Green Tea Chiffon Cake

25 December 2007


I finally succeed in getting a nice and tall chiffon cake again. This time I make sure I don't underbeat the egg whites and beat until stiff and dry stage. I guess it works! I like the nice green tea fragrance. We usually don't find bakeries selling green tea chiffon cakes right? I wish I have added some Japanese Azuki Beans. :)


Recipe for Green Tea Chiffon Cake (6 inch)
(Modified from here)

Ingredients
(A)
2 egg yolks
20g castor sugar

(B)
25ml warm corn oil
35ml warm water + 1 tsp green tea powder

(C)
50g cake flour
1/2 tsp baking powder

(D)
3 egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
20g castor sugar

Method
1. Cream ingredients (A) with hand whisk till sugar dissolved.
2. Add in ingredients (B) in the respective order and mix well before adding the next item.
3. Sieve in ingredients (C) and mix till no lumps.
4. Beat egg whites with electric beater till frothy, sprinkle in the cream of tartar. Beat till white in colour and add in sugar by thirds. Egg white should be beaten till stiff peaks are formed.
5. Put half portion of egg white into yolk mixture and mix it with a hand whisk in 6 strokes.
6. Pour yolk mixture into the rest of the egg white and mix well with hand whisk.
7. Put batter into a chiffon cake pan, bang the pan on a hard surface several times to release the bubbles and bake at 170C for 25 minutes or till cooked.
8. Invert cake on a wire rack immediately to cool completely.

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Bread Pudding

20 December 2007

Quite sometime ago, I found this website called Blogger's Recipe that has a collection of recipes. Most of them are cooking recipes, and since I'm not a good cook, I don't think I will be trying them out. But on this day, seeing that there were quite a lot of bread left, I tried this healthy bread pudding.


And while waiting for my bread pudding to be done, I started preparing my chocolate chip cookies. There seems to be a lot of different recipes for chocolate chip cookies. I found the most basic one and from here you can adjust the quantities to your own liking.


Recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies (makes 12)

Ingredients
115g butter, softened
115g caster sugar ( I use half caster sugar, half brown sugar)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
175g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/8 tsp salt
175g chocolate chips

Method
1. Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy.
2. Beat in the egg and vanilla essence.
3. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and fold in with the chocolate chips.
4. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture on to the prepared baking sheet. Use another spoon to push it onto the tray, if required). Leave plenty of space between the cookies to allow for spreading during baking. Flatten each cookie slightly with the back of the fork.
5. Bake the cookies at 180C for about 10-15 minutes until golden. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.

More tips
1. For chocolate flavour, substitute 1 tbsp cocoa powder for the same quanity of flour.
2. For a chunkier texture, use coarsely chopped chocolate instead of chocolate chips.
3. For mocha flavour, use coffee essence instead of vanilla essence.
4. For nutty flavour, add whole or chopped macadamia nut, walnut or hazelnut.
5. For fruity flavour, add chopped dried fruit, such as raisins, sultanas, etc.

Merry Christmas!!!

This is a Christmas cake we ordered from Four Leaves

Merry Christmas to everyone!!!

Sweet Buns

16 December 2007

Have been quite long since I started baking and all that I have baked are cakes, muffins and cookies. I feel like baking something new and after seeing sweet tooth's first attempt to bake buns, I decided to try it myself.

I also followed Happy Homebaker's Sweet Buns recipe. I took a really long time to knead but still had not been able to knead until it can be stretched into a thin layer without tearing. Then I gave up and left to to proof. Due to the rainy and cold weather these few days, I left it to proof for nearly 2 hours. I also had problems shaping the buns well and they all turned out looking out of shape. :)


The bread is soft but not very soft and fluffy. Probably because I did not knead well. It turned hard on the next day. I wonder how the bread we buy from the bakery remains soft for a few days.


If you have noticed that I have not been updating my blog, it's because my pc crashed due to virus and removed everything in my pc. Now I have to reinstall everything again. :(

Nutella Muffins

9 December 2007


Nutella has always been my favourite since I was young. It's my favourite spread on my bread for breakfast. So I decided to try this Nutella muffins from Precious moments. The swirls I did are not very obvious. Overall the taste is not too bad. The nutella taste is not very strong though. Perhaps because it is only spread on the top. I prefer something very nutella. :)


This is a lemon chiffon cake that I have tried last week. It's the second time my chiffon cake sink again. I guess it has to do with beating the egg whites. Shall try again next time.

The Little Garden

This is the little garden along our corridor. They are all managed by my mother who is quite a gardening enthusiast. I know nothing much about gardening and can't recognize most of her plants actually. Here are some of the plants we have. Sorry if I don't know the names of some of the plants. :P

Long beans:



Peppermint:

Lady's Finger (no lady's fingers yet):

Pandan leaves:

Sweet potato leaf:

Chillies:

A type of herb. I check with my mother. It's called 红田乌 in Chinese (Hong Tian Wu). It's good for diabetes and high blood pressure. Just boil it with water and drink.

A type of herb called 马尾草, also good for diabetes and high blood pressure.

Pomegranate (石榴):

Aloe vera:


Orchid:

Other flowers: