Pretty pretty desserts for you...

My friend was asking me how come I did not bake anything recently..Heh actually I did bake some cookies last week...but will be posting it later with another batch of cookies that I intend to make.

Meanwhile, thought I'd probably post some eye candy pictures of yummy pretty desserts I've had recently. :)

Waffles @ Bakerzin

Strawberry Shortcake & New York Cheesecake@ one of a dessert cafe at Clarke Quay





Yummy2! Alrightz that's all for you to drool at at the moment. When post some more pictures when I have any desserts again... ;)

Cream Scones for breakfast!

Yeah...yeah...finally something different for breakfast. Getting quite bored of muffins, breads, cereals, oats ...etc for my breakfast. Been thinking of what can I bake without making a mess of the kitchen and getting scolded by mum; without having to wash so much and making myself so tired after a day's work, and still fulfilling my baking itch and next morning's energy booster...


Flipping through my recipes, yeah scones it shall be. Realised I've not been baking it for a long time since the last (and first) time I baked it. So this was my second time. I found one recipe that uses whipping cream. Just nice cos' I'm still left with some whipping cream which I had been hoping to finish it up. The recipe, from Williams Sonoma-Essentials of Baking, wrote that "these cream scones-rich british tea biscuits, with slightly cake-like texture, have to be worked quickly, using a very light touch and put into the oven immediately after cutting in order to produce tender scones." Heh however I did not fulfill that, my hand movements still rather clumsy. Luckily it turned out fine. :) These are sinfully rich scones, where butter is rubbed or cut in, mixed with heavy whipping cream and often brushed with cream and sprinkled with sugar.


I was quite happy that the result looked similar to the picture posted. :) And they were really nice..flaky texture, buttery taste but quite rich though; not something I would usually have for breakfast. The orginal recipe uses currants but I used chocolate chips. I made another version plain, and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. Both has its own unique taste, yummy! Can't tell which I prefer. :)




















I eat it with some strawberry jam. Doesn't the one on the left look like strawberry shortcakes?? ;)

Ingredients:

For the dough

2 cups (10 oz/315 g) plain flour
1/4 cup (2 oz/60 g) granulated sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp grated lemon zest (i omitted it)
6 tbsp (3 oz/90 g) cold unslated butter, cut into 1/2-inch (12-mm) pieces
1/2 cup (3 oz/90 g) dried currants (I used chocolate chips)
3/4 cup (6 fl oz/180 ml) heavy cream

For the topping

1 tbsp granulated, demerara, or turbinado sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp whole milk or heavy cream


Method:

1. Position a rack in the middle of the oven, and preheat to 425°F (220°C). Line a half-sheet pan or rimless baking sheet with parchment (baking paper).
2. In a bowl, stir together the flour, granulated sugar, abking powder, salt, and lemon zest. Using a pastry blender or 2 knives, vut in the butter until the mixture forms large, coarse crumbs the size of small peas. (I used rubbing-in method--rub with finger tips, pinch some flour with the butter and keep rubbing in, lifting the flour high each time and continue until all the butter are rubbed in, forming coarse crumbs) This was the first method I learnt in baking during my secondary days home economics lesson!
3. Stir in the currants. Pour the cream over the dry ingredients and mix with a fork or rubber spatula just until the dry ingredients are moistened.
4. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and press together gently until the dough clings together in a ball.
5. Pat out into a round about 1.2 inch (12 mm) thick and 6 1/2 inches (16.5 cm) in diameter. Cut the round into 6 wedges, or use a 3-inch (7.5-cm) biscuit cutter to cut out rounds. Place them one inch apart on the prepared pan.
6. In a small bowl, stir together the sugar and cinnamon. Brush the wedges / rounds with milk and sprinkle evenly with cinnamon sugar.
7. Bake until golden brown, 13-17 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool slighly. Serve warm. Can be stored in airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days.

Jam-filled Sponge Cake

I had to modify the name...initially the title of this post was supposed to be jam-filled swiss roll, if only I had made it successfully. But I didn't manage to roll it nicely and it cracked. :( So I had to turn it into slices of cake sandwiched with strawberry jam.

The cake was really yummy, soft and spongy. Recipe from Aunty Yochana's sugar roll. I guess besides the lack of technique of rolling, the top part of the sponge sheet was abit burnt, thus it cracked easily when I was trying to roll it. Found that my oven was rather hot. Really got to undestand my oven well before venturing into my bakes next time.

Packed a slice of it for my nephew. :)

Hmmm...what shall I bake next??

Muffins Craze...

I had been baking muffins recently. Not that I like to eat muffins alot but cos' I find muffins cute, convenient and much simpler where I can spare the time and energy to bake during weekdays when the itch to bake sets in... ;)

Now that christmas is coming, I'm planning to bake cookies and cakes to give away! Somehow ever since I started baking, whenever I see bakeries selling cookies and cakes, and if knowing I know how to make myself, I can't help wanting to go back home and try myself instead of buying it. This christmas, I'm thinking of trying more colourful decorations for the cookies, if time allows. Hopefully I can get more creative than previous years, and produce nicer, more tasty treats. :)

Here are some of the muffins I baked.

