Mini project

It's been a while since I last did some serious cake decoration. The last was the Barbie doll cake for DD's 5th birthday.

This year I had the honour to be in charge of the cakes for my little niece, Charis' birthday party. She will be turning 4 in a few days time. The party was held earlier this Monday since it was a public holiday. My dear cousin (her mum), K, has chosen princess theme for the cakes. She wanted cupcakes instead of a whole cake (save the trouble of cutting). After discussion, we decided to use pink and purple as the main colour scheme. Charis especially requested for rainbows in her cakes. She's a little princess who adores rainbows. She'll include them in all her drawings.



I didn't have much proper planning this round (what's new, right?). I was glad I manage to deliver my promise in time for the party as I had only started on the decoration after 11pm the night before the party!

I hope the little princess was happy with the cuppies. Every little girl at the party was eyeing for these limited edition "click clock high shoes". LOL...There were only two of them.



Picture speaks louder than words. You'll see from them that my piping skill has lots of room for improvement.



















And these were what I did earlier on but never find a chance to post them up.

Chocolate pancakes (yes, I've finally tried to make them from scratch)


Vanilla cupcakes



I have at least 2 more projects down the road this year. Time to get some serious planning done.

I am bad

I've been neglecting my blog (and almost everything else) ever since I got hooked on Facebook games some 3 weeks ago. I'm still playing them now, but have learnt to slow down a little (or have I?). It's very addictive. I used to set timer for baking, now I set it to remind myself to login the game when time is up to collect the game money. Yes, that was how bad I have been.

As such I haven't been baking much these few weeks, except for the recent Chocolate cupcakes for the kids to bring to their teachers for Teacher's Day. I still had two outstanding "old" bakes done in early August which I have not put up in my blog. I reckon I had better put them up now before I really forget about them.

I tried my hands on bread roll.



It wasn't too difficult except that I probably should have underbaked the bread a little so that it doesn't crack during rolling.



I rolled in some cheese and ham slices with a mixture of tartar sauce and mayonnaise. Simple and yummlicious.

I bake this during the National Day period, for hubby's birthday. Can you guess what it is?



It was actually an Oreo Durian Cheesecake. Hubby has been mentioning the Oreo Durian cake from some hotel quite some time back. Maybe he was hoping I would do one for him. I didn't want to do a sponge cake (I still have inconsistent result with sponge), so I twisted it into a sinful cheesecake instead, with chunks of Oreo in it.



And one final happy news to share with all of you. I've finally bought my KitchenAid! Yes! A bright Orange fellow that sits on my kitchen top everyday. Had it for $599 at the recent Robinson sale, a good deal.



Am going to churn out some goodies with this fellow now so that it justifies the cost.

All things yogurt

I always have problem catching up with my blog. The bakes to be blogged are always accumulating. I wonder how many food bloggers out there are facing the same problem as me. I bake before I could blog the earlier items.

I did three different items with yogurt last week. The first was another Yogurt Chiffon cake. This time I've paired it with Chempedak. This was a total failure, possibly one of the worst Chiffons I've baked this year. The cake didn't drop off the pan during cooling, but this was what I got.



And the result was a dense cake, of course. More of a "Chempedak cheesecake" kind of texture.



I realised yogurt tends to make my cakes dense. Or maybe I'm just bad at the Yogurt-Chiffon combination. All my past yogurt Chiffons didn't turn out well. I don't think I'll be trying this combination anymore, don't want to waste more ingredients.

It's been quite a while since I last made bread. Since I've got quite a fair bit of plain yogurt in my fridge and I didn't feel like making any more yogurt Chiffon, I turned to my tested Yogurt Bread recipe. I added in some Yuzu paste (I got mine from Kitchen Capers retail store at Geylang Bahru) to form a Yuzu Yogurt Bread. It was refreshing. The bread smelled great while baking in the oven. I knead this bread using my normal stand mixer at medium speed. Since it's not meant for heavy duty task, you'll have to make sure you stop the machine frequently to give the dough some turns and to prevent overheating the poor machine.



Yuzu Yogurt Bread

Ingredients
260g bread flour
15g sugar
3g salt
3g yeast
90g plain yogurt
60g fresh milk
15g egg
30g butter
2 tbsp Yuzu paste (about 40g)

Method
1. Mix all dry ingredients together.
2. Add in all wet ingredients except butter and knead to form a dough. Knead for a few minutes till you can stretch the dough a little.
3. Add in butter and knead till smooth and elastic.
4. Shape the dough into a ball. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth or cling-wrap and leave it to proof in a warm place till double its size (about 45 mins).
5. When proofing is completed, punch down the bread dough to release the air.
6. Divide the dough into 3 equal portions. Relax the dough for 10 mins. Roll and shape each portion into an oval log and placed them into a loaf pan.
7. Cover the loaf pan with a cling wrap and allow the dough to go for second proofing until it has reached 80% of the pan.
8. Cover the pan and bake in preheated oven at 170-180C for 50 minutes. My oven loses heat easily. So you may need to adjust the time according to your oven.
9. Remove bread from loaf pan immediately to cool completely.



