My 1st project with fondant with my niece

my 1st fondant project after the wilton class. I think i actually liked it more than piping flower n doing royal icing.. he he..

My first try on making christmas Gingerbread house

This is my first try on making a gingerbread house. Well i am only using a ready set from wilton but still it took a lot of time to made it and wait for it to be dry to put on the design. my kids just love it..

Xin 5th birthday cake and Hwee's company christmas celebration cake

It is Xin birthday today but as usual since it's our family gathering on each Monday of the week, naturally we celebrated her birthday early. This was the cake I made her. Am really new in piping cartoon picture with piping gel.

Made yet another mango blueberry cake for hwee's office christmas celebration.

Wilton Method cake Decorating Course 1-3

I had viewed and seen a lot of wilton's product. However was not able to attend this intensive 3 days course last year as my maid was back for 1 month.

This year round, I had manage to find out and sign up for the course. So will be flying out tomorrow to KL as the course start on the 25th till the 27th Nov. AM very excited to see what is taught and how my skill will improve..

4th Anniversary of our togetherness...

Firstly would like to wish my hubby happy 4th anniversary and thanks for the great support, understanding and contribution to me n the family. We really love you.

I had made a new cake today. One that I had never tried before and eaten before coz I'm just not a puding and mousse person. But thought that I gave it a try and wau la... It was quite nice... Really a recipe tat i'll keep but will try to reduce the sugar abit as most of it is chocolate..

Chocolate Cupcake

Had not been baking lately as the whole family was sick one after the other.. Just feel like resting and finally was free and decided to try making cupcakes. I try this chocolate cupcake which was quite straight forward and with the help of my boy..

Once the chocolate cupcake was out, it was really black in colour not from overbaked but coz i think of the coco powder added in. So decided to put in some decorations for the cake. There was a lot of ideas from the book but i was just wanna try making something simple and straight forward.

I really liked the idea of making fondant and the book showed a lot of cute design using fondant etc but dun know why i was a bit reluctant to try it.. Firstly, dun know how much of it will be needed, no ingredient available, thinking that it will be a lot of effort to made it.. Just decide to drop it n go for something simple.

Here I just use whipped cream as topping and put some of the ready chips.. It turn out quite cute. Overall, the chocolate cupcake taste quite nice.. Will use this recipe again next time.

Orange Butter Cake

This was another bake that I had made last week which I had forgotten all about. This was another try on Amy Heng's cake recipe as I had no idea of what to bake so this was what I chose to try on.

The recipe was quite simple and my oldest son really loved it. It was not too dry and at first thought it was a bit oily. But by night time, it was just nice.

Non-baked Mango Cheese cake

Was left with 3 extra mango, so decided to try out a non baked mango cheesecake recipe from the Amy Heng. Her cake was a bit complicated with the side baked cake and the mango pudding. I just decided to go for a simple one as it had been quite long time since I made a mango cheesecake and so got a bit of craving for it.

I had used marie biscuit for this and 2 mangoes - 1 for puree & 1 as mango cubes in the mango cheesecake. The cake taste quite refreshing and a bit of soury taste maybe due to the mango and the orange juice used.

I liked it..

Strawberry Mashmallow cake & I got order for another 2 cake

Well, today I got another two order of cake: Mango Blueberry and Hazelnut Coffee Cake. Hope my friends like it and will help spread the virus and get others ppl to try.

Back to this post, I also wanna try in another new cake : strawberry Mashmallow cake. I haven't try it yet as wan to wait for hubby to come back tomorrow and try with him. overall it's just strawberry and mashmallow filling. I guess it might be a bit lacking in taste coz I didn't add in a "Kirsch" not sure what's tat. But I think it should be the strawberry flavour or something.. Will update once I try it out..

My New Toy.. :p

Yes, I just got my new toy ha ha.. I knew about this mixer since last year where I started to bake more. But it was very expensive.. But I got a chance to try it out coz my ex collegues was very good and borrow me her mixer.

