Gula Melaka Butter Cake

Whenever I want to bake on Sundays, I would need to find an easy recipe to do so, because I only have mornings to do my baking. It's been a while since I bake a cake for my in-laws, so I decided to bake this Gula Melaka Butter Cake, also known as Palm Sugar for Gula Melaka. Thanks to Victoria, the cake was really fragrant and nice. 

I also made a Gula Melaka swiss roll incorporating the palm sugar into the whipped cream. I used Jeannie's recipe for the vanilla swiss roll. Thankfully, the swiss roll turned out well, the gula melaka in the whipped cream was really light and nice, not too sweet for our palate.


Recipe for Gula Melaka Butter Cake, adapted from Victoria Bakes.
(Makes 3 mini and 1 regular)

Ingredients:
A
200g Gula melaka (Palm sugar), chopped
100g Coconut cream
B
250g Unsalted butter
23g Brown sugar
C
5 Eggs, large
D
200g Top flour (or cake flour)
1/2tsp Baking powder
1/8tsp Baking soda

Method:

1. Place A in a saucepan with low heat. Stir until gula melaka has melted and bring to a gentle boil. Let it cooled totally.
2. Sift D and set aside.
3. Place B in a mixing bowl and beat till light and fluffy.
4. Add in C in 3 batches. Ensure they are thoroughly mixed in each batch.

5. Alternate A & D in 3 batches, ending with D. (I sieved out A as there was some charred bits.)
6. Pour the batter into the prepared pans - 3 mini and 1 regular pan loaves.
7. Bake in preheated oven of 160C for 40-45mins. I removed the minis from the oven after 40mins and continue baking the regular for another 5 mins.

8. Let it cool before cutting and serve.

Strawberry Swiss Roll

It's been a long time since I had the motivation to bake a 'frosted cake' in the evening. Since I came back from my Australia trip after our National Day, I had been busy with the usual bakes and watching Korean Dramas. >v<

However, last evening, there was a sudden urge to want to eat swiss roll, so I decided to bake one myself. I had wanted to have pandan swiss roll, but I've used up my pandan extract. So ended up, I made a Strawberry Swiss Roll. The swiss roll was really soft and fluffy with the nice chantilly cream. I was satisfied.

Recipe for Strawberry Swiss Roll.
(Makes a regular roll)

Swiss roll cake sheet
Ingredients: 

4 Eggs (weigh 50g with shell each)

70g Caster sugar

40g Cake flour

25g Butter, melted

20g Milk, warm

1 tsp Strawberry extract

A few drops of red colouring

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C.
2. Line the base of 30x30cm cake tray with baking paper.
3. Warm butter and milk till butter has melted. Set aside.
4. Using hand mixer, beat the egg white with sugar (add the sugar gradually) until stiff peaks form.
5. Pour the egg yolks into the egg white, beat with low speed for 1 minute.
6. Sift the flour into the bowl and fold to combine.
7. Add the strawberry extract and red colouring into the butter mixture and mix well.
8. Scoop 1/4 of the egg batter into the melted butter and stir well to combine.
9. Then pour the mixture back into the remaining egg batter. Using a spatula, fold to combine well.
10. Spread it evenly into the prepared cake tray.
11. Bake for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven.
12. Remove the cake sheet and let it cool on a wire totally.

Fillings

120g Whipping cream

15g Sugar

8-10pcs Medium Strawberries halved.

Method:

1. In a clean mixing bowl, add whipping cream and sugar.
2. Beat on high speed until thickened and spreadable.
3. On the cake sheet, spread out the whipping cream evenly, leaving 1 inch each at the front and end.
4. Arrange the strawberries on the cream.

5. Roll it out evenly.
6. Chill and slice it before serving. Enjoy!

Red Velvet Christmas Logcake

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

Early November, in the Facebook group of the Singapore Bakers, someone posted a red velvet logcake. I thought it might be a good idea to make red velvet logcake this year. There were already some famous bakery selling this. I supposed the recipe for red velvet logcake will be different from the normal red velvet cupcake. As shared by the member, the recipe was modified from Yummyholic site. The batter from the original recipe was too stiff that it was really difficult to fold. So I added oil and milk to it, to make it more foldable.

