A Princess turns 9 with a Pear and Nut Crumble Cake

Sunday, 17th February 2013 marked the 9th Birthday of my (not so) little princess. I cant believe how the time has flown and how quickly she has grown up. As per tradition, we woke her up early in the morning and she looked under the bed for her presents.

This year she got a nice stash that included a set of headphones, a Faber Castell paint set, a clay art and craft set and a Litte Miss key-chain. She also got DrawSomething - a game that all of us can play together since she loves boardgames so much.



It being a Sunday, we went for the early Church service and while the kids had Sunday School, we rushed back home so The Lovely Wife could cook lunch. It was going to be a vegetarian lunch since the kids have given up meat for Lent.

The Lovely Wife, with some help from her Mother, cooked up a whole bunch of vegetarian dishes that were really tasty. The menu this year consisted of Vegetable Briyani, Stir Fried Ladies Fingers (Okra) Tomato Chutney, Yoghurt Curry, Tarka Dhall, Baji and Stuffed Taufoo (tauhu sumbat). Very Yummy indeed!



The kids had a lot of fun stuffing the Fried Bean curd with cucumber and turnip and topping it with chilli sauce.



Lunch was really delicious....

Lemon Frosted Lemon Cake with a sad snake...

Every Chinese New Year for the last few years, we have been invited over to Ms Lor Siak Por's for lunch. Ms LSP always provides a lovely spread of food and this year was no exception


As has been the 'tradition' I bake a cake for her and her guests to eat. Except for the first year, when I managed to pipe on a Chinese character on the cake, the last 2 years have seen me trying to feature the Chinese Zodiac animal on the cake.

Trying is the operative word as my Zodiac Animals never seem to turn out well. Two years ago, I attempted a Rabbit Cake but the rabbit turned out looking more like a hamster or maybe a rat. Then, last year, I attempted a Dragon Cake but alas, said dragon turned out looking more like a fancy prawn.

This year, being the year of the snake, I attempted a Snake figure for the cake. Well, it kind of looks like a snake but perhaps a rather sad snake. As my little princess said, I should have just gone for a 'cartoonish' kind of snake in 2D rather than trying to be fancy. My son said that the snake made the otherwise lovely looking cake look scary....

He said I should have taken a picture of the cake first without the snake. I wish I had done that too.

Boozy Cheesy Cherry Cake

Many weeks ago - in January - one of our good friends, Elison, celebrated her birthday and we invited her over for dinner together with another good friend, Lynn. I've mentioned before that Eli is a great cook who also has very high standards so I'm always a bit nervous when baking a cake for her - especially her birthday cake!

The Lovely Wife suggested that I do something different instead of always going down the route of chocolate. I considered making her my Chocolate Trifle that she adores but then decided to try and dazzle her with something new.

Almond Choc Chip Chinese New Year Cake

I'm late
I'm late
For a very important date.
No time to say "Hello, Goodbye".
I'm late, I'm late, I'm late.


Yes, Late, Late, Late! Chinese New Year has come and gone and I'm only now posting about the cake I made for Ms Lor Siak Porfor Chinese New Year 2012!

Taking a cake over to Ms LSP's for her Chinese New Year parties has become something of a tradition. It's the least we can do since Ms LSP always feeds us with some awesome food! This year, I fell in love with her Abacus Yam dish. The dish is basically yam shaped into abacus like discs and then cooked with minced meat and all sorts of other stuff. I dont know how to make it nor what goes into the dish but is really yummy. You'll have to ask her how it's made but trust me when I say it's delicious.

I always feel I need to make something different to tantalise Ms LSP's taste buds. She is one person that I really enjoy baking for as she is honest and will tell you if the cake doesn't meet up to her expectations. She also doesn't ooh and ahh for the sake of oohing and aahing but will tell you what she really thinks.

So for this year, I decided I would make a Choc Chip Almond cake topped with my usual Chocolate Ganache. This being the year of the dragon I piped out a dragon on top of the cake.

No, I dont have good piping skills, what I did was to make a royal icing and pipe it over a printed out picture of a dragon. Then I carefully moved it over to the cake. Rather clever of me I thought!



For the cake, I flirted with the idea of making a blondie - the vanilla version of a Brownie. What I did was meld the method of a brownie with my butter cake recipe and this is what I came up with.

Ingredients
250g Butter
230g Brown Sugar
4 Eggs
230g Flour
2.5 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsp Vanilla
100g Choc Chips
100g Almonds (nibs or chopped)

Chocolate Ganache
150g Dark Chocolate
200ml Cream
Sugar to taste

Method
Melt the butter and let cool. Beat in sugar. Add in eggs one at a time till creamy. Sift flour together with baking powder and fold into the mixture. Add in vanilla, nuts and choc chips. Mix well. Spread into a lined baking pan and bake in a preheated 170C oven for about 40 minutes or till done.

For the topping, heat the cream and then pour over the chocolate. Mix well and add sugar to taste. Allow to cool slightly then spread over top and sides of cake.

My kids reckoned that the dragon looked a little bit like a prawn but fortunately Ms LSP and her guests all knew it was a Dragon!




I think the cake turned out pretty well and Ms LSP gave me the thumbs up. Thanks for a great lunch Ms LSP and here's a belated wish to everyone for a Very Happy Chinese New Year! May the year of the Dragon bring you lots of peace, love and prosperity. Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Truffle Torte - Christmas 2011

This post finishes off the Christmas 2011 Meal...

Choosing the dessert for Christmas took quite some time and was a choice between going down the route of a tried and tested or doing something new. As I usually do when deciding on a dessert, I leafed through my numerous cookbooks. My son sat with me as I was rifling through pages and pages when his eyes fell on the Truffle Torte from my Le Cordon Bleu cookbook. "Dads, can you make that for dessert?" he asked as he tapped his finger on the page.

I had often wanted to try out this cake but the amount of chocolate it required coupled with the fact that it required a very thin sponge to be made had always deterred me. Not this time however. I scanned the recipe, smiled up at my boy and promptly declared that this would be dessert for Christmas Eve dinner.






This recipe is interesting in that it calls for a little bit of gelatine and liquid glucose to thicken the chocolate. I decided to substitute Honey for liquid glucose. I also decided that since I was using dark chocolate for the filling, I would use some milk chocolate for the chocolate pieces that would go around the cake. The final modification that I did was to top the cake with caramelised almonds for that extra crunch rather than to dust the top with cocoa as the recipe called for.

The sponge was fairly easy to whip up especially since the eggs are beaten over a pot of simmering water. The eggs fluffed up really nicely and didnt deflate too much once the flour was folded in. The cake was nice and soft and in fact bits of the top stuck to the cooling rack as I left it to cool a tad too long. Next time I should place some non-stick paper over the cooling rack.

This is my modified recipe based on the one from Le Cordon Bleu Home Collection - Chocolate.

Ingredients
2 eggs
2 1/2 Tbsp Caster Sugar
4 Tbsp Plain Flour
1 Tbps Cocoa

30ml rum
330g Good Quality Dark Chocolate
200g bar of milk chocolate
1 tsp gelatine powder
1 Tbsp honey
500ml Whipping Cream

Method
To make the sponge: preheat the oven to 170C. Butter and flour a 8 inch springform pan. Half fill a saucepan with water and bring to the boil. Remove from heat. Put the eggs and sugar into a large heatproof bowl and place over the saucepan making sure it is not touching the water. Using electric beaters, whisk for 5-10 minutes until the mixture is thick and light, has doubled in volume and leaves a trail as it falls from the beaters. The temperature of the mixture should never be hot, only warm. Remove the bowl from the pan of water and continue to beat until cold. Sift the flour and cocoa together and carefully fold into the whisked mixture with a large metal spoon or plastic spatula until just combined. Pour the mixture into the tin and gently smooth the top with the back of the spoon. Bake for about 15 minutes or until springy and shrinking from the sides of the tin. Turn out onto a wire rack to cool. Clean the cake tin so it is ready to use later.

Trim the top crust from the sponge using a long serrated knife. Cut the cake into a disc no more that 1.5cm thick and to just fit inside the tin. Place on a 8 inch cake card inside the tin or directly on the base of the tin. (I used a cake ring placed over a square cake board). Brush the sponge with the rum.

Put the chocolate into a bowl. Half fill a saucepan with water and bring the the boil. Remove from the heat and place the bowl of chocolate over the pan making sure the bottom of the bowl is not touching the water. Leave the chocolate to melt slowly, then remove the bowl from the pan. Stir the gelatine powder and 1 Tbsp water over a pan of simmering water until dissolved. Add in the honey and stir well. Pour onto the melted chocolate mixing thoroughly. If mixture turns lumpy, heat very gently over a pan of simmering water until smooth. Let cool.

Whip the cream till soft peaks form and then fold into the cooled chocolate mixture. Do not overmix. Fill the tin to the top with the truffle mixture and level with a pallete knife. Refrigerate for a few hours, preferable overnight.

For the sides, melt the bar of milk chocolate and spread onto a sheet of non-stick paper and spread to a thickness of 2mm. Refrigerate until set then break off large pieces and stick on the side of the torte. Dust the torte with cocoa powder (I used caramelised almonds instead)

So yes, a rather long and tedious recipe but when you actually make it, it really doesn't seem that long nor tedious.

