Raspberry Jelly Chocolate Mousse Cake

Another year of Valentine Day celebration . We did not do much , not super fancy dinner, no gift exchange . We went to a restaurant few day earlier then Valentine day and playing bowling with a group of friends . Finally have a home cooked roast and beautiful cake for our celebration at home in the weekend.

I love the simple celebration , to have the close one doing normal daily stuffs . That is the dream I always wish before married , so there is no complain ^^.

To make our dinner special , it got to end with a special sweet. I come by this food blogger ->Dailydelicious. The entrement she made is simply beautiful . From the element she used, you can imagine is simply delicious, rich ,sweet. The picture itself is already so appealing !! Everytime when I see the picture on internet food blogger, my this year wish is to improve in my baking & picture skill .

So here is the cake I have bake for this year Valentine night celebration . I used the recipe above but did not do exactly as her creation.

This recipe make 4 of 6cm small cake

1 piece of Chocolate Spongec cake ( 6" round cake)
Cut into 4 pieces of 6cm small cake using the cake ring

Raspberry Jelly

Ingredients :

70g  Raspberry Puree
11g  Caster Sugar
1tsp Lemon Juice
1.5tsp Gelatin
1Tbsp water

Method :

1. Pour water in a bowl, sprinkle gelatin on it and let it bloom. Set in a bath of hot water and melt the gelatin,
2. Bring raspberry puree, sugar and lemon juice to boil.
3. Mix in the gelatine till disolve.
4. Pour the mixture evenly in 4 silicone molds. Freeze it overnight .

Chocoalte Mousse


Ingredient 

70g  Dark Chocolate , chopped
32g  Egg Yolks
12g  Caster Sugar
75g  Milk
85g  Whipping Cream
1tsp Gelatin
1Tbsp Water

Method :

1.Place the water in a bowl sprinkle gelatin on it let it bloom. Place the bowl in a hot water and let it melt.
2.Beat the yolks with sugar until combine, boil the milk and pour the hot milk over the yolk mixture and whisking it all time.
3.When the milk combine well into the yolk, bring this mixture heat over low heat till 80C.
4. Take the pan away from the heat and add in the gelatin till disolved.
5. Place a sieve over the bowl of chocolate, slowly pour in the egg mixture through the sieve and wait for 1 minutes.
6.Stir untill all the chocolate melt, let the mixture cool to room temperature.
7.Beat the whipping cream till soft peak, put 1/3 of the whipping cream into the chocolate mixture mix well.
8. Pour the whole chocolate mixture to the reminding whipping cream, combine well.

I do not have the cake ring,  I used my cheesecake mold which the base can be push up when dislocate the cake. Slo here is how I assemble my cake :

1. Take the raspberry jelly out from the freezer
2. Place one piece of chocolate cake at the bottom of the mold.
3. Pour in 2 tablespoon of the chocolate  mousse, place the raspberry jelly in.
4. Pour in 2 tablespoon of the chocolate mousse to cover the raspberry jelly.
5. Place the cake in the freezer over night or at least 6hrs.

Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients :

44g  Milk
20g  Golden Syrup
30g  Whipping Cream
20g  Sugar
100g Milk Chocolate
34g  Dark Chocolate

Method :

1. Bring to boil all the ingredienst expect both chocolate.
2. Pour it over the chocolate and stir till well combine.

Unmold the cake and slowly pour the ganache over the cake.  Decorate with fruit and chocolate slice before serving.

It does take time to prepare this cake,it is not difficult just need patience. Time for raspberry jelly to freeze, time for chocolate mousse to set, to freeze up. Result ? Is worth it !!

The mousse is smooth and the raspberry bring refresh to this cake and rhe chocolate coating is not too sweet. As a non chocolate fan , I do enjoy and love the taste of this cake.

To improve, next time I would have to push the raspberry puree through a seive to remove the seed . I wanted to deco the cake with cherry but this does not bring out the color of the cake. At the end, mango still suit well.

Give this a try and you might surprise yourself and your love one.

Mini Blueberry Cheesecake

This is simple yet delicious cheesecake, is easy to make and the review will be great. I bought this mini cheesecake pan for quite awhile , have been wanted to make something beautiful from it. Before I attain to this recipe, I use this recipe to make tweak it to Orange Cheesecake , the result is equally yum .

The recipe I used is the easy and no fail from ->Christine Recipe , she is my all time favourite food blogger , love the way she present her food and the step by step picture. It just make the baking easy and is no fail at all.


