Steamed cupcakes

I was searching for cupcakes recipe online one day and came across this quick & easy recipe (and many others). All the cupcakes posted by bakers were so pretty!! If you don't believe, just google images on "steamed cute cupcakes and you'll find many pretty pictures :)

Recipe adapted from Peng's Kitchen
* makes about 5-6 small cupcakes

Ingredients:

• 100gm pancake mix (Morinaga Brand)
• 1 egg
• 30gm sugar (I reduced to 20gm)
• 30gm plain yoghurt
• 30ml fresh milk
• 15gm unsalted butter, melted

Method

1. Whisk egg and sugar together.
2. Add in yoghurt and milk and mix till well blended.
3. Sift in pancake mix powder and fold till well blended.
4. Stir in melted butter.
5. Spoon the batter into cupcake liners.
6. Steam the cupcake for 12 mins. 

Notes:

- Tap the cups lightly on the surface several times to remove any air bubbles. 

- I doubled the recipe and made 12 cupcakes

Here's the result of my 1st attempt. Tried to draw spiderweb on the cupcakes but I failed horribly, :p wasn't as easy as I thought hee.. It turned out to look like HUAT KUEH!! Lol! Nevertheless, it was yummy except that its a tad too sweet for me but my boys said they tasted just right. Oh well, kids just love sweet stuff, don't they?

After the 1st round of Huat Kueh, I decided to try again. This time, I doubled the recipe and reduced the sugar and steamed at medium heat. It turned out perfect and the cakes didn't HUAT like the last time :)

Yummy steamed cuppies

Almond cookies

Another of my CNY bakes - Almond cookies!

In my opinion, cookies are the easiest to bake when it comes to baking. I've always told many of my friends to start with baking cookies first if you want to try your hands at baking.

You cannot go very wrong and don't have to worry about overmixing or deflating the batter. All you gotta do is to cream butter and sugar and mix in the rest of ingredients to form a dough. It's easy and can be done within minutes. Even kids can bake!

Although... it takes practice and alot of patience to shape the cookies. Especially for the recipes with very soft dough. It' essential to chill the dough so it's easier to shape.

I love to shape cookies, just like how I like to do craft work (for the kid's school projects or teacher's day gift). It gives me time to slow down my pace, train up my patience and time to think about nothing else but making the perfect shape I want.

I'm happy with these almond crunchies. Golden and round. One of my best-shaped round cookies.

Recipe adapted from Alan Ooi

Ingredients
- 180g plain flour
- 120g almond powder
- 120g caster sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 120ml unflavoured cooking oil ( I used sunflower oil)
- 1 egg yolk for glazing

Method
1. Combine all ingredients in a mixer to form a dough.
2. Divide dough into 7g portions and shaped into round balls.
3. Arrange on lined baking tray and top with egg glaze.
4. Bake at preheated 180deg oven for 15-20mins.
5. Cool on wiring rack completely before storing in air tight container.

Melt in the Mouth Pineapple Tarts

Another of my CNY bakes for this year - Pineapple Tarts (凤梨酥) 旺来旺来! 

It was very addictive and I can't stop popping one after another into my mouth! Everyone who tried this kept coming back for more! 😉

This is the best pineapple tart recipe ever! 

My not-so-good-looking but very-yummy pineapple tarts.

Updated photo of my better looking tarts :p

Melt in the Mouth Pineapple Tarts

Recipe adapted from Table for 2

INGREDIENTS

• 400g cake flour
• 30g corn starch
• 3 egg yolks
• 250gm butter (unsalted)
• 75g sugar
• 170g whipping cream
• 50g cream cheese

• Home-made or store-bought pineapple jam (I bought the jam from Ailin Bakery and it was yummy!)
• 1 egg yolk for glazing

METHOD

1. Roll pineapple jam into small balls (7g each) in advance. Store in the fridge.
2. Cream butter, sugar and cream cheese till combined.
3. Pour in whipping cream and whip on medium speed for 10mins until it turns creamy.
4. Add in egg yolks and beat for 1 min.
5. Add in 1/2 of the sifted flour to the mixture and mix on low speed until combined. 
6. Add in remaining 1/2 of the flour and mix till combined. Do not overmix.
7. Chill dough in fridge for 30mins before starting to wrap with jam.
8. Roll the dough into small balls (10g each)
9. Flatten the dough, put the pineapple jam in the centre and wrap up with dough quickly. 
10. Brush with egg yolk and baked in preheated oven (160deg with fan for 20mins or 180 deg without fan for 15mins). 

Melt-in-mouth German Cookies

One of my bakes for CNY this year..

This is a very easy to make recipe, however, the finished product is really quite fragile. Really melts in the mouth! I made 3 different flavors to brighten up the colors (since it was for CNY) but I still prefer the plain o'vanilla flavor among all.