After brushing the cake with rum I used my dessert ring to surround the cake rather than a springform as I wanted the cake to sit on a cake board instead of the springform base. Making the truffle filling was very easy too. As I mentioned, I substituted the Liquid glucose for honey and I'm still wondering why there was a need for gelatine as I am sure the truffle filling would have held up on its own. I think I scrimped a bit on the chocolate for the pieces surrounding the cake as I didnt get a large enough bar! So when I tried sticking the pieces on, they were rather thin and the heat of the kitchen and my hands started to melt the pieces rather quickly.

I think the addition of the caramelised almonds really made a difference as the crunchy, nutty, sweetness complemented the taste of the dark chocolate really well. The truffle filling actually resembled a really thick mousse and it was very chocolatey and flavourful. The thin layer of cake offset the creaminess of the truffle filling and provided a nice change in texture. The cake practcally melts in your mouth and my son came running up to me for seconds even before I had finished serving the rest of the guests! I told him to wait his turn while everone else had a slice first then proceeded to give him a larger piece that he devoured just as quickly!



I was actually a little surprised at how easy this cake is to make especially since it produces such sensational results. My darling boy certainly loved this cake and my little Princess quickly agreed. I would have to agree with them that the cake was really pretty amazing. Definitely something I want to make again and I'm so glad my son spotted this and asked me to make it as I would probably have just left it as one of my 'want to makes' instead of actually making it!

Black and White Butter Cake

Just last week, Sarah's Godparents came over to visit over tea and as usual, the question of what to cook cropped up. I decided to keep things simple yet at the same time take the opportunity to try out something new. I settled for a simple Butter Cake.


Although I have a tried and tested Butter Cake recipe - that is basically a Pound Cake (you know, a pound of everything), I decided to broaden my horizons and try something new. This recipe comes from The Australian Womens Weekly Old Fashioned Favourites - Desserts|Cakes|Biscuits|Slices
and this is how it goes.

Ingredients
250g Butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 (275g) caster sugar
3 eggs
2 1/4 cups (335g) self raising flour
3/4 cup (180ml) milk
Method
Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and line a 22cm round or 19cm square cake pan.
Beat Butter, vanilla extract and sugar till light and fluffy.
Beat in eggs, one at a time. Stir in sifted flour and milk, in two batches.
Spread mixture into pan. Bake about 45 minutes or till done. Stand cake 5 mintues. Turn top side up onto wire rack to cool

Funny thing is, the actual recipe said to bake for about 1 hour but my cake was nicely done in 45 minutes. I think this may be due to the fact that my pan was slightly smaller and I used some of the batter to make a smaller cake. That probably accounts for the time difference perhaps.




We couldn't wait to try out the small cake as the house was filled with a lovely smell of baking! So as soon as the cakes were done, I popped the small cake out and my Little Princess proudly carried it off to show to The Lovely Wife. We wasted no time in cutting the cake and tasting it.



The cake was really nice and light. Almost like a sponge cake rather than a butter cake. Compared to my usual butter cake recipe, this has one less egg and about a 100 grams more of flour. Interesting how this affects the texture so much. Taste wise, it was really good too.




Too make it more interesting, I whipped up a batch of Orange flavoured butter icing and another batch of chocolate icing. For the Orange Icing, I mixed 60g butter, 2 cups icing sugar and about two Tbsps freshly squeezed orange juice together. I also added in some orange essence. I iced half the cake with the orange icing and then used the same basic recipe but omitted the orange juice and added in about 4 Tbsps of cocoa. I used the chocolate icing to ice the other half of the cake.

I also covered the cake with some roasted almond flakes. This gave it a nice crunch and the nuts went really well with the icing.



So with the twin colours of Black and White, I decided to name this simple cake, a Black and White Butter Cake. The kids preferred the chocolate icing over the orange but having two small slices of each flavour was really the way to go!

Hedgehogs and Spiders for Easter...

This post is rather late as Easter was last weekend, however, better late than never as they always say. This Easter, the kids really got involved in the cooking - or at least the selection of what to cook!!

After going vegetarian for Lent, somthing that I was very impressed with the kids for doing as I didn't really observe the Vegetarian bit, they were really keen on a Meat Fest! They 'dictated' to their maternal grandmother what they wanted as well as to The Lovely Wife. Amma - what the kids call maternal Grandma although by right Amma means mother and the correct word should be Ammama (Mothers mother) - made some Mutton Chops for them while The Lovely Wife did her famous BBQ Chicken Wings.

My two children have also been avidly following MasterChef and Junior Master Chef (Aust) and have suddenly started looking at some kids cookbooks that we've bought them. In one particular book, two recipes caught there fancy. One was for a Hedgehog cake while the other was for Spider Meatballs.

