Cheesecake with caramel sauce

This time, I made something more complex than what I baked previously. It consist of 3 parts :)

Biscuits base:

I estimate the amount of biscuits I need by spreading the un-crushed little biscuits into the mould. Then I liquify the butter and mix together with the crushed biscuits and some sugars. Taste and adjust the flavor and required butter. Make sure the butter is sufficient to hold the biscuits together. After that just use something to compress the base onto the mould or in my case the cupcake paper. Then, just put it in fridge.

The cheesecake:

I used 200g of cream cheese, mix with 1 egg and a tablespoon of milo and sugar for flavoring purpose. And that's all u need to do lol. Scope the mixture onto the cold biscuit base and put it in oven. I still haven't gotten the way to prevent the cheesecake from cracking, but anyway I think the timing is crucial. I suspect 10-15 minutes under 170 degree is sufficient to make it cooked. However, a larger mould will need more time. The timing I provided is based on the size of cupcake mould.

Caramel sauce:

150g of sugar in sauce pan to make it melt and boiled. U can stir a bit to make the sugar evenly heated. But when it start melting, just use the handle of the pan to shake it gently. You will achieve a nice amber colour when the sugar is completely caramelized. Then, add in 50g butter and stir it. Lastly just add in sufficient amount of heavy cream by observing the texture of the mixture. You will want to achieve a slightly sticky and half transparent liquid. Then just pour into the container to cool it down. Heat up the amount you needed for the cake and store the rest in the fridge :)

And this, is my first cheesecake attempt :) not as creamy as I wanted as I slightly overbaked it but still look great :)

Butter scones

Hello ppl! I'm back with a good recipe to make scones :) actually I tried to make it 3 times already and this is the most successful attempt. The previous experience included uneven temperature oven which burned the bottom of the scones and shivery hands that pour way too much milk into the mixture which I tried to fix the problem by adding flour. Well, as expected, the final products look more like a Chinese shao bao than scones @.@

The first batch of scones look like this lol.

And this, my friend, is the successful batch :) it does look like scone right? (Please say yes lol.)

Anyway I adapted a recipe which I found online and I made the self raising flour myself by mixing normal flour and baking powder. As I was using the salted butter, I omitted all the salts required for the recipe. The substitution of self raising flour with normal flour is: 1 cup of self raising flour 130g is equal to 1 cup of normal flour plus 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder plus 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Recipe is as below:

1 cup 130g of self raising flour

30g salted butter

25g caster sugar

Around 65-75mL milk

Little bit of egg liquid

Very easy busy. Rub in the butter into the flour and make it looks like crumbles. Basically u can cut the butter into very small pieces first or for me I just scope in enough butter and cut them in the flour using the wooden spatula. The crucial point here is that u have to keep the butter cold so that it won't melt. Then, just stir in the sugar.

To make the dough, I added the milk very gradually thanks to the precious experience. U just have to add the minimum amount of milk to combine the crumbles to become a dough.

Lastly, cut the dough using the cutter or like me I just used my hand to separate the dough to make the size I want. However make sure u have enough height for each scones around 2.5cm so that the final product is thick enough. Glaze the scones with the egg and start baking it! The oven is set to 220 degree Celsius to bake the scones around 15 minutes. 

I tried to taste the scones when they first come out from the oven and they are soft inside. I thought I did it wrong again. But after they cool down, their texture changed so I know I make it right this time :)

Panna cotta

I dunno if I'm doing it in the traditional way. Basically I just want to satisfy my milk pudding crave therefore I made this. It wasn't easy as I was trying to figure out my own recipe so I have a few failed attempts. 

Anyway the successful recipe is as below:

About 100mL full cream fresh milk

1 teaspoon condensed milk

1 teaspoon agar agar powder

So what I did is I mix everything and heat them with medium fire so that the powder will melt. Then just wait for it to settle in the fridge. I didn't mix the powder with water to make normal agar agar mixture as I scare it will become too like normal pudding instead of creamy milk pudding. I used agar agar powder to substitute gelatin but I guess they are more or less the same lol.

And the experience I gained from my fail attempts:

1. Have to melt the agar agar powder if not it will not settle the pudding and will taste powdery

2. Never cook the egg with the milk as it will turn into scramble egg

3. Add egg only if you are going to cook the pudding in oven

Ya I made some scramble eggs @.@ so please don't repeat my experience and make some successful pudding :)

Chocolate Flavoured Ice Cream

Ice cream for hot weather! Yes i made ice cream again lol. This time i tried the chocolate/milo flavour =)

Ingredients are as below:

3 Tablespoon of Milo
1 Tablespoon of Unsweetened chocolate powder
2.5 Tablespoon of Milk powder
1 Egg
Sugar optional (depends on how sweet you want it to be)

The process was as the previous recipe. Mix all the powder and add minimal amount of hot water that is just enough to cover the surface of the powder. Then mix it thoroughly before adding in the whisked egg. Then freeze it for an hour and take it out to stir it at medium speed. Repeat the stirring process every half an hour to get a smooth texture.

The result was good. The ice cream looks exactly like ice cream and the taste is very rich. I didn't add sugar as i like it to taste like dark chocolate flavour.

I guess next time i will try some other flavours since it's successful. Also, just want to emphasize that milk powder and egg are really the main components in making handmade ice cream.

Milk Ice Cream

Made another new batch of ice cream last night and ate it today haha. Didn't take any pic as it looks normal and i dun have the ice cream scope so can't do the ice cream shots haha. Anyway i change the recipe a bit as below:

5 Tablespoons of milk powder
1.5 Tablespoons of castered sugar
1 egg

So firstly is to add hot water to the milk powder and sugar to melt the powder. The water level should be as minimal as possible, just nice to cover up the powder. Then make sure the powder is melted and add in the whisked egg gradually while mixing. After the egg is fully integrated into the mixture, put it into the freezer. After an hour, take the mixture out to mix it again. As mentioned in previous ice cream post, the mixing process should be repeated as frequently as possible to produce smooth ice cream.

This time the ice cream taste richer with very strong milk taste. Also more creamy. During the mixing process, it kinda feel like watery dough texture, like gelato. I would say this time is more successful but some people might not like it as it is really milky. I guess i will try to make milo or chocolate icecream next time haha.

Honey Flavoured Ice Cream

New week, new month, 2nd half of the year! Time flies isn't it? It's half way through year 2013 and we are still alive =) I guess it won't be end of the world anytime soon. Well, that's what i hope anyway haha.

Today, i'm gonna talk about the handmade ice cream i did last week. The reason i made it is because i need ice cream to eat with my chocolate mousse. As you know the mousse is super rich so i can't really just eat the mousse alone.

Anyway, i use Honey as my flavouring agent. The recipe is as below:

4 Tablespoon milk powder
~150mL of full cream milk (3/4 ramen bowl)
1 Tablespoon honey

So, i boil the milk and add milk powder. Stir until fully mixed and lastly add in the honey. Then, what you need to do is cool down the mixture for a while and put into freezer. After about 2-3 hours, check out the mixture. It should be frozen halfway. Now what i did was i stir it and whisk it until fluffy. Like how you make whipped cream. As from what i understand, ice cream means frozen cream, with extra creamy taste. So, that's what i did. After that, put back into the fridge and do the same thing in about half and hour or 1 hour. It will be smoother if you can stir the mixture as frequent as possible until it is completely frozen. This is to mimic the process in ice cream machine. What they did is they continually stir the mixture until it becomes ice cream.

It tasted great but i think i can improve the recipe by adding in more milk powder. That can make the ice cream more milky and rich. As i only stir for 2 times for this batch, it is still a little bit rough and not smooth enough. But the texture is alright.

