Our annual bloggers gathering

A few of us would initiate a food bloggers' gathering once a year. This year, I've decided to initiate one, and to held it at my place. As it was year end and school holidays, the turn out wasn't very good. However, that didn't dampen our mood. We proceeded with our plan.

Being food bloggers means our potluck dishes were homemade. In fact, many of us had already knew one another. The gathering was a time to catch up and share our foods.

Have a good festive season my friends!

Fried Pumkin Bee Hoon & Oriental Salad - Jane
Cheese & Ham puffs & Falalel - Veronica
Fried Radish Cake and Kong Bak Bao - Meg
Maple Pork Balls and Fruit tarts - Bee Bee
Apom berkuah - Alan
Osmanthus jelly - Annie
Chicken Wings & Japanese mochi - Rei

Banana Cinnamon Cake

On my previous post, I mentioned about too much fruits at home, especially when my spouse was out for his business trip. Knowing that he was coming back on Friday, I thought I'd better quickly finished up some of the fruits, else he will start nagging why I didn't feed the children the fruits.

With some ripen bananas, I decided on baking a Banana Cake. Somehow, I just felt like adding cinnamon to it. The cinnamon overwhelmed the banana a little. Will try this again next time with lesser cinnamon, and maybe add some nutmeg or so.

Recipe for Banana Cinnamon Cake, adapted from Nigella.
(Makes a 9" square cake. Can use a 8" round cake pan to be taller.)

Ingredients:
100g LIV Unsalted butter, soften
80g Caster sugar
¼ tsp Salt
2 Whole eggs, room temperature
1 lemon zest (I omitted this)
1 tablespoon rum (optional)
400g Bananas (overipe - mashed. I used only 330g (4 med) and it was a bit dry)
1 tbsp Lemon juice
300g Plain flour
¼ tsp Cinnamon powder (optional) (I used ½ tsp and I think it overwhelmed the banana)
2 ½ tsp Baking powder
4 tbsp Whole milk (optional)

Method:

1. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar together.
2. Add the eggs and mix well. Add the lemon zest, if using.
3. Add the bananas, rum and the lemon juice. Once the bananas are mixed in, you might notice the mix looks curdled. Don't worry, just continue mixing.
4. Sift flour, cinnamon powder and baking powder together. Add to the egg-flour-banana mix and combine. If the dough/batter seems too heavy, add milk. (If you don't have enough bananas like me, the batter will be very thick. Add more milk to make it smoother.) 
5. Butter the tin and pour the batter in.
6. Bake it at preheated fan oven of 160°C for 45mins or when it turned brown and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Note:

• This is a simple, but yet delicious cake.
• There must sufficient bananas to make it moist, even though the cake was light and fluffy.
• Original recipe includes 100g raisins soaked in rum and 150g nuts which you may want to add. 
• If you use a smaller pan, bake it for 60mins.

Pineapple & Coconut Cupcakes

My spouse likes to buy fruits to feed the family. Then he will made everyone eat. It's a good thing because by forcing my children to eat, it really build up their immunity. I must say, my children are quite healthy. They don't get sick very easily, thanks to their daddy.

This week, we bought a lot of fruits, but he were away for business trip. There were so much fruits at home - watermelon, apple, honeydew, pineapples, jackfruits and bananas! Gosh, we could not finish them within a week! So I decided to bake Pineapple & Coconut Cupcakes. The cupcakes were creamy, soft and fluffy. It's really nice, and I think it can be used as a basic cupcake recipe.

Recipe for Pineapple & Coconut Cupcakes, adapted from the hummingbird bakery cookbook.
(Makes 12 regular cupcakes)

Ingredients:
120g Plain flour
80g Caster sugar
1 1/2 tsp Baking powder
A pinch of salt
40g LIV unsalted butter, room temperature
120g Whipping cream
1 tsp Vanilla extract
1 tsp Coconut oil (optional)
1 Whole egg
2 slices Pineapple (fresh or canned), cut into small pieces
Some Desiccated honey coconut

Method:

1. Put the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and butter in a mixing bowl.
2. Using a whisk, mix until you get a sandy consistency and everything is combined.

3. Mix the cream and the vanilla extract in a separate bowl, then beat into the flour mixture until combined.

4. Add in the coconut oil, followed by egg and beat well. Scrape down the sides and mix well.

5. Divide the chopped pineapples between the paper cases.
6. Spoon the cupcake mixture on top until two-thirds full. Sprinkle desiccated coconut on top.

7. Bake in the preheated fan oven of 160C for 20mins, or until golden.
8. Leave the cupcakes to cool slightly in the tray before turning out onto the wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Hazelnut Bakewell Tart

This post is sponsored by Liv butter. Try Liv today!

After a super long holiday in Germany during October, it was quite difficult to get back to my baking. :p I can only salivate at all other food bloggers' good foods and bakes.

After thinking and browsing through the recipes, I finally decided to bake a simple tart - Hazelnut Bakewell Tart. I realised that hazelnut-related snacks are really cheap in Germany. They have abundant hazelnut snacks - chocolates, wafers, biscuits and what-have-yous. I also didn't hesitate to buy a packet of 200g ground hazelnut (crazy me). So for this tart, I decided to use all hazelnuts. I even used ground hazelnut for my tart crust. All in all, it's a wholesome hazelnut treat!

Recipe for Hazelnut Bakewell Tart, modified from Kitchen Corner.
(Makes a 9" tart)

Ingredients:
Use your favourite tart crust recipe.

For the fillings:

100g Ground hazelnuts

25g Plain flour

1 tsp Hazelnut extract

83g Liv Unsalted butter

50g caster sugar

1 egg

50g Halved hazelnuts, toasted

Some chocolate ganache, or Nutella

Method:

1. Prepare your tart crust and mould it into the tart pan. Place it in the fridge until ready to use.
2. For the fillings, cream the butter, sugar and hazelnut extract in a bowl until light and creamy.
3. Add in the ground hazelnut, plain flour and beaten eggs and mix well.
4. Place in the fridge to firm up for at least half an hour.
5. Spread the chocolate ganache into the tart crust. Then spread the hazelnut cream over the chocolate.
6. Arrange the toasted hazelnuts on the surface of the hazelnut batter, pressing them in lightly.
7. Bake the tart in the 180'C preheated oven for about 25 minutes. Remove tarts from the oven and leave it to cool.
8. Spread a layer of chocolate ganache on top, and refrigerated.
9. Serve chilled.