Layered Crepe Cake and White Chocolate Mousse with Mixed Berries

It was a baking frenzy last weekend, making a total of 3 desserts.  It was the side effect from reading Daily Delicious blog. Without hesitation, I tried the Whiite Chocolate Mousse with Mixed Berries.  I shall not re-write the recipe here.  Instead pop over to Daily Delicious blog for the details.  The mix berries goes well with the white chocolate mousse.  Its tangy taste helped to make the white chocolate mousse less "jela" though some tasters preferred to do without the berries.  The white chocolate mousse makes you think of condensed milk.  I made a slight mistake and ended up putting half the portion of gelatin but the mousse was still quite all right while eaten cold.

I made the Mille Crepe Cake using the recipe from The Food Fairy Blog.  I made the cream using pastry cream and ready bought non dairy whipping cream.  The taste of the pastry cream mixed with non dairy was fragrant.  I even added some longan bits in the cake.  I cut the quantity of sugar used by half for the pastry cream as the non dairy whipping cream was already sweetened.  The end product of the cake was a mildly sweetened crepe cake which I will be making for my dad's upcoming birthday celebration next weekend. 

Chocolate Chip Muffin

I have recently purchased these beautiful cupcake liners from Ikea. They cost $1.90 for 65 pcs and there are 3 designs in 1 box. The size of these are slightly different from those you get from Phoon Huat. These come with a smaller base of about 1.5" and has a hight of about 2.5".
Here is the recipe for the cupcakes:

120g plain flour

70g sugar
1tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
150g plain yogurt
1 egg
50g canola oil
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:- Preheat oven at 180C
- Mix dry ingredients together
- Mix wet ingredients in another bowl
- Pour wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix gently.
- Scoop into cupcake liners 3/4 full.
- Bake for 15mins.

* Word of caution - Do not over mix if you want tender muffins.

Chocolate Streusel Cake

I made Chocolate Coffee cake on Dailydelicious blog site. Pook at Dailydelicous calls this Chocolate Coffee Cake because she thinks that this goes well with coffee. But I think I prefer to call it Chocolate Streusel Cake.

Streusel is a German word which means - something scattered or sprinkled, generally referring to a crumb topping of butter, flour, and white sugar that is baked on top of muffins, breads, cakes. (abstract from Wikipedia)

I thought this cake was normal. Nothing very impressive about the streusel topping. D doesn't think very well of the cake either and he doesn't like the cinnamon topping.

Despite all this, I think Pook's photos are very well taken. Hope I could take photos like that one of these days too.

Marshallow Chocolate Cupcakes

When I saw the recipe that uses Nuttella to dress a cupcake from Flavours magazine Mar-Apr 2011 edition, I told myself that I had to make it. I was quite disappointed that I could not find the mini coloured marshmallow from NTUC and had to resort to cutting large white marshmallow into small bits. The recipe in Flavours actually drizzled melted chocolate on top of the marshmallow but I had problem melting the chocolate buttons I had at home, so in the end, I gave up and just left the marshmallow white.

The cupcakes with mini M&M were more popular as compared to the ones with marshmallows. These were yummy!!

Happy Birthday Dad! Chiffon Cheesecake

Happy Birthday Dad! Wishing you good health always! (sorry for the wrinkles on the cake. :P)

Thanks dad for providing for us and bringing us up. He may not be the type of dad that chats with us and plays with us but he shows his love and concern in other ways. During our younger days, we tend not to know how to appreciate his care and concern and gets frustrated when he impose or nags at us too much. As now I am a parent myself, I learn to appreciate what dad has done for us in the past.

Dad came over last weekend for dinner at my place. Besides making the birthday cake and a Longan Tart. With the help of my MIL we cooked : Curry Chicken, Stir Fry Garlic chives, Cream prawn dip, Sotong Yew Cha Kuay and Steam Fish.

Chiffon Cheesecake Recipe
Egg White Batter:
6 egg white
1/4 tsp tartar powder
140g castor sugar (I reduced to 120g )

Egg Yolk Batter:
6 egg yolk
50g butter
250g cream cheese
100ml milk
60g cake flour
20g corn flour

Method:
Preheat oven 160degrees.

Place cream cheese, butter, milk in a double boiler, stir till all dissolved and cream. Sieve the mixture to ensure batter is lump free. Add in egg yolk when mixture is cooled. Sieve in corn flour and cake flour. Mix well.