Well hope i can make a better batch next time =)

Chocolate Molten Cake

Fresh from the oven people! Just made the chocolate molten cake and here I am sharing with you guys how I made it :)

Anyway I used the recipe from bbc good food but varied a little based on the ingredients I had at home. Also i prefer less sweet so i reduce the amount of sugar and substitute with cocoa powder. So I will share my recipe here:

50g butter

50g cooking chocolate 

2 medium eggs

40g sugar

25-30g unsweetened cocoa powder

20g all purpose flour

The steps were same as the recipe. Melt and mix the butter and chocolate. Then mix with other ingredient until smooth. Be careful not to cook the eggs so i add the sugar with eggs and other ingredient before mixing with the hot mixture. Then before the chocolate start to solidify, equally pour the mixture into ramekins or other oven proof material. I would suggest to use baking paper to line the container so that it won't stick. Alternatively you can spread some butter in the container. Oven at 200 degree Celsius for 10 minutes in my case. Then just invertly push out the cake onto a plate. Serve with whipped cream will be heaven!

If you want something from fridge you can also put the mixture into the fridge and make chocolate mousse instead. Which is equally nice. 

 

 This is the chocolate mousse. Smooth and thick, the way I like it.

Da-dang!! Chocolate molten cake. Look just like the way I want it. Liquid chocolate bursting out from inside. Coolest successful dessert I baked to date haha.

Hope you guys like it:)

When Toasts Meet Milk

Ok first of all, the haze is killing me. My house is like a big oven with smokes smell here and there and everywhere. My respiratory system is dying! I wonder when will this annual event of forest fire be stopped cos everyone in the countries affected are getting sick. Such terrible polluted air.

Anyway, i was actually in the mood of making some scones just now but i couldn't do it because i dun have enough butter/margarine at home. This sucks! Anyway, will try to get some soon or i'll just bake something which use oil instead of the butter. I wonder if frozen oil can be used hmm. Will let you guys know when i try haha.

Today, i'm sharing with you my pleasant surprise last night when i was hunting for supper. Wasn't so hungry to eat instant noodle so i look for biscuits/ bread. Anyway, i toasted 2 piece of breads and start looking for the chicken floss but apparently it was finished already. So i was so disappointed as i already pour a glass of milk to pair with my toasts. Since i have no butter at home too, i thought, maybe dipping the toast into the milk can be nice. Like how people dip oreo biscuits into milk right.

It was fantastic! As the bread was toasted to become crunchy, it kinda tastes like newly baked pastry. And because all the water was gone during the heating process, the milk easily bind with the toast and therefore it's crunchy and juicy. Unlike biscuits, bread structure is much hollow so it was very easy to absorb the milk, within seconds. I finish my toasts so quickly and by the time i finish, my milk was half glass gone already.

Well, this might not apply to low fat milk as what you need is a good glass of milk to spice up the toasts. However, chocolate or strawberry flavoured milk might be able to work. I dunno haha.

2nd Year Anniversary In SG

Today is my 2nd year anniversary dinner with my bf and we celebrated it at One Rochester, singapore. We never make any reservation and still were able to get the table. 

Foie gras with salads and crunchy bread stick. The foie gras was superb. 

Main course baby chicken which is their signature dish. Needs 30 minutes time to prepare which is just nice for us as we both have small apetite therefore need time to digest. The meat was tender and the potato cubes were good too. But I would probably prefer a more crunchy potato or French fries instead. 

Aglio olio spaghetti with king prawns and tomato and asparagus. Love the asparagus, very nicely cooked and provide a refreshing taste as the spaghetti is quite spicy. Prawns were fresh and delicious too.

Strawberry frozen margarita. Little bit too sweet so I think the classic version could be better. Also it melted really fast and I end up having a warm margarita lol. 

