Pwincess thoughts

Orange Chiffon Cake

2008-08-12T23:01:00.001-07:00

I think this is becoming a chiffon cake madness. Ever since I felt confident enough to make chiffon cake, I have been absolutely mad about making them.

This is another of SD's masterpiece again. SD recomended that pure orange juice is used, ie those freshly squeezed from the orange but I was too lazy so I just used orange juice from the carton, hehe.

[Ingredients]
(A)
140g plain flour
40g cornflour
1 tsp baking powder

(B)
7 eggs yolks
1 tbsp orange zest (grated then chopped)
60g castor sugar
95g odourless oil
150ml orange juice

(C)
7 egg whites
100g castor sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tar tar

[Method]
1. Sift all flours 3 times and set aside.
2. Whisk egg yolk and sugar from B till sugar dissolve and batter turns pale yellow.
3. Add in oil, orange zest and orange juice and continue to whisk for a minute in slow speed.
4. Fold in the sifted flour one tablespoon at a time. Do take note that there should not be any flour particles after sifting.
5. Whisk the egg whites with cream of tar tar till frothy.
6. Add in 1/2 if the sugar from C, continue whisking for 3 minutes. Then add in the rest of the castor sugar and whisk for another 3 minutes or until stiff peak.
7. Fold in 1/3 of the meringue (stiffen egg white) into the yolk.
8. Then fold in the egg yolk into the meringue. make sure not to overfold causing the egg white to deflate.
9. Pour in the mixture into the angle pan tin. Using a butter knife, run through the muxture a coupple of times to remove any large air bubbles.
10. Bake at a preheated oven of 160degC for an hour.

Banana Mocha Chiffon Cake

2008-08-09T01:10:00.000-07:00

The other day I was viewing Aunty Yochana's blog when I realise that all this while I've shaven off the top of my chiffon cake. No wonder my chiffon cake always look weird! I thought it was because of the sinking down in the middle (which is probably one of the reason why it looks ugly lar! =.=)

But unable to make the cake and deliberately making the cake bald is two different story. So this time when I attempted to make the cake, I had to make sure that the cake is completely cooled down before removing it from the tin! (I always have been impatient all this while =.=)

The last time the cake became burnt at the top and I had to remove it from the oven before the designated time. But SD advise that I were to cover it with a piece of aluminum foil 2/3 through baking as the oven I'm using now is the old kind without a fan or anything. So I followed obediently and it worked! Thanks SD! :D

Ingredients
(A)
120g plain flour
30g cornflour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
15g cocoa

(B)
7 egg yolks
50g caster sugar
200g mashed banana mixed with
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2g (1tsp) coffee powder 20g of milk powder dissolved in
100ml of water
125ml canola oil (or any odorless vegetable oil)

(C)
7 egg whites
90g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Method

Sift all of ingredients A 3 times and set aside.
Whisk egg yolk and sugar together till all the sugar dissolve and mixture is pale yellow. This should take about 3-5 minutes. Then add in the rest of ingredients B and continue beating with the electric beater.
Fold in all of ingredients A that have been sifted.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with the cream of tartar till frothy.
Add in half of the sugar and continue whisking for 3 minutes. Then add the remaining sugar.
Continue whisking until you obtain a shiny meringue, with a slightly soft peak.
Fold in 1/3 of the meringue into the egg yolk mixture.
Fold the egg yolk mixture into the remaining meringue.
Pour into the chiffon cake tin, and using a knife, cut through the batter a few time. Tap the tin onto the table a few times to remove any large air bubbles.
Bake at 160 degrees for 1 hour.
Once removed from the oven, over turn the tin, and leave it until it cools completely. Only then should you remove the cake.

Tips:

Make sure that the flour is properly folded, if not, the cake will rise very quickly in the oven, and sink when it's removed from the oven. N.B. You have to fold it tablespoon by tablespoon.
Its much easier to separate eggs when its cold. The bring it to room temperature.
All ingredients should be at room temperature.
Fold the egg yolk and the meringue together is the crucial part. Fold some meringue into the yolk batter first ti make sure that its lighter. Then only should it be folded into the meringue. Be careful not to deflate the meringue.

