Christmas Fruit Cake

I know this a bit too late to post, so sorry not to be able to update the blog, and I was actually baking this fruit cake at the last minute of Christmas day.  Just hope that I never too late to submit to Aspiring Bakers #14 : Creative Christmas Bakes (December 2011) hosted by Hankerie :)

Ingredients:

250 gr Mixed Fruits

50 gr Apricot

50 gr Cranberries

3 Tbsp Rum

250 gr Butter

130 gr Sugar

1 tsp Orange zest

4 Eggs

210 gr Plain Flour

½ tsp Baking Powder

40 gr Orange juice

40 gr Ground Almonds

Method:

- Soak mixed fruits, apricot and cranberries with rum over the night.

- Cream butter and sugar until pale & fluffy, add in orange zest.

- Add eggs one at a time till thoroughly mixed before adding in the next egg.

- Mix 2 Tbsp of flour to soaked fruits.

- Fold in shifted Plain Flour+Baking Powder, orange juice and ground almonds alternately to the butter batter, lastly add in soaked fruits, mix well.

- Pour into 8 inch square cake tin.

- Bake at 160C for 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hour or until cook.

- Let the cake cool in tin for 20 mins, then remove and leave it to cool completely.

PS : Dizzle some drop of rum onto cake once a while (every 2-3 days) to keep cake moist in the fridge.

Here, I would like to wish everyone HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012!

Black Glutinous Steam Cake

I brought two cakes for our recent bloggers’ gathering using the same basic ingredients (black glutinous flour) and this is the steam version. I prefer steam one cause you can really taste the fragrant of black glutinous in the cake compare to chiffon. It is soft and has chewy texture too. If you prefer soft & fluffy texture, then you should try this chiffon version.

Source : NCC - Fatmah Bahalwan with modification

Ingredients :
2 Eggs
50 gr Caster Sugar

75 gr Black Glutinous Flour

25 gr Cake Flour

40 gr Oil

60 gr Instant Coconut Milk
1 Tbsp Condensed Milk
Pinch of salt

Method:
- Preheat the steamer.
- Beat eggs, sugar until pale & thick.
- Add in mixed flour, stir a while.
- Add in mixed oil, coconut milk and salt, stir until well incorporated.
- Pour in small pan, steam for 40 mins or cook.

Black Glutinous Chiffon Cake II

 

I got chance to go back Jakarta just before gathering, and brought back this black glutinous flour. Since it is hardly found here, then I was thinking to bake some cakes for the bloggers’ gathering. Just hope they may like it.

The first time I made few years back, I could taste a bit of sawdust in the cake. However, with this brand, quite okay, there was no sawdust taste in the cake (agreeable with fellow bloggers during last week gathering).

Here, I made half of the recipe with modification.

Source : NCC – Fatmah Bahalwan



Ingredients:
A:
80 gr Egg yolks
35 gr Caster sugar

B:
120 gr Egg whites
50 gr Caster sugar
1/4 tsp salt

C:
25 gr Plain flour
50 gr Black Glutinous flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder Double Acting

D:
75 ml Instant coconut milk (I used KARA)
1-1/5 tbsp Oil

Method:
- Use hand whisk A until creamy.
- Then by using mixer beat B until stiff.
- Add C and D to A creamy mixture, then mixed with B.
- Pour into tube pan, then bake into preheated oven of 150C for 50 minutes or until cook.
- Invert the cake for cool down process.
- Remove the cake once cool down and serve.

Bloggers' Gathering (NOV 2011)

Thanks Bakertan to be an initiator and Eelin for being a great host that we all were enjoying  this wonderful gathering. I found this time we had quite balance between sweet and savoury of the buffet spread this time.

Let’s look at the spread details :)

The Batter Baker : Green Tea and Pina Colada Cuppies

Baking Library : American Sandwiches and New York Cheesecake

Passionate About Baking : Roti John and Oriental Salad

Yummy Bakes : Hokkaido Chiffon Cupcakes

Baking on Cloud 9 : Cinnamon Buns

Busy Gran : Shepherd's Pie and Choux Pastry

Kohken69 : XO Sauce Fride Lo Shu Fan

HoneyBee Sweets : Dorayaki Ham&Cheese and Green Tea Red Bean

My contributin : Black Glutinous Chiffon & Steam Cake

Chocolate Cream Cupcakes

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #13: EnjoyCupcakes (November 2011) hosted by Min of Min’s Blog.

Ingredients:

70 gr Boiling water
25 gr Cocoa Powder
20 gr Sugar

4 Egg yolks
15 gr Sugar
50 gr Oil
75 gr Cake flour

3 Egg whites
50 gr Sugar

Topping:

150 gr Chocolate, melted

100 gr Buttercream

Decoration: Marshmallow (optional)

Method:
- Shift cocoa powder and sugar in bowl, then pour in the boiling water and stir well incorporated.
- Preheat oven 180 degree.
- Hand whisk egg yolks and sugar until pale. Add in oil & the cocoa mixture, mix well.
- Fold in cake flour until combined.
- In separated bowl, whisk egg white until foamy, add in 50gr sugar, whisk until stiff (soft peak).
- Pour 1/3 egg white mixture into egg yolk-flour mixture and mixed well, then pour this into the rest of the egg white and mixed well.
- Pour into cupcake cases and bake for 15-18 mins.

- Chocolate cream : mix the melted chocolate into buttercream, pipe the cream over the cupcakes, decorate it with marshmallow.



Black Bottom Cupcakes

Saw Hearty Bakes and I Love.I Cook. I Bake baked this too, here I'm submitting my version of these irresistable cupcakes to Aspiring Bakers#13: Enjoy Cupcakes (November 2011) hosted by Min.

Source : David Lebovitz's The Great Book of Chocolate via Joy of Baking

Ingredients:

Cream Cheese Filling:

227 gr Cream cheese, room temperature
65 gr Caster sugar
1 large Egg
1/2 tsp Vanilla extract

Chocolate Cupcakes:

195 gr All purpose flour
200 gr Caster Sugar (I used Brown Sugar)
30 gr Unsweetened Cocoa powder
1 tsp Baking soda
1/4 tsp Salt
240 ml Water
80 ml Vegetable Oil
1 tbsp White vinegar (I omitted this)
1 tsp Vanilla extract

Topping : Chocolate chips (optional)

Method: - Preheat oven to 180 C

- Cream Cheese Filling: Beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add the sugar, egg, and vanilla extract and beat until creamy and smooth. Set aside.
- Chocolate Cupcakes:
- In a large bowl sift together the flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl mix the water, oil and vanilla extract. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stir in the wet ingredients until nice and smooth.
- Evenly divide the batter into cupcake cases. Then spoon a few tablespoons of the cream cheese filling into the center of each cupcake. Sprinkle some chocolate chips on the cheese.
- Bake about 25 minutes, or until the cream cheese filling has set and the cupcakes feel springy to the touch (a toothpick inserted into the chocolate part of the cupcake will come out clean). Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool.

Kuih Bingka Ubi

This is another Wendyywy’s kuih recipe that I baked for this month. I like about this kuih because of it chewy but still in soft texture. It may look like that very easy to make while you just combine everything in it then bake, however, when having to grate the cassava finely and squeezing the juice out, it may take a little effort for doing that :( 

Source : Wendyywy @ Table of Two or more

Ingredients:

900 gr grated White cassava /Tapioca/ Ubi kayu  **

200 ml Thick coconut milk
2 Eggs

250 ml Water
200 gr Sugar

40 gr Butter
Few pandan leaves

Few drops of yellow colouring

Method:

- Boil water, pandan leaves and sugar, melt in butter, leave it aside.
- Combine coconut milk with eggs.
- Combine grated cassava and starch water**, pour in the boiling sugar water, it should thicken slightly.
- Pour coconut egg mixture, add in yellow colouring, stir until well incorporated.
- Pour batter into a 8 inch round baking pan. Bake in a preheated oven at 170/180C for 1 hour ( I bake 1 hour 25 mins) or until golden brown.

