Back for Classes! :)

After more than a year, I am back at Creative Culinaire for classes! The class on Day 1 was pretty short and the fillings were all prepared by the school. We had a demo by chef for the fillings but I thought it would be better if we had the chance to do it... I guess the focus is on the puff pastry, not filling... 

Class on day 2 was still about making puff pastry. We used pastry margarine to do it on day 1 but butter sheet on day 2. Again, the curry puff filling and apple strudel filling was prepared for us. We had the chance to do our own pastry cream though. And I love the apple strudel. Yummy! My friend and I were pretty apprehensive about handling the dough these 2 days but fortunately, we still made it!

Overall, I learnt quite abit from the class but somehow, I still have a lot of 'Why's after the class. I shall practise it one of these days and see how it goes...

Subway Cookies :D

This was meant to be my 2nd bake of the day but sadly, it became my only baking product for that day. My oven is breaking down... :( I was supposed to make tiger roll and I happily prepared the outer skin for baking at 200degC. After a while, my oven light started flickering. I thought it was ok as the light previously could not even be lighted. But... I realised the temperature actually rose to 220degC. And before I could rectify the temp, I saw the burnt product. Grr....

Strangely, when I was baking the cookies, my oven became normal again. Hope it is just throwing tantrum and not really breaking down. Anyway, the cookies turned out pretty okay. This was an attempt to make my favourite subway cookies. I like the combination of white chocolate and macademia nuts. But... they were too sweet and not chewy enough. The cookies could be made thinner in my opinion. Surprisingly, I had 3 fans for the cookies... so maybe it is worth sharing the recipe afterall...

The Recipe (adapted from the Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe in the book, Big, Soft, Chewy Cookies by Jill Van Cleave)

Ingredients (makes about 16 cookies)

125g unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar (can cut down)

1/2 cup caster sugar (can cut down)

1 large egg

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup plain flour

1/2 cup cake flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup chopped white chocolate

1/2 cup macademia nuts

Method

1. Heat oven to 190degC. Line baking trays with parchment paper.

2. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and both sugars until smooth. Add the egg, milk and vanilla and blend.

3. In a separate bowl, mix both flours with the baking powder and salt. Add to the creamed mixture. Stir in the white chocolate and macademia nuts.

4. Using either an individual 1/4-cup measure or a 2 ounce ice-cream scoop, scoop level amounts of dough and drop 2 inches apart onto the tray.

5. Bake until cookies are lightly brown and firm to the touch, about 15 minutes. Using a spatula, transfer cookies to a rack and let cool.

To prevent hardening, wrap each cookie individually in plastic wrap and store at room temperature for up to three days.

A Wedding Gift

I saw a recipe in the book, 'Essentials of Baking' by Williams-Sonoma and I've been wanting to try it... and I found a perfect occasion to bake these lovely cookies.... and so I tried....

These were simply butter cookies, cut out with cookies cutter and filled with jam. Don't they look lovely? But... I did not succeed in making them. This is only a picture of the book illustration. The dough turned out to be too soft & impossible to work with. Difficulties working with a dough again... Grr...

In the end, I settled for a simple chocolate chip cookies from my most trusted blogger, Happy Homebaker. And fortunately, they taste quite good... or at least my sisters thought so. Have not heard from the wedding couple yet.

This was what went inside the lovely container...

And the recipe which was adapted from Happy homebaker (Original source: The Cookie & Biscuit Bible) is as follow:

Ingredients (makes about 28 cookies)
115g butter, softened
115g caster sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
175g plain flour
110g semisweet chocolate chips
65g chopped hazelnut (toasted)

Method
Preheat oven to 180degC. Line baking trays with parchment paper.

With a wooden spoon or electric mixer, cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until the mixture turns pale and fluffy.

Beat in the egg gradually. Mix well after each addition. Add in vanilla extract, mix well.

Sift the flour over the mixture, fold in with wooden spoon or a spatula. Fold in the chocolate chips & hazelnuts.

Drop tablespoonfuls of the cookie dough onto the prepared baking tray. Leave some space between the cookies to allow for spreading. Flatten each cookie dough slightly with the back of a fork, keeping the shape as even as possible.

