Superhero Cake October 4, 2011

Nigel’s turning 3 and as always, I asked him months ahead what he would like for his birthday cake, and I do that at every opportunity to double check that he was clear about what he wanted.

His consistent request – “I want Ben 1o, Spiderman and Batman”. I thought this should be pretty easy, set a scene of buildings on the cake and find the respective figurines and place them on top of the cake. Luck would have it that I could never find those figurines of reasonable quality, price and right (and equal) size. Months went by and this is my last resort:

I googled for images, designed and printed the tags, stick on cardboard, cut out to desired shape then adhere skewer at the back.

When I looked at picture references of these superhero cartoons, they all spell violence and that’s certainly not the theme that I want to get across. So I decided to balance off with a pastel yet not too feminine colour palette. And this is the end result:

Unfortunately, you are not able to taste the moist, kids-friendly chocolate cake which I’ve finally perfected to suit my taste buds; and the perfect frosting that is so addictive, easy to prepare and so creamy it’s easy to work with.

Here’s the recipe which I used.

Chocolate Cake
(original recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/black-magic-cake/detail.aspx)

Ingredients

• 220gm (1 3/4 cups) all-purpose flour
• 200gm (1 cup) white fine sugar
• 65gm (3/4 cup) unsweetened cocoa powder
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 eggs
• 250ml (1 cup) chocolate milk (or strong brewed coffee if baking for adults)
• 250ml (1 cup) buttermilk (I use 1tbsp white vinegar or lemon juice then top up with milk to make 1 cup of liquid, leave it for at least 5min then stir before use)
• 120ml (1/2 cup) vegetable oil (I use canola oil)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8 inch round cake pans (also makes two 9 inch round cake pans, one 9×13 inch pan, or thirty-eight small souffle cups at 30gms of batter each including weight of cup).
2. In large bowl combine flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the center.
3. Add eggs, coffee, buttermilk, oil and vanilla. Beat for 2 minutes on medium speed. Batter will be thin. Pour into prepared pans.
4. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 to 40 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center of cake comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and finish cooling on a wire rack. Fill and frost as desired.

Tips:

1. If making cupcakes, pour batter into a jug then pour into cupcake liner; weight each cup worth of batter (about half filled) so that they will look consistent and bake to the same level of moistness.

2. Bake 1 day before consumption to allow the flavour to intensify. If keeping in fridge, need to seal the moisture by crumb coating the cake using thinned icing, or brush with mixture of jam with warm water before storing in fridge. However, this process is not necessary if leaving cake in airtight container in room temperature.

3. It is important to use buttermilk or its substitute as I had indicated.

4. Use good quality, strong brew coffee if baking for adults, the chocolate taste will be deeper and more intense.

5. Adjust baking time according to your oven, take note not to over-bake or the cake will be too dry. Cake will continue to cook after removing from oven.

Cream Cheese / Whipped Cream Frosting
(original recipe http://allrecipes.com/recipe/sturdy-whipped-cream-frosting/detail.aspx)

Ingredients

• 1 (8 ounce / 250gm) package reduced-fat cream cheese, softened
• 100gm (1/2 cup) white sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
• 500ml (2 cups) heavy cream

 Directions

1. Combine the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla extract and almond extract in a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Fit the mixer with the whisk attachment and mix on medium speed until smooth. While the mixture is still whipping, slowly pour in the heavy cream. Stop and scrape the bottom of the bowl a couple of times while you continue whipping until the cream can hold a stiff peak.

Tips:

1. This cream is very yummy and not too sweet. You may want to increase the sugar if you have a sweet tooth.

2. To refrain from using artificial colouring, I used green tea powder and cocoa powder for green and brown coloured frosting. The taste blended well with the cream cheese.