I also had the dessert which is the freshly baked soufflé. However, I was so eager to eat and therefore didn't take any picture of it haha. I had the hazelnut soufflé with vanilla ice cream. It is exactly the same as the one I ate in Australasia, Manchester but different flavor. Also it didn't provide any sauce to pour into the soufflé compared to the passion fruit soufflé I had in uk. But, the ice cream was good if u love milky stuff. I love it haha. 

The atmosphere is overall great. We sat outdoor which has a shelter so won't get wet if the rain pours. They have different area of outdoor seats so one area will have approximately 2-4 tables or sofas. Also they have a few big fans that make minimal sound. My bf find the fake waterfall sound very soothing and calming haha. 

That is all the updates I got for now. Hope you guys enjoy! :)

Milk Pudding, Super Soft Super Smooth

Sorry guys, still gonna talk about food today lol.

My head was all about food since last week so never really have the time to think about DIY stuff haha. Anyway, today i'm gonna talk about a simple way of making milk pudding.

It's really easy, just need 5 minutes to mix the ingredients and then what you need to do is leave it in the oven for 25-30 minutes.

Ok, so what you need is:

1 egg
130mL of milk (full cream milk will achieve richer effect)
25g of sugar

Mix the milk and sugar in the pot and heat up a while to melt the sugar. Then, leave it to cool down a bit before adding the whisked egg as you won't want the egg to become cooked egg before being incorporate into the mixture.

Then pour the mixture into the container, e.g. ramekins or glassware. If you want the pudding to be smoother, you need to sieve the mixture a few timess before pouring into the container so that the surface is smooth and bubble-less.

Put the ramekins into a container which contains water at 1/3 of the height of the ramekins. I used the cake mould as the container lol. Then oven it at 170 degree celcius for 25-30 minutes.

This is how it looks like fresh from the oven. You can put them into the fridge to cool down also for better taste. I used farm milk bought from Tesco which is super rich in flavour just like the full cream milk in the UK or better. So the taste is very rich which might turn some people off lol. But i love it so i dun care haha.

This is the half-eaten pudding. You can see how smooth the surface is. It is literally bouncing when you move the ramekin, which is what i was trying to achieve. I want it to be like the Hokkaido milk pudding. Smooth and milky.

Please do have a try! All you need is egg and milk and sugar =)

Brownies From Ready-mix Pack

Well well well, it's Monday again! Always feel so lack of energy on Monday and i think everyone knows why haha.

Anyway, brownies!

I used the ready-mix brownies pack i bought ages ago with 2 eggs, 1/4 cup of water and 1/2 cup of oil as directed. Everything is accurately measured this time. It took me like 10 minutes top to start and put the tray into the oven. Extremely easy this time haha. The key point was to follow everything accurately and you'll get exactly what the box said you'll get. It is definitely easier than making brownies from scratch. However, if looking at the money aspect, ready-mix pack is expensive compared to buying all the ingredients by urself.

The final product. Big love for the crispy top!

Surprisingly thick texture. Just to be clear i didn't put any extra chocolate to make it looks like molten chocolate cake.

The brownies taste really nice, not too sweet except for the crispy layer. Might actually get the ready-mix pack again if i need to haha.

Half-baked Nagasaki Cake

Weekends are too good yet too short every single time isn't it? Just found out that i have a surprisingly good number of views yesterday for my recent post, which makes my day =)

Today i'm going to talk about the Half-baked Nagasaki cake i attempted to bake few weeks ago lol. Last Monday i spent time talking about the General election thingy and left this out. Anyway, it was a up-level challenge as people who always bake cakes would know, without an automatic blender, it is quite hard to make something fluffy and soft. And me, was determined to break this myth and bake some spongy cake.

I managed to beat the eggs and sugar mixture into a foamy texture but only the surface is foamy. The bottom part of the mixture still remain as fluid, i'm guessing it is not easy to incorporate the egg yolks with the egg whites which are easier to foam the meringue. Anyway, i got tired of exercising my hand muscles and therefore continue with the steps despite the incomplete meringue and send it to be baked.