After trying it out, it really help save a lot of hand energy and it was so simple to make up a cake. The nicest thing i like abt it was it can whip up whip cream nicely. Yes it cost me almost B$1k plus i got myself a SCRAPE-A-BOWL Flat Bleater and put it to try this afternoon.

It was just fantastic and no need for me to do the scraping at all.. ha ha..

My 1st Cake Order

This is my very first cake order. Felt very pressured coz I'm not expert in decoration but taste wise shouldn't be a problem.

So this time round I got a order from an old friend who saw my cake picture in Facebook and decide to order the cake for her husband. ANd my husband was the one promoting the cake for me. So all of a sudden when I heard that I am getting a cake order, I start to panic.. what if....

But since there was a demand and also dun wan to reject my friend, I decided to take the challenge with great support from hubby.

The ingredient and process of making was much familiar to me. So I ensure all ingredients are ready but you know what... There was no stock of the normal mango I used to buy and give good results... I was not sure of what to do. I went around a few shops but there was still no the usual mango I used.

It seem that this was already a new season for the Thai green mango.. therefore the sweet and sour nice thai mango with the yellow skin was no way to be found. SO I PANIC... WHAT to do.. and I was only 1 days to go before I had to pass the cake to my friend.

So I decided to try another type of mango. It's green skinned, nothing nice looking. I bought some home to try and the one I try was half rotten and the other half was nice. I was a bit glad.

Then I got another heart attack when one of the mango was eaten. The reason being that most of the mango there was not ripe so I had to put in the rice grain to made it more riper so it dun taste sour. It was both becoz my mango for the cake was eaten halfly and also coz i see that the mango being eaten was not nice in colour( pale yellow) and also it taste sour..

I almost can't sleep. But hubby keep reminding me to think of the good side and everything will go well. SO I crossed my finger and imagine the mango turn out great and went to sleep. Of course just on the safe side, I went n bought more mango.

I find that the mango turn out nice - sweet and soury. the appearance of the cake was great - luckily and my friend's husband like it.. phew... I made it... ha ha

Classic Baked Cheesecake

Yes this cheesecake was a bit burn coz the temperature in my small oven is very high eventhough i put it as 100 degree celsius. This is my first try of the cake. The baking time took more than 2 hours then stated in the Delicious Cake book by AMy Heng.

I think it took me 3 hours to bake it scare if I put temperature of 180Degree it will burn the top but if low temp it won't cook in the middle. But taste wise it was good. But the bottom bisuit was a bit burnt coz the water bath dry up..

But will try to made it again.

Chocolate Chips cookie

Thanks to Baking Library for her contribution to this cookies. The cookie texture is definitely great but I find that the recipe is a bit too sweet for my taste. So next time round will reduce the sugar in the recipe. Was quite easy to whip up the whole things and bake it.. Below is the recipe for this nice cookies but do reduce the sugar if you r not a sweet lover.

Chocolate Chip Cookies (Recipe kindly shared by Hugbear from Bakingmum)

125g butter softened at room temperature

75g caster sugar

60ml brown sugar

1 egg

1/8 teaspoon or 7 drops of vanilla essence

150g plain flour

45g cornflour

1/2 tsp bicarbonanate of soda (baking soda)

pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)

60g chopped nuts

125g chocolate chips (use more if desired)

Method:

1) Cream butter with both sugars till light, pale and fluffy. Beat egg with vanilla and add to butter mixture. Mix well.

2) Sift plain flour, cornflour, baking soda and salt together and add to the mixture in 1). Mix until a soft dough is obtained. Do not overmix.

3) Stir in chopped nuts and chocolate chips.

4) Drop levelled teaspoons of cookies onto baking tray lined with baking paper.

5) Bake at 180 degrees C for 18-20mins. Transfer to wire rack to cool.

Things to note:1) If nuts are ommitted, chill shaped dough for 30 minutes before baking to prevent dough from spreading too much and ending up with flat shaped cookies.