Difference between sponge and chiffon cake

2008-08-01T02:31:00.001-07:00

I have always wondered what was the different between these cakes. Having failing in making these cakes several times, where the cake rose up nice and high in the oven and then decided to fall rapidly after leaving it, these little rascals made me even more adamant to reach a point where I can confidently be sure that my cake will turn up well.

As time pass, I saw several recipes which made me confused as there was many sponge and chiffon recipes, and some had oil and some did not. So with Google backed up, I decided to do some investigation and came to this website *click here*

Summary from the website:

Sponge cake: Basically water and oil/butter/fat free. Yolk and whites are beaten separately.

Genoise cake: Recipe similar to sponge cake except it calls for water and butter/oil/fat. Eggs are beaten as whole and over a water bath.

Chiffon cake: Calls for oil. Quote:

The dry ingredients are mixed together and then the oil, egg yolks, water and flavouring are beaten in. The egg whites are first beaten separately till stiff but not dry, and then folded into the batter. The batter is quite thin and is traditionally baked in a tube pan.

.... Egg white beaten till stiff and not dry??? Huh??? -_-

Angle food cake: Hmm, first time hearing this. Guess I'm pretty sua ku, haha. Basically chiffon cake with no fat. BUT contains the highest amount of sugar amongst these cakes.

I think I'm sticking to sponge and chiffon cake in the end :D

Oreo cheesecake

2008-07-30T20:31:00.000-07:00

I can never understand why people like cheesecake. To me cheesecake is like one of the highest ranked cake that I dislike. Yet Nanny Yee absolutely adores it. So I decided to make one for her. After all, my baking tin is small (hearts! <3) and using one block of cream cheese would be sufficient :)

This is a baked oreo cheesecake.

Oreo cheesecake

[Ingredients]

250g cream cheese
25g icing sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg
1 packet of 125g oreo cookies
some butter

[Method]
1. Remove the cream from the oreo cookies. Crush 3/4 of the cookies till fine, and for the remainder, have it finely crushed.
2. Rub in butter with the crushed cookie till the crushed cookie is able to be molded into a ball.
3. Line the baking tin with an aluminum foil and press the crushed cookie to form the case. Leave it in the fridge for about 20 minutes.
4. Cream the cheese, sugar and vanilla extract. The add in the egg and beat till incoperated.
5. Fold in the remainder 1/4 cookies.
6. Bake at 160 degrees for 40 minutes.
7. Chill the cake for a minimum of 4 hours before serving.

Pandan Sponge Cake (2 egg)

2008-07-29T22:15:00.000-07:00

The Japanese usually have a small cake for Christmas, and when I saw the size of the cake, I wanted a cake tin of that size. Usually there are 4-5 people eating a cake, and making one whole cake of 20cm means that we would be eating the cake for some time. So when I came back to Malaysia this time, one of my mission was to get a small size cake tin :)

The one I got was only 15-17cm. The main cake that I intend to do was birthday cakes so I decided to try a two egg sponge cake.

This the recipe (Its from Jo's Deli, I can't link it now, not too sure why. Hmm..)

[Ingredients]

A:
50ml pandan juice
2 egg yolks
45g castor sugar
75g plain flour, 5g corn flour (or just use 80g cake flour)
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
25g oil

B:
2 egg whites
30g sugar
1/8 cream of tartar

[Method]
For ingredients A
1. Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda 3 times and set aside.
2. Whisk egg yolk and sugar till pale yellow using an electric beater.
3. Add in pandan juice and oil, continue beating with electric beater.
4. Fold in sifted flour. The mixture will thicken at this point.

For ingredients B
1. Whisk egg white and cream of tartar till frothy with the electric beater.
2. Add in 1/2 of the sugar, and continue whisking.
3. Add in the remainder sugar and whisk till stiff peak. To check, the egg white would not fall if you over turn the bowl, the typical ultimate test!

Mixing the mixture
1. Use 1/3 of the egg white and fold it into the egg yolk mixture.
2. The fold in the egg yolk into the egg whites (folding the egg whites into the egg yolks makes the egg yolk lighter, thus ensuring that we don't deflate the egg whites)

Bake at 170 degress, for 40-45 minutes.

