Durian Cake

MIL's bday was round the corner and she 'pre-ordered' a Durian cake from me... To make her happy, I obliged..

It's been almost a year since I last baked a Durian cake.. my 1st attempt (last year for her bday) wasn't really successful... the cake & durian filling was ok but my icing & decoration sucked.. :p I also encountered problems with the whipping cream then.. this year, I was determined to get it right!

I started off with baking 2 basic sponge cakes.. The recipe is similar to my Chocolate Sponge recipe, simply replace the cocoa powder with flour. I had to bake 2 of them in my 8" square tin as the cake was supposed to feed about 20 pax...

After sending off the batters into the oven, I began preparing my durian puree filling. I've browsed through many recipes and most of them require the durian puree to be mixed with whipped cream.. I did so last year and the fillings tasted yummy... However, this year I decided to omit the whipped cream..

To prepare Durian puree filling:

Ingredients:
- 1 medium size durian, remove seed
- 300ml of whipping cream

Method:
- Puree the durian pulp in the blender
- Whip the whipping cream until stiff peaks form
- Combine durian puree with whipped cream

To Assemble:
- Slice the sponge cake into 1/2 (Do this only when the cake is completely cooled)
- Spread the durian filling in between the layers
- Cover the whole cake with whipped cream (I whipped up another 300ml of whipping cream to cover the cake)
- Decorate as desire

Cake Decoration - Part II

Presenting the fruit of my labour...

This was the cake that I baked & decorated for my elder boy's 5th birthday..

Chocolate Sponge with Buttercream Icing

Cake Decoration - Buttercream Icing

I had this ambition to bake a cake for my son's birthday this year... but then cake decoration is not an easy task... from mixing butter cream to the right consistency to spreading it on the cake and making it look as smooth as possible... gosh.. these are tough work!

The last time I decorated a cake when almost a year ago, did a durian mousse cake for MIL's birthday but failed terribly for the decoration.. had limited ingredients then and didn't really know how to decorate.. :p to me, it was way too ugly though everyone sang praises.. they are all too kind to say negative things.. hee...

Anyway, I used the Wilton Buttercream Icing recipe to cover the cake in 2 coats - 1 crumb coat & another layer over the crumb coat... I let the crumb coat crust in the fridge for about 20mins before applying the 2nd layer... tried to use parchment paper to smooth the top but wasn't successful cos mine wasn't non-stick! this is why you could see the 'waves' on the surface of the cake :p Anyway, I came up with the idea of using chocolate rice to cover the 'uneven' icing on the sides and it turned out well.. (so this is what you do when you can't smooth the buttercream properly.. :D)

I also made Chocolate Buttercream for piping around the cake... my son had loads of fun piping and eating the cream!

So here it is.. my 1st attempt at whole cake decoration.. :D

Chocolate Buttercream

Ingredients:
· 125 gm. Butter
· 125 gm. margarine
· 80 gm. icing sugar
· 100 gm. melted cooking chocolate

Method:
· Put butter, margarine and icing sugar in the mixing bowl and beat until light.
· Pour in melted chocolate and mix evenly (I added cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate and it turned out very nice too)

Chocolate Sponge

Over the weekend, I tried out this basic sponge cake recipe from Alex Goh’s Fruity Cakes recipe book. Added cocoa powder to the recipe since the kids love chocolate!

Ingredients A
· 4 eggs
· 120g sugar

Ingredients B
· 95g flour, sieved
· 15g cocoa powder

Ingredient C
· 70g melted butter


Method:
1) Put ingredients A into mixing bowl and beat until white & fluffy
2) Slowly fold into Ingredients A mixture from Step 1 – mix well
3) Stir in ingredient C to the mixture and mix well
4) Pour the batter into a greased baking tin and bake in preheated oven at 180 °C for 25mins


Notes:
· I reduced the amount of sugar to 100g as I didn't want it to be too sweet.

· I didn’t have any butter in the fridge and so I used the Olive-Canola magarine I had to replace butter. Taste good as well!
· For a vanilla sponge, simply replace the cocoa powder with same amount of flour (total 110g) and add ¼ tsp of vanilla essence (to Ingredients A).

Orange Sponge Cake

Wanted to make a quick & easy cake for my kids and so this Orange Sponge Cake came to me.

Ingredients:

· 250g spongemix

· 4 eggs

· 100ml orange juice (i used freshly squeezed orange juice)

· 1tsp orange essence

· 50g cooking oil

Method:

· Preheat oven at 180ºC

· Combine all ingredients (except cooking oil) and blend at fast speed for 10 to 15 mins in the mixer.

· When flour paste becomes thick, add in cooking oil and blend at slow speed until well-mixed.

· Pour the batter into baking tray and bake in preheated oven for 25mins (test for 'done-ness' w a wooden pick)

PS: Cakes made from Spongemix tastes sweeter so if you don't like it too sweet, can choose to make ur own sponge from scratch.

Chocolate Chips Bun and Pandan Sponge Cake

Had some leftover bread dough and cake batter from the Pandan Cake Bread and so I made these.


