Chocolate Swirls Cheesecake (II)

I was happily typing the title of this post, without realising that I had written a post with the same title "Chocolate Swirls Cheesecake" before. Scatter-brain. Referring back, the ingredients are quite identical except for the portion of each of them. And of course, I have forgotten that I had written in my earlier post that the (250gm) butter is excessive and I would like to cut it down. Anyway, this is another tasty chocolate swirls cheesecake shared by Bakericious, and again this taste like brownie to me. I guess I'm "infatuated" with swirls, chocolate + cheese (*_*)

Ingredients/ Method:

(A)

250g cream cheese, softened (reduced from 300g)

40g castor sugar (reduced from 50g)

1 egg

lemon zest from 1 lemon (not added in original recipe)

1. Beat cream cheese with sugar until light and fluffy.

2. Add in lemon zest and give a few strokes to just incorporate into cream cheese mixture.

3. Beat in egg until well-mixed and set aside.

(B)

250g butter, softened

145g castor sugar (reduced from 165g)

4 eggs

4 tbsp cocoa powder

160g self-raising flour

1 1/4tsp baking powder

1 1/4tbsp chocolate milk (replaced with full cream milk)

1. Sieve cocoa powder, self-raising flour and baking powder and set aside.

2. Beat butter and sugar till light and fluffy. Batter should look pale in colour.

3. Add egg one at a time and beat until well incorporated into the butter mixture.

4. Alternate flour and milk into the egg mixture, and beat on low speed until well-mixed.

5. Pour half of chocolate batter into prepared cake tin, followed by cream cheese mixture, and lastly the remaining chocolate batter. (I did mine in 6x6' square tin, and there are enough batter for another 6 medium-sized cupcakes.)

6. Bake in pre-heated oven at 180 deg C for 45 to 50 mins or until skewer comes out clean. (I bake the cupcakes first at 180 deg C for 20 mins, i guess 18 mins should be good enough.)

You might notice that the colour of the

chocolate in these cupcakes are not "rich"

enough, that's because I had scooped the

mixed batter from my square tin after realising

my 6x6' tin can't "accomodate" all the batter.

Princess castle cake

A year ago, I made a Princess cake for my little cousin Winni's 9th birthday. One year wiser, she requested for a Princess castle cake for her 10-year old birthday. Although I did toy with the idea of doing a castle cake before her request, I was quite apprehensive as I could not figure out how to make the towers (P.S. I still could not figure out this part, anyone can help or suggest?). Thereafter, I had many question marks like the design, the assembly, whether using butter cream or fondant...etc, and these kept me thinking for many days. It also did not help that workload had not been kind for the last few weeks, and therefore I was totally drained when I reached home. Timing was ticking, and I finally sketched out the design of the cake plus whatever 'accessories' that I want to put on the cake. Only on the Wed nite that I finally got anxious and started to prepare the fondant, and did couple of figurines. Did some on Thurs nite. Did some on Fri nite. Did some on Sat nite. No more energy to bake the cake on Sat nite. The birthday party was on Sunday 6pm, and I probably spent almost the whole day to bake, decorate, and did the final touch-up of the cake. Phew! Finally, the end result .....

A Princess sitting on the garden with her lovely cat, and

surrounded by 3 towers at W I N N I castle.


She's pleased with her beautiful dress and pearl necklace,
bumble bees buzzing around her and the flowers, but oh
no, the castle towers are leaning towards each other. They
seems to collapse anytime ;p



Bright and sunny roses and petals flanked the castle gate,
to welcome all guests to W I N N I castle.

Diamond-shaped window with details and flower motifs. This

is a 2-storey tower.

This is the 3-storey tower that was constructed to lean like

"Leaning Tower of Pisa".

The main cake used is Steamed chocolate cake,

but the "tower" is oven-baked using the same

recipe and in muffin cups.

Dim Sum Fried Carrot Cake

When I saw Honey Bee Sweet's post on dim sum fried carrot cake, it caught my eye because they really look yummy! The ingredients and method are pretty straight-forward and I managed to try it out yesterday. As I hardly cooked at home, I had to "borrow" the chinese sausages from my dad, and the shallots from my aunt. I guess the rest of the ingredients are within their expiry dates...opps! HBS had them pan fried, which I didn't but they are still good. I'm going to make this again, for sure! Hope over to HBS for the method/ ingredients for preparing this dish ;-)

This is a steamed version, not fried yet