Black Glutinous Ang Ku Kuih ( Aka Purple Sweet Potato soft cake )

I have always wanted to make the black glutinous rice flour Ang ku Kuih. I was hoping the color of this kuih will be dark shining black . However the result is more a dark purple kuih. When I planned to make this kuih another traditional biscuit was in my mind , so I decided to do a mung bean fillings. The half of this mung bean fillings is used for another recipe ( I hope I can update it soon ) .

For the Mung bean fillings I follow the recipe from Nasi Lemak Lover

Ingredients :

400g peeled Mung Bean ( The one I bought is already peeled , soaked overnight)
250g caster sugar
2tsp  salt
Dash of white pepper 
1/2 Onion ( original recipe called for shallot) - Finely chop.
4-5 Tbsp of vegetable oil

Method:

1. Combine Mung bean , sugar and salt in a large metal bowl. Mixed well and steam on medium heat for 30min.
2. Once Mung Bean is easy to mash , off the fire and mash mung bean to fine. I used blender to blend it , make sure is not too finely blended
3. Heat up the vegetable oil in a wok and stir fried the onion till brown, set aside for later used.
4. In the same wok pour in the mash mung bean and stir fried on low heat till is dry and able to form a ball.
5. Remove from heat and pour in the fried onion and mix well with the mung bean mash.
6. Divide and shape the mung bean into ball shape for later used.


Black Glutinous Rice Ang Ku Kuih 

Adapt from ->Butter , Flour & Me

Ingredients :

80g  Purple Sweet Potato
1Tbsp Caster Sugar
50g Warm Water
120g Black Glutinous Rice Flour ( Original recipe call for 40g black glutinous rice flour + 80g glutinous rice flour)
1Tbsp Cooking Oil

Method :

1. Cut purple sweet potato in cube and steam till cooked and mash it finely.
2. Mix all the ingredients till combine , add in the oil at last to form a dough.
3. **Portion the dough accordingly to fit the mould , and wrap the fillings with the dough.
4. Gently press the dough into the kuih mould that has dusted with flour.
5. Hit the side of the mould and unmould the kuih and place it on a small piece of banana leave .
6. Once finished moulding all the kuih, steam the kuih in a wok with medium heat for 2 min , open the lid let the hot air off closed lid, continue to steam for another 2min , open the lid again and close it to steam for another 1 min.
7. Take the kuih out and brush some cooking oil onto it. Let the kuih cool and serve .

I have 2 size of mould . one is tiny one another is consider medium.

** Note:
For small mould - weigh 11g dough and 9g fillings
For medium mould - weigh 13g dough and 10g fillings.

The kuih is soft and the fillings is just nice sweetness. I have a few freeze and when have the kuih steam back is still soft and yummy.

Black forest cake ( La forêt noire )

A completely different Black Forest Cake. I came pass this cake recipe years ago. I do bookmark as a cake I must do when I have an opportunity.

April month was full of celebration. One of the special day was my beloved birthday. I did not bake him any cake last year, during my pregnancy I was so put off by any sweet . So I can not make any baking. This year I promise him I will do a special cake for him. So what does he expect from the cake ? He love chocolate and want something creamy. So this is the right cake!!

So this recipe that I have bookmark from my favourite blogger ->DailyDelicious Black Forest Cake . 
is the best choice for this event. 
Ingredients : 

Basic Chocolate Sponge cake 

85g Egg Yolks ( 4 eggs)
25g Caster Sugar
45g Vegetable Oil
45g Milk
60g Cake Flour
25g Chocolate Powder - mixed in the cake flour above

170g Egg White ( 4 eggs)
85g Caster Sugar  ( I reduce to 60g)

Method:


1.  Mixed egg yolks and 25g caster sugar with hand whisk till is combine .
2.  Mixed the oil and milk together combine well. Pour into the egg yolks mixture and whisk well,
3.  Sift the cake flour mixture into the egg yolks mixture and combine till no lump.
4.  Preheat oven till 160C.
5.  Used electric mixer beat the egg white till foamy and gradually add in the sugar. Beat the egg white till peak foam .
6. Fold 1/3 of the egg white into the flour mixture combine well and continue to fold the egg white in 2 batches into the flour mixture , till all combine well.
7. Pour into the rectangle mold and bake for 15mins or baked. When the sponge cake was cold , cut into 2 pieces of square cake that fit into 6" loose base square mold.

