Littlest Baby turn 3

~ Edited ~
It is a big affair for Kieran turning 3! Weeks leading to his actual day he kept asking when is his birthday, where will we be going, he wanted a rainbow cake, will we sing to him etc etc etc...imagine me having to answer the same questions over and over again. At least a hundred times.. haha

I promised him that I will bake him a rainbow cake but since it is for kids at school, I rather they not eat too much food coloring. Instead, I baked him a Chocolate Fudge Cake - which kids do not like chocolates? So I set out to work with fondant, creating a rainbow, cutting out the letters on Wednesday so that it can dry up properly by Friday. I am quite satisfied with the outcome of the fondant this time round except when covering the cake. I never seem to be able to roll out a big piece of fondant to cover the cake properly. Boo..

Kieran is as usual very forgiving when it comes to mummy. The cake is not very satisfactory, the rainbow broke (my guess is that it is too big and thin), the covering of cake was messy, because of the humid weather, the buttercream melted faster than usual, creating a mess. Another boo boo

See how I have to 'pou' those area that cannot be covered fully by the fondant. And because the buttercream created such a mess at the bottom of the cake, I put in pearl pops (bought from Candylicious). Kids love it..haha 

My vision for the cake was like the above but but but the rainbow broke. So I had to improvise by placing the rainbow flat on the cake.. ok lar, still look good. I especially love the white clouds. Personally felt adding some tylose into fondant makes it so much easier to shape.

Joy to Kieran during birthday is the singing, blowing of candle and cake cutting. Poor rainbow was 'mutilated'. Well, as long as he is happy, what else matters?

I did not manage to capture a picture of the cake after it was cut. It was chaotic with the kids hoarding the balloonist. Special mention to Balloon Blasters for such awesome arrangement.
The cake was awesome, fudgy and moist. Yummy! Kieran ate them all.. which is pretty rare for him.

Chocolate Fudge Cake (recipe from Nigella's site)

400g plain flour
250g* golden castor sugar (I do not know what is this so I used white castor sugar)
100g light muscovado sugar
50g best-quality cocoa powder (Valrhona is the best imo)
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 large eggs
142ml sour cream (I used light sour cream)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
175g unsalted butter (melted and cooled)
125g corn oil
300ml chilled water

How?
- Preheat oven to 180C, butter and line 2 8" round pan. I used 1 8" round pan and slice the cake into 3 layers. Whichever suit your preferences.
- In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients, flour, castor sugar, muscovado sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt. Set aside.
- Using a measuring jug, whisk together eggs, vanilla extract and sour cream until well mixed.
- Beat cooled melted butter with corn oil until blended. Add in chilled water. Give it a quick stir.
- Add in the dry ingredients all at once and mix at low speed. Finally, add in the egg mixture and mix until all combined.
- Pour into the prepared tin.
- Bake for 55 - 60 minutes or until skewers comes out clean.
- Once baked, cool the cake for 15 minutes before removing it to cool completely.
- Decorate as per your liking.

*I reduce sugar from 250g to 180g

p/s: I did not use mixer be it machine or handheld for this cake. Everything is done using a whisk which I felt is good enough. This prevents us from over mixing the batter. Also I am lazy in washing so I only used minimum utensils - 1 mixing bowl, 2 small bowls, whisk and a measuring scoop. Lazy me..

We continued Kieran's birthday celebration at USS - and this time round we make it a point to go for all rides which are applicable for the kids of course! The boys enjoyed themselves tremendously.

To celebrate with family members and close friends, we had a BBQ session on Saturday night. Food was great.. I ordered majority cooked food so that everyone get to eat quickly. Just heat it up and good to go. Chicken wings were good too. Yummy yummy..I must say this BBQ session is the best I had so far.

Using the same recipe above, I made them into cupcakes (original intention was rainbow cake but unfortunately the cake flopped big time). I used Sally's Baking Addiction's White Chocolate Buttercream as frosting. Yummilicious..

I find that using 1M tip for frosting really makes a lot of difference on the cupcakes. So beautiful..

This is the cake I made as a trial for Kieran's birthday. Spiderman themed which I think was really nice but Kieran insisted that he wanted a rainbow cake. Pretty adamant about it. Plan changed hence the cake shown above.

