Anniversary Cake - 22 May 2014

This cake was made specially for my parent's 40th wedding anniversary.  I made the cake base two nights before the actual date and did the decorating the next day, which was the night before the actual anniversary date.  The decoration of the cake was not what I intended.  Faced with the soft whipped cream, I just simply piped round the cake using Wilton tip 32.  Guess the candle helps make the cake look much prettier.  :)

Chocolate Cake (by Aunty Yochana)
Ingredients:

8 egg white
8 egg yolks
300g sugar
160g cake flour
64g corn flour
4 1/4 tbsp cocoa powder
2 1/8 tsp baking powder
106g corn oil

Method:

1. Sift cake flour with cornflour, baking powder and cocoa powder.
2. Whisk egg white until soft peak forms and then add in sugar gradually and whisk till sugar dissolved and mixture is thick and glossy.
3. Drop in egg yolks, one at a time, making that it's evenly combined before the next addition.
4. Fold in 1/2 of flour mixture and mix well.
5. Pour in oil and mix well, fold in the balance flour mixture and mix till well combine.
6. Pour the mixture into round cake tin and bake in pre-heat oven at 175C for about 45 mins or till skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
7. Leave cake to cool on a wire rack.

Whipped Cream
Ingredients
360ml heavy whipping cream
1/2 + 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1.5 tablespoon castor sugar

Method:

1. In a large mixing bowl, place whipping cream, vanilla extract and sugar together.

2. Beat the mixture until stiff peaks form.

3. Add colouring and decorate as desired.

2014 Chinese New Year bakes

These are some of my CNY bakes early this year, just for record.

18 Jan 2014
Tried out the pineapple golf balls using Kenneth Goh's recipe.

22 Jan 2014
Almond cookies (shared by Meng Choo at CK)

25 Jan 2014
Pineapple tarts (Recipe from food for tots)

Almond cookies (New Year Cookies by Alan Ooi cookbook)

Blueberries Yogurt Cake (17 May 2014)

Saw a lot of bakers baking this cake recently. And I finally got to try out myself early yesterday morning! Recipe was shared by Cindy on her blog. But my cake was somehow shorter than hers.  :p

Ingredients

140g self raising flour

130g plain flour

200g sugar

3 eggs

168g plain yoghurt

125g butter,softened

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 punnet of blueberries,rinsed and pat dry

Method

1. Sift flour and set aside.
2. Cream butter and sugar till pale and creamy.
3. Add eggs,one at a time.
4. Add vanilla extract.
5. Add flour and yogurt in alternate batches.
6. Pour into greased and lined 8" cake tin.
7. Top with blueberries,press the berries lightly and slightly into the batter.
8. Bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for 50 minutes or till cooked.
9. Leave in tin for 10 minutes before removing to cool on rack.
10. Serve when cooled.

Doughnuts!

My kids love doughnuts.  Last year, I tried making doughnuts using two different recipes.  Give a try if you are interested.  :)

17 Oct 2013 (Recipe Source : Nasi Lemak Lover)

Ingredients:

A)

412g High protein flour
247ml Water
10g Instant dry yeast (about 2 tsp)

B)

103g  High protein flour
41g Egg (about 1-2 eggs)
62g Sugar
10g Salt

15g Milk powder

62g Butter

26g Water

Method

1. Mix (A) ingredients and knead till smooth dough, set aside and rest for 1 hour or double in size.
2. Mix (B) ingredients with dough (A), knead till elastic.
3. Weight dough 60g each and shape it into a ball, set aside and rest for 10mins.
4. Made a hole in the middle of the dough, and shape it like a donut shape.
5. Fry in hot oil until golden brown, once done, immediately coat with sugar.

23 November 2013 (Recipe Source : My123favourites)

Ingredient A:  

340g high protein flour
160g low protein flour
80g castor sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp instant yeast
3 tsp milk powder
190 ml water

Ingredient B:
 90g butter

Method:

1. Put ingredient A into a mixing bowl and mixed into rough dough.
2. Add butter beat at medium speed till a elastic dough is formed.
3. Shaped the dough round, put into a floured bowl and covered with plastic wrap. Let this rest for 40 minutes.
4. For doughnut balls, divide dough into 50g each & shaped them round. 
5. To make into doughnuts, roll dough into round shape.  Dip rolling pin into flour and press rolling pin into the middle of the round dough to make a hole.  Lightly floured a finger and dig into the doughnut hole and make it a little widen and neater. 
6. When all of the doughnuts are shaped, cover with a plastic wrap.
7. Heat up 2 cups of cooking oil, fry the doughnuts in batches till golden brown. Drain excess oil.
8. To coat the doughnuts nicely, Get ready a big plastic bag, pour some icing sugar or castor sugar into the bag, drop 2-3 doughnuts into the bag and shake.