So here is the recipe for my own record :


Cheesecake


Ingredients :

1 packet of Oreo Cookies ( 150gm) remove the cream fillings
50g melted butter
250g cream cheese block
50g caster sugar
1 large egg
100ml thicken cream ( pouring cream)
20ml lemon juice ( if you are making orange flavour, replace this with orange juice)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract ( I used 1Tbsp of lemon zest instead of this extract)

Method :

1. Preheat oven to 170C

2. Pulse the Oreo biscuit to fine crumb using food processor and add the melted butter to combine well.

3. Divide the Oreo mixture evenly to 12 mini cheesecake pan. Is about 2 tablespoon for each small hole. Using the flat end of the rolling pin, lightly press the mixture and even the surface.

4.Combine the cream cheese and sugar in a mixing bowl. Use electric mixer to beat till smooth. Scrape down the side of the bowl to ensure even beating of the cream.

5. Add the egg in the cream mixture, beat well and follow by thicken cream , lemon juice and lemon zest. Beat till the mixture is smooth and well combined.

6.Spoon the cream cheese mixture over each Oreo biscuits evenly and bake in the preheated oven for 20min.

7. Once is bake well , take it out and cool at the wire rack . Carefully remove from the pan and chilled in the fridge.

Blueberry compote

Ingredients :


100g Blueberries
20g  caster sugar
2tsp lemon juice
2tsp cornflour + 1Tbsp water ( combine well)

Method :

1. Cook the blueberry with sugar and lemon juice in a small saucer pan with medium low heat.
2. When the blueberry started to turn soft , break it down and pour the cornflour water in bit by bit , stir  well to combine till you get the right consistency.
3. Remove the compote from the heat and let it cool down and chilled in the fridge if you not serving immediately.




Serving :


Spoon the blueberry compote onto the cheesecake , it should have a small curve in the cake to let this compote sit well.
Decorate with blueberry . I choose Cherry , it looks good on it and the taste yum .


This mini cheesecake can be bake in cupcake as well.Top with any fruit you like or change the flavour according to your liking, it can be as surprise as a Valentine Treat.

This is one of the dessert I brought to a Christmas party ^^.

Coconut Egg Rolls ( Kuih Kapit ) Aka Love Letter

 
Just cant have enough of all the Chinese New Year goodies. Please understand here in Australia we do able to grab everything ( almost everything) from our home country. But talking about home made vs machine mass production . I do prefer home made with love and knowing what is the ingredient put in the food we ate.

Ok, to fulfill my own satisfication of having all the CNY goodies I love , I got to be the one who home made the goodies I love. One of it , is this traditional goodies we all love in Malaysia and often store in Milo tin. If you are part of the family , your will have a milo tin as a token as CNY goodies from family member who make it that year.

I knew the traditional way of making this , sitting infront of a roll of  charcoal using a metal mold and have to look after each plate you put on the charcoal . If it get burnt, well you will get a scolded from the elder. I dont really have an experience on that. So I probably will not know how to do it. With the technology now, it is a pleasant experience to make this.

Here are the recipe I follow from this link ->Cheryl Marie Cordeiro.

Ingredients :

400 ml of canned coconut milk
5 eggs
150 g caster sugar
150 g rice flour
90 g plain flour

Method :

1.Beat the egg with sugar till sugar resolve .
2.Pour in the coconut milk , combine well .
3. Sift in the flour and mixed well.
4. Heat up the machine as per mannual
5. Place 1 table soup ( western soup) of batter in the machine and press it hard if you prefer a thin layer.
6. When is done , either roll it as a roll or fold it as a triangle shape.

I simple love the coconut milk fragrant in this biscuit and it did bring back all my good childhood memory. My cousin used to make this and we always got a tin from my auntie. Bear in mind , my cousin was a boy then, I admire his patience. I guess this is how Asian family show love and appreciate to one another. We seldom express love verbally often we show love in giving things that we make from home . So we do love to share food during all festival.

This season for all those who celebrate this festival , I wish you Prosperous Lunar New Year, good health and dreams come true in this Horse year.

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #39: CNY Rock and Roll! (Jan 2014) hosted by Food Playground .



Pineapple Tarts

After welcoming 2014 , is time to prepare for another big festival of the Chinese . Lunar new year will soon be coming . This year it seem earlier than the usual date , the Chinese New Year( CNY) will fall on 31/01/2014. Most of my friends has planned to go back home for celebration . As the new year fall close with Australian Day ( 26/01/2014) is good to take some holidays and have a public holidays in between. Well, I hope is not a too lonely year for us who are "left behind".

This year I want to be more prepared than last year. So I have decided to start my baking of CNY cookies earlier and plan to sell it for a good start of my year 2014.

