Monkey Queen

Had not been baking much lately due to work commitments. But for my MIL's birthday, I just had to bake a special one. She's the one that's always standing up for me and being there for me and my children.



She's born in the year of the Monkey, so here's what I baked for her :



Its a mango sponge cake (her favourite) and the monkey is modelled using home-make gumpaste. Only after cutting the cake did I realise that I forgot to give the Monkey a tail!

Happy Birthday Mom!!

Pandan Chiffon

Have not baked a chiffon cake for quite some time. Love the ultra-soft texture of the chiffon cake. So while I still have some coconut milk from the supermarket, decided to try the pandan chiffon cake.

The secret of the chiffon cake is really in the beating of the egg white. Here's what it should look like... a little shiny and gathers around the whisk.



The yolks, coconut milk, pandan paste and flour are mixed together in a seperate bowl.

Put about half of the egg white in the egg yolk bowl and fold it in.

Then pour all of this mixture back to the egg white bowl and fold it in. Here's what it looks like when the folding is complete.



Remember to run the spatula through the cake mix in the tin or drop the tin from about 5cm from table a couple of times, to get rid of big bubbles.






And here's the end result. Nice and fluffy!

New Year's Day Feast

Did I ever mention that my mother-in-law is a great cook? To borrow a word from my son's vocabulary - the 'bestest'. :-)

To her, to cook is therapeutic, so despite her bad cough, she cooked up a storm for us on New Year's Day. On the menu : her famous Nonya Poh Piah (must stress that its Nonya), mee siam and fish porridge.


Here's the table setup. Ingredients include (clockwise direction), starting from vegetables (chinese lettuce and chinese pasley), raw garlic paste, chilli, ground peanuts, finely chopped hard boiled eggs, prawns, fried eggs, chinese sausage, cubed tau kwa, shredded cucumber and bean sprouts. Oh, and the sweet sauce. The middle bowl is for the turnip.




You see the up-turned bowl in within the larger bowl? That's to help 'dry' the turnip, the sauces will flow into the bowl and keep the turnip drier for easy handling.

This picture's with the turnip. Oh, there's also my favourite deep fried garlic (missing in pic).

Here are some samples of the poh piah creations.My mother-in-law's version that has everything, except peanuts:

My brother-in-law's friend's version. He made the most jumbo of all poh piahs with tablespoons of sweet sauce. One can conclude he has a sweet tooth plus a jumbo appetite.

Another of my brother-in-law's friend's. He's either very creative or just trying to be funny.

Anyway, after its all wrapped up, they all look similar, like this:






Oh, my mother-in-law also made pie tee shells.. which unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of.



Here's the mee siam and silly me forgot to take photos of it in a bowl. Too busy slurping it up. :)





In the evening, my husband, the fisherman who abandoned his wife and kids to go fishing on new year's day, came back with sotong, fish and prawns which was promptly steamed and served. So quickly was it eaten.. there were no photos.

Hopefully, this year I can learn to cook too... at least some simple dishes. I am really hopeless in this department! My wish is to be half as good as MIL. Eh... that's too ambitious, just 1/8 is good enough. Ha ha.

Chocolate Wassant

I am a fan of the chocolate wassant bread at Provence Bakery, so are a lot of my friends and colleagues. Sometimes, at lunch time, we would detour to Holland Village to pick up bags of the soft, fluffy bread.

And after coming across the chocolate swirl bread at Happy HomeBaker blogsite (sorry I don't know how to create a link), I decided to use the recipe of the chocolate paste and my favourite cream bread recipe to re-create the chocolate wassant at home.

Here's a tray of lovely wassants :


Not quite as lovely as the ones at Provence, but hey, I'm only a novice. This is actually my fourth attempt already. I think the best was my third attempt, which I managed to get three layers (like Provence's, as I observed) of chocolate paste in between before I roll them into tiny croissants.





I rolled out the bread dough into a large rectangle and spread the chocolate paste on it using a spatula. Hmm.. an idea just crossed my mind, next time, I will try spreading nutella, I bet it will taste just as great. The best will be three layers of chocolate, but I only managed two. Roll the dough even thinner, then cut them into little triangles. Roll each triangle like a tiny croissant and they will look lovely like this :



From my last few attempts, I learned that what is key to ensuring that the bread is soft and fluffy is to ensure that you do not bake it too long. My first attempt, I baked at 180 degrees for 12 minutes. It was OK, but not soft enough. In this attempt, I baked the bread at 200 degrees for about 8 minutes. The bread is soft, slightly crisp outside and very nicely browned, without any egg-wash. But I think the best was when I baked it at 180 degrees for 8-9 minutes, almost as soft as Provence's and stayed that way for couple of days.