Doesn't look too bad when i pull it out from the oven. The only problem is that regardless i followed the full recipe this time, the mixture is too little to fill the mould therefore it turns out pretty flat.

This is how it looks like after a few seconds/minutes. This is not a failure though because it is meant to look this way. Tried it and realised it's totally not spongy and below that nice thin brown surface the texture actually look and taste like Malay's kuih (kueh) especially the layered kueh (as shown below).

Oh well, i'm sure i'll try to bake it again when i get the blender from my bf's place. The next baking will probably be brownies as I still have a pack of instant mix brownie flour from ages ago and the expiring date is getting close.

Have a great day people!

Recipe resource: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5578602f01016adb.html

A Sweet Mistake - Chocolate Muffin/Cupcake

Anyone suffering from monday blue today? Hope everyone's alright =)

Anyway, I'm so excited to talk about my baking session last week! Well, i found a chocolate muffin recipe and thought i could bake some to finish up the paper cups i left from the hokkaido chiffon cake session.

As usual, i thought i will just use half amount of each ingredients as i only have 3 or 4 paper cups left. However, things happen. After i finish mixing the flour and baking powder to create 130g of self-raising flour, i forgot to halve the rest of the ingredients =.= So ya, i use the original amount of ingredients with only 130g of self-raising flour. Forgot to put more baking powder too yey. Milk was substituted with the chocolate milk and no vanilla extract was used as i was too lazy to cut the vanilla stick.

So it turn out to have super runny mixture which i still use it anyway.

I've got my WHISK finally =) Ya, it looks like extra-chocolate chocolate milk. And the chocolate cubes i've thrown in all sink to the bottom, thanks to gravity. Anyway, everything happens for a reason so i'm still gonna bake it. Tried a small amount in the paper cups i used in the hokkaido chiffon cake session but the mixture leaked out so i change to a smaller cupcake's cup. The baking time was exactly 10 minutes.

Doesn't look too bad right? Except that the surface is like moon surface, i guess i didn't whisk too well haha. Used a chopstick to confirm that inside was cooked yey!

Due to my mistake of putting too little flour, the cake is very moist and soft which is actually v nice. Very light and fluffy too. After baking the samples, i decide to just throw in the mixture into the cake mould for convenience and laziness haha. Because the chocolate cubes are too heavy for the mixture, i filter out the chocolate and put half of the mixture in the cake mould and baked for 10 minutes first. Then i take out the half-cooked cake and pour in the mixture with chocolate cubes. By doing this, the chocolates will not sink to the bottom as the cooked layer will hold the weight of the chocolates. Then, i put the cake back into the oven for another 10 minutes.

This is how it looks like when it came out from the oven. The chocolate was melted and it actually looks like those chocolate lava cake haha.

This is the best baking session to date. Stupid goes lucky haha.

Recipe reference: http://www.mumsnet.com/Recipes/i/1376-Chocolate-muffins

Hokkaido Chiffon Cake

Did my almost-routine baking last Thursday with a recipe i grabbed online for Hokkaido Chiffon Cake. Now this cake is like selling everywhere in bakeries. Fell in love with the one sold near my place with very rich and milky whipped cream.  However, it's not very affordable to eat everyday so i thought i can try baking it myself and see how the it goes.

Bought everything i need from tesco except cake flour. Couldnt find it so i decide to make my own cake flour instead as apparently it is very easy to substitute different kind of flours with all-purpose flour and some other baking ingredients. So cake flour's equation is " 140g cake flour = 100g flour + 40g corn starch". I'm not a big fan of the CUP, TEASPOON, TABLESPOON measurement as they can be really inaccurate. So i prefer to do everything based on weighing scale =) Simple and accurate!