"Can we make this for Easter?" They both piped up.
"Sure" Mommy and Daddy replied, "As long as you HELP and not make us do all the work."



And help they did!

Rather than follow the recipe in the book, I made my usual meatballs. I made them a bit larger and flatter though to shape them like the body of a spider. For the legs, we sliced capsicums thinly and stuck them into the meatballs. The eyes were capers stuck on to dollops of mayonnaise.



For the hedgehog cake, I used my usual chocolate cake recipe as well and just shaped it into an ovalish kind of shape. For the 'prickles' I used a fork to shape the icing and then used Chocolate "Rocky Brand" sticks for the spikes. For the eyes and nose, I made a quick fondant with a dash of water mixed into icing sugar and then popped an M&M on to it. The mouth was made with nibbed almonds. There was a little cake batter left over and we made a 'baby' hedgehog using my rabbit pans.

BBQ Chicken Recipe (same as BBQ Ribs)
Chocolate Cake recipe
Meatball Recipe

The kids had a blast making the cake and the meatballs and they did more than help. They actively participated in the making of the cake where both sifted the flour, held the mixer to beat the sugar and butter and of course in decorating the cake. Same with the spiders where they helped to shape the meatballs and of course had a lot of fun sticking the 'legs' into the spiders!


I have to admit, I'm still a little afraid of the kids using the kitchen appliances but I'm glad that they have taken a real interest in cooking. They loved the fact that they had bragging rights over the cake and spiders and they enjoyed eating their own creations too!



Happy Belated Easter everyone!

Triple Layer Chocolate Delight

This post is rather late and I realise that I have quite a backlog of posts to clear up. I made this cake for our Christmas Meal in 2010 and I mentioned that although it turned out well, it wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. I had mentioned in that post that:

I had wanted the baked layer of the dessert to be softer but it turned out more like a brownie thanks to me adding in too much flour, forgetting that the cocoa would act as a binder as well. (I redid the layer a few days later and I'll post about that soon - I hope!)

So yes, you realise how late this post is!


This is how I wanted the layer to be. Soft, baked mousse, although in the remake, I left out the walnuts.



This is the full recipe for how it Should be!

Ingredients
For the Base
1 Packs Oreos
50g Butter

For the Baked Mousse
100g Walnuts
4 eggs
170g good quality chocolate
10g butter
120g brown sugar
1/2 cup cocoa
3 tbsp corn flour
1 tsp baking powder

For the Mousse
200g Good Quality Chocolate
3 Tbsp Brown Sugar
3 Egg Yolks
300ml Whipping Cream

Method

For the Base:
Melt the butter and let cool. Crush the oreos and mix with the melted butter. Pack into a 9" springform pan. Bake for 15 mins in a 180C oven. Allow to cool.

For the Baked Mousse:
Melt the chocolate with butter and set aside. Whisk the eggs with sugar till thick and foamy. Add in the chocolate mixture and mix well. Add in the cocoa sifted together with corn flour and baking powder. Turn out into the oreo base and bake for 25 mins at 180C. Remove from oven and let cool.

For the mousse top:
Whip the cream till soft peaks. Melt the chocolate with the brown sugar and whisk in the egg yolks. If mixture seizes, dont worry. Add in the cream a little at a time and whisk till smooth. Fold in to rest of cream and then once cake is cool, spread over the cake.

Allow to chill for at least 4 hours

It really is a lovely dessert and anything with loads of chocolate and nuts is a winner in my book. You may want to double the ingredients for the oreo base as I thought more Oreos would make the dessert taste even better.

Remember that the pictures are the original attempt and not how the edited recipe would appear. Try and picture a combination of the mousse top and the baked mousse cake shown earlier and you get the idea. Sorry if I'm complicating things!

Chocolate Orange Cake with a Rabbit thrown in!

Happy Chinese New Year everybody! Okay, So I'm a little late but at least I'm still within the 15 days of Chinese New Year! This year, our good friend, Ms Lor Siak Por, invited us over for Chinese New Year lunch on Saturday, 5th February. That was the 3rd day of Chinese New Year.

I have to say that Ms Lor Siak Por cooked up a feast and I ate a whole lot more than I should have. I told her the food was Absolutely (F***ing) Delicious and she laughed at my profanity! I'd tell you what she cooked but then again this is my blog and not hers...

So anyway, The Lovely Wife and I thought that we couldn't go over empty handed especially since Ms Lor Siak Por is such an ardent fan of my cakes/desserts. Since this year is the Year of the Rabbit and since Chinese New Year is always equated with mandarin oranges, I decided to make a Chocolate Orange Cake.


I've made a Choc-Orange cake before for a friend where I just added in some marmalade and cointreau to my usual chocoalte cake recipe but this time I wanted it to be different. What I did was to make a double batch of my butter cake recipe, but modified to include Marmalade, Cointreua and Orange Oil. Then I split the quantity and added Cocoa to one half and then marbled the batter to make a Choc Orange Marble cake.

