Fudgey Cocoa Brownies

Hello, I'm back! :)

This post marks the beginning of my 2nd year of baking and blogging. I don't know whether readers have become bored with the layout or content of my blog or not. I wanted to do a bit of change. But I have limited ideas and creativity. Must let me think slowly first. ;)


So here's a brownie recipe that I found from Ovenhaven. I realize that I haven't baked a brownie before. Quite unbelievable!


Despite the lack of height (although I have used a 8 inch square pan), this brownie is absolutely delicious!

1 year of blogging

23 Jun 2008

I almost forgotten that I have started my baking blog one year ago. I didn't know that this hobby can last this long. And I have definitely not expected so many readers visiting my blog.

Whether you are just passing by, or silently reading my blog, or maybe checking my blog regularly for updates, thank you all of you.

Special thanks to readers who have left encouraging comments in my blog.

Of course, thanks to my family and friends who don't mind trying my bakes, even though some of them didn't turn out good.

I admit that I did not bake as regularly as I wanted to nowadays. I hope I can come back as soon as possible.

Some of my favourite bakes:

Devil's Food Cake

10 Jun 2008

This is meant to be a birthday cake for my sister. The frosting is not done very nicely, haha! But the taste is so good that I'm still drooling at the thought of it. Two layers of chocolate cake sandwiched between rich chocolate frosting. Are you drooling already too? ;P


I got this recipe from one of the Australian Women's Weekly Cookbooks. I'm beginning to become a big fan of their Cookbook series. Their recipes are simple and easy to follow with pictures that inspire you to bake. My first try of this Devil's Food Cake proves that the recipes are worth keeping.


Devil's Food Cake
(Recipe from Sweet Old-Fashioned Favourites, The Australian Women's Weekly, English q641.86 SWE-[COO])

Ingredients
180g butter
385g caster sugar
3 eggs (60g each)
225g self-raising flour
75g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
66g cocoa powder
3 tsp dry instant coffee
1/2 tsp red food colouring (I omit this)
125ml water
125ml milk

Rich Chocolate Frosting:
60g dark chocolate
60g unsalted butter

Method
1. Grease 2 deep 20cm round cake pans, line bases with paper; grease paper.
2. Beat butter and sugar in small bowl with electric mixer until light and fluffy; add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after additions.
3. Transfer mixture to large bowl, fold in sifted flours, soda and cocoa with combined coffee, colouring, water and milk, in 2 batches.
4. Pour mixture into prepared pans; bake in preheated oven at 180C for about 45 minutes. Turn cakes onto wire rack to cool. Join cold cakes with whipped cream, top with rich chocolate frosting. (I use rich chocolate frosting for both layers.)

Rich Chocolate Frosting:
Combine chocolate and butter in heatproof bowl over pan of simmering water, stir until smooth. Remove from heat. Cool at room temperature until spreadable, stir occasionally while cooling.

* I have halved the recipe for a 6 inch round cake.
* I scooped 2 spoons of the batter into a cup case and baked it as a cupcake. The cake was very very soft and delicious!

More from the Little Garden

I think some of you might already know about the little garden along our corridor from my previous post about half a year ago. My mother has been saying that her new flowers are blooming and ask me to take a look. So I took some photographs to share here. Sorry if I don't know the English names of some of the plants. My mother only knows their Chinese names and I'm really bad at identifying plants :P

Long beans:

Lady's Finger:

Yellow Orchids: (oops, I don't know what type of orchid it is)


木耳花: (looks like the fungus used for cooking)


Jasmine flowers (茉莉花): It smells really nice!

七星针: A type of herb good for detoxification and can prevent cancer.

苋菜: A type of vegetable we commonly eat.

万年青:

Wholemeal Bread

1 Jun 2008

Quite some time ago, I bought a packet of wholemeal flour. As I have not found any wholemeal bread recipes, I'm not quite sure what to do with it. Luckily, Happy Homebaker posted a Wholemeal Bread recipe. It is different from other bread recipes as it uses a 'sponge dough' method which requires 90mins of extra proofing time.


Instead of baking in pullman tin, I baked it in my breadmachine using the 'wholemeal' function, like I always did. The bread is truly very soft and springy to touch. Thanks to HHB's for the wonderful recipe from 孟老师的100道面包. I'm trying to get hold of this book. Will look for it at the World Book Fair. If not, will have to reserve a copy from the library liao.