Simon's Birthday Cake

Guess what's this cake? Stay tuned.....

More mooncakes

There are a few variety of mooncakes that i wanted to make, those baked ones, cheesecake snowskin mooncakes, chocolate snowskin mooncakes, durian snowskin mooncakes..... but alas i only have so little time to do either of them. Since i have some left-over ingredients from my earlier moonies, i decided to finish up all of them. There's also a pack of red bean paste that i bought a few months ago, supposedly to bake this, but i never had the chance/ courage to try out bread-making. For bread-making, it seems you need alot of time for proofing, which i don't have the luxury since i usually do my baking almost in the 'wee' hours. I also made some custard filling, which i initially thought would be quite effortless to prepare. Things are easy until sieveing the custard, ohmigod, i started to regret preparing it.

Ingredients/ Method for custard filling:

2 egg yolks

150g caster sugar

40g superfine flour

40g corn flour

30g custard powder

100ml coconut milk

150ml milk

50g butter

1. Mix all ingredients except butter till well combined.

2. Stir in butter.

3. Steam for 15 mins or till cooked.

4. Sieve the custard paste and leave to cool.

5. Scale custard paste at 15g each.

I had 2 types of fillings, custard with white lotus paste, and custard with red bean paste. Hands-up for the low sugar white lotus paste. The red bean paste is a tad too sweet.

The snowskin is using the same as my previous bake. However, i tried added a few drops of pandan paste and strawberry paste this time round to give me more 'colorful' moonies. Yields 24 mini mooncakes, which i shared with my family members.

Blueberry Yogurt Cake

I've been trying to find a recipe that uses yogurt as the tub in my fridge will be expiring soon, and i definitely have to use it up by this week as i'll be away for 2 weeks from this saturday. Went back to the usual blogs, and found one "Another Yogurt Cake" by HappyHomeBaker.

The result of the cake doesn't turn out what i expected it to be, as it was rather dense and heavy. Other than that, the cake is very flavourful, and of course, you can't go wrong with fresh blueberries. Not too sure whether i did anything wrong in the preparation, but i will attempt this yogurt cake again when i return.

Ingredients/ Method:

125ml yogurt

100g caster sugar

60g brown sugar

3 eggs

95g ground almond

140g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

125ml olive oil

some blueberries

1. Preheat over to 180 degC. Grease and line 8" round pan with baking paper.

2. Mix yogurt, sugar and eggs.

3. Add ground almongs and sieve over flour and baking powder. Mix till combined.

4. Fill 2/3 of the batter in the pan, arranged blueberries on the batter and pour the rest of the remaining batter over the blueberries.

5. Bake at 180 degC for 40-50 mins or until skewer comes out clean.

6. Let cool in pan for 20mins before unmoulding.

Strawberry Chiffon Cake

My cousin, Sandra, birthday happened to fall on Malaysia's National Day. For couple of years, there was no birthday 'party' for her as i think the date is near/ the exam period. So the next time if anyone were to plan for a baby, timed it to holiday season so that your kid would not be 'deprived' of birthday parties! This year, however, is an exception and it was a rather last-minute decision that there'll be a celebration for my cousin. Not too sure whether my cousin would like a home-baked cake, i actually sought my aunt's permission to bake a birthday cake. I thought my cousin like cheese or chocolate, but no it wasn't; it's strawberry, perhaps this is all (little) girl's favourite??

There wasn't much time for me to search the internet for strawberry cake recipe, so i dig through my rather-thick stack of recipe print-outs that i've accumulated so far. Since my sponge cake has not been very successful, i was thinking of using other sponge cake recipes, but i eventually found one recipe that is exactly what i intend to bake - Strawberry Chiffon Cake by Little Corner of Mine. The batter is little too much for my 8' cake tin, and pour the remaining batter to a smaller cake tin. I bake these 2 cakes at the same time. I would say the small cake is a success as it did not sink after cool. But i can't say the same for the big cake, it shrink quite a fair bit and has a sunken top after cool. Weird? Why 1 is ok but the other is not, when they are being bake at the same time, same temperature, same batter, same level in the oven? Anyone can advise?

We ate the small cake for our breakfast, and i like the texture, although the next time, i will cut down on the sugar. The big cake is to be decorated as a birthday cake. I like the simple decor. The verdict from T is that there is enough fresh strawberry for the cake and too much whipped cream. In my baking journey, T and my aunt Cat has given me alot of valuable feedbacks, which i appreciate. I hope i can improve a little step at a time (^..^)

Happy Birthday, Sandra

Ingredients/ Method:

(some modifications were made as most of my measurement is in gm instead of cup)

(A)

230g plain flour

1 tbsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

100g sugar (to reduce sugar the next time)

(B)

1/2cup canola oil

6 egg yolks

185g strawberry puree

1 tsp strawberry paste

(C)

6 egg whites

1/2tsp cream of tartar

125g sugar

1. Preheat oven to 170 degC.
2. Sift (A), stir to mix. Add (B) and use an electric mixer till well incorporated. Set aside.
3. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar in another bowl until soft peak, then gradually add in sugar. Beat until stiff peak is formed.
4. Fold 1/3 of the egg white mixture into yolk batter gently but thoroughly. Then, add 1/3 egg white and do the same until all the egg whites is used.
5. Pour batter into cake tin, and igive it a knock on the table.
6. Bake for 45-50 mins or until toothpick inserted come out clean.
7. Invert the pan and let the cake cool inside the pan. When cooled, loosen the edge and remove the cake to cool completely on wire rack.