Bake for 10 mins or until golden (My oven took 20 mins). Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Home cooked Chicken Rice

I seriously think I can follow recipes and cook better than I bake.... Cooked these for my family and they taste quite good.

Of course, I did not cook these from scratch. We had a premix from our CNY hamper and it was expiring at the end of this yr.... so... decided to use it.

The instruction was pretty easy to follow. And the packed seasoning made cooking much easier too... what's more, it came with yummy chilli sauce, dark soya sauce & ginger sauce!

Chicken was soft, tender & juicy. Rice was a little weird in taste though... not as nice as the chicken rice sold outside. Maybe because it was a 'healthier choice' product afterall...

I don't think you would even want a bite of this. Haha...Blur me somehow made a blunder of the ingredients again. This always happens when I am reducing the recipe. Grr.... First, the cupcake itself was way too sweet and crumbly. Then, the cream topping was too watery.. probably because I whipped for too long. I absolutely cannot see myself baking cupcakes again anytime soon. Haha....

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins

With one big packet of buttermilk in my fridge which was going to expire soon, I had to bake something and this was it. Chocolate Chocolate Chip Muffins. A recipe which I copied down from some website donkey years ago.

I baked these before and the colour was much darker and nicer. Guess what happened? I put in the wrong quantity of chocolate! Haha... I think the colour of these muffins look like 'huat kueh'. Fortunately, they still taste quite good... just that the texture is not really like a muffin.

When will I ever be able to have a perfect bake?

On a side note, I threw away one big bag of flour and other miscellaneous ingredients a few weeks back. I need to stop myself from buying things unless I have time to bake. My baking cupboard is so full that I can hardly squeeze in more things. Stealing space from my mum slowly... Lol... No more lunch time shopping at the baking shop!

Jap Food again!

I was cheated into cooking this meal. Sis said we shall cook together on Sunday so that my mum can rest. Ended up... she only helped with the vegetables.

I wanted to cook Oyaku Don from the Jap Recipe book initially but mum said she has pork chop so I decided to make do with it and made Katsu Don. I took the recipe for the Japanese Pork Cutlet and used the sauce for Oyaku Don. And tada... I have.....

The end product was a bit too dry... I cooked the "egg sauce" for too long... But overall, it still taste good. Could have seasoned the pork more too. Along with this, I made tofu teriyaki again. Oya, n I cooked the rice using the same process... but... my mum recently used the rice cooker to cook it and I must say it tastes the same. Shall ask her how she does it to save my time the next time. Haha...

Loving the golden brown fried pork cutlets here! :D

我的很多第一次 :)

For the very very 1st time in my whole life, I cooked a complete meal (mostly) on my own! It was not a 1-course meal... In fact it was a 4 course meal, enough to feed 6 people! *Proud* Something which I always wanted to do!

I was inspired by the 'Japanese Home Cooking' book by Yoshiro Murata which was featured in the Straits Times sometime back. I managed to get hold of the book at the library and browsing through it just makes me feel like cooking so many many dishes. And I just decided I had to cook a meal one of these days and this was it. A Japanese meal for my family!

I cracked my head a little when planning which dish to prepare first as I was concerned that some of it will turn cold and might not taste as nice by the time everything was ready... which can be quite long with my well-known 'efficiency'. Heh... :P

So I decided to start off by preparing the RICE! My very first time cooking rice entirely on my own and what's more... I was cooking rice in a pot over the stove. Mum nagged at me to use the rice cooker but I insisted on following the recipe instructions! Kinda disappointed that I got the wrong type of rice... never knew japanese rice has got different types. I got the medium grained ones instead of the short grained ones. But I think they taste good too!

The recipe for cooking this japanese rice requires soaking the rice for 20 mins, boiling it for 5-10mins, cooking it on low fire for 15 mins, turning off the heat and leaving it undisturbed for 10 minutes. Finally, you aerate the rice by 'stirring' it before it is ready. Long process compared to cooking normal rice but I guess it was worth it. Mum says she will cook this rice in the rice cooker one of these days. Let's see if it will taste just as nice.

