Jackfruit Cake Demonstration

My colleague asked me, why is my post so outdated now? I replied her that I haven't been baking lately. Actually it's only half true. I did bake...except that it was a repetitive bake that didn't warrant much attention. Lately, I've been so comfortable of not baking that I have become quite complacent. It's not very good for me physically and mentally though. I truly would love to bake more. However these were the excuses for not baking:

1) still too much CNY goodies;
2) not enough space in the kitchen to bake;
3) nobody wants to eat my bake as all most of them want to diet after a good CNY feasting;
4) CNY house visiting.

So, now that CNY is over, there should be no excuse for not baking. Good. Then, it's time again to attend workshops! That was exactly what I did on Sunday. Once again, my dear friend Doris arranged a demo workshop with Amy. There were five of us. These were three types of cakes demonstrated:

The reason it was called Triple Jackfruit cake was because jackfruit was used in the sponge cake, the mousse and a layer of crispy bites. Cool, isn't it? I tell you, while she was preparing the jackfruit, the scent of jackfruit filled the kitchen. Even though the number of steps and ingredients involved were really numerous, the taste of the cake really made the efforts worthwhile. The cake was heavenly!

The second cake demonstrated was the Green Tea Tiramisu cake. Green tea liquor was used. That was really cool too! The green tea colour was very natural. I like the overall colour. The mousse was very smooth, almost like having an ice-cream. I was given a cup of the left-over green tea mousse and I didn't have the chance to finish it, my son wobbled them down before I could take another spoonful!

Finally, the last of the cake was Japanese Cheesecake Stick. It was almost like our normal cheesecake. However, this type of cheesecake allows you to cut them up into rectangles and wrapped them up individually! I was telling Doris that I would like to try to bake this, then sell them! Looks pretty easy to wrap them up and sell. If I'm not wrong, the USP is around $2.80/pc. Good?

Ah...one more good thing about Amy is, Doris pestered her to prepare salad for us. Doris and I had been a great fan of all Amy's salads. We simply love them! So Amy obliged. Since it was "Yuan Siao Jie", she made vegetarian "Yu Sheng" for us. Isn't she fantastic? She made the sauce herself. We bugged her for the sauce recipe but she has yet to give us. It was very nice. I took a lot of servings. 

I've attended so many workshops from her, but so far, I've only baked the Chocolate Praline Cake. I must try to bake them, otherwise, in time to come, I'll definitely forget the steps and the know-how!

煎年糕

There were just too much CNY goodies at home, awaiting either for consumption or rejection. Some were kept too long that it grew moulds. Others were consumed even before it has chance to be infested by the spores of the mould.

One of them which turns mouldy very fast is the 年糕 (nian gao or sticky cake). In order to prevent it from turning mouldy, I placed it in the fridge. So this morning, I decided to pan-fried the sticky cake. Actually, fried it with self-raising flour will be so much nicer. However, since I decided that I want to eat more healthyly, I figured pan fried is good enough.

It's actually very simple to prepare. You need about 2 eggs for a 4" sticky cake. Cut the 年糕 into thin slices so that it's easier to pan fried. Dip the 年糕 into the beaten eggs and placed them on the non-stick pan with some cooking oil on medium heat. Turn it over after a few minutes. Once the 年糕 has soften, it's ready.

As I used 3 eggs, I had some leftovers. So I used the leftovers of the eggs to make scrambled eggs for my youngest boy. There is a good video on how to make good scrambled eggs on ieatishootipost blog. I didn't followed it because I've already beaten the eggs. Well, it's not too bad anyway!

No new bakes

Nothing new in my bakes. They are just repeated bakes that I made over the past few days. House visiting was enough to tire me out. All the eating and gorging were just so sinful. There was so much tim sum food to take, so much CNY goodies to indulge. After eating them, it was time to hit the sports stadium! I had been putting on (lots of) weight for the past few months. Didn't have enough discipline (to exercise regularly) and control (to indulge). Until one day, I just couldn't fit into my clothings anymore!! ARRGGHH... time to exercise!!

Therefore, it was like a wake up call for me. Especially after I went to the Body Works Exhibition and realised how fats can cause all kinds of problems (not that I don't know), then I started to be scared, really really scared! So my exercise regime started...

Made a chocolate fudge cake for a colleague.

Make some mini cakes, alias Petit Fours, and brought them to a friend's house for a house visit.