 Simple Syrup ( original recipe is Kirsch syrup )

120g Sugar
100g Hot Water
15ml Brandy ( original recipe used Kirsch)
 -> I actually used the juice from the can of pitted cherry.


Chocolate Cream

80g Dark Chocolate Chopped
2 Egg Yolks
15g Caster Sugar
85g Full Cream Milk
100g Whipping Cream ( pouring cream)
-> Next time I would add some gelatin in it to have it more firm(1 Tbsp of gelatin + 1 1/2 Tbsp of water to bloom it)


(Kirsch) Brandy Flavor Whipping Cream

2g Gelatin ( will change to 1Tbsp gelatin + 1 1/2 water to bloom it )
1 Tsp of Vanilla paste
280g Whipping Cream
20g Caster Sugar
10-20g Brandy or Kirsch

Chocolate Whipped Cream
30g Dark Chocoalte chopped
130g Whipping Cream

-> Melt chocolate , and put the 35ml whipping cream into it and mixed. Pour the mixture into the remaining cream and beat till soft peak. Chilled in fridge .


Decoration

Chocolate Shave
Cocoa Powder

1 can of pitted cherry or fresh cherry (pitted)

Method :

Make Chocolate Cream

1. Beat the yolks and sugar till well combine. Boil milk and pour the hot milk over the yolk mixture and whisk all the time.
2. When all milk mix into the yolk. Pour the mixture in sauce pan and heat on low heat until 80C
3. P;ace a sieve over the chopped chocolate. When the egg mixture is ready, have the mixture slowly pour onto the chopped chocolate through the sieve.
4. Wait for 1 min and stir till the chocolate is all melted and let it cool to room temperature.
5. Beat the whipping cream till soft peack, spoon 1/3 of the whipped cream into the chocolate mixture , fold to combine and pour the chocolate mixture back into the whipped cream and fold to combine.

Put 1 piece of the chocolate sponge cake in the 6" square mold sprinkle with syrup . Pour the chocolate cream over the sponge and refrigerated for 2 hours until firm.
Drained the cheery and place the cherries over the chocolate cream.

Make Kirsch flavor whipping cream.

1. Place 80ml whipping cream in a small saucepan with vanilla paste and sugar. Bring it to boil and put the gelatin into the cream and still till melt. Let it cold to room temperature
2. When the cream is cold mix in the kirsch ( brandy) and the rest of the cream whip till soft peak.

Spread the cream over the cherries sponge and place the other pieces of chocolate sponge cake on top. Sprinkle with syrup and refrigerate until firm . I did overnight.

Before serving , decorate the cake with chocolate whipped cream , chocolate shave and cocoa powder.

As I did not drained the cherries enough , my chocolate cream part was really melting when I unmold my cake. I have to freeze the cake to have it come out nice.

If I make this again , will put some gelatin in the cake or use fresh cherries I think would be better.

My husband love this cake to the bits . I promise nobody will share his cake , so basically he has this whole cake himself. I knew he enjoy it lots.

Almond Chocolate Chip Chiffon Cake

This is the 2nd bake for this Chiffon Cake . The first one was bake with cutting off chocolate chip from a chuck of chocolate. On this 2nd bake I am using chocolate chips. I found that using chocolate chip in chiffon cake , the chocolate chips seem to sink into the bottom of the cake and not inside the cake itself. However using cut fine chocolate , it will give a lighter and better effect of having chocolate in the cake itself.

I'm joining Best Recipes for Everyone April 2015 Event Theme: Fun with Almonds by Fion of XuanHom's Mom and co-host by Doreen of My Favourite Little DIY


Using almond meal in the recipe has create a chiffon cake full of almond fragrance and the cake texture is a lot softer and not spongy.