The bread is soft and fragrant. Do give it a try. I think I'm still better at bread than cakes...lol...



The last yogurt item was some Yogurt Raisin mini cupcakes.





These were more for the kids as the two girls had excursions with the school last week. So I decided to bake these for them to bring as snacks and to finish up my tub of raisins. I had used berry yogurt for these little cuppies. It goes quite well with raisins.

Japanese Sweet Potato Chiffon Cupcakes

I first encountered Japanese Sweet Potato Cake from Rei's blog. I had the honour to try out the cake when Rei brought them to a gathering. It was yummy!

Recently I saw a Japanese lady making it in a YouTube video. At the recent Hokkaido fair, I bought a similar sweet potato custard dessert. That was yummy too, but the sweet potato layer was far too sweet for me.

I decided to try to pair this Japanese Sweet Potato Cake with Chiffon cake in one of my recent Chiffon cake practice. The kids were getting bored with the conventional tube shaped Chiffon, so I thought changing it into cuppies may spice things up a little. The little trick worked. They were happily eating the cuppies without associating them with Chiffon cakes.



I've made the sweet potato cake to be sweeter to go well with my not-so-sweet Chiffon cake. If you like it to be not as sweet, use Rei's recipe.

Japanese Sweet Potato Chiffon Cupcakes

Ingredients

Sweet Potato mixture
550g Japanese Sweet Potatoes
30g butter, soften (suggest to reduce it to 20g)
50ml whipping cream (suggest to reduce it to 40ml)
20g sugar
1 egg yolk

Chiffon Cake layer
(A)
2 egg yolks
15g sugar
20g corn oil
30g milk
40g sweet potato mixture (see below)

(B)
2 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
25g sugar

(C)
60g cake flour
3/4 tsp baking powder

Method
For the sweet potato mixture,
1. Steam the sweet potato over medium high heat for about 25-30 mins till cooked. Peel off the skin and mash them up. Net weight of mashed sweet potato is about 470g.
2. Add the remaining ingredients for the sweet potato mixture into the mashed sweet potatoes. I run the mixture in a blender for a smoother finishing. Reserve 40g of the mixture for the Chiffon cake.

For the Chiffon cake,
1. Sift cake flour together with baking powder.
2. Whisk the egg yolk with sugar till sugar dissolves.
3. Add the corn oil, milk and sweet potato mixture to the yolk mixture and mix well.
4. In a separate clean bowl, beat the egg white with cream of tartar till soft peak.
5. Add sugar in 2 separate additions and beat till just initial stage of stiff peak.
6. Gently fold 1/3 of the egg white into the yolk batter. Mix well. Fold in the remaining egg white in 2 additions. Mix well each time.



To assemble,
1. Fill 1/3 of small paper cup with the sweet potato mixture. Smoothen the mixture with a teaspoon.
2. Fill the remaining paper cup with the Chiffon batter till 80% full. Gently bang the paper cups on the table top to get rid of any trapped bubbles.
3. Bake the cupcakes in preheated oven at 170°C for about 25 mins.
Note: My oven usually takes longer to bake the cake. So you may need to reduce your baking time according to your oven.

This cupcake is ideally served with a spoon so that you can scoop the Chiffon and sweet potato layers together. Enjoy! :)

Too many backlogs is a pain!

Due to my fantastic PC monitor, I now have so many backlogs to update before the next intermittent "crash". I had initially wanted to create separate posts for the different items, but after going through my earlier 2 posts, I decided to place all the remaining into this single post. So this will probably end up to be a super long post, please bear with me.

Ever since the Hokkaido fair, I had been wanting to try my hands on some of the Japanese sweet treats. Last Friday, I finally could find some time to make these.

Hanami Dango


Hanami (means flower viewing) dango is traditionally made during Sakura-viewing season (source: Wikipedia). Dango is similar to our 汤圆 in texture. This experiment wasn't too fascinating as I've made them too bland. I must remember to increase the amount of sugar the next round.

On that same day, I made Radish/Carrot cake too, so that we can have them for breakfast on Saturday. I ended up with one big chunk of carrot cake and our family could only finish half of it, including a portion which was given to our neighbor. That was how much I had made!

Black Carrot Cake


White Carrot Cake


I like the texture of this carrot cake as it yields a very soft cake. Reminds me of a previous Chai Tow Kuay store I used to frequent. The store has since moved away when the area was called for redevelopment.

I have halved the recipe here. It should serve 4-5 person.

Radish/Carrot Cake

Ingredients

100g radish, shredded
60g carrot, shredded
1 tsp sugar
1.5 tsp salt
250g rice flour mix well with 850ml water

Method

1. Fry radish and carrot for a few minutes. Simmer with a little water (approximately 100ml) till soft and water is about to dry up.
2. Turn down the heat. Pour the flour mixture through a sieve into the wok slowly.
3. Add in sugar and salt.
4. Change to medium heat and cook till mixture starts to dry up like the texture of mashed potatoes. Turn off heat.

