Ham & Cheese Bread Cup

Post-Christmas..I'm sure many of you would have left-over of turkey and ham. Well, we didn't have turkey but plenty of ham left. Beside having them with my favorite instant noodles, decided to bake ham & cheese bread. Munch Ministry site has been popping with a lot of similar bread but in cups. I bought some pretty cupcake liners from Taobao spree earlier and this is a good chance to put them at use.

I picked a recipe from this book and had my friend helped to translate it to English for me. This book uses tangzhong (a mixture of bread flour with liquid cooked over stove until it is 65C).

Adding tangzhong into bread helps to make it soft & fluffy! Apparently if you get the tz cooked right the bread remain soft for days.

Ham & Cheese bread in cup

Tangzhong

50g bread flour

250g milk/water or 50:50 water & milk

To prepare tangzhong, combine bread flour and milk into a saucepan and cook over low fire. Keep stirring until mixture thicken and trailing lines are formed. Temperature of the mixture should be 65c hence the name 65c tangzhong.

Dough

540g bread flour

86g sugar

8g salt

11g instant yeast

86g egg

59g dairy whipped cream

54g milk

9g milk powder

184g tangzhong

49g unsalted butter

How?
- Using your bread maker (you can still follow these steps if you are using a mixer or hand), add all wet ingredients first - milk, tangzhong,egg, whipped cream.
- Follow by all the dry ingredients - flour, milk powder, sugar, salt & yeast. It's very important to place both salt and yeast to be far apart.
- Knead until dough is form. Using the bread maker it'll take approximately 10 minutes. Add in butter and continue kneading.
- Your bread is ready for proofing when you have achieved the window-pane effect on the dough. Proof the dough for 60 minutes covered with a piece of damp cloth or clingwrap.
- At the end of proofing, your dough should be at least double in size. Punch out air from the dough and gv it a few quick knead.
- Divide the dough into small rounds of 50g - 60g depending on how big is the cupcake liner used. Alternatively, you can shape the dough any way you like, wrapped, twist or rolled.
- Place shaped dough in the cupcake liner and put any topping of your choice. For this, I used honey baked ham with cheese slices.
- Once done, let the shaped dough do its last proofing for 45 minutes.
- Preheat oven at 170C and bake bread for 25 minutes.
- Store in airtight container when bread has completely cooled down.

Baking in progress

Bread in loaf tin

Ham & Cheese bread

Kjeldson Butter Cookies

I baked these last week as a pre-Christmas gifts for colleagues. It was my fave Danish butter cookies! Yeap.. Those that came in blue round tin. This biscuit has been going round the blogging scene recently so I Googled it as well.

Alan's website came out and I like the way pictures were taken and explanation seems easy. Why not??

I only need flour, icing sugar, good quality butter & vanilla paste which I substituted with vanilla extract. The steps are easy for novices like me. Do not over-mix the dough.

Piped the dough on baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

Try it.. you will not regret it.

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!