Orange and Passionfruit Chiffon

Ever since my last successful chiffon, I've been thinking of baking an Orange and Passionfruit chiffon. I don't know why I chose this combination, perhaps it's due to inspiration from Happy Homebaker's Mango and Passionfruit chiffon. I have always wanted to try an orange chiffon. I thought adding passionfruit is not a bad idea since passionfruit seems to blend in well with orange. I bought a bottle of passionfruit pulps last time when I bought some 爱玉 jelly, so I used it this round.

I recently read from Happy Homebaker that the egg white used in chiffon does not require to be stiff peak, soft peak can do the job too. This is really something very interesting to me. I have always thought that if we cannot achieve stiff peak, the chiffon is bound to fail, or at least that was what most people have been telling me. As a result, I always make sure my whites are beaten to very stiff stage, so much so that you'll have a little difficulty moving the whisk around. The disadvantage is, you'll have a harder time getting the white into the yolk batter evenly (which explains why my chiffons always ended up with white spots in them). This time round, I no longer whisk the whites till super stiff stage. I still achieve stiff peak. I guess I'll need a bit more courage to try baking one with soft peak. LOL......

The chiffon turns out well this time too, thankfully. There wasn't any cracks or volcano eruptions on top. Guess I'm finally beginning to understand my 20L oven a little.



However, my skills for removing the cake still need improvement. Tore the cake a little in the process of getting it off the pan. Too impatient, perhaps.



The texture is springy and moist, just like a sponge. The orange and passionfuit instill a nice fragrance into the cake. The kids, especially the girls, love the cake.





Orange and Passionfruit Chiffon

Ingredients
5 egg yolks
30g sugar
1/2 tsp salt
40g corn oil
70g passionfruit pulp
60g orange juice (from 1 orange)
Rinds from 1 orange

Sift together
130g cake flour
1.5 tsp baking powder

5 egg whites
50g sugar

Method
1. Cream egg yolk and sugar with a hand whisk until sugar dissolve. Add salt and mix well.
2. Add corn oil. Mix well.
3. Mix the passionfruit pulp with the orange juice and add it to the yolk batter. Mix well.
4. Add orange rinds and mix well.
5. Fold in sifted flour mixture with a hand whisk.
6. In a clean bowl, beat egg white till soft peak. Add in sugar in 2 additions and beat till stiff peak.
7. Add 1/3 of the egg white into the yolk mixture to soften it.
8. Fold in the remaining egg white in two rounds until well incorporated.
9. Pour into 21cm tube pan. Knock pan on table top to remove trapped bubbles.
10. Bake at 170C for 45-55 mins. Tent top if it gets too brown. (I bake for 55 mins. Adjust the timing according to your oven.)
11. Invert cake to cool once out of the oven.

Chiffon, I think I'm getting it

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you would know that I sucks at Chiffon cakes. I have never baked one that can be considered successful. All my earlier attempts either looked like volcano eruptions, or they would end up dropping out of the pan when inverted. On that few occasions where they are "eatable", they never achieve the classic brown look.

Mom has been requesting for a mango chiffon ever since I last made her a Yuzu chiffon. I felt bad having delay it for quite some time. So I decided to make her one last weekend. I adapted the recipe from one of my trusted chiffon recipe from Rei. This time round, I let the cake sit in the oven for a longer time, knowing that my oven always required longer time that what is specified in a recipe. I had to tent the cake towards the end to prevent the top from burning. I was very happy that the cake managed to stay in the pan throughout the whole cooling period.

There you go, my first ever browned Chiffon. :)


The texture was right, springy and moist.


One minus point though, the cake didn't smell or taste of mangoes. :( Next time I'll try adding some Jupe all natural Mango paste, as suggested by Gina.

