Sugee Cake

Make a batch of biscottis over the weekends and had many egg yolks left over. I decided to make the Sugee Cake which I read in a magazine. However, I have modified the recipe slightly to accomodate to the ingredients I had at home.

The cake has a grainy texture due to the semolia flour and almond powder. I guess this is a cake that you will either love or hate. I personally do not really like the cake. I would prefer blueberry cupcakes or butter cakes to this.

Here is the recipe (reduced sugar version):

Ingredients:

250g butter

200g sugar

9 egg yolks

3 egg whites

225g semolia flour

170g almond powder

30g cake flour

1tsp mix spices

2tbsp milk

Method:

Preheat oven at 160C.

1. Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy.

2. Add in egg yolks one at a time. Beat well after each addition.

3. Add in semolia flour and almond powder and mix till just blend.

4. Sift flour with mix spice. Add into no. 3.

5. Add 2tbsp milk. Put batter aside.

6. Whisk egg white till light and fluffy.

7. Add into butter mixture. Mix well.

8. Put in a baking tin and bake at 160C for 50mins or till light golden brown.

Father's Day Cheesecake

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

Dad asked for cheesecake for Father's Day. I used the same recipe as the cake chessecake I baked for my son's Birthday excluding the Oreo Biscuits inside the cheesecake.

Pardon me for the messy handwriting. Doing writings on cakes is something that I need to definitely improve on.

I bought a new recipe book - Bit Size Desserts by Carole Bloom over the weekends at Kinokuniya since there was 20% storewide for members. Initially, I thought I would wait till this book was available at the library to see what the book was like before buying. But after waiting for 2 months, still no sign of it being available at the library and the thought of the book keeps appearing in my mind. In the end, I decide to take the risk and just buy the book.

Well, no regrets buying the book. The recipes were interesting and it included weights of ingredients in ounces instead of just cup measurements. There were also pictures includes for many of the recipes so you actually get to see how the outcome of the recipes would be like.

A good book to add to my collection.

Ice Box Cookies

These are called Icebox cookies. I got this recipe from the book called Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets. These cookie dough were quite tricky to handle as it was soft and needs to be chilled. I made a total of 4 different flavours here.

1. Orginal Flavour (ie the plain ones with red sugar coating)

[The kids called them cha siew cookies]

2. Orginal Flavour with chopped glaced green and red cherries.

3. Chocolate Flavour

4. Marbled Flavour (Orginal with chocolate)

In order for it not to be too sweet, I actually reduced the sugar content and forgot that cocoa powder is bitter. As a result, the Chocolate and Marbled flavour cookies tasted 'non sweet'.

My son and niece was so excited when the cookies came out and as the chocolate ones were not sweet, I would think that the kids won't like it. To my surprised, the 2 rascals said that the chocolate cookies where yummy... .... ...

Well, glad they liked them!

Biscottis With Egg Yolk

This biscotti recipe was given by a colleague. It is different from the ones i usually make in the sense that it had egg yolks in this recipe. It was also easier to make as you just need to mix the liquid ingredients into the flour, form a dough and bake it. After that, just slice the dough into thin slices and double bake it again.

The egg yolk smell is very strong in biscotti made in the way even though I have added grated orange peel into it. Reviews from people who have eaten the egg white version and this version all preferred the egg white version one.

My personal preference is also the egg white biscottis.

Oknomiyaki

Bought a pack of Oknomiyaki Flour from Mei-diya recently. So I made this for lunch last Saturday. I made a giant one for myself which was this one and finish everything. I added thinly sliced pork at the bottom of the pancake, but I think bacon would have made it taste better.

Osmanthus Konnyaku Jelly

My colleague got her brother to buy some osmanthus essense from Hong Kong. I wanted to make these Osmanthus Konnyaku Jelly some time back, but was not able to find the pack of osmanthus flowers in the fridge. So I gave up the ide till recently when the pack of flowers mysteriously appeared again.

The taste was pleasant but due to the fact that I did not soak the dried flowers, the flowers tasted grainy on the jelly and that was not very pleasant to eat. I will try again next time by soaking the flowers first before putting it in the jelly.

Dishonest Cake Shop at Bukit Merah Central

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YL!

Forgetting that there was a Han's near my workplace, I resorted to buying a cake at a neighbourhood bakery shop - Sweet Ring at Bukit Merah Central. This neighbourhood cake shop has been around for many years and I thought that the cake quality won't be that bad. Thus I chose this cake that looked the best out of all the cakes in the display fridge. However, maybe due to tiredness or maybe due to the glaring 2 red cherries, I have failed to spot the dried up fresh grape that was lying at the centre of the 2 red cherries behind Garfield. The fresh grape was all wrinkled and almost rotten. It was only when I got home, took out the cake that I noticed the grape. The cake shop had got the cheek to charge me $12 for this 4" cake which to our extreme dismay, it turned out that the cake was extremely stale. Base on my experience, this cake could have been in their display fridge for at least 3 weeks to 1 month!

The sponge cake was extremely dry. Stale should be the more correct word to use. After taking 1 mouth of it, we decided to throw it away. Don't think we want to risk food poisioning and have to spend further money to see a doctor.

Anyway, lesson learnt, never to buy cakes off the shelf from this Sweet Ring Cake shop. In fact, the bread they baked didn't look nice as well and they aren't cheap. I really wonder how they can survive so long at Bukit Merah.