Next up is my first dish for the day:
Steamed Egg Custard aka Chawamushi

I am not a fan of chawamushi. My verdict on this dish was that it was too watery, I guess the proportion of eggs was too little as I did not get the large eggs which was indicated in the recipe. Bro-in-law says it might be because I did not dry my ingredients like mushroom before adding it in.... possible.... shall take note.

Anyway, the chawamushi lovers told me the taste was not there yet. I guess it was because I did not use store-bought chicken broth or home cooked dashi stock. Mum prepared home cooked chicken broth by cooking chicken breast in water as she feels that it is healthier than store-bought chicken broth. But I guess the lack of flavor in my Mum's chicken broth did not bring out enough taste for the chawamushi. I shall be more hardworking and try making Japanese dashi the next time i attempt this recipe.

My 2nd dish of the day was.... healthy vegetables!

This was easy to prepare. I just had to cut the french beans, boil them, shock them in cold water and mix them with the prepared sesame dressing and they are ready!

Although we do not normally prepare in this way, I think it tastes quite nice for a change. They were finished up quite fast too. In fact, all my food was finished up. Might be because I did not cook a lot too. Haha....

Now, my last 2 dishes for the day was....

Both are quite easy to prepare. You basically just have to cut them up, dust them with cornflour, cook them for a while, add in the sauces required, simmer them for a while and tada... they are ready! But one thing I realised when I was cooking these 2 dishes was that I do not know how to see if my food are cooked... had to shout for my mum for help a couple of times. I would say the pork chop was slightly overcooked as they were a little tough.

As for the Tofu Teriyaki, it was a test of my skills. I was supposed to buy firm tofu but blur me got tofu with firmness of 2/5. So... I just had to make do with it. Luckily they did not get smashed very easily and I was able to make decent looking and nice tasting tofus. I tried them the 2nd day using tofu with firmness of 1.5/5 which I had in the fridge and it was kinda disastrous. Anyway, love the bonita flakes garnishing on top. Expensive but they taste GREAT!

Eager to try out the many other recipes in the book soon.... :D

Yet another failure :(

Hopefully 失败真的是成功之母... another failed cake. Decided to make this interesting Pandan Cheese Roll from a blog which I have bookmarked for so long. A simple roll cake which went wrong. The cake turned out lumpy... a result of my poor folding-flour-into-mixture technique.... Grr.... The cream filling was not bad. Overall, it was edible but I wouldn't eat much. I kept them in my fridge for 3 days before throwing them away. Managed to make some guineau pigs eat though. :P Anyway, a photo below showing the decent looking swiss roll.

Looks totally different from the pictures from the blog I took the recipe from :D

Cheesecake again!! :)

I seem to bake a lot of cheesecakes... but they never seem to be able to taste as nice as those yummy ones I get to eat in cafes. Maybe it is time to go for classes or do more research.

Anyway, this time round I made a variation of the normal cheesecake for my sister's birthday.

Yesh... Blueberry Cheesecake... She has been bugging me for months or years. This recipe was taken from the 'Essentials of Baking' by Williams-Sonoma. What I love about this is the hazelnut base. But what I dislike about it is the taste of the almond essence. I wish I had followed my heart and not put it in instead. Being someone who dislikes the taste of almond, the taste of the almond essence was too overwhelming. I couldn't even taste the cheese. Eeks.... But I love the crust... :) My tasters felt the cake was quite okay. If I am going to attempt it again, I will definitely leave the almond essence out!

The outlook of the cake wasn't perfect with the snow powder not evenly distributed due to the lack of proper equipments :P But I love it! Simple and nice. I wanted to deco it with writings on a white choco board but somehow the white choco did not melt nicely.. not sure what went wrong... wasted my $5 worth of white choco. But I really have been having problems melting my choco recently... seriously need to find out what is wrong.

~2 Chefs.8 Hours.4 Bakes~

A weekday afternoon spent baking with Qin on 6 Sept 2010. Haha... not a very motivated baking day though... the rainy weather makes me feel lazy and I left most of the baking work done by Qin. I did the washing up though. This seems to be what happens when friends come over to bake at my place. I do less of the baking and more of the washing up.

