Chocolate Cream Cake - Birthday cake for my niece Xin Xin

Wow.. two weeks had passed since my maid had gone on a month leave. It had been hectic looking after my two boys coz both are very attached to me and wish that they can be hold by me all the time. So I had not had time to do anything except to play with them, wash them and feed them.

Both am glad tat hubby finally took time off for a few day to help me and my niece's birthday is tomorrow so decided to made a birthday cake for her.. my excuse to bake a cake so can try a different and new flavour cake.

Had been trying to decide what cake to bake and hubby finally say that it's best that I check with my brother on what cake his baby girl like .. Xin is turing 5 yrs old. So today the chose of cake is a "Chocolate Cake".

So check my cake book and look for a chocolate and yahoo.. got a simple recipe from Kevin Chai book on a chocolate cream cake and decide to put it to the trial ha ha.. It was quite a simple recipe and I got most of the ingredients.

However, I find that the chocolate cream is so little so not sure whether the cake is creamy enough ha ha as it's a cake for kids and kids just love cream right?? Since it's a cake for a kid and time is short so decided to put a simple design for it.. So the cake topped with fresh whipped cream with M&M chocolate on top and is cover at the bottom with flowery mashmallow..

A Happy Birthday to you Xin, hope you like the cake yee yee made for u...

Giant Oreo Cupcake

Been thinking of making something different which is nice and easy to made. Finally decided to make cupcakes for this time round. I particularly saw this simple looking recipe and spotted this nice picture of a Oreo & Raisin Cupcakes from Aunty Yochana.

The ingredient was so simple and only few ingredients was required to made it. As I only have a simple small desktop electric oven so was going through my cupcake mould to see how many can fit it and my gosh... I can only fit in 9 cupcake mould and this is a big size one as well.

Had not done any cupcake before and the recipe did not state how many cupcake i can made. So i decided to just use the 9 big size cupcake mould and throw in all the batter.. ha ha .. and i think i overfilled the cupcakes almost to 90% coz I dun wan to leave any batter behind. And it was really a mistake as the batter start to rise, rise and rise and overflowed out from the cupcake mould. And so it was another mess that I had made he he..

I think maybe some one can help me out on this as to whether i can just leave the batter and put it in after the 1st tray of cupcake is done. coz for most cakes it's best that once u mix everything together u must straight away put the cake batter into the oven to start baking or else the cake will be deflatted.

This is the biggest problem with a small oven. How I wish I can get a bigger oven to made life more simpler ha ha.. so I can bake with more fun and not going around worrying whether the cake pan can fit.. So Santa pls help me send out this msg for a new oven.. ha ha n thank you..

Ok ok coming back to the cupcake, beside having cake batter flowing out everywhere in the oven, my giant cupcakes turn out alright. Ya i forgot to mention that I didn't add in raisin as I'm not a great fan of it and for the oreo part I just put in 80g instead of the 100g mentioned and yes it was just alright for me.

When I try the cupcake the top was a big harder ( coz i overbaked i think) but surprisingly the texture inside was just soft and nice. It was a bit sweeter becoz of the oreo cookies added in so if u are not a person with sweet tooth then maybe u can reduce the cookies or reduce the sugar in the ingredient.

Another thing I would like to mention as well was the oreo cookies - I had chopped it into small pieces but not till it all crumbs. I think it taste better as u can taste the oreo and it become soften when u it baked.

So my 1st experience for the first cupcake baking was great he he.. except for the oven complaint part. Thanks to Aunty Yochana for her great recipe and here is the link (recipe) if u wish to try it for yourself. Do try it...

Light soft Yummy Cheese cake

Had been busy with chasing sales and taking care of the two boys. So by the time I'm free already too tired to think of baking. However, recently saw a blog pal sharing on a light cheese cake recipe so decided to put it to trial.

Years ago I had eaten a very nice yummy fluffy cheese cake and ever since that had been wanting to make one myself but fail to get a nice recipe for making it. By thanks to Little Teochew's cotton japanese cheese cake recipe, I get the chance to try it again.. For the recipe pls refer to Little Teochew's blog.

