Happy Teacher's Day!

Happy Teacher's Day to all the great teachers!

It's a day of rest for most of them. I hope their efforts, hard work and passion have been appreciated!

For the teachers of my children, I decided to bake carrot cupcake for them. I baked Spiced Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese frostings and topped them with fondant carrot or rose. I used the recipe from Yochana's American Carrot Cake. This is one of my favourite carrot cake recipe. I added some ground nutmeg and ground ginger to make it "spiced". I hope the teachers like it!


As I baked 1.5x of the recipe, the rest of them, I baked into a round cake, and added rum and raisin for our own consumption. It was really good with the added rum & raisins. My hb loved it very much.

Ultra Chocolate

Last weekend, my sister said they wanted to go East Coast Park for cycling, followed by Carl's Junior for dinner, and to celebrate my nephew's birthday. I asked if she wanted a cake for him, she said okay if it's not much trouble. I pondered for a while on what type of cake should I bake for him, taking into consideration that the cake cannot require refrigeration. Because I would assume that we would probably spend at least an hour under the late afternoon sun before adjuourning for our dinner, then followed by cutting the cake.

Finally, I decided on the Cake fondant ultra-chocolate. I used valrhona chocolate and ghirardeli cooca powder for the cake. I read on Honey Bee Sweets' post on this cake that it's worth to use good quality chocolates. Very fortunately, I took her advice! I had misread the instructions and tried to overturn the cake while it was warmed and ended up my cake broke into half! I quickly patched it back and decided to put it in the fridge to see if I can salvage it.


The next day, it was really easier to remove it, but the cake was really hard and crumbly, but the taste was heaven! It was very chocky and extremely rich. Even as I pinch off the sides for my children, they loved it too! As I do not have time to bake another cake to replace it, I decided to trimmed it smaller to fit the buttercream portrait I drew of my nephew earlier. As I've not done buttercream transfers before, I was rather clumsy in the transfer. The tracing on the portrait also wasn't well done. So I'd admit that this cake decoration failed totally this time! *tsk*tsk*


Luckily my sister and my nephew were very forgiving. They didn't complaint about the design, and were happy with the taste of the cake. In fact, all of them liked the cake very much. Boy, was I glad! I must say, this type of the cake belongs to "I am very ugly, but I taste very good!" Hahaha...

Sharing some pictures I captured in East Coast Park while my kids went cycling, I just r&r.

Green Tea Cupake

I wanted to prepare some simple cakes for my meeting on Tuesday. So I decided on using one of the cake recipe from "The Cake Bible". Instead of using cocoa powder, I replaced it with green tea powder. I just realised it's been a long long time since I used my green tea powder to bake. I sort of missed having green tea desserts. Initially, I thought I wanted to mix some red beans (as I don't have azuki beans) with green tea cake. Then I decided not to make it so troublesome (laziness set in), so I did away with the red beans. Finally, I bake Moist Green Tea Cupcakes, and did some simple decoration using chocolate ganache on the cupcake. The reviews from my colleagues – moist and yummy!




You can get the recipe from Rose Levy's website..

Cookie Art Workshop 23 Aug 09

Another fun Sunday, conducting this Cookie Art workshop in Asian Bakes @ The Central. I always like to be there early, do my setup, preparation. Then have a short rest and lunch in the studio before the participants arrived. This was my prepared lunch.


Then it was back to having fun. Captured my participants in actions. They were so engrossed in their decorations. I can understand that. Sometimes, after they finished their outline or flooding, they stand upright to take a breather! Heehee...

Busy cutting out the shapes from the dough.

Piping outlines, and flooding the cookies.


Taught them how to check for runny consistency for piping, and they were busy filling up the coloured royal icing for flooding. They were all very fast and good!


Finally, just to share the nice containers that the lucky participants get to bring back. Anna had specially got these in from our neighbouring country. It's limited edition container, whilst stocks last! Heehee. This picture was contributed by Celestal in my previous workshop. She's really good in her photography. If I get the opportunity, I'll post up her "arty" pictures to share.

3 Chiffons and 1 Brownie

Have I mentioned that I've not been baking cakes for a long long time? The last was like...July? Goodness! Shows how lacking I've been! Anyway, my usual Saturdays were spent at my parents place. Last Saturday was an exception. My spouse was out for a seminar, I went BITC for my bread lesson, and decided to go home to do some baking since my children are home.