5. Line baking tin with aluminum foil. Scoop the mixture into the tin and smoothen.
Note: I use a 9" round cake pan for double the recipe.
6. Steam over high heat for 45 mins. Cool completely before use. (I cool it overnight in the fridge.)
Note: the steamed carrot cake may taste a little bland on its own. It should be just nice after frying.


Frying

Ingredients

1.5 tbsp chopped seasoned turnip (Chai Por)
2 eggs, lightly beaten
Salt
Light Soy Sauce
Sweet Sauce

Method
1. Rinse and soak the turnip for about 5 minutes. Drain and squeeze out excess water.
2. Fry the turnip for 1-2 mins. Add carrot cake (cut into strips of 1cm x 3cm) and fry together. Break them up into smaller chunks with your wok spatula.
3. For white carrot cake, add salt and/or light soy sauce to season. For black carrot cake, add soy sauce and sweet sauce to season.
4. Spread out the carrot cake to a single layer. Pour the beaten eggs over it. Let the eggs set a little before turning over.

I have one more item to blog on. But I'm really too tired and hungry now. Will continue tomorrow if the monitor is still with me. Going to tuck in some cold cold ice cream next!

Fried Potato Balls

It is not my usual style to deep fry things in my kitchen as I hate the use of large amount of oil in cooking. But once in a blue moon, I'll try out some deep fried dishes just to satisfy the craving of those at home. I have a very understanding hubby, he always tell me to buy whatever deep fried stuff I feel like eating, no need to spend so much effort to go through the process.

Last week, I made these deep fried potato balls for dinner. They go very well with tartar sauce and the kids love them. Yummy!



My apologies for not having a proper recipe as I didn't really measure the individual ingredients. Hopefully this estimated recipe will give you an idea of how to make these. You can always alter yours according to your liking.



Fried Potato Balls

Makes about 36 potato balls

Ingredients (estimated)

550g minced pork
10 Chinese mushrooms
3 tbsp light soy sauce
Coriander powder (I use quite a generous amount)
Dashes of sesame oil
1 egg yolk
5 medium potatoes
Garlic Salt
1-2 tbsp Margarine
Bread crumbs
1 egg white



Method
1. Soak and wash the Chinese mushrooms. Cut them into small dices.
2. Season the minced meat and mushrooms with the light soy sauce, coriander powder, sesame oil and egg yolk. I marinate it for at least 2 hrs.
3. Boil the potatoes till cooked. Remove the skin and mash them when hot. Season with margarine and garlic salt (use normal salt if you do not have garlic salt).
4. Mix the mashed potatoes with the seasoned meat. Make into balls of about 1.5 inches. (I use two spoons to make into balls so that I don't have to mess up my hands.)
5. Coat each ball with egg white followed by bread crumbs. Freeze the balls for 15 mins to prevent too much crumbs from dropping off during frying.
6. Fry the balls in hot oil until golden brown. Drain and serve with tartar sauce.

Crazy over Chiffon

Finally I can access my PC! My monitor has been taking non-approved time off as and when it likes to. For the past 1 week or so, I have no access to my PC as the monitor just show me a blank white screen whenever I tried to turn it on. This is not the first time it happens and I anticipate it will not be the last. So here I am, with tonnes of backlogs to update since I've been churning out things from my kitchen for the past week. I hope I can complete my updates before the monitor takes its next long break again.

I finally understand why some of the bakers out there couldn't stop baking Chiffon cakes, especially if they've succeeded after many tries. Chiffon is very addictive to bake (and eat) indeed. It is light and not as oily and hence a "healthier" version of cake to feed into my ever expanding tummy.

Since I wasn't completely successful in Chiffon yet (it really very much depends on my luck), I continued to bake Chiffon in different flavours. The kids are obviously getting a bit tired of Chiffon. They used to be able to finish a 21cm Chiffon in 2 days, now it usually takes a few days. They didn't complain, just not as interested to eat mummy's cake. Sorry kids, practice makes perfect. So until your mummy gets it right confidently, you'll probably be seeing more versions of Chiffon on your dining table.

After my last failed Mango Yogurt Chiffon, I decided to try on a "normal" Chiffon. I chose to bake a Chocolate flavoured one this time. I did the cake twice, as I find the Chocolate flavour to be too mild in the first trial. I was hoping to achieve a real Chocolatey Chiffon.

I tried not to overbeat the egg whites. Not too sure if I've succeeded but this is how my egg white looks like.




I did a mistake for the first cake. I popped it into the oven and went to shower (bad move!), thinking it'll take at least 30 minutes to be baked. My oven ended up too hot. There was a hole in the cake near the tube of the pan.



Other than that, the cake looked better than my Mango Yogurt Chiffon. The holes were not as big and it was taller.




For my second attempt, I had used melted dark chocolate instead of cocoa powder. It tasted better, but still not what I deem as real chocolatey. Will continue to experiment more in future. Do you think the second cake looks better compared to my first?