2) Chilling and addition of nuts prevent cookies from excessive spreading.

3) If dough is too sticky to handle, chill dough for 40minutes before shaping. The dough should harden and become less sticky.

Posting previous cake & kuih

Rainbow agar agar

Here is the rainbow agar agar that I had made..

Company Fun Day Out

Today we celebrated Fun Day out for all the Sales. In Brunei there is only two of us, Norven and myself. We were given a certain budget to enjoy our afternoon. It could be anything : Karaoke, movie, bowling etc. We chose to go for a movie.

So we spend the money on our lunch, movie and tea.. ha ha.. it was very relaxing and feel free.. ha ha.. it's really something different... as this time you are allowed to do anything during office hours..

Princess Cake

Made this cake for my two sweet nieces

Cake decorating course by Tan See Fong

Today, I had joined a cake decorating course by Tan See Fong. It seem he is quite famous in the area of cake decorating and had come up with a number of cake decorating books.

AS it was my first time to go for a cake decorating class and that my covering of icing is very bad so it was a challenge for me. But all it need was a bit of pratice. ANd practice made perfect. THis was the cake I had done.

Milky Mantou

Had not logged into all my baking recently.. had been lazy ha ha.. My Father in law had suddenly requested me to made Mantou yesterday. Was Surpised and excited as well. Previously I had tried it but it was a failure - the mantou was hard and the yeast smell was so strong.

So had been searching for the recipe last night and I found this sharing from 周老師的美食教室 . Her mantou was especially simple to made and only took a total of two hour and 40 min to get the dough double in size.

The result: Good to me. But it's still not the type my father in law was looking for so I'll still need to look for more mantou recipe. ha ha.. But here is the recipe from this teacher. Thanks to her I got the chance to try this milky mantou recipe. Happy trying

Milky Mantou - Makes 14 pieces

材料：
牛奶……………………………300克
快發乾酵母……………………1大匙
中筋麵粉………………………600克
細白砂糖………………………6大匙
沙拉油…………………………2大匙
手粉………………………………適量

做法：
1) 材料（除手粉外）攪拌成麵團，基本發酵1小時（可省略）。
2) 麵糰撲手粉，以壓麵機反覆壓到光滑平整，再捲起（要捲緊），切成14段。
3) 排在鋪了烤盤紙的蒸籠裡（每個之間要有足夠間隔，以免蒸好後黏在一起）。
4) 放溫暖處最後發酵30至40分鐘，至手指輕壓，痕跡較慢回復即可。
5) 從冷水開始蒸，用中火，籠蓋打開些。水沸後計時15分鐘即熟。熄火後放置片刻再開籠蓋，把饅頭取出放在乾布上，以免潮溼。

Marble Cake

Am still on my search for a nice tasting marble cake and therefore decided to try the recipe from Agnes CHang's marble cake recipe. My findings the cake is not as tasty as I wanted and there is nothing special about it. Maybe I'm picky but yet we are always searching for the one things that will give us the "On my gods!!" expression.. ha ha.. so it didn't really meet my expectation..

Cream Cheese Chiffon

Today I try a recipe from Alex goh's cheese book - cream cheese chiffon. I didn't took picture of the chiffon being it break during baking and I use a too big chiffon mould therefore the cake had came out very low and flat ha ha..

But though I would share on how these recipe turn out. Texture is good but not much of cheese taste in it. To me, the cream cheese in the cake is not enough and the cake didn't smell as nice as most cake would do when you add in cream cheese. SO maybe when I try it again I'll add more cream cheese so that you can really smell and taste the cream cheese in the cake. But still would like to share the cake recipe here..