** Bought around 1.2 kg white cassava, peel and grate it. Since it could be slightly bitter, squeeze out the juice with cloth into a cup and let the juice sit until can see the starch settles on the bottom. Measure the cassava water layer and replace it with clean water (you may omit this step if you buy yellow cassava).

I am submitting this to the Aspiring Bakers #12 –Traditional Kueh (Oct 2011) hosted by Small Small Baker.

Kuih Tako

Seeing how easy Wendyywy recently made her tako, really attempted myself to try it at home. It’s true … it was really easy to make the tako, indeed I spent more time doing the tako casings from pandan leave than making the tako hahahaha ….   I couldn’t manage to get the mung bean starch, with Wendyywy fast replied & kindly clarification, then I decided to use mix of Hunkwe & corn flour to make it. But I'm satisfy with the result in texture and taste.

I am submitting this to the Aspiring Bakers #12 –Traditional Kueh (Oct 2011) hosted by Small Small Baker

Source: Wendyywy @ Table of Two or more

Pandan Layer:

25 gr Mung bean starch **
250 ml Pandan juice ++
60 gr Sugar
3 Water chestnuts, peeled and chopped

Coconut layer: 15 gr Mung bean starch **
125 ml Water
125 ml Coconut milk
50 gr Sugar
Very small pinch of salt

Pandan leaves for the tako casings (refer here for the full details)

Method:

- Prepare pandan layer. Mix everything together and cook on medium low heat until it looks transparent and thick.

- Spoon over prepared casings
- Prepare coconut layer. Mix everything together and cook on medium low heat until it thickens. Taste, it should no longer taste floury.
- Spoon over the pandan layer.
- Let cool down to room temperature and it will harden. Best served when chilled.

** I cannot find Mung bean starch, I replaced with half Hunkwe and half corn flour

++ I blended 15 gr Pandan leaves (cut into small pcs) with 300 ml water, strained to get the pandan juice.

Chocolate Bottom Banana Cupcakes

Finally I baked this popular Chocolate Bottom Banana Squares, there are two versions of the cake, butter version by Hearty Bakes and oil version by Cook.Love.Bake. Since left with only 2 ripe bananas on my kitchen, then I baked half recipe in cupcakes using the oil version. Texture was soft & fluffy, however I found lack of chocolate taste here maybe due to too much batter I took to mix with the chocolate powder.

Source : Cook.Bake.Love

Ingredients:

A.
35 gr castor sugar
1 large egg

B.
40 gr Oil
2 medium-sized bananas, mashed with a fork (about 110gr)

pinch of salt
20 gr milk
1 tsp rum (or ¼ tsp vanilla extract)

C.

65 gr plain flour
¼  tsp baking powder

¼  tsp baking soda

D. 1 tbsp cocoa powder ( can add upto 25 gr)

Topping : Chocolate rice / Chocolate chips.

Method:

- Preheat oven at 180C.

- Beat (A) till light and creamy.
- Add (B) and combine.
- Sieve in (C), mix till just incorporated. Stop once there is no traces of flour remain.
- Divide the batter into half. Sieve in cocoa powder to one portion of the batter and mix well. Add the cocoa batter to cupcake cases.
- Add the remaining plain batter on top of the cocoa batter. Sprinkle top generously with chocolate rice.
- Bake for 15-20 mins or until a skewer inserted in the centre and come out clean.

Assorted Cupcakes

Made these below assorted cupcakes for Children's Day Celebration at my eldest son's student care today.
Above cupcakes set .... breakfast for my colleagues :)

Chocolate cupcakes, I used my swiss roll recipe.
Swiss Meringue Buttercream from Wendy's blog. Thanks Wendy for your step-by-step instruction, that help me a lot on the preparation, and I just love the smooth texture & light taste of this buttercream:)

Nutella cupcakes, I used Busygran's recipe. Thanks Judy for the yummy recipe :)

Buttercake Rich Choco

I saw this recipe here, and decided to give it a try. I love the texture of the cake, it is a good recipe if you like soft & fluffy butter cake with additional chocolate taste, then you should give it a try too :)

Source : Sajian Sedap

Ingredients:

150 gr Unsalted Butter (Cold)