Rainbow Cake

I decided since January that Kieran's 3rd birthday celebration will carry the theme of Rainbow! Yep..my happy cheery boy loves rainbow, so does Zachary. It is such a fun theme to work on and I have already done several bookmarked from Pinterest (don't you just love Pinterest for having everything  and anything you need under the sun; party ideas, deco ideas, food ideas etc etc etc. the list is limitless)

Last year, I tried baking rainbow cupcakes and it was disaster. I attempted it again over the last weekend and I am glad I had the courage to bake it once more. The result was great.. it receives great reviews from both my boys and colleagues of myself and hb's. Happy happy.. instead of the usual cream cheese or whipped cream, I used my favorite peanut butter frosting but something went wrong (I tried a new recipe) and it was a tad too sweet to my liking. Ugh.. i really have no sweet tooth I must say.

Baking a rainbow cake will require a white cake as base.. I refuse to bake one from ready made box you buy off the shelf so I start to source for recipes; Nigella, Joy of Baking etc etc etc.. then I saw this lady, BakingTaiTai baked her rainbow cake..looks good! I shall try her butter cake recipe. Her recipe calls for high content of sugar. I reduced them drastically but still sweet to my liking. I will definitely use her recipe again. The cake was moist and soft, mainly due to the egg white and milk that was used.

Assembling the cake was a messy affair. Instead of the usual stacked rainbow cake, I ventured out to try checkered board rainbow cake. I googled on how to assemble it. Looks pretty easy. Obviously I underestimated the effort. The moment I cut out the shape, my cake broke. Some broke by few pieces. I was sad of course but luckily it will not be noticed.

Rainbow Cake (recipe adapted from BakingTaiTai)

- 150g unsalted butter
- 250g castor sugar (I reduced to 180g; I will reduce it further)
- 3 large egg whites
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 280g cake flour
- 2 1/2 baking powder
- 240ml fresh milk

Food coloring: Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, Violet, Orange

How?
- Preheat oven to 180C and prepare 6 (I use 5) 6" round baking pan. I use disposables cake pan from Phoon Huat.
- In a clean bowl, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This will take about 5 minutes.
- Add in egg whites few additions at a time, making sure it is well incorporated.
- Mix in the vanilla extract next.
- Alternating between cake flour + baking powder and milk, mix them in 3 additions, starting with flour followed by milk.
- Continue beating the batter for additional 1 minute.
- Divide the cake batter into equal bowls (roughly 270g each) and mix it with food coloring. The trick is to mix a little food coloring at a time to make sure the color is not too intense. I am using Wilton gel coloring.
- Bake in oven for 15 minutes or until inserted skewer comes out clean.

Assembling the cake
- Once the cake is cooled, wrapped them in cling wrap and pop them into the fridge. This will help when cutting out the round shapes.
- In the mean time, prepare the frosting (you can use any frosting that you like).
- Starting with violet as the base, cut out the round shape using cookie cutter/cake ring. Do the same for blue, using the 2nd smallest round shape cutter.
- Frost the inner part of the cake, and place them nicely surrounding the violet cake. Repeat for the other colors.
- Crumb coat the cake (mine came up to almost 8" tall!) and let it set in the fridge. Cover the remaining of the cake with frosting and decorate as you wish.

Steps to assemble the cake

Batter before baking - love the bright colors

After baking. The colors of the baked cakes is the same as the batter

Using cake rings, cut the cake - some of my cake split. Too soft.

Putting together the first layer

A very very tall cake and I frosted it with peanut butter buttercream. The boys love it!

After cutting the cake.. need to improve on the color arrangement though

Deeply Dark Devil's Food Cake

I bought this book off Amazon some time ago and been flipping the pages on a daily basis, making mental bookmark on what I wanted to bake from this book. I have heard rave reviews on all Tish's cake and saw a few recipes that call for sour creams! That will be later.

Decided to go with a simple and quick chocolate cake so I chose Deeply Dark Devil's Food Cake as my maiden cake from Tish Boyle's The Cake Book! No regrets..the cake was extremely soft due to the amount of liquid used.

