Random Bakes 2 :P

Hopefully this will be the last of my mass postings... Here goes some of the more recent random bakes...

No. 1: This is a birthday cake for WQ, done in the wee hours, bet 12am to 5am, together with Weiling and the company of her cute little doggy, Sky. The difficult part of making this cake was in the ganache and decoration. The ganache we made did not manage to stay on the sides and slightly melted the cream layer. To save the cake, we covered the sides with chocolate sprinkes and chocoalate rice. With no idea of how to decorate and with limited equipments for decoration, we decided to piece her name together as deco.

I was quite satisfied with how the final cake looks but the taste part... hmm... cake was too dry. I guess we overbaked it.. but still, not too bad.

No. 2: My creation...

Not exactly my creation but I combined and adjusted the recipes. I changed the recipe for a pandan sponge cake to make the strawberry sponge cake. I found another recipe for cheese cream and used that for my filling. Unfortunately... it tastes weird! Haha... I guess I added too much lemon juice to the cream cheese and it tasted sourish. To make things worse, the sponge cake was slightly underbaked. But still... it looks nice.. just not very edible. :P

No. 3: Soft & Fluffy...

The one on the left is a strawberry chiffon cake, made by replacing the pandan paste & coconut milk in the orginal pandan cake recipe to strawberry paste and full cream milk. I guess I added too much strawberry paste and it was too sweet. The bottom right hand corner shows an orange chiffon cake... not enough of orange taste though.

No. 4: I finally made chicken pie on my own!!!

This was by the request of the birthday girl, YB. My San Jie, who made the chicken pie previously was not around and I had to attempt making puff pastry the very first time on my own... The first batch of puff pastry did not turn out very well. I changed and used another recipe for the puff pastry and it turned out better for the 2nd batch... though it had a strong pastry margarine taste. Sad to say, the filling was not up to standard. It was too dry... But overall, not too bad for my first attempt.

No. 5: On the very same day that I made chicken pie, I made this...

Another of my 'creation', inspired by the Coco Exotic cake at Four Leaves bakery. This was for my 4th sis's birthday.

I had a hard time making this cake as it was a combination of many many different recipes. Let me reveal what was inside the cake...

1st Layer (bottom): Chocolate Sponge Cake

2nd Layer: Chocolate Ganache

3rd Layer: Crunchy flakes with hazelnut paste & dark chocolate

4th Layer (light brown layer): Hazelnut Mousse

5th Layer: Chocolate Sponge Cake

6th Layer: Chocolate Mousse & Crunchy Pearls

7th Layer: Chocolate Sponge Cake

8th Layer: Chocolate Mousse

9th Layer: Dark Chocolate Ganache

Finally, it was topped off with chocolate sprinkles and Ferrero Rocher Chocolates, and an 'A', which is the first letter for my sister's name, was formed in the middle of the cake with the crunchy pearls.

There was a lot of hiccups in the process of making the cakes:

1. The crunchy flakes lost its crunch as it was stored for too long... but... I used it anyway.

2. I bought hazelnut ganache instead of hazelnut paste for the mousse so I did some adjustments to the recipe by omitting the milk.

The Verdict...

From my sisters' & mother's reaction:

It was way too rich... too much chocolate. But my San Jie who took it seperately said not bad... and she still thought we bought it. Haha... :P

My Bro-in-law:

Took one bite and said he didn't want to eat it anymore :(

Meili de mama:

Said it was quite nice except for the 'lou4 feng1' crunchy layer.

Meili de papa:

Took the first bite (top part of the cake) and told Meili de mama... "Ok ar... not bad ma...". He took the 2nd bite (middle layer with hazelnut mousse) and he kept quiet. He took the 3rd bite (with 'lou4 feng1' crunchy layer) and he told Meili de mama he did not want to have it anymore.

Conclusion:

This is definitely a rich cake, just like Coco exotic, which you can't eat too much. But... mine had 2 major flaws... the "lou feng" crunchy layer and the saltish hazelnut mousse. I must be more aware of my ingredients in future. But actually, I still think the cake is not bad la... :P

No. 6: Another Birthday cake made in the wee hours...

I love the appearance of this cake. Simple but Pretty. :)

Yes, this is similar to the original one that I made, except I changed the chocolate sponge cake recipe and omitted the hazelnut mousse and of course I got crunchy flakes.

Unfortunately, the chocolate sponge cake turned out terrible but I used it anyway as I had no time to make another. Later on, I realised the flour has expired. Heh... :P I didn't manage to eat the cake but my friend told me the ganache and mousse was not sweet enough. I shall continue to improve on my Crunchy Choco-Hazel cake.

No. 7: Yummy yummy...

A recipe from the "More from Magnolia" book by Allysa Torey which I have been wanting to try. With buttermilk in my fridge which was going to expire soon, I had to give this recipe a shot. This is an easy to make recipe... It is essentially a chocolate cupcake topped with cream cheese & chocolate chips.

I personally find that the chocolate part can be improved further... the taste was not good enough and it was quite crumbly... might be due to the mixing process. The cream cheese layer was good but sweet.

A sweet treat that might not be to everyone's liking.

No. 8: Simple roll cake...

The only difficulty in making this was folding the flour into the mixture... need to improve on my skills. It might have been more challenging if I made the kaya on my own. I read that you need 2 hours to make the kaya... and I didn't have the time to do so... Maybe another time.

No. 9: A different kind of Egg Tarts...I was hoping to make 'Tong Heng' style egg tarts but sad to say, they did not turn out that way. The crust was flaky but not as flaky as I hope they will be and some were even a little hard. The egg part was a bit watery and I suspect it might be due to the smaller eggs that I used. Overall, it was nice but not fantastic. One thing to take note, the egg part for this recipe was made with alot of sugar.... not very healthy...

Finally, I'm done with mass postings! :)

Baking at Sis's Place...

Over the Hari Raya weekend in Sept, we had potluck at my 5th sis's new place and I baked using her new built-in oven.

Baked Item No 1:

The crust was not very successfully made... but the filling was delicious. Apart from the main ingredients which were ham and mushroom, the filling was made up mainly of whipping cream, eggs and parmesan cheese. In my opinion, quiche are not to be eaten in large quantities. Reason No 1: It is unhealthy. Reason No 2: I get 'sick' of it easily.

Baked Item No 2:

Look at the 2nd photo on the right: The egg part expands like a balloon in the oven!

This was more of a dessert item. I started baking only after we finished our dinner. The crust was made mainly by my San Jie since she needed it for the food she was preparing. I only had to do some rolling and cutting. The egg part was quite easy to make but it was extremely fattening. It was made up of Whipping cream + Milk + Sugar + Eggs + Vanilla Essence. Yes, unhealthy again...

As for the end product, It had a weird taste (which I think was due to the pastry margarine), though my family thought it was quite acceptable. But... the egg part was sweet and yummy. :)

Anyway, along with me, I dragged my San Jie along and forced her to bake with me! Below are her baked items!

San Jie's Baked Item No. 1:

The one on the left tastes much better as they had my preferred ingredients-ham and mushroom, but it was not nicely shaped as we did not have enough pans.

It was so amazing to see her make the dough as it will actually expand! BUT.. it is hard work... need a lot a lot of hand power!!! I am interested to make but feel so lazy... haha...

San Jie's Baked Item No. 2:

Looks enticing right? Same puff pastry as my egg tarts. The clam chowder... hmm... tastes not bad with the puff pastry la. :P

So this was what we baked for the day. Of course we had other food for potluck - Zi char: tofu, prawns and vegetables, Mummy's 'Po Yi' (similar to meatballs/ngoh hiong) and I also forced my 5th sis to make Chendol agar agar which ended up dirtying her stove area. The agar agar was not easy to make as it had many many steps but it is an interesting dessert.

*Special thanks to Sally & Marc for allowing Ling & I to dirty your beautiful white kitchen*

Intermediate Baking Class

In comparison to Beginner Baking Class, my memory of the Intermediate Baking Class is not that clear... perhaps there was too much information coming in and too much things to do. Many of the recipes taught were also not my favourite...

I shall do a short summary of the cakes learnt during these classes:

Lesson 1 (29 March 2009):

The chocolate cake & ganache covering this cake was yummy... but I didn't like the pecan icing which was the filling.

And another item baked during this lesson...

We overwhipped the egg white and the Loaf cake turned out to be quite soggy... but still nice... :)

Lesson 2 (5 April 2009):

I destroyed the sponge cake by pouring it out from the container when I realised that I did not add baking powder... notice the super flat sponge layers. Anyway, the mousse did not taste nice.. maybe we did not cook it well...

Lesson 3 (12 April 2009):

Choconana cake was quite good. The pistachio sponge cake itself was good but the buttercream had a weird taste which not everyone can accept...

Lesson 4 (19 April 2009):

Notice the extremely nice cake made by my teacher on the top right hand corner... Beautiful! :)

Hopefully after I update all my 'overdue' baked items, I will be able to blog in detail to share the recipes and to remind myself of each baking experience.