What's Cooking: A walk down my kitchen's products for the past two weeks

School has started for two weeks and the workload has just gotten tougher and tougher.. Nevertheless, I've still found some time to do some baking here and there.. I won't deny that it's tough to manage both school, personal work and baking/cooking at the same time. Nevertheless, I'll still try my best! (:

Here are some of my products of from the past 2 weeks! (:

My hands were itchy and I woke up early on my off day from lessons to bake this mini version of the usual Barbie Doll Cake.. I did my version, the Kelly Cake! (: Love the soft strawberry sponge cake coupled with chocolate ganache! Suitable for a smaller party but still carrying the beauty of a doll cake! 

I also baked some Mini Nutella and marshmallow croissants! Truth be told, rolling puff pastry in Singapore whereby the humidity is CRAP is almost impossible! Nevertheless, I love these warm and they just tasted so good cos it's marshmallows and Nutella! 

There was an order for Rainbow Cake last week so I had 6 layers of beautiful colours baked! I just love how beautiful the colours looked stacked together! 

And since the fav boy is sooooo into bartending, I had this craving for Orange Juice (Florida's more pulp, no less) with Vodka! I was a lil' too generous with the Vodka (Vodka 100 in the black bottle) so the drink was heavy! Nevertheless, it was still very refreshing! Perfect for the Monday-off-in-lieu public holiday! 

This Wednesday, I wanted to bake some Pineapple tarts, the semi-wrapped version! I prepared my pineapple jam from scratch and I loved it! However, I guess the humidity's to blame again.. and my ignorance to the humidity.. the batter/dough became very oily as the butter melted. By the time the tarts were baking, they were 'deep frying' in the butter from the tarts ): The tarts may look reasonably pretty but they were pretty hard! Guess I should do my baking in my air-conditioned room in future! XD 

I also played with the flavoured chocolate I had.. I made some strawberry, banana and grape mini Mushrooms! Love how the strawberry one tastes but.. the banana one was overwhelming. Once again, I was LAZY (who isn't?) and I didn't melt the chocolate over a double boiler and I simply dunked the entire sealed piping bag into a bowl of almost hot water.. the chocolate didn't melt enough for it to fall nicely into place inside the mould. Nevertheless, it was still good! (:

I'm such a fan of Richard Goh so I decided to jump on the bandwagon and attend his icing and creaming class though I can pretty much do most of the stuff in his class.. I really appreciate his tips and true enough, this Blueberry Cake I baked using my home-made sponge cake I brought for his class looked so good with the cream! His tips for creaming made my creaming skills improve by leaps and bounds! Stay tuned for my version of tips in the weeks to come, adapted from RG's class! (: 

Btw, the cake was so soft and good! It was also well-received by friends who I gave slices to! ((: Such joy! 

Being such a fan of RG, I attended his Mooncake lesson as well. We baked 2 snow skin mooncakes: Pandan snowskin with pandan paste and melon seeds as well as Yellow snowskin with durian paste and melon seeds. 

I love traditional mooncakes way more than Snow skin mooncakes. Maybe I'm just old-school like this XD We baked White Lotus mooncakes with melon seeds and salted egg. I'm such a sucker for salted eggs I tell you! (: Now, I'm still contemplating if I should bake mooncakes this year.. After all, it's not something that we eat very often and no one eats it in large quantities (unless it's my boyfriend we're referring to)! I'm thinking of baking it and giving it away as gifts to the family and loved ones.. We shall see how it goes.. I'm gonna go shopping for it! (: 

What's Cooking: Mrs Ng SK's Butter Cake

Since this cake has been highly raved and I've been craving for a butter cake since Nana's 3rd birthday, I decided to bake this today since it's a free day for me! Truly, this cake is tasty and soft.. truly worth buying better butter for! (: Want the recipe for it in step-by-step image format? If yes, please leave a comment! (: 

TIPS: Lining a round baking tin

It's usually a hassle to line baking tins, especially if they are round baking tins! The measuring, the trimming and all, it's all so much of a hassle! I figured out a lazy man's way to lining a round baking tin! (:

This is my 'cheater's way to lining a round tin! Have a piece of baking paper/greaseproof paper slightly larger than the size of the base of the tin. Tuck and 'press' the sides of the paper into the tin to get the shape of the base. Remove it and trim the 'sides' of the paper that's not required. You can trim the sides to be a lil' smaller for a better fit. 

After which, cut out strips more or less the height of the walls of the tin and using butter/oil, grease and 'stick' the greaseproof paper onto the tin.

It's just as simple as that! Hope you enjoyed this simple baking tip! 

Yam Layer Cake

My dad seriously thinks too highly of my cake baking abilities. For his birthday, my intention was to bake him a Pandan Kaya Cake, something that's different from the usual cakes that I bake for the family. owever, he decided that he wanted a 'non-green' pandan kaya cake! That was kinda insane cos pandan is green! So after some discussion, I decided to give it a try: Yam Layer Cake. 

I adopted the 'kaya' portion of the cake from Angel of Cook Bake Love. However, I made several modifications to her recipe as I realise that it didn't really work out to a smooth cake. I didn't use the French Cake Sponge method that she used but I stuck to my usual whole egg cake sponge method. The cake was still very soft! Also, she used very little thicker for the recipe so the cake took a real long time to set. Nevertheless, the taste and all was good! My family especially my dad LOVED the cake so much that my dad even had 2 slices of the cake! 

This cake took me about an hour to bake and assemble but has a setting time of about an hour. This recipe yields a 9 inch cake.