However, I made a boo boo when I converted the temperature wrongly and before I realise it, the cake 'exploded' on top. My heart sank and broke. I used my bought-long-time-never-used heart shaped pan for this cake. Ahh.. I shall attempt this cake again next time.

Note that the recipe below is for half portion as  the full recipe will yield a pretty tall cake - family of 2 adults and 2 kids cannot finish such big cake. =)

Deeply Dark Devil's Food Cake by Tish Boyle
(half recipe)

- 106g all-purpose flour*
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp + 1/8 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 1/4 tsp + 1/8 tsp of salt
- 78g unsalted butter, room temperature
- 150g sugar (I reduced it to 120g)
- 31g cocoa powder (I used Valrhona cocoa powder)
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 160ml warm water

* I do not have all-purpose flour, so I substituted it with self-raising flour and I omitted baking powder and salt.

How?
- Grease the bottom and side of your cake pan generously and dust with flour.
- Preheat oven to 325F or 160C.
- Sift flour and bicarbonate of soda together and whisk till well blended. Set aside.
- In a clean bowl, beat butter at medium speed until creamy, about 1 minute.
- Gradually add the sugar and beat at high speed until the mixture is pale and we; blended, about 3 minutes.
- Add cocoa powder and beat at medium speed for 1 minute. using a spatula, scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
- Beat in the egg followed by vanilla extract.
- Turn your mixer to low speed, add the flour mixture in three additions, alternating it with warm water in two additions. That is flour, water, flour, water and flour.
- Scrape down the side of the bowl and mix at low speed for 30 seconds.
- Pour the batter into prepared pan and smooth the top.
- Bake for 25 - 30 minutes, until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
- Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack for 20 minutes.
- Remove the side of the pan and invert the cake onto the rack. Let it cool completely.

Bon appetit!

Strawberry Shortcake

It was a dear colleague's birthday on 12 Nov so few of us decided to do a mini celebration in the office. The unofficial baker that is me took up the challenge to bake her a cake.
I always wanted to bake a strawberry shortcake Japanese style. The sponge layer must be cottony soft with the right amount of whipped cream in between. From Monday I was Google-ing a few recipes and saw the recipe from Rima's blog that look super duper awesome. It was simple and quick too. Right..this is the one

Strawberry Shortcake
145g cake flour
15g cornflour
1 egg
5 egg yolks
150g butter
65g fresh milk

Meringue
5 egg whites
100g castor sugar
1/4 tsp salt

How?
- Preheat oven to 160C. Prepare a 9"square pan and wrapped the bottom layer with aluminum foil.
- Heat milk and butter in a small pot until warm. Do not let it boil. The butter will be melted by then.
- Remove pot from heat and add in sifted flour and cornflour. Mix. It will be lumpy at this stage.
- Transfer mixture to a bigger bowl and add in lighted whisked egg and egg yolks.
- Mix the batter until smooth.


- This is how the batter should look like.
- In another clean bowl, beat egg white until frothy.
- Add in salt and sugar in 3 addition.
- Beat the egg white till soft peak.
- Add 1/3 of the egg white mixture into the egg batter and mix well. Add the remaining egg whites and fold gently.
- Pour cake batter into prepared tin.
- Bake it using bain marie method for 45 minutes.


I am using another larger square pan and fill it with water to steam bake the sponge cake.

Whipped Cream
2 tsp gelatine powder
8 tsp cold water
2 cup whipping cream, keep cold
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

How?
- In a small saucepan, sprinkle gelatine on the surface of the cold water. Let rest for 5 minutes.
- Place pan over low heat and stir constantly until gelatine dissolves. Remove pan from fire and set aside to cool.
- Using a clean bowl and chilled beaters, beat whipping cream, icing sugar and vanilla extract till it thickens.
- At low speed, gradually pour in gelatine mixture and beat till stiff peak.

To assemble the cake

- Cut the cake horizontally. It is easier to cut with less cake crumbs if the cake is chilled. I chilled the cake for about 3 hours but 30 minutes is suffice.

- Brush some syrup (mixture of sugar and water) on the cut layer cake.

- Spread some whipped cream on the cake followed by cubed strawberries. Cover with another thin layer of whipped cream.

- Place the other layer of cake on top and brush with syrup.

- Spread a thin layer of whipped cream and chill the cake (this steap is known as crumb coating).