This is a simple mixed-in muffin with carrot and orange juice. The recipe was obtained from the same book mentioned in the previous post - Cakes and bakes by Hamlyn. The result was not what I expected. The taste was not bad, but I find the muffin too moist. I'm not sure if it was due to me shredding the carrot instead of grating it, thus it produces alot of water. When the muffin was baked, I could not see any carrots, but orange rind only. I think I should have added more flour, or more oil instead of liquid ingredients. Anyway this is a good combination to consider for a healthy muffin and i would probably add in carrots to another orange muffin recipe which I'm going to introduce below.

Noticed some brown spots on top? Those were white chocolate chips. Sprinkled onto some of them but taste wasn't prominent. This is a good and yummy recipe from Florence's blog after having tried different recipes before. This time, I made quite a few modifications to the original recipe. I halved the recipe, used canola oil only instead of half oil and half butter, reduced the amount of oil as I felt that the one I made the last time was too moist and oily, as I personally prefer not too moist muffins. Just cutting a bit of oil works just as fine. I also omited the chocolate swirl as i was lazy to wash extra bowls. Wanted to make it as simple as possible. :P

I'm able to make 12 mini muffins and 4 heart-shaped cakes from the heart-shape mould. The 12 minis were for my mum to bring to her tea break with her friends. :) I told her that the heart-shape muffins was for her afternoon Sunday tea accompanied with the rose buds for her to brew some rose tea. But she didnt drink that though. :P



Ingredients:

• 3/4 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 45 g sugar
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 small egg
• 62.5 ml orange juice }
• 62.5 ml buttermilk } Just a guage, not very accurate though
• 40 ml canola oil
• tsp vanilla essence
• grated orange zest of half orange

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190 degree celsius.
2. Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
3. n a separate mixing bowl, whisk together egg, buttermilk, orange juice, oil, vanilla essence and orange zest.
4. Pour the egg mixture into the bowl of dry ingredient. using a wooden spoon, stir them gently until well combined, forming a uniformly moist batter. Do not over-stir.
5. Fill each muffin cup to 80% full.
6. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, then rotate the pan for more uniform baking. Then bake for another 5 to 10 minutes or until a tester inserted comes out clean. (Note: my baking time is shorter as I used mini muffin pan. For regular muffin pan, bake for 12 minutes, rotate, then bake for about another 10 to 15 minutes)

Adapted and modified from: Do What I Like

Can yield about 14 mini muffins or 6 regular muffins.

Ok this is the last muffin I made.
This was made before the mini orange. Saw this cute little pandan chiffon from one of a chinese blog, with lots of nice bakes. However for this muffin, I find the taste ok only, cos' it used pandan paste only. It would be better if pandan juice or coconut milk was added. And I guess too much of the pandan paste was added so made the colour looked artificial. But I like the cute dome shape! :)

Banana Streusel Cake

I just borrowed this book from the library - Cakes and bakes by Hamlyn with various types of recipes of homemade bakes. Was attracted by this Cherry streusel cake in the form of bars topped with cherries and almonds. The recipe uses canned cherries. I have instead some ripe bananas and so decided to use bananas as toppings.
The result was good, with a thin layer of crusty cake base, topped with bananas, crumb toppings and lots of toasted almonds. it can be cut into 16 squares, so each mini bite is buttery and flavoursome. Something different!

Ingredients:

• 175 g self-raising flour
• 100 g unsalted butter, diced
• 75 g caster sugar
• 50 g ground almonds
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence (orginal recipe uses almond)
• 4 large bananas (original recipes uses 425 g can stoned black cherries, drained)
• 25 g flaked almonds

Method:

1. Sift the flour into a bowl, add the butter and rub it in with your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and ground almonds and stir with a wooden spoon to mix. Measure out 75 g of the crumb mixture and set aside for the topping.
2. Add the egg, milk and essence to the rest of the mixture and mix together until smooth.
3. Lightly oil and line a shallow, 8 inch square (I use 7 inch) baking tin. Spoon the mixture into the tin and smooth flat. Sliced the bananas thinly and placed on top of the mixture and sprinkle the reserved crumbs. Sprinkle the flaked almonds on top. (if using cherries, just spoon the cherries instead of bananas on top of the cake mixture).
4. Bake in a preheated oven, 180 degree celsius for 25-30 minutes, or until it is well risen and the topping is pale golden. leave the cake to cool in the tin. remove from the tin, peel away the paper and cut into 16 squares. cake may be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.

