Chiffon & Chiffon

My parents' birthdays are just days apart, and we would eat out on my mum's birthday as hers is on earlier date but we would have cakes on both actual day. I've never baked a cake before until last year. And this year i did two different type of chiffon cakes - passionfruit and blueberry, and they are just plain cakes without any decoration.

the appearance did not do justice to the taste

au-naturel blueberry chiffon cake

"star-studded" fresh blueberies are impromptu put-on.

little zak loves it the most!

the texture is different from the usual chiffon cake wonder

is it due to the whipping cream i added?

Blueberry cheese tarts

Blueberries are on promotion these days and 2 punnets cost less than $5. They are very versatile in baking and of course taste good on its own, so can't resist to buy when my baby and i were browsing at the supermarket after our breakfast last Saturday. At the back of my mind, I already knew i wanted to bake some blueberry cheese tarts, which had been in my to-do list for some time.

Ever since i shifted back to our home, Saturdays is an eat-out affair throughout the day - breakfast, lunch, dinner. There are occasional home-made bakes like cakes, breads, etc during teatime treats. I'm going to break the routine and have at least a home-cooked lunch on Saturdays. The only reason, of course, is for little zak. I started cooking a simple porridge last Saturday, and luckily little zak really 'give face' by finishing the whole bowl of porridge with carrot and meat balls.

Back to the tarts, i'd planned to do it during his nap time but before i could finish, little zak woke up and just then, it started to pour and flashes of lightning and came ear-cracking thunder. He started to cling onto me, and forbade me from going near the windows or sitting down on the sofa..... there goes my plan to make him tarts for his teatime treats, and he just ate some cream cheese crackers. Anyway, i only managed to finish baking the tart base and got to prepare the blueberry cheese filling the next day morning, for little zak's breakfast!

By the way, i got myself a customised turn-table through Lydia of My Kitchen, and I got a little excited to take photos with it ;-)

Ingredients/ Method:

Recipe adapted from Reese Kitchen

Pastry:

125g butter

50g fine granulated sugar

250g plain flour

1 egg yolk

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1 tbsp COLD water

1. Sift flour and sugar into mixing bowl.

2. Rub butter into flour until resembles coarse crumbs (rubbing method).

3. Add in egg yolk, vanilla and water.

4. Shape dough into ball and refrigerate (20-30 minutes) before using** (before using, take out from fridge, wait for awhile until dough soften).

5. Place dough onto tart shells, and pooked the base with fork (this is to let the air comes out while baking).

6. Bake at 160-170'C for 10-15 minutes or until brown.

Filling:

250g cream cheese

20g butter

50g fine granulated sugar

1 egg

1. Beat cheese, butter and sugar together until fluffy.

2. Add in egg and beat till well mix.

3. Pour mixture onto baked tart shells.

4. Spoon some blueberries or blueberry pie filling onto unbaked tarts, and use a toothpick to create swirls.

5. Bake at 170-180'C for 10 minutes.

Century egg porridge

I was down with a cold last friday and having no appetite for outside food, i decided to cook century egg porridge for myself. I don't know for others, but there are certain food that bring back many memories for me.

When all 4 siblings were staying together at my parents' place, we will have home-cooked food on most of the Sunday mornings! I supposed it's cheaper to cook than to have breakfast outside since there are so many of us. My mum or dad will cook a big pot/wok of either century egg porridge, san mee, kway teow with yong tau foo, mee hoon kueh (handmade noodles),etc. Before/during and after breakfast, sibling bickerings and fightings and bullying were a common scene then, and my mum would be shouting at us at her top of lungs! (Un)fortunately these are only fond memories! *sob sob* The last time i cooked this century egg porridge was 1.1.2008, it was for my family and relatives who were staying over at my place after our new year count-down.

To prepare this porridge, most importantly is to soak the rice in water added with some cooking oil and dash of salt, at least an hour before cooking or overnight. When the porridge is almost cooked, add in mashed 1/2 century egg and 1/2 salted egg, meat balls, pork liver. Salt, pepper and sesame oil to taste when the porridge is cooked.

Basic bread

I'm craving to bake something last week, and nevermind that it's a working day, cos my hands are really really 'itchy' for not-baking for so long. Did couple of recipe searches and finally chose one that doesn't require baking; contradicting right? Basic bread for breadmachine. Maybe i just wanted a freshly baked bread? Again, i want to say breadmaker is the best and most amazing piece of kitchen equipment!

