April Babies!

15th of April! The day to produce Lianne's spread for her party on Sunday. Was really nervous when i started baking and doing the prep work. It's always like this when i'm making something for a big event. Baking jitters! Who would have thought? :D
From what I know, it's a little party to celebrate the birthdays of 10 adorable April babies. And these babies can't take sugar or eggs so the lil cupcakes that DIVANA came up with had little sugar, mostly banana and some honey with no egg at all. Honestly, I believe it was really ambitious of Sam and I to try doing such a recipe (not because i'm such a big fan of eggs and sugar) but because we've just about never tried something like that before! And to start it right out with a recipe of our own...dangerous...like balancing on a cliff in with a big jug of sloshing milk. The cupcakes (which are really muffins...) came out good and solid, smelling heavenly with their banana-ish perfume.

They weren't overly sweet but had a good texture and wholesome taste to it. Hopefully, they find a satisfied home in the stomachs of those pretty babies! I can only cross my fingers and hope with all my heart. What I really loved bout these cupcakes were the names piped onto them. I thought it was such a sweet thing to do...get one cupcake for each baby. Sam and I couldn't resist adding the little heart quins too. Adding a little of our love :) Sam started fantasising abt how this was her life..baking for babies..(of course she means her children)..fulfilling her dream of being a wonderful mother and a baking goddess in the kitchen, which of course i'm 100% confident of her becoming! She's amazing and i know she'll love her children and shower em with all the fat-full goodness of sugar, eggs and butter. Ritey sam? :D C'mon admit it..it's the only way to love em these days.

The chocolate cake was also the original DIVANA cake, made extra chocolatey as instructed by Lianne cause the adults apparently are chocolate fanatics. :D My kind of people. Well..all in all, it was a good day taking a rest from work and enjoying myself baking for people who love to eat.

So hey guys! I do hope you all really really REALLY enjoy em. And thanks Lianne for supporting me with your order. Somehow I hope you won't regret it. Maybe if it's bad, just don't contact me. Ha, so I can silently wallow in my shame. Have a nice time tmr!

p/s World Gourmet Summit is going on now. I'm so tempted to go for those classes or at least one of those 195++ per head dinners but that's major overkill and way past my budget considering i'm flying out to UK next week. Money's just never enough and the world's too big for my wallet!

Best Birthday Cake

Malteser Creation

I believe in chocolate being the most wonderful ingredient for a cake. Since the day i started eating chocolate, i'm a firm believer in birthday cakes existing in only one flavour - chocolate. And bless Nigella for creating the Malteser chocolate cake; such a cake would have been perfect for my sister's birthday today since she just loves maltesers (so do i really!) but the sad thing was i just didn't have time to go out and get plain flour or horlicks. time's been really lacking for me lately and i had to settle for whatever i had at home.
Last night, i really started to panic because i was lackin so many things: an extra 9" cake pan, plain flour, caster sugar, dark chocolate. It really gave me a headache since i wanted this to be the best birthday cake my eleven year old sister will ever taste. I scoured my recipes and my books and managed to solve the problem by combining a chocolate cake recipe from Lora Brody's Chocolate American Style, leaving out her decadent white chocolate cream cheese frosting (cos i didn't have any white choc or cream cheese...darn...but i would certainly try it in the near future), and my favourite Debbi Field's chocolate frosting from a previous devil's food cake recipe. Except, this time round, i used about 2,3/4 cup icing sugar instead of 4,1/2cup cause i figured the cake didn't need to be so intensely sweet.
And honestly, Lora Brody's cake recipe was about the best chocolate cake i've ever made. Although it really gave me a heart attack because i had used one 9,3/4" round springform instead of 2 9" ones and had to figure out the best cooking time for it (i switched it from a 35min cook time to about 1h5min cook time because my cake tester came out wet after 35min). Even a last minute idiot like me could whack out something so tasty from the oven, so you know how good this recipe is. What's so good about it ain't just the fact that it was no-fail. It's a very interesting recipe because on tasting, it's slightly deep-tasting and bitter from the coffee that is in it (yes, there's coffee!) but on moving the cake about in your mouth and mashing it between your tongue and the ceiling of your mouth, the sweetness starts to melt out of the cake and it's quite an amazing taste experience. While it's baking in the oven, it sure looks ugly but no worries because it tastes like a beauty!

