Pineapple Tarts

What have i been doing?

Well, Chinese New Year is coming so i have been busy baking CNY goodies. The 1st in the pipeline is my fav Pineapple Tarts. See above picts for the finished tarts. :) Yum yum!

Will post up the recipe later. :)

Conversion Calculators

Found this very useful site where it helps you to convert the various recipe measurement to your prefered ones. Check it out!

Calculator from Diana's Dessert

Chocolate Lava Cake

On Sunday, I baked Chocolate Lava Cake. Its a very simple cake to bake with just few ingredient. However, it was not easy to get just the right result. I baked once at my Brother' place in the afternoon and again in the evening at my friend's place. At my brother's place, out of the 3 cakes that i baked, only 1 turned out nicely. For the 1st one, the outer layer, ie the cake layer, could not hold the chocolate in it. The chocolate flowed out immediately when i removed it from the ramekin. With such result, i put the remaining 2 back into the oven for another 2-3mins. Out of these 2, only one turned out as per my expectation.
@ my friend's place, i double the ingredients to bake more. With double ingredients, i managed to have 51/2 full ramekins. My friend has a microwave oven and we used its convection oven mode to bake the cakes. Not sure if its because its not a traditional convection oven, the cakes were still wobbly after 10mins. So all the cakes went back into the oven. After few in and out, we have baked the cakes for more than 20mins!

Marble Cake

Marble Cake

Hubby loves to eat Butter Cake. So i tried baking Marble Cake on New Year Day. It was an easy recipe to follow and didnt take very long. However, my brother's oven (Im currently using his table top oven) temp seems to be higher than required. Realised that my cakes either overcooked or cooked way before the specified required timing. Maybe i should get an oven thermometer to be more accurate.

Recipe

(from hongkitchen)

Ingredients

250g	Butter
210g	Cake Flour (Sifted)
200g	Caster Sugar
5	Egg
1/2 tsp	Baking Powder (Sifted)
20g	Coco Powder
2 Tbsp	Milk
40g	Granulated Sugar
25g	Milk

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170degree Celsius.
2. Cream the butter.
3. Add in the Caster Sugar and cream until fluffy.
4. Add in the egg yolks one by one, beating well.
5. Mix in Milk.

My little princess helped out in sifting the flour and baking powder

6. Stir in the sifted Cake Flour and Baking Powder using a rubber spatula. Remember to only stir in one direction.
7. Pour 1/3 of the batter into a separate mixing bowl and add coco powder into it.
8. Pour the remaining 2/3 of the batter into the pan, then the coco batter on top of it.
9. Using a fork, stir the batter to form the marble effect.
10. Bake for 45 minutes.

Gotten the recipe for Rose Water and Raspberry Cake from Dailydelicious. However, i've used Strawberry since i can't find any Raspberry. Strawberries were not such a good choice as the cake was bit soggy where the strawberries were. Nevertheless, the cake was yummy and it was eaten up all in a day :)

Recipe

(from Dailydelicious)

Ingredients

160g	Butter
110g	Icing Sugar
170g	Almond Powder
3	Egg Yolks
1	Egg
80g	Cake Flour (Sifted)
3	Egg Whites
40g	Granulated Sugar
25g	Milk
40g	Rose Water
125g	Raspberries

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180degree Celsius.
2. Mix Rose Water with Milk.
3. Cream the butter icing sugar and almond powder in a large mixing bowl until fluffy.
4. Add the egg and egg yolks, beating well. Add the rose water and milk mixture, beat well.
5. Beat egg whites and granulated sugar until soft peak form.
6. Use a rubber spatula folding the flour mixture into the butter mixture in alternately with the meringue, stir until just blended.
7. Pour 1/3 of the batter into the pan, then put the raspberry on top. Pour another 1/3 of the batter and put the raspberry on top of the batter again.Pour the last part of the batter
8. Bake for 50-60 minutes. (My cake was done (bit overcooked actually) within 40mins)

Peanut butter and white chocolate blondies

A mummy has shared @ M4M forum the following recipe that she has gotten from Rachel Allen's Bake baking book. And she has shared that this recipe was captured and shown at UKTV. This recipe is easy to follow, plus UKTV has the video showing how this can be done.

I have tried it out and its really easy recipe to follow. If a baking nerd like me can do it, you can too. :)

Instead of using white chocolate, as specified in the recipe, i have used my favourite dark chocolate. I have also used a bigger pan because i do not have the 20 x 20cm pan that it has asked for. Due to my inexperience, the top layer of my blondies was burnt. I should have reduced the baking time since my blondies were thinner due to the bigger pan. :(

Nevertheless, after scrapping off the top burnt layer, the blondies turn out to be quite yummy! I would like to try it out again. And to make sure i have better result, i have bought a 20 x 20cm pan just for this recipe. :P

Recipe
(Adapted from Rachel Allen, Bake)

Ingredients

A
125g	Plain Flour
1tsp	Baking Powder
100g	Salted Butter (@Rm Temp, plus extra for greasing)
150g	Crunchy Peanut Butter
175g	Soft Light Brown Sugar
1	Egg, beaten
1tsp	Vanilla Extract
75g	White Chocolate, chopped

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 170C/gas 3. Butter the sides of a 20 x 20cm square cake tin and line the base with greaseproof paper.

