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!