This cake is good to fridge but must be taken out to thaw for an hour before serving. I've left mine out at room temperature and will fridge it for half an hour before eating. Can't wait!

If you're wondering how much the frosting recipe yields, for a 2 layer cake it's just about right. But since i was too lazy to slice my cake in half and turn it into a layer cake, the recipe yielded a little too much even though i'd only used 2,3/4cup icing sugar. My advice would be to half the recipe or simply be overly generous in your frosting. The vanilla extract is also a little too much for 1tbs, so i used only 2 tsp. And thanks goes to mel for calming my midnight jitters about baking time, great advice mel (the one about just standing guard by the oven and watching :D).

I wanted to be daring and copy nigella by throwing in horlicks (which i didn't have) or milo into the cake batter but i was a coward. figured it would be too risky to be held responsible for ruining the birthday cake and throwing a wet blanket on the whole occasion. Despite it not being the Malteser cake i initially wanted to make, i made up for that (hopefully) by decorating the final product with Clarissa's favourite candy. A simple garnishing would require one packet 40g of the candy. Something more fanciful or funny (like a heart design) would maybe need you to get two packets. Just have fun decorating! I sure did.

Speaking of chocolate cake, i had a fudge slice yesterday with caramel gelato at Estivo. It's located at Greenwood behind Raffles Girls' Pri. Greenwood has the most amazing food bistros and restaurants, my favourite being the Fish market restaurant that serves super good fish & chips (either beer batter fried or grilled in asian style). Anyway, it was an ice cream outing for my sister as a treat. She had a mocha gelato and a hotdog which she insisted was served with a sinfully good chilli sauce. I don't know bout that but the cake was quite good. It was buttery and chocolatey in the sense that there wasn't an overpowering sweetness but a good solid chocolate taste. The gelato we had were all normal flavours but it still tasted like a million bucks. I guess that's what makes a gelato good gelato, or at least a gelato maker a fabulous gelato maker. I'm not saying Estivo was world-class but it certainly made our day by serving out good ice cream in regular flavours ( & not so regular flavours like that kiwi sorbetto) and making us think of homemade goodness, lazy Sundays, Tom&Jerry cartoons on a peeling leather couch right from the comforts of an air-conditioned parlour.

Best Birthday Cake

Ingredients

2,1/4cup sugar

1,3/4 cake flour

1,1/4cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2,1/4tsp baking soda

1,1/4tsp baking powder

1/2tsp salt

3 eggs

1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 tbs vanilla

1,1/2 cup buttermilk

1tsp instant coffee/espresso powder dissolved in 3/4 cup boiling water, cooled

Preheat to 180dCelsius. Butter your pans and dust with flour.

In a large bowl, sift together the sugar, cake flour, cocoa, bkaing soda and powder and salt. In another bowl, beat the eggs and then beat in the melted butter and vanilla. With the mixer on medium speed, beat in the buttermilk & coffee mixture until just combined. The mixture will appear curdled. Pour this into a well formed in the flour mixture and beat until traces of flour disappear. Check that none of the floor has formed on the sides of the bowl, if so, use a spoon and gently mix it in. Divide the batter between the 2 pans and bake for 30-35min or until the cake pulls away from the sides of pans and cake tester inserted comes out clean. Transfer to rack and cool cakes in pan for 20min, no later. Then remove from pans to cool completely.

White frosting

4oz white chocolate, coarsely chopped

16oz cream cheese, at rtp

1 stick unsalted butter

4 cups icing sugar

semisweet chocolate shavings

Melt chocolate in bowl set over, but not touching a pan of simmering water. (I think it's called bandmarie?) When melted, let cool. In another bowl, beat cream cheese and butter together on high speed for about 4min. Reduce mixer speed to low and gradually mix in icing sugar. Increase speed to medium and beat for 2min. Add melted white chocolate & beat until well blended. Fridge the frosting, covered, until firm enough to spread.