Recipe for Red Velvet Christmas Logcake
Makes a 11" x 14" cake sheet

Ingredients:
Cake Sheet
4 Egg yolks
30g Caster sugar
25g Whole milk
20g Vegetable oil
60g Cake flour
10g Cocoa powder
3/4 tsp Baking powder
1/4 tsp Fine salt
A few drops of red colouring

4 Egg whites
1/4 tsp Cream of tartar
90g Caster sugar

Method:

1. Prepare a cake tray and lined with parchment paper.

2. Sift the cake flour, baking powder, cocoa powder and salt; set aside.

3. Whisk egg yolks and sugar till light and frothy. Add milk and vegetable oil, mix well. Then add colouring.

4. Add in the sifted flour mixture into the batter and mix well.

5. Beat egg whites in a mixing bowl till frothy.

6. Add the cream of tartar into the caster sugar, mix well. Gradually add in the caster sugar into the egg whites. Beat till stiff peak.

7. Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk batter. Mix well.

8. Bake for 12 mins in a preheated oven of 180C or until browned.

Cream Cheese Frosting

300g Cream Cheese

90g Unsalted Liv butter, room temperature

100g Icing sugar, sifted
2 tbsp Lemon juices
1 punnet of fresh blueberries (optional)

Method:
1. Beat cream cheese and butter until light and creamy.
2. Add in sifted icing sugar and mix well.
3. Add in lemon juices and combine well.

Assemble:

1. Spread the cream cheese frosting onto the swiss roll, followed by blueberries if using.

2. Roll it up tightly.

3. Trim both sides of the cake and placed the swiss roll to the main log.
4. Frost the whole cake with cream cheese.
5. To make the spikes, just use the spatula to gently pat on the cream cheese frosting and lift it up quickly. Repeat the process for the whole cake.

6. Decorate with X'mas cake ornaments as desired, then chill it in the fridge before serving.

Christmas Holly Durian Logcake

Christmas is my favourite festive season of the year. It is a period where there will be lots of feasting and gathering. I love to host Christmas gathering with family members and friends too! This year, I invited my family members and in-laws over to my place (separately) for a mini celebration. For occasions like this, I will usually bake some kind of desserts. And one of the common desserts will have to be Christmas logcake.

Ploughing through the patterned swiss rolls recipes in the blog, I decided to try this recipe from Reese. As I wanted to make two log cakes, I increased the quantity of the ingredients. I made one with strawberry jam and the other with durian. The durian logcake was very well received by my in-laws! I was glad they enjoyed it!

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #26 - Creative Christmas Motif Bakes! hosted by Alan of Travellingfoodies.
 
Recipe for Christmas Holly Durian Logcake, adapted from Reese.
Makes two 10 x 13" sheet cake

Ingredients:

Egg yolk batter:
8 Egg yolks
27g Caster sugar
80g Milk
2 tsp Vanilla extract (may omit this. I prefer to add vanilla extract as I found it very eggy without)
60g Vegetable oil
133g Cake flour
20g Cornflour

Egg Whites:
8 Egg whites
94g Caster sugar

For picture: (I originally use more. However, there were a lot of left over. This is the original recipe)
20g Egg whites
10g sugar
[with 30g egg yolk batter from the top]
Green colouring
Red colouring

Frosting:
60g Durian flesh
130g Whipping Cream
13g Caster sugar

Method:

1. Egg yolk batter: Whisk egg yolks together with sugar, then add in milk and oil and mix well.
2. Add in cake flour and cornflour and stir well. Set aside.
3. Scoop out 30g egg yolk batter with 10g (for red) and 20g (for green) respectively. Mix in red colouring to the 10g batter and green colouring to the 20g batter. Mix well.
4. Whisk the 20g egg whites and sugar (ingredients for pictures) till half soft peak form and add 1/3 in the prepared 10g red egg yolk batter, and remaining egg whites in the green yolk batter. Stir well.
5. Spoon the red batter into a piping bag with tip #3. Pipe 3 rounds to form a little triangles onto lined tray.
6. Spoon the green batter into a piping bag. Cut off the tip and pipe it to form a leaf. Pipe three leaves around the red triangle.
7. Bake at 180C for 1 minute then set aside.
8. Egg whites: Whisk the egg whites together with the sugar until stiff peak.
9. Fold into the egg yolk batter. Then pour batter over the half-baked hollies. Split them (almost) equally into the two trays. (As I have left over from the picture batter, I piped them onto the surface of the batter, to prevent wastage.)

10. Flatten the top with a spatula and bake at 180C for 13 minutes, or browned. (Then baked the other tray)
11. Transfer onto wire rack to cool completely.

To assemble:

12. Whisk the whipping cream with sugar till stiff.
13. Spread the durian flesh onto the swiss roll, followed by whipped cream.
14. Roll it up and decorate with Christmas decorations.

Wish you a Merry Christmas & a very Happy New 2013!

Patterned Swiss Rolls

I was drawn by Cathy's pretty giraffe swiss rolls when I first seen it! The patterns on the swiss roll looked really like her giraffe stuff toy! So I decided to try it one weekend. I must say, the swiss roll was really very soft and nice. I frosted with chocolate buttercream, and for the first time, my buttercream-lover sister said the swiss roll was very nice. She asked for more the following week! She hardly asked for swiss rolls. This was the first time. I was pleasantly surprised!

Because of the success of this swiss rolls, I decided to bake the swiss rolls again for a simple "office warming" party for my colleagues in another sub-department. I personalised it for them. For this swiss rolls, I frost it with strawberry jam and chantilly cream. They were really touched and amazed by the customised swiss rolls I made. It was very well received by them! I was elated! I'm sure I'll be making more patterned swiss rolls.


Check out Cathy's blog for lots of patterned swiss roll ideas!

Durian Swiss Rolls

I completely agree with Jean! It's truly a month of durians, durians and more durians! I have been eating durians non-stop, at least twice a week since two weeks ago! Even the $2/pc tasted good, don't need to indulge too much on MSW (猫山王), even though I will still yearn to have some during its season!
After my failed attempt on the durian chiffon cake, I still have some durians pulps left over. I decided to make durian swiss rolls. It seems that, there are endless options of using durians nowadays, compared to previously, where only durian puffs, durian swiss rolls and durian crepes were available commercially! Nowadays, you can still bake durian cheesecake with it!

I made my durian swiss roll using Pook's soft sponge cake recipe. The sponge cake is really very soft, however, I found that it's a bit "rough" for swiss rolls. Perhaps, this recipe wasn't meant for swiss rolls, more suitable for trifles or other whole cakes! Somehow, I found that using whole eggs and separating eggs really made a lot of difference to the texture of the cakes, especially swiss rolls. I still prefer swiss rolls using the traditional chiffon method, followed by separating the egg yolks and egg whites method, and finally the whole eggs method. The whole eggs method is less cumbersome though.

I hope you can try out this sponge cake recipe for swiss rolls and see if you agree with me!

Recipe for Durian Swiss Rolls 

Soft Sponge Cake, extracted from Daily Delicious
Makes approximately 13" x 11" sheet pan

Ingredients:
4 nos  Eggs
85g Fine sugar
80g Cake flour, sift
A pinch of salt
40g Whipping cream (warm)
Method:

1. Whisk the eggs until lighten, then add the sugar gradually and beat till thick and lighten (Thick ribbon stage).
2. Sprinkle the sifted flour and salt over the egg batter and fold to combine.
3. Take 1/4 cup of batter and mix with the warm whipping cream, fold to combine. Pour the batter back, and fold to combine.
4. The batter will be smooth and thick.
5. Pour into a lined sheet pan, and bake it at preheated oven of 180C for about 12mins.
6. Let it cool completely before frosting.

Fillings:

200g Fresh durian pulps

200g Whipping cream

20g Caster sugar

Assembly:

1. Beat whipping cream with caster sugar till thick (soft peak).
2. Place the cooled cake on a silicon paper. (I merely used back the lined sheet which was used to bake the cake).
3. Spread the durian pulps on the cake evenly and thorougly.
4. Then spread the whipping cream on the cake evenly.
5. Roll it up tightly.
6. Let it chill in the fridge before slicing. (I omitted this part and found they were very messy!)
7. Consume within 2-3 days as fresh durian pulps are perishable, unless it is frozen.

I'm submitting this entry to the Aspiring Bakers #9 - Swiss Rolling Good Times hosted by Obessedly Involved with Food.

Bamboo Charcoal Swiss Roll

When I'm out dining, I can't bake. I've been out too often to be home baking! Heehee...

This evening, I decided to do some baking, otherwise, I'll totally lose touch with baking. I've wanted to use my bamboo charcoal since I bought it from Kitchen Capers a couple of months back. I knew I wanted to try Shirley's Bamboo Charcoal Swiss Rolls when I saw her post. It got preceded by other bakes that it was forgotten...until today.

The cake turned out rather dry, but soft. I think I might have over-beaten the egg whites. However, when mixed with the fresh cream, it was still quite nice. Bamboo charcoal has this... weird and funny taste. The taste is like, when you burnt your tongue and upper mouth, and it leaves a coated layer on them. It tasted exactly like it. It leaves a layer of charred taste on the tongue. I just don't know how to describe this taste. I don't dislike it, neither do I love it. You just have to try it to experience for yourself! However, I do like this black... so cool, isn't it?

Feather Swiss Rolls

Lately, I've been referring a lot to the recipes from "Baking Code" by Alex Goh. I found that his recipes are easy to understand, rather easy to make and it's very much our Sin-Malaysian style!  Here's one swiss rolls which I made from his book. However, I made a couple of changes to it.

Recipe for Feather Swiss Rolls.
Ingredients:
A
5 Eggs
120g Sugar

B
130g Plain flour
1 tsp Vanilla extract

C
100g Corn oil

D
1 tsp Chocolate paste

Method:
1. Whip A until light and fluffy. Fold in B, mix until well blended.
2. Add in C, mix until well incorporated.
3. Take out a tablespoon of the batter. Add in the chocolate paste and mix well.
4. Pour the original batter into a lined 13" x 11" cake sheet pan.

5. Place the chocolate batter into a piping bag. Pipe lines on top of the batter. Then use a skewer to make patterns on batter.
6. Bake at 190C in the middle shelve of the oven for 20mins.
7. Remove it immediately from the mould when baked.
8. Allow to cool.

Frosting:
50g Chocolate Ganache
20g Dessicated coconut

Assembly:
1. Roll out the cake sheet with the feather pattern face down.
2. Spread chocolate ganache on the cake.
3. Sprinkle dessicated coconut evenly.
4. Roll it up tightly.

Boxing Day Celebration

This year, our usual family X'mas celebration was arranged on Boxing Day, 26 Dec. My elder sister hosted our celebration party at her place. She single-handedly prepared three dishes for us - Salad, Roasted roots and vegetables and Seafood Aglio Oglio. It was really nice. My youngest sister prepared her usual fruit salad, a pre-dinner food. My third sister bought drinks. Each of us did our part to bring some food, to lighten the load from my sister. At times like this, I really appreciate my family being slightly bigger, where sisters come together to share burden and make merry!


As for me, I made a Christmas Logcake. Wasn't a difficult task for me too! I tried a new swiss roll recipe from Daily Delicious. The cake sheet was pretty easy to make.