Beat egg white and cream of tartar till foamy. Slowly add in castor sugar. Whisk till soft peaks.

Mix egg yolk mixture into egg white mixture. Stir till combine. Pour into an 8" baking tin. Bake in water bath for 1hr 10mins or till cooked.

Once baked, keep in oven to cool slowly. Do not take out the cake immediately as it will cause the cake to collaps.

Happy Birthday YL! No Baked Oreo Cheesecake

Happy Birthday YL!!

It has been another year. It was quite unfortunate that YL had gotten some allergic reaction from some food items recently. Till now she is still not sure what is causing outbreak of rashes. Anti-allegric medication doesn't seem to help but she has concluded that it could be things such as eggs and seafood that is causing her outbreak. As she likes cheesecakes, I have decided to make a No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake for her birthday.

This cheesecake is free of egg and gluten and best of all, it is no bake! I am sorry for the slip short photos. However, due to the lack of time and a demanding toddler, I can only settle for normal snaps of pictures at the moment.

YL commented that her cake looked like a clock with the mini oreos round the edge which was the same thoughts that I had when I placed the oreos round the cake. :P. I wanted to make the whipped cream stars before topping up with the mini oreos, but I ran out of whipping cream, thus have to settle with the mini oreos laying flat on the cake. Anyway, even though the cake don't look as pretty as it tastes, but it was nice and YL commented that it tastes better than the baked ones as this no bake version is lighter in cheese taste.

No Bake Oreo Cheesecake (8" round tin)
Crust
24 pcs of large Oreo Cookies (with filling removed)
100g butter (melted)

Filling
300g cream cheeese
150g sugar
9g gelatin powder (3 gelaltin sheets)
20 ml water
600 ml dairy cream
5 pcs large Oreo Cookies (with filling removed)

Deco
Whipping cream; Mini Oreos

Method:
For Crust: Crush cookies and mix with melted butter. Put crumbs into a spring form baking tin. Press evenly and chill till required.

For Filling: Bloom gelatin sheets in 20ml of water. Heat mixture till gelatin dissolve, put aside. Double boil cream cheese and sugar till sugar dissolve and cheese is soft. Add gelatin liquid into cream cheese and mix well. Whip up dairy cream till soft peaks. **(be careful to watch your cream carefully and not have it overbeaten and turn to curds of butter) Mix cheese mixture into the whipped cream. Pour 1/2 into the baking tin, place cookies over in a circle, pour the remaining cheese mixture on top of the baking tin.

Chill overnight.

For Deco: Decorate with whipping cream and mini oreos.

Sunquik Mango Chiffon Cake

Apologise for the not so nice picture. This was taken from my Iphone.

Made this cake using the Sunquik Mango Concentrate. The mango concentrate smells and tasted very nice on its own, but the flavour of the mango was not that strong after making it into a cake. Sunquik Orange Chiffon is better.

Anyway, here is the recipe. You can replace Mango concentrate with Orange concentrate. You may try with the other range of Sunquik concentrate if you like. Let me know the results!

Mango Sunquik Chiffon Cake

Ingredients

Merigue

7 eggs white

120g castor sugar

1/4tsp cream of tartar

Yolk Batter

7 egg yolks

150g cake flour

1/2tsp baking powder

150ml of mango concentrate

4tbsp oil (corn oil/sunflower oil)

Method:

1. Preheat oven at 170 degree celcius, preheat 8" chiffon tin.

2. Mix all ingredients in the yolk batter.

3. Whisk egg white till slightly foamy. Add caster sugar slowly. Whisk still form soft peaks.

4. Mix yolk batter into merigue.

5. Pour into chiffon tin and bake for 1hr or till golden brown.

6. Invert immediately to cool after removing from oven.

Raisin Pound Cake

This raisin cake is made from the same recipe as the fruit pound cake. However if you notice, this looks a bit dense. I suspect is because I used some left over brown sugar instead of castor sugar and my brown sugar was a bit damp. This could have contributed to the cake failing to rise. But I prefer this cake taste to the fruit cake as it has a brown sugar fragrance.

Fruit Pound Cake

I have used this pound cake recipe to make various versions with different fruits, nuts, etc. This recipe gives a light and fluffy butter cake texture and this is not the traditional type of fruit cake which you usually get on Christmas.

