Another Layer Cake

As I had some left over whipping cream, I decided to have another go on a layer cake. I made this Mixed Fruits Sponge Cake with the same recipe as that of the strawberry sponge cake which I did last week.

I am proud to say, this sponge cake was baked to almost close to perfection (in my own opinion, of course!) The top was not burnt as I baