Strawberries Cream Cheese Butter Cake

I was having a little body ache after a bowling game with my family yesterday. If I could I would really wish to spend some time doing nothing but just relax after our Sunday Mass at the church. However, my mind just could not detach from this gorgeous picture that I saw in a blog on a cream cheese butter cake. I visited Cuisine Paradise frequently to look out for healthy, yummy and inspirational recipes. It is an awesome blog and I could almost feel the writer's energy, passion and sincerity sharing all what she knows and likes about food each time I read her post!

I find that it is exciting to bake unplanned every time. So even though my muscles are a little stiff I went ahead to do a simple baking project with the kids. I enjoyed it so much doing this with my kids though baking with younger kids means you have more clean up to do and it was time consuming as you have to be really patient explaining and giving instructions to them. But those are the points; you want them to learn through fun; it was the best way and environment for them to be exposed about home economics and to learn this important life skill. I have learned to be patient with the kids and to 'tolerate' the mess if I want to engage them with kitchen activities. It defeats the purpose of learning if you did most of the steps for them for fear of mess. It definitely kills their excitement and fun; and worst their self esteem.

This recipe is adopted from Cuisine Paradise. The changes that I made to the recipe are as follows:

a) I used strawberries instead of the blueberries as I found none in my local supermarket.

b) I used two 4" x 9"x 3" baking tin and maintain the baking time.

c) I divided the recipe into two portions for all the ingredients as I wanted the kids to get better hands-on and feel confident that they are in control.

The cake is so easy to make, delicious and gorgeous!!

Notes :

1. The cake is really soft so do take note when removing it from the tin. Revert the cake only when it is completely cool.

Pumpkin Crumble Cake

My father in law bought me one half pumpkin and my initial intention was just to puree some of it for infant food and I had no idea of what to do with the balance of it. C has been pestering me to do a baking project with her. After having the second addition in the family, I will only bake during weekends when hubby helps to take care of P. I will try to spend half morning with C in the kitchen and have fun. If not, I will bake at night during weekends when both kids are asleep.

I did this impromptu project with C two days ago during night time. Yeah, I just wanted to get rid of the pumpkin in the fridge but the main reason was because I miss baking so so much that if I were not dead tired, I would love to spend some time in the kitchen trying out new recipes and having fun with C.

This recipe was taken from the book writen by Agnes Chang, entitled 'I can bake'. The recipe called for creaming method but I was really lazy to take out my hand mixer which I put in the store so I changed using the two mixing bowls method instead i.e to put all the dry ingredients in one bowl and wet ingredients in another and mixed the dry to the wet later on. Not sure whether because of this that the cake turned out to be a little dense and not so fluffy!

Of all the ingredients needed, I totally forgot about the milk so I didn't use milk for the recipe. Surprisingly, it turned out quite well if not perfect. I like the natural yellowish colour of the cake and the walnuts crumble on top. The cake looked so gorgeous with simple nuts crumble on top by itself. Though I must admit that this cake is very sweet but I don't mind having it as a treat once a while.


PUMPKIN CRUMBLE CAKE

Ingredients

300g self rising flour, sifted
200g butter
200g pumpkin
180g castor sugar
120ml milk
3 eggs
1 tbsp rum (optional)

For the crumble topping:
120g walnuts
1/2 tsp cinnamon
75g butter
90g sugar
3 tbsp of plain flour

Method (Altered using two mixing bowls method)

1. Steam the pumpkin and mash with a masher or the back of a fork.

2. Melt butter and put aside to let cool.

3. Preheat oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F. Grease and baseline a 9inch cake pan.

4. Whisk eggs in one bowl and add in the sugar, rum, butter and milk. Add in the pumpkin and stir well.

5. In another bowl sift the flour. When finished, fold the flour in 3 batches into the wet ingredients.

6. As for the crumble, coarsely chopped the walnuts and slightly toast them for 5 to 10 minutes. Mixed the walnuts with 3 tbsp plain flour, sugar and cinnamon. Cut in butter.

7. Pour half the batter in the cake tin then add dollops of the walnut crumble to the batter. Save half of the crumble for the topping. Pour in the balance half of the batter and finish up with the walnuts crumble spread on top.

8. Put in the oven and bake for about 1 hour.

Notes:
1. I used plain flour since I don't have self rising flour. Therefore, I added 1 tsp of baking powder to the flour.

Chocolate Ganache

I made this chocolate ganache as my family Christmas dessert last year. I was in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, my hometown for 2 weeks. Spent great deal of time having fun and catching up with family members there. I was very thankful to my dad and my brother for sending my daughter and I back to Singapore. I was also in particular happy to see my dad enjoying himself with the company of my daughter, his grand-daughter.. My dad is a man with few words and sometimes all of my siblings including me have difficulties in understanding his thoughts and feelings. But we know he is a kind and responsible man and infact too responsible until sometimes cause headaches in the family :) Whatever it is we love him and we know he loves us too!

I was cooking 2 of my favourite dishes; the Indian curry chicken and a simple roasted chicken with lots of garlics, rosemary and butter for a simple family gathering. Decided to cook these dishes as I didn't have much time to prepare as I reached Singapore only 2 days before Christmas. So thought of doing something that I am familiar with. As for the dessert, I must admit that I am ambitious and daring to try on the new recipe for an important family gathering! Praise the Lord! Everything turned out find.

I got the 2 Christmas figurines when I was attending a baking workshop so they have become the centre pieces. Frankly the cake did not look appealing in the picture but it really tasted wonderful!. Take a small bite of the cake and let it sit in your tongue for a moment. Let your natural enzymes did the rest of the work... dissolving the cake bit by bit and you will enjoy the strong and smooth chocolaty punch flowing slowly from your mouth to your throat before ending in your stomach!! The berries cut the sweetness of the cake and create great balance of this dessert!

CHOCOLATE GANACHE

Ingredients

1/3 cup / 35g cocoa powder
1/3 cup/ 80ml hot water
150g dark eating chocolate
150g butter, chopped
1 1/3 cups (300g) firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup / 125 g almond meal
4 eggs, separated
240g fresh blueberries

chocolate ganache
200g dark eating chocolate, chopped
2/3 cup (160ml thickened cream)

1. Preheat oven to 160 deg C. Grease deep 22cm round cake bine, line the base and side.

2. Blend cocoa powder with hot water in small bowl until smooth.

3. Combine chocolate and butter in medium heatproof bowl over saucepan of simmering water, stir until melted. Remove from heat and stir in cocoa mixture, sugar, almond meal and egg yolks

4. Beat egg whites in clean small bowl until soft peaks form, fold into chocolate mixture in 2 batches. Pour mixture into prepared pan.

5. Bake in oven for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Stand cake in pan for 15 min before turning onto wire raxk to cool.

6. Arrange berries on cake, pour ganache over cake to partically cover berries. Stand at room temperature until set.

Method to make the ganache:

1. Combine chocolate with cream and stir over lower heat until smooth.


Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F. Grease and baseline an 8inch cake pan.

Notes :

1. This cake can make up to 3 days in advance. Store it in air tight container

2. The actual recipe called for raspberries. I am sure the cake looks much better with raspberries on top than blueberries as the latter did not bring out the colour of the cake.

3. Top with berries and chocolate ganache when you are ready to serve.

4. I find this recipe easy to make and fast but you need to plan ahead as the baking time is quite long.

5. It is suitable for special occasion due to the exotic chocolaty taste and also its gorgeous look, only if you able to find the right ingredient to decorate though!

This recipe was extracted from The Australian Women's Weekly.

Banana Muffins/ Cake

My whole family loves bananas a lot especially my daughter and my father in law. I will usually try to get a comb on Saturday if my in laws are coming over to stay. Since there were some over ripe bananas left over after a weekend, I decided to try baking banana cake as i read a lot on internet and books that this should be pretty well easy for a beginner to bake. Browsing through all the resources that I have, I decided to bake this using Agnes Chang's recipe.

I baked the banana muffins and the banana cake in 2 seperate occasions. I left no choice but to bake this as muffins since the most important ingredient that i need for any banana recipes that is the bananas left only 3 pcs! So I decided to mash 2 of them and left one for decoration. I halfed all the baking ingredients of course.

My daugther and my husband are always the prima tester for all my cooked and baked goodies. Yeah they are the guinea pigs! :) As any other mums, I always concern about the nutritional intakes of my daughter. So, if I can I will try to use checimals minimally and wisely in all my cookings and bakings.

So for the muffins recipe, I didn't use the baking soda at all since the baking powder itself already consists of the baking soda. The muffins turned out to be very moist but not greasy, it is soft but not airy and light as it shouldn't be! It tasted so good but it doesn't look very presentable as it sunk in the middle a little!

Well this is expected as I didn't add in the baking soda to boost up the leavening effect. I didn't fill up the muffin cases 3/4 full as my batter can barely made six! So when the batter leavened, it didn't successfully flow out to get that nice curve at the edge as it was blocked by the muffin cases. It looked like being squeezed to the centre didn't it?




Read somewhere that we should fill up the empty muffin holes with water for even baking. I did that for my muffins. No regret of not adding baking soda for the muffins though.

The banana cake which I baked in a loaf tin was not successful. The inner part of the batter was not cooked and it has a few big holes and the biggest one was in the centre of the loaf!

I thought of baking this to serve the hungry pangs of my hubby over the weekend when he needs to work. Anyway he didn't know about this :)


Very disappointed but still I was glad that we were able to try the sides of the cake. It tasted a bit heavy though. I used the self raising flour and therefore did not use the baking powder as instructed in the recipe.

Read in JoyofBaking.com and other sites and found some baking tips and clues to the failed project :


Q1 : Why use baking powder and baking soda?
A1 : Baking powder consists of baking soda, one or two acid salt (cream of tartar and sodium aluminium sulfate) and cornstarch. The purpose of the baking powder and baking soda is to leaven the batter and baking soda is normally used for acidic ingredients, chocolate & cocoa, honey, maple syrup to neutralise the acidic ingredients and soften the cake at the same time leaven the cake. Baking powder that we used has 2-staged leavening effects that happens at different time. The first stage happens when liquid is added to the baking powder. This step happens when baking powder is added to the batter. The baking soda in the baking powder will mix with cream of tartar and create gas bubbles called carbon dioxide in the batter. The second stage of leavening happens when the gas bubbles enlarge when exposed to thebheat in the oven. (Baking soda able to create reddening effect on batter when mix with chocolate/ cocoa powder.)