3. If you don’t like taste of cheese, use mascarpone cheese. The texture should be slightly heavier than whipped cream.

4. If you want sharp piping details, prepare the whipping cream 1 day in advance and refrigerate so it stiffens

5. Piping tips used: Green flower (1M, swirl from centre out), White dots (#3), Brown nest (grass tip)

Forget about icing sugar loaded frosting, I will be using this cream cheese/whipped cream frosting from now on! 🙂

Kueh Bangkit Challenge January 22, 2011

So… I was told that Kueh Bangkit is one of the most difficult cookies to perfect. Since CNY is round the corner, I thought I should give it a shot. I mean, how can this simple looking cookie be that difficult to perfect such that it is crispy, hollow and melt-in-the-mouth?

There are very few ingredients, which meets one of my criteria when choosing recipes to try – I admit, I’m a lazy and fussy baker!

I googled and considered a colleague’s granny’s recipes and I got really confused as there are so many methods to make the same cookie and everyone claims theirs is crispy yet melt-in-the-mouth! Faced with such varied choices, I studied the science of each method (actually it’s more gut feel + biased arguments :P). Let me compile all the suggestions I’ve come across.

Ingredients

1. Flour – usually tapioca flour or starch; sometimes mix of tapioca and sago flour; or arrowroot and corn flour

2. Coconut milk – some claim that one should never compromise fresh coconut milk with tetrapak ones and that this is the secret ingredient for the perfect kueh bangkit

3. Sugar – usually regular fine sugar, some suggested icing sugar

4. Pandan (screw pine) leaves – this is the only consistent ingredient, there’s only 1 case whereby the blogger suggested drying the leaves before frying

Method

1. Frying of flour – All said to fry the flour till it’s light and flying. Length of time is anywhere from 15 to 75min! (How can light flour be even lighter??)

2. Cooling of flour – Most say to leave overnight before use, one said 3 days to let it cool fully, while another suggests putting in fridge to cool

3. Dissolving the sugar – 1) warm the coconut milk and stir in sugar till melted, cool then add egg yolks 2) beat egg yolks with sugar till light and fluffy then add coconut milk

4. Dough texture – knead till the shape is formed but not shiny (what does this really mean????)

I’m really challenged by all these suggestions found online. I guess I just have to try it to figure out. Attempt 1 has failed. I’m giving myself 2 more chances.

References

– http://www.recipestap.com/kuih-bangkit-tapioca-cookies

– http://www.citrusandcandy.com/2010/02/chinese-new-year-kuih-bangkit-malaysian.html

– http://auntyyochana.blogspot.com/2008/01/kueh-bangkit.html

– http://belachan2.blogspot.com/2006/01/step-by-step-kuih-bangkit-guide.html

Princess Doll Cake for Laura November 7, 2010

I suddenly had to celebrate a good friend’s birthday; suddenly because we realised if we didn’t do so 2 wks in advance, her travelling schedule wouldn’t have allowed us to celebrate the exact day.

This also marks the first cake I make for Laura, and I know she likes the doll cakes I made. I had a few designs that I archive in my mind but none quite suit her personality.

After making the cake the night before the party, the dress design was dreamed up while I was drifting into dreamland. Laura’s a bright and chirpy character so the usual cutie pie sweetness wouldn’t suit, that rules out pink and purple. Yellow came to mind immediately and reminded me of the yellow dress that Kate Hudson wore in “How to Lose a Guy in 10 days”. I imagined a doll dress, pastel yellow in colour, made up of drop flowers. It is a little plain so I decided to add a white ribbon (white cos the overall look will be more pure and it also means less dyeing of colour :P). Additional white ruffles at the bottom was to add layers to the dress, matching the ribbon; sprinkled with gold balls for the finishing touches. This is how it looked in the end:

Instead of the usual buttercream, I used Red Man brand whip topping (I was told by the staff that it’s non-dairy), I expected it to be more stable than normal dairy whipping cream. It was, but still not stable enough. It turned out more watery than buttercream hence piping details didn’t show up well. Next time I’ll try a soy-based whipping cream which has been said to be stiff enough to even pipe flowers like roses.

For the cake, I only like a few cake recipes so finding another one that satisfies my criteria of minimal input maximum output was tough. Eventually, I decided on Nannie’s Hot Milk Sponge Cake (I only reduced the sugar to 1 cup but was still too sweet, I’d use only 3/4 cup next time; I used slightly more than 1 cup of milk too) as it looked simple enough, has good reviews, uses whole eggs instead of egg white and is oil-free!!! Fresh from the oven, it yields a soft, moist and a slightly chewy texture. Left in the fridge overnight, it became dense and chewy – perhaps I should have sticked to 1 cup of milk, or maybe the eggs weren’t beaten properly?? It wasn’t light and fluffy as the reviewers raved about but the taste was pretty good. I need to give this recipe another try to perfect the texture.

For step-by-step info, please click here.

As for the remaining cream and cake, they never go to waste. They became materials for my kids to experiment with cake decoration 🙂

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNTIE RARA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🙂

Thomas Train for Nigel’s 2nd Birthday November 6, 2010

My kids’ birthday have become major cake projects for me. Because their parties are always massive like 80-100 pax – adults and kids, family and friends combined. Besides venue, the size constraint of my home kitchen and fridge is another challenge.

My homemade cake made its first appearance exactly last year on Nigel’s 1st birthday, which was also about the time when I went more seriously into baking. It was a simple choc cake but it wowed many – I must have done something right. If you had read my post on princess doll cake, you’d have known that I missed Hazel’s 3rd birthday so I don’t want to miss Nigel’s 2nd birthday.

I started conceptualising in August, thinking that I’d have enough time to prepare, only to have the idea disapproved by my girlfriends, so I’ve reserved that concept for Hazel’s 4th birthday. The theme is a secret for now 🙂

What this meant was that I was left with only 2 weeks to research, design, source and bake. Seems impossible for an amateur like me but thanks to Google, I could fast track and finally designed a 2-tier Thomas the Tank Engine cake for Nigel – a boyish theme.

This is the end result. I wasn’t exactly most happy with it as the designs didn’t come out as well as I had envisioned. Nonetheless, it was still something I made by hand, with love for my boy and that’s what’s most important.

To truly appreciate the magical effect of this cake, you must watch the video.

For step-by-step info, please click here. The cake was a simple Butter Cake, frosting was Quick and Almost Professional Buttercream – only change made was to use 100% vegetable shortening (I use Crisco) instead of butter, so it’s more stable in our tropical climate. The highlight is in the cake decoration, using piping techniques coupled with a moving Thomas Train, it was something different from store-bought ones. Personal touches can be seen in the cupcake topper which I laid out, printed and created piece by piece by hand. Each flag comes with a photo of Nigel on one side and picture of Thomas train on the other, just so the theme is carried through.

The 2-tier cake (9″ x 4 layers + 5″ x 2 layers) was enough to feed 30+ pax, I must have made some 40 cupcakes to make sure all the guests get fed.

Nigel’s 1st Birthday

Looking back at where I was 1 year back, the highlight was in the cake as that was about all that I could manage. I used a simple but moist and rich Chocolate Cake recipe, Black Magic Cake which is an original Hershey’s recipe; deco was simple using sprinklers and strawberries – the colour combination was yummylicious!

So you see, regardless of one’s baking experience, there’s always something that anyone can make and impress upon the guests at the same time.

Princess Doll Cakes for Michelle

This is a delayed posting for another 2 doll cakes that I’ve made in Aug 2010, for a colleague’s 4-yr-old daughter. I had 2 more dolls so I put them to good use. Although I only need to give 1, I made 2 in case I screw up 😛

So here they are.

For detailed step-by-step, please click here.

Princess and Doll Cake August 8, 2010

I first started researching on princess cake in early 2010, in preparation for my daughter’s 3rd birthday in April. I think it’s every girl’s dream to have a princess cake for their birthday. The Coolest Birthday Cake website is where I get my inspiration from. You can find many videos on YouTube of people decorating doll cakes – I found them very useful. However, none was comprehensive enough so I had to go to Wilton websites as well, to find out more about piping techniques – very helpful.

I didn’t get to make for Hazel’s birthday as I was too busy with work, and simply have no energy left to take on this challenging project. So I bought her one from Polar Cake Shop in the end.