Nian Gao Rolls (1 Mar 14)

After seeing May Law's post on Nian Gao Rolls, I quickly bought a pack of popiah skin since I have nian gaos in the fridge.

Maybe I am a bit too slow in the wrapping because the skin cracks, making it difficult to wrap.  So, I ended up making only a small batch. :p

Ingredient：
Nian Gao  (cut into 1cm x 10 cm strip)
 Popiah Skin (cut into required size)
1 Egg (beaten)

Method
1. Place a strip of nian gao at the end of the popiah skin.
2. Apply beaten egg at all sides & roll up slowly pressing both sides tightly.
3. Deep fry in medium fire until golden brown.

Little boy helps with the brushing of eggs

Homemade Muah Chee (9 Feb 14)

I made this back in February.  It was evening time and I just have to make something！This has been on my to do list for quite a while and I've bought packet of peanuts when I bookmarked it.

Easy Homemade Muah Chee
Recipe source: Angelia Chia

Ingredients:

(A)

- 250g glutinous rice flour

- 100g fine sugar (can be reduced)

- 400g water 

(B)

- 140g ground peanut powder (I used ready-made available at most supermarkets)

- 60g fine sugar (or according to taste)

Method

1) In a bowl, combine (A). Stir until well blended. Run mixture through a sieve once or twice to remove any possible lumps.

2) Pour into a 8-inch square or round tin.

3) Bring water in pan/wok to boil and lower tin into pan/wok. Cover pan/wok and steam mixture under high heat for 20 minutes until fully cooked.

4) In a deep plate, combine (B) and mix well.

5) When mixture is cooked, let the cooked dough cool before cutting stripes from the dough using a knife. Place the stripes of cooked dough into the peanut powder and sugar mix and cut them further into bite-size using a pair of kitchen scissors. Coat well and serve.

5 Thousand Starter Dough Bread - 30 Mar 14

I've bookmarked this recipe after seeing Victoria's post.  Thereafter, I've been seeing a lot of other bakers baking this.  Finally, it's my turn!  But due to over baking, the supposedly soft buns were crusty and hard! Will definitely find time to try again.

I prepared my starter dough one day in advance.  This is how it looks like the next day.

My overnight starter dough.

5 Thousand Starter Dough Bread

Recipe taken from Victoria's blog

Ingredients

Starter dough
210g bread flour
90g cake flour
24g caster sugar
6g instant dry yeast
240g water

Main dough
210g bread flour
90g cake flour
96g caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
24g milk powder
90g egg
54g water
72g unsalted butter, softened

Method

1. Prepare a pan with base measuring 26.5 x 19.5cm, and top measuring 29.5 x 23cm. if you do not have this, you can use an 18cm square cake pan for this but utilising only 2/3 of the above recipe
2. Mix all starter dough ingredients dough together and allow to sit in a warm environment to rise till it looks like “honeycomb”
3. Mix the above with main dough ingredients except butter and knead till it is soft and non-sticky. incorporate butter and knead till it is shiny and pliable
4. Allow dough to rise till it doubles in size
5. After dough has risen, punch dough down and WITHOUT RESTING dough, divide it into 6 equal portions and roll each portion out into a 1m rope. please refer to the same site for shaping of the dough. for non chinese reading bloggers, basically, what you do after rolling out the rope, is to bring one end to the other. then using your left hand to secure the dough, twist the roll inwards twice, and then tuck it (the right ends) into the left side of the dough (where the hole is)
6. Place shaped buns into oiled baking pan and allow to rise
7. Bake in preheated oven of 180 degrees C on lower rack for 30 mins
8. Once out of oven, brush rolls with melted butter

Assorted bread - before bake 

Assorted bread - after bake