So our first bake of the day (if I rem correctly):

The taste of the cupcake was good since it has nutella... but it was overbaked. :P Also, the texture was heavy.

Next up are these Nestum Cookies which you see below:

Hmm... they taste okay but I wouldn't attempt it for another time. Using nestum as the ingredients was an interesting idea though. :)

Our 3rd bake: Cheese Logs

It was fun piping the dough into wordings and shapes but I did not like the taste of the 'cookies' when they were cooled. Too saltish...

And our final bake of the day was the Marble Cheesecake:

This is my 2nd attempt baking this. The texture is pretty similar to my first attempt, maybe a little softer and soggy. Need some improvements and I am keen to master it.

This time round I made the chocolate sponge base and it tastes even better. I am so proud of the springy chocolate sponge cake which you see on the left... tastes a little weird on its own but tastes great as the cheesecake base... :) Most importantly, it is springy! I can press it down and it will return to its original form immediately! Worth experimenting it again.

This cheesecake is well-liked by my family but apparently not so well-liked by Qin's family. Shall let my friends try it the next time and see their response.

So this ends off my baking day with Qin. 4 bakes in 8 hours by 2 efficient chefs... Haha... :P

Another unsuccessful bake :(

I made these cream cheese spirals on a weekday night, after work. They look simple enough to be made in a few hours but... they were not. I realised I am not good with doughs... perhaps there are some special techniques to handle them to make them less unpredictable...

These were basically made up of butter and cream cheese. The filling was brown sugar, cinnamon and almond bits. Somehow, I was not able to roll up the spirals in a neat manner. Secondly, the filling was way too sweet. I only used half of it and I couldn't even make myself finish one. I kept all of these baked ones in a container and instructed my mum not to let anyone eat it. And I threw it away the 2nd day. I just can't bear to throw them away immediately. What a waste!

Looking back, I wonder why I chose to make these. Maybe they look good in the pictures which I saw. Lesson learnt-Never be deceived by outlook in future. Haha...

My 1st Attempt on a Healthy Recipe

Don't they sound healthy? They taste healthy too, except for the fact that I used sweetened cranberry. Hee... recipe was adapted from Happy Home Baking once again. I replaced the walnuts with diced almond. I wanted to use almond flakes initially but I realised it was spoilt when I was about to use it.

The cookies were well liked by my family and friends.... positive feedbacks. They like the texture of the biscuit and the fact that it is not too sweet, Some like the ingredients. But I guess, it is not to everyone's liking as it tastes like muesli bar. Working towards a healthier baking/cooking journey... :P

我们家的肉粽

Everyone in the family took part in the 肉粽process, be it preparing the ingredients, wrapping it, starting the fire or eating it... Lol... But of coz, the main chefs are my mum and 三姐.

Below are some of the ingredients for the 肉粽:
And of cause it includes seasonings like salt, dark soya sauce, pepper and some powder which I can't remember.

Making 肉粽 is tiring... Haha... I was suppose to make my Nonya 粽子in July, after my busy work schedule... but... I did not get down to it. Maybe soon? :P

If I remember correctly, we made more than 100 肉粽. Of cause we did not eat everything... some were given to friends and relatives of our family. The 肉粽this year is much much better than last year's tasteless ones which I did with my mum.

And I like it coz I made 8 肉粽 with my favourite ingredients=no chestnut! Yeah... so I enjoy them more. Below are the ones I made....
Hopefully I'll get down to doing my Nonya 粽子soon! :)

A Simple Cheesecake

I haven't been baking much recently... missed out on alot of birthday cakes this year.. Grr... But still, I managed to squeeze some time to do a simple one for Qin in June.

Somehow, I like this photo of the cheesecake in baine marie :)

The completed cheesecake with simple decoration doesn't taste as nice as I hope it could be. I actually went Hokkaido recently and tasted one of the best cheesecakes at LeTao... It tastes like ice-cream cheesecake... Yummy... if only I could reach that standard...

Marble Cheesecake

This is a light, souffle type of cheesecake (Recipe from: Kitchen Corner). The original recipe calls for a chocolate sponge cake base but being too lazy to bake sponge cake which are so unpredictable... I gave it a miss. :P The cheesecake turned out to be quite nice but could be lighter. Worth making it again, maybe with a base on my next attempt.

On a side note, my posts are becoming shorter and shorter... let the pictures do the talking. :)

Portuguese Egg Tarts again! :D

Same recipe as my previous attempt - taken from the book "Irresistable Pastry" by Alex Goh. I like the outlook of the tarts this time round but the crust was not crispy enough. I suspect it might be the oven temperature or the too thick containers or maybe the process of making the puff pastry itself. Hope I'll get some answers during my next attempt. :)

Tarts for Sale?!? :P

Disastrous Baking Day :(

On the left is the first disastrous bake of the day... It is a Durian Cheesecake for my sis's birthday. Everything appears to be going well until it went into the oven and a big crack appeared on the surface. That is why it is covered with nuts in the middle... :P But hazelnuts do not complement the taste of cheese n durian.

Without much tools and ideas for deco AGAIN... I decided to just write on the cake. I guess I was lazy too. And my pek-cek-ness with the cracked cake made me feel sian about decorating it. So end product looks.... Eeks... Taste wise, still ok... edible la... (Recipe from: Kitchen Corner)

Next up, is Chocolate Cream Cheese Eclair (Recipe from: Aunty Yochana) The choux pastry was actually still quite good... just tt the chocolate cream cheese filling was more watery than what it should have been and it could not be piped at all. I would say it still tasted quite nice. Worth giving it another try. :)

(Baked on 27 March 2010)

Another decorated cake :)

This was for dear Ah bu... I had to make a Birthday Cake that does not need a refrigerator and Brownies sounds like a good choice... This recipe was taken from Happy Homebaker's blog once again. I love the recipes that she posts!

The decoration was done with royal icing, which consists of egg white, icing sugar and colouring.. This was my very first time using royal icing and it was easy!! But... I did not eat them as I guess they must be extremely sweet.

The brownies are the chewy and slightly fudgy kind. I guessed I overbaked it and it was kinda hard too. The amount of sugar can definitely be cut down further. Way too sweet...

Not extremely yummy but I am satisfied with my 1st attempt in decorating with royal icing!

Baking with friends (260210)

I spent another afternoon baking with friends at my place... and this was what we made!

The first on our list.....

This is a soft and fluffy muffin with a generous serving of choc chip+blueberry jam in the centre. I like the texture of the muffin but not the too sweet centre...

Next up will be Scones.... This recipe calls for the use of a food blender to cut the ingredients in order to create a soft type of scones. Without any in my house, we decided to adapt and use the rubbing-in method. The amount of butter used in this recipe is scary... and we spent a long long time rubbing in the butter.

The original recipe uses cream to cover the top of scones before baking. We did not.... and out first batch of scones had burnt apricot slices. :( We became smarter and covered all the apricot slices with the batter in our subsequent batches... and they turned out much better...

And my 2 dear friends lovingly shaped the scones to make the following for their bfs... I had one from Pearly too :)

The scones were indeed soft in texture... much better than those hard as rock kinda scones that you eat outside... but the amount of butter used makes me think twice about making them again.

The Boy & the Fat Bunny (210210)

Violet came over to my place to bake a cake for her friend over the weekends and we had fun exploring how to make fondant figurines to be placed on her cake. I would say it wasn't professionally done... we were making use of what we had, to do what we can...and we were making use of techniques learnt in our previous angel clay making classes. Haha...

Apart from the figurines being too huge, I guess they are still considered cute and adorable... Waiting for Violet to come over for our next session... :)

My 1st Decorated Cake!!

I received this 'assignment' from my dear friend about 2-3 weeks before the actual day of celebration. I didn't think she was serious about it until 1 week before... and I started getting stressed, flipping books and browsing through websites for recipes and designs. I finally settled for a recipe for Japanese-style Strawberry Cake from the book, Okashi: sweet treats made with love by Keiko Ishida.

