Birthday cake for my mother

I seldom succeed in getting a homemade birthday cake ready on time for that special day of anyone... however this time, I delivered the cake to her on the day of my mother's birthday! I am so proud of myself. Haha.

This is a very simple all in recipe, so I gamely try it out as a birthday cake. The recipe asked that all the ingredients be thrown into a food processor and then just bake and decorate. Sounds so easy right? But I do not have food processor and I think the KA can do the job. The recipe is for a 4 layers cake and I half the recipe since I wanted to make a 2 layer one (* struggling to keep awake *).

Even though the butter is relatively soft, after some mixing, there are still cubes of butter not blended into the batter. I chose to leave it because I am worried about the gluten forming when flour is over beaten. But this recipe uses self raising flour .... does this applies to self raising flour too? I am also too lazy to lay the baking paper properly, so I just simply fold and tug to cover the 8 inch tray. I thought the batter would turn more "watery" and then will press out the folds but I was wrong.

The "naked" cake ended up looking like this.

Then I happily (dozed off for a while while writing!) prepare frosting. I did not use the recommended buttercream since I wanted to finish my whip cream in the freezer. I beat the whipping cream with my hands, so tired but I push myself and when finally done, I pour cooled melted chocolate into the cold whipped cream. I am sure all of you know what happens after that. This mistake is the 2nd time. The first time, I pour cool melted chocolate into the whipped cream when I served them ice cream like that of chocolate syrup... but the melted chocolate hardens upon touching the cold whipped cream. I can not imagine I can forget the mistake and made same one again. So in the end, the frosting was a whipped cream with bits of chocolate. Well, 另類 frosting then.

The cake was very sweet. I dare not reduce any sugar as I am afraid the cake will taste bitter if there was not enough sugar to compensate. The inside looked presentable but the cake is on the dry side and crumbly. However, it taste very good with the whipped cream. This is how my decorated cake looked like.

The recipe is taken from BBC Australian Good Food April 2011

Layered Easter Chocolate Cake 

Serves 12 Prep 20 mins plus cooling

Cook 35 mins 

Super Easy, Family favourite

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups (225g) self raising flour

1 1/4 cups (275g) firmly packed brown sugar

250g unsalted butter, softened

75g dark chocolate, melted

1/2 cup (50g) cocoa 

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

4 eggs

16 mini Easter eggs, to decorate

Ganache icing

1/2 cup (80ml) cream

160g dark chocolate, chopped

buttercream filling

375g unsalted butter, softened

500g pure icing sugar

1/2 cup (80ml) milk

1. Preheat oven to 180C or 160C. Grease and line two 20cm round pans.

2. Place flour, sugar, butter, chocolate, cocoa, baking powder, vanilla, eggs and 2 tbsp water in a food processor and process until smooth. Spoon into pans, level surfaces and bake for 35 mins, until a skewer inserted into centre comes out clean. Stand for 5 mins, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

3. Meanwhile, to make icing, heat cream in a small pan on medium. Bring to boil. Remove from heat and add chocolate. Stand for 2-3 mins, until chocolate is melted. Whisk until smooth. Stand for 20 mins. until cooled slightly and thickened. 

4. To make buttercream filling, use an electric mixer to beat butter until as white as possible. Alternately beat in sugar and milk, starting and finishing with a little sugar.

5. Using a bread knife, split each cake into two layers. Sandwich together all four layers with buttercream. Top with ganache and decorate with Easter eggs. Serve.

For those interested in the texture inside, I hope the picture can help a little.

Phew, I have finally managed an easy birthday cake on time for someone's birthday!

Smooth top bread machine chocolate bread

Looks like I am quite free hor, able to have a new post every night. Actually I am not, just that I ignored the housework and my kids since my hubby is not around.

I made a bread today, a bread machine bread. No, not from the book that my dear friend has given me yet, but a recipe that I happened to come across and the blog showed great results and even give tips on how to make a good machine bread. It is from Cook.Bake.Love. Indeed, recipe makes a difference.