Yam Layer Cake Recipe

This recipe yields a 9" cake

Ingredients:

SPONGE CAKE

100g plain flour

100g butter (I used LIV salted)

90g fine sugar (I've already reduced this)

4 eggs (I used 60g Seng Choon eggs)

YAM KAYA

(A)

800ml water

150g sugar (I've already reduced this)

A pinch of salt

2 tsp agar agar powder

(B)

300ml coconut milk

300g Thai Yam

(C)

100ml coconut milk

100ml water

120g Hoen Kueh flour

1 tsp yam liquid yam flavour (I got mine from PH)

A small bit of purple/violet gel food colouring (I used Wilton)

DECORATION 

120ml whipping cream

1 1/2 tbsp dried dessicated coconut

Wilton gel food colouring

Kueh Bolu

These Kueh Bolus are less than perfect due to the lack of colour on the top but they taste awesome! I baked these for my mum as they are her favourite and I'm glad that she loved this surprise I sprang on her along with a new book on fruit juices that I got her to keep her occupied in her stall! (: 

On a side note, these Kueh Bolus are NOT PERFECT.. I'm still gonna improve it with tips some ladies have shared with me.. However, since it's been requested, here it is first.. For me, I believe that appearance for this snack doesn't really matter that much cos my mum still loved it anyway. Nevertheless, I will update this recipe and improve it when I get to doing it. (:

This recipe takes about 30 minutes and yields a dozen mini cakes. This recipe was taken from Egg Me On by Evon Kow. 

Kueh Bolu Recipe

This recipe yields about 12 kueh bolus

Ingredients:

1 egg (I used Seng Choon 60g egg)

50g fine sugar

37g salted butter

47g plain flour

Some butter for greasing pan

What's Cooking: Pita Pizza

Last night, we had Pita Pizza, the lazy man's way! I used wholemeal pita bread that's sliced in half along with some pasta sauce, canned pineapples, back bacon, cherry tomatoes and cheese to whip this up for the family. We had some boiled baby carrots too. As the portion was rather small, I'd suggest 2 for each person to make a decent meal! (: We had one each only (bad planning!) as my family usually doesn't finish the extra I portion.. but yesterday night was different! We were all still half hungry after the meal XD

Enjoy this lazy man's pizza by baking it in a 180 degree Celsius oven for 15 minutes or till bacon is all cooked! (:

What's cooking: Roasted Chicken Drumsticks and Potatoes

Welcome to this new 'section' called What's cooking! I've somewhat decided that since I do repeat many of my recipes or modify them from them to time.. Maybe I'll just share what I had from time to time and if there are many requests for the recipe, I'll do a blog post for it.. Alternatively, if you have any recipe requests, do leave me a comment! (: 

Anyway, I've got to bid farewell to my 3.5 months of vacation that I've been merrily enjoying. Watching this blog grow as well as pursue my interest in baking and cooking has been a lot of fun. But all good things have to come to an end.. my new school semester's starting in another week. It's gonna be lectures, tutorials, assignments, meetings, examinations and tutoring. It's really tough to bid my freedom goodbye but I haven't got a choice. Only consolation's that I'm in my 4th year already! Just one last year before I get my Degree in Education. 

I'll try to cook and bake as much as I can, just as much as time permits. Meanwhile, have fun baking and cooking! (: 

Pandan Kaya Cake

This has been once of those cakes that I've been wanting to bake but hesistant to do so.. especially since I've heard of failures from friends around me when attempting it. However, since dad's birthday was approaching, I decided to give it a try to shy away from the usual chocolate cakes I'd bake. This is my second trial as I did the first one with merely half recipe.

This recipe is from Richard Goh but I took reference from Fong's Kitchen who modified RG's recipe to churn out this cake. This cake is on the less-sweet scale due to the reduced sugar. It was pretty well liked by those who tried. I even had 2 slices when I first baked it! 

This cake is one of the SIMPLEST layered cake I've ever baked as it's pretty much effortless after the sponge cake has been baked as compared to the usual layered cakes I bake. Nevertheless, this cake should take about 2 hours to prepare and this recipe yields a 9" round cake.

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Updated 17 August 2014

This cake was baked more than 2 years ago! My baking skills have since improved and I'd like to recommend an improvisation to this recipe.. The quantity is tweaked to get a cake that is easier to manage.. The proportions for the improved version will be listed below the original.. 

Pandan Kaya Cake Recipe

Ingredients:

PANDAN SPONGE CAKE

4 eggs (I used 60g Seng Choon Eggs)

100g plain flour

90g fine sugar

80g butter, melted

1/2 tsp pandan paste

20g pandan juice 

PANDAN KAYA 

(A)

400ml pandan juice

50g butter (salted)

120g fine sugar

(B)

70g Hoen Kwe flour

2 tsp agar agar powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pandan paste

250g fresh coconut milk

150g water

30ml whipping cream

3 tbsp dried dessicated coconut

A small bit of pink gel food colouring (I used Wilton)

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This is the 'improved' version I baked today.. 

Improved version

Ingredients:

PANDAN SPONGE CAKE

4 eggs (I used 55g Seng Choon Eggs)

100g plain flour

90g fine sugar

80g butter, melted

1/2 tsp pandan paste

20g pandan juice 

[Bake this in a 7" round tin instead of a 9" as recommended in this recipe. Cake will be taller and easier to slice. Cake ring should still be 9" so that it leaves a good gap at the side between the cake and the kaya.]

PANDAN KAYA 

(A)

400ml pandan juice

50g butter (salted)

120g fine sugar

(B)

70g Hoen Kwe flour

2 tsp agar agar powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pandan paste

250g fresh coconut milk

150g water

5 tbsp dried dessicated coconut

1 tbsp cocoa powder