A lot of the friends has express their interest in this lovely goodies - Pineapple Tarts. This is my no 1 top love of the CNY cookies. We used to place order and from the best famous Malacca style pineapple tart. Only after making it myself I understand why this cookies is always the most expensive and at time one tarts can reach the price of $1.50 each. Not only is time consuming and the delicate of handling it require patience and again time .

I have make a batch of 81 pieces with the following recipe and would like to let my friends try out and see do they love this version and taste.

The recipe I used is from ->Table for 2 or more

I follow the pineapple jam recipe from hers as well ->Homemade-pineapple-jam

Yes I make everything from original and would love to provide the best natural ingredients in all I bake.

The recipe of Pineapple tarts dough is as below:

Ingredients :

250g Unsalted Butter
170g Cream ( Pouring Cream/Whipping cream)
50g   Cream Cheese
3 egg yolks
400g Cake Flour
30g Corn Flour

1 large egg yolk + 1 tablespoon of milk for egg wash.

Method :

1. Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar in a mixer. Till well combine
2. Pour in the cream and continue to mix in medium speed, scrap down the side from time to time. It might look lumpy at the beginning it will all combine well together as you continue your beat.
3. Beat in egg yolks for 1 minutes.
4. Sift the flour together and pour in half to the above mixture and continue to beat till combine and pour in the reminding flour and make sure is combine well but not over mix.
5. Let the dough sit for 10 min before handling it and wrap with the pineapple jam that has been roll in ball.
6. Gentle wrap the pineapple tart in this dough and brush with egg yolk wash .
7. Preheat oven to 165C , and bake the pineapple tarts for about 20min till golden brown.

Pineapple Jam

Ingredients :

1kg pineapple flesh
1 1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 small piece of cinnamon stick

Method :

1. Blend the pineapple flesh till fine ( is good to leave some fiber in )
As mention in Table for 2 or more recipe, include the core of the pineapple does make it more juicy and add fibre in the jam texture.
2. Pour all the blend pineapple in a deep base wok/pot and start to cook in medium heat.
3. When the pineapple started to dry up and like thick oatmeal, gentle pour in half of sugar and continue to cook in low heat.
4. Stir occasionally and make sure no burning of jam in the bottom.
5. When the water reduce to 80% pour in the reminding sugar, and stir every 8 min.
6. When the pineapple jam is cooked to your liking consistency , off the fire and let it cool down .

Is easy to handle the jam after chilled  in a fridge.

The post written by Wendyikk is very helpful and details. Do used her blog for more details information.

Happy baking and I do hope this will be well received by my friends or customers :)

Rainbow Cake

December is a month full of celebration . My birthday fall in the month of December. But this is not the only celebration we do in end of the year. Follow by Christmas and jumping into new year. Is always a month have lots of celebration .

I make this cake first for my own birthday. The interesting thing is , I have started my baking "business" ( cant really consider as full business but I bake by order from friends who want cake for any occasion ) . So my friends order a cake from me for my birthday . Wahahaha!! Reason given - " we cant find a cake that you will like. So we will pay you to bake a cake for your birthday party. "

Well I did not complain , afterall I got to experiment and get to pay for it. In Australia it does has a culture to bring your own cake to the office and celebrate with your colleague. ( Do not ask me why, I can not figure out the reason as well ). So I treat this as an honor and there was this cake I would always love to try out - Rainbow cake !!!!

I look for the recipe and mostly is all using coloring. NOPE this is not what I prefer my cake to be. So when I find this ->Peng's Kitchen. I am happy to use this recipe and adapt to the ingredients I can find in Australia.

Hereby this is the cake I have make and right after my birthday I have an order from a lovely husband who want a colourful cake for his lovely wife. So I did make the 2nd Rainbow cake and improve a lot from my plain decoration version.

My recipe as below :

Natural Colourings :

Ingredients

Red : 2 Tbsp of cherry puree + 1 little drop of red velvet color ( Is difficult to get the red )

Plain yellow : 1 egg yolk + 1 tbsp milk

Orange: 2 Tbsp of mango puree

Green : 2 Tbsp of pandan juice or 1 tsp of pandan essence

Blue : 2 Tbsp of blueberry puree + 1 tsp of lemon juice ( a tiny drop of blue color, as blueberry tend to become purple)

Purple : 2 Tbsp blackcurrant puree +2 tsp of lemon juice

Chocolate : 1 Tbsp of cocoa powder + 2 Tbsp of hot water ( Mix and dissolve)

White Velvet Cake ( I have added half portion of the original recipe)

660g Plain Flour

3 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

300g sugar ( original should be 375gm)

90g butter

2 tbsp oil

3 egg white

375ml milk

188ml natural yogurt

3 tsp vanilla paste

Method

1. Cream the butter with oil and sugar till white and fluffy. ( It take about 2min)

2. Add in the egg white and beat till well combine

3. Mixed the vanilla, milk and yogurt well in a bowl.

4. Sifted the flour with baking powder and baking soda.

5. Add in the liquid ( step 3)  and flour alternately in step 2 . Be careful not to over mix.

6. Preheat Oven at 160C

7. Divide the cake mixture into 7 portion by having  3/4 cup batter into separate bowls and mix in natural coloring into each bowl.