This time, my bread has a smoother top, a much much smoother one. However, I do not understand how come there is a crack on top and it looks like a big potato. LOL. Let you take a look.

I also heed the advice of stopping the machine 10 - 15 minutes before times up and I noticed, yes , no thick crust. Infact the crust is not noticeable at all! However, I am not sure if the bread is totally cooked, but it did sound hollow when I knock on it all sides using a fork. And now while writing this post and revisiting the recipe, I have put half a tsp less of yeast! I am eager to try again to see if the top will still be as smooth. I tried another recipe twice and both gave very ugly top. You can look at it here.

I can never cut thin slices!

Look ! Like no crust ya? ! And this is the first piece somemore!

A very tasty bread indeed. I ate two (the first and the last piece) right after dinner. How to slim down like that? No time to exercise and lots of time for supper.  

I am eager to buy a new bottle of yeast to try out again.  Let's see if this one remains soft tomorrow. 

Volcanoes

It has been more than two months since I last did any baking. But I still borrows books on baking and beading from the library. Recently I borrowed a book titled "Crave" which has all these recipes using cream cheese. I marked a few to be tried but after 6 weeks (I extended the deadline) I still have no time for them. I quickly did a "photo"copy of the easier recipe by snapping the recipe using my phone camera before I bookdropped it unreluctantly. Did I violate any copyright law?

So now that the exam is over, I decided to give it a try. Not only my skills (if I had any) are dusty, the mixer is also dusty, so I had more preparation work. I wiped the mixer clean, prepare the bowls that I need, weight the ingredients, blah blah blah. It took me 2 hours from preparation till the end products "emerge" from the oven. Luckily I am not cooking dinner.

The little thing I baked this time is called Volcanoes. They look like this (picture taken from the book).



Nice ya? But mine did not look like this at all. The cheese part of my cupcake sank all the way to the bottom. My volcanoes are dormant ones. :-)

The cheese part is pretty easy to mix, all done by hand, and I used icing sugar instead of caster sugar. I am not sure what is superfine caster sugar anyway. I added 10g more of icing sugar because I have understood from a baking class trainer that we can add 10g more if we want to replace caster with icing sugar.

The cake batter part is not that difficult either. However, my batter has this grainy look which I am not sure if that should be the case. It kind of look like the egg is not fully incorporated into the batter. The recipe called for large eggs, but since my eggs are small, I used 1 instead of 1/2 for the cream cheese filling and 2 instead of 1 and half for the batter mixture. Was it the extra egg? Or the shortage of cocoa powder? I tried to make up with flour thou.

Assembly time. The "assembling" instruction says that a cavity should be made with the back of the spoon, but my batter is not of that consistency and the cavity "cave" in rather fast and so I have to be quick. I use one spoon to try make the cavity and the other hand quickly pour the cheese mix in. Actually, the cheese mix still kind of stay at the top. In the end of the assembling process, I have alot of cheese mix left and I have to create little cupcakes of cheese mix with chocolate cake base.

After 35 minutes of baking (5 minutes more than required, kiasi lah), I took them out. They looked puffed up and baked. However upon cooling, I noticed they shrunk. No matter how they looked, they passed the taste test. The cake is very soft and very moist (fudgy a better word?). The kids like it, I like it and now, 2nd day after the volcanoes are baked, they are all gone. I ate at least 5 of them, for taste test and QA (on the 2nd day) etc. However, something puzzles me. On the 2nd day (ie today) I noticed the top of a few cupcakes are glossy, and the cross section shows a layer of frosting lookalike at the top. I hope I have a teacher ready for me to ask these kind of questions.

Here's how my volcanoes look.




And now, here is the recipe. (Makes 12 cupcakes)

Ingredients

Cream Cheese Filling

Cream cheese 115g (4oz)
Caster (superfine) sugar 70g(2 and half oz)
Vanilla Essence 1/4 tsp
Egg 1/2 large, lightly beaten

Fudgy Chocolate Cupcake batter (Now then I realise cupcake is of fudgy nature)

Cake flour 100g (3 and 1/2 oz)
Cocoa powder 5 and 3/4 Tbsp
Baking powder 3/4 tsp
Salt 1/3 tsp
Butter 100g
Castor (superfine) sugar 70g
Light brown sugar 70g
Vanilla essence 2/3 tsp
Eggs 1 and 1/2 large, lightly beaten
Milk 140ml

Method

Prepare cream cheese filling. In a medium bowl, blend cream cheese, sugar and vanilla essence until smooth and creamy. Gradually add egg, beating until smooth. Set aside.