Ingredient :
a. 60g milk
40g Cream Cheese
25g Butter
b. 65g flour
c. 4 egg yolks (large egg weight 60g without the shell)
d. 4 egg whites
100g sugar
pinch of salt
1/8 tsp cream of tartar

Methods:
1. Cook (a) over double boiler until well blended and it thickens
2. Remove it from double boiler. Add (b) and mix until smooth
3. Add (c) and mix until well combined
4. Whip the egg whites in (d) until foamy. Add in the rest of the (d) ingredients. Whip till stiff. And add in the cheese mixture from step 3. Fold in by hand till well combined
5. Pour into 9" chiffon pan. Bake at 175 degree celcius for 35-40 min. Remove from oven and invert the cake pan and let it cool.

Overall, my son still like to eat the cake.. he he..

My first adventure into Bread Making

It had been in my plan to made my own bread at home. But due to lack of knowledge and no class on bread teaching around here therefore my adventure in making bread had not started till now. Had got inspiration from a lots of blogger on their bread. Therefore decide to take the challenge today.

I learn from Carol who is very expert in all kinds of bread making and it was also great of her to actually show the step by step explaination of how to made a bread. Yes the process of making the bread is really long I think to just let it expand in size it took around 3 hours and not to say that the time to mix the dough and baking it. So when u wan to made a bread you must really plan your time so that it can be in time for breakfast or even tea break.

With my new oven, I had really to explore the temperature as I had over burn the top of my bread so when it came out it was hard as a rock on the top. ha ha.. better adjust my temperature to less than 170 degree and also the bread was ready in 20 mins time instead of the recommended 40 min. So when you are baking do adjust the time according to your own oven temperature.

Yes the bread is definitely yummy as it was silky soft inside however need to improve in my bread making. WIll post in my next bread making adventure soon. Below is the ingredients for this bread, thanks to carol:

山形白吐司12兩帶蓋吐司模1個(20cmX10cmX10cm)

材料:高筋麵粉350g,速發酵母3/4茶匙,橄欖油(或無鹽奶油)20g,鹽1/2茶匙,細砂糖20g,冷水220g步驟:

1.將所有材料倒入鋼盆中攪拌搓揉成為一個不黏手的麵團 (液體的部份可以先保留20-30cc,在麵團已經攪拌成團後再慢慢加入)

2.繼續攪拌搓揉成為撐的起薄膜的麵團,將麵團滾圓,收口朝下捏緊放入 抹少許油的盆中

3.放入盆中,噴灑些水,表面罩蓋上濕布發酵60-90分鐘(約2倍大) (氣溫低將麵團放入微波爐中關上門做第一次發酵.在微波爐中放一杯 沸水幫助提高溫度.水若冷了就再換一杯)

4.將第一次發酵完成的麵團的空氣拍出,分割成2等份(約295g),搓成圓 形,蓋上擰乾的溼布再讓麵團休息20分鐘

5.將麵團橄成長形後翻面,由短向捲起,蓋上擰乾的溼布再讓麵團休息20分鐘

5.休息好的麵團用桿麵棍桿成長條(約35cm),光滑面朝外由短向捲起,收口 朝下間隔適當排入吐司烤模中(若不是不沾烤盒,請刷上一層奶油避免沾粘)

7.噴些水再發酵50-60分鐘至膨脹滿模 (氣溫低將烤盒放入微波爐中關上門做第二次發酵.在微波爐中放一杯 沸水幫助提高溫度.水若冷了就再換一杯)

8.進烤箱前在表面輕輕刷上一層全蛋液9.放入預熱到170度c的烤箱中烘烤40分鐘

10.出爐後馬上倒扣放在鐵網架上放涼

Happy trying.

New Animal cookie Mould

You know what!! I had been looking up and down for these animal cookie moulds which you need to buy from Y3k. Had been looking at the local bookstore, cake store selling accessories but not these cookie mould.

And guess what!! I found it at a supermarket. It's not actually a cookie mould but it's the same picture cartoon - 4 pcs only - for children clay mould. What a surprise that you can get these from the children book section.. and it only guess like B$2.50. COz I know if I were to order it, which I'm not sure how as they order send to Malaysian only, it would have cost me more.. So glad I found these mould that i can use for my cookie next time.. ha ha wat a great and surprise buy..