Well, the other reason was also I don’t have enough fridge space for all he cakes I need to make to serve the guests. And I haven’t found the right dolls. the Wilton dolls are all very mature looking, not suitable for kids. I couldn’t find Kelly dolls that some website suggested too. Months later I did, but they were too expensive for me. Until recently, I found those “made in China” dolls that costs 3 for S$3.90 but look so adorable. they were perfect for this.

So along the way, I collect the Wilton mini wonder mold, piping tips, piping bag, icing colour, dolls etc. I’ve also never made icing before so lots of first for me. I finally decided to make it this Aug for a colleague’s birthday – a challenge I set for myself. The complete step-by-step can be found here.

I used the Black Magic Cake (a Hershey’s recipe) recipe that is so easy to make yet good to eat, half the recipe is enough to make 3 dolls. As for the icing, I use Quick and Professional Buttercream Icing that called for ingredients that I have readily in my kitchen.

What I could have done better is to use an icing recipe using vegetable shortening, so it can better withstand the humidity and heat in our temperate country. And to use colourless vanilla essence – I wished this had been indicated in the recipe.

As this is my first doll cake and I cannot fail because it’s for a birthday, I used the simplest piping technique (I’ve never done this before nor make icing from scratch so I was very nervous about how it will turn out) which is using stars. It is also not the full size Barbie cake (almost 3kg) but a mini one – which both easier to make and cuter. It was a hit!!

What is also extremely important which nobody would probably tell you, is to choose the right dolls. It is the soul of the cake and makes hell of a difference as you can see from the photos above. So make sure you spend time sourcing for seemingly the least important “ingredient” of the cake.

So here’s the link to step-by-step instructions – http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=256212&id=678979347&l=8b5ee65a59

Ni-Tamago August 1, 2010

I’ve had ni-tamago (eggs whereby the egg white is just cooked to opaque while the egg yolk is still soft, or even runny depending on your preference; not to be confused with onsen tamago or hot spring egg) that is commonly served with Japanese ramen many times, but nothing quite like the one I had at Maratuma. It was love at first sight. I thought I was never gonna be able to master the art of making such soft and flavourful eggs, until a conversation I had with a guy business associate and he claimed that he could make eggs like those at Maratuma!!

Me, a baker, cannot cook eggs is gonna be quite a joke. But then, one has to admit that eggs are one of the most versatile ingredients on earth. It is easy to cook but to master the characteristics of eggs and cook them to perfection depending on how they are to be eaten, is an art. There’s no one-size-fits-all instructions as one has to consider the size of the eggs, temperature of eggs, timing and the heat used to cook the egg. Vinegar and salt are the secret ingredients for making the perfect boiled eggs. So, this is my egg challenge to replicate the Marutama ni-tamago.

The first time I made, 4 were destroyed due to the egg white being stucked on the shell. So make sure you add vinegar to the ice water. 2 survived with little egg white disfiguration and 2 were perfect thanks to vinegar. You also need to know the proportion of water you use to the number of eggs you’re cooking that determines the length of time the eggs should be cooked to the state you want. This is typically anywhere between 6 to 8 mins.

The recipe for braising sauce is varied but basically you want a balanced taste of saltiness and sweetness. You should dilute to the state whereby the taste is rather light as you want to sauce to seep into the egg yolk (which will take days) without overpowering the original taste of eggs.

If you can afford, Farmer’s Brown seems to be the most “flavouful” eggs as recommended by other bloggers. I think otherwise – since the eggs are to be braised, whether the eggs are originally flavourful or not doesn not matter much. 

Lastly, general rule of thumb, cooked eggs should be stored in chiller and consumed within 7 days.

My ni-tamago references:
1.  Chubby Hubby’s blog – most popular blog post on ni-tamago
2. danlyne.blogspot.com – following Chubby Hubby’s method
3. Japan Food Addict
4. Soshiok.com – Japanese-style eggs, ni-tamago – Tips from Foodie Chris Tan
5. EyeDeas Photography: Making ni-tamago… | Facebook

This is the tongs method – too much work for me.
6.   Ni tamago the Men Tei restaurant way – I wonder how manypairs of tongs and hands the restaurant need to make their daily supply.  I do agree to using string to slice eggs for a very clean cut.