Q2: What happen when too much baking powder is used?
A2: Too much baking powder will cause the batter to collapse. Too little will cause the cake has no volume and compact.

Q3: Why there is a big hole in the cake?
A3: When use baking powder and baking soda, you must sift them and mix them well before putting in the batter if not there will be a big whole in the cake. (I used self raising flour and did not use baking soda so why there are holes on my banana loaf cake remains as a myth until i found the answer!)

Q4: Why the inner cake is not cooked?
A4: Too low temperature or too short time of baking. (This is what happened to me as I bake the loaf for about 25 minutes as I was rushing out to have breakfast with my family friends. Hubby read wrongly the baking time as this is the baking time to bake the muffins instead.)


BANANA MUFFINS/ CAKE

Ingredients

180g unsalted butter
180g castor sugar
2 eggs
4 ripe bananas, coarsely mashed
1/8 banana essence optional (which I did not use)
3 tbsp of milk mixed with 1 tbsp of lemon juice

Dry ingredients :
240g plain flour
1tsp of baking powder
1tsp of baking soda

Decoration : 2 ripe bananas, slimed and ½ lime

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F. Grease and baseline a 10” x 6” loaf tin.

2. Cream butter and sugar and gradually add in eggs.

3. Mix in the mashed bananas (add in bananas essence at this stage if you are using). Pour in the sifted dried ingredients and mix until well incorporated.

4. Pour the batter into a cupcake or a loaf tin and bake for about 20 – 25 min.

5. If you are making the muffins squeeze lime juice over banana slices arrange banana slices on top of the cake as decoration.

6. Remove the cake from the oven and leave to cool before serving.

Marble Cake

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This is my second baking project but first one with this hand mixer that I got. The recipe is taken from a book called Homemade Cake by Philippa Vanstone. The book featured mainly on American traditional cakes and pastry using old-fashioned recipes!

The reasons why I am attracted to this book are two-folds. First, I am interested to learn about the traditional cakes, breads, pies, and biscuits as I think as a baker we need to know how to bake traditional pastries if possible from as many countries as possible. By knowing the basis then we are able to understand the changes through times and from there we can creatively modify and transform the recipe to suit our today's taste buds without losing its traditional essence. To me that is important. Though I have not grasp on any baking techniques and skills, this principle will set the foundation for my entrepreneurialship in my culinary journey.. that is know the foundation, know the roots!! The second reason is simply because it has a summarised version of the important basic knowledge and tips that I need to know about baking like equipment, essential ingredients, some terms used in baking like creaming, folding, rubbing etc, how to troubeshoot, cake decorating, freezing and storing. For a novice baker like me these are absolutely helpful!



MARBLE CAKE

Ingredients (make 6 - 8 slices)

175g cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
75g unsalted butter
2 eggs beaten
1 tsp pure vanilla essense
75g bittersweet chocolate, melted

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C/350 deg F. Grease and baseline an 8inch cake pan.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt and put to one side

3. Cream the butter and sugar. Add in sugar gradually. Beat the batter until it turns fluffy and light in colour. I did this about 5 minutes.

4. Gradually add in eggs, a little by little and alternately fold in flour and milk to the mixture. Stir in the vanilla essense. The book didn't mention how many times. I did it in 3 additions that is add and egg and mix at lower speed then add in flour and milk and continue to mix until all are incorporated. Add in the second portion of egg and do likewise for the flour and milk. Add in the last portion of the egg and do likewise.

5. Pour half of the mixture to another bowl and stir in the melted chocolate.

6. Spoon the batters alternately into the pan until all batters are used up.

7. Use a chopstick/ knife to gently swirl the batters to create the marble effect.
Bake for 35 – 40 min and remove to a wire rack after 5 minutes.





The marble cake that I made turned out to be crispy on top but not hard. The marble effect was not clear in fact it just looked like a lump mixture of chocolate and butter cake. Probably I had not divided the batter evenly and being a chocolate lover I purposely pour in more batter for the chocolate flovour! Also I knew I didn't swirl it correctly as I just cut it through with 7 parallel straight lines on the batter and didn't swirl it at all :( Read on some baker blogs and found out that the crispy top could probably due to too much egg! Seem like many people are using cocoa powder instead of the bittersweet chocolate. Nonetheless there are some that combine both. Some use both baking soda and baking powder and bake it in a loaf pan. Anyway there is no one strict way in baking a marble cake! It is a matter of preference and perhaps the economic factor also as I think cocoa powder is cheaper than a bitter sweet chocolate bar. The taste was very good, very moist, tasty, not so sweet and it remained moist after 5 days (I kept in air tight container). My husband loves it a lot! I came across a recipe on marble cheese cake and I will try baking it soon.