Ingredients

226g unsalted butter

100g shortening

300g castor sugar

350g flour

1tsp baking powder

5 eggs

1tbsp vanilla essence

1 cup milk

2 cups dried mix fruits/chopped walnuts/raisins/blueberry/etc

Method

Preheat oven at 180C.
1. Cream butter, shortening, sugar till light and fluffy.

2. Add eggs 1 at a time and cream well after each addition

3. Add vanilla essence.

4. Put 1 tbsp flour into mix fruits and mix well.

5. Sift flour with baking powder.

6. Use a spaluta and mix in flour and milk in 3 batches, starting with flour then milk.

7. Lastly add in mix fruits, pour into baking tin, bake for 1hr or till cooked.

Banana Cake

I made this banana cake from More Kitchen Secrets from Betty Saw. This cake uses a generous amount of bananas and makes use of the rub-in method instead of creaming method. Initially I was a bit suspicious if the cake would be soft but it turned out moist and soft as Betty has claimed.

Steamed Chocolate Cake

Made this Brownie Steamed Cake from a recipe I found from Reas Küche . This recipe proved to be a success. The cake was soft and nice. I put chocolate rice at the centre but it didn't taste like what I expected it to be. In future, I will steam it without the chocolate rice at the center and then top it up with chocolate ganache after it is cooked. I believe it will taste better that way.

Steamed Sponge Cake

This Steamed Sponge Cake was made from a ready mixed flour mixture that I bought from Seng Siong Supermarket. All you need to do is to put in milk and egg and beat it till mixed. It was suppose to open up like a flower, but then because I didn't oil the knife to make an 'X' for every cake, thus no flower appeared.

I thought the cake was rather dense as well. Maybe I should have added more milk to have a fluffier and lighter sponge. On the whole it tasted good. Nice eggy fragrance.

Chocolate Chip Muffin

These muffins were made using the rubbing in method. This means no need for a mixer to bake these muffins. Simple to make and very tasty. A colleague of mine recommended self raising flour from Prima. I must admit that she is right. Using Prima Self Raising flour definitely makes softer cakes.

No Baked Brownie Cheesecake

After eating something from Canele, I thought chocolate base cake with cheesecake goes really well. I baked this last weekend after deciding which chocolate base and cheesecake formula to use. After some thoughts I decided to use a no bake cheesecake formula.

This brownie had an additional step of whipping the eggs and sugar till fluffy instead of just mixing it into the chocolate mixture. The brownie turned out to be light and spongy but it could have been baked a bit too dry. Overall, the cake was delicious though the base could be a bit thinner and the brownie a bit more fudgier.

Recipe for brownie

250g dark chocolate

250g butter

200g brown sugar (this has been reduced from 2cups to 1cup)

6 large eggs

1tbsp vanilla essence

1 cup of chopped walnuts (optional)

200g flour

Method:

1. Melt dark chocolate with butter. Leave aside to cool

2. Whip eggs with sugar till thick and fluffy, add in vanilla essence.

3. Add melted chocolate mixture, followed by flour.

4. Pour 2 cups of mixture into a 9" square tin.

5. Bake at 190C for 10mins or till cooked.

6. Leave aside to cool.

(Pour the rest of the mixture into a baking tin to bake till cooked at 180C for about 40mins.)

Recipe for No Baked Cheesecake:

350g cream cheese

100g sugar

350g dairy cream (whippped)

1tsp vanilla essence

1tbsp geletine

3tbsp hot water

Method:

1. Melt geletine in hot water.

2. Cream cheese and sugar till smooth. Add vanilla essence

3. Pour dissolved geletine into cheese mixture. Mix well.

4. Mix whipped dairy cream into cheese mixture.

5. Pour cheese mixture onto cooled brownie base.

6. Put in freezer to set.

Ganache Topping:

100g dairy cream

100g dark chocolate

Method:

1. Bring dairy cream to boil.

2. Off the flame and pour dark chocolate into dairy cream.

3. Stir till chocolate is melted and well blended with the cream.

Longan Peach Cake for CH

Happy Birthday CH!

Another year had pass... and CH is one year older ...

Children look forward to every new age, but we adults dread every upcoming birthday. :)

After doing stock taking of my baking ingredients last week, I am quite glad that my stocks of all sorts were almost used up. Not baking for about 3 months had rendered 2 new bags of floor useless due to bugs infesting in it.

I used up the last bag of sponge cake mix and also some canned fruits to make this cake up. Got to get rid of the carton of whipping cream in the freezer as well. Quite please with the outcome of the cake. The fruits looked a bit dry though as this cake was in the fridge for 2 days before it was taken out to cut and I did not have any glazing jel at home, so I didn't do any glazing on the fruit.

