Marbled butter cake

Mrs NgSK's butter cake. First, I saw it at Busy Gran's which made reference to Peng's kitchen and then it lead me to WendyinKK. I was thinking who is Mrs NgSK and there seems to rave review on the butter cake. If you are still wondering who's she, please visit Table for 2...or more for more details. Instead of a plain butter cake, I did a marbled one but I didn't like the not-so-swirls effects. Anyway, I'm typing out the recipe for my future reference. Taste-wise, I'll update it later after I try it out as my breakfast tomorrow. (Update 4 June 2012: Forgotten that I had not updated after the taste-test. Actually sliced and packed in boxes for my colleagues but woke up with a swollen eye the next day and can't go to the office, ended up had to ask hubby to bring for his colleagues. He called in the afternoon and told me that his colleagues would like to place order for the cakes, and said "Are you happy?") 'Nuf said)

Mrs NgSK's butter cake (with modifications)

Ingredients/ Method
230g salted butter, softened
200g eggs, without shell (about 4 eggs)
50g + 150g (reduced to 130g) caster sugar
180g self-raising flour, sifted
60ml milk
1 vanilla bean or 1tsp vanilla paste
20g cocoa powder

1) Pre-heat oven at 180 deg. Lined bottom of 8 inch square pan and grease the side of the pan.
2) Separate egg yolk and white and set the egg yolk aside.
3) Whisk egg white and 50g sugar in a clean bowl, until stiff.
4) Beat butter and 130g sugar until pale and fluffy. Add in vanilla bean and mix well.
5) Add in 1 egg yolk at a time into butter mixture, and beat well after each addition.
6) Add in half the flour and beat on low speed till well mixed. Add in milk in 2 additions and mix well. Add in the remaining flour.
7) Add half of egg white into the batter and mix on low speed. Pour the balance egg white and fold.
8) Pour batter into baking pan, but set aside about 1 3/4 cups of batter and mix well with cocoa powder.
9) Spoon cocoa batter into the plain batter and using knife to create swirls.
10) Bake for 45mins at 180 deg C or until skewer inserted into cake come out clean. (I adjusted the oven temp to 170 deg C mid-way through the baking.)
11) Allow cake to cool on rack.

Japanese dark pearl cake

This is my second weekend where I get to bake early in the morning, and managed to get everything done and clean up within an hour or so.  Although I lose so sleeping time, we are able to carrying on with our day's activities more leisurely. Like last week, we went for a swim today and since it's still early the pool is pretty empty and water seems cleaner. We'll see how long our new swimming sessions will last.

Japanese dark pearl cake
(Recipe adapted from aunty yochana)
Original recipe is for 23-25 inch tube pan, I halved the recipe for my 21 cm tube pan

Ingredients/ Method:
Cocoa Batter:
75g chocolate, chopped
45ml water
50g corn oil
12.5g cocoa powder
32.5g cake flour
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
57.5g egg yolks (about 3.5 eggs)

Egg White Batter:
112.5g egg white (about 3.5 eggs)
45g castor sugar
a pinch of salt
1/16 tsp of cream of tartar

1) Melt chocolate in microwave for 2 mins on medium and stir till smooth. Add in cornoil and stir till smooth. Fold in the rest of the cocoa ingredients and stir till smooth. Set aside.
2) Whisk egg white with cream of tartar till frothy, then pour in sugar gradually and then add in the salt. Whisk till a medium peak.
3) Add about 2 cups of egg white to the cocoa batter and mix well.
4)  Fold cocoa batter into the remaining egg white evenly.
5) Pour into 21cm tube pan and bake in pre-heated oven at 170 deg C for 45 mins.
6) When done, remove the tube pan from the oven and invert on a cooling rack and leave to stand for 2 hours.

Update 25 May 2012: I had the cake on Monday & Tuesday as breakfast, and it's soft, spongy, moist & chocolatey! Nice <3

Mango cream cake

Finally get to bake after so long, and I kid you not that I've been dreaming and thinking of baking cakes. After a late night on Saturday, there was a sudden urge and influx of energy flowing through my body in the early morning of Sunday. "I must bake and it must be NOW" ~ that was what went through my head. Although nothing really fanciful came out of the oven, I'm delighted to have accomplished a so-called task. By 10.30am, I was done with the washing up and baking, only left with cake decorating which was completed after we had our afternoon swim near our house. My lil boy was so sweet that he offered to do some chores after my baking, "...like sweeping, cleaning or mopping...". Daddy allows lil boy to mop the kitchen "... as mommy dirties the kitchen floor after baking..." Oh my, lil boy has grown up! It was a really good Sunday, and of course, a memorable Mother's Day.