Preheat oven to 180 degree Celcius. Line a 12 hole cupcake tin with paper cups.

Prepare cupcake batter. In a medium bowl, stir together cake flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt until well blended. Set aside.

Wtih an eclectric mixer, cream butter, castor sugar and light brown sugar at medium speed until smooth and fluffy. Gradually blend in vanilla essence and eggs until well incorporated.

Lowe speed and add flour mixture and milk in 3 separate additions, starting and ending with flour mixture. Make sure each addition is fully incorporated into batter before adding the next.

Divide batter evenly among paper cups, Create a cavity in the centre of each cupcake with the back of a spoon. Fill cavities with cream cheese filling.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until tops are lightly browned and spring back when gently pressed. Leave to cool in tin for 10 minutes.

Remove cupcakes form bing and leave to cool completely on a wire rack before serving. The cupcakes can be stored, covered, at room temperature for up to 3 days, or in the regfrigerator for up to 1 week.

Now you may want to have a go at it.

p/s : I used another editor and do not know how to have the recipe type out in proper spacing. Sorry.
p/s : Since I have so much of the cheese filling left, I think I should have added more to each cupcake and then the cheese mixture will not sink down?

Chocolate Cheese Cake the 2nd

Last sunday was my granny's birthday. No, I did not bake the birthday cake, my "Kungfu" still not there yet, but I baked a cake to add to the list of existing food. I had no confidence that the cake will make it, so I did not tell my relatives at all. Finally, after much meddling with that new baby, I got an 8" by 8" product.

I used alot of time making this cake because I can't decide if I should use the K beater or the wire whisk. Finally, I choose the K beater. Since I only have one beater and one mixer bowl, I have to wash after I cream the cheese part. When I am about to start my cake batter portion, I realise my SR flour has expired and I have to google for a substitute and finally settled with mixing baking powder and plain flour. The "formula" that I used is to add 1 and a half teaspoon of baking powder to 140g flour to make 140g of SR flour. The recipe called for 120g flour, so I just estimate and mix. I also, out of convenience, reduce the butter by 6g. I also used icing sugar for the cheese mixture rather than caster sugar.

The outcome? The cake has many bumps on the surface, not sure why. It did not rise alot, and I tent it throughout after half the baking time because it is chocolate cake and it is difficult to see if the top is burnt. Since it is for other's consumption, I think I want to see how it taste before letting other people eat it. So I tasted a corner. The chocolate part is rather dry, but the cheese part is defnitely super yummy.

After the gathering, I brought back an empty container. My 2nd aunt took the remainders. All of them who ate said they love the cheese portion and said the same thing "the chocolate part is dry".

My kids did not get to eat any (besides the little bit of sampler) so I baked for them again the next day. This time I use SR flour with the right amount of butter and it resulted in a cake with very moist and soft chocolate part with the same super yummy cheese part. I gave some to my boy's classmate's mum and she also said the cake is very yummy.

The whole cake is gone on the 2nd day. I think the chocolate part taste close to Sara Lee. Wonder if I can just bake the chocolate part portion and "serve" as Sara Lee to my kids. They have finish 4 boxes of Sara Lee this month.

Cake made from SR flour. Rises better.

Last bake of 2008 - Chocolate Cup Cakes

I baked this before, but couldn't find the entry, so I guess I may have did it before the birth of this blog. The post it slips with comments sticking on the recipe page should be sufficient to support my guess.

The comments mentioned that the cupcakes were bitter so this time round I only reduce the sugar by 20g (it was a 50% reduction previously).

I was lazy to do the washing of the mixer so I manually whisk the eggs, butter and sugar so now I still have an aching arm even though the cupcakes are done beginning of last week.