Verdict:
To be honest, I'm really pleased that the cake was able to rise and not fall flat after removing from the oven, something that always happen to me -_-
I guess practicing to fold in the flour really helped *beams.
My mistake was that I was too lazy to line the tin, so I had to battle with my cake a wee bit. And it turned a wee crumbly at the end :(
The cake was slightly on the hard side, for a sponge cake that is. So perhaps if I were to use just plain flour and no cornflour, the cake would be softer. Ah, that's another experiment for another day! :)

Banana Chiffon Cake

2008-06-16T05:13:00.001-07:00

Oh I'm seriously so proud of myself *face beams

Last summer after trying making a plain chiffon cake with Mama Cheng for 4 times, in which all of them failed, I developed an immense fear of making this cake again. I think it's my folding technique that I have yet to master. Although this time it was much, much better, the center of the cake still sink =.=

But nevertheless, Imma seriously so proud that there's still height to the cake, and seriously the cake is so soft! T______________T *tears of joy

Ingredients
(A)
120g plain flour
30g cornflour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
*30g almond meal
sift all together except the almond meal and set aside

(B)
7 egg yolks
50g caster sugar
200g mashed banana mixed with
1 teaspoon lemon juice (I replaced it with vinegar)
20g of milk powder dissolved in
100ml of water
125ml canola oil

(C)
7 egg whites
90g caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees.
2. Sift A except almond meal 3 times and set aside.
3. Whisk egg yolk and sugar together till all the sugar dissolve. This should take about 3-5 minutes. Then add in the rest of ingredients B and continue beating with the electric beater.
4. Fold in all of ingredients A, including the almond meal. Make sure that the flour is properly folded, if not, the cake will rise very quickly in the oven, and sink when it's removed from the oven. N.B. You have to fold it tablespoon by tablespoon.
5. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites with the cream of tartar.
6. When it reaches soft peak, meaning that there is a little peak in the egg white, start adding in the sugar tablespoon, by tablespoon.
7. Continue whisking until you obtain a shiny meringue, with a slightly soft but not hard peak i.e. there should be a peak but the peak will bend a little if you leave it there. (I hope this is clear enough!)
8. Fold in the meringue into the egg yolk mixture i.e. A+B mixture by 1/3 at the time.
9. Pour into the chiffon cake tin, and using a knife, cut through the batter a few time. Tap the tin onto the table a few times to remove any large air bubbles.
10. Bake at 160 degrees for 1 hour.
11. Once removed from the oven, over turn the tin, and leave it until it cools completely. Only then should you remove the cake.

The original recipe is here. :)

Happy Baking! ^_^

Conor!

2008-04-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

Meeting with Connor has been the nicest thing that happened in my life.

Although we only had two intercourse, it has been totally orgasmic.

The first time I was inexperience and hence the 'outcome' wasn't that nice. It was rather 'dense' :(

Connor's just so muscular! I love his arms, the way he uses it.. Ahhh..~ Just makes me swoon! :D

Macho macam ni babe!

I heart you Connor! <3

*
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Connor

Arms you say? Duh, if not how to knead??? -_-

Banana custard rolls

2008-04-12T06:12:00.000-07:00

The other day ee bought some custard chocolate buns home and we have been trying to imitate that buns.

But I thought it was a bit boring so I decided to change it a little-and banana custard bun was delivered :D

I din plan to put the chocolate chips at first but the middle one wanted chocolate buns so I decided to scatter it on top instead (:

This time I really let the buns double in size and the outcome was really worth it cause the buns were so, so soft!

The mistake I made was using unripe bananas- I thought they would melt in the oven, appears not! T_T

And I thought there wasn't enough banana flavor-artificial flavoring are so disappointing -_-

Still room for improvement! (:

Coffee Twist

2008-04-05T05:18:00.000-07:00

When I first saw this on the Japanese website, cookpad, I just had the itchyness and big big urge to do it. In fact a kind Japanese blogger helped me to translate what wheat flour meant!

But it was all in Japanese :(

So when Florence post how to make the chocolate wassant, I was overjoyed and decided to try the coffee version instead! :D

And hence my coffee twist family was born

unbaked

coffee twist family

Guess what this is!

2008-03-29T04:17:00.000-07:00

This is what Ee jiejie and me made today. She made the ingredients, I rolled it out! :D

Closer view let you see! :)

Bit flat, but nah crack let you see! :D

Its the foochow food kom pian! Huu hoo~!!

Nai Wong Bun Recipe

2008-03-28T13:38:00.000-07:00

[Ingredients]
Custard Filling.