Others:
7. Perfect hard boiled eggs
8. How to boil an egg
9. How to fry an egg

Finally, the step-by-step photo guide is here – http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=254526&id=678979347&l=ab58a3ddb2

There just ain’t any cookie that satisfies every taste bud September 23, 2009

I made, what in my opinion, super sweet m&ms chewy cookie. Well, I was under the impression that it’s one of the best recipes and was hoping that this will be a keeper. I was so wrong.

Anyway, have a look at the source of the recipe and you’ll understand why I was ‘conned’.

I brought them to office and these are what some testers said:

• Tester 1 (avid baker too): These taste great! Can I have another one? (he went on to help himself to his 3rd helping while I wasn’t looking, or so he thought! 🙂 )
• Tester 2 (Face in cramps): Szu, these are very sweet! (Yes I know, I warned you)
• Tester 3: mmmm… these are good! Homemade ones are better than Betty Crocker anytime.
• Tester 4: Very sweet? Nah, I’ll pass.

Personally, I like cookies that are not so sweet, has to be chewy, hopefully not too fattening too. I’m still in search of the one cookie that I feel is worth the calories-overload that’s why while I like cookies, I don’t eat them often.

Perhaps it’s the same for everyone. We each have a mental picture of how cookies should taste, its texture, fillings, thickness, size etc, and each is unique.

One day, I will succeed in making the type of cookies I want. One day, that uniquely-cookie day shall arrive. I hope it’s the same for you if you haven’t found yours.

Swedish Thumbprint Cookies August 23, 2009

I was given this recipe by Hazel (ex-colleague) and wanted to give it a shot cos it was so simple I could even involved Hazel (my 2 yr-old daughter) in the process. The coincidence was unintentional 😛

In the process, I realised there really isn’t much a 2 yr-old could help except pouring in the ingredients into the mixing bowl / holding the bowl. Her little thumb was also too tiny to help with the indentation. Nonetheless, I got her involved and boy, she enjoyed licking the raw dough off her finger which was nothing but butter, sugar and flour! Then she decided that it was time to take her nap and I was left to complete the rest on my own – a blessing in disguise.

This is so easy to make and you can reap much satisfaction from it. Even hubs who doesn’t have a sweet tooth loved it. Hazel the picky eater could finish 5 of these in a go and tell me they’re “very nice”! If you could do with more motivation to keep your baking bug going, this is the recipe to try. A true keeper!

The colour looks great, but jam was a little sour for my liking. I use Hero brand.

Nutella speaks for itself. This is an all-time favourite 🙂

Ingredients
225g butter, softened
100g icing sugar or castor sugar (Icing sugar results in a smoother, lighter crust which almost creating that ‘melt in the mouth effect’. I’ve not tried castor sugar, can’t comment on that.)
250g plain flour, sifted
1/2 tsp vanilla extract or almond essence (really up to you)
Enough jam / nutella (or any other preserves that you fancy)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, add sifted flour and vanilla extract, and mix well
3. Shape dough into 1/2 inch diameter balls and place on a lined cookie sheets
4. Imprint your thumb in the center to make an indentation
5. Fill with your favorite jam or preserves
6. Bake for 10 minutes or until golden brown at the edges
7. Remove to cool on wire rack

For detailed step-by-step guide, go to my Facebook album.

The original recipe can be found here. I also found many other variations from my favourite recipe source if you search for “thumbprint cookies”. Just to highlight some of them that are just as easy to make:

• Raspberry and Almond Shortbread – additional dressing looks nice.
• Thumbprint Shortbread cookie – adding the fillings after cookie is baked sounds like a great idea for choc version. For jams, I still encourage adding prio to the baking process as it will boil then sink nicely into the indent so the cookies all look uniform.
• Jam-filled Thumbprint Cookies – wonder how by adding 2 egg yolks will do to the cookie.
• Cream Cheese Kolacky – an easy recipe using cream cheese. You don’t have to roll out the cookie dough suggested in the original recipe, you can use the thumbprint method to roll dough into a ball and make an imprint.