When ready, slice your two cakes into 2 so you get 4 layers in all, then ice it generously, scattering the shavings on top thereafter. :)

Hello Christmas!

Potluck dinner tonight and my contribution was a Lemon,Yoghurt & Blueberry Cake. Got this recipe from Comfort Zone, a low fat recipe adapted from one of Alice Medriech's recipes. Thought the cake turned out fabulous! Tasted fantastic but mine turned out a little too moist because i was way too generous with the blueberries. (Used nearly 2 punnets instead of 1) So the cake was so fragile I had quite a bit difficulty removing it from the springform pan base. Despite the little amount (5tbs) of butter used, this cake didn't stick at all and i didn't even bother with greasing the pan. Amazing. The lemon glaze of the recipe was so simple and tasty too. Lemon juice with powdered sugar. It went fantastically well with the cake. I used 5 1/2 tbs of powdered sugar. Worked just perfectly.

And I used a slice of leftover lemon and some blueberries to garnish the top of the cake so it wouldn't look too empty. 2 sprigs of mint from my garden too.


Well I'm so terribly satisfied with this cake I can't wait to make it again when there's the occasion and best of all it uses yoghurt and tastes so much like a cheesecake of sorts! (low fat style :D)









And even better news to end the night, my aunt started asking about the price for a cake this size. Goodness! Interest in one of DIVANA's customised whole cakes! I'm excited. And am so glad I'm finally free of studying to enjoy baking and trying out recipes and thoroughly building up that mutual love affair with my oven.

I know my dad too is loving it. Fat paunch he has! Well so after the cake was done moved on to the roast chickens. This is one of my favourite chicken recipes. Pot-roasted Chicken with Sweet and Sour Sauce. It's from Jamie Oliver's 'Happy Days with the Naked Chef'. and it's a wonderful recipe, using the wondrous taste of fresh pineapple, peppers, fennel seeds and balsamic vinegar.
It has a twangy sweet spicy (from the chillis. used chilli padi instead of normal chilli. asian flavour) that's very unique and chicken meat has never tasted better. If the recipe is wanted, just email me or leave a comment asking for it!

So the dinner went pretty well. There was just too much food. But what really caught my attention was the chocolates table! My aunt bought some chocolates from Italy. Apparently you can find these in Cold Storage supermarket stores as well. The CREMINO ones are hazelnut chocolates and the other ones she had were large chocolate balls with nuts or crunchy bits in it. Soooo yummy. I'm in heaven. Christmas is heaven! Christmas is gorgeous. Christmas has made my tummy 10 times larger than it already is! God bless us.

Vanny Birthday

We made a cake yesterday for van's birthday today. That's good news! But the bad news is...we created our own cake?! One thing was we were reallly broke and couldn't afford really lavish ingredients like berries n all. Second thing was we really didn't have enough ingredients at home or the time to run out to the store to get em (things like half-and-half,heavy cream,sour cream,the makes). Third thing, we were kind of sick of the usual all-choc cake (but arh shucks, we used choc in the end) So we were really forced into doing things our own way.
Sam & Dav's Crazy Cake aka Chocolate-covered Cookie Butter Cake
White velvet butter cake layers with a chocolate frosting & OREO cookie filling.
It sounds pretty good ya?
The butter cake was a pretty basic recipe and was egg yolk-less. Check out the amount of yolks we wasted. But weren't they cute in that lil cup.

The cake layer was supposed to be pretty light and fluffy, especially since we used skimmed milk but it came out pretty dense like a pound cake. Sam figures it might have turned out more like an angel cake should she have fluffed up the egg whites until they were those cloud like white peaks. Well, at least it turned out more pound cake then car tire-like. Besides, we used 2,1/4tsp vanilla extract so the cakes smelt really good.