For the Icing, I used a combination of cocoa, butter and chocolate with liberal doses of cointreau added in as well. The results were indeed rather yummy. The recipe yielded enough for 1 round 9inch cake plus a square 8 inch cake plus a Mother rabbit and two baby rabbits.



I had the Rabbit moulds stored away in the cupboard - a hand me down from Mummy dearest who had apparently made a Rabbits in the garden cake many, many, many years ago! So I baked all the cakes together and they came out looking pretty good. I decided I would keep the small rabbits for the kids and put the mummy bunny on top of the square cake.

Makes 2 quantities. Half the recipe for just one cake.
Ingredients
460g (16oz) Flour
5 tsp Baking Powder
460g (16oz) Castor Sugar
500g Butter
8 Eggs – lightly beaten
6 Tbsp Marmalade
2 Tsps Orange Oil
3 Tbsp Cointreau
3 tbsp cocoa mixed with hot water

For the Icing
4 oz butter
4 oz chocolate
4 oz cocoa
12 oz icing sugar
1-2 Tbsp Cointreau
water

Method
Cream butter and sugar till light and ivory coloured. Add eggs a little at a time. Fold in flour (sifted twice with baking powder). Add in Marmalade, Orange Oil and Cointreau. Mix well till smooth. Halve the mixture. Mix the cocoa with a little hot water to make a smooth paste. Add in the cocoa to one half of the mixture.
Marble the batter by putting in two spoons of plain mixture followed by two spoons of chocolate mixture. Divide equally into two lined and greased cake pans or moulds.
Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 C for about 45 mins or till golden and done
Allow to cool then frost with icing.

Icing
Melt the butter, cocoa and chocolate together to form a smooth paste. Allow to cool. Sift the icing sugar and beat into the mixture. It may clump up a little. Add in the cointreau then add in a little hot water, a little at a time till you achieve a nice smooth, thick icing.
Method

I had made the cakes the evening before and The Lovely Wife's mother, brother, nephew and niece had come over. I served the cake with Ice Cream and the Kids ate the baby rabbits and then dug into the cake with much gusto. The cake was almost completely polished off and I was surprised by how fast it went.



Once cut, the cake had a nice marbled effect and the orange taste was rather distinctive while the chocolate was more subtle.

When we took the cake over to Ms Lor Siak Por's place, I was a bit embarrassed as I thought the rabbit looked more like a little rat as my icing didn't turn out so good. I had run out of icing bags and had to make do with zip lock bags that kept bursting. Fortunately, it looked enough like a rabbit for everyone to ooh and ahh. Apparently her other guests remembered my Chocolate Raspberry Cake that I made last year and I was hoping that this cake would be just as good.

The cake turned out really well and everyone enjoyed it. The kids especially liked it when we could finally cut into the rabbit. I think the rabbit tasted especially good too and as I said earlier, the marbling looked quite good too.




Happy New Year Ms Lor Siak Por and I hope you enjoyed eating whatever cake was left over! Thanks for the splendid meal too. :)

Graham Cracker Crust Chocolate Flourless Cake

What do you do when your children want something delicous to eat, you want to finish off some unused biscuits and you want to try something new? Bake a new dessert of course!

I've seen a lot of recipes that call for Graham Crackers. Never seen them before nor have I tried them. I usually use Marie Biscuits or Digestives in place of Graham Crackers whenever a recipe calls for it. Anyway, our friend Lynn brought over some Graham Crackers to eat with cheese - not knowing that Graham Crackers are sweet. I don't blame her since the word cracker would imply savoury rather than sweet. Anyway, I was thrilled to finally get my hands on some Graham Crackers. They tasted very much like Digestives, although maybe a little sweeter.





The Graham Crackers sat in the cupboard for a little while till the kids asked for a nice dessert one fine day. I decided to whip up something and to use the Graham Crackers as the base. This is what I did.

Ingredients
125g Graham Crackers
90g Butter

200g Chocolate
3 eggs
150g sugar
100g almond meal

300ml cream
Method
Melt butter and allow to cool. Crush the Graham Crackers in a bag till fine (or use a food processor - although the bag method produces a nicer crust). Place crumbs in a bowl and mix with the butter. Pack into a 8" or 9" springform and then bake crust for 15mins at 180C. Remove from oven and let cool

Meanwhile, melt the chocolate over a double boiler. Allow to cool. Whisk the eggs and sugar together till thick and creamy. Beat in the chocolate and then mix in the almond meal till smooth. Whip the cream and fold into the chocolate mixture. Spread into the springform pan and bake at 180C for 20 mins. Remove from oven, cool and then refrigerate for at least 4 hours before serving.