As I won't be baking as much as I used to, I won't stock up too much on ingredients and will only buy what I need.

Last week I was very happy as CH brought back 13 baking books from Taiwan on his business trip for me. It resulted in a 3kg excess baggage and he was fined $50. Thus, there was very little savings for the books bought due to the fine.

Banana Chiffon Cake (High banana content and low sugar)

It hasn't been good past 2 months. Basically wasn't feeling too well and not up to bake anything at all. I only felt better 1-2weeks back and was more or less back to my usual self. I had been looking at making a Banana Chiffon Cake few weeks back and last weekend, the opportunity came when there was a bunch of overripped bananas setting on the dining table screaming 'Use me! Use me!'

I have modified the recipe to make this low sugar and banana filled chiffon cake. The original recipe called for 1 cup of bananas but I threw in all 6 large bananas I had which was about 2.5cups to 3 cups of bananas in total. The cake still baked into a beautiful chiffon cake, soft and full of bananas.

Banana Chiffon Cake

Ingredients:

(A)

200g cake flour (sifted with 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of bicardonate soda)

50g castor sugar

8 egg yolks

6 tbsp oil

2.5cups mashed bananas

(B)

8 egg whites

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

100g castor sugar

Method

• Mix all (A) ingredients together to form a thick batter.
• Whisk egg white and cream of tartar till 'soapy' stage.
• Slowly add in castor sugar
• Whisk till egg white becomes medium peaks.
• Mix egg whites to (A), mix well but with a light hand.
• Pour into a 25cm/10" chiffon tin
• Bake at 160C for about 1hr or till cooked.

Have fun!

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.

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.

Chocolate Marble Cheesecake

HAPPY BIRTHDAY YL!

Baked this cake for YL for her birthday. She actually wanted a strawberry cheesecake of don't know what sort which I don't have a recipe for. And she didn't have a picture of how the cake should look like. Thus in the end, she settled for this Chocolate Marble Cheesecake from my cheesecake recipe book - Junior's Cheesecake Cookbook

This cheesecake has a digestive biscuit crust which I laid the crust higher at the sides so that there was more biscuits to eat with the cheesecake.

Besides this cheesecake, I made dumplings for this Thursday dumpling festival - 端午节. This was of course with the help of my Mother-IL who did the cutting and cooking of the filling. Cooking the fillings is a lot of work having to cut up all the meat, and other ingredients are cooking them. The Hokkien dumplings needed more effort as each item had to be cooked seperately whereas the Nonya dumplings only needed to cook 1 filling which had all the ingredients in it.

There were quite a lot of ingredients for the Nonya dumpling left as we ran out of rice. So that means that we could do dumplings again pretty soon!

Mini Mango Mousse Cake

Mother's day is this weekend but my parents were going off for a short holiday so I decided to make some cakes for my mom as well as my mom-in-law last weekend. I did some Kaya Pandan Cake for my mom as I recalled her talking about it some months back. And my mom-in-law wanted a normal Chiffon Pandan Cake. No pictures taken as they looked similar to what I had made before in one of the posting.

Last Saturaday morning, I went to the market to get some water chestnuts. Though my inital intention was only $1 of water chestnut from the vegetable store, I ended up buying $10 of vegetables and fruits from the store owner. He recommended snake beans (蛇豆）to me and told me it was 10 times better tasting than the normal long beans and that I will love it. They looked like long beans but was slightly broader and grossly ugly, with very rough skin. No pictures though as my mom-in-law eagerly broke the long beans into shorter stems ready for cooking. She said that she was looking for this for a long while and also commented that it tasted better than normal long beans. I fried it with sambal chilli and I thought it tasted almost similar to normal long beans and frankly speaking I don't fancy them. I was never a fan of long beans and would prefer french beans to long beans.

Besides the long beans, the store owner recommended mangoes to me. He said that he bought it for own consumption and sold some of the extras. I was septical as the mangoes didn't smell frangrant. But he assured me that they were sweet. So all in all, I spent $10 at the vegetable store instead of $1.

So with the mangoes bought, I made the mango mousse cake and used the recipe I learnt at Creative Culnaire. One quantity of the cake recipe could make about 15 mini mango mousse cakes. These mini mango mousse cakes are easier to manage and decorate as compared to a regular 9" cake.