Mom tested the cake. She actually preferred the last cake which was firmer (I think that cake dropped out of the pan during cooling, if I didn't remember wrongly). So next time I must underbake the chiffon if it is for her. ;)

Here's the recipe, for Pearlyn who's requested for it. Hope you have fun baking Chiffon over at England. :)

Mango Chiffon

Ingredients
5 egg yolks
30g sugar
1/2 tsp salt
50g corn oil
130g mango puree

Sift together
130g cake flour
1.5 tsp baking powder

5 egg whites
50g sugar

Method
1. Cream egg yolk and sugar with a hand whisk until sugar dissolve. Add salt and mix well.
2. Add corn oil. Mix well.
3. Add mango puree. Mix well.
4. Fold in sifted flour mixture with a hand whisk.
5. In a clean bowl, beat egg white till soft peak. Add in sugar in 2 additions and beat till stiff peak.
6. Add 1/3 of the egg white into the yolk mixture to soften it.
7. Fold in the remaining egg white in two rounds until well incorporated. I use a hand whisk initially and change to spatula in the last round to give the bottom a final fold.
8. Pour into 21cm tube pan. Knock pan on table top to remove trapped bubbles.
9. Bake at 170C for 45-55 mins. Tent top if it gets too brown. (I bake for about an hour. Adjust the timing according to your oven.)
10. Invert cake to cool once out of the oven.

A last minute bake

One of my cyber friends saw the birthday cake I did for DS and asked me to help her bake a cake for her 17 year old, whose birthday was just a few days after DS. I was hesitant in the beginning for a few reasons. There were only two days left. I wasn't confident of my skills to accept a request, which is why I have not been taking orders despite having a few requests. Baking for family is totally different from taking orders.

However, I was touched by this mother's love and sensitivity towards her daughter. So I agreed to help her in the end. I did an Oreo Cheesecake for her as that was her girl's favourite.



It was a rich and sinful version, the same one I did recently for my hubby's birthday.

Next comes the design, which was the challenging part. I'm one who work very much based on impromptu ideas without prior planning. I had a long time thinking of how I should dress up the cake. I have never bake for a teenager and was worried the design would be too childish. It took me a few rounds of change (yes, literally changing the design on the cake!) before I finally settled on this. Even the surrounding greens and flowers were decided in the last hour before collection. I still feel birthday cakes should have a bit more colors, rather than just plain old black.









I was relieved that the birthday girl love the cake. Hopefully she can feel the love from her mom through this cake.

It's one year again!

Time flies. DS turns 11 a few days ago. I planned a small surprise party for him this year as next year he'll probably be having his PSLE during his birthday.

He is obsessed with the Animal Kaiser cards and game recently. His company of friends are all playing the game. For his birthday, he has requested to play the game in the arcade with his friends. We seldom bring him to the arcade, so he was thrilled when he got his wish this year.

Needless to say, he requested for the same theme for his birthday cake as well. I have only watched him play the game once. I could not recall how the game screen looked like. With the help of modern technology, I was able to search the required information from the net.

I didn't want to spend too much time doing the figurines, so I just got some toys, clean them up and use them as toppers for the cake. Luckily the birthday boy didn't complain. He liked the cake and was even surprised that I know the exact shape for the scores.




This was the first time I piped grass and I just loved it! It allowed me to be "messy". If you have been following my previous works, you would know that my piping sucks.







The birthday boy with his cake


The sisters and cousins

Time to do some blogging

My pictures have been piling up. If I do not clear them, very soon, they will go into the Recycle Bin.

After my last attempt of moist brownie, I wasn't really satisfied. So I went on to search for more brownie recipes to try.

Attempt 2 - Jamie Oliver's brownie


Great taste, but my pan size is obviously wrong to be able to yield this super thin brownie.

Attempt 3 - White brownie


A self-experiment which turned out to be a disaster! I wanted to make a white brownie using white chocolate. So I tried to modify the moist brownie recipe to use white chocolate. I ended up with a super sweet dense cake instead. Yucks!

Attempt 4 - Back to Jamie




I decided Jamie's recipe is worth trying again. This time I adjusted the ingredient and amount and got my own version of perfect brownie. Don't you think so? LOL... This will hence be the recipe to use whenever I feel like baking brownie.