Father & Mother's Birthday Celebration

Today is mum's Birthday (Lunar date) and father's advance birthday celebration (6th March). So we went out for dinner at Thiam Hock and of course, I baked the birthdays cake for them. Yes two 7" cake.

I used Kevin Chai's birthday cake recipe and made one Mango blueberry Cake and Oreo Cake. It was my first time to decorate the cake with mango. And it gave me quite of a challenge in putting the slided mango on top of the cake and last minute due to I didn't buy any strawberry for decoration, I used chocolate for the top as decoration.

And well the Oreo Cake was meant for the kids as I know they might like the mango blueberry cake. Hubby commented that the Oreo Cake design is not nice coz it's plain black and white - whip cream and chocolate.

Am so happy coz everyone liked the cake. As predicted the children all asked for the Oreo Cake whereas all the adults prefer the Mango Blueberry Cake.

First Swiss Roll

SInce getting my new oven, I had made anything with it beside the pizza but i didn't manage to get a pic of the pizza I had made. Yesterday, I had just went out and got a new baking pan specially for making swiss roll - 10"x 14" pan.


So after looking at all the recipe available i finally decide to made a chocolate swiss roll from Kevin Chai's elegant swiss roll book. But wanted to made a easy filling so I just thought I'll put in the blueberry filling I just bought together whipped cream.


The ingredient for the chocolate swiss roll was simple and straightforward where it only uses egg, sugar, flour, butter and cocoa. And I had reduced the temperature to 170 degree and it only took around 15 min to get done.


I thinkbeing new to making swiss roll I lack the experience in putting the right amount of filling as well as rolling up the swiss roll and did i made a big mess ha ha. And yes as you can see from the picture there was not enough filling in the centre. SO Will need more practice of swiss roll making.

My New Oven - gift from hubby

Had been dreaming of getting a bigger oven as the previous one- Akira Tabletop oven is just too small.. especially when u plan to bake a swiss roll or cookie and u just can't do everything at one time. I think I had been looking and looking for a newer and bigger oven.

But as there is just no place for a big big oven that come with a stove on top or even those that go on the wall in my in law's house so my option is very limited. meaning that if I were to get a new oven it must still be a table top type of oven. I had searched high n low and all the oven i saw was just a bit bigger and thus I had delayed my wish to get an oven and gave up ha ha..

But recently, I actually found one that was quite big but one thing is it's not branded and it's only the local made one. So was a bit hestitated on buying one as am not sure of it's quality. But after discussing with hubby and we decide to go for it. I actually wanted to buy the Aifa AE53R model which was quite big but luckily i didn't it earlier as they came out with the newer and bigger one Aifa AE54R.

This was what I wanted.. it was bigger and longer in size so making it very convenient to bake more cookie at one go.. and best of all it came free with 3 pizza pan and a pizza rack.. And it only $20 difference.. And today I brought hubby to go and see and got the new oven.. AM so happy he he... So tonight since got some guest coming to my house so will give the pizza making a try..

CNY Cookies

Had only manage to start my CNY baking on Wednesday night. Actually I only baked two type of cookie - Cornflakes cookies and Choc Chip Walnut cookie. Well, I had made a few dozen of the cornflakes cookie and This was made specially to my friends and collegue to thank them for the help and support they had given me throughout the year of 2009 andto wish them a better year in 2010.

And to all my blogger friends, A very Happy New Year to you all..

Failure doggie cookies

Had been seeing a lot of bloggers making this cute horlick doggies so decide to try since it's very cute. So after the boys had gone to sleep yesterday, decided to try it out. The mixing of the ingredients part was very straight forwards and I guess the hard part of it all was making the decoration especially as we are using the chocolate as the eye decoration.