8. Pour the batter into a 7" round pan and bake for 15min or until the toothpick inserted come out clean.

9. Take out the cake leave it to cool (5min) and use a thin knife go arout and the cake pan and have the cake out and cool on rack.

I bake 2 cake at one time as I happen to have 2 mould. It help to shorten the time of the baking.

After finished all the baking , make sure the cake cool down before frosting.

I frost one of the cake with strawberry Italian Merigue Buttercream and anoather with blueberry Italian Merigue Buttercream. For Italian Merigue I am using the recipe from ->Cake Journal

Decorate the cake with your favourite fruit , I used cheeries & blueberry . Simply love the look of this cake and the height of it. The cake did bring a "wow" factor after one slice was being cut out. However the cake is not as moist and soft as I would love to. I will try other cake base and see what it will bring next time when I bake this again .

Rainbow always mean something speacial to my heart, as it remember GOD's promise for me and my dear one on our wedding. At time things get tough and life is not always easy , I bake this cake to remind myself GOD's goodness in this season and trust HIM will bring a more of HIM 2014 in our life again!

Happy New YEAR !!! May GOD blessings fall upon you and the love one in 2014 . You will be a great blessings to those around you .

I am submitting this post to Baby Sumo's Christmas Recipes Collection 2013 event which is hosted by Baby Sumo of Eat Your Heart Out.

Remember every cloud has silver lining and rainbow always come after storm !!

 

P/S : The picture in this blog is taken by a talented brother. Really love how it make the cake looks so like magazine picture.

3D House Cake

A child laughter is always a happy song singing to our ears . You will not get bored or annoy by it. Therefore hanging around with children make you felt younger and indeed help you stay energetic.

It is my god daughter 1 year old celebration. Kid just grow faster than we can imagine. It is always honor  to celebrate birthday together as a family :)

I want to bring something special for her party. Got the permission from the parents to bring a cake for this special occasion.( Just in case they would like to order something special for their precious baby)

I do not dare to promise anything. Though I know this is the cake I would like to make - House Cake.I saw this cake last year from the blog. Have been looking for an occasion I can make this cake and not to eat it by myself ( it is not wise to eat a whole house of cake ^^) . However not knowing how well I will success in making this cake. I just told them hopefully it will be a surprise.

I follow the link ->Cook.Bake.Love and appreciate the blogger of sharing what they have learn and how to improve the cake decoration . She is good in doing the decoration , I hope I can have such skill :)


So here is how to build the house ..

Ingredient :

1 piece of  8" butter cake with 2" height.
( I used NGSK butter cake ->Zebra Butter Cake)

1 piece of 10" pandan sponge cake 1.5" height
(I used one of the swissroll chiffon cake base ->Yam Taro Paste Swissroll)

Cream frosting :

For frosting the house in between the layer

Blueberry Cream

100g Blueberry ( I used can blueberry as I need to juice )
250g Pouring Cream ( Whip to stiff peak)

Method :
1. Puree the blueberry and press through the sift .
2. Mixed the fine puree with the whipping cream.

For outter layer of  the house

Strawberry yoghurt cream

Ingredient

300g Strawberry Yoghurt
300g Pouring Cream ( Whip to stiff peak)
2Tbsp Gelatin
4Tbsp Water

Method :

1. Put the water in a bowl and sprinkle gelatin in it. Mix well and place in a bowl of hot water to have it melt.
2. Whip pouring cream till stiff peak.
3. Pour the melted gelatin into the strawberry yoghurt and mixed well.
4. Fold the whipping cream into the strawberry yoghurt mixture.


Chocolate cream ( for the house ground)

Melt 10g of dark chocolate ( double boil)
Mix with 100g whipping cream

To make the grass - Desicated coconut mix with some pandan ecessene.
Candies , green grapes , raspberry , biscuits , anything you think your kids will like.

