Chocolate Truffles

Having seen all kinds of truffles popping out in the recent mooncake market, like champagne choco truffles, rum and raisin..etc...I was tempted to be 'creative' and make my own truffles and add them into mooncakes as well. Anyway, I dropped the idea later as I only have red bean paste and don't think red bean would pair well with chocolate. So, i made the truffles for consumption alone and was pretty satisfied with the results :) Yummy! I can now make my own 'Rocher". When i gave some to my friend, she was asking me what is truffles? Well, I replied her that i just know that it is a kind of chocolate, and most often made by your ownself. Hehe very lame right. A net search for its meaning defined it as a group of chocolate confectionary, traditionally made with a chocolate ganache center coated in chocolate or cocoa powder, usually in a spherical, conical or curved shape. Nowadays, other fillings such as nuts, caramel or melted chocolate may replace the ganache (Source: Wikipedia). They are named for their resemblance to the truffle fungus. There are 3 main types of chocolate truffles. This method is the swiss truffles method. For more info, you can refer to the link.

I got the recipe from Sweet Indulgences and made some modifications myself.

Ingredients:

• 55g of milk chocolate
• 35g of dark chocolate
• 80 ml of heavy cream
• 15g of almond meal (ground almond) - original recipe called for ground hazelnut
• 1 1/2 tbsp of butter
• Hazelnuts/whole almonds toasted (optional)

Method:

1. Melt chocolate over double boiler and set aside.
2. Heat cream till simmer.Stir cream into melted chocolate and stir in widening concentric circles.
3. Add butter, stirring gently.
4. Add ground almond and stir gently.
5. Pour into a pan and refrigerate for about 2-3 hrs.
6. Toast some hazelnuts (about 20)
7. Use a melon scoop to scoop moulds of ganache and wrap it over 1 hazelnut - note: Be sure to let the nuts cool before wrapping otherwise the ganache will melt and turn soft
8. Dust with cocoa powder or chopped peanuts before popping back into the refrigerator

Makes about 18 truffles

Note: For more variations, you can coat it with melted chocolate or white chocolate before dusting it for additional chocolate layer

Must be consumed within a few days

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Like many others, I too joined in the mooncake frenzy. This year though, I did not bake any traditonal mooncake. Just made some simple snowskin mooncakes with red bean paste. Added in lots of toasted pumpkin seeds which really enhanced the taste. :) I added green tea powder and some essence to make into green tea, pandan and strawberry snowskin. But felt that the taste was not obvious enough, should have added more..so these are only good for home consumption, though my mum's friend who didn't like mooncakes liked this red bean as it was something different from the usual lotus seed pastes she had eaten. :) :)

The snowskin recipe was obtained from Zu's blog - Quick 'n' Easy Treats. I like the texture and it's a simple recipe. Here it is:

Ingredients:

• 75g glutinous fried rice flour (kou fein)
• 90g powdered sugar
• 33g shortening
• 75g cold drinking water
• 1/2 tsp condensed milk
• Vanilla essence or other flavours that you fancy
• Colorings of you choice
• Any paste of your choice (red bean, lotus, green tea, etc)
• Salted egg yolks, steamed on an oil plate for about 5-10min (optional)

Method:

1. Sieve flour and powdered sugar
2. Add shortening and mix them using rubbing-in till you get crumb like texture
3. Add water, condensed milk, essence and colouring, mix well until it forms a smooth dough
4. Set dough aside for at least 20mins
5. Make the fillings into ball shapes of 28g inclusive of yolk if you are using (note: this really depends on the type of mould you are using and the thickness of the skin you want it to be). I would advise you try out one first to get the right proportion.
6. Divide dough into small portion each 22g
7. Flatten dough to wrap up the fillings
8. Seal up dough to enclose filling completely
9. Roll the dough in fried glutinous rice and sprinkle some of it in the mould for easy releasing.
10. Press into mould and knock the mould to loosen the mooncake

Makes 12 mini mooncakes

After the red bean paste were finished, i still had some dough left. In order not to waste it, I came up with my own version...peanut mooncakes! I mixed some peanut butter with crushed peanuts, and ...yeah there comes my peanut mooncakes. I made it much shorter or it becomes a mini bite-size one. I quite like this, it tasted just like peanut mochi...