Yes the cake was like what she had shared.. light, fluffy and cheesy. Her tips was nice as well but coz we were going out so I had taken the cake out from the oven straight after it was baked. It was fluffy and full but as u see from the picture when the cake was let to cool on a wire rack the top just sink in. So this is to tell u better to hear what other advice ha ha.. I didn't have a 8 or 9 inch cake pan as I only got those that is loose pan one. I didn't use as this recipe call for baking a in water bath. So i used a square pan -not sure wat size is it. SO when I pour in the batter it was almost 90% full..

So at first, I had try to put a aluminium foil on top to cover but coz the batter was too full it was touching the foil so I decided to take it out. Scare that I overbaked the cake so I lowered the oven temp to 150 degree celsius and extended the baking time to 1 hour 30 min. when it was baking for almost 40 min I lowered the temp again to 140-130 degree so it cook slow and with a nice golden colour on top.

But the cake is just very nice. ANd my son being very picky had eaten a few more pieces than usual and this was the same to my in laws. I must say if u are looking for a light spongy cheese cake this is a cake recipe that u must try..

Banana Chiffon Cake

There was quite a lot of banana leftover and seem like no one are eating it ha ha. So I thought why not made use of it and decided to made another round of banana chiffon cake. Had not made this cake for quite sometimes and had already forgetton all abt it.

As usual chiffon most impt technique i guess is beating the egg whites to stiff consistent and another one would be mixing it with the egg yolk batter and made sure that it's not over mixed. I think I'm getting better with chiffon cake making and it's quite easy.

I added an additional egg to the actual recipe as the egg was quite small. I guess the actual recipe asked for medium or large egg so decide to put in an additional one more. The cake turn out as expected very soft - when I cut the cake, the was a watery sound so am not sure whether is it I put too much egg so it's too soft and wet. But when I taste it, it was just nice but it was a bit sweet. I totally forgot to reduce it. So will try to remember to reduce the sugar the next round.

Chocolate Banana Cake again!!

My Brother in law was having a gathering for his office collegue yesterday so invited us to go their house. There was bouncer for the kids and foods for the adult ha ha.. We weren't expected to bring anything but I thought that I can made a Chocolate Banana Cake for them to try.

Making the cake was not difficult. I think the challenge I have with this cake is how to put it on a wire rack after icing and transfering the cake onto a cake board once I had pour the chocolate ganache on top. I had friends sharing how they had to lift up the cake and then slowing sliding the cake so that it can be transfer to the cake board.

I try it but it didn't work for me. It was really a big mess. Not sure how to do it better. hmm.. Will try to see what is a better option to transfer the cake next time.

Boy... I made a real mess on transfering the cake with chocolate everyway- on the table, the board, my hand n my t-shirt. I try sliding the cake but it didn't slide at all. If you see from the picture i took, i accidently cut the side of the cake when trying to transfer it.

Butter Cake

It had been quite some time already since I last made some cake. Partly coz of work and partly coz of my sons. Wee had been very "manja" lately and it's making it kind of hard for me to spend some time on my baking. So I had to temporarily put down my passion and try to made him at ease and secure coz he is always looking for me and making it very hard for me to leave home for work or even spend some time doing other things.

Today I just thought that I had to made something up so after work I straight away go to the kitchen and made a butter cake which the recipe I got it from Kevin Chai's Book - Butter Cake. The recipe seem very simple and i got all the ingredients in my kitchen.

Well, eventhough it's plain old butter cake but I find it that I had so far not yet got one that look nice, come with nice texture and taste nice as well. All the recipe that I got were all nice to eat but when cut it's got a lot of crumbs - not like those sold in the bakery which is nice and got good textures.

As I only got small egg so I decide to put in an extra egg as the original recipe call for 5 egg only. I find that most recipe books dun state the size of the egg they use which might also affect the texture of the cake. When the cake was out, It sure taste nice but still I didn't get the nice texture cake which I was looking for and the crust was a bit over baked so it was hard. Guess I better start looking for other better recipes..

Vanilla Blueberry Chiffon Cake & Scones

Wee wee had been quite picky on his food recently and becoz i was quite busy I just instruct my maid to cook noodles, cereal etc for his breakfast. So on wednesday after work I decided to made some scones a day ahead so that he can have it for his breakfast the next day.

At the same while waiting for the scones ( as it need to be fridged for 1/2 hour so that the butter dun melt), I decided to try to made the vanilla chiffon cake which I had failed to made the other day. So was busy for almost 2 hours in the kitchen as making both the scones and the cake at the same time.

The scones turn out quite nice and fluffy. This time the vanilla chiffon was a success, it turn out quite soft. I didn't know what actually went wrong the other day.. was it the ingredient, was it me or my skill.. Something to think about ha ha.

I left the cake overnight not knowing what to put for filling and how to decorate. And being lazy to go to the bakery to get new ingredient I just went to my fridge and see what I got. Well luckily, I still got some blueberry, non-dairy whip cream and dairy whip cream. Frankly speaking I dun really know the difference between the two type of whip cream expect that one is dairy and the other is non-dairy. Maybe I should do a research in which is better and more stable for cake decoration.

Since I still got some blueberry filling, so decide to put it to use. Coz it was not enough to made the blueberry torte so I just use it as it is. Didn't have any idea on how to decorate the cake, so just simply put some chocolate rice I have in the fridge on the side. And since still got some much of cream left I decide to try on my skill or piping the cream.. It was tough to do it right but very interesting as well. Tough in the sense that firstly, i have no piping background and secondly the dairy whip cream was very soft - seem like it's melting maybe due to the hot air in the kitchen. SO just trying my luck to made the best out of it.

But surprisingly the icing pattern was there he he.. just need more practice. It was a good try but i really think I must improve my piping skill by either going to classes to get some hand on or learn from books as well as get more decorating ideas he he.. I think this time it's not so attractive. Really admire the cake designed by a lot of home bakers wonder where their insiprations come from.

Chocolate Banana Cake

Two weeks had passed and were very stressed at work so had not made any cake. Had been planning to made this cake since my last visit to KK. What inspired me to made it ?? Well I had tasted the nice Chocolate Banana Cake at Secret Recipe - It's very Chocolatic, rich yet not sweet.

So decided to give it a try to made my own Chocolate Banana Cake. It was quite challenging coz firstly I couldn't find chocolate whip cream in Brunei - Luckily Brenda shared with me that we do make our own chocolate whip cream by just adding cocoa powder to the normal whip cream. Secondly, was having difficult in making the side of the cake smooth with the whip cream. Because of not being able to made it smooth so when the chocolate ganache dry it dun look smooth on the side. Lastly, I didn't wait for the whip cream to set for enough time before I pour the chocolate ganache. The result was that the whip cream also slide off abit from the side. There was also the issue of taking the cake out from the tray after the chocolate dry. I just wonder how it was done.

The cake turn out very good - not sweet, yet rich and chocolatic and well the banana match in so nicely. Definitely a good try and Yeah I did it !!

Coffee Chiffon Cake

Woke up late today as am very tired as didn't get much sleep due to my two boys waiting up one after the other.. Had a quick breakfast and set out for work.. today was a very hectic and hot day for me.

Had a little urge to do something today after work but didn't have idea till i thought about trying a Coffee Chiffon Cake for tomorrow breakfast. SO far I had only try the norm of chiffon cake - orange, pandan.. so decided to give it a try.

I had seen this recipe in a few blog and decided to go for the recipe recommended and tried by e's joie. Thanks for the sharing of the recipe as I was not able to get hold of Kevin Chai's chiffon cake recipe book.. so sad..

The Cake turn out very soft and fluffy but as I had only used nescafe I guess the smell of coffee was not as fragant. I have actually triple the recipe shared as I was using a big chiffon mould of 23cm- coz got a big family.. ha ha.. so below i posted the original recipe by kevin chai and the version from my end. So depending on the size of your chiffon pan you can adjust the serving accordingly.

Coffee Chiffon Cake

Fit 7″ mouldAdapted from Kevin Chai – Chiffon Cake is done

Ingredients :

Egg Yolk Batter

1 tbsp instant coffee powder

30ml milk (original recipe call for 20ml milk)

2 egg yolks

20g caster sugar

20ml cooking oil

40g cake flour (original recipe call for self-raising flour)

1/4 tsp baking powder

Egg White Foam

3 egg whites (original recipe call for 2 egg whites)

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

40g caster sugar (original recipe call for 50g, I find his recipe a little too sweet)

Method

1. Stir instant coffee powder with milk until melted. Combine with egg yolks, sugar and oil together.

2. Fold in flour and set aside.

3. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar until mixture is foamy. Add in sugar gradually and beat until stiff peak.

4. Gently fold beaten egg white into egg yolk batter until blended.

5. Pour into ungreased 7″ mould and bake in a pre-heated oven for 30 mins or until cooked.

6. Invert cake to cool before removing.

The Ingredients I used for my 23cm chiffon mould...

Ingredients :

Egg Yolk Batter

2 1/2 tbsp instant coffee powder

60ml milk

6 egg yolks

60g caster sugar

60ml cooking oil

120g cake flour

3/4 tsp baking powder

Egg White Foam

6 egg whites

3/4 tsp cream of tartar

120g caster sugar

Enjoy ya! :)

Happy Birthday Cake for My father-in-law

Last week we celebrated my father-in-law's birthday on 30th sept 2009 (It's his Lunar's Birthday) and since he liked to eat yam so I put a challenge to myself to make a yam layered cake for his birthday.

I had previously bought the cake recipe book by AMy Beh and saw this nice Yam layered cake recipe. There was a few steps involved - most importantly need to go buy a nice yam which was a challenge for me as I have never bought any yam before and so am not sure which type to go for, what is nice and will give a better taste to the cake. So the first i did was ask my father in law what type of yam is nice and went out to shop for the yam. And I found out yam really is expensive ha ha almost B$4 per kg.

And on top of that I also thought about how to decorate the cake as am good in decorating with icing as got no experience on it. So I just followed the cake decoration from the book with fresh fruits as the main decoration which is also good in presentation and I had putted almond flakes on the side instead of white chocolate as they dun really like cakes that is sweet.

I had tried the chiffon cake recipe given in the book but it turn out dry and hard. Am not sure what had went wrong - is it my technique ? which I am yet to discover. So I had to use Kevin Chai's sponge cake recipe as I'm sure that it will turn out better- due to shortage of time.

The result - well the cake decoration was nice, Sponge cake - i think was not so spongy - have to improve again and lastly yam fudge - i think it's a bit too dry - unless the yam fudge i try outside which is a smooth, creamy one - am not sure is it I put too much of the agar-agar powder.

But one good thing is my in laws like it as it's not sweet.. at least got motivation for me to try again.. ha ha..

Egg Tart again

Got an invitation for tea @ 3.30pm this afternoon and hubby suggested to have me to work on my egg puff - firstly to improve my skill and to have his friend to try out my egg puff ( call it egg puff since I use puff pastry for the base).

For the first try the one problem I faced is the temperature and timing for the egg puff to be soft inside and crispy. So had put two egg puff to try and the texture was quite different. But now I know how to control the temperature but still learning on how to made it nice and fluffy as the egg filling drop once I take it out from the oven for cooling. I guess maybe I had put it in the oven for too long.. But good try I should say..

Cornflakes Cookies

Today I woke up very early.. at around 5.10am coz Jay Ee wan to play ha ha.. then went back to sleep and woke up almost around 11.30am. After having my brunch and since we are not going out till 3pm so decide to try out the cornflakes cookies recipe which I got from Bake 4 Fun.

The cornflakes cookies is really very simple to made. But I think I had put too much of the cornflakes coz i bought the one with more than the 325g packing as with hari raya around the corner the cornflakes are also coming in bigger packing and i didn't crush it enough into smaller pieces. So it was a bit hard to form the dough into small balls.

The cookies was a bit burned coz i put it for 30 min. I think next time round will lower the temperature to 150 degree C and maybe put it for 25 min only. I think coz of the different type of oven used so it's always better to check you oven and test the cookies accordingly.

Overall, the cookies turn out to be quite nice - suit my taste - crunchy and not sweet. Thanks to Bake 4 Fun, I have found the right cornflakes cookies recipe. will definitely bake it for the coming CNY.


Ingredients:
300g Self-raising flour
1 Egg
240g Butter
180g Fine Sugar
1tsp Vanilla Essence
1 big box of cornflakes (325g)
Cherry for decoration (optional)
Methods:
Mix butter, sugar, egg till sugar melts.
Add vanilla essence
Add flour slowly (bit by bit)
Add in crushed cornflakes.
Make it round and place a bit of cherry in the middle.
Bake in 160deg C for 30-40 minutes or till golden brown.

Polo Bun

Had been thinking of trying the made Polo Bun one day after having seem the recipe at the Famous Cuisine Magazine. It seem quite simple and Brunei dun have nice Polo Bun. So since am not working yesterday so decide to made it as will need some time for the dough to double in size.

However, when i mix the dough it was not as smooth looking as what had been shown in the book so start to feel a bit uneasy as hubby was putting a lot of expectation on the Polo Bun. After adding in the butter, it look more unlike the picture shown as it was very oily. Since it was quite difficult to mix with the philip hand held mixer I decided that maybe I better put my hand to work and start to mix the dough with my hand.

After it double in size have to divide it into small dough and wait for another 10 min. Then the next challenge came on how to put the butter filling on top. Maybe it was my first time to made bread, I was also finding it hard to made the small dough into nice round ball. But after a while it was ok. But hubby say since we are trying it out no need to bake all first so I just baked 9 pieces of the dough.

As was busy with my two sons, so when i put in the 1st batch of the dough I forgot to put glaze it with egg. And when it was done, it didn't look like the Polo Bun as there was no crack on the top and it look quite hard. Was already disappointed with the look already. But when hubby try it he say it was nice.. then only i also try it and find that eventhough it look hard but was soft inside and the topping was nice.

So start to put the 2nd batch to bake, but since I just left the dough to double in size and did not put the topping, it was harder to put the topping. So i put quite a thick layer of the topping and this time i remember to glaze it with an egg.. And wa..la.. it look and taste nicer.. coz the first batch i didn't put enough of the topping therefore there was not much of the topping to crack and with no egg glaze it didn't shine nicely.

It was a really good learning for me. ha ha.. So next time will put a thicker layer of the topping and remember to glaze it with an egg.

Egg Tart

Egg tart is one of my husband favourite food. Whenever he go Kota Kinabalu he will sure try to buy some nice egg tart from there. He claimed that the egg tart from one of the stall in Centrepoint is the best egg tart he ever had with a crispy crust and the watery of the egg custard.


Had been telling my husband that I'll try and made it but had never attempted on this little project ha ha.. It all started with my sister-in-law who had been trying to made egg tart in preparation for puasa. She was thinking of selling this egg tart during the puasa period as usually there are a lots of stall to sell food during this period. The egg tart they did tasted quite nice and so I asked for the recipe.


SO I used the reciped shared by my sister-in-law but changed the crust to puff pastry as that's what my husband required. To cut short the process, I just used the store bought puff pastry. The first batch turn out quite good but the 2nd batch I made some of the egg custard flooded the pastry and therefore the egg tart didn't turn out fluffy like the rest. Also I think either I overbaked or the temperature of the oven was too high so the custard strink in size once it cool down.


It was a good try though, never knew that making a egg tart was so hard ha ha.. Hubby enjoyed his breakfast on thursday morning ha ha.. Asked me to try and made it again..

Curry puff

Suddenly have this idea in my mind to prepare curry puff for wednesday morning breakfast. Yes eventhough have to be at work at 8.30 sharp but with a little preparation a day ahead it was much easier.

Since I have recently bought some ready made puff pastry - introduced by my sister-in-law, thought I will just need to prepare the ingredient a day ahead. I'm not a good cook and dun really know how to made the curry puff ingredient so just asked my mother-in-law's maid to help cook the ingredient. I actually got a lot of these filling recipe but sometime the serving is so big and I get a lots of left over which I usually forget and left to waste. So this time I just ask her to use 2 potato and 1 chicken breast for the filling. Instead of my trying to made the ingredient, I was thinking since she know how to cook better made her an expert first then ask her to teach me.. smart and easy ya...