I starting making the cake at 10pm on a Saturday night. Things were not going well right from the start...the recipe for making the sponge cake was entirely different from the normal ones. It required me to warm the egg mixture and beat it with an electric mixer until light and fluffy... but... no matter how long I beat, it only seemed like it was in the ribbon stage. I wondered if it was a problem with the translation and continued with the next step anyway. The end product did not really rise and was heavy... tastes like 'ji1 dan4 gao1' if you know what that is.

By the time I finished this cake, it was close to 12 midnight and I was trying to find a trusted recipe for a sponge cake. I took out my recipes for my baking classes and got down to it immediately. The cake was supposed to be baked in 35 minutes... but it did not! After waiting for an hour, I decided to take it out anyway and... I realised it was underbaked!!! Another failed sponge cake!!! That was about 2am.

Determined to make a cake for dearest 'Meili'... I searched for a sponge cake recipe from my trusted blog by Happy Homebaker. The same problem surfaced... the cake took longer than the time indicated. When I finally took out the cake after about an hour, I realised it was actually still slightly underbaked. I figured it will still be edible and continued....

Another hiccup in the process... the vanilla cream... this had a milk component which made use of gelatine sheet. The 1st time I made the milk component, I allowed it to cool for too long until it hardened. After which, when I finally got my vanilla cream right the 2nd time, I happily put it in my fridge while cutting up my strawberries... BUT... I forgotten that there is gelatine!!! When I remembered, my cream has all hardened... Fortunately, my 3rd attempt went smoothly....

After putting the whole cake together, the decoration started at about 6am. Phew! It was a challenge to do all the pippings for the very 1st time but I am definitely satisfied with the end product which was completed at about 8am (including the cleaning up). That was when I got my beauty sleep and woke up in the afternoon for the full month celebration!

So how was the taste of the cake which took 2 failed sponge cakes and 2 failed vanilla cream?? I did not managed to taste it as I left early and did not allow my friend to cut the cake when there was many people around. Apart from the sponge cake, I tasted all the other stuffs that made up the cake separately (strawberry, vanilla cream, whipped cream, toasted almond flakes & buttercream) and I think they taste good. Meili's mum, friends and relatives who tasted the cake said it was good too. It was worth the effort afterall... Haha... :)

So here's the recipe

Get the sponge cake recipe from Happy Homebaker

The rest of the recipe is adapted from 'Okashi: sweet treats made with love' by Keiko Ishida ... Here it goes:

Ingredients:

For Vanilla Cream:

Whipping cream (150g)

Castor Sugar (15g)

Vanilla Extract (1/2 tsp)

Gelatine sheets (4g, soaked in ice water to soften)

Fresh whole milk (20g)

For Sugar Syrup:

Castor Sugar (25g)

Hot Water (50g)

For Whipped Cream:

Fresh cream (200g) - I used whipping cream

Castor Sugar (15g)

Vanilla Extract (1/2 tsp)

For Buttercream (Half the quantity is required for my design):

Unsalted Butter, softened (400g)

Egg whites (140g)

Icing sugar (140g)

Orange or cherry liquer (1 tbsp)

Others:

Strawberries (1 punnet)

Almond flakes, toasted (60g)

Method:

Slice the sponge cake horizontally to make 2 layers.

Stir castor sugar with hot water to make sugar syrup and set it aside to cool.

Make vanilla cream. Whip cream in a chilled bowl until stiff peaks form. Place milk, sugar and vanilla in a small saucepan and bring to boil. Add softened gelatine and mix well. Let milk mixture cool to about 30 deg. Add milk mixture to whipped cream and fold until just incorporated.

Brush one side of each of the sliced sponge cake with the sugar syrup. The brushed side will be the 'inner layers'.

Slice strawberries lengthwise. Spread vanilla cream onto the cake layer that was brushed with sugar syrup. Top with sliced strawberries. Spread another layer of vanilla cream. Place 2nd layer of cake over and press down lightly. Chill in the refrigerator for a few minutes to set.

Make whipped cream. Whip vanilla, sugar and vanilla in a chilled mixing bowl until stiff peaks form. Cover cake with whipped cream. Cover the side of the cake with toasted almond flakes.

