggers out there are facing the same problem as me. I bake before I could blog the earlier items.

I did three different items with yogurt last week. The first was another Yogurt Chiffon cake. This time I've paired it with Chempedak. This was a total failure, possibly one of the worst Chiffons I've baked this year. The cake didn't drop off the pan during cooling, but this was what I got.



And the result was a dense cake, of course. More of a "Chempedak cheesecake" kind of texture.



I realised yogurt tends to make my cakes dense. Or maybe I'm just bad at the Yogurt-Chiffon combination. All my past yogurt Chiffons didn't turn out well. I don't think I'll be trying this combination anymore, don't want to waste more ingredients.

It's been quite a while since I last made bread. Since I've got quite a fair bit of plain yogurt in my fridge and I didn't feel like making any more yogurt Chiffon, I turned to my tested Yogurt Bread recipe. I added in some Yuzu paste (I got mine from Kitchen Capers retail store at Geylang Bahru) to form a Yuzu Yogurt Bread. It was refreshing. The bread smelled great while baking in the oven. I knead this bread using my normal stand mixer at medium speed. Since it's not meant for heavy duty task, you'll have to make sure you stop the machine frequently to give the dough some turns and to prevent overheating the poor machine.



Yuzu Yogurt Bread

Ingredients
260g bread flour
15g sugar
3g salt
3g yeast
90g plain yogurt
60g fresh milk
15g egg
30g butter
2 tbsp Yuzu paste (about 40g)

Method
1. Mix all dry ingredients together.
2. Add in all wet ingredients except butter and knead to form a dough. Knead for a few minutes till you can stretch the dough a little.
3. Add in butter and knead till smooth and elastic.
4. Shape the dough into a ball. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth or cling-wrap and leave it to proof in a warm place till double its size (about 45 mins).
5. When proofing is completed, punch down the bread dough to release the air.
6. Divide the dough into 3 equal portions. Relax the dough for 10 mins. Roll and shape each portion into an oval log and placed them into a loaf pan.
7. Cover the loaf pan with a cling wrap and allow the dough to go for second proofing until it has reached 80% of the pan.
8. Cover the pan and bake in preheated oven at 170-180C for 50 minutes. My oven loses heat easily. So you may need to adjust the time according to your oven.
9. Remove bread from loaf pan immediately to cool completely.



The bread is soft and fragrant. Do give it a try. I think I'm still better at bread than cakes...lol...



The last yogurt item was some Yogurt Raisin mini cupcakes.





These were more for the kids as the two girls had excursions with the school last week. So I decided to bake these for them to bring as snacks and to finish up my tub of raisins. I had used berry yogurt for these little cuppies. It goes quite well with raisins.

Happy Teacher's Day...erm...a bit late

I'm behind for my posts again. Seems to be becoming a habit, a bad one indeed, coz I'll start to have lots of backlogs.

I did this on one of the nights for dinner last week - baked noodles.



The recipe was taken from KC. It was very nice, every time I think of it I feel like making it again. I've added quite a bit of Extra Virgin Olive Oil and a pack of instant noodles seasoning to toss with the noodles.

Before the cheese is in...


I think I might have added too little cheese (though I swear I've covered every corner of the ingredients with the cheese), the end result wasn't as pretty as what Gina had posted. But nonetheless, it was still very good.


Last Wed, I baked some cuppies for the kids to bring to their teachers on Thur for Teacher's Day. Did my favourite Lime Cream Cheese Cupcakes and tried another great recipe from the "Easy Stir 'n Bake Cakes" by Kevin Chai.

Orange and Carrot Cupcakes


My estimation this round was better than my previous attempts of cupcakes, the end products ended up taller. I was quite pleased with them indeed.

Cuppies waiting to be baked


As usual, I have this weakness for citrus stuff. This orange carrot combination turned out another great keeper, moist and absolutely aromatic. I've reduced the amount of sugar in the original recipe and the sweetness is just nice!



I had wanted to frost the cupcakes to make them real pretty, but decided against the idea. I don't think I can depend on the kids to deliver the cuppies to their teachers in a mess-free manner, so better be safe than be sorry. So nothing fanciful this year, sorry, teachers.




Mood: satisfied

Finally kicked those lazy bones of mine...

I finally gave myself a good kick and got down to bake these on Wed nights.

Mulberry Cheesecake Cuppies


Olina's teachers were coming for home visit on Thurs. I thought it's only proper to serve them something. Finally a "valid" enough reason for me to get down to do some baking that has been terribly slacking!

I bought this mulberry jam recently on a nursery field trip with the "mulberry gang" (a group of GCS gardeners actively growing mulberries in Singapore). It's not too sweet and goes well with bread. You can also mix it with iced water or fresh milk for a refreshing drink.



I've got a big tub of it. So I thought of making use of some to make some cuppies and came up with this self-created recipe. It was the first time I self create a cake recipe. Unlike bread, cake may fail terribly if certain ingredients are not in the right proportion. I wasn't very sure of it at the beginning and there was some adjustment along the way based on gut feeling. Luckily it turned out well. The cuppies were very soft (or should I say, near to powdery state?) and best served chilled. If you're daring enough, you can give it a try...lol... I gave one to Karina's teacher cum my baking friend. She said the cuppy was aromatic (a very berry aroma) when she opened the bag.