The recipe is adapt from a Japanes translate to chinese cakebook - 自已作职人配方戚风蛋糕。

For 20"(6 Eggs) or 23" (7 Eggs) Chiffon Cake Mold

Ingredients :

7  Egg Yolks
90ml  Vegetable Oil
100ml Warm Milk
140g Almond Meal
70g Chocolate Chip
7 Egg White
100g Caster Sugar

Method :

1. Preheat oven to 165C
2. Place the egg yolks in the mixing bowls, pour in vegetable oil and warm milk . Mix till combine.
3. Shift the almond meal into the egg yolks mixture. Whisk till all well combine.
4. Whisk the egg whites to foamy and add in caster sugar gradually and beat till stiff peak.
5. Gently fold in egg white mixture into egg yolk batter in 3 seperate additions until well combined.
6. Sprinkle the chocolate chop into the cake mixture and lightly stir in the cake.
7. Pour the batter into the chiffon cake mold. Bake in the preheated oven for 40-45min.
8.When the cake is out from the oven , invert pan immediately to cool completely before unmold.


The cake is very soft and I love the fragrance of almond in the cake. This is definitely a very healthy chiffon cake beside the chocolate chip. You can replace the chocolate chip with 40g roasted almond chip to have a total almond chiffon cake .


Hope you can give this recipe a try .

Magic Custard Cake

During my pregnancy, I can not take any sweet , as my taste bud just does not like sweet at all.  I was always tire and can not do much baking. At time I can not even look at any dessert picture. It will make me want to puke. However by chance I come across this recipe -> AncooJournal Magic Custard Cake. What attract me is the 3 different texture in one cake. I wonder how it will taste when you have 3 texture - cake, custard and the bottom chewy dough .

Interesting part of pregnancy is , once you give birth . Whatever was weird then , will get back to the normal self. When I finally found the time and got my "normal" taste bud back , I can not help but to try on baking this cake.

Recipe as below :

Ingredients :

113 g Butter
480ml Milk
4 Eggs , separated egg white from egg yolks ( 70g each egg including shell)
1 Tbsp of caster sugar
115g Plain Flour
150g Icing Sugar ( I used 120g)
1 Tbsp Water
1 Tbsp of Orange Zest
1 tsp of Vanilla Extract

Method :

1. Preheat oven to 160 C fan . Line a 8"x8 " (20cmx20cm)  Square cake pan all sides up . I used a removable square pan .
2. Melt the butter and set aside for slight cool. Warm the milk to lukewarm and set aside.
3. Whisk egg yolks with icing sugar using hand held mixer until light and fluffy. Mix in the melted butter and 1 Tbsp of water until evenly incorporated ( about 2 min).
4. Mix in the flour until evenly incorporated. Slowly beat in the lukewarm milk and vanilla extract until everything is well mixed.
5. Whisk the egg whites to foamy and add 1 Tbsp of caster sugar into it, whisk till stiff peak.
6. Fold in 1/3 of the egg white into the flour mixture in step # 4 with spatula. Repeat until all the egg whites are folded in. The mixture will seem cuddled is normal.
7.Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 50-60min ( my oven is 50min) or until the surface is golden.
8. Once bake , take the cake out from pan let it cool and chilled in fridge before serve.

      
I bake this cake twice. The first time I bake it was for our church life group gathering. The response was so good, I only manage to get one piece to try out. So the week after that, I bake another one for me and my beloved. Ok we did indulge ourselve with sweet now and then. At time it can be tire in adjusting our new role as parent.  We need to pamper ourselve.

I did not manage to take a good picture of the cake. The layer does not seem to obvious in the picture. I love the texture of the cake , it has the soft cake in 1st layer, soft custard cream on 2nd layer and the chewy part at the bottom. I enjoy soft cake and my beloved love any creamy cake. So this cake suit both of our taste. 

Give it a try if you want something different in one cake.