Bake a banana & black sesame chiffon cake as a birthday cake for my brother-in-law since he requested for a chiffon.

This year, dad decided to buy a cake for mum instead of me baking. I think he wanted to have a taste of a real nice cake. I concluded that the cakes I baked all this time were not within his standard, thus, he still prefer to buy! :p Well, it's good to buy from outside once a while, that'll save me the trouble of baking. He got the Chocolate Walnut Cake from Secret Recipe. I love the cake too!

新年快乐, 情人节快乐!

inally, it's our chinese new year tomorrow, and for the westerns' it's Valentine's Day!

Here's wishing all chinese : 新年快乐 恭喜发财 万事如意!

And all non-chinese, Happy Valentine's Day and happy holidays!

These were the final bakes for this week before I temporarily "retired" for the long weekend holidays!

Fruit Cake with a "平" which stands for 平安 which mean peace or safe.

Heart-shaped Orange cookies, intending to distribute them on the 1st day of CNY with my angpao! ;)

Finally, bite-size buns which is chewy and cute. I brushed some honey on top to give it a sweet taste. Eat it on its own, or dip it with chocolate. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to sandwich bak kwa (barbeque sliced pork) in between. Oooh...yummy!

Baking a Butter Cake

After all the cookies baking, it's time to bake a simple butter cake. I browsed through the recipe files and thought I like one called - Ultimate Butter Cake. This was extracted from Crummb's blog. This blog is owned by Pau Lin, one of the food journalist for The Straits Times. I came to know her by chance, that we were in the same Cake Decorating course last year. However, I didn't have the chance to know her better. It will be good to have gone through the course with her. She was truly a talented lady with passion for baking and decorating. During the practice classes, she was very quick to pick up the techniques for decorating.

She didn't manage to complete the course because she found out that she was expecting! The shuttling between work and course was too hectic for her, so she decided to postpone her course to concentrate on her pregnancy. It was a good decision made! I believe the greatest mother will sacrifice to have a healthy baby! I'm very happy that she has delivered a healthy baby girl now!

Anyway, back to my butter cake. The recipe called for unbleached flour, but I used Pilsbury stoned mill whole wheat flour since I got it from Mustafa some weeks back. I didn't really know how to use the whole wheat flour, except to replace them with plain flour. Using this whole meal flour made the butter cake more browny instead of nice bright butter yellow colour! Nevertheless, the cake turned out to be soft, a bit crumbly and fragrant! Baking it in a bundt pan made it looked prettier!

Also updating my lunch with my spouse at Triple Three. Last December, I brought my son for a treat. I told my spouse about it and he wanted to try the buffet. So I brought him there. This time, I took more desserts than the previous time. The best part of the buffet was the ice-cream counter. I was pleasantly surprised to find the "exotic-ness" of the ice-creams: orange sorbet, pistachio, sesame, saffron pistachio, strawberry and vanilla. I've never try saffron before, so this saffron pistachio caught my eye when I saw it! It was a nice combination for an ice-cream. I really like it! Anyone tried any other exotic combination of ice-cream before? Maybe can share with me?

Raisin Scones

I got out of bed on Sunday early morning, remembering that we didn't buy breakfast for the kids on Saturday. Flipping through my stacks of unfiled recipes, I was looking for scones. I remembered seeing some easy scones quite sometime back. Finally I found the recipe to bake-Raisin Scones from Fenying.

Recipe for Raisin Scones

Makes 8 2-inch round scones with 1-inch height

Ingredients:

A

250g Self Raising flour

30g Sugar

B

65g Cold hard butter, cubed
C
70g Raisins
D
135g Whole milk
Zest of an orange (original use lemon, I use orange)
* Fresh Milk for brushing top, Sugar for sprinkle

Method:


1) Sieve self raising flour into a bowl, add sugar and mix well.
2) Add cold butter pieces, rub into flour mixture to resembles breadcrumbs.
3) Mix well with raisin.
4) Dig a well in the centre of above mixture, pour in D and mix to form a soft dough.
5) Remove and place on a floured table, roll dough out.
6) Cut into rounds with a 2" cutter and arrange them on a baking tray.
7) Brush the top with milk and sprinkle with some sugar.
8) Bake in pre-heated 200ºC oven for 15 – 18 mins till light brown.
9) Remove and served warm with fruit jam/honey or beaten fresh cream.