Mango chiffon cake

Ingredients/ Method

(Recipe is for 25cm tube pan, but I baked in 2 tube pans - 21 cm and 17cm)
7 eggs
200g cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
165g icing sugar
100ml mango puree + 50ml water/mango juice (will add more mango puree the next time)

150ml corn oil

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1. Pre-heat oven to 170 deg C.
2. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites. (abt 240ml egg whites)
3. Sieve cake flour, icing sugar, and baking powder into a mixing bowl.
4. Make a depression in the centre of the cake flour mixture, add egg yolks, mango juice and oil and stir until well combined.
5. In a clean separate bowl, whisk egg white and cream of tartar on high speed until stiff.
6. Add in cake batter to the egg white gradually and fold gently in batches, until well mixed.
7. Pour into tube pan and abke for 50 mins at 170-175 deg C. 
8. When done, remove the tube pan from the oven and invert on a cooling rack and leave to stand for 2 hours.
9. Remove the cake from the tube pan by pressing the sides of the cake along the perimeter of the pan and inverting the cake onto a plate.

Mango cream
1 3/4cup whipping cream
2 tsp icing sugar
1 1/2 mango puree
1/2tsp vanilla bean paste
1 extra fresh manago, cubed (for decoration)

1. Whisk whipping cream until foamy.
2. Add icing sugar to whipping cream and continue to whisk on medium-high.
3. Add in vanilla bean paste and mango puree, and continue to whisk till stiff.
4. Decorate cake as desired.

面煎糕/ Traditional chinese pancake

It was raining so heavily this morning that it's such a luxury to be staying at home and sleeping in. My lil boy and I actually planned to visit my brother's baby early in the morning and have our breakfast around there, but alas the rain kept us indoor. Zak was so happily playing his 3 sets of Thomas & Friends' train tracks that he doesn't want to get out of the house for breakfast too. A good opportunity for me to try out this 面煎糕 which I chanced upon at Gigi in the House blog. It is really a simple recipe and taste close to the real stuff - sprinkled with store-bought coarsely ground peanuts generously and added with lots of sugar! That's our breakfast plus 2 half-boiled eggs each, what a heavy meal to start the day!

面煎糕/ Traditional chinese pancake(yield 3 pieces of 6" pancake)

Ingredients/ Method
165g all purpose flour
2 eggs
30g caster sugar
1/2tsp yeast
210ml water

Peanut fillings
Coarsely ground peanut
Sugar

1) Mix all ingredients in a bowl and set aside for 30 mins.
2) Heat up a non-stick pan using low heat and pour 1/3 of the batter into it.
3) Cook for about 1 minute or so on low heat. The surface will appear to be "holey".
4) I use a sharp knife to remove the pancake from the pan, and transfer onto a plate.
5) Sprinkle any fillings you like and ready to serve.

I did a thick pancake and 2 thinner pancakes which I rolled them up. Still prefer the thick one, which taste and look so nostalgia, the way it was done when I was a little kid. Now that I don't need to spend 70cents for a small slice of 面煎糕, and can easily churned out fresh ones from my own kitchen! A keeper recipe o(^^)o

I love this picture, "peanut picking", hand model - who else but my lil Zak :D

Full month celebration

One month seems to have passed so fast and we were celebrating my younger niece's full month yesterday. From a tiny baby at slightly more than 2 kg at birth, she has put on healthy pounds with so much tlc from her mommy, daddy, grandma & "auntie" (the confinement lady). If my beloved late mom is around, she would be very very happy to see that all her children have settled down and started our own family. But I believe that she can see us from above and continue to give us her blessings from wherever she is now. Most importantly, wishing bb YL healthy, cheerful and happy always!

For the full month celebration, I have again* offered my brother & sis-in-law that I can prepare cupcakes for the party. (*again = the last was during their wedding dinner!) Thankfully they agree and I had another opportunity to play with fondant modelling. I did a simple chocolate cupcakes using valrhona cocoa powder and top with nursery themed fondant.