Stamped ShortBread

Time goes past fast even as a home mom . There will be days , my schedule is about cooking,eating, feeding, coaxing the little one to sleep , rest and cooking etc repeat itself from days to weeks. Well, am not complaining at all. In fact I thank GOD , my princess is a good baby. By 2nd months, she sleep through the night from 9pm - 6am. She is a happy baby most of the days. As I am not into carry baby all day and times, she kind of knew it and able to adapt well . Praise GOD , prayer works and I now find time to bake and hopefully can update my blog as much as I can .

We are back to church and most of the activities we family used to do . This shortbread was baked for the ministry I am serving. Our church has a small cafe operate on Sunday to let people have some munch and coffee before service started each Sunday. Of course those who serve in the cafe are all volunteers . We do need more volunteers to help out. So we have the Ministry Fair Sunday to encourage people to serve in different ministry.

I come across this shortbread recipe from one of my favourite blogger ->Dailydelicious. As I need some cookie that I can stamp some wording on it, I have to make sure the dough of the cookies is firm and will not be out of shape once bake. Her recipe is just perfect. So here is the recipe I have used to make my Book Cafe Short Bread.

In total I make 47pic with heart shape and round shape mould. I double the portion from the original recipe and add orange zest in it to give a hint of orange in the cookies.

Ingredients :

200g  Butter ( cold and cut into pieces)
1/8tsp Salt  ( as I used salted butter, so I omitted the used of salt)
60g  Icing Sugar ( original recipe is 80g)
240g  Cake Flour
90g  Rice Flour
1 Tbsp of Orange Zest.


Method :

1. Cut the butter into small cube and put in a mixing bowl.
2. Sift cake flour, rice flour, icing sugar and orange zest , pour over into the butter.
3. Use your fingers to mix the dry ingredient into the butter. Mix it till looks like small bits of bread crumb.
4. Knead the crumbs till stick together and smooth.
5. Wrap with the plastic and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.
6. Take the dough out from the fridge, roll the dough to 5mm thick and cut it to different desire shape.
7. Preheat oven to 160C, and line the tray with baking sheet.
8. Place the cut cookies on the tray with baking sheet and press the wording you desire on the cookies.
9. Bake the cookies for 15-20min until the light golden.
10.Take the cookies out from the oven and cool on tray. Keep the cookies in airtight container.

The cookies is soft but firm, it will not easily break into pieces and it hold the shape after baking. Though the cookies look "plain", the taste is simple delicious.If you want to send a message in a cookies , this might be a good choice too.

Soon Kueh - May this be a smooth sailing year with our little one

The pregnancy happen on last year, does take up a lot of my time and energy in the whole process. Add on to it, we were moving during my pregnancy. Moving to a new home , is a whole entire full on project for a pregnant lady. Packing and unpacking is insane. Thank GOD all is over and we have welcome our new born in Nov 2014. Now I am a homemaker aka mommy and also a feeding cow to my little one. As all mom said, is tiring, is stressing at time but all is WORTH it. I hope to get back to baking and more cooking as my little one grow older.

So here is a long outstanding blog . However is good to start my 2015 with this kueh I love most - Soon Kueh. Hopefully this will be a smooth sailing and soon soon year for our whole family .This is one of the kueh I sort of crave during my pregnancy. As I can not get any here I have to make it myself. I follow the recipe from this link ->atkokken-soon-kueh-turnip-dumpling

The skin for this recipe is easy to follow and I simply love the result , the skin is transparent and chewy soft . Is just the right texture for me.I hope you will like it as well.

Ingredients for fillings:

500g Turnips
3 tbsp  Oil
1 tbsp  Minced garlic
1 tsp    Oyster sauce
1 tsp    Salt
1/2 cupChicken stock
55g      Dried shrimps
Sprinkle of white pepper

Method:

1. Peel turnip and cut into matchstick and soak in water. Drain and set aside.
2. Add oil to a heated wok. Fry garlic until fragrant and brown.
3. Add dried shrimps stired fry till aroma come out add in turnip stir fry to combine well
4. Add in the chicken stock ,oyst,r sauce,salt and fry for a 3 mins.
5. Cooked till the water reduce and turnip turn transparent and soft. Dash some white pepper on it
6. Let the filling cool down before wrap it .