I baked two batches because the first batch is polished up on the same day and my kids still ask for more. However, the 2nd batch took 3 days to finished, perhaps due to the additional choice of cheesecake which I baked the same day as the first batch. I did not do any icing this time, even though I originally wanted my kids to decorate the cupcakes. I only added white chocolate droplets into the first batch and let them sprinkle on some sprinkles on the 2nd batch.

The cupcakes are really tasty (to me) since they are chocolate flavour. Spongey on the inside and a little crispy on the crust.

Here's how mine looked.

The first batch



The 2nd batch


And here's the recipe from the book "Complete Cookery - Baking" by Ann Nicol

Ingredients :-
100g/4oz butter, softened
100g/4oz soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
100g/4oz self rasing flour
25g/1oz cocoa
50g/2oz plain chocolate chips

Icings :-
25g/1oz butter. melted
25g/1oz cocoa
1 tbsp milk
100g/4oz golden icing sugar
50g/2oz milk chocolate mini buttons

Steps :-
1. Preheat the oven to 190dC/375F/Gas 5. Line 18 buns tins with foil or paper cases.
2. Sift the flour and cocoa into a bowl. Add the butter, sugar and eggs. Beat until smooth, then stir in the chocolate chips.
3. Divide the mixture between the lined bun cases. Bake in centre of the oven for about 15 minutes, until the buns spring back when lightly pressed. Remove the buns to a wire rack to cool.
4. To make the icing, beat the butter with the cocoa, milk and icing sugar until smooth.
5. Spread over the tops of the buns and sprinkle each one with a few chocolate buttons. Leave to set for 30 minutes before serving.

p/s : Oh, I found the picture I took of my previous chocolate cupcake attempt. They are done in Aug 2007 with a couple of other bakes like the doggie biscuit and some lemonly stuff. Now I miss my doggie biscuits.

Orea Yogurt Cake with Chocolate Crumbles

So, did the chocolate crumble scare u? Ya, those are suppose
to be chocolate crumble, but I am not sure did I do it correctly.
It is so difficult to rub butter into flour to make crumbs like
texture, and since it is so wet, so I just add flour and add flour
and add flour till I see sandy, crumb like texture. Then I just
bake as required by the recipe and sprinkle them onto the
yogurt filling top and the sides (cos I have alot of them).

This is a Oreo yogurt cake, made from following recipe in
Happy Homebaking's website. She has done hers so nicely
and I am tempted to make one since I have to use up my
yogurt (really sick of my chocolate marble cake). Usually I do
not have much problem with non bake cake, but this time I
find jelly like substance at the bottom of the filling. Anyway,
its edible, so I just ignore it for the time being.

Non bake cakes are always welcomed by my kids, so I had no
problem in finishing the cake.

不知要笑我不自量力，还是夸我勇于尝试。不好好安分做些简单
反而去自找麻烦。 不过没法啦，得用完我的那一大罐 无糖yogurt，
所以除了那个失败多次的巧克力蛋糕，我就来一个冷的蛋糕，
因为孩子喜欢冷品，所以希望能快点儿解决那个yogurt.

这回上场的是Happy Homebaking 的 Oreo Yogurt Cake.
本来不必烘的蛋糕，我是没什么问题的，但这次不知为什么，
蛋糕的yogurt馅的底部有jelly的踪迹。反正是熟的，就不管啦。
白白的蛋糕，怕有点儿吓人，所以也有样学样，尝试chocolate
crumble (这就是我不自量力的地方）。结果就是以上的样子，
过程我就不想多说啦。

可不可告诉我，我是不自量力， 还是勇于尝试？不过，连续三次
同样的蛋糕，我真的吃腻了。

Another go at the Low Fat Chocolate Marble cake

I got a big tub of no sugar added, natural yogurt and its too
"sour" just to eat it on its own, so I am trying to use it on
baking.

Looked through my blog and found the low fat chocolate
marble cake uses yogurt .. but that wasn't such a successful
bake. Didn't manage to find any recipe that interest me that 
night and so I 've got no choice for the time being.