Valrhona chocolate cupcakes
(I doubled the below recipe to yield 55 mini cupcakes)
Ingredients/ Method:
185g butter
250g fine sugar
200ml evaporated milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
125g all-purpose flour (plain flour)
70g valrhona cocoa powder
1/2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp baking soda
1/2tsp vanilla essence

1. Sift flour, cocoa power, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
2. Combine sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla essences and butter in a saucepan.
3. Stir over low heat until sugar dissoclved and butter melted. Remove from heat.
4. Add the beaten eggs into the slightly cooled mixture and stir till well mixed.
5. Add egg mixture over the flour and stir till well mixed.
6. Spoon batter into baking cups using ice-cream scoop till slightly more than 1/2 cup full. (The cake rises a fair bit, so if you want a nice dome cupcake, fill up about slightly less than 3/4 cup)
7. Baked at pre-heated oven of 180 deg C for 18 to 20 mins or till the skewer inserted into cupcake comes out clean.
8. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

Orange butter cake

The Easter long weekends gave me enough time to unwind and time to bake. Other than the Vanilla Beans Macarons, I also baked some orange butter (cup)cakes. It was meant to be a test bake for my niece's full month celebration this coming Sunday, and I'm now torn to bake this or my favourite chocolate cake.



Actually just this year, our family is blessed with 2 "小龙女" (baby girl born in the year of dragon per chinese zodiac), first from my elder sister who's residing in States, and second from my youngest brother. Because of the distance, we are not able to fly over to States to hug the lil one now but I'm already planning to go by next year or earlier if possible. With my brother's newborn baby, it gave my boy more excuses to take the train to visit them during the weekends. I can't forget my boy's first expression when he saw my brother's baby in the hospital - anticipating, exciting, happy and bewildered! He must be imaging how the baby was in my sis-in-law's bump on a Saturday and came out as such a beautiful baby 2 days later! It still bewildered me and keep me constantly amazed with such miracle and beautiful creations!



Anyway back to baking the cake, I love how the orange zest were rubbed with the sugar - smell, taste and sight, love how each addition of ingredients were incorporated into the batter. The mixture didn't get too wet even with fluids being added and it just turned out so beautifully! Taste-wise, the cake turned out like an old-fashioned butter cake, moist and fluffy. The orange zest give you a slight twist and it feels good knowing that only 100% fresh orange juice is used!



Orange butter cake
(Recipe adapted from Baking Library;
yield 12 standard size cupcakes, 2 mini loaves)

Ingredients/ Method:
250g self raising flour, sifted
250g good quality unsalted butter, softened
185g castor sugar (I reduced it to 170g)
170g whole eggs, at room temperature (about 3 eggs)
100ml freshly squeezed orange juice (about 1 orange)
finely grated zests of 2 oranges

1) Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Prepare baking tins or lined cupcake moulds and set aside.
2) Grate the orange zest over sugar and rub them together. You will get orange-infused sugar, super nice!
3) In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and orange-infused sugar on medium high speed for about 5 mins until pale and fluffy.
4) Add beaten eggs to butter mixture in 6 additions, ensuring that each addition is well incorporated before adding the next addition.
5) Add 1/3rd of flour to the egg-butter mixture on low speed till well incorporated. Next add in half of orange juice to batter till well incorporated.
6) Add another 1/3rd of flour to the batter till well incorporated. Add the remaining orange juice and mix till well incorporated. Lastly add the remaining flour into the batter and mix till well incorporated.
7) Scrape the side and bottom with a spatula for any loose ingredients.
8) Using an ice-cream scoop, fill up 2/3rd of the lined cupcake mould and bake at 180 deg C for 25-30 mins.
9) For mini loaves, I bake for about 40-45 min at 180 deg C.
10) Check doneness when skewer come out clean after inserted into cake.
11) Allow cake to cool completely on wire rack.



Enjoy!

Vanilla beans macarons with lemon curd

After many fail-carons, I'm finally able to close the chapter with this happy feet-Macarons! It's rather frustrating and annoying whenever the bakes fail, but usually I would try & try until they turn out right. Just like these little macarons, really put my preserverance to test! Urgggh....

With each macaron that failed, I would go in search for other 'easy' recipes. And I'm lucky to find one recipe in Brave Tart that I can manage, though I made a few modifications on the steps. I find her 10 myths and 10 commandments on macaron very useful, and pretty easy to understand.

