Fresh fruit sour cream cake

This blueberry sour cream cake is somewhere between light sponge and typical local (UK) cakes (rather dense)so I would say medium light...lol. Ok, so it was one of the 'ladies who lunch's birthday and I volunteered to bake the cake. It's a simple to do cake with very few steps, i.e. dump all ingredients into the mixer and mix till it drops off the spoon easily and bake! Of course you still have to measure flour, sugar etc and wait for butter to softened which is forever in this climate other than that, how simple can it be? I decided on a fresh cream/mascarpone icing and fresh fruit theme. As I was only baking it the morning for lunch, I didn't want to mess around with smoothing icing so out came the chocolate fingers to go round the sides. I must learn to make chocolate cigarillos, it's on my to conquer list now.

Cross section, baked blueberries turn sweet and lovely!

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Sausage buns

This is my kind of simple light weekend lunch. Sauage laced with tomato sauce on super soft and fluffy bread. I did say light lunch but one is never enough and it's simple enough to tick all boxes for all in the house. Using the TZ bread method, the buns stay super soft till the next day. And there's something about baked mayonnaise the texture and taste changes to something yummy! I made some round ones topped with cheese and yummy...sinful? Yes, yummy? Double yes!!

The factory line

Stick to the TZ method if you want soft soft bread

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Iced gem biscuits

It's Friday and today I'm working from home. I normally work from my kitchen table so when the clock strikes the hour to indicate the start of the weekend it took all of one second to go from holding a computer mouse to holding a measuring cup! A friend of mine had recently received a batch of iced gems that her friend had kindly made and sent to her. She shared the recipe and give it good reviews. I've looked at recipes for this before but never got round to deciding which one to try and since this recipe was given and tested I thought I'd give it a go.

So what aWre iced gems? This one brings back memories from the past, these little biscuits not bigger than a 20 sen coin is topped with crunchy icing of the most attractive colours! I used to buy them in handfuls from the local shop where they were carefully weighed and then wrapped in newspaper. What a great treat it was to get home and unwrap the package to see how many different colours I got and if there were many of my favourite ones! As with eating the modern day M&Ms there is of course a sequence by which the various colours were eaten, need I say more?

Anyway, they did indeed turn out great, tasting exactly as I remembered them and best of all I managed to once again share a little of my childhood with my little girl. What a delight it was to see her create her own sequence of preference when eating the iced gems!

Baked and waiting to be iced

 

Took a bit of rummaging in the kitchen to find something that gave the size to cut the dough

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Pot baked crusty bread

This may change the way I bake bread from now onwards. A friend asked about baking bread in a cast iron pot and in doing so flicked the curiosity switch that is inherent in my nature. A quick google showed Great British Bakeoff finalist James Morton recommending baking bread in pots! I didn't need any further convincing, so together with my friend we embarked on a journey that may change us forever as we both love hand kneading bread! Did I neglect to mentioned that this particular recipe from JM does not require kneading the dough? Even more reason to test it out, right?

One of the comments on the JM blog also said the person was happy to hear cracking after removing the bread from the oven. Cracking ??? When I did mine, it did indeed produce cracking sounds after I removed it from the oven...in fact t it went on cracking for a good while! Just the sound, the bread did not actually crack as you can see from the picture.

I will have to leave you now while I wait for the bread to cool enough to cut into. Yes, I was so excited to see the baked bread in a pot that I started to blog before I even cut the bread! Stay tuned!

I only cut the loaf the next day, it was still soft on the inside and the crust due to the steaming action in the pot is really good!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Salted caramel chocolate cake

It's other half's 40th birthday, so what cake? A friend was also baking a birthday and she decided on a gooey moist salted caramel chocolate cake. I decided to give it a go too as I've not made salted caramel before.

Oh! It is evil this thing called salted caramel! I'm not the kind who likes to lick spoons when cooking or baking but this salted caramel calls to me and just can't help myself! Consider this a warning for those brave enough to try! And yes, I made some chocolate shards for the first time too but the excitement of the salted caramel overshadows it.

Pure indulgence!

I went for a moist sponge instead of gooey as per my friend

 

 

Chocolate shards and icing

 

Posted with Blogsy

Flooded icing cookies

It's been a struggle getting back into work mode since a great holiday back to Malaysia. So this weekend something to remind me of the whole point of going to work i.e. to pay for the things I enjoy, is much needed. A friend shared a video she came across on uTube ...what else is there than to let myself be suckered in and give it a go. So this is the result of trying out flooded icing and wet on wet techniques. It was fun and not too complicated but as always working with icing sugar, the cleanup is not so fun. And since I'm not a fan of super sweet biscuits, I'm going to need willing volunteers to eat them!

Made some pink ones too

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Christmas fruit cake part 2

Finally the rest of the fruit cake has been iced. Not much different from the smaller 2 but a bit tidier I believe. So this is it for the fruit cake for this year. Maybe I will attempt round ones next year. It's late and words escape me so I close the fruit cake story with some before photos.