Added in chocolate chips to the bread dough and I get Choco Chips Bun, which my son loved to eat... OK, it's a little bit hard cos I left it in the oven for too long, but he still liked it... as long as there's chocolate in it...


Pandan Sponge Cake





It's very soft and fluffy and yummy too!

Pandan Cake Bread

I browsed through the book over and over again and finally settled on this recipe for my very 1st shot at Bread. Though the bread didn't turned out very soft and fluffy, it was already quite good for a 1st attempt... :D

Ingredients:

· 300g basic bread dough
· 250g sponge mix

· 4 eggs

· 50g pandan leaves

· 1tsp pandan essence

· 50g cooking oil

· 50g raisins (optional - i did not add this)

Method:

For Bread:

· Following the basic bread dough recipe, prepare bread dough of 300g

· Soak raisins in water for 5mins, remove to drain and mix into bread dough (you may skip this step if you do not wish to add in raisins)

· Divide dough into 150g each, roll them, proof for 10mins, mould into round shapes, place them onto a 2 x 8 cm inch greased baking mould, allow to leaven for 30mins

For Cake:

· Blend sponge mix, eggs, pandan leaves and pandan essence in the mixer at fast speed for 10 to 15 mins in the mixer. When flour paste becomes thick, add in cooking oil and blend at slow speed.

· Pour the thick paste on surface of leavened bread.

· Place into pre-heated oven, bake at 200ºC for 30 to 35 mins. Serve.

Bread Code

I bought this recipe book "Bread Code" by Wendy Kor few months ago cos hubby mentioned he'd prefer bread to cakes... I hardly attempt bread because it's not easy to bake...

This is the recipe for Basic Bread Dough from the book.

Basic Bread Dough

Ingredients A:
· 500g high protein flour (or bread flour)
· 1 tsp instant yeast

Ingredients B:
· 60g sugar
· 1 tsp salt
· 1 tsp milk powder

Ingredients C:
· 1 egg
· 250g water

Ingredients D:
· 50g butter


Method:

· Put ingredients A in the mixer, blend at slow speed for 1 min. Then add in Ingredients B and blend for another min.

· Add in Ingredients C and blend at slow speed for another 1 min. Then, blend at medium speed for 5 min till dough-like.

· Add in Ingredients D and continue to blend for 10 to 15 min till the dough is shiny and springy.

· Use cling wrap to cover the dough, allow to leaven for 40 to 50 mins till dough size is doubled.

· Set aside

Almond Cookies

Baked these cookies for CNY this year. This was yet another hit among those who tried. :D


Ingredients:
· 230 gm. plain flour
· 1 tsp. baking powder
· 1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda
· 150 gm. caster sugar
· 1/4 tsp. vanillin powder
· 1/4 tsp. salt
· 150 gm. ground almonds
· 150 ml. oil (i used sunflower oil)
· 1 egg yolk


Method:
· Preheat oven at 175ºC
· Sift flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda
· Add in sugar, vanillin powder, salt and ground almonds
· Add in oil and mix well into a dough.
· Make small balls of dough and place on baking tray.
· Beat the egg yolk and brush over small balls of dough.
· Bake in preheated oven for 20 mins. or till lightly browned.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

My very 1st attempt on muffins.. not perfect but still everyone gobbled down everything in less than 2 days... This recipe is very versatile. I actually used the recipe of Raisin Muffins to bake these.. just replaced the raisins with choco chips and viola, it's done! :D So if you don't fancy choco chips, just replace it with something else!


Ingredients:
· 1.5 cups self-raising flour
· 100g sugar (I use caster sugar cos it's finer and easier to mix)
· 2 eggs
· 1/2 cup milk
· 55g butter (unsalted)
· 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
· chocolate chips


Method:
· Preheat oven at 180ºC
· Sieve the flour and set aside.
· Cream the butter and suger until creamy and pale white
· Add the eggs gradually to the batter and mix well
· Add in vanilla essence and milk and mix well
· Fold in sieved flour and mix well
· Stir in chocolate chips
· Spoon batter into muffin cups and bake at preheated oven for 30mins or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean

Cornflake Cookies

This is one of my favorite recipes! It's among my very 1st bakes and it turned out very successful! Received many praises and everyone esp my boys love to eat these cookies! This is almost a fool-proof recipe, it's very easy to follow and almost nothing could go wrong - even for an amateur like me!

Happy baking!

Ingredients:
· 300g plain flour
· 225g butter (unsalted)

· 100g castor sugar
· 1 tsp baking powder

· 1 egg

· Unsweetened cornflakes (crushed)

· A pinch of salt

Method:
· Sieve the flour and baking powder together and add salt. Set aside.
· Cream the butter and the sugar till creamy and pale white

· Beat the egg and add to butter/sugar mixture and mix well

· Fold in the flour mixture into the batter.

· Mix well until it forms a soft pastry dough.

· Make small balls of dough, roll and coat evenly with crushed cornflakes.

· Bake at 180 degree in a preheated oven till brown.