Besides brownie, I also tried Jamie's Banana and Honey bread.



Although I really love his brownie, can't say the same with the bread. It's best eaten fresh from the oven. Once overnight, the texture is compromised.


Did some Naan for dinner one night after seeing the easy-to-follow recipe on Gina's FB. I did two versions, onion and cheese. Both were good, the kids love the cheese ones.



It's 11:55pm now. My eyes are threatening to shut down any minute. Must be the effect of the medication starting to kick in. I shall let the pictures of my bake today end this session.

Waiting to be transformed...


...into this!


My forever lousy deco skill...


我很丑，但是我很好吃



Trivial... I sliced off the top of the cake for deco reason and had a big piece left (almost 9"). My girls who were eyeing the cake were happy that they can finally lay their hands on something. I told them not to finish the whole piece of cake as it was nearly lunch time. They really listen to what I said and left this.



When I questioned them, one of my girls answered, "we didn't finished the cake what". *fainted!*

A "not so brownie" brownie?

I mentioned in my earlier post that I was looking for a brownie recipe. I sourced through a few fellow bloggers' recommendations and decided to give Edith's Moist Brownies a try.

Frankly speaking, I was never a brownie person. Brownie, to me, is something dry and not so interesting, even when goes with ice-cream. I do not know what prompted me to try to bake one. Maybe it's the need to try something new, rather than some same old cakes and breads.

The recipe wasn't too difficult to follow, thankfully. However, I made a mistake of trying to bake the same amount of ingredients intended for a 8" pan, into a 6" pan. Needless to say, my brownie took forever to cook. Since it was my first time making brownie, I wasn't even sure when it should be considered done. In the end, it took about an hour before the stick inserted was no longer wet. The top of the brownie was already turning dry and I had to tent it for the second half of baking for fear that it might burn.

My brownie was quite tall, when out of the oven. To my dismay, it started to collapse quite a bit upon cooling. So much so that the top cracked and tore off from the brownie! I wasn't confident at all whether it was even eatable.

Once cooled, I couldn't wait to test it. Surprisingly, the result turned out really good! Although I'm not sure whether mine was the correct texture, it probably was a good mistake, if it was one to start with.



It was moist and dense, yet not heavy. I can't find the perfect word for it, but the kids adore it. DS said this was probably one of the best cakes I've made (initially he thought it was a cake). I may try it again. But this time I'll make sure I use the right amount of ingredients for my pan size.


The kids requested to have pizza for dinner. I was quite reluctant as it was already 6pm then and I knew I would not be able to make the pizzas in time for dinner. They insisted they were not hungry and can have a late dinner. I had no choice but to quickly set to work. I used Happy Home Baking's pizza dough with mixed herbs. I added 1 tsp of mixed herbs instead of 1/2. It was a good choice. I love the aromatic base and the kids had no complains too. This dough recipe is a keeper.

A slow death

I'm slowly killing my blog. Haven't been posting for months and I wonder if anyone still bothers to read. My passion for blogging has been reduced to almost nothing. At times I just don't feel like posting something for the sake of posting. Moreover, I haven't been baking new things. It would have been boring for you guys to read the same thing over and over again. I guess I'm one of those whose passion in something always cool off after a while, 三分钟热度, which can be quite bad.

Some of what I've done recently, nothing spectacular though.

Green tea Azuki buns - not a favourite with the kids


Blueberry Chiffon - can't say it's totally successful with the blueberries sticking together


Plain swiss roll - something I'm still trying to master. Yet to get the right texture. I'm really bad at swiss rolls!



One of the nights, I decided to cook something different for dinner. It was well received by hubby and kids. Effort worthwhile. :)

Grill fish for the kids. Sides are creamy mashed potatoes (too creamy though) and mango prawn salad.


Steak for the adult


Ever since I learn the tips from KC members, I was able to get the perfect medium rare which hubby and I like.



Lastly, luncheon buns for today's breakfast, kids' favourite.



I'm looking for a not so sweet brownie recipe to try. If you have one to share, do let me know. TIA.