French Macarons

(Slight modifications, and I did a quarter of the original recipe)
115g almond meals
230g powdered sugar
144g egg whites, temperature and age not important! (I used 5-days aged egg white, room temp)
72g sugar
the scrapings of 1 vanilla bean or 2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp (2g) salt

1 ) Preheat oven to 150 deg C.

2) Sift almond meals and icing sugar, or blitz them in food processor and sift. Set aside.

3) In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the egg whites, sugar and beans (not the extract) and salt and turn the mixer to medium (4 on KA) for 3 mins. Increase speed to medium-high (7 on KA) and whip another 3 mins, and speed 8 for another 3 mins.

4) Turn mixer off and add in any extracts or colour and whip for a final min on highest speed, till well mixed.

5) The egg mixture will be a very stiff and dry meringue, where there will be a big clump of meringue in the centre of whisk.

6) Put all dry ingredients into the meringue and fold them in with a rubber spatula. Use both folding motion to incorporate the dry ingredients and a pressing motion to deflate the meringue against the side of the bowl.

7) Transfer the batter into piping bag and pipe onto non-stick baking sheet.

8) After piping, hold the sheet pan and hit it hard against the counter to dislodge any large air bubbles that might cause the macarons to crack.

**The original recipe does not require drying the shells before baking. But I did dry them in the oven which was pre-heated at 130 deg C for about 8 mins (oven is off during drying the shells), a tip I learnt from Honey Bee Sweet.

9) Bake for about 18 mins or until the macarons can be easily peel off from the baking sheet. If it still sticks, continue to bake for a min and constantly check when it's done.

10) Cool the macaron on the baking pan before peeling the cooled macarons from the baking sheet.

11) Sandwich the macaron with your favourite filling, eg lemon curd, and leave in fridge overnight in air-tight container for flavour to infuse and for biscuit to soften.

Enjoy!



Since there are still some aged egg whites in the fridge (though aged egg white is not necessary in this recipe), I'm likely to make the last round of chocolate macarons. Stay tuned!

Vanilla beans lemon curd

For the past weeks, I've been trying my hands on macarons and sadly I've got more fail-carons than those delicate beauties. Gone were at least a dozen of egg whites, almond meals, icing sugar... Some fail-carons were still edible even though they were feetless, some were over-baked, some were under-baked, some were coyingly sweet, some were as flat as the airplane runway, some were undermixed and looked rough and tough, etc. The last I did was a vanilla beans macaron with a sunset yellow hue, with pretty feets that I thought I was lucky but it failed on me again! It doesn't help that I only realised it after I started preparing a nice vanilla beans lemon curd filling for what was supposed to be a pretty orangey-yellow macaron. I can't sleep and function well without successfully baking an attractive looking and yummy macarons, literally. I've just separated the eggs to age this morning, and let's see what happen next?



Meanwhile, the only consolation out of so many failures was the real tangy lemon curd, which I had modified using Frozen wings' passionfruit curd. Simply easy and delicious on its own!



Vanilla beans lemon curd
(Yields about 235gm curd)

Ingredients/ Method:
2 egg yolks
1 whole egg
lemon juice from 2 lemons (rind and freshly squeezed)
zest from 2 lemons
2 tbsp caster sugar
seeds from 1 vanilla bean
50gm unsalted butter

1) Put all ingredients except butter in a bowl over simmering water, at low heat.
2) Using a hand whisk, stir the mixture continuously until thicken (looks like baby porridge). It should take around 7-8 minutes. (According to Frozen wings, the mixture is ready when it is thick enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.)
3) Remove from fire and put in the butter and continue to stir until the butter has melted.
4) Let the mixture cool and store in a sterilised jar and refrigerate.

Macaron-ing

I didn't expect I would have time for any baking after Zak's birthday celebration last Sunday. I guess I really need a little baking-time to off-load some work stress. As we don't cook at home, there's no eggs in the fridge unless I plan to bake something. After baking my boy's birthday cake, I'm left with 3 eggs. Not wanting to throw them in the bins, I separated the egg white/yolk yesterday, of course with half-mind yearning to bake a macaron or two if time permits.