Chopped pecans

 

The mixed batter

 

Posted with Blogsy

Christmas fruit cake part 1

Baking requires patience as the saying goes, how about five weeks of patience? Five weeks is how long I've waited to cut into this Christmas fruit cake full of dried fruits and pecan nuts, diligently laced with rum week after week. Yes, I said rum and not brandy. I'm not a fan of this rich cake but with the rum it's not too bad! So after five weeks, I finally get to the fun part, this is the make it or break it step of the process. Decorating is not my strong point so armed with pictures from the net, icing sugar and marzipan we begin. The end result was a design not like any I googled, it's was improvised as the first ribbon I used for my 'I think I can do this design' which was all fancy and sparkly left gold dust on the cake...inedible gold dust, oh dear! So the cake got stripped off, icing and all and we start again.

In the end I think it was passable, OCD kicking in now and I hope my two friends will be happy recipients of these two loaves. The other big half of the cake will be iced come weekend, that's for the in laws, measuring tape and level spirit will be required for that one so stay tuned for the second part of the Christmas fruit cake.

The two loaves

 

Of course I sneaked a slice, it's been 5 weeks!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Pandan chiffon cupcakes

This afternoon there was a desperate request for 'green cake' or better known to the rest of the world as pandan chiffon cake. The conversation went something like this

'I really really want the green cake'

'no, it takes a long time to make, how about tomorrow'

'But I want it now, I'll help you make it' goes off into the kitchen and started to clear a space on the table

'You put the ingredients here' so as commanded I proceeded to 'put the ingredients on the table'

Now cakes that are prone to collapsing and little helpers are not a good combo but I have seen this cake made in cupcake form. So I decided to half the recipe and make chiffon cupcakes. As it turns out, the cupcakes did not colaspe and my little helper, true to her words did a lot of the work. There was a bit of a volcanic action going on 7 minutes into the bake but once the temperature was adjusted it calmed down giving the end result a bit of a rustic look. Little helper happily ate two cupcakes as soon as it was done and left me to do all the washing up.

Unlike the full sized cake, no need to invert and cool

 

 

Still as fully and soft

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Chocolate fudge cake

Chocolate fudge cake Is on the menu this time round, needless to say it's for another potluck, you all know the drill by now. I made this cake before a long time ago for my girl's 1st birthday, that time it was covered ready rolled icing. This time I decided to cover it with luscious ganache and then on a whim because I bought too many bars of chocolate, chocolate covered cherries! This cake is the kind that needs to sit and think about being delicious before it actually becomes delicious for a day or two which is great as it means I don't have to have panic attacks about running out of time before the dinner gong sounds!

There's not a lot I am proud of but this is one of them!

Let is shine!

Dark choc and cherries...match made in heaven!

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Macarons madness

This is a back post, a while ago a friend of mine shared her macarons recipe, one which she took a class for which was very kind of her. This is the first time I attempted Italian meringue, this is the one using sugar syrup to make. The meringue was not too difficult to make, it was the piping that was challenged for me. Just using drawn circles, it was hard to get the piping going at a consistent rate in order to end up with circles that would pair up. I've made another batch since the first try, it turned out to be quite fun as you get to play with colours of the shells as well as dream up flavours for the filling, I've tried lemon cream, dark chocolate ganache and green tea buttercream..all yummy!

The green tea one

 

 

Italian meringue

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Japanese cheese cake

This is my attempt at the acclaimed japanese cotton soft cheesecake. Actually, it's my second attempt, the first one, just 24 hours earlier was not what one would call a success. After the usual searching for the recipe to try and watching countless uTube videos, I settled for one and went for it. After turning up the motivation crank to full , I discovered I only had 3 eggs instead of 6 but I was still determined so I halved everything and before you know I was watching tv waiting for the ding of the timer. As the forces that be will have it, baking is not as easy sailing as that. The cake (this is the first one btw) rose and rose while I was focused on the tv and the top cracked open, bringing to mind mount vesuvious. After which once removed from the oven proceeded to deflate and resembled something like a flat tyre. Nevertheless it still went into the fridge for the required time before being consumed as per the recipe...oh, only it actually didn't as someone (not me) forgot to put it in the fridge after promising to do so. Which meant that cake nbr1 was really not meant to be. So on to cake nbr2, deciding to give the recipe another go, I started again, this time watching the cake like a hawk. End result, not too bad, there's still a bit of a collapsed but passable. Though it tastes good, would I try again? Maybe but not in the near future.

 

 

 

Croissants

This is a back post, I can't believe I forgot about this one. For a really long time I've been wanting to make croissants, am always fascinated with the folding of the dough to make the layers. I finally did get round to it using a recipe from the great British Bakeoff. To results was ok-ish, which means the hunt for a better recipe is on, however it will be a while before I will attempt it again...too much waiting in between steps!

Mini me having a go at the dough

 

 

Sarcher torte

I first saw this on the Great British Bakeoff, the shiny ganache like topping on a moist chocolate base looks really lush. So when it's other half's birthday, what better time to give it a test. Though I was up at the crack of dawn on the birthday day to make the cake, the first thing I read on the recipe was that this is a cake that is best eaten a day after it was baked...bummer! I don't happen to have a time machine with me so there's not really much I can do but to go with it. We left it till really late at night to cut the cake, poor little one was past her bedtime and only the excitement of getting cake and blowing candles kept her awake. The cake tasted just ok and I had to reign in my disappointment and hold judgement till the next day. As it turns out, the cake was lovely, moist and chocolatey the next day, so thanks Mary Berry for a lovely recipe.

 

 

Fastest way to ruin a cake is with shaky icing writing!