Taste of Chocolate - Macarons

 

It is rather late for me to say that these chocolate macarons were my Valentine's gift to my wife. I made them only after 14th February. I made them a week later and I am now posting this blog. How late can one be. But it is the thought that counts.

Well, 'thoughts' as it remains. After making them, I did not present her the macarons but simply left them in the refrigerator - own time own target - help yourself to them, so to speak. Isn't it terrible? Dying romance, one would say? At least it is not dead!

No, I have to qualify. It was mutual and I mean me and my wife understood the situation back then on the14th. Let's hope history will not repeat itself. By the way, for those keen in learning to make macarons, I suggest you surf the net. You'll get lots of recipes and advice. The thing is - keep working on it. I am doing just that.

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.

Make not lemonade but Lemon Chiffon

As the saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. For me, in 2013, I make Lemon Chiffon. The reasons I decided to do a lemon version are - one of my Christmas presents from my boys is a reamer and the other, I wanted to adapt a recipe from a book I got my hands on ie  Vintage Cakes: More Than 90 Heirloom Recipes for Tremendously Good Cakes by Jane Brocket. Notice the cup at the background in the picture below? They were flown in from the US and each of these 6 cups depicts the two different days of Christmas. Awesome! Gonna pass them down to the next generation.

Tweaking the recipe produced a cake that was moist, light, flavorful and tangy. However, I wished it was a little more light and less compact. I reckoned it could be the brand of flour I used and the amount of lemon juice which I liberally added (no mention of lemon juice in the recipe and so I wondered how it could be called a Lemon Chiffon)

Lemon Chiffon Cake (adapted from Vintage Cakes)

For the cake

6 eggs separated and an additional of 2 egg whites

230g Japanese wheat flour

10g baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

300g caster sugar (150g for the dry ingredients and 150g for the egg whites)

125ml vegetable oil

finely grated zest of 2 lemons

100ml of water

50ml of lemon juice (approx as amount is up to the individual)

1 tsp of cream of tartar and 

1tsp of vanilla extract (optional)

For the glaze

600g icing sugar

juice of 1 lemon

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees C

2. Separate the 6 eggs and combine the egg whites with egg whites from 2 additional eggs

3. Place the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl and whisk it with a hand whisk - just to mix them up or you could sieve the dry ingredients

4. Add the caster sugar and combine it with the (3)

5. Make a well in the center and add the yolks, lemon zest, oil, water and lemon juice

6. Using a hand held mixer, beat till well combined

7. Place egg whites in a clean bowl

8. Whisk them till gentle peaks form then add the cream of tartar, caster sugar and vanilla extract, whisking till completely smooth

9. Spoon the egg whites into the sponge batter and fold them in carefully

10. Pour the batter into a 24cm cake tin

11. Pour excess batter into mini chiffon cake tins (optional)

12. Bake the cake for 40min - 50min. Insert a skewer to see if it comes out clean

13. Once cake is done, remove from the oven and invert the cake. Let it cool completely before removing from cake tin

To make the glaze

1. Combine the lemon juice and icing sugar till you get a light and runny texture

2. Drizzle the runny icing sugar on the cooled cake

 

There you go, Lemon Chiffon. On hindsight, I should have followed the recipe and try it out. Hmm...

Christmas Macarons #1

Attempted the so called Christmas macarons. Well, it is basically having red, green and white macarons with different fillings.

By saying attempted I meant on the colors. I could not get that Christmassy Red and Green. Anyway, even for the green ones, they were matcha macarons. So much for Christmas eh?

However, this is my version #1 as stated in my post title. I will attempt another batch and may consider chocolate ganache for the red ones; peppermint for the green and vanilla for the white. We shall see...

Not Martha's Orange Chiffon Cake

Having bought some rather large oranges, I decided to bake an orange cake. What came to mind was a chiffon cake. About a week ago, I deliberated on signing up for a baking class on Orange and Pandan Chiffon Cakes. My wife had told me to drop the idea as I already know how to bake an Orange Chiffon (Martha Stewart's recipe). Reluctantly, I gave the class a miss but I trawled the internet for different versions of making an Orange Chiffon.

I came across Mintyskitchen's blog and noted that she uses self-raising flour instead of cake flour. Finding it interesting, I decided to attempt making the chiffon.

However, as I was getting the ingredients ready, I was unsure if I should adapt the recipe and replace the self-raising flour. Between a sealed, yet-to-be-opened pack of self-raising flour and a half used cake flour pack, I went for the latter. 

I would like to thank Veronica of Mintyskitchen for the wonderful recipe. With cake flour and extra orange zest, I think I made another perfect chiffon. Guess my wife was right. I do not have to attend any more classes. Perhaps I should have been daring enough to use self-raising...

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...

Soya Bean Chiffon Again

It is about time I did the Soya Bean Chiffon again. The last time I did this was in June this year. Refer to my post Soya Bean Chiffon Cake dated 27 June 2012.

I noticed from the number of hits, blog readers tend to check out this chiffon and the Matcha or Green Tea Chiffon. I hope this second post will provide a little more information on this chiffon.

If you had noticed, I have bravely divided the chiffon into 3 layers this time round and each layer is topped with whipping cream. I could only do this after I bought the Wilton Cake Leveler a day ago. 

I had given the reference to the recipe in my previous post and I had mentioned too about the soya bean powder that I used. Hope that the photo directly above will help you identify the product easier. However, I am not too sure if you can get it at your local store...or if it is available, it might come in a different packaging.

I must say that this chiffon is a great cake to make. It is not too sweet. It is really soft and fluffy and light - all the good attributes of that perfect chiffon. 

My only regret is that I used 200ml of whipping cream. Having a layered cake like this requires more than that amount and so I concluded. Thus, you noticed I did not cover the entire cake with the cream. Nevertheless, it was a great cake. Spoken with pride.