Coloured Rolled Cake

This is the season to be jolly, and I'm inspired to create all sorts of pretty and edible desserts for the numerous celebration parties that I've been going to.

For the gathering tomorrow, I'm bringing a Coloured Rolled Cake. Who else would have thought of this besides the Japanese? They make all things look so kawaii, even a simple swiss roll. I adapted Junko's rolled cake recipe from Cakelet's and Doilies' blog. This was a breeze to make and the texture of the cake was fabulous - soft and spongy, just the way I like mine to be.

I think I was a little too heavy-handed on the colouring as it turned out bright pink and green when I wanted it to be pastel in colour. Oh well, lesson learnt...next time I'll be slower to add in the colours :).

I whipped up a simple creme chantilly and lined the sponge with mandarin oranges, all rolled and into the fridge within an hour! The next I make this I'll probably opt for a custard based cream with bananas in it...perhaps with polka dotted sponge! I get excited thinking about all the various combinations I can create with a simple rolled cake :).

Here's another picture of the cake - all sliced up and ready to go!

Oooh...how I miss baking once again. There will be more posts to come...I promise! 

Blessed Christmas 2013

It's been close to a year since my last post, and many things have happened since. Here are just a few to share:

1. I have...gotten married! Yes, no longer single and with all the time in the world to do the things I want :). But good nonetheless!
2. I have...changed jobs again! In a new role, new industry, not far from what I dreamed of doing...but it is reaaal tough >.<
3. I have...grown another year! Looking forward to an exciting new season and year ahead of me, hopefully with more time to bake and photograph and eat and experiment!

This Christmas, my husband Darren has decided to whip up a sSteak as the main course, with Garlic Baguette and Minestrone Soup as the starter. And I did a simple Rose Coconut Cherry Ice Cream topped with Cocoa Nibs to finish off the meal. The grape juice we had from Montalto Wineyard of Victoria Australia was the best I've ever had. It definitely capped off a sweet Christmas meal with the family.

All in all, we had a wonderful Christmas. And not to forget the reason for this celebration is because we have an even more wonderful Jesus, the baby born one blessed night that gave us the greatest Gift of our lives.

Merry Christmas everyone! :)

To the Happiest Year Yet

Durian Swiss Rolls

What a ride it has been in 2012 - a year that's been full of ups and downs, yet God's fingerprints are still all over it. I went for Hillsong Conference, the London 2012 Olympics, got proposed to and had opportunities to do the things that I love...what more can I ask for? :)

I ended the year with a gathering with my kingdom friends. It was a potluck party and our small group brought along some Durian, Coffee and Pandan Swiss Rolls from Rich & Good Cake Shop, as well as made Peri Peri Chicken Wings with Nando's Peri Peri marinade.

Will leave you with the pictures to enjoy while I wish you all a very Happy New Year! 

It shall be an even better year yea? :)

Pandan Swiss Rolls

Peri Peri Chicken Wings

Peri Peri Chicken Wings

Nandos' Peri Peri Sauce

Christmas Cookie Pops

As usual, I come back once in while when there's an occasion to bake for *grins*. How I miss fiddling around in the kitchen and creating pretty and yummy goodies for all to share. Christmas is always the season for baking. Everyone's in a celebratory mood, regardless of race of religion, gift giving happening everywhere and we are all expecting a better year of us - what more can we ask for? Such a joyous mood calls for joy inducing treats too, and this year I decided to make cookie pops!

Inspired by Happy Home Baking's post, I set out to look for the bakeable M&Ms...but I couldn't find them anywhere! I remember we use to see them in the supermarts and baking shops, but somehow they just disappeared when I wanted to use them again. Sigh. Anyways, I substituted them with Ghiradhelli Chocolate Chips (more yummy than M&Ms for sure!) and Roasted Hazelnuts. And boy, they turned out very yummy indeed!

I adapted the recipe from this link, didn't search very far or wide due to the shortage of time, and I am real glad it turned out very well. Once baked, I simply wrapped them with clear plastic wrappings, put on the "handmade" sticker I bought from Japan some time ago and tied a ribbon round the stem. They look pretty cute don't they? :)

Can't wait to see my friends' reactions when they see this. I am getting very excited myself! Hahaha...

Hope you having a wonderful Christmas too, enjoy the year end holidays!

Pandan Chiffon Cake - A Singaporean Childhood Favourite

Was just watching Liverpool vs Arsenal on TV earlier, it was painful to watch (mebeing a Liverpool fan) that I switched off my TV set and decided to blog instead. Recently, 2 of colleagues departed from the company and the week seemed like a week of farewell - saying our goodbyes and well wishes to each of them. It felt sad, yet at the same time happy for them to be moving on to a new and better place. And in the midst of that, I also received a couple of requests for chiffon cakes, so here goes :).