- After 30 minutes - 1 hour, cover with another layer of whipped cream, smoothen it or piped with design.

- Decorate as you wish.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SERENE!

Pandan Chiffon Cake

Lately I have been reading a lot of blogs about making pandan chiffon cake. Almost all of them bake them using home-made pandan essence.
I googled and saw Wendy's blog on how to make pandan essence in step by step. I went to the provision shop immediately and bought 3 packet of pandan leaves. As I do not have a food processor at home, I depended on the Braun handheld blender to blend the pandan leaves. Haha.. wrong move! My wall tiles and floor tiles were covered with splatters of pandan juices..haha. I have a helluva time cleaning up after that.

I made the above pandan essence 2 days in advance so that the extract may settle down nicely. Look at how thick and nice the color of the pandan juice are.

Pandan Extract
30 leaves of pandan / screwpine leaves
1/2 cup of water

How?
- Wash and cut the pandan leaves into small pieces
- Add 1/2 cup of water.
- Using a food processor, blend the pandan leaves till fine.
- Using a food strainer or muslin cloth, squeeze out the pandan juice till dry.
- I place them in a clear glass and covered with clingwrap and place them in the fridge to settle.
- The dark green section at the bottom of the glass is the essence. To get that, pour away the top part (I kept the middle section of the juice for my pandan cake).
- The above will yield 2 tbsp of pandan essence.

Pandan Chiffon Cake
(recipe adapted from Kevin Chai basic chiffon recipe)

Cake batter

4 egg yolk (egg without shell should weigh approximately 60g each)
45g castor sugar (I reduce to 40g)
70ml coconut milk
70ml oil
45ml pandan juice (including 2 tbsp pandan essence)
150g cake flour/plain flour
1tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt

Meringue

4 egg white
80g castor sugar (I reduce to 70g)
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

How?
- Preheat oven to 175 degree.
- Prepare a 20-cm tube pan
- Whisk egg yolk and sugar until it dissolves.
- Add in coconut milk, oil, pandan juice and pandan essence.
- Mix well
- Sift in flour and baking powder. Add salt
- Whisk the cake batter until well mixed.
- In a clean bowl, beat egg white until it is frothy (about 30s)
- Add cream of tartar and 1/3 of castor sugar. Continue to beat until soft peak.
- Add in remaining sugar gradually and beat until just before stiff peak.
- Taking 1/3 of the meringue, add into the cake batter and mix well.
- Pour the cake batter into the remaining egg white and fold gently (I fold for about 20 times until no more streak of egg whites can be seen).
- Pour the mixture into the tube pan. Knock the pan several times on your kitchen counter.
- Bake for 40 - 45 minutes.

Look at the natural hue of green on my finished cake. Taste awesome..as I am typing this I am contemplating should I bake one next week. :)

Topo Map Cake

Topo or topography is related to Geography - a subject I hated most in school. Haha.. Saw this cake a few times when I was surfing and it really interest me how a simple butter cake can be made into such nice formation.

I checked out Wendy's blog and some recipe found on Munch Ministry. Being the kiasu me, I of course went with an experienced food blogger's recipe..keke

Frankly this cake is fairly easy to do and it taste really good and moist.

Topo Map Cake
(source: Table for 2..or more)

250g butter
250g sugar *
5 eggs (the eggs I used weigh about 57g each)
300g cake flour
1tsp baking powder
125ml evaporated milk
1tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp pandan extract
Some cocoa powder for the topo lines

How?
- Cream butter and sugar until pale and fluffy
- Add in eggs, one at a time. Beat well after each additon
- Sift half of flour and baking powder. Beat on low speed until combined
- Pour in evaporated milk and beat on low speed until combined
- Add in remaining flour and beat on low speed until combined.
- The batter is now ready. Pour half of the batter into a separate bowl and mix in pandan extract in one part and another with vanilla extract.
- Spread 1/2 of the pandan batter into lined and greased pan. Level it.
- Carefully, sift a layer of cocoa powder on the batter.
- Gently, scoop a dollop of alternate batter (if pandan was used as base, put vanilla batter next or vice versa). Level the batter, becareful not to scrape off the cocoa powder.
- Repeat with a layer of sifted cocoa powder and pandan batter.
- Repeat layering until all batter has been used it.
- Bake for 45 minutes or when toothpick comes out clean. Oven temperature is 180C.