Coz it so very small and break easily.. The designing of the doggies was so fun but took a bit of time. Here are some of my design.. just simple cute doggies.The first failure was that I was too concentrated in designing the cookies that I overbaked the first batch and it was burn on the bottom. Thought it shouldn't have created a lot of problem but when I went n try out the first bit of the cookie... yuak.. it's bitter and there was no taste of the horlick.

I was so disappointed.. WHAT HAD WENT WRONG... Coming to think about it I think it's becoz of the milk powder I had added it.. Coz i only used my son's milk powder coz to buy a pack here I'll have to buy a whole 1 kg which I only need 40g so had not spend money to buy it. And I forgot that my son's milk powder is the bitter type .. nan ha.. so i guess it could be becoz of this that's why the cookie is not tasting as nice as expected. What a disappointment

My first LV bag

Had been busy with work lately so no time to blog. But would like to post this up as I got a new LV bag - Neverfull MM as a gift from hubby. SO very happy. It all started with my old bag looking old and dirty ha ha.. coz it a white bag.. so had been roaming around to look for a new bag but unfortunately all the bag was not up to my standard ha ha...



Was thinking of getting a new bag that look nice and can last long.. ask a few opinion here and there and some how or the other hubby who just came back from outstation inform tat he will buy me a bag.. LV. And so happen my sister in law and mother in law was going to singapore. So got my LV just early of the week..



Thanks to hubby for the nice gift and sister in law& mother in law for going all the way to help me get it...

Hazelnut Coffee Cake for Brother in Law's Birthday

Yes this was the actual cake which I intended to made and beside making this cake I also made another cake for My son and also a cupcake. This cake was made for my brother in law who is celebrating his birthday today.

The cake is a hazelnut cake and for the cream - it's coffee cream with kahlua added in. Haven't had a taste of the cake... hope it's not too sweet..

Hazelnut Cream Cake For Jay Wee

This is just a cake that I had whipped up together with the cake for my brother in law but this was made specially for my elder son. Coz the cake for my brother in law is covered with coffee cream and kahlua is added so I purposely made another one for him so that he also can eat a slice of the cake.

So this is a Hazelnut Cake covered with hazelnut cream with a simple design. I think the texture of the cake is a bit rough due to the grounded hazelnut added. And yes the hazelnut cream is also a bit too sweet for my taste. My son dun like sweet things as well as he only ate half the slice of cake which I had given him. So next time I won't use so much of the hazelnut in the cream.

Chocolate chip Hazelnut cupcake

As tomorrow is my brother in law's birthday, so hubby asked me to bake a cake for him. And he asked me to bake something that's different for a change and not so sweet. So saw this recipe from Kevin Chai's book - Hazelnut coffee cake (which I'll post tomorrow after the decoration).

So as normal will bake the cake first and do the decoration tomorrow. But while I was mixing the batter an idea pop into my mind.. It's Cupcake.. ha ha.. so I took some of the batter of the cake and mix some chocolate chips and wa la... there is a new cupcake invented ha ha..

It's quite nice but maybe coz I only added ground hazelnut the smell of hazelnut is not strong. Will try putting in hazelnut essence next time. But the cupcake sure taste nice ha ha.. This goes to show that there is creativity in everyone so when u have the idea do take the action and act on it.. ha ha..

1st gathering of 2010 & Happy New Year!!

Wow time had really passed so fast and now we are in the year of 2010.. A new year.. a new beginning.. ha ha.. Last month was really a very tiring month and really stay home time for me as my maid was on a one month holiday. So there wasn't much time to bake or even shop coz I had to take care of the two boys.

Hubby had decided to have a small gathering @ home to welcome 2010 and to had a few cool drink and since it was a saturday what better to do then have friends to spend some times together. So i had just made prata sausage for the gathering as it's the fastest. And yes this was a finger food gathering meaning that we are serving only finger food and drinks.. ha ha.. It was good that our friends brought some food over to share as well so decide to share with you all what we had..

And Would like wish all the beloved bloggers a happy 2010!!