10g instand custard powder.
50g tung min flour/wheat starch.
75g sugar (granulated/icing)
100ml milk (suggestion-use evaporated if you like the filling creamier :))
40g butter
1 egg, slightly beaten.

Methods:

Mix the custard powder, wheat starch, and sugar in a pot.
Heat it up while adding the milk into the mixture, stirring constantly.
Add butter into the mixture. Remember to stir or the mixture will burnt! :)
When the butter has melted completely, remove the pot from the fire and add in the beaten egg. Continue stirring. You should have obtained a thick sticky custard! :)

For the bun, I just used the Water-Roux Sweet Bun Dough. Here

Verdict:
The custard was a little sticky. But after baking, it dried up nicely and I really liked it :). My nieces and cousin loved it too and it was gone in a night! Ah, managed to take one photograph only :(

Char Siew Bun

2008-03-26T13:19:00.000-07:00

Char Siew

400-500g Pork shoulder/loin
2 TbspHoisin Sauce
1 1/2 TbspChar siew sauce
1 piece Nam yu
1/2 Garlic (chopped)
2 Tbsp Chinese wine
1 1/2 Tbsp Soy Sauce
1 Tbsp Sugar

Mix everything together and let it marinate for minimally one hour. The longer you marinate it, it will obviously taste nice.
Place it on an aluminum foil and cover it with another sheet of aluminium foil.
Bake it for 5 minutes, remove from the oven, collect the sauce/juice produce. You will need this later.
Re-bake it, with the aluminum foil covering it.
Repeat step 3 and 4 until you obtain enough sauce. Remove aluminum foil and let oven the char siew till dried up.
With the sauce produced from above, heat it in a pot. Add some cornstarch and potato starch flour with some water. Pour into the sauce produced.
If you did not manage to collect sufficient sauce, add some water and add some char siew sauce into it. :)

For the bun, I just used the Water-Roux Sweet Bun Dough. Here

butter cake

2008-03-18T01:39:00.000-07:00

For ann

Ingredients
3 medium eggs
170g self-raising flour
170g/12oz butter
170g/12oz caster sugar

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Lightly butter and line the base of an 18cm/7in cake tin with greaseproof paper.
3. Cream the butter and sugar until smooth and pale in colour and then gradually beat in the eggs.
4. Sift the flour and fold into the mixture, a little at a time. Pour into the cake tin, level off the mixture with a palette knife and bake for about 90 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Egg Tart Recipe

2008-03-16T10:04:00.001-07:00

I've never really had egg tart till I was 14 years old, and to be honest, I don't really have a crave for it. But my cousin and her daughters love it, so I decided why not. Wai Wai likes it too so I though I'd make it. :)

It was quite simple i guess, compared to making breads.

The egg tarts I made was the Chinese egg tarts served in Dim Sum restaurant, those with the puffy pastry.. mmm~ yummy! :D

And I used butter instead of ghee or lard, so its healthier! :D

[Ingredients]
Pastry:
Water Dough:

80g plain flour
5g (2 teaspoons) custard powder
5g (2 teaspoons) milk powder
pinch (1/8 teaspoon) salt
1 egg yolk
10g butter
12g (1 tablespoon) icing sugar
40ml (approx.) water, adjust as necessary (ice cold)

Short Dough:

100g plain flour
100g butter.

Filling:
Sugar Syrup:

100g white sugar
200ml water

Custard:

2 eggs
50ml evaporated milk
150ml Sugar Syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Pastry preparation:
water dough:

Mix all the ingredients. Add cold water just enough till a soft, yet non sticky dough is formed.
Wrap it in a cling film and chill at least 20 minutes before using it.

Short Dough:

Rub the butter and flour
wrap it with a cling film and chill.

Custard:

Stir the egg with a chopstick.
Stir in the evaporated milk with a chopstick, slowly. Make sure you dont beat it or it will form bubles and the egg custard will not be pretty!
Add in the vanilla extract
Add in the sugar syrup.
Sieve the mixture and leave it to set.

Tips:

Make sure that the custard is only 80% full, cause the egg tart will expand when it is cooked. If the custard is more then 80% full, the custard will overfill out and there will be a black rim around the tart. Like mine! :(

photolog of mango mouse cake

2008-03-15T02:05:00.000-07:00

rather lazy to put the recipe of the cake lar. if anyone wants it, leave a comment lah.

my sponge cake story!