Hope you have fun trying your hands at this recipe! 🙂

Japanese Cheesecake – attempt 1 July 19, 2009

When I ran out of ideas on what to attempt next, I asked my colleagues what is the one thing that they’d like to eat but can’t be found in the stores. Catherine came back with this request – soft, fluffy cheesecake. So I googled.

There were many Japanese cheesecake recipes but were very similar. Out of the 10+ wesites I reviewed, I shortlisted 6 secipes of which I singled out this recipe as the first to attempt. Theretically, it is most promising in turning out the lightest homemade Jap cheesecake – use icing sugar instead of castor sugar, cake flour instead of plain flour.

Ingredients:
140gm icing sugar (I used only 110gm cos I don’t like my cake to be too sweet)
6 egg whites
6 egg yolks
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
50gm butter
250gm cream cheese
100mlfresh milk
1 tbsp lemon juice ( I also add in 1/2 lemon rind )
60gm cake flour ( I used top flour – cos I got confused and bought the wrong flour)
20gm cornflour
1/4 tsp. salt

Method :
1. Melt cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler. Cool the mixture. Fold in the flour, cornflour, egg yolks, lemon juice, lemon rind and mix well.

2. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. Add in the sugar and whisk until soft peaks form.

3. Add the cream cheese mixture to the egg white mixture and mix well. Pour into a 9-inch round springform pan (Lightly grease and line the bottom and sides of the pan with greaseproof baking paper or parchment paper).
4. Bake cheesecake in a water bath for 1 hours 10 minutes or until set and golden brown at 160C.

I started by using a plastic spatula to stir the ingredients over boiling water. Taking care not to let the water touch the bowl.

After 10mins and the cream cheese was still not fully melted. I switched to a manual whisk and everything was well mixed in 2min! Another lesson learned.

While the cream cheese mixture was being cooled, I worked on separating the egg yolk from the whites. Notice that I used a small bowl for each egg, before transferring them into a bigger bowl respectively.

This was how the mixture looked after the dry ingredients had been folded in.

Adding egg yolks to the mixture. I like the rich orange colour here.

This was how it looked after the egg yolk was well mixed into the mixture.

Measure out the icing sugar.

Add cream of tartar to the egg white. You can’t really tell from this photo but there was a tint of egg yolk here, causing the egg white to fail to form soft peak later on.

Here i whisk egg white and cream of tartar manually until foamy then add icing sugar to it. I read in another blog which advised that cream of tartar be added after the white is foamy. I’ll try this method next time.

I took 45mins to get to this stage and it became apparent that this egg white was not going to form soft peaks. I later learned that this process should have taken only a few mins if I had used an electric beater.

This was how it looked after the egg yolk + cream cheese mixture was folded into the egg white. It’s clear that this cheesecake was not gonna turn out the light fluffy texture it’s supposed to.

I lined only the sides of the pan with baking sheets. It was supposed to be about double the height of the pan so that when the cake rises over the pan it doesn’t spill out. Of coz mine didn’t quite rise… I wrapped the exterior of the pan with aluminium foil to prevent water from seeping into the pan. I didn’t have a bigger sized pan so I poured water onto the baking tray for the bain marie (water bath) effect.

At this point, I was just hoping that the cake will be edible.

Nice colour, smooth surface, smells good… promising!

Hmmm… all wrinkled and shrunk… not looking as great as when it was fresh from the oven.

You can imagine how dense the texture was.

Taste was actually great!

  

 

The verdict
The cake tasted light and tangy. Some who tried actually liked the unique texture while most others felt it doesn’t cut as a Jap cheesecake. I definitely need to work on the egg white.

Notes

1. Advice from Joy on egg white: the important thing is to make sure there is no oil in the egg white including the mixer, bowl, etc. and NO strains of egg yolk…need to practice separating the whites! And lastly, eggs have to be at room temperature, not straight from the fridge.
2. More on how to beat egg whites http://bakingsheet.blogspot.com/2005/06/cooking-school-how-to-beat-egg-whites.html