Mango & Macadamia Nut Loaf

 

I have been baking and referring to a couple of recipes by the Dean Brettschneider. So far, the 4 recipes I tried were - 5 Spice Chocolate & Almond Macarons, Farmhouse Carrot Cake with Natural Yoghurt, Chocolate Chip Hot Cross Buns and this Mango & Macadamia Nut Loaf. The outcome? All turned out well and looked exactly like the pictures in his books! Can you believe it? They tasted awesome too!

 

 

The cakes were very moist, nicely densed and flavoured. In all of the above cakes and buns, 5 spice powder and mixed spices, amongst other spices, were required. But I must confess I added half the quantity as suggested. I reckoned the spices would overpower and affect the entire cake experience. Well, I am glad I did but really, if you are one of those who does not mind the aroma of spices or tasting more than a hint of spices in the cakes or buns, then by all means go ahead and follow the amount suggested.

 

 

To date, I have only referred to two of his books, The Global Baker and New World Baking. For the clueless ones, Dean has set up his bakery in Singapore under the banner of Bake & Cook. Although he hails from New Zealand, he does come down often to the City and I do hope to meet him one day. He has replied to an email I sent him with regard to his recipe on the 5 Spice Chocolate and Almond Macarons and I am certain he will answer all queries in future.

 

I have provided the link to his website where you are able to get a few recipes: http://www.nzbaker.co.nz/. Go try them out!



Sugee Cake

I have been thinking of what to bake this Chinese New Year. Macarons came to mind. What if I made macarons with mandarin orange buttercream fillings? Would that not be appropriate for New Year, albeit a touch of French? But I had wanted something to represent gold; celebration; something I have not done before...a sugee cake!

I trawled the net while ignoring the few recipes that were printed in the books I had. I came across a recipe from a blog post in http://www.thelittleteochew.com/2010/01/sugee-cake.html. Looks easy, sounds easy and so little fuss. I gave it a shot.

I followed the recipe closely and I took up the tips of using less sugar (well not much, 240g) and replaced the buttercream essence with rum - 2 tbsp and let it soak, baby!

Pretty pleased with the final product. Moist and butter-ry. I guess the evaporated milk helps to make it more moist. Feedback from family members was that while it tasted great, there were not enough of the semolina. So totally agree. Point taken and I may increase the amount of semolina or perhaps go for a different brand the next time. No matter. I am glad I attempted making a sugee cake. So thanks, Ju, for the recipe.

Martha's Red Velvet

I started having this Red Velvet fever again. For the past fortnight, to be exact. It was like about a year ago that I baked Red Velvets cupcakes for my mom's birthday celebration. As I had to bake close to a hundred cupcakes, I got myself a Rowenta, my second oven. It could have been my third if not for my Baby Belling letting me down at that crucial period.

The recipe I used then was from Barefoot Contessa, Ina Garten (my blogpost dated 31/8/2011). This time round, however, I scanned through Martha Stewart's version and decided to have a go at it. The recipe is available at www.marthastewart.com.

No cupcakes this time. A layered cake covered with cream cheese frosting. Personally, I prefer Martha's version to Ina. But you know what, I will suspend my judgement at this juncture as I am now scanning over Rachel Allen's recipe. Yes, here I come, Rachel. I am gonna bake your version...

Retrolicious Valentine's Day

A retrolicious cake - that was what I called it as I baked this wonderfully moist and light sponge cake on Valentine's Day. To be more precise, I named it, "Old Flame". It is a chocolate sponge cake, with a dash of Cointreau, topped with rich vanilla buttercream and wafer roses. The sides are covered with bittersweet chocolate flakes. 

For those who live in this sunny island, these wafer roses used to be common sight and popular toppers for light sponge cakes sold at bakeries. 

My sons and their friends who happened to be in the house on the day I creamed the cake were fascinated with those roses. They tasted the wafers after much persuasion and politely turned down when I offered them more. 

To make it more nostalgic, I placed a slice of the cake over the famed "Good Morning" hand towel. I believe these towels are still being used as hand towels in some homes and in some beauty salons. They are cheap and absorbent. They bring back memories - I am sure - for the initiated.

Although I was pleased with the cake (it tasted better the next day), I think I should have used only one heart-shaped pan instead of two for layering. The cake was rather high but the taste made up for it. So Happy Belated VD, everyone!

Gone Bananas

Decided to bake banana loaves today simply because I took home a bunch of bananas from a board meeting on Friday. My colleagues told me to bring them home so I could bake them a cake for Monday. Well, it was very appropriate as I was dying to try out the recipes from this book I had borrowed from the National Library - AllanBakes Really Good Cakes by Allan Albert Teoh. 

I first saw the book at a local bookstore and hesitated to buy it. There were some questions I had in mind as I flipped through the pages. Glad that when I checked the library, they had copies, fresh from the oven (pun intended). Decided to work out some of his recipe before deciding to buy the book or not. So, the first recipe was the Banana Loaf - what else?