I filled the cake sheet with whipping cream, chocolate ganache, hazelnut ganache and almond nibs. Rolled it up and poured chocolate ganache over it. As I was left with some whipped cream, I just splashed some on the cake to make it look more attractive. Decorated with Christmas decorations, and WO-LA, my Yule Logcake!




Recipe for Chocolate Cake sheet, modified from Daily Delicious.

Ingredients:
5 Eggs (separated)
100g Sugar
55g Cake flour
12g Cocoa powder
42g Butter, melted

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C.
2. Line the base of 11"x13" cake tray with baking paper.
3. Using hand mixer, beat the egg white with sugar (add the sugar gradually) until stiff peaks form.
4. Pour the egg yolks into the egg white, beat with low speed for 1 minute.
5. Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the bowl and fold to combine.
6. Pour the melted butter into the bowl, and fold lightly to combine, then pour the batter into the prepared pan.
7. Bake for 10-11 minutes, or when a skewer inserted comes out clean.

More Pound, more variety!

Despite attending my Barista Training Workshop for two evenings this week , I still find some time to do some baking. One of the cake, had to be pound cake again! Not that I purposely wanted to bake pound cake, but it was actually a request from a colleague to have pound cake. Actually she requested for blueberry pound cake, but I baked an orange coconut cream cheese pound cake for her instead. My excuse was - I don't have blueberries at home. :p Partly also because I still have cream cheese and I want to use them up. I discover that by adding desiccated coconut to the orange pound cake, it makes a whole lot of differences! It's a new "concotion" I discovered, and I'm rather happy with the combi. Anyone of you can try it too! :p



I also made some chocolate banana jam because my children told me that they like the bread with jam in school. So I thought I'll made them some jam. However, after I made the jam, they didn't want to take it. *sigh* children!


Today, I decided to bake some breads, and swiss rolls was decided some last minute. Nowadays, I like to prepare bread dough the night before, and do the rest the following morning. Usually, it'll be Friday prepare dough and Saturday to mould and bake. Then I'll leave the dough in the fridge to proof. I also added pre-ferment dough to the fresh dough to make it softer. Today, I made plain buns (for my egg mayo), pork floss buns (of different shapes) and white lotus buns with black sesame seeds. It's really not easy baking food for a family of 6. If they like the food, it'll be gone in a day or two. However, if they don't like, the food can be kept for a week and nobody eats! I had to bake about 16 buns on weekend to see us through Sunday breakfast. That means 400g of flour (bread + plain). See what I meant by feeding a family of 6, almost like a small football team!


I was testing out the swiss roll cake sheet for a cake order next week. Not wanting to waste the cake, I used the chocolate banana jam as my filling and added whipped cream to it. It tasted rather good, even though the whipping cream was rather thick. I've not baked swiss rolls for a long long time!

Swiss Rolls and Jap Sweet Potatoes

I bought some strawberries last week and found that they were really sour! I knew nobody would wanted to eat those, including myself. So I've decided that I shall bake a cake sheet, then turned it into swiss rolls. I mixed the strawberries with the frozen blueberries and cooked them with sugar to form berries sauce for the swiss rolls.


I didn't do very well with the rolling of the swiss rolls. Somehow, they don't turn out to be tight as I wanted them to be! Maybe my filllings were too thick? I shall be less generous next time. *excuse*


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Ever since our last Food blogger's party, I've been thinking about Rei's sweet potato cake. Finally, this week I saw that the Japanese sweet potatoes were having sales. Without hesitation, I bought quite a few and decided to make the sweet potato cake. I can't quite remember the taste, but after I boiled the sweet potatoes, it was so sweet I decided not to add coconut where I had originally intended to! So what I did was just to add salted butter into the mashed potatoes, put them into the baking cups and baked them for about 25mins. It was really nice. The natural sweetness from the jap sweet potatoes was really really good! Yummy. I shall again next time with coconut, unless I ask Rei for the recipe. :p