Updates...

On my previous post on Catching Up, I did not indicate where I got the recipes from due to my "urgency" to post up my activities. Now is the time to "give credit when credit is due!" ;)

1. Kueh Makmur: Recipe from Violet Oon's website. As I didn't want to buy any Ghee that moment, I tried a recipe without using any ghee. The result was, it's not as fragrant as those using ghee. I probably baked too long, the crust as a bit too hard. The next recipe I want to try will be from Honey Bee Sweets.

2. Pineapple Tarts: The crust recipe was shared by a colleague. So I can't post them here. However, I did try the recipe from Pineapple Tarts Blog. The dough is very very wet, but very nice as it's melt-in-the-mouth kind.

3. Valrhona Triple Chewy Chocolate Cookies: This is what I renamed it from Eat and Be Happy's blog. As I used Valrhona cocoa powder, I gave "credit" to Valrhona. These cookies have become my children's favourite. They have been bugging me to eat these after I baked. I had to reject them most of the time as it was used as a complimentary gift to my "customers". Finally, all cookies delivered, there were quite a number of cookies left, and they were free to consume them all!

4. Cookies for Sales. The cookies I baked for sales included Almond Cookies, Chocolate Almond Cookies and Spicy Dried Shrimps Cookies. Almond cookies' were modified from my baking school recipe, therefore, I shall not post up the recipe here.

The Chocolate Almond Cookies were extracted from Fenying's Blog. I felt in love with this cookies the more I eat! The difficulties is in cutting the dough. It has to be harden before you can slice it nicely. I sliced them too thin sometimes it just broke!

The Spicy Dried Shrimps Cookies were modified from Daily Delicious. The additional of chilli flakes made it taste like "hay bee hian". It's actually very tasty. I thought it will be good to have savoury cookies since almost all cookies are sweet.

Finally, these were my last CNY bake for my family.

Catching up...

My posts are so outdated now! It's time to catch up on what I have baked lately. I have been baking CNY cookies to fulfill orders, so busy I really don't have the time to do any postings! :p So this is the time to catch up and update now.

Tried my hand at Kueh Makmur. I thought it was quite okay, but most of them said "Not Nice". I'll leave it at that comment.

Made these pineapple tarts for my family. They loved them very much and can't stop at one. One more compliment for me. :)


Baked these Valrhona Triple Chewy Chocolate Cookies as free gifts to my "customers". Some has no comments, but my children simply love them!


Baked my Kueh Lapis after I've finished baking my cookies to fulfill orders. A must have for my CNY. ;)


Finally, the cookies that I am selling and the goodies that I give. From left to right: Valrhona Triple Chewy Chocolate Cookie as goodie, Almond Cookies, Spicy Dried Shrimps Cookies, Chocolate Almond Cookie and Round Pineapple Tart as goodie.


Lastly, here's wishing everyone

新年快乐!
万事如意!
年年有余!
身体建康!

On the morning of Sunday...

This morning, I woke up pretty early. For the past few days, I had been baking cookies, cookies and more cookies. Playing with doughs, doughs and more doughs. I didn't bake any cakes. I had one tub of egg whites in the fridge, screaming for my attention, wanting me to use them. I was very tempted to try macarons since my several attempts were a flop! However, it's the "cookies" category again.

Without hesitation, I recalled having Yochana's Egg White Cheese Cupcakes recipe. So I fulfilled the wish of the "screaming" egg whites and used some of them to bake the cupcakes. As I didn't filled up the whole cup, it sort of "shrank" after it was baked. However, it smelled and tasted great! I baked quite a lot of them as each turned out to be small. :p

Saturday Bakes

It's Saturday again. Lately, I seemed to be baking "dough" related food. Cookies, quiches & tarts! These were what I did for Saturday!

1. Almond Cheese Tart
This recipe was extracted from Kitchen Corner. It looked really good. Unfortunately, I didn't do it well. Firstly, for the blending of the dough, instead of "bread crumbs like", mine were "watery". I added so much more flour to it. And when I blind baked it, it shrunk! When I saw that the crust was still usable, I proceed to make the cream cheese. Then I decided to halve the recipe. But ended up by puttin more cream cheese but less sugar & everything. I proceed to bake the tart. It turned out very beautiful physically. Unfortunately, it was tasteless! Crust was bland, cheese was bland. Neither sweet nor sour. Aiyoyo... it was a failure from the start! :p


2. Quiches
I made bacon, broccoli & mushrooms quiches for lunch. I used the crust from Rei's blog. It was really crispy and nice.


