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!