2. Sift the flour and baking powder into a small bowl and set aside.

3. In a large bowl, cream the butter and peanut butter together until very soft. Add the sugar, egg and vanilla extract and beat until well combined. Add the flour, baking powder and the chopped chocolate and mix to form a dough.

4. Place the dough into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 25–30 minutes, or until golden brown and almost firm in the centre.

5. Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin, before removing and cutting into squares.

Sweet Blanc

Got this recipe from Dailydelicious, one of my fav food blog. The photos put up by Pook (owner of dailydelicious) were too nice to resist! :) Moreover, the recipe looked easy to bake too. Therefore, i tried baking it on last Sunday. It was my 1st time to bake a bread.

Challenge
Making the cream cheese filling was easy. Just need to mix all the ingredients needed using the mixer. But i faced a big challenge making the bread dough. No matter how long i knead, i just could not make it to the soft and almost satiny texture that Pook has described in her blog.

I threw away my 1st dough as it was still very sticky and wet despite adding more flour while kneading for more than 20mins. Not sure if its because of me using Bread Premix flour instead of Bread flour, i went out to get a new packet of Bread flour.

The 2nd dough was not as wet and sticky as the 1st. However, after kneading for more than 30mins, it will still tear when i tried stretching it. :( I were too tired to knead further so i went on to the next step to let it rise.

Luckily, the dough did rise to double the size after an hour. :D In addition, as you can see in the above picture, the bread turn out nicely after all the hard work and waiting. All the 10 bread were eaten up by my family. Felt really happy that they all liked the bread. :)

After Note
Had posted the query in M4M forum to find out why my dough could not reach the right texture. Some of the helpful members have shared the following likely reason:
1) Too much liquid. Instead of mixing the liquid ingredient into the dry one at one go, I should have add them in bit by bit. Depending on the brand and age, flour absorb liquid differently.
2) Humidity level. As Singapore is pretty humid, we usually need lesser water than in less humid country.
Will have to keep in mind to control the liquid ingredient the next time i bake bread again. :)

Recipe
Dailydelicious: Sweet Blanc>

Sweet Blanc
Makes 10

Dough

A
210g	Bread Flour
40g	Cake Flour
6g	Instant dried yeast
4g	Salt
30g	Sugar
B
63g	Plain yoghurt
1	Egg
13g	Condensed milk
8g	Honey
50cc	Water (1cc = 1ml)
30g	Unsalted butter (soft)
Egg wash
1 egg + 1tbsp water
Decoration
10	Strawberry
	Icing Sugar
Cream Cheese Filling
230g	Cream Cheese
50g	Sugar
80g	Plain yoghurt
30cc	Whipping Cream (1cc = 1ml)
2 tsp	Lemon Juice

Make Filling

1. Beat the cream cheese and sugar until smooth and creamy in a bowl.
2. Pour the yoghurt into cream cheese mixture, beat to combine.
3. Pour the whipping cream and lemon juice into the mixture, mix well
4. Cover the bowl with cling film and refrigerate until use.

Make Dough

1. Mix the (B) ingredients together, except water.
2. Put the (A) ingredients, except butter, in a bowl, whisk to combine.
3. Pour the (B) mixture into the bowl, and use large spoon or pastry scraper to mix everything together. Slowly, add the water bit by bit and to stop when its enough.
4. When all the ingredients come together, put the butter in the bowl and rub until all butter is distributed, and kneads briefly to bring all the ingredients together.
5. Take the dough out of the bowl and knead, until the dough is soft, smooth and elastic about 10 minutes.

Put the dough into a light buttered bowl. Let the dough rise in a warm place until double in size about 1 hour.

Gently press down the dough, then put the dough back into a light buttered bowl. Let the dough rise again in a warm place for another 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 180°C, and butter the muffin pan.

Take the dough out of the bowl. Gently press down the dough and cut the dough into 10 pieces (about 50 g/ piece). Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a circle, about 8 cm. Gently presses down the dough into the muffin pan to form a cup.

Cover the shaped dough; let rise until almost doubled in volume, about 30-40 minutes. Before baking, brush the dough with egg wash and pour the filling in.

Bake for 12 minutes.

When cool, place the strawberry on top and sprinkle with icing sugar.