Not sure why I had so much egg whites in the fridge. Must be from my Cookie Art Workshops! Anyway, I wanted to do some sweet treats for my cousin, who had invited my family to her daughter's first year. So I decided on Egg White Brownies. As usual, I love this recipe. After baking, I just felt like having a piece, but I had to control myself from cutting it since it was going to be a gift!


Knowing I have enough time for the evening, I proceeded on to do Banana Sesame Seeds Chiffon cake. Most importantly because I saw the bananas hanging in the kitchen. I cannot, simply cannot resist bananas for baking...similarly for oranges! Hahaha... I just can't wait to convert them into something sweeter and nicer! So I made three different sizes of the chiffon cakes-7", 5" & 3", or termed as Do-Re-Mi.


I must have underestimated the timing for the bigger chiffons, they turned out to be slightly moist. However, the taste was really good. I added white and black sesame seeds to the cake. I like the look of black sesames on this chiffon. To me, it looked like ants on the cake...which I found it to be a little pretty! Hahaha...



Egg White Brownies, modified from Zu's Kitchen.

Ingredients
250g Semi-sweet chocolate
100g Unsalted butter
2tsp Vanilla extract
100g Cake flour
220g Egg white
120g Fine sugar
100g Walnuts, coarsely chopped and toasted

Method
1. Microwave butter and chocolate. Mix thoroughly until the chocolate melted and incorporated with the butter. Let it cool.
2. Sift flour into chocolate mixture and stir gently till well combined and add vanilla essence, put aside.
3. Beat egg whites till foamly and slowly add sugar bit by bit and whip till stiff peaks.
4. Take 1/3 of the egg white and fold it into the chocolate mixture.
5. Stir in mixture into the balance 2/3 egg white and gently mix till well combined.
6. Pour 1/4 of the mixture into a 8x8 pan lined and greased, and add half the walnuts on the batter.
7. Pour the remainig batter into the pan.
8. Top batter with the remaining walnuts and bake in a 180C preheated oven for about 35mins (depending on your oven) or till a pin inserted into it comes out clean.
9. Once baked, leave brownie in the pan for 5-10mins before removing and cooling it on the rack.

Continential Breads 2

For our breads this week, we made focaccias and ciabatta. Both use exactly the same recipe, same method, except that for focaccia, we add olive oil. That is considered "fats". Ciabatta is actually an Italian sandwich bread. According to Mr Low, it's actually a very cheap bread in Italy, but somehow, when it comes to Singapore, it became expensive! Now I know why it's a cheap bread in Italy, because there are very very few ingredients used, and it's very easy to make too!

I prefer focaccias as the addition of olive oil and rosemary herbs really made it very fragrant. The bread itself is not sweet, it taste really good! We sort of "mass produced" the focaccias!

Mixing the doughs until all leave the side of the bowl. Remember to do the membrane test!


We made so much focaccia dough that it has to be splitted into three containers for it to proof. Remember to grease the bottom with olive oil before putting in the dough to proof.


After proofing, we took out the dough and put it on a "floured" bed. Mr Low said, "floured bed, not your bed!" Hahaha... Who will put bread dough on the bed?? Not me!! Then we even out the dough, cut and put it on the baking tray for a second time proof.


Another two working table of focaccia doughs! After the 2nd proof, we created "dimples" on the dough, adding olive oil and rosemary herbs. Then we baked it in the oven. Look at how high it rose!!


Trays and trays of baked focaccias, awaiting distribution (to us!) The actual internal of the focaccia should contained big holes. That was what Mr Low told us. He said "Singapore" style is very compact, which is not right!


Finally, I brought home two big bags of focaccia and ciabatta. They looked so much alike, don't they? I think they are "cousins"... :p


When we were preparing our dough, Mr Low brought out "stollen bread" for us to eat. He wanted to let us try the bread so that we can sign up for this class if we are interested. I've never thought much of this "stollen" thingy, knowing that it's really sweet. But after trying this, I really like it. He said we have to cut it very very thinly and eat it chilled, which was exactly the way he served us! But I think about it, it's very similar to "hot cross buns"! Maybe I'll just do some internet surfing for "stollen", I should be able to find some very good recipes! Anyone tried baking "stollen" before?


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The following day, I made a Ciabatta sandwich with cheese & ham as my lunch before my Cookie Art workshop. I bought kopi to go with it. It's so satisfying. I didn't want to pay a premium for gourmet coffee though I know it goes better! I'm happy just to have (cheap & good) kopi with it! ;)
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