Will share with you the recipe later. Now just to share with you some changes i made to the recipe when i baking the Hokkaido chiffon cake. As usual, i cut half the portion and made only 4 cakes (or should i rather say cupcakes lol). Then i used only 2 egg whites instead of 3 as i really think my house's eggs are really GIGANTIC. and i whisk my egg white and sugar with a spoon, which is totally wrong but i dun have any choices because i dun have a whisk or blender. As a result, didnt manage to get the sponge feel inside the cake. Another thing is i substitute the milk with chocolate milk haha. Just to make use of the chocolate milk that nobody is actually drinking. Other than all that, I comply with the recipe i found =)

Result was not bad. Except the sponge cake texture wasn't achieved due to my poor whisking tool and technique. Inspite of that, everything went well actually, which was kinda surprising as i haven't successfully bake something for quite some time haha. The whipped cream is made of the heavy cream leftover from the cream puff baking session. Still taste amazing!

This is how it looks like when it came out fresh from the oven. The middle one was like a tasting sample so i finish it before i put in the whipped cream. 

Anyway, good experience this time and guess i'll try it again next time when i bought my whisk!

Recipe link: http://hearty-bakes.blogspot.sg/2012/08/the-comeback.html

Cream Puffs!

Dear all, hope your weekend was great and relaxing! Mine was pretty exhausted but overall it was alright =) My usual weekend plan is to hang out with my bf but last week he wasn't able to make it so i ended up making cream puffs on Saturday. I had 2 experiences in making cream puffs in the past, which both of them took place during my good old uni times.

First time it was quite a messy experience as I did it in a very small kitchenette in school hall. Another problem is i didn't know the underlying theory of baking and therefore just follow the recipe without making any adjustment. Ended up with really watery mixture and therefore when it was baked, it was quite hard to form a proper shape. Unfortunately i lost the photos i took for my first ever made cream puff, which has extremely smooth surface as I dun have the tools to shape them into proper cream puff shape. Nevertheless, the taste was kinda good except the whipped cream melt down as i injected them when the cream puffs were still hot.

2nd time, i made cream puffs in my rented apartment as my housemates and i were in the bakingmania state at that time lol. I thought i can polish my skills of making cream puff there with more accuracy and appropriate adjustment. This time, I add the egg amount according to the texture of the dough as i dun wan it to be too watery again. The cream puff was a 100% success! However, not for the whipped cream. I didn't learn my lesson from last time and injected the whipped cream too fast too furious again so it melt. Foolish me. Absent-minded me. lol.

THIS TIME, i found a really detailed recipe which tells everything that i need to know. I will provide the link at the end of the post so that u guys can try it too =) However, i was worried that I might make too much cream puffs so i halved the amount of ingredients required. Another problem that i faced this time is that the eggs in my house is surprisingly too big. After i added in one egg, the dough texture quickly become like the porridge for little baby =.= No choice, i had to add in more flour as it won't form nicely even if i do nothing. First batch came out like crackers, so i add in more flour. Accidentally too much flour (damn it my shaky hands =.=). So 2nd batch does look like proper cream puffs, but the texture is too hard. Well, i have no more dough for 3rd batch so that's the end of it. haha.

Now, for the whipped cream. I used to buy ready-made whipped cream but this time, i decide to do it myself! This is the most enjoying part of the whole baking session to be honest. I used heavy cream bought from tesco and added in some honey for flavouring. I took advice from the web and put the cream into the fridge before i start whipping it. More problems! I can't find the whisk! So, ended up using a metal spoon. Luckily, metal spoon do the tricks too. It was surprisingly easier than i thought as after whisking for 5-10minutes, the texture of the cream changed.

So, i put it in the fridge again as i learnt that low temperature is the key of getting a good whipped cream haha. Today, i took out the whipped cream, and yey, it looks fantastic!

End of the story: Happy with how i made the whipped cream but not so proud of the cream puffs haha.

Oh yes, the link of the recipe: http://cook4youme.blogspot.com/2012/02/simple-cream-puff-for-2012-valentines.html

Enjoy!