Mulberry Cheesecake Cupcakes

Ingredients
350g cake flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
320g butter
250g cream cheese (room temperature)
190g sugar
5 eggs
6 tbsp mulberry jam
1/4 tsp salt

Method
1. Sift the cake flour and baking powder together.
2. Cream butter and cream cheese till light and creamy. Add sugar and beat till light and fluffy.
3. Add eggs, one at a time, beating till incorporated.
4. Fold in flour mixture and salt.
5. Stir in mulberry jam (you can also create as swirl)
6. Bake in preheated oven at 180°C for 25-30 minutes until top is lightly browned.


Mood: happy

Eggless Orange Cupcakes

Too busy but want to cook up something simple and nice? Try this.

Pan fry herbal fillets


I'm in the midst of exam fever (not mine, but ds's). I've lost all mood to cook elaborate stuff. Everything has to be kept as simple as possible. So I cook these for lunch today. These are really simple yet delicious. So simple that there isn't even a recipe to talk about. Just get some dory fillets from supermarket. Season both sides with a little garlic salt and mixed herbs and pan fry them till a little brown. Before serving, squeeze juice from a wedge of lemon over the fillets. Can't be simpler, right?

Stress has got this wonderful powder to dampen your mood or the other way round. I've got this dying urge to bake something, just anything. I know I won't have time to do the long winded bread, so I decided on cake. Then I realised I've run out of eggs! Oh my! Did some search and found this in KC.

Eggless Orange Cupcake


The original recipe was a buttercake. I just change it to cuppies and added a little orange zest to them. This was the first time I baked and ate eggless cake, so I wasn't too sure what to expect. But they were not bad, not bad at all! Soft and moist and not too sweet. I think the next round I'll add some lemon juice to them to have a little more tangy sensation!



Eggless Orange Cupcakes
Yields 13

Ingredients

Sieve the following ingredients together twice:
2 cups plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 & 1/2 tsp baking powder

100g butter, room temperature
3/4 cup icing sugar
3/4 cup evaporated milk
200 ml freshly squeezed orange juice, unsifted (about 3 mid-size oranges)
Zest from 1 orange

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170°C.
2. Cream sugar and butter till light and fluffy.
3. Add milk and orange juice to mix. (Note: My butter was separated from the liquid after mixing.)
4. Fold in flour mixture and orange zest using a fork/spatula until well combine.
5. Fill each cup to 80% full and bake for 25-30 mins.


Mood: stressed

Daring Enough?

In case you're wondering where I've been for the past few days, I've taken some time off from baking and blogging. Main reason was I haven't been in the best state of health for these couple of days. First was the gastric problem (must be due to the coffee macarons I was testing the last time. I always have problem with coffee). Then I had diarrhoea on Sat. Thank goodness everything is over now.

Made these for the kids last Thurs, my favourite Orange, Apple & Wolfberry Muffins. This time I filled the cups to about 90% full, manage to get 18 cuppies.



After the long rest, I was finally well enough to continue my baking. Decided to bake some banana cakes for the first Daring Enough challenge in KC. This is like those blog challenges where everyone will bake/cook an item according to the theme in the challenge.



I've adapted the recipe from the banana and walnut cake in Uncle Billy's Joy of Baking book. This book is dedicated to help all the cancer patients. This is the first recipe I've tried from the book and I'm happy with the result. The cake is light and fluffy, not the heavy kind of banana cake. I've added more bananas as I love the nice aroma from the fruit. I did some of them in my mini doughnut pan and the remaining as cupcakes.

Banana Cake

Ingredients
Butter 100g
Salt 1g
Fine sugar 100g
Banana (peeled and sliced) 225g
Egg 100g (2 eggs)
Cake flour 220g
Milk powder 25g
Baking powder 5g

Method
1. Sieve flour, milk powder and baking powder together.
2. Mix butter, salt and sugar evenly.
3. Add in bananas and mix (at low speed) until banana pieces are mashed.
4. Add in the eggs, one at a time, and mix well.
5. Fold in the flour mixture.
6. Fill the paper cups till 80% full.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 170°C for about 30 minutes. For mini doughnut pan, bake for about 20 minutes.

Had them this morning for breakfast with a glass of homemade sesame soya bean milk. Healthy enough? :)




Mood: satisfied

My private class with Gina

Today I have the honour of inviting Gina over to have a private class with me and my friend to learn baking of cupcakes.

Taking the opportunity that she's here, we decided to do another Chiffon Cake, just to ensure I am doing it correctly. Everything seemed fine from the time we started till end of baking. The cake rose, as usual, in the oven. We inverted the cake pan once it was out from the oven. Upon cooling, the same disappointing result faced us. The cake had dropped out of the pan and it is caved in, like my first attempt. Gina recalled that one of the books she has read showed the same picture as my chiffon cake. The cause was uneven heat of my oven. Mystery solved! So it seemed that this will be my third and last attempt of chiffon cake, at least, until I change to a better oven.

Because of this "characteristic" of my oven, the cupcakes also took much longer to bake (about 25 mins as compared to the usual 15 mins). Despite having first baked the chiffon cake for 40 minutes, the temperature still fluctuated. :( In the end, I had to remove the cooked ones from the oven before shifting the not-so-cooked ones nearer to the hot spot. Arrrgghhh.... Now I'm beginning to understand why half of my cakes always ended up as failures! Looks like I'm more suitable for bread making rather than cake making.

Anyway, these are the cupcakes we baked today. Gina taught us how to use a basic recipe to create different delicious recipes. We did a chocolate chip version (more for the kids) and a lemon zest version (which smell heavenly!)



And this is the second version of the Cream Cheese Bread that I baked yesterday, a healthier wholemeal version. Still as soft and fluffy. I'm going to try to further improvise it before sharing the recipe with you.



Mood: blank

330

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