Classic Corn Bread

I am very much a breakfast person...every morning without fail, I would religiously take my breakfast at home; normally it's 2 slices of bread with my favourite peanut butter and milk :) Nowadays when the bread finishes towards the end of the week, I would take the opportunity to try to bake something simple so i can have it the next day. So it usually won't be anything too fanciful. I had a packet of cornmeal which I bought as i wanted to try the famous 'kenny Rogers corn muffins' one day.
I tried this very simple mix-in classic corn bread. There are dozens of cornbread recipes and variations around the world. The traditional one though, originated from southern United States and is baked in a cast-iron skillet, which gives it its crumbly texture. I baked mine in a normal loaf pan. I halved the recipe though I should have just keep to the original as there wasn't enough batter to keep it tall. I sprinkled toasted pumpkin seeds on top which greatly improved the appearance and taste of the bread. My mum felt that it was rather bland, which I agreed. But I guess It's supposed to be like this since it was so versatile to go with different types of flavourings or eaten with butter and jam; and what can we ask for when it's so healthy without any sugar but only 1 tbsp of honey, right. :P I like spreading with butter or jam and biting into the corns ..! :) The recipe was adopted from Williams-Sonoma - Essential of Baking. I shall post the recipe later or when requested as I find that the taste wasn't that fabulous. I shall try other corn bread/muffin recipes some other time.

Specially for 'Bee'!

Who is this "bee'? Haha it's not me, although my name has a 'bee' in it too. Quite an overdue post...cos this was the day 4 of us, xian, ling and me celebrated our dearest gal, Soon Bee's birthday! I had been planning what to bake for her before her big day. I know u like tiramisu gal, but I've tried before and it's kinda difficult to assemble it beautifully and making it firm. Don't wanna take the risk. Wanted to bake a mango mousse cake but didnt turn out to be very good when i tried the week before. So..here it goes...a chocolate mousse cake. :)

Actually there were some risks involved. I baked a chocolate chiffon which i dun often had much success with. Luckily it turned out not too bad. Thou the centre sank abit, at least the sides did not shrink. I was also afraid the mousse would'nt turn out well. Anyway, my backup plan was to bake a basic choco butter cake should it fail.

This is how it turned out. For the chocolate chiffon, I cant remember where i got the recipe. It's just a basic chiffon recipe. As for the choco mousse, the recipe was obtained from Florence - Do what I like. The steps were quite tedious but I would say it's not difficult and worth it. The taste was really good. I sandwiched the cake between choco mousse, glazed it with choco ganache and decorated with strawberries and toasted hazel nuts. This is the final presentation...

Hehe I know the circumference doesn't look too nice. Not sure whether there wasn't enough ganache to cover the sides or i just simply don't know how to glaze it propery. So it somehow mixed with the mousse and looked wet and gooey. But the result is still good. Tasted nice. I specially bought this 4 inch cake pan so that for our mini gatherings, the cake is just enough for about 4 of us. :)

With some leftover mousse in the fridge, I scooped it into a pastry bag and piped into a muffin cup and...a cupcake mousse! Nice right? I was quite surprised that I can actually piped it so nicely; not sure whether are mousse supposed to be that stiff after setting in the fridge or should it be softer? Don't have much eating experience with mousse. We celebrated Bee's birthday at shinKUSHIYA, a Japanese restaurant. Their specialties are charcoal grilled skewers, which were all excellent! We described their food as being prepared to bring out the 'essence'. Didn't took the photos as we were too immense in the eating. The ambience and services were excellent too. Do give the food there a try. It's located at the New Suntec Galleria #01-031.
Xian bought a packet of chocolate 'bees' for our birthday girl. Happy Birthday gal! Friends Forever! :)

The journal of my baking adventure begins...

Never thought that I would be keeping a blog one day, somehow just don't like the idea of blogging about my life, thoughts, feelings...and publish for the world to see. Until one fine day, while searching the net for baking resources, I discovered the world of food blogs which came to me that there were actually so many out there who loves baking as much (i would say much much more) like i do.

Baking is fun! I read from an article in Women's magazine sometime back that the kneading and swirling hand movement can help to relieve stress. The energy exhausted in the process can also help to make up for the calories consumed for maybe a mini muffin? hehe...I'm not joking...especially when having to knead by hand or using a handheld mixer for more than 10 minutes...I can feel the 'heat' coming. So well, it is good that I don't own a kitchenAid mixer (*comforting myself* :P). I just love to see a clump of dough or a smooth creamy batter being magically transformed into delicious sweet things, filling the whole house with the homely warm aroma. It's really satisfying, especially when I see my little nephew enjoying my bakes...kids don't lie ok :) Have been reading several foodie blogs with good recipes and advices...would like to say thanks to those out there who had responded to my queries before and given me your valuable advices.

As I baked more and more, I felt I simply need an avenue where I can keep a record of all my tried and tested recipes, the verdicts and the hiccups along the way which had proven to be good learning experiences for me through every baking session... So here I am. :) I can now understand why people likes to blog. It's simply about sharing your passion and penning it down, be it about life...a hobby..food....

Hope this little journal of my adventures and *disasters* in the kitchen will accompany me as i bring my baking skills to greater heights, and allow me to find more inspirations in cooking which I'm still not good at. Hehe...

A glimpse of some of past bakes above....

They were all taken with my pathetic Nokia camera, so not very clear. But not bad lah...at least the flaws couldn't be seen..:P