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.

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

Midnight magic July 19, 2009

What are you up to at midnight?

For me, it’s probably one of the most productive period of the day. Me-time.

A time when I put my work aside, no kids or hub to bug me around. Time when my mind just runs wild overflowing with ideas (not that it doesn’t in the day time :P). It’s quality time I get to spend with myself and my kitchen 😉 A time for my creative outputs.

Naturally, I am one who’s easily distracted as I tend to put others’ needs over mine. When it comes to baking, precision is everything. It is only during the middle of the night that I can get to bake without disruptions. And so far, it’s been proven that my best creations are produced at night. Joyce’s birthday tiramisu, Wendy’s brownie birthday cake, my first and very successful new york cheesecake…

Conversely, those baked in the day always go wrong somehow.

Looks like I can’t multi-task as well as I’d like to 🙂

The sign(s) July 6, 2009

Frankly… I’m really a blog-dinosaur. In fact, I’m a little (just a little) intimidated by all the features here on this page where I’m editing my post. What’s all the funny icons I’ve never seen before? What’s Excerpt for? What’s trackback?? Kitchen Sink??? I’ve never used these functions on MS Office before… HA!

I was asked twice today to start a blog. How uncanny. I take it as “a sign” in the words of Paulo Coelho.

Liana told me that blogging is just like keeping a diary. The problem is, I don’t have a habit of keeping a diary! But since she complimented that my foodie photos are very bloggable, I shall put them to good use – to share and garner baking tips from the blogger community 🙂

Conz showed me a colleague’s diabetically-lovey-dovey-family blog and said I should start something like that. That’s not quite my style but I get the drift.