Chocolate Banana Cake ala Awfully Chocolate

Baby Kieran will be turning 1 on 13 June 2012. Being the youngest son to a busy working parents is no fun at all. He didn't get as many toys as his older brother, nor he get many new clothings. Bad mummy..

Feeling bad, I tried to make amends by giving him more perks for his birthday bash - hiring entertainers. Hahaha.. On actual day, I decided to bake him a birthday cake instead of getting it from bakery. Personalised.

I did a trial over the weekend, following Aunty Yochana's recipe from her blog. I am glad the sponge cake turn out good but lazy mummy decided to skip the mousse part and place the banana directly on the cake batter. WRONG! The cake was overly moist and damp at the bottom.. sigh. I shall follow every recipe to the dot and not try to be smarty to change or amend unless I am very very confident of it.

Chocolate cake that is not frosted yet

Decorated cake with chocolate ganache and Zach helped with the M&M deco

I will start baking the actual cake on Monday and decorate it on Tuesday night so that we can give him a birthday 'mini' party on Wednesday! Wish me luck...

Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake

One of the many food blogs that I follow, this particular one caught my interest the most! A SAHM with 3 kids and yet she manage to whip up really good cakes, dishes etc and her photography skills are really good too. None other than The Little Teochew.

Inspired by her Cotton Soft Cheesecake, I attempted to bake one for my dad's birthday! It was a near disaster.. the cake was practically in the oven for 12 hrs! Hahaha.. I attempted the 2nd time earlier this week and this time round, I made a real small cake and I finish it on my own..that spells FAT. It was a success..Happy! Next time I will bake the same cake again and decorate it..

Cotton Soft Japanese Cheesecake (recipe from here)

Awfully Chocolate Banana Cake - a keeper!

This recipe is a keeper! I've decided to start blogging down those recipes that I've tried and taste-tested to be good into my journal so that I can remember :)

Awfully Chocolate Banana Cake (adapted from Aunty Yochana)
Prep time: 15minutes

Chocolate Sponge Cake
(A)
4 egg yolk
100g castor sugar
120g self raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
50g corn oil
1 tsp vanilla essence

30g cocoa powder + 120g hot water - stir till smooth

(B)
4 egg white
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
60g (50g) castor sugar

Method
1. Put (A) into a mixing bowl and mix them well.
2. Pour in cocoa mixture and stir till smooth.
3. Whip egg white and cream of tartar together till frothy (about 30s) on speed 2.
4. Add in sugar and continue whip for 2 minutes till soft peak (not stiff peak else it will be difficult to fold).
5. Take 1/3 of the egg white mixture and mix into the chocolate mixture. Mix well.
6. Pour the chocolate mixture into the remaining egg white and fold gently. Becareful not to overmix or the egg white will deflate and the cake will sink)
7. Pour mixture into a 9" cake pan (square or round) and bake at 175C for 50minutes or when inserted skewer comes out clean.
8. Leave on wire rack to cool.

Chocolate Mousse
400g (300g) Whip Cream
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp gelatine + 4tbsp water - microwave for 20 seconds
50g cocoa powder + 80g (50g) icing sugar
1 1/2 tbsp Nescafe + 1 1/2 hot water
1 tbsp baileys or tia maria (I omit this)

2 large ripe Del Monte Bananas - slice thickly

Method
1. Beat whip cream till soft peak
2. Mix all the ingredients together

Assembling
1. Slice the sponge cake into 3 layer.
2. Spread chocolate mousse on the first layer, arrange sliced bananas and spread another layer of chocolate mousse to cover.
3. Top with second layer of sponge cake and repeat (2).
4. Cover the cake with remaining mousse and let it set in fridge for an hour or so.

Ganache
35g cocoa powder
50g (30g) castor sugar
150g whip cream
30g butter
80g cooking chocolate - I use white chocolate

Method:
1. Double-boil all the ingredient above till it thickens and become a smooth batter.
2. Let it cool completely before pouring it onto the cake

*measurement in bracket is the one I used - I prefer to reduce the sugar for health reason.