Other than baking, another good way to de-stress is definitely spending good quality time with my little boy. We don't have to spend dozen to be happy or lavish on expensive food to feel fed, a simple bus ride and a piece of roti prata made boy & mum extremely contented! Our happiness is not dampened by the 'lousy' roti prata we had at Jalan Kayu, even my boy lamented that it's really not nice. We then proceeded onwards to Ikea to satisfy his incessant-liking-for-long-bus-rides. Both of us had our retail therapy at Ikea, followed by lunch of hotdog and donuts. When we stepped out of Ikea, realised that it was raining so heavily. Our initial plan to take a return bus trip was thwarted as there's no covered shelter to the bus stop. It's actually quite a relieve (for me) as it's a good excuse to take the cab home after hours of walking and heavy stuff to carry.



Back to the macarons, they were done when it's daddy's turn to bring little boy for their fun bus-train-LRT-bus rides on a lazy Sunday. I was half doing work & half macaroning. And half the macarons turned out feet-less, and the rest with short-feets. Nothing is wasted (except one odd shell that is left), they were slabbed with godiva dark chocolate ganache, waiting to be matured and devoured days later.



72% cacao dark chocolate macarons
(macaron recipe adapted & modified from Tartelette, refer for more details)

Ingredients/ Method
45g egg white (ideally aged for 3 days, but mine was aged 1 day)
15g caster sugar
100g powdered sugar
55g ground almonds
powdered colour (optional)
1 tsp vanilla bean paste/essence (optional)

1) Whisk egg white until foamy, and gradually add sugar until glossy meringue. Do not overbeat or it will be too dry.
2) Added sieved almond and powdered sugar, (colour & vanilla bean paste) to the meringue. Give it a quick fold to break some of the air and then fold the mass carefully until you obtain a batter that falls back on itself after counting to 10.
3) Use quick strokes at first to break the mass and slow down. Whole process should not take more than 50 strokes. (To test - if tops flatten on its own, you are good to go. If there is small beak, give batter a couple of turns.)
4) Pipe batter on good baking sheets. Rap the tray 2 times to let any air bubble escape. Sit macarons for 30 mins to 1 hour, until a firm layer on shell forms.
5) Bake in pre-heated oven 150 deg C for 15 - 20 mins.
6) Let the macaron shells cool down and remove from the baking sheet.
7) Spread any favourite fillings on the shell and keep in air-tight containers. Keep macarons in fridge for at least 1 day to let taste mature.

Chocolate ganache
70g 72% cacao Godiva dark chocolate
3 tbsp whipping cream
1/2 tbsp unsalted butter

1) Put all ingredients in a bowl and microwave on medium heat for about 2 mins.
2) Stir to mix them evenly and keep in fridge for about 10 mins to harden ganache for easy spreading on macarons.

I'm also submitting this post to this month Aspiring Bakers #17: March Macarons Madness! (Mar 2012) hosted by Alan of Travellingfoodies.

My boy turns 5!

Pardon my lack of update on this blog and though I still visit my favourite list of blogs, I seem to have lesser time to do so these days. Lesser time to bake as well. Hopefully I'll be freer come 2nd quarter of the year!

Today is an exceptional and joyous day, my boy turns 5 and he sure has grown and changed alot! Long before his birthday, he'd made many requests and threw ideas on how he wanted his celebration. Not one, but two parties; one with family members and another one in school. A Monopoly cake and an Angry Bird cake. Since AB cake is more readily available at the bakery, I did a Monopoly cake for the family celebration. I'd to bring out the Monopoly boardgame to mimick the details, not an easy feat since I had not been baking or playing with the fondant for a while :p And instead of name of places, my boy specifically and repeated reminded me that we should have our family members' name on the board. I'm pretty happy to know how much thoughts he put in for his party and everyone was pleasantly surprise to see their names on the cake. Even the peanut-butter cream for the chocolate-flavoured cake, which was an instant hit with the guests, was decided by the birthday boy. The at-least 3kg cake was 'wolfed' down and requests for 2nd servings/ 'ta-baoing' (packed) would made any baker a happy (wo)man.

My best wishes to my lovely darling to be ever so healthy, all-rounded and successful person. Not forgetting to have fun and smell the roses along the way <3<3<3

Here's some pictures on Zakris' Monopoly-themed 5th birthday party and cake.

With Feb's month Aspiring Bakers' deadline extended, I'm glad to be able to participate and therefore submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #16: Fun with Fondant! (February 2012) hosted by Yvonne of iceamericanos.