Had a hard time making this cake cos I got other housework
in between. Similarly, the result is not very satisfactory.
The cake rose but sank when cooling down. Cracks form on
top. However, I tented it this time so the top isn't so hard.

Upon cutting, I still find moist moist part at the bottom of
the cake. Am still unsure if the part results from the sinking
of cake or uncooked ( inital temperature is correct but not
sure if it changes in that one hour cos I can't see the
thermometer .. but I baked it for at least 1hr 15 min
liao). Furthermore, the cake has shrink away from the loaf
pan and the skewer comes out clean.
Anyway cooked or uncooked, they still went down my
family's members' tummy.

Look at that dreadful moist moist patch. (Sorry to my friends
and readers for all my nasty looking bakes)


It so happen that I am browsing other websites prior to
writing this post and guess what, Happy Homebaker has
adapt this recipe and tweak it to make her son's birthday
cake and its such a success. There are also more successful
stories on this cake while I ..........

Well, with the tub of yogurt sitting in my fridge, I can always
try this recipe again. This time I will follow Happy
Homebaker's recipe which has measurements in kg and ml
rather then cups. Perhaps, I will also use this recipe to make
my girl her bday cake in Oct, or my mum's bday cake in sept
(my mum only fancies cake that are filling)

Wish me luck.

又是一个不成功的蛋糕 （有图为证）。第二次了，还是这样。
材料还有，如再次尝试，要跟Happy Homebaker 的食谱了。
 

Fresh from the oven - Brownie Muffin

It wasn't until I finished baking them just this morning that
I realised I  have baked them before.

The recipe is scribbled in my notebook, and I find the steps
easy so wanted to do it with my boy.

Very happy that my boy enjoyed himself and very happy
with myself that I can still manage to prepare lunch with this
baking session on.

Here are the lovely sinful, fattening muffins.


Please check out the recipe from JY's Baking Journal.

Like she say, the muffin is moist inside and has a crusty top.
Best of all, I do not need the mixer. However, the batter is
quite thick, so spooning into my muffin cups is a challenge.

好开心今早与孩子烘了些巧克力马芬。这食谱非常简单，
不需搅拌机，所以孩子很开心能帮上忙。赶快点击这里， 与孩
子一起做，促进亲子关系吧。

Double chocolate muffin with yogurt

Tried this simple recipe shared by Zu here.

Easy to prepare but it sticks to my paper cup that I use with my
mini muffin pan. Almost 1/3 of the muffin is "wasted". Luckily
those in aluminium foil cup did not really stick. Must buy proper
muffin cup to see if it is still so sticky.

The muffin taste a little chewy. Not sure have i over stir the
batter or is it meant to be the way. But it is indeed tasty since it
is chocolate milk with cocoa powder. My girl ate 3 in a go and
another 2 for night snacks!

Here's the double chocolate muffin with yogurt.

 

Chocolate Cheese Cake

Has been a long time since I last baked Here's what I hv to share
today.

Got this recipe from Zu's kitchen. Thank to Zu for this tasty recipe.

I used a 8 by 8 square pan to make this cake. Made a mistake
when I beat the mixture A by adding in the egg and beat
all together instead of beating the cheese and sugar then add
egg. Not sure how it had affected the final product.  I expect the
mixture B is of a pouring consistency since the recipe says "pour"
the mixture into baking pan, but mine is not and that gets me
worry a little.

 

Anyway the final product is soft and tasty when I eat it while its
warm. As the cake has a cheese part, I decide to put it into the
fridge. However, the chocolate cake portion taste dry when I eat
after it has been fridged (ya I ate a total of 4 pieces liao).

 

hmm .. now i m thinking of having another piece.

Update on 30th nov. Saw from the comments of the original post
that I shd leave the cake in room temperature before serving cos
the cake harden in the fridge due to the butter content in the
chocolate cake.

Egg Tarts and a chocolate and vanilla marble loaf

Wasn't in good mood these few days. People say if mood not good
better don't bake. Anyway even thou mood isnt any better, I still
went ahead to bake egg tart and try out a new recipe from a book
I borrowed from library.