Anyway I also woke up early on wednesday as Ee was up early and wanna to play. It was my first time to use this type of store bought puff pastry so was trying to figure out which are the easiest way to made it - coz the one I bought is a small square size puff pastry which come in 10 pieces per pack. So I had to roll it out into a rectangle shape then put in the ingredient.. it looked a big like a apple puff pastry..

Well overall, it taste nice but if the puff pastry was more fluffy it would be better. I guess maybe i had rolled it flat therefore it's not so fluffy at all ha ha.. mayb i should try to do a triangle shape one next time.. Hubby was happy and ate quite a few pieces.

Orange Chiffon Cake

Had been quite sometimes since I spend some time in the kitchen to do my own things. Having two small baby at home really occupied a lot of my times. Of course, I love the times spend with them ha ha..

So today when I reach home around 5 plus, I decided to bake a simple orange chiffon cakes which I have never tried before. Plan to have it for tomorrow's breakfast as well to brush up my chiffon making skill coz they say once you stop then you'll forget all the technique in making a good cakes as the more experienced you are then the better the cake you made..

The Chiffon cake is a conversion from the pandan chiffon cake that I had made before. The texture is still nice and soft but I think I had put on a little too much sugar. I should have reduced if the orange juice added was sweet. But overall it's still a good soft yummy cake.

Ingredient:

(A)

5 egg yolks

80g Sugar

(B)

100g Orange Juice

1 tsp Orange Paste

50g Corn Oil

(C)

75g Plain Flour

35g Corn Flour

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

(D)

5 egg whites

60g Sugar

1/4tsp Cream of Tartar

Method : 23cm Chiffon Mould

Preheat oven at 170 degree C

Part A:

1. Whisk (A) till the egg yolks turn creamy pale

2. Add in (B) to step 1 and mix well

3. Then fold in (C) and mix well

Part B:

1. Whisk (D) at max speed until stiff

2. Add in 1/3 meringue into Part A mixture and mix well

3. Pour this mixture back to the balance meringue and fold well till the mixture is smooth

4. Pour into a clean & grease free 23 mould and bake for 50 min or till cooked.

5. Invert cooked cake to cool. Remove from mould once cake is completely cool

Happy trying..

Curry Potato Prata

Hubby was complaining that I had been trying out on a lot of cakes, ice cream even scone recipes but not on any of his favourite food. One of which is curry puff. So since I was free in the afternoon so i quickly went and took out all the ingredients required for this Curry Potato Puff.

I take the easy route where I got my maid to cook the ingredient since I dun really know how to cook curry ha ha.. So after she had cooked the ingredient which I watch and learn so that I can cook up the ingredient myself next time, I just did put the ingredient in the dough and bake it. Baking just took around 30 mins of the time.

Hubby say it was a good try and should be named potato prata instead of curry potato prata coz it was not spicy enough for him. I did put chicken into the recipe but coz the potato was more so I named it curry potato prata. I thought the shape was not so fanstantic but hubby say it was nice wrapped up and he save money rathered than going out for tea.

English Scone for breakfast

Recently had start to enjoy the so called "English Scone" for tea and it seem tat my son like it too. But the price for a good scone here is around B$1.60 which is quite expensive (equivalent to a loaf of bread) ha ha.. so when i saw the recipe from Happy Home Baker, I decide to give it a try.

It was quite simple to made and you just need few ingredient to made such a delicious scone. The scone look hard on the outside but was very soft in the inside. And it taste just like the scone that I always have in Fleur dyn lys. Hubby who was not a fan of scone also think that it was nice when we have it the next day for breakfast. So a very thank you to Happy Home Baker for the kind contribution of her scone recipe. I have attached the ingredients as below if you would like to try. It is a definite keeper for me and will made more of this lovely scones for breakfast or even tea again.

Ingredients:
(makes 7)

250g cake flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
one pinch of salt
50g cold unsalted butter (cut into small pieces)
30g caster sugar
1 egg plus enough fresh milk to make up 140ml

Method:


1. Lightly beat the egg and add enough fresh milk to make up 140ml of liquid.

2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. Add in salt and sugar and whisk the dry ingredients together. With finger tips rub the COLD butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (It is important that the butter be cold so when it is cut into the flour mixture it becomes small, flour-coated crumbs. Due to our hot weather and my warm hands, I use a fork to work the butter into the dry ingredients. If the butter starts to melt away during this process, stop and place the mixture in the freezer for 10-15mins to prevent the butter from melting further. Continue the process when the mixture is well chilled.)