As you can see, the loaves turned out well and I want to believe they looked very similar to the photos in the book. But I found the texture not so fluffy but I could have over-folded the batter. Could have been a little sweeter so I thought too. I did not tweak the recipe except for reducing the salt to 1/4 tsp instead of 1/2 tsp.

Perhaps you might want to get your hands on the book and see if Allan's Grapefruit Chiffon and his Chocolate Cakes will turn out well. 

Father's Day 'Special'

Yes, it is Father's Day (FD) today and I have to just blog about it. As I have mentioned before, blogging allows me to archive my thoughts, inner feelings and my attempts to be a good baker, which otherwise, all will be forgotten in the next months or years to come.

What is so special about FD this year? It seems a long, long time ago that my two boys, Dom and Theo, have expressed their appreciation and love for their dad on a card. When I got up this morning, carefully place on a stool outside my bedroom door was this card. I could not help but smiled and felt a tinkling sensation in my stomach as I read their corny expressions of how great a dad I was. But as to why I felt so touched was because my boys are in their teens! For teens to express their feelings explicitly take great effort. My wife was instrumental to get them to say it all, I reckoned.

And so, with that revelation that aliens-did-not-take my boys away from me, I decided to prepare a Sunday Brunch for the family. Old American breakfast menu of runny scrambled eggs, streaky bacon and bread rolls. No beers for the boys, only the dad gets to drink beer. But this being a baking blogspot, I need to write on something related to it and so I thought.

You may have noticed a cupcake peeking from between the Heineken and card. That was for dessert. Banana Cupcake with Valhorna Chocolate Pearls.

Got the recipe from Sensational Cupcakes, by Alisa Morov. The actual recipe called for dark chocolate ganache to be poured over the cupcakes but I sprinkled them with chocolate pearls instead. Just so as I wanted to whip up something real quick.

Recipe for Banana Cupcakes with Valhorna Chocolate Pearls adapted from Sensational Cupcake:

Ingredients:

1) 240g Plain Flour

2) 170g Caster Sugar

3) 1 tsp baking powder 

4) 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

5) 1/4 tsp salt

6) 2 eggs

7) 2 ripe bananas

8) 30g thickened cream (I prefer Bulla)

9) 1 tsp vanilla extract

10) 130g unsalted butter cut into cubes (for easy mixing)

Method:

1) Preheat oven to 170 to 180 degrees C.

2) Sift flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda at least twice. Put aside.

3) Mesh the 2 bananas and mix it with the thickened cream till smooth. 

4) Add the 2 eggs and vanilla extract to (3) and mix well.

5) Add (4) to (2) carefully and using a handheld mixer, slowly combin them. In actual fact, I put (2)  over (4) and guess what happened when the mixer was turned on? So it is better to add liquid to dry to prevent powder clouds from forming. Common sense? I was not thinking then. Haha.

6) Add the butter and whisk till well combined. The butter should be at room temperature so it will be easier to combine them.

7) Pour batter into cupcake moulds and sprinkle chocolate pearls over the top. The pearls do not sink during baking as I reckon the batter is heavy enough to hold them at the top.

8) Pop them into the oven for 15-20mins and the inserted skewer should come out clean before turning them out of the oven.

The cupcakes are extremely moist - great for breakfast or for brunch. 

Cheers to a Cherry Cake

As a follow up to my previous post, I decided to bake the Cherry Cake adapted from robin's eurasian recipes. I had to tweak the recipe as I was baking half the recipe. But the tricky part was how does one half a recipe that uses 5 eggs? Came round that when I calculated the total weight of 5 eggs @60g each and divided it by two. Not too sure if that was a wise move but I simply did it.

I replaced the maraschinto cherries with what was available in my fridge ie Waitrose Glace Cherries. You will notice that for the cherries, half of 250g is 125g but as I wanted a little more cherries to be in the mixture, I added to 160g glace cherries instead.

The ingredients below are for a half recipe. Oh yes, I omitted the cherry essence as I did not have it and put in vanilla extract instead. On hindsight, I should not have added any. Why? Did not think the vanilla brought out the flavor as much as the cherry essence would have. So if you do not have the cherry essence, I suggest do not waste your vanilla.

Cherry Cake adapted from robin's eurasian recipes:

Ingredients
150g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
125g unsalted butter (not stated in the actual recipe if salted or unsalted)
150g castor sugar (original recipe used fine sugar)
150g eggs (original recipe is 5 eggs so this is really up to you how you want to halve it)
1 tbsp milk (I used full cream)
1/2 tsp cherry essence ( I omitted it and replaced it with 1/2 tsp vanilla extract)
160g diced glace cherries (original calls for 250g maraschinto cherries)
Procedures
1) Preheat oven to 170 degrees Celsius.
2) Sift flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and mix well.
3) On a stand mixer, beat in butter and sugar till creamy ie 5 mins on high speed.
4) Add the eggs one at a time while beating for a few more minutes.
*5) Fold in half the flour mixture followed by the milk and vanilla extract and mix well.
*6) Fold in the remaining flour followed by the cherries.
7) Pour mixture into an 8 inch tin and bake for 60 minutes.