3. Valrhona Double Chocolate Chips Cookies
I tweaked the recipe a little from Joy of Baking. Instead of adding white chocolate chips, I added dark chocolate chips. As I've never been a fan of white chocolates, it was quite difficult to find it in my inventory. I baked this because my son kept asking me to bake "Subway" cookies. He likes this cookies that I had baked.

Baking Cookies

For the past one week, I have been trying out, baking cookies non-stop, almost every day. Had been so busy baking, I didn't have the time to update my post. These were the bakes I tried for CNY.

Assorted Cookies including Almond, Chocolate Almond & Pineapple Tarts.

Green Peas Cookies. Recipe extracted from KC Forum. However, it doesn't melt in the mouth, and has no green peas taste. :(


Dried Shrimps Cookies. This is a savour cookie. Very nice actually. With so many sweet cookies around, good to have a savoury variety!


Another version of my pineapple tarts.


I varied the dried shrimps cookies to include some chilli flakes and called it Spicy Dried Shrimps Cookies.

French and Flourless

Happy Birthday to my dear sister!

It was my elder sister's birthday today. I asked her what kind of cake she would like me to bake for her. As usual, her request was: flourless, chocolate & hazelnut. I've known that she doesn't like cakes, cakes using flour. However, she has an acquired taste for good quality chocolate, especially dark chocolates. And she loves hazelnut. Having baked an almond torte before (for my youngest sister), which was flourless, I didn't think I wanted to bake the same cake for her. Knowing what her taste is like, it got me a bit stressed!

I rumbled through all my recipe books, looking for hazelnut tortes. Somehow, I didn't find many recipes. Since I bought the gorgeous cakes book, I've not tried any recipe from there. I happened to come across this recipe called "French and Flourless". That does sounds good. So I decided to give it a try, hopefully it will turn out good!

The baking process was smooth. However, the shocking part was after the cake has cooled down. It was really crappy, and crumbly and looked like every corner was falling apart! Hahaha... The cake sank so badly in the centre! The cake was baked without flour. I also didn't dare to risk adding ground hazelnuts into the batter. So I topped the cake with the toasted ground hazelnuts instead. Luckily I made a decision to do that because the top was simply UGLY! Heehee...

This was how the cake looked like during & after baking.


Fortunately, very fortunately, I used good quality chocolate: Ghiradeli's 66% Dark Chocolate. I knew she will appreciate that, so I used them. Therefore, the overall taste was really very good! My family all loved the cake very much! She loved it too! I'm so glad my first experience with this recipe was good. Shall try other recipe from this book again!


Updated on 1 Feb 09:
French and Flourless (from Gorgorous Cakes)

Ingredients
(makes 1 x 20cm cake)
250g Unsalted butter, diced
250g Dark chocolate, (approx. 50% cocoa solides), broken into pieces
5 Medium eggs, separated
220g Golden caster sugar* (can be reduced by another 40-50%)

Method:
1. Melt the butter and chocolate in a bowl set over a pan with a little simmering water in it, stirring occasionally.
2. At the same, whisk the egg yolks with half the sugar for several minutes until pale and doubled in volume.
3. You can do this in a food processor, then transfer the mixture to a large bowl.
4. Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then gradually whisk in the remaining sugar, whisking for about 20 secs for each addition. Whisk till stiff peak.
5. Fold the chocolate and butter into the egg mixture, then the egg whites, in two goes.
6. Pour the mixture into the prepared buttered & lined 20cm cake tin 9cm deep with a removable base.
7. Bake for 50-60mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out with just a few moist crumbs clinging.
8. Run a knife around the edge and leave it to cool in the tine, when it will sink.
9. Its craggy appearance is all part of its charm, but if parts of the sides are very high, then simple break a little off to level them.

I just topped the cake with ground hazelnuts to cover the crappy appearance.

*Note:
The original sugar used was 250g. I reduced to 220g. However, due to the sweetness of the cake, the good quality bitter chocolate was masked by the sugar. Therefore, after discussion with my sister, we decided that in order get the real chocolate taste, the sugar should be reduced by half. Then the taste will be similar to the Almond Torte, but much better!