Melt-in-mouth German Cookies 
Recipe from Happy Home Baking

Ingredients 

• 125g butter
• 40g icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (I used essence) 
• 125g potato starch
• 80g cake flour

Method

1. Beat butter and icing sugar till light and fluffy. Add in vanilla essence and mix well.
2. Sift in potato starch and cake flour. With a spatula, mix to form a soft dough. (Note: if the mixture appears too soft and wet to shape, leave the dough to chill in the fridge for about 10-15mins)
3. Roll dough into small balls, arrange on lined baking pan and press lightly with a fork.
4. Bake in preheated oven at 170 deg C for 15 mins, upper rack (need not bake till cookies turn brown).

For green tea flavor:
Add 2 tsp of matcha green tea powder to the dough

For chocolate flavor: 
Add 2 tbsp of cocoa powder to the dough (you may want to reduce the amount of flour by 2 tbsp so that the dough is not too dry after adding cocoa powder)

Chiffon cupcakes

This was yet another impromptu decision to bake a birthday cake for hubby. 

With limited time and ingredients, I decided to bake cupcakes which are easier & quicker to make.

I've bookmarked this recipe sometime ago and now it's come into good use.. and finally I've a chance to make use of the cupcake holders that I purchased some months ago.. one stone kill two birds.. hehehe..

80% filled cupcake holders, ready to be popped into the oven

baking in process....

fresh from the oven! but it deflated a little..

Ta-daa!!! Decorated with buttercream icing and some DIY cake toppers.. 

Recipe adapted from Peng's Kitchen

Ingredients
* makes 8 cupcakes although recipe says it yields 9-10 cupcakes. 
- 3 egg yolks
- 30gm sugar
- 45gm oil
- 65gm cake flour
- 60ml milk (I didn't have Hokkaido Milk, so I used Fresh milk)
- 1/2 tsp vanilla paste (i used 1tsp vanilla essence)
- 3 egg whites
- 45gm sugar
- 1/4 tsp cream of tartar (omitted this as I don't have it :p)

Method

1. Sift flour and add sugar. Add in yolks, milk, corn oil and whisk until thoroughly blended. Beat in vanilla paste.
2. Using a electric whisk, beat whites and cream of tartar until foamy. Gradually add in sugar and whisk on high speed until stiff peak.
3. Scoop 1/3 of the egg whites into the yolk batter and blend well. Pour the batter into the remaining egg whites and quickly fold till combined.
4. Scoop the batter into cupcake holders until 80% full. Tap the holder lightly to remove excessive air pockets.
5. Bake in preheated oven at 20mins or until skewer comes out clean when inserted into cupcake.
6. Cool cupcakes completely on wire rack before decorating

Note: The original recipe calls for cream to be piped into the cupcakes but I did not follow. I made some buttercream icing and piped it on the cupcakes and just decorated with my DIY cake toppers. Please refer to the link above if you want the recipe for the cream filling :)

Cookies & Cream Cake

It's been ages since I updated this blog, which also means that I have not been baking for the past years.. started baking again since the beginning of this year and so I here I am bloggin again :)

This was one of my recent bakes, for my mum's birthday. 
It was an impromptu decision to bake this and since it was my first time, there's still room for improvement.

What's a birthday cake without any decoration? I frosted the cake with whipped cream and decorated with oreo cookies on the sides and dusted cocoa powder on the surface of the cake. My frosting skills sucks and so this decoration was perfect for hiding the uneven frosting :p  

Cookies & Cream Cake
Recipe adapted from Taste of Home

Ingredients:
1 package white cake mix 
(I replaced the cake mix with my own concoction of white cake mix. pls see the other recipe at the end of this post for the cake mix substitute)
1-1/4 cups water
1/3 cup canola oil
3 egg whites
1 cup coarsely crushed cream-filled chocolate sandwich cookies (i used 8 cookies)

Method:
1. In a large bowl, combine the cake mix, water, oil and egg whites; beat on low speed for 30 seconds. Beat on high for 2 minutes. Gently fold in crushed cookies.

2. Pour into two greased and floured 9-in. round baking pans. Bake at 350° for 30-35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks to cool completely. (It took me about 50mins to bake this cake)

3. When cake is completely cooled, slice into 2 and spread the whipped cream frosting onto the bottom layer. Put the 2 layers together and frost the whole cake with remaining whipped cream. Decorate as desired.       


Frosting (recipe from Craftsy)
1 tsp unflavored gelatin
4 tsp cold water
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/4 cup sifted icing sugar

1. Combine the gelatin and cold water in a small pan. Stir gently and let the mixture stand until it turns thick.
2. Place the pan over low heat and keep stirring until the gelatin has completely dissolved.
3. Remove from heat and let it cool to warm (do not let it set completely).
4. Whip the cream until soft peak, add the icing sugar and mix till combined.
5. Reduce to low speed and add in the gelatin while continuing to beat
6. Return to high speed until stiff peaks form


Substitute for White Cake Mix:
If you are not too keen on using store-bought ready cake mix like me, try this substitute that I found from Food.com or you can use any other white cake recipe that's available .