2008-03-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

Last week was mother's day celebrated by the British.

I tried to make a cake for ee jie jie and wai wai's mami. I always feel that all mothers should be celebrated for at mother's day. Not your own mother only ok. All mothers should/deserve the very right to be appreciated on M-day.

But....

:(

This was what turned up.

See the arrow is pointing to the place where there is actually flour oozing out.

-_____-

So i asked the aunty who wrote the recipe.

She was sOooo kind!!! She replied pronto and gave me like loads of tips!! :) :)

She said that I prob din beat long enough and that i din fold in the flour properly. :( :(

Hi linfoong,
It sounds like your sponge has failed. The reasons could be that you did not beat the eggs to its proper ribbon stage, or

when you fold in the flour, you either did not fold in properly or you did it too vigorously and deflated the air bubbles in the beaten eggs. Always fold the flour in small batches and fold in by hand, don't use mixer unless you are very confident with making sponge cake.

The oiliness is an indication that the melted butter was not mix in properly. You must make sure the batter thoroughly absorbed the melted butter.

Have you make whole-egg sponge cake before? If not, you may want to start with the method of separating the eggs and beat the egg whites with about 2/3 of the sugar until firm (almost stiff peaks stage). Then beat the egg yolks with the remaining sugar until sugar dissolves, then fold the egg-yolk mixture into the egg-white mixture and continue from there, this method is much more fail-safe.

Another way is to make a basic vanilla chiffon cake and use it instead of the sponge if you are not too confident with making sponge cake. Hope this helps.

So I asked her again how to properly fold in, and the diff btwn sponge and chiffon cake. She explained to me in great detail weh!! T_T.. so touched... T_T Some more comfort me weh!!!

Hi,
Don't worry, I have done many failed sponge cakes before, just learnt from experiences :)

Always use eggs at room temperature when you make sponge or chiffon cake, a very crucial step. When you fold in the flour, it is best to use a large metal spoon. Hold the spoon so that the edge cut down into the middle of the batter down to the bottom of the bowl, then scoop upward so that the batter falls back on top of the batter, continue to turn the bowl and dig, scoop until you cannot see any dry flour. If the eggs have been beaten properly, you shouldn't worry too much about deflating the air bubbles as it will be quite stable.

If the flour is not properly folded in, yes, it will rise up high then deflate after removing from oven. The flour not mixed in properly will basically sink to the bottom, making the bottom part dense and kuih-like. The top part will basically rise like a souffle in the oven and deflate like a souffle after removing from oven because there is no flour to support it. <--- T_T so true, so true.. this was what happened T_T

A sponge cake is dryer, a chiffon cake is moist. Basically a true sponge does not have any added liquid in it (milk or water) and may or may not have any melted butter (usually about 20% to the amount of flour). But most recipes nowadays will add a little liquid in the batter, again about 20 to 30% to the amount of flour.

A chiffon cake has a lot more liquid in the batter, usually at least 50% to the amount of flour. It also uses oil instead of melted butter, and again about 50% to the amount of flour in the batter.

The techniques of making are also different between a sponge and a chiffon. The sponge is made like I described in this recipe, or as I described in my last comment by separating the eggs.

A chiffon is always made by separating the eggs. However, beat egg yolks with part of the sugar, then mix in liquid, oil and flour. Meanwhile beat egg whites with remaining sugar until stiff and fold into the yolk mixture. Hope this helps.

T_T

T_T

Very touched.

So i decided to try again. This time i separated the eggs.

I beat the egg yolk for abt 2-3 minutes. then i added in the vanilla here. it smelt like custard leh. hmm, suspecting custard is made this way. that means custard's made of raw eggs? OMGawd... *disgusting leh...*

And then i beat the egg white on top of a pot of hot water. ee jie jie says this will make the egg white stiffer wor...

and walla!

:) can turn upside sumre leh!!! :)

i beat it for 6-8 minutes.