1/4 tsp Salt
100 gr Caster Sugar
75 gr Dark Chocolate, melted
5 nos Egg Yolk
2 nos Egg White

75 gr Plain Flour

25 gr Cocoa Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Powder (BP)
1/8 tsp Baking Soda (BS)

25 gr Almond sliced for decoration (optional)

 

Method:

- Preheat oven to 180C
- Cream butter, salt and sugar until creamy & smooth. Add in melted dark chocolate, beat until well incorporated.
- Add in eggs one at a time with part of flour mixture (flour, cocoa powder, BP and BS), mix well before next addition.
- Fold in the rest of the flour mixture.
- Fold into 24x12x4cm or 6 inch round pan, spread the almond sliced on top of the batter.
- Bake for 25-40 minutes or until cooked.
- Leave on cake rack to cool before slicing.

Here, I would like to participate this post to {Event} Natural Colour Bakes hosted by Hankerie.

Moo Moo & Oink Oink Paus

I’ve been influenced by Fatmum via Facebook, to make these cute paos. Aren’t they cute? Too cute to be eaten ??? hehehehe .. but not for my kids, they saw those and wanted to eat them up straight away ..Hahahaha ….

I used Cheah’s recipe for the pau skin. If you would like to make this, I would suggest, please do not to add too much filling inside the bun, so you will have round & smooth surface. I ever made this earlier that I was greedy to put lots of meat ingredients ….. at the end burst and look ugly. This time, I just added nutella inside the paus, or you may also put kaya or lotus paste.

Source : No-Frills Recipe 

Ingredients:
(A) Starter Dough:
70 gr Pau flour or Hong Kong flour
1-1/4 tsp Instant yeast
50 ml Lukewarm water

(B) Main Dough:
180 gr Pau flour or Hong Kong flour
65 gm Caster sugar
20 gr Crisco shortening
1 tsp Baking powder
1/4 tsp Salt (I skipped this)
55 ml water

Method:
A - Starter Dough
- Mix the instant yeast with lukewarm water, stir well.
- Add in 70 gr sifted pau flour, mix well with the yeast mixture. Roughly form into a ball of dough and set aside for 15 mins.

B - Main Dough
- Mix the balance 180 gr sifted pau flour with the baking powder and sugar, stir well.
- Add the starting dough mixture (A). Add in the shortening and water sparingly, knead till dough doesn't stick to the hands.
- Cover dough with a damp cloth and let it rest in a warm place for about 1 hr. to 1.1/2 hrs or till double in size.
- Knock down dough to expel some air, transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead for a while.
- Weigh dough @ 20 gr each and roughly shape into a ball. Make about 15 pieces.
- Flatten and roll out the dough into a circle. Place filling in the center, seal the bun with round on top.
- Place the pau onto a piece of greaseproof paper. Proof it for another 15 mins.
- Steam the pau over the high heat for about 10 to 12 mins.
- Remove from steamer and serve, hot.

NOTE:
- Mix the food colouring before weighing the dough to individual ball shape.

You may check for the softness of the skin here :)

Butter Cheese Cake

I was actually thought that I had all the ingredients at home, however, just realised on the last minute during measurement I had no more cheddar cheese block. Therefore, just substitute with sliced cheddar cheeses. The result was good and the cake had fine texture & quite flavourful with the cheddar cheese mixture.

Source Recipe : Aunty Yochana

Ingredients:
250 gr Butter
200 gr Sugar
5 nos Eggs (I used 4 Large eggs)
100 gr Sliced cheddar cheese, minced or stripped
1 tsp Vanilla essence
100 ml Fresh milk

225 gr Cake Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder

Method:
- Cream butter with sugar till creamy and smooth.
- Add in eggs one at a time, mix well before the next addition.
- Add in half of minced cheddar cheese and vanilla essence.
- Fold in fresh milk and cake flour sifted with baking powder alternately till finished.
- Pour into 8 inch square pan, spread the stripped cheddar cheese on top of the batter and bake at 180C for about 45 mins or till a stick inserted in comes out clean.
- Leave cake in the pan for 5 mins before removing. Leave on cake rack to cool before slicing.