Ingredients/ Method:
Recipe adapted from Blessed Homemaker


1 cup cold water
3 cups bread flour (or 1 cup plain & 2 cups bread flour)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp yeast (make an indent in the flour and add in yeast)


1. Using my bluesky BM, put in the liquid ingredients followed by the dry ingredients. Yeast to be added last.
2. Select Basic function, Light, 700gm, and press Start.
3. Let the loaf cool down before slicing.


I gave 2 slices of bread to one of my friends to try as she is interested in getting a BM. Her comment is that "it tasted like bread we buy from outside." Another point i wanted to add is: there is no preservatives and definitely fresh!


I like my basic bread with margarine and sprinkle of sugar ;-)

1st food bloggers potluck party

It was a casual remark made to Jane of Passionate About Baking sometime beginning of the year, and she really made it happen last Sunday, 31 May '09! We had our very 1st food bloggers potluck party at Gina's newly opened shop - Kitchen Capers at Kallang Bahru. I had jitters before the event as each of us supposed to bring an item to the party, and i chose Japanese cotton soft cheesecake, which i baked before. However, the appearance of cake really sucks and i was almost too ashamed to bring it to the party. As I can't back-out at the last minute and there's no time no ingredient to do another one, i just have to bring no matter how ugly it is, at least i know it would taste good.

The party was fun, although everyone took a while to warm up to each other, the food was good - no preservatives, only love, Jane was very good at being a host and making us at ease, Gina is very generous to lend us her shop front for the party, a tour and intro to her shop, she also gave everyone a goodies bag plus discount for any items we bought on that day! I must say that Gina's shop do offer quite a number of things and ingredients not sold in PH, will definitely patronise the shop again soon.

I would love to have another such get-to-together with my food blogger friends. Hope to see my new friends again ;-)

Here's the good food on that day.....

*I didn't manage to take all the pictures of all food so only able to put up those that T had taken on that day.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Last year, when i first 'rekindled' my baking hobby, i made a birthday cake for one of my best friends. Another best friend of mine got wind of it and called me to 'request' for the same thing, but at that time she was in Sydney doing her Master. She has since graduated and back to S'pore. I did plan to bake a cake for her this year, but since i knew that my another friend had ordered a cake for her, i decided to make something else for her. After thinking through, cookie seems to be a good choice as gift, and HHB's chocolate chip cookies immediately came into mind.

Actually the cookies were made whilst i was waiting for my carrot milk loaf to proof. The timing of bread making and cookie making is just right, and there's no time wasted ;-) For the vanilla extract, instead of the normal one, i used Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Vanilla Bean Paste which i recently ordered from Elyn. I like this vanilla extract as it's a close choice to the very-expensive vanilla bean pod, and i can still see the specks of vanilla beans!

Ingredients/ Method:

115g butter, softened

115g caster sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla extract

175g plain flour

175g plain or semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 180degC. Line baking trays with parchment paper.
2. With a wooden spoon or electric mixer, cream butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until the mixture turns pale and fluffy.
3. Beat in the egg gradually. Mix well after each addition. Add in vanilla extract, mix well.
4. Sift the flour over the mixture, fold in with wooden spoon or a spatula. Fold in the chocolate chips.
5. Drop tablespoonfuls of the cookie dough onto the prepared baking tray. Leave some space between the cookies to allow for spreading. Flatten each cookie dough slightly with the back of a fork, keeping the shape as even as possible.
6. Bake for 10 mins or until golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

The cookies stay crispy even until today, but i find it a tad too sweet. Will reduce the amount of sugar the next time i baked it.

Easy birthday cake

Why i call this an easy birthday cake is because ... i cheated. Instead of baking a sponge cake from scratch, i used Phoon Huat's Sponge Cake Mix. I only need to add eggs and water, and that's all. I still prefer sponge cake with my own mix of sugar, eggs, butter, flour, etc. It's a kind of satisfaction when the sponge cake comes out golden brown, properly rise, no sunken top, soft and fluffy texture, etc.

The mixed fruits were requested by my aunt cat, although it's uncle goh (go go)'s birthday. Grapefruits with skin removed, strawberries, mango. Actually, i bought gooseberries as well, but there is no space on the small cake. The freshness of fruits give this cake a lift! I hope they both like the cake made especially for them ;-)

Purple Sweet Potato Milk Loaf

After my successful attempts in making bread and especially carrot loaf, i toyed with the idea of baking a purple sweet potato bread. However, i couldn't get any purple sweet potato in the supermarket, there were only yellow ones available. Few days later, i saw Honey Bee Sweet posting a Purple sweet potato milk loaf, and it made me more determined to bake this one. Hence, on Saturday morning, i woke up rather early and took a bus to our nearest wet market, hoping that these purple sweet potato are available there, together with my little one. At 2+, little zak still wants to be carried most of the time. But he can somehow understand now when we tell him that we are tired and got no more energy to carry him. So last Saturday, he obediently walked from our block to the bus-stop, and throughout our walk to the foodcourt and thereafter to the market, we held hands and took small little steps that whole morning. A good feeling!