The crust turned out really nicely and the cake was mousselike with a nice texture from the almonds. The children really enjoyed it as did The Lovely Wife. I love anything chocolate and this one goes in as another one of my favourites - a mix between a pie and a crusted cake.

Simply Delicious!!

Flirting with Nigella

I've probably mentioned somewhere in this blog that The Lovely Wife loves adding cookbooks to her collection. She especially likes 'celebrity cookbooks' - you know the Jamie Olivers and the Wolfgang Pucks and the Nigella Lawson's.

I quite fancy Nigella Lawson - not so much her cookbooks but her! I love watching her cooking shows where she makes cooking look so effortless. She always looks so good while she is cooking and you know she is playing the erotic cook by the way she flutters her eyes, smiles at the camera and swishes her hair. She is one sexy cook!

Anyway, sexy cook aside, I had never tried any of her recipes. So a few weekends ago, when some friends said they were popping over for tea, I decided to flip through her book and see what I could find.

This recipe comes from How to be a Domestic Goddess and Nigella calls it her Store Cupboard Chocolate Orange Cake. I've edited the recipe but only for ease of typing and reading...

Ingredients
125g butter
100g dark chocolate, broken into pieces
300g, thin cut marmalade (I used Apricot Jam)
150g caster sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
150g self raising flour
20cm springform, buttered and floured
Method
Preheat oven to 180C
Put the butter in a heavy-bottomed pan and melt over low heat. When its nearly completed melted, add in the chocolate. Leave for a moment to soften and then take the pan off the heat and stir with a wooden spatula until the butter and chocolate are smooth and blended. Now add in the marmalade, sugar and eggs. Stir with the wooden spoon until amalgamated. Beat in the flour bit by bit. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 50mins or until a cake tester comes out clean. cool on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out.

I had my doubts about this cake as it looked like it didnt have enough eggs nor butter and I thought it would yield a cake that didn't rise. However, it turned out to be a well risen cake.


As Nigella points out in her book, the recipe doesnt produce a pretty cake and she suggests that if you want to 'beautify' it, to dust it with Icing sugar or something along those lines.

The taste was different, slightly chocolatey and with a jammy taste to it as well - probably due to the load of apricot jam in it. The Lovely Wife and our friends reckoned it would have tasted better with Orange Marmalade and weren't quite sure whether they really liked it or not. To be fair, we ate it on its own and immediately realised that it would definitely taste better with some cream or ice cream.

The next day it tasted a whole lot better with Vanilla Ice Cream. It tasted better on its own the day after too! The cake was taken over to my mother-in-laws where my children and their cousins did a fine job of polishing it off!



This was my first flirt with Nigella. Well, flirt with her cookbook that is - and I know that's the closest I will ever get to flirting with her!

Rasberry Chocolate Chinese New Year Cake

Recently, The Lovely Wife and I were invited over to a good friends house for dinner on the second day of Chinese New Year - February 15th 2010. Ms Lor Siak Por had also just moved into a new apartment and so this was kind of a double celebration.

I had offered to make a cake and initially I had planned on making my version of the Le Kit Cat but a quick check with her showed that there may be some problem with space in her fridge. I also didn't know how many people she would be inviting so I thought I would make a cake that didn't need refrigeration.


Deciding on what cake to make was a bit of a challenge. Ms LSP had indicated that she wanted a red cake - in line with the Chinese New Year festivities and also the fact that Red is considered good fortune. The only red cake that I know of is the Red Velvet Cake but I'm not a big fan of that due to the amount of colouring that goes into the cake. I considered making a normal butter cake and topping it off with red icing when I remembered that I had once made a cake using Jelly crystals (but never posted about)that my friend Naomi had told me about.

The fact that Ms LSP also likes fruity, summery flavours convinced me further that this was a good idea. So I made a Raspberry Chocolate Cake! I sandwiched the cake with chocolate icing and also piped on the Chinese Characters for Luck in dark chocolate.



For a bit of added flavour, I tossed in some strawberry jam in the chocolate icing as well!

The beauty of this cake was that everyone thought I used real raspberries for the cake. The cake had a lovely reddish tinge (okay, maybe more pinkish) with a nice subtle taste of raspberries. The strawberry jam laced chocolate icing complemented the cake very nicely.

How to make a Jelly Cake? Just use your favourite Butter Cake recipe - plain of course.
The trick to this cake is to just substitute an equal amount of sugar with jelly crystals. If your cake uses 200g of sugar and your jelly crystals are 90g, then use the 90g of jelly and 110g of sugar. Get it? Very easy, very tasty and everyone will wonder where you got the flavours from!

