Mocha coffee cake

24 June 2007

I'm using this Mocha coffee cream cake recipe. It uses instant coffee and cocoa powder. I did prepare the cream but I make the cake look worse after spreading the cream. Better not take any photos. Here's how it looks like just out of oven.

It's a good try for me. I manage to do it without serious mistakes. Overbake a little bit. Shall cut the baking time to 40 minutes or lesser.

Egg tarts

17 June 2007

These are my ugly egg tarts. Obviously, my skill is lacking. For the pastry, I should have left the dough in the fridge to make it easier to handle. Pastry can be made thinner and neater. For the custard, I waited too long for it to set. Take out from the oven when some of the tarts have already puff up into a ball. That's why the custard filling wrinkle when it's cooled. However, I didn't consider this as a lousy bake. :P Cos they taste really nice and delicious. A good recipe.

This recipe is also from the chinese baking book I bought at the book fair. Also refer to Aunty Yochana's version.

Ingredients (yielded 18 egg tarts)
Pastry:
125g butter
60g icing sugar
1/2 egg
180g plain flour
a pinch of salt

Filling:
200g milk
100g sugar
3 eggs

Method
Pastry:
1. Beat butter till soften.
2. Add in icing sugar and beat till fluffy.
3. Add in egg and beat till white and fluffy.
4. Add in sifted flour and salt. Fold and knead with hand until dough is soft and smooth.
5. Roll and press dough into the tart moulds.

Filling:
1. Heat until milk begins to boil.
2. Add in sugar and stir until sugar dissolves, remove from heat.
3. Whisk the eggs and add into the milk mixture, mix well.
4. Sift the mixture and pour into tart moulds.
5. Bake in a pre-heated oven (2nd lower rack) at 180C for about 25 minutes.

Mini cupcakes 小蛋糕

13 June 2007

Hehe. I feel like this is one of my best bakes so far. Cos the little cakes comes out nice and tastes good too. This recipe is from a chinese baking book I bought at the book fair.

Ingredients (yielded 6 big and 24 small cakes using 2 eggs)
120g eggs
100g sugar
40g milk
100g corn oil
120g cake flour
2.5g baking powder

Method
1. Beat egg and sugar till white and fluffy.
2. Add in milk slowly and mix well.
3. Add in oil slowly and mix well. Be careful not to deflate the mixture.
4. Add in sifted cake flour and baking powder. Mix well.
5. Spoon the mixture into the paper cups.
6. Bake in a pre-heated oven (2nd lower rack) at 180C for about 15-20 minutes until golden brown.

Chocolate roll

10 June 2007

Ah... this is a failed attempt to do chocolate version of the sugar roll. The recipe is the same as the sugar roll, except to add 20g of cocoa powder and reduce 20g of flour and sieve the plain flour and cocoa powder together. But I failed cos when I mix the cocoa powder, I deflate the mixture and the mixture just sink. I think I was trying too hard to mix the cocoa into the mixture evenly. Didn't take any photos cos it gets eaten up before I can take any photos. Reason is because it smells really nice and tastes very nice too, except a bit hard and flat lor. Will try it again in the future.

Pizza

3 June 2007

Pizza fresh from oven. Me and my mother made this together. Recipe taken from a book and slightly modified. I put on the 2nd lower rack of the oven. (ok, this is for my own reference :) )

Ingredients
Dough:
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp instant yeast
110ml water
200g plain flour, sifted
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil / corn oil

Pizza topping:
tomato puree
mushroom
ham
yellow bell pepper
shredded cheese

Method
1. Mix sugar, yeast and some water in a bowl and leave for 10 minutes or until it begins to bubble.
2. Sift flour and salt in a bowl. Add in yeast mixture, oil, and remaining water and knead until very smooth and elastic.
3. Put dough in a greased bowl, cover with damp towel. Leave to rise until it doubles in size (about 45min). Punch down, shape it into a ball and rest for 10 minutes.
4. Roll and pull gently into 3mm thick round shape. Place onto a greased pizza pan. Use fork to prick holes onto the dough.
5. Brush tomato puree onto the dough. Evenly put the topping ingredients over the dough.
6. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 200C for about 15-20 minutes, until cooked and golden brown.

1st successful cake

27 May 2007

This is a more successful attempt. Evenly baked and looks ok. The taste is good too. This is using the recipe by Aunty Yochana's Sugar Roll. I use half the recipe to try out. Put on the 2nd lower rack of the oven. It is supposed to be rolled up like a swiss roll. But I didn't as I thought I might fail again, so I did not prepare the cream. Anyway, I might spoil the cake after rolling. =)

1st attempt at cakes

20 May 2007

Another unsuccessful attempt to do a lemon cake. The bottom is uncooked and I have to turn over the cake and bake again. Very ugly looking. The texture also a bit funny, a little moist. Not like cake, more like a "fa gao".

1st attempt at cookies

13 May 2007

Obviously, this is an unsuccessful attempt at baking cookies. I overbake the cookies as you can see from the photo.

Reasons:
1. not sure how to see when the baking is done,
2. the heating in the oven seems to be uneven, like one side brown faster than the other.
3. Cheap oven haha... Maybe I set a lower temperature or put on higher rack next time.

Besides that, the taste is not bad.

The first bake - Vanilla cupcakes

6 May 2007

Here's my 1st bake to test the "new" oven.

This vanilla cupcake is supposed to be the basic recipe for cupcakes, from a book that I have read. So I use this recipe as it looks quite simple to start up with. I only use 1/4 of the portion to test this recipe, i.e. 1 egg.

Ingredients
225g unsalted butter, softened
225g caster sugar
225g self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 175C. Place 18 paper baking cases in muffin tins.
2. Place all the ingredients in a medium bowl and beat with an electric whisk until smooth and pale, about 2 to 3 minutes.
3. Spoon the mixture into the cases. Bake for 20 minutes.
4. Remove the tins from the oven and cool for 5 minutes. Then remove the cupcakes and cool on a rack.
5. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.

This is before baking.


This is after baking.



I am quite surprised at the result. It looks quite nice for someone who has never baked before. (although I had helped my mother to bake cny cookies many many years ago). This time I did it alone when nobody was at home. The taste is quite nice also. But a bit too sweet and buttery for me.

I'm quite excited. Looking for more recipes to try out again.

The small cheap oven

4 May 2007

This is my small cheap oven bought from yahoo auction at $12 only. It's a second-hand oven and comes with a free cupcake tray too.