Make buttercream. Beat buttercream until pale and creamy. Using a clean bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add half the sugar and continue beating. When agg whites have achieved some volume, add remaining sugar and continue to beat until egg whites are glossy and stiff peak form. Add meringue to butter and mix thoroughly. Add orange or cherry liquer and fold in well. Add in desired colouring and mix well. Decorate as you wish.

In another attempt to make the Melt-in-the-mouth tarts...

This time round the crust was better but they still did not taste as good as those melt-in-the mouth ones.

The filling was the same but not as sweet as the previous time.

An improvement to my previous attempts but still not good enough to be mass produced for CNY. Maybe next year.... :P

For the 10th day of Christmas...

On the 10th day of Christmas, I had a family gathering and I decided to make Tiramisu again as I had leftover mascorpone cheese in my fridge. This time round, with lady finger biscuits... as I had two packets which I bought previously.

I used the exact same recipe from Happy Homebaker... just that I did not bake the sponge cake and I put the Tiramisu into small containers instead. I realised to get the layering effect at the side, I should fill up the space with the biscuits... if not, they will turn out with just the cream at the side, which is not as nice.

So tada... here are my 'little' Tiramisu:

Also, I got a recipe for molten cake from my friend and decided to give it a try too since it sounds good with ice-cream for a dessert on a Xmas cum New Year gathering. The chocolate centre had to be made at least 3 days in advance and I did... But somehow, mine does not seem to be what it should be when I was preparing... does not seem like it will flow.

And indeed, the final product did not flow... Have not found out what went wrong with the chocolate centre yet. But the overall taste of the cake was good... just that it doesn't flow!!!! Oya, I overwhipped the egg white too... so the cake was abit weird in texture.

Notice the wet chocolate centre that does not really flow in the bottom right picture.

On the same weekends, I made pineapple tarts ! I have been procrastinating for the longest time ever... from November 2009 to January 2010. So, of coz, I had to do it... to be in time for CNY. :P

This is my 3rd time doing pineapple tart and I tried a totally different recipe, in hope of getting the melt-in-the-mouth type of tarts. Sad to say, they did not turn out this way.

The filling was too sweet... though I think it was better than my previous attempts as I added some spices and used a blender this time round. But the pastry cracked easily as you can see in the picture... might add in more butter in future. Shall make further attempts till I succeed... den I shall post the recipe here! :)

So I had a good 'baking' start in 2010 with 3 products on my list... :P

Tiramisu & cookies to end off 2009!

I am not a fan of Tiramisu but one of my friends is and it is her birthday!! So... I decided to make one for her. My initial plan was to make small portions in small containers, using readily available lady finger biscuits as I was lazy and was also afraid that removing the cake from the tin is gonna be a difficult task.

But I guess the lack of baking for the past 1 month plus made me decide to bake the sponge layer.... And also, a birthday should come with a whole cake afterall. I looked around for a number of recipes before I decided on the one from Happy Homebaker. I replaced the non-dairy whipping cream with a dairy one though.

The preparation of the tiramisu was pretty easy. The removal of the cake from the tin was much easier than expected too... just that there were some small areas not covered by the cream as I did not trim the sponge cake small enough. The difficult part was transferring it onto another cake board. The tiramisu seems so heavy and almost ready to break... I had to ask my sis for help. I always had problems transferring cakes... but I realised, sometimes you just have to be 'courageous' and not think too much... and before you know it, it is done beautifully. Ha...

So how did the cake taste? Hmm.... I can only say my friends ate up their portions fast and the birthday girl volunteered to bring back the remaining cake which we did not cut. I have eaten Tiramisu for less than 5 times in my life and it is almost impossible for me to compare. But I find the sponge layer soggy... my friends told me it is meant to be this way though. Ok, I guess this is a successful bake afterall.

On the very same day, I made cookies while waiting for the sponge cake to cool. This is my 2nd attempt at making tollhouse cookies (Recipe from Alex Goh-"Baking Code"). This time round the cookies did not taste as good... probably because I forgot to toast my nuts and one of the ingredient has lost its aroma & taste after being kept for too long.

And these were my cheapo Chirstmas presents for my dear friends... Heh :P Hope they enjoyed it.

So 2009 came to an end with these bakes... hopefully, I'll have more time to bake in 2010!