Was craving for egg tarts, so were the kids. This time I used cake
flour  instead of top flour. The same recipe used, full portion for
 crust, 3/4 portion for the filling. Makes 12 tarts instead of 10 thou
tart base is too thin for my liking. 26g of pastry dough per tart.

Hubby said taste not as good as the previous batch (some time
back) but is still good. My boy took 2 in a go for snacks just now.
No picture to show since am rushing in cooking process the whole
day. Imagine, pizza (bread base) for lunch, sushi for dinner, plus
the egg tart and cake, so busy.

As for the cake, its from a book called "simple cakes". I find the
steps of those bakes are pretty simple. This one that I tried is a
all-in-one method cake using a mixer, but my mother (ya she 
was helping cos i need to go off and put kids to nap) even omit
it and uses hand mix.  After an hour, the cake is ready.

Taste wise is fine, look wise, far from the one pictured in the book.
However, after eating it, i find the funny feeling that you will get
when you touch the back of your bottom teeth after eating not
so ripe bananas. Is that the result of too much baking powder?
My mother is the one who noticed the excessive use (in her
opinion) of baking powder even thou self raising flour is used.
Can anyone tell me is there any harm in having too much baking
powder in a recipe ? My mother says its not good for health.

I will hv to try again with mixer to see if there is any vast
difference in using hand mix and mixer.

Here's my cake.
 

Here's the recipe from the book "Simple Cakes" by Mary Berry.

Chocolate and vanilla marble loaf

Preparation time : 30 minutes
cooking time  : 1 - 1 1/2 hr
tin needed : a 900g (2 lb) loaf tin, 17 x 9 x 9 cm base measurement

Ingredients :
225g (8oz) margarine, soften
225g (8oz) caster sugar ( I use 200g sugar only)
275g (10oz) self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
2 tbsp milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
2 tbsp hot water

For icing : (I did not use this since cake already fattening)
25g (1oz) margarine
15g (1/2 oz cocoa powder, sifted)
1-2 tbsp milk
100g (4oz) icing sugar, sifted
abt 25g (1oz) white chocolate, melted

Method:


1. Lightly grease the tin and line with a wide strip of non-stick
    baking parchment to go up the wide sides and over the base of
    the tin. Pre-heat the oven to 160C/325F/Gas mark 3. Put the
    margarine, sugar, flour, baking powder, eggs, milk and vanilla
    extract into a large bowl and beat with a hand held electric
    mixer fir about 2 minutes, until well blended. Spoon half the
    mixture into another bowl and set aside.

2. In a small bowl, mix the cocoa powder and hot water together
    until smooth. Allow to cook slightly, then add to one of the   
    bowls of cake mixture, mixing well until evenly blended.

3. Spoon the vanilla and chocolate cake mixtures randomly into
    the prepared tin until all of the mixture is used up and gently 
    level the surface. Bake for 50 minutes - 1 hour, until the cake  
    is well risen, springy to the touch and beginning to shrink away
    from the sides of the tin. Allow to cool in the tin for a few
    minutes, then turn out on to a wire rack, remove the lining
    paper and leave to cool completely.

4. For the icing, melt the margarine in a small pan, add the cocoa
    powder, stir to blend and cook gently for 1 minute. Stir in the
    milk and icing sugar, then remove from the heat and mix
    thoroughly. If necessary, leave the icing on one side, stirring
    occasionally, to thicken.

5. Spread the cake evenly with the icing, then drizzle the melted
    white chocolate over the top. Leave to set.

1. 
   

What is this, you may ask. This is the steamed moist chocolate cake, recipe taken from my friend's blog.  Thanks Pris and the originator (if she ever chanced upon this). I did not put any frosting, cos i did not hv condense milk.
Anyway it is already very soft and moist and delicious.
Hubby say very nice leh.

Not difficult to make since it doesn't require mixer, and no need for oven too (not heaty then i suppose). Wonderful! BUT my kids are not eating it :(.

Just wondering, did u see the holes? Are the holes suppose to be there?