3. Keep the mixing bowl (with the flour-butter mixture) in the fridge for at least 30 mins.

4. Remove bowl from fridge. Add the egg & milk mixture and stir until just combined. The mixture will be sticky, moist and lumpy. Gather up the mixture and place it on a lightly floured surface and give it a few light kneading (not more than 10 seconds) so that it comes together to form a dough. Do Not over work the dough. (Only mix the dough until it comes together. Too much kneading will cause gluten to develop, and the resulting biscuits will turn hard and chewy. Mix only until the ingredients come together into a combined mass.)

5. Place dough in a plastic bag or cover it with cling wrap. Keep dough in fridge for about 30mins. (The objective here is to keep the dough cold to prevent the butter from melting so that there will be little bits of dispersed butter in the dough. During baking, the heat will cause these tiny bits of butter to melt into the dough and leaves pockets and layers in the biscuits for them to rise nicely. If the butter melts or softens before baking, the resulting biscuits will be hard and flat.)

6. On a lightly floured surface, dust your hands and the dough with some flour and pat out into 1 inch thickness (avoid using too much flour). Cut out the dough with a lightly floured 2.5-inch biscuit cutter (I use a drinking glass instead). In order for the biscuits to rise evenly, press the cutter directly down and lift it straight up without twisting. Dip the cutter into some flour after each cut. Gather scraps together and repeat until all the dough is used.

7. Place cut biscuits on baking sheet (lined with parchment paper). For soft-sided biscuits, place them close together on the baking sheet so that the sides are touching. For crisp-sided ones, place them 1 inch apart, these will not rise as high as biscuits that are baked close together. Brush the tops with some milk.

8. Bake at preheated oven at 200degC for about 13 - 15 minutes or until the tops are golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center of the biscuit comes out clean. The texture of the interior should be light and soft. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack. Serve warm.

Green Tea Ice Cream

I am a Ice cream lover and have always thought of wanting to made my own ice cream as the nice ice cream is always very expensive. SO recently i came across a ice cream book which seem very easy and simple to made. This book was by this lady call Kelly Tang and her book name is "The Cold Tempation dessert".

SO last friday I put up the effort to try out this 'Green Tea Ice Cream' since i still got a lot of the non-dairy whip cream leftover in the fridge. The recipe is very simple and straightforward and one good thing abt it is that you don't need a ice cream maker. I do have one but have not use it since I failed to made ice cream with it. And I always thought making ice cream is very difficult and you must have a ice cream maker to made ice cream at home. Now I can made ice cream at home with only a hand mixer. ha ha..

It took me less than an hour to get everything done and got the ice cream ready to freeze overnight in the freezer. On Saturday afternoon, I try the ice cream. My comment with this recipe is that the texture is smooth but I find that the recipe is too sweet for my liking and it's too creamy for me. Eventhough the recipe didn't turn out as wat I would like but i think I have more confident in making ice cream at home. The recipe will need more altering meaning I will be making more of this ice cream at home till I get it to fit my taste. So dear husband of mine, pls get ready to have more tasting of the Green tea Ice Cream and thanks dear for helping to take the nice picture of the Ice Cream I made.. ha ha..

Prata Sausage for Lunch

Lately we had not been eating lunch at home so it had become a norm no that lunch will be prepared. Today, Hubby suddenly call up asking whether there is anything to eat at home as he was very hungry. The only quick and easy thing to cook up was the prata sausage and instant mushroom soup.

I'm not a frequent cook so a lot of times the ingredient required to cook the food that I know how to cook is not there. So without hesitation I just informed Hubby that i'll prepared the Prata sausage for lunch. By the time hubby got home which is 45 min from when he call, everything was ready. The Prata sausage was very crispy on the outside and soft in the inside. So that's the quick and simple yet nice lunch we had today.

