Trenyce's Birthday Cake

Decided to make a cake for Trenyce birthday celebration last weekend. After google thru the web for ideas, thought that castle cake is easy to manage. As the sponge cake is not that dense to hold 2 layers of sponge cake on 2nd deck, I remove 1 slice and just make a shorter 2nd deck for this cake. Maybe I didn't stress myself to deliver a perfect cake, it turns out acceptable. Most important the kids are happy with the cake :)

Blueberry Muffins

The kids requested for some afternoon snacks, as I was busy with housework and was left with little time to bake something for their tea, quick browse through my books and saw this recipe, so made 2 recipes of it, one batch of muffins were added with blueberry while the other batch I added in some chocolate crunchy pearls(was lazy to chop the chocolate bar into chips) per the kids' request. This recipe was adapted from the book Okashi by Keiko Ishida, although I didn't do the topping still its nice just eat on its own.

 



Ingredients (make 6 muffins)

120g Pastry flour

1tsp Baking powder

100g Fresh blueberries ( I use frozen ones)

50g Unsalted butter, softened

40g brown sugar

30g caster sugar (I use 25g)

1 Egg, about 65g

60g cold fresh whole milk

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Sift flour and baking powder twice(I only did once). Set aside 18 blueberries.

2. Beat butter with and electric handheld mixer until soft and creamy. Add both sugar and beat until mixture is light and fluffy. Add egg and beat until well-combined.

3. Add one-third flour and fold in with a spatula. Add half of milk and continue to fold batter gently. Add another one third of flour and fold in, followed by the remaining milk. Add remainging flour and fold through, but do not over-mix. Add remaining blueberries and fold in gently.

4. Spoon batter into cases until three-quarter full. Divide the 18 blueberries among each muffin (3 for each). Bake for about 25-30min or until muffin have a springy texture when pressed gently.

5. Leave muffins to cool on a wire rack. They are best served warm, and consumed the day they are baked or the day after. If not consuming immediately, store in and airtight container and refrigerate for up to 4 days, freeze for up to 2 weeks.

Pineapple tarts'13

This year I cooked my own pineapple jam or my tarts. Bought 8 pineapples to made the jam and endup with  
lots of left over pineapple jam, made two portions of the pastry for my sisters and my own family. The left over jam will do closed tarts to finish it. I prefer salty to sweet pastry to balance the jam sweet sour taste, so I do not add sugar to the pastry.

Pastry:
250g butter
365g plain flour } sifted together
20g corn flour   }
2 egg yolks
a pinch of salt
egg wash


Method:
1. Cut butter into smaller pieces, rub butter to the sifted plain flour and corn flour and salt mixture until it become like bread crumb.
2. Add in egg yolks and let the flour mixture combine and become a dough. Do not over knead the dough.
Chill the dough for 30min.
3. Roll the dough between two sheets of plastic. Sprinkle a little flour on the surface of the dough, cut out the shape of the tart with cookie cutter. Shape the jam into a ball and place on top of the pastry. Brush the tarts with some egg wash.
4. Bake at 160deg C for 25min. Remove from oven and cool. Store in container when tarts are fully cooled.

Kuih Bangkit

I have a little bit more time this year to make cookies for Chinese New Year, I picked kuih bangkit as one of them. I did two portions of Ms Valarie Kong's recipe that I learned couple of years back and also did one recipe from Alan Ooi's cookie book.

Valarie's Kuih Bangkit

Alan Ooi Kuih Bangkit

Below is the recipe for Alan Ooi's Kuih Bangkit from the book 'New Year Cookies published by y3k"..

Ingredients:

3 egg yolks

120g icing sugar

150g concentrated cocconut milk

400g tapioca flour (stir fry in a wok over very low heat till flour become light, sieve and leave it to cool and store for at least 2-3 days)

Method:

1. Beat the egg yolk and icing sugar with a hand-held electric mixer till consistency is thick and creamy. Add in coconut milk and mix well. Lastly, stir in cooled tapioca flour and knead dough thoroughly by hand till dough is white and has a light-textured touch.

2. Roll out dough between two pieces of plastic sheet. Use cookie cutter and cut out the desire shapes. Place them on lined baking trays. Baked in a preheated oven at 170degC for 15-20min. Cookies should be white and not browned. Cool them.

Tips: (extracted from the book)

1.Tapioca flour must be well fried so it becomes light. The cooling process will enable the flour to absorb in the coconut milk so dough will be soft.

2. Dough must be well kneaded to produce light cookies that can melt-in-the-mouth.

3. Always keep dough covered with a piece of clean kitchen towel to prevent drying out.

4. Its also useful to keep some extra coconut milk aside. Sprinkle a little onto dought when texture is very dry. Knead well to smoothen it.