Nativity

Two Christmases ago, I saw a nativity cake on CakeCentral and secretly harboured the ambitions to create a similar cake. It was full of beautifully hand modeled fondant figurines that I can only dream of making. This Christmas, I finally made my version of the nativity cake, drawing inspirations from the one that I've seen, for a family Christmas eve party.

Here's Joseph, Mary and baby Jesus....


I used store-bought Wilton fondant to mould the figures. I usually buy the white coloured ones as they are cheaper and I can colour them on my own, using Wilton gel colours. Baby Jesus was suppose to be sleeping on a bed of straws.. I did not have the tools to make the straws so it looked as if he is sleeping on a bed of worms... The two beige round lumps you saw at the back are 'heads'. I was thinking of making the three wise men but I ran out of fondant and had to make two shepherds instead. Then I realised I did not even have enough fondant for two shepherds... so I made my own gumpaste (since this is the only recipe I have on hand that I have all ingredients).

Here's the final cake.

The pictures was not very well taken as I only managed to finish the cake like half an hour before the party and the lighting was bad. But I thought its a very lovely cake, couldn't wish for more. Cake is 12" chocolate banana cake with low fat ganache (recipe from Creative Culinaire).

Closeup.

The thing about fondant is that it 'sweats' when put on top of icing and colour can smear so I usually try to use less strong colours to prevent dis-colouring my cakes.



My favourites are the little lambs.. they are tiny as a twenty cent coin and really cute. I smeared compound chocolate on the cake board, let it harden about 80%, then sprinkled some brown caster sugar on top before placing the figures on top. I like the effect, it looks like sand with a little bit of shimmer. Grass is icing sugar left over from my cookies decoration.

The shepherd with the beard is made with my home-made gumpaste and it dried solid hard but is also brittle, especially the thin parts. The fondant made ones are still malleable. This is my first experience with gumpaste.. will try putting him in the fridge to see if he 'melts'.

Here are some of the cookies that I made. Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year to you!! Cheers!!

And a very happy snowman!

Christmas!!

Wow! Has been more than a month since my last post... how time flies...

Had been busy at work and at home with little time for baking. Even had to turn down some opportunities to create cakes.

My little girl is going through the 'terrible twos' phase and her bad temper is ignited by the smallest thing that goes against her wishes. She'd then cry inconsolably for the next hour. I'm almost pulling my hair out!

Anyway, here are some cookies and treats I made last year for the Christmas season. I pray I get sometime to do the same this year.

1) Marshmellow Snowman

Marshmellows coated with white chocolate, on a skewer. M&M buttons and noses. Eyes and hands are piped chocolate. Easy to make and oh so cute!

2) Christmas cookies

An assortment of chocolate cookies (recipe taken from wilton), decorated with royal icing, which I packed in little bags and gave away to dear colleagues in the office.

How long did it take to decorate these? Back-breaking long.

3) Joy to the World!

The Lord is come! Christ bring salvation to the nations and we celebrate with joy, the birth of baby Jesus.

Stained glass effect created using coloured piping gel.

A Merry Christmas to all! May you experience the real joy of Christmas.

Sandals and ipod

Apologies! Had been so busy lately. Did do some baking on the weekends, but have not even uploaded the files from camera to computer yet.... So I'll share some pics of cake I've done some time ago.

This one's for my nephew's 21 birthday. A 'cool' cake - beach theme, complete with sandals, 'sand' sea shells, starfish, a crab and the indispensable ipod for the young adult. Everything is edible, except the 'screen' of the ipod which is just a piece of paper.

The straps of the sandals of strips of licorice. Sea shells, crab, starfish are all made of fondant. The ipod is biscuit wrapped with fondant. I am especially proud of the ear phones, I thought they look quite real. *argghh* cannot find a close-up pic of the ear phones.

Anyway, a lot of his guests were amazed by the cake and they actually ate up the earphones and the ipod...