*Steps 5 and 6 were what I did instead of what the recipe called for - Fold in the flour mixture and add milk, essence and cherries. 

As soon as the cake was cooled, I cut it up to serve as dessert for my son and me. Too sweet for me! That is the problem when you add 35g more cherries into the batter. Well, at least I had the thumbs up from him. 

Rich Eurasian Cakes

Had a go with baking a chocolate cake days leading to Easter. I have been baking chocolate cakes but just thought I try out this recipe from robin's eurasian recipes. I guess I have always been impressed by the sugee cakes (semolina and almond) that is so trademark-ish of Eurasians. I stand corrected. So I was hoping this cake would somehow taste different.

Well for one, it was really dark and chocolaty. It rose to a nice height which is perfect for an iced layered cake. It tasted better and more moist the next day. This cake has made it to my list of cakes to bake for special occasions.

There are a few more recipes, common as they are that I would like to try out from the book. Namely the Cherry cake and the Butter cake. The latter calls for 12 eggs and 500g of softened butter! Though I mentioned that the sugee cake is so Eurasian to me, I am not sure if I should try baking it. The recipe calls for 10 egg whites and 15 egg yolks! That is a whole lot of eggs and butter we are talking here...but again these are precisely the ingredients that make a good cake so I reckon. So should I try the recipe out or not? As they say, no venture, no gain. Besides, since I am still in the mood of making macarons, I should be able to put those yolks to good use.

Come this long weekend cos of the Labor Day holiday, I see myself laboring to bake the cakes and, as usual, eager to know how they will turn out.

Experimentia 1

What happens when you have the craving for bananas, oreos and had acquired a taste for rum? You combine all these three distinct items into a batter for cupcakes and aptly name them Banana-Oreo-Rum Cupcakes!

In my previous blog, Going Bananas Over Bananas, I baked a wonderful banana cake. It was an affirmation that I could bake it right. Further inspired by fellow bloggers who also baked Banana cakes; Banana Oreos Cakes and Rum Cakes, I thought I should combine all my three favorites and experiment. Hence the title of my blog Experimentia 1. It being the first of many more 'experiments' to come.

Really ignorant if there is already such a combination out there and I do appreciate it if fellow readers could tell me so and provide me the references. In any case, I doubled and adapted the recipe from blogger Cuisine Paradise so as to make it a tad original.

I replaced the Plain Flour with Cake Flour simply because I had left overs from previous bakes and I wanted the cake to be lighter and more fluffy. To cut down the 'sweet' content, without reducing the sugar, I left out the condensed milk and poured in the rum. As I was mindful that I had left out the sweetness of the condensed milk and replaced it with something bitter, I decided to crush as many oreos as I like and did so with the bananas by mashing more than 4. I was hoping the natural sweetness of the over-riped bananas will also overcome the 'bland' mixture. Really, it is up to the individual when it comes to a matter of taste.

Recipe for Banana-Oreo-Rum Cupcakes:

220g Cake Flour
220g Butter
180g Caster Sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tbsp Dark Rum
1 tbsp vanilla extract
About 16 Oreo cookies coarsely pounded
4 - 5 bananas randomly mashed

1) Preheat oven to 180 degrees C
2) Cream butter and sugar till light and fluffy
3) Beat in the eggs
4) Incorporate the mashed bananas, rum and vanilla extract
5) Sieve flour, baking powder and baking soda over the batter and fold in gently
6) Fold in the crushed cookies
7) Scoop and fill in cupcake casings - makes about 14
8) Bake for 25 to 30 mins

And there you have it, a moist and fluffy Banana-Oreo-Rum cupcake.

Going bananas over bananas

Over the past 2 weeks, I had the craving to bake something with bananas in it. There were a couple of occasions I bought a bunch of bananas with the hope of using them for my baking but they ended up feeding the fruitflies. Simply no time and usually too tired after work.

Reading all the fabulous blogs with banana cake recipes only made me more guilty of having to throw the rotting bunches away. Moreover, there is always an urge to try out those recipes that are featured. Moist and fluffy etc bloggers usually describe their masterpieces and then I wonder if I could produce the same.

Attracted by 2 particular recipes, by Jess@Bakericious Banana and Oreos Muffins and Banana Chocolate Cake from fellow blogger and great baker, Bakertan, I finally disciplined myself to try them out.

The Banana and Oreos Muffins were absolutely gorgeous and an instant hit with my colleagues. They could not taste the oreos as oreos and thought they were melted chocolates! Moist and fluffy - haha - now my turn to use that common phrase, the muffins were a success and I would like to acknowledge and thank Bakericious for putting up the recipe on her blog. Unfortunately, there are no photos of my muffins. 

Baketan detailed how to bake his Banana Chocolate Cake and it was so inspiring that I told myself I had to try it out. And so I did this morning. It was awesome and again, moist and fluffy. Took less than an hour to bake. Thanks Bakertan.

The quest is on - not going bananas but macaroons! Any tips or reference from dear bloggers?