Note: I have some leftover carrot, I just put in together to enhance the sweetness.

 Ingredients for the skin wrapping :

375 g Wheat Starch ( Tang Mien)
180g  Tapioca Flour
450 ml Boiling water ( I add a little bit more, this can varies as to see how the texture to be)
3 tbsp  Vegetable oil ( original recipe suggest either shortening or oil )
Oil for greasing

Method :

1. Place all flour ( Wheat starch & tapioca flour) in a mixing bowl. Pour in boiling water and mix quickly with ladle ( I used wood ladle). Leave aside with cover for 15 min
2. Add in oil and knead into a pliable dough. Be careful it can be real hot.
3. Roll out in a cylinder , cut with a sharp knife into 2cm slices. Dab some oil on both side and roll out gently into thin round shapes.
4. Place 1 Tbsp of the filling in the center of the each dough and fold in half . Seal the edges by pressing it.

I used a curry puff mould to help me in this. As I just want to make sure the size of the kueh is consistant. I am not good in making any pleat at the edge. Cover the dough with warm tea towel during the process to avoid it dry up and keep moist.

Oil the steaming tray with some vegetable oil and place all the kueh in it and steam in high heat for 15-20mins. Once the kueh is cooked , brush some vegetable oil on it while is hot so the kueh will not stick to one another when take out.

Serve with chilli sauce or you might want to top with some deep fried shallot and dark soya sauce.
I even pan fired one of the soon kueh to test the texture. The texture is soft yet will not easy broke. I will keep this recipe as is what I like :)

FootBall Cake

I can only say I have my months past really fast with all the sleeping and eating in this period of my life. I am journey into my 6th month of pregnancy. I still felt drain and tire after work and can not stay awake after dinner.  Most of the time I will be sitting and doze off infront of the TV till my love gentle nudge me and ask me to get into bed. Gosh I hope I will have more energy as time past.


Not be able to have this post on July I hope I will not miss it in Aug14. Time flies just too fast for me to realise it. I have make this Football Cake early this year. This cake is for a little boy 1 year old celebration, his party theme is Football as he love balls. This is the present I gave to him for his 1 year old celebration . Really love this cute little boy, he is one of the babies in church that who does not scare of my love. :p


Instead of baking the round cake in oven, I actually used a steam cake recipe. As I do not want to buy a Football mould cake tin. However I do have some metal bowl to do some steaming . So here is the recipe I follow ->Blessed Homemaker


Steam Moist Chocolate Cake


Ingredients :
185g Unsalted Butter or cooking oil. ( I used butter)
180g Castor Sugar
200ml Evaporated Milk
2 Eggs lightly beaten
110g Cake Flour
45g Dark Cocoa Powder ( I used up to 60g and good quality cocoa powder)
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract


Method :


1. Heat up the steamer. I used my normal wok to steam
2. Line the bottom of the round metal bowl and spray oil around the bowl.
3. Put castor sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla extract and butter in a saucepan, stir over low heat until the sugar is dissolved and butter melted. Off fire and leave to cool.
4. Add the beaten egg into the above mixture and still till well combine.
5. Sift the flour , cocoa power , baking powder and baking soda into a large mixing bowl.
6. Pour the eggs mixture over the flour and stir still combine. The batter should be runny.( If the chocolate mixture is not dark to the color of your liking , put a drop of red velvet essence )
7. Pour the batter into the prepared pan , cover top of the pan with a piece of aluminium foil.
8. Steam over medium heat for 45min.
9. Cool the cake in the pan before turning our for further decoration .

I have this cake decorate by using Vanila Buttercream and Melted Chocolate. To make the football filed, it is the simple pandan chiiffon swissroll base. 

I would not say this is a good decorate football cake. Anyway is the 1st attempt of making a football cake. I do hope to improve my skill in near future. The steam chocolate cake is kind of dense however as it is a steam cake so the moist still keep well in the cake. I do hope the parents and the boy has enjoy this cake.