The cake was very well received and everyone really enjoyed it. The only trouble with this cake is that it gets a little dry after some time - especially if left uncovered. It does have a nice crumb though.



Ms LSP was really thrilled with the cake and the next day she sent me the photo above to post on this blog...

I'm glad you liked the cake Ms LSP!

Chocolate Sauce Frozen Cake another delight from Aunty Julie

Some time ago, I explained the cooking influences in my life - one of which is my Aunty Julie. When we were young, she would treat us to these magnificent creations that left such an impression that I still salivate whenever I think of them. She would always be more than happy to share her recipes as well and this recipe comes from her.

This dessert is a real delight to eat. Cake, combined with a mousse-like Chocolate sauce that is frozen. It turns out a little like a mix between an ice cream cake and a self saucing pudding. The frozen cake doesnt really get hard as it is a sponge cake and thaws in a matter of minutes.


The original recipe calls for one thick layer of sponge cake covered with the sauce but since I made two cake layers, I decided to layer this cake too. I decorated the cake with mandarin slices that gave it a nice citrus flavour too.

Ingredients
1 Sponge cake
6 oz castor sugar
6 oz butter
300ml milk
1.5oz cocoa
3 egg yolks
3 egg whites
Rum

Method
Cream butter and sugar till light. Set aside. Boil milk and cocoa and whisk till smooth. Add in egg yolks being careful not to let the yolks curdle. Mix into the butter mixture. Whisk egg white with a pinch of salt till stiff. Add in some rum. Pour over a sponge cake and freeze.

Unfortunately this cake didn't photograph very well - or maybe its just my photography skills that are lacking. Nonetheless, it is a delightul dessert that doesnt take long to whip up but the oohs and aahs that accompany the eating of this dessert prove what a winner it is.

Chocolate Valentino - Co-hosting the DB Challenge

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
They have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

What’s that? Did it say that I was co-hosting! Yes, Indeed! Cant you tell how excited I am!!! Now please sit back and watch the opening credits:

Location: A house somewhere in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia sometime in September 2008.

Camera focuses on a bedroom door. Pan back to reveal the door opening. An unshaven (but terribly good looking!) man walks out, rubbing his eyes. He makes his way to the bookshelf and moves a cookbook. A panel opens up revealing a small DVD player. Camera focuses on the screen and then shows the reflection of the (extremely good looking) man’s face as a voice over says….

Good morning, Mr. Navaratnam. My name is Wendy. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves co-hosting the February Daring Bakers challenge with me. You and I need to select a recipe, any recipe, but it should include Chocolate and Ice-Cream. That’s what I think anyway. You have forty-eight hours to help me choose and decide on a recipe. Once we have decided on the recipes, you will need to test it out and then compare notes with me. We will then have to inform Director Ivonne and Commissioner Lis, the founders of the DBs on our choice of recipe. As always, should you mess up the recipe, be caught or be killed, we will all disavow any knowledge of your actions – or even your existence.

And Mr. Navaratnam, the next time you come out of your room, please be good enough to wear a shirt. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

Camera pans back. Man covers his face as the DVD screen blows up.

And that in a nutshell is how I came to co-host this February Challenge of the Daring Bakers – with a little bit of literary and artistic licence of course!


In all seriousness, it was way back in September 2008 that I got an email from Wendy asking me if I would like to co-host the February Daring Baker’s Challenge with her. I was really thrilled that Wendy had asked me and without any hesitation, I said yes! Can you believe that we actually started planning all this way back in September?

Both of us knew we wanted to do something with chocolate. After tossing up various ideas, we both decided on a Flourless Chocolate Cake paired with Ice Cream. Wendy liked the idea of using a recipe from someone in this part of the world and that’s when we decided we would use the recipe from Chef Wan. For all Malaysian’s and those who are fortunate enough to get to watch the Asian Food Channel, I am sure you have heard of Chef Wan from Malaysia who claims to be “Asia’s most flamboyant food ambassador”. For those of you that have never heard of him, trust me when I say he is an extremely entertaining person to watch and his recipes are firm favourites in this part of the world and especially in my household!

February’s challenge is a Chocolate Valentino, inspired by Chef Wan’s Recipe from his book Sweet Treats.

The thing that I really liked about this recipe was that it was very straightforward but gave lots of room for interpretation. We decided that we would give the Daring Baker’s lots of room for variation by not limiting them to the chocolate they would use. We also decided to let them pair it with any kind of ice-cream or whipped cream or any topping they so desired actually! We provided two ice cream recipes too.


So this is my take on this months Challenge.

I felt the cake wasn’t really all that difficult to do. I think the trick was in getting the egg whites to beat up nice and stiff and then to not let them collapse too much while folding into the chocolate mixture.

