Japanese Chocolate Cheesecake

After my first successful attempt on Japanese Cheesecake, I was so tempted to try again with another flavour. I was comtemplating between Chocolate or Green Tea. I finally decided on Chocolate since I have chocolate milk.

I replaced the milk with chocolate milk, using my favourite brand-Marigold. I also replace 10g of flour with 10g cocoa powder to give more chocky flavour. The rest of the ingredients remained the same. I also change the pan to one 7" and one smaller pan, both squeezed into the water bath pan. Total baking time was about 37mins.


I brought in our dear little friend for a treat. Guess who is that??


Oh! My little friend is Pikachu! He must've come after Rayquaza told him about my Japanese Cheesecake!


Woah! Trying to take a bite when I was busy taking pictures?? Aiyo-yo!

Chocolate Moist Cake

As usual, I dug my fridge for any near expired items, waiting to be used. Sour cream was in there for quite a while now. :p So I used it to bake Rose's Chocolate Domino Cake. I've always use this recipe for all my chocolate cupcakes. They stay moist and good even for a few days. Even from the fridge, it stays moist & soft. This recipe cannot go wrong somehow. This is the first time I'm using this recipe for a 9" cake (even though the recipe is meant for 9" cake!)

I dusted some snow powder to create some patterns, but realised I cut the papers too thick. :p

Decorated X'mas Cookies

About a month ago, I went to Shermay's to learn decorating cookies from Chef Jocelyn. The purpose of learning is so that I know how to do it, and perhaps, to try it out and sell it for Christmas! :) But of course, I'm still not as good as her, but there's always a start somewhere. I tried it last evening and come out with my own version of decorated x'mas cookies! Can pass?

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake

Every evening, on the way home from office, I will think and ponder what cakes or pastries that I will bake after my dinner. Then I'll try to recall what else is left in the fridge or the cabinet that might expire soon. My list of to-bake are just endless! There are so many items I want to try, but just didn't have the time to do it. Yesterday evening, I decided to use my cream cheese. Even deciding on the recipe for cream cheese was difficult. Cannot be too difficult to bake, cannot take up too much as I only have an evening of time...blah blah...

Finally, I settled on Alex Goh's Japanese Cotton Cheesecake. The result was just perfect! Too good to be true! My family just love it! I shall try different flavours in the next few days! :)

Look who is hiding behind??

Ah-ha! It's Rayquaza! He came to see if my Japanese Cotton Cheesecake is good enough to be considered "Japanese"!


Post Mortem: For the benefits of those who are interested to know what is water-bake, here is a picture for sharing. I hope this is clearer now.


As promised, here is the recipe from Alex Goh's "Fantastic Cheesecake".
Ingredients:
(A) 160g Cream Cheese, 25g Butter, 120g Milk
(B) 40g Flour, 30g Cornflour
(C) 4 Egg yolks
(D) 4 Egg whites, 1/8tsp Cream of Tartar, 100g Sugar, pinch of Salt

Method:
1. Grease and line the bottom of two 20-cm oval pans. Wrap outside of the pans in foil.
2. Place (A) in mixing bowl and stir over double-boiler until thick. Remove it from double-boiler.
3. Add (B) and mix until well combined. Add (C) and mix until well blended.
4. Whip the egg whites in (D) until foamy. Then add the remaining (D). Continue whipping until soft peaks. Add it into the cheese mixture from step (3).
5. Pour the cheese filling onto the prepared oval pans. Bake in water bath at 160C for 40-45 minutes or until well incorporated.
6. Remove cake from the oven. Remove the cake from the mould immediately. Set aside to cool.

My notes: I used a 8" round pan. I should have used a 9" round pan instead. Then it will be flatter and bigger, rather than higher and smaller.

Coffee Sponge Cake

It's been a while since I last baked cakes. I wanted to polish up my skills of baking cakes again. So I tried Alex Goh's traditional sponge cake and added coffee paste to make it coffee sponge cake. I had some caramelised walnuts leftover from last week and some chocolate cream. I wanted to frost the coffee cake.

The coffee sponge cake wasn't well baked. Firstly, I didn't fold in the flours thoroughly. Secondly, the coffee paste wasn't well mixed. The results was a sponge cake with lots of "acnes"! Gee, I spent almost half an hour trying to "take out" the "acnes" from the cake. From a 3" high cake (baked on 7" round cake pan), I cut and removed till 2" high. However, the cake was pretty soft despite all these blunders. This is how my cake looked like after "facial" & "make-over".

Just Choux

It was just choux pastry for me this weekend. It's quite unlike me to bake one item for a weekend only. Heehee... It was because I was out the whole Saturday morning, out on Sunday too! Therefore, I only made some chocolate cream puffs this week. The choux pastries were made on Friday evening, and the cream and chocolate ganache on Saturday. I also made caramelised walnuts to top the chocolate cream puffs.

The recipe for Choux pastry was from Fresh from the Oven and the chocolate cream from my banana cupcakes. The caramelised walnuts were made melting sugars in the pot and throwing in the walnuts. Then they were crushed and topped onto the cream puffs.