Housing making step :

1. Level bthe butter cake and cut into precisely half.
2.Spread the blueberry cream ont he half of the butter cake and place it on top of the other buttercake.
3.Divide this cake into 3 equal portion. , cut out 1/3 ( be precise as you can )
4.Lift up the 1/3 portion of the cake to standing position , cut diagonally into 2 triangles.
5.Place the 2 triangle together to form a roof and join them with the blueberry cream.
6.Place the roof on top of the remaining 2/3 of the cake. Joint together with blueberry cream. Now the house has been form ^^.
7. Spread the chocolate cream on the sponge cake, place the house on top and position as your preference.
8. Spread strawberry cream to cover the house and cream as smooth as possible and start to decorate the house to your liking or the liking of the litte one.

e

I love to have fruit on my cake and try not to put too much of candies. So I build the house with green grapes as path leading to the door and have a bush of raspberry as roses and green grass. I have little princess & horses candies. Afterall is still a little girl cake.

Beside making a ginger bread house this year, maybe can try to do a house cake as a beautiful dessert. If you have the little one I am sure they will love to decorate the cake with you.

Hopefully this cake will bring a surprise on the christmas dinner. Wish you all a merry christmas and blessed new year 2014 ^^

 

Ladybug Steam Cupcake

Well is the time of year , where everyone is rushing to get pressie, prepare food , arrange for holidays .  To want to end the year more foodfull , and have the celebration mood to journey forward to New Year.

Staying in western country, Christmas is a big event for everyone. In US the celebration kick start from thanksgiving in November till the new year. I used to fantasy on how Christmas will be celebrated in western country. The movie seem to project such romantic event with the love one and snowing whole days, nights and months.  Well, sorry Australia is summer during Christmas . How people celebrate Christmas in this country is not romantic at all. Is very family , we tend to have BBQ at the back yard and beers and hot hot weather.  So maybe should a white Christmas will make some different ? Not sure has yet to experience it.

I try not to get too involve on getting present and eating ourselves silly as years goes by. Honestly that is lot of time the present we give or get might not be the one people like. All the people I knew of, are very blessed and have house full of things . This should be a season to bless those who really in need. So I want my Christmas to be one that is give to the needy not to top up others store room .

Every year my church will have an event for the children to know the true meaning of Christmas->Christmas for Kids ( C4K). This event has run for 10 years and we really want to bring the love of GOD to community that has struggle or needs in life.

So I participate in baking Cupcake for the little one. I found this recipe from the website , which I knew the children surely will love the print on this cake . I hope by enjoying the cupcake it will bring some joys to this special day for them .

The recipe I used and modify  is from ->My Little Favourite DIY

Ingredients :

3 Cold Eggs
275g Plain Flour
3 tsp baking powder
150ml Fresh milk
1 tsp ovallette ( I cant find this in Aus, I replace with 1/2 baking soda)
220g Castor Sugar ( can be reduced)
1 tsp vanilla essence
1-2 piece of dark chocolate ( melted by double boiling )

Method :

1) Place the egg and sugar in a mixing bowl , beat till fluffy and creamy , reach ribbon stage
2) Mix in 1/3 of the flour in the egg mixture till combine, pour in 1/2 the milk portion. Follow by another 1/3 of flour then 1/2 milk portion and finally pour in the reminding 1/3 flour in the mixture and combine well.
3)Take 1 Tbsp plain mixture and put into a piping bag
4)Take 3 Tbsp plain mixture , mix with dark melted chocolate and put into pipping bag .
5) Colour the rest of the mixing with bright red and put into a piping bag
6) Pump the red color mixture into the cup about 80% full .
7) Draw a cross with the chocolate mixture and do dots on both sides. Color the upper half of the cross with chocolate mixture.
8) Make 2 plain dots as eye and filled 2 small dots in the plain mixture as eye balls.
9)Steam with medium high heat for 10-12 min. Remember to cover the steamer lids with tea towel. You do not want the water condense to drop onto the cake.

As I do not know how should the texture and the taste of the cake with ovallette inside. Is hard for me to know what I did is successful or the cake should be more moist then this.

I do a pre run batch before the actual baking events. And put some strawberry jam in the cake as fillings. However the jam melted and leak out from the bottom of the cake and make it wet . Where I omit the jam but instead filled with some chocolate chip instead..

The cake is moist and is not as chewy as I thought it will be . The texture of the cake is sort of like chinese fa kueh. Thank GOD the texture is not like the chinese style steam cake.

What is the let down when I did that for the big batch. The cup cake liner I used seem to be bigger which I do not notice it. Until I start steaming the cake it takes longer than my pre run. The cake folor fade and some of the print fade as well.



Lesson learnt - Do not fill it too full , as the longer the heat to steam it will cause the color fade and the cake will surely crack! Is a hard lesson , but I will be more careful next time when it come to cake steaming.