Next, we used up our left over espresso frosting we kept in the fridge and used that to ice the top of the bottom cake layer. Then sprinkled broken OREO bits onto that. We used 9 oreo cookies in all and kept 5 of the cream fillings.

Then we used more of the frosting to cover the bottom of the next cake layer so that the layers would mesh together. Finally we just iced the whole darn thing with our cocoa frosting. It isn't one of our prettier cakes I have to admit. Guess it really is just one crazy cake. :D

O in an effort to be artistic, we even made chocolate leaves to decorate the top. Ha. Doesn't matter. Van rated the cake fabulous. So one point for Sam's euphoria and my craziness. Don't think anyone would ever want this recipe. Cheers.

Housewarming

Today was the big day, big dinner. Tonnes of people came, and so many i had never ever seen before in my life. But they were friendly faces so that was alright. Got up way early in the morning to bake the cake for the dinner. It was a Debbi Field's Devil's Food Cake which basically means a pretty special Chocolate Cake with this wonderful chocolate icing. Did a bit of adjustments but it turned out just right. Think the only problem with it was that i might have beat too much between adding each egg so it ended up too light and crumbly?
Here's the recipe:
Ingredients
Cake:
6oz semisweet chocolate
1,3/4cup boiling water
1,1/4cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2cups sifted cake flour
2tsp baking soda
1/4tsp salt
1,1/4cup softened unsalted butter
1,3/4cup darked brown sugar
4 eggs
1tbs vanilla essence
Frosting:
1,1/4cup softened unsalted butter
4cups sifted powdered sugar
1cup unsweetened cocoa powder (it's very important that this is sifted otherwise your frosting would not be smooth but ugly and lumpy, though the taste wouldn't be affected)
1tbs vanilla essence
1/4cup + 2tbs lowfat milk (use full-fat milk if you want an even richer and thicker frosting)

Directions
Cake:
Preheat oven to 180dcelsius. Butter the sides of 2 springform 9" rounds and place a circularly cut baking parchment on the bottom of the pan.
Chop the chocolate and place into a bowl, pouring the boiling water over it. Set aside for a short while then add the cocoa and stir till smooth, rubbing the unmelted pieces at the sides till it melts into the mixture. Set aside to let cool to rtp.
In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.
Next, cream the butter and brown sugar until fluffy for around 4min on medium speed. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and beat well in between each addition.
Beat in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and half of the chocolate mixture. Beat to combine.
Add the remaining chocolate mixture and beat on low speed until smooth.
Divide the batter evenly between the 2 pans and bake for 30-35min.
Remove to cool on wire racks for 10min or so then remove the springform to let cool completely. After about another 10min, remove the baking parchment and the bottom pan.

Now to the frosting!
Put all the softened butter in a bowl and beat it with your electric mixer until fluffy. You'll know it's fluffy when the butter starts making a slicky little sound and looks pretty glossy.
Whisk together the sifted sugar and cocoa in another bowl and beat about a third of the mixture into the butter. Add the vanilla and beat.
Just keep beating~
Add the remaining of the mixture and beat until the frosting is ABSOLUTELY smooth.
Once your cake is completely cool and that is when you touch your cake, it's no longer warm, you can begin to frost it. I waited around an hour for mine to cool. Used that time to munch on some food, rest my aching feet and watch some tv (jungle book II was showing on cable).
So basically, get a cake stand or a cake plate and put the bottom cake layer on it. If it is slightly volcanoed like mine was, slice off the top to get a nicely flat surface. Do the same for the other layer if it is so.
Using a metal spatula, lop on a generous amount of frosting and in neat gentle circles, (or by simply moving the plate) ice the top. Then place the next layer on top, arranging it such that it is directly above the bottom layer, frost the top and the sides to give a very smooth looking cake.

Debbi Field's used a pastry bag to pipe decorative rosettes but i did mine simply by using cranberries and fresh strawberries. Try using peaches, kiwis or whatever fruits. They go well with such a cake and add a burst of colour to the deep brown richness of the cake as well. Just make sure you keep the cake cool because my cranberries started to bleed after all in the warm tropical air of Singapore. :S