And then i slowly fold the flour in. this time leh, i folded the flour using 1-2 tsp of flour at a time!! hehehehehe.. i will upload the video which i learned how to fold the flour later :)

folding in was the tiring part. cause i couldnt do it too vigorously and because im very short and the table is very tall............... arm very painful lah!!! >_<" and then hor, dunoh why, my baking tray rebelled against me!! the rim all of a sudden would not hold on to the bottom part..!!! my cake nearly fell out you know!!! >_<"

but it was wort it :D

because this was the outcome :D

so pretty hor????

hihihihih!!!!

ok lar maybe its a bit flat.. -_-'

i dunoh why it turned up flat. i suspect that maybe i over fold -____-. previously underfold, now over fold. so ma fan! >_<'

not sure what i wanna do with it yet. mite use it to make an ice cream cake :) il wait till jia wu comes back ans see how it goes. sorry lar, too excited, must blog now.. bwahahaha!

i'l post the recipe later lah! :)

and also after i decorate it :)

cute doogie cookies

2008-03-05T10:58:00.000-08:00

I have a sweet tooth, so i don think this cookie is sweet enough. Yeeny said that she din like the horlicks taste T_T

so if i were to make it again, i think i would replace the horlicks with icing sugar :)

after all, im making it cause its pretty, hahahah!

Ingredients:
(makes about 48 cookies)

180g butter, soften at room temperature
80g Horlicks (original flavour)
200g top flour or cake flour
25g corn flour
25g milk powder
100g chocolate chips
some chocolate rice
some Koko Krunch

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 140deg C. Line baking tray with baking paper and set aside.
Sieve top flour, corn flour and milk powder.
Cream butter and Horlicks for about three minutes at low speed. Do not overbeat.
Put in top flour, cornflour and milk powder and beat for about one minute to form
dough.
Divide dough into 10g each. Put three chocolate chips into each piece of dough and roll into balls.
Insert two pieces of Koko Krunch to form the 'ears', chocolate rice for the "eyes", and a chocolate chip in the centre for the 'nose'.
Bake at 140 deg C for about 25 minutes. Depending on your oven, it may take another 5 to 10 minutes more for the cookies to be ready.
Leave to cool on wire rack before storing in an airtight container.

obtained from here

Mexican Buns

2008-02-24T11:29:00.000-08:00

Was waiting for the cream for my blackforest cake to harden so I decided to make this :D

I really like making buns these days. I really wanna master the ability to make real good buns :D

Water-Roux Sweet Bun Dough

[Ingredients]

375g bread flour
100g plain flour (or use 80g plain flour + 20g vanilla custard powder, or cornflour)
35g milk powder
75g caster sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 sachet (7g or 2½ tsp) instant dry yeast
1 egg, lightly beaten
150ml (approx.) lukewarm water, adjust as necessary (I only needed 130ml for this batch)
40g butter, cubed

Water Roux

25g (just under 2 tbsp) bread flour
125ml (1/2 cup) water

* Water Roux is basically 1 part bread flour to 5 parts water.

[Preparation]
Water Roux :
Mix flour and water in a small saucepan. Cook over low to medium heat, stirring continuously until it reaches 65ºC. It should have thickened to a paste at this stage, that is when you stir you can see the bottom of the pan. Remove from heat, place a cling wrap (cling film) over the paste and leave until lukewarm, or room temperature, before using. (Alternatively if you don’t have a thermometer, cook as before until it starts to thicken, then continue to cook for about 1 more minute before removing from heat.) This water roux can be kept in an airtight container after cooling in the refrigerator for 1 day if not used immediately. However DO NOT USE if it turns grey in colour, that means it has gone bad.

For the Bun Dough:
1. Sift bread flour, plain flour, (custard powder,) milk powder, caster sugar and salt onto the working surface. Add instant dry yeast and mix well. Form the flour mixture into a well. Add lightly beaten egg and lukewarm water roux and mix in. Gradually add just enough lukewarm water to form into a slightly sticky, soft dough. Knead for 10 minutes until smooth and elastic. During hand kneading, the dough also needs to be thrown onto the working surface once every few minutes between kneading to improve the dough structure. (I usually just pick up the dough to about head-high and throw it down onto the working surface 10 to 20 times every few minutes between kneading.)