I made the cake in a Heart Shaped pan just as a Valentino is supposed to be. I also made a few smaller cakes in ramekins just to keep the Lovely Wife and the Kids happy. They were so eager to have a taste of the cake before it was served later that night for a few friends. I also did that so that I could test how baking individual cakes would turn out. You see, hosting a challenge means you need to test these things out!

Both the heart cake and the mini cakes turned out superb! The texture of the cake was very dense and rather fudgy.





Next of course came the ice cream. I DO have an Ice Cream maker but I decided NOT to use the ice cream maker for two reasons. First, I wanted to simulate how people without ice cream machines would handle this and secondly, my ice cream maker requires overnight freezing prior to use and of course I didn’t do that!!

I think the hardest part in making a custard based ice cream is in getting the custard just right.




After making the custard, I had to let it cool. I decided to take some fancy pictures using the recipe book as a prop!



The next hardest thing is making ice cream without a machine. For this, I had to whip cream till it was nice and thick and then fold it into the custard mixture.

Doesn't that look all creamy and delicious?

Then it was time to pour the cream into containers and freeze them.


I took the freezing ice cream out of the freezer a number of times and whipped it lightly. This is important and also can be a little tricky as if you don’t beat the mixture often enough, it will form lots of ice crystals and then the ice cream will be really hard and icy.

As I mentioned earlier, the kids couldn't wait to eat the cake and so I served one of the ramekins to them - complete with ice cream and a fresh cherry!



You can see that my official tasters really enjoyed this cake with ice cream!




Later that night, I served the cake at a dinner party and the guests all loved it. The vanilla ice cream went really well with the dark chocolate and the flavours were really delightful. One of our friends said it was the best chocolate cake she had ever eaten! This recipe is definitely one to be made many, many times. The only trouble is that with the amount of chocolate in it, this will be an expensive cake to make. I would also advice anyone who makes this to use only the Best Quality Chocolate - and use eating chocolate and not baking chocolate!



Although I tested the cake and ice cream recipes, Wendy went a step further and tested the cake 4 times and also provided a more detailed version of the recipe based on her experience. It’s a good thing she did because that alleviated a lot of the questions that would definitely have arisen had we only provided the recipe as is. Here, I provide for you the original unedited recipe exactly as it is in Chef Wan’s Sweet Treats. I also provide the Ice Cream recipe just as it is in the book - just so you can see how much more of a challenge it could have been!!

I really hope all of you Daring Bakers enjoyed this challenge. I must say it was a load of fun choosing and testing this recipe as Co-Host. It was also a lot of fun answering questions on the Forum and I'm sorry if I wasn't able to answer questions to any ones satisfaction. Finally, a big hug and another word of thanks to Wendy for asking me to co-host with her on this challenge!!

Here are the unabridged, unadulterated recipes.


Chocolate Valentino by Chef Wan from his book, Sweet Treats
453 grams of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped
140 grams butter
5 eggs separated

Method

Melt chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Stir until smooth. Cool
Grease a 22cm spring form pan. Beat egg yolks and stir into cooled chocolate
Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Gently fold on quarter of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Fold in remaining egg whites
Pour batter into a pan and bake for 25 minutes at 190C/375F or till done. Cool.

Chefs note: The Valentino is a heart-shaped version of this cake. Bake a Valentino in a heart-shaped pan. This is a very dense chocolate cake.



Classic Vanilla Ice Cream
Recipe comes from the Ice Cream Book by Joanna Farrow and Sara Lewis

Ingredients
1 Vanilla Pod
300ml / ½ pint / 1 ¼ cups Semi Skimmed Milk
4 large egg yolks
75g / 3oz / 6 tbsp caster sugar
5ml / 1 tsp corn flour
300ml / ½ pint / 1 ¼ cups Double Cream

1. Using a small knife slit the vanilla pod lengthways. Pour the milk into a heavy based saucepan, add the vanilla pod and bring to the boil. Remove from heat and leave for 15 minutes to allow the flavours to infuse
Lift the vanilla pod up. Holding it over the pan, scrape the black seeds out of the pod with a small knife so that they fall back into the milk. SET the vanilla pod aside and bring the milk back to the boil.
2. Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and corn-flour in a bowl until the mixture is thick and foamy.
3. Gradually pour in the hot milk, whisking constantly. Return the mixture to the pan and cook over a gentle hear, stirring all the time
4. When the custard thickens and is smooth, pour it back into the bowl. Cool it then chill.
5. By Hand: Whip the cream until it has thickened but still falls from a spoon. Fold it into the custard and pour into a plastic tub or similar freeze-proof container. Freeze for 6 hours or until firm enough to scoop, beating it twice

By Using and Ice Cream Maker: Stir the cream into the custard and churn the mixture until thick (follow instructions on your ice cream maker)