Pandan Chiffon Cake

Yesterday after work, decided to made a Pandan Chiffon cake for today's breakfast. I have previously try a lot of recipes for this chiffon cake but a lot of time the taste of the pandan does not come out eventhough i used a lot of pandan leave. I was also finding it quite hard to squeeze out the juice from the pandan.


However with the recipe I got from Wen's baking, the cake's pandan smell was very nice and very natural. I only need to add pandan paste to get the pandan fragrant out. The texture of the cake was also nice and fluffy.. Really melt in your mouth. Hubby was say the cake was very nice he he.. So it's definitely a keeper for me to use this recipe.

Mango Cheese Cake

I had made mango cheese cake last week but have no time to upload the picture therefore did not post anything up. Thought I'll just write some thing here first and remind me to load the picture. ha ha..

Since there was some over ripe mango in the fridge I decide to go for a mango cheese cake. I got the recipe from Momster's cuppie corner. The recipe was easy and since i only have 250gm of cream cheese at hand therefore i only used that and not the 300gm as recommended in the recipe. But the cake still turn out nice only thing is mayb not so much of the cream cheese in there. Since my husband is not a really great fan of cheese cake and cheese, so the recipe was quite ok. But with regards to the sugar side, I think mayb next time i'll try to reduce a bit if my mango is very sweet. coz the cheese cake was a bit on the sweet side.

But overall the recipe was nice and the mango smell of the cheese cake was very tempting for me ha ha.. will try to made it again when there are tons of mango in the fridge ha ha..

Banana Chiffon Cake

As I'm off today decided to try baking a Banana Chiffon Cake since got some banana around. Had try previous time already how the texture either very rough or the cake did not rise up. SO after finding a good recommended Banana Chiffon Cake recipe so decide to give it a try. The Cake recipe actually seen from the Small Small Baker recipe adopted from Kevin Chai.

The recipe actually is for a 20 cm chiffon cake but i got a 23cm / 8" chiffon cake mould so i adjusted the recipe to fit my cake mould. The result as expected - the cake's texture was very soft and fluffy... a bit like it would melt in ur mouth ha ha.. The smell of the banana was very significant unlike all the previous banana chiffon recipe i try which there was no smell of the banana. Another thing abt this cake, it rose quite high and the cake did not fall down. So this recipe is sure a keeper for me...

Swimming @ Empire Hotel

It had been quite some time since we brought our son out for a swim. So we decide to go Empire for a swim last sunday. Since he had grown bigger so we decide to go shopping for a new swimming suit for him tat morning.The Weather was very moody tat day.. seem like it could rain anytime.. so we decide to go early and start our journey to The Empire Hotel at 3.30pm.

it was almost 4 pm and was very windy. The weather didn't stop our intention to bring our son for a swim ha ha.. so after changing him into his new swin suit my husband straight away brought him into the pool. He was ok at first but when we start putting him into the water, he started to cry. We were surprise as we thought he should like it. I guess it could be coz he is not familiar with the environment and there was so many ppl so tat scare him a bit.

So we had to bring him out from the pool and decide to bring him to the children playground since we had come all the way. There was a lot of things to play at the children playground - you can swim, play with the swing and they even got a small man-made sand beach ha ha.. so we try to let him play everything but eventually he decided that he would like to play with the sand which he enjoyed himself.He enjoyed himself too much and start ignoring us ha ha.. so we have to keep ourself entertained.

Since the weather was turning quite dark already, we decide it's time to go back and when my son had changed his cloth he was happily running around full energized and wanting to play with the water in the pool. My husband and I had concluded that we need to give time for our son to warm up, familiarize with the environment, first before we bring him into the pool so he is not so scare. SO eventhough we didn't get to swim much but we enjoyed the time spend as well learn a new thing today..

Chocolate Rice Butter Cake

Today is my first time blogging here. Woke up very early today by my younger son, Jay Ee and can't seem to go back to sleep. So decide to made full use of the time and bake a cake. Today instead of the normal marble butter cake, I decide to be a bit creative he he.. and put the chocolate rice which i just bought into the plain old butter cake recipe and we got a new cake being invented.. ha ha.. and it's a chocolate rice butter cake.

The cake turn out quite nice and with the chocolate rice added, it therefore have a bit of chocolate taste to it but not too much. Simple yet yummy Cake...