Steamed 9-layer kueh and spinach stir-fry

I made this steamed 9-layer kueh the day after I made the pandan chiffon with the leftover coconut milk but had been too busy to post. I thought I had all the ingredients on hand, so it would be great to utilise the remaining packets of tapioca flour, glutinous rice flour which I had left from previous festive bakings.


Only as I was reading from the recipe and measuring out the ingredients, I realised that what was needed was rice flour and not glutinous rice flour! Actually I was not sure of the difference between the 2 types of flour. I even went to make a search to make sure they were different. Oh well, since the rest of the ingredients were out already and would have gone to a waste, I might as well tweaked the recipe a little bit to see if it works. So, I increased the amount of tapioca flour and replaced some rice flour with plain flour (which I saw was used in some kueh recipes).


There I began..steaming layer by layer...These were the only colours I have :) It was a very relaxing task, not much strength needed unlike beating or creaming or the heat from the oven.


Surprisingly I was able to get a quite decent-looking 9-layer kueh. :) :) Taste wise, I felt it could be sweeter, I would not reduce the sugar in future and would probably follow the amount as indicated in the recipe. Only downside was it was rather tough, and chewy...which was expected as I did not follow the recipe at all! My mum still liked it.. haha, she's too easy-going. Anyway I got the recipe from Florence's blog - Do what I like.


By the way, there's this kind of kueh sold in Bengawan Solo, a small piece of brown kueh (don't know what it is called) which I think was made from brown sugar and probably coconut? Does anyway have the recipe for that? My mum loves those and would be great if I can try that ;)

It was a lazy Sunday for me that week. Didn't go out after an outdoor activity the previous day. So I offered to help my mum cook some dishes, with a little supervision from her..haha..have not cooked for quite some time. Here's my piece of work : Spinach stir-fried with canned mushrooms. Was quite pleased with the results. :)


Hopefully I will have the chance (provided I'm not going out or lazy :P) to cook more in future.

Yay, finally I did it!

After my 'almost there' chiffon cake, I was so determined to try again, until I got it right. Haha, that's me, wanna prove to myself I can do it. Haha...If only I am so determined in many other things as well... :P

This time round, I used another pandan chiffon recipe from Yochana's blog. I must say her recipe really rules...it smells so nice when baked, and the taste is so good! Guess is because it uses pandan juice, essence and coconut milk. The texture is very soft! I actually bought a new 17-cm chiffon tin, for me to practice more in order not to waste so much ingredients in case I fail.. :P The other tin that I've got is a 23-cm, which is way too big for my family to finish.

Prior to this pandan chiffon, I had actually tried another lemon chiffon which was a failure again. :( In fact that lemon chiffon was worse than the previous pandan one. It dropped out of the tin when I overturned it. I was so disappointed that I had no mood to take any pictures; which I should have done that at least for my record.

After reading many comments and techniques on beating egg whites, I deduced that egg whites have to be beaten to stiff, but not VERY stiff peaks. This can be confusing cos' some recipes would state for egg whites to be beaten to stiff peaks, some firm but not stiff. I think most importantly, it has to be glossy, firm and the whites curl slightly when the beater is lifted up. It should be stiff yet not straight peaks (too stiff).

That was what I had done for the first pandan chiffon. It was so stiff that the peaks stand upright straight. Thanks to Aunty Yochana's comments where she mentioned egg whites beaten too stiff would result in it being difficult to be folded properly, thus deflate easily. Being too extra careful for my lemony chiffon try, I think I had stopped the beater too early, resulting in not being firm enough cos' the whites turned a bit runny after that. I could already sense that something was wrong as when I was folding in; cos' the whites should be firm enough that when all the batter in transferred to the tin, it must be rather thick that you need to use a spatula to smooth it (most recipes would state that). However when i folded mine, it was rather liquid, I do not even have to smooth the top. I find this post by Nic's - Bakingbites on egg whites quite a good reference.

This was what I got this time round, not sure whether it's of the correct consistency, guess should be something like this.

Yeah this is how my chiffon turned out. Can see that I did not do a good job in the unmoulding. Actually, the top part sank abit because the cake rose very high, far extending the brim of the pan.

I wonder why...cos' I have half the recipe and used only 3 eggs. I guess for such small tin, 2 eggs is enough? Anyway, finally I'm able to see the outer crust, and I'm happy already...hehe

Haha...I was scare out of my wits when I saw this....


Well, at least this gave me some courage to attempt chiffon cakes. I will have to keep trying until I'm more certain on the egg whites consistency and the correct folding technique. :)

While waiting in anticipation for the chiffon to finish baking in the oven, I made myself a salad. I am by no expert to give any recipe. :P I simply tossed some chopped strawberries, pears, butterhead lettuce, sliced blanced almonds and pumpkin seeds; dizzled with combination of lemon juice, honey and olive oil and finally sprinkled some Nestum Family cereal. I like the crunchy feel of the cereal...:)