Turning to getting the purple sweet potato, all the vegetable stalls do not carry them, except for one, and they cost about $3/kg. I didnt get to start preparing the bread until after our dinner as i only realised that i don't have enough bread flour after our morning marketing. Although the preparation is easy, the proofing time is rather long. By the time i finished baking the bread, i think it's around 3am! That's how bad my time-management is ;-( I didn't take any pictures when the loaves are out of the oven, which i usually do, as i'm dead tired!

I like the purple colour, they look so sweet and so 'Barney'. I told my little zak that he can call it purple bread or Barney bread, which the little purple dinosaur is his favourite character. By the way, purple is the first and only colour that he can confidently identify at the moment!

Ingredients/ Method

400g bread flour

220g purple sweet potato (peeled, sliced, steamed-10mins and mashed)

60g sugar (i reduced to 25g, which is still sweet)

1 large egg

1 tsp salt

1 tsp instant active yeast

60ml fresh whipping cream

100ml fresh milk

60g unsalted butter

1 cup cranberries/ raisins (i omitted this)

1. Put all ingredients except butter (and cranberries/ raisins) in the BM and let it knead for 20 mins, restart the BM and knead for a further 10 mins. Add in the butter into the dough after about 8 mins of kneading.

2. Place dough in a greased bowl and cover with cling wrap and allow to proof for at least 90 mins.

3. Punch out the air in the dough and divide into 4 equal portions. ( I divided the dough into many portions cos my bread tin is too small to 'accomodate' everything, and I'm managed to fill up another tin with the remaining dough.)

4. Flatten the dough and roll from the short edge like swiss roll.

5. Cover the dough with cling wrap and let it proof for another 90 mins.

6. Preheat oven to 180 deg C.

7. I omitted the egg wash on the loaf top and put the loaf tins into the oven and bake for 30 mins at 180 deg C (i feel my oven is slighter hotter and reduce the temp. to 170 deg C throughout the baking process.)

8. Remove the loaf from bread tin immediately when done and cool on rack completely before slicing.

Carrot raisin milk bun

This morning, using the same Carrot Milk Loaf recipe, i added 60gm of raisins and made it into 3x3 buns. Since the raisins are sweet, i reduce the sugar further to 25g. Unlike the earlier loaf i did, this dough did not rise much during the first 25mins, and it took very much longer during the 2nd proof to reach double in size. The sweetness is just nice. However, in terms of softness and colour, i still prefer the original loaf.

Carrot Milk Loaf

Recently, I bought a recipe book from the make-shift newspaper stand near my work place. Flipping through the book whilst on my way home during the train ride, I already made up my mind to do the simpliest recipe - Carrot milk loaf. In fact, i did 2 loaves, yesterday and today. 1 failed and the other taste delicious! It always happen, the simpliest recipe always fail on me. This is the 1st bread that turns successful without using the breadmaker!

This picture shows the specks of carrot and the softness of bread

Ingredients/ Method:-

(Recipe adapted from Daniel Choong, Baked & Steamed Bun - 面包蒸烘味)

(A)

130g bread flour

70g cake flour

55g grated carrot (i used 35g as that's what I'm left after the 1st failed loaf)

40g sugar (original recipe uses 50g)

1 tsp salt

8g instant yeast

40g butter

12g milk powder

(B)

80g grated carrot (totally omitted cos I've no more carrots left)

50g cold water

1) Put ingredients (A) into mixing bowl and stir well.

2) Add in ingredient (B) and beat to form elastic dough.

3) Remove dough from the mixing bowl and cover with a big bowl and leave to rest for 25mins.

4) Flatten the dough into long oval shape, roll like a swiss roll, and press lightly into greased loaf tin.

5) Rest for 15 mins or prove till double in size.

6) Brush some evaporated milk. Make a slit in the middle of the bun using a sharp knife. Pipe butter into the slit. Sprinkle some sugar and grated carrot on it. (I omitted this step)

7) Bake at 185 deg C in the middle of the over for 25-30 mins or till golden brown.

Don't you think this looks like a tortoise head?