Singaporeans first knew chiffon cakes in pandan flavour. Personally, I never knew other flavours existed till I started baking. I love its light, fluffy texture with its gentle sweetness that makes eating this feels like a treat! Having seen my mum gone through her fair share of chiffon cake failures, I never dared to try making it, though the Pandan Chiffon Cake has always been my favourite. I tried a couple of Pandan Chiffon Cake recipes following the success of my Chocolate, Marbled & Yuzu Tea Chiffon Cakes, but they never quite satisfied my tastebuds. Yet at the same, I had to make one by Monday...hence I picked a new recipe by Chef Judy Koh of Creative Culinaire and hope that it works out well eventually.

The recipe was easy to follow, but the cake batter turned out too little for my 22cm pan. I would recommend using this recipe on a 20cm pan instead, as I prefer my chiffon cakes tall :).

Guess I'll have to wait with bated breath till Monday to find out how it tastes! Since I can't cut it in advance now >.<.

Pandan Chiffon Cake

Ingredients:

5 pandan leaves, finely chopped

3 Tbsps water

48g egg yolk, from about 4 small eggs

70g castor sugar

1/8 tsp sale

20ml corn oil

36ml thick coconut milk (I used the chilled version that is more suited to my tastes)

1/4 tsp pandan paste

54g cake flour

120g egg white, from about 4 small eggs

1/8 cream of tartar (i replaced this with corn flour)

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius.

2. Blend the pandan leaves with water to a fine pulp. Wrap the pulp in muslin cloth and squeeze to extract the juice. Discard the pulp and set aside the juice.

3. Whisk together the egg yolks, 30g sugar, salt, corn oil, coconut milk, pandan paste and pandan juice until well incorporated.

4. Sieve the cake flour into the pandan mixture and continue to whisk till smooth. Set aside.

5. Whisk the egg whites till foamy, add the sugar and cream of tartar and whisk till stiff peak form.

6. Gently fold the egg white mixture into the cake batter, 1/3 at a time, until well incorporated.

7. Pour the batter into a 20cm tube pan and bake for 40 minutes.

8. Remove the cake from the oven and invert it on a rack to cool before removing from the mould.

Alice in Wonderland Wedding Cookies

It's been a long long time since I blogged. Haven't been checking my blog for the last few months, neither have I baked apart from what I post...haha. I miss baking, wish I can have more time to do this, and am working towards doing this more in the next couple of months.

I'm glad that a good friend of mine actually asked me to create a set of Alice in Wonderland cookies for her wedding. She sent me an image for inspiration, and the standards were just waaaay better than what I can do. Hence, I can only try, and try my best. 

Ultimately, I came up with a set of 3 cookies - the TeaPot, the Ribbon & the Poker Cards. I'm glad they turned out pretty okay, though they weren't as crunchy as I would have liked. Reckoned the humidity didn't help the icing to dry well....

Nevertheless, I really enjoyed doing this! Darren even did an amazing job on creating 3D Alice in Wonderland cut-outs....they were beau-ti-ful, check this out - so cute!

Apologies for the poor photo quality. I had too much to carry that day and only took these with my handy camera phone..gotta make do with these!

Will just leave you with these other photos I took...till the next project that comes along the way :).

Plentitude Macarons

It's been a while, a pretty long while since my last post. Are you wondering what I've been up to since then? Well, after changing to my new job, the hours are long, workload's heavier and I don't have much time nor energy to dream of baking sweet treats like I do last time. When I get off work, some time is spent destressing (i.e shopping) to get my mind out of work mode and into the lifestyle mode. And after that, I'm pretty much ready to go to bed. Baking time is almost non-existent.

Well, I miss baking! Miss the days when I can dream about the goodies I can bake with my "spare" brain capacity. Miss the days when I can spend long hours in the kitchen without worrying about finishing within a certain number of hours. All that has changed, quite abit in fact. 

I feel a little rusty in the kitchen, a little lost when I can't find those ingredients like I used to, a little sad when I had to throw away expired ingredients that hasn't seen the daylight since months ago. Wish I had more time to make good use of them rather than throwing them away right now.

The first thing I decided to bake when I had an off day is macarons! I have not tried any recipe from the Pierre Herme's Macarons book yet, and decided to pick a simply one - Plentitude Macarons. The description for this sounded delicious enough - caramel chocolate filling with fleur de sel dark chocolate chips sandwiched between 2 shells - I'm sold just by reading this!

Seriously, I was quite rusty. I forgot to start beating my egg whites and my sugar syrup was already reaching 110 degrees. I overmixed my batter and it turned out pretty runny. I was all set for a failed batch until I saw those frilly feet rising up high. Phew!

However, the texture didn't turn out quite right, they were wayyyy too crispy for their own good. I had a good laugh when I bit into one and heard a crunching sound HAHA. Ended up with a batch of Crispy Plentitude Macarons!

Apart from the shells, the caramel chocolate filling was super yummy! I caramelised the sugar to a deep amber and it gave this a nice burnt sugar taste which I love. The filling's a winner for sure :).

I'm still in 2 minds as to whether these can be shared with the world. After all, it's kinda like a "failed" batch, though it's edible. Alternatively, I can look at this as being the "pioneer" of Crispy Plentitude Macarons...HAHA.

Oh well...