2. Knead in butter until incorporated. (In many cookbooks, they mentioned that the dough at this stage should be able to be pulled and stretched into membrane, but it’s hard to achieve with hand kneading. I usually stop kneading when the dough sticks to the work surface and stretches like chewing gum when pulled!) Form the dough into a round ball and let it rise until double in size in a large greased bowl, cover with cling wrap (should take about 1 hour in warm weather, longer in winter months). Optimum room temperature for this first prove is 28°C with a humidity of 75%. To test if the dough has risen properly, dip a finger into bread or plain flour and poke down into the centre of the dough as far as your finger will go and pull out again – the hole should remain if it is ready. If the dough springs back, then it is not ready, continue to prove further.

3. Punch down, knead briefly. Then divide into 16 equal portions. The easiest way is to first divide equally into 4 larger portions first, then divide each of these again into quarters each. Form each into balls and let rest for 10 minutes.

4. Shape and fill as desired to make into buns of your choice.

Obtained from here

Filling

100g softened butter
45g plain flour, sifted
50g milk powder, sifted
45g caster sugar, sifted

Just mix everything :D

I was not too satisfied with the filling actually, still have room for improvement!
I think the problem was that I used milk instead of milk powder, so it was too liquidy. If i were to do again, i think i would add more flour perhaps :D (damn sound so sih lai)

The toping was done using this recipe:

Topping

100 g butter, softened
80g icing sugar, sifted
1 egg, lightly beaten
coffee flavoring (available from bakery supplies shop, use 2 tablespoons instant coffee powder dissolved in 1 tablespoon of water)
1 pinch ground cinamon , can be added to the coffee flavouring
100 all purpose flour, sifted

cream the butter with the icing sugar
add in the egg and coffee flavoring and continue beating
add in the flour.

I think i would add 2 eggs instead of one, cause i felt the topping was a bit hard. I suppose it depends on your preference, if you want the toping to be biscuity, then 1 egg would be fine, if you want the topping to be cakey, 2 eggs would be better :D (OMGawd, so sih lai)

You are suppose to pipe the topping around the bun in a spiral fashion. I din have a piping bag, so you know what i used?

Bwahahahaha.. Its the water cones for the water dispenser one ah..

What to do, poor student what =.=

Anyway this is what is suppose to look like after piping :)

Woot, forgot the choco chips! :D

Its so hard to pipe without proper stuff so in the end......

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Bwahahahha..

Why am I so lazy ah.. =.=

Dont ask me what temperature and time i used to bake. There is no numbers on the dials of the oven so we just chuck the food into the oven and bake till the thing is cooked. I know lar, damn ulu right? Bwahaha..

Mexican Bun! :D

Blackforest cake

2008-02-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

Ta's birthday tmrw so decided to bake him a cake. I asked him what cake he wants and this fella come and tell me he wants a blackforest cake wor.

Of all the yummy cakes in the world why must he choose that cake.

I think blackforest cakes are horrible. But i think the worst cake is cheesecake. oh yes, i absolutely hate cheesecake ok. after eating one or two spoonful, i wanna throw up already.

anyway he wants so i make.

Black Forest Cake

Stabilized Whipped cream filling

500ml whipping cream

90g icing sugar sugar

1tbsp rum/cherry liquor

1 tsp Unflavored Gelatin

3 tsp water

1. Soak gelatin in 2 tsp water for 5 minutes, add 1 tsp water and melt over a boiling water bath or in a microwave.
2. Cool to room temperature. Beat cream till soft peaks form, sprinkle sugar, add rum and beat again.
3. Pour in Gelatin and beat well till stiff peak consistency is achieved.
4. Refrigerate till use.

Cherries in syrup

Pitted fresh cherries – 1 ½ cup
Sugar - 2 cups
Water - 2 cups
Cherry liquor / rum - 1 tbsp

1. Mix sugar and water, boil in a thick bottomed pan, with constant stirring, till the sugar dissolves and the syrup thickens.
2. Add cherries, remove from fire, add liquor/rum, keep it covered for 10-12 hours. 3. Drain cherries on a sieve; reserve the syrup for moistening the cake.

NB. i think this is too sweet lor, if i were to do again, i would really cut down the amount of sugar, to maybe 1/4 cup. by the way, i just use a mug to measure everything cause i think all they want is the ratio.

Hehehe..

I tipu-ed.

I used tesco chocolate sponge cake as the base.

Couldnt be bothered making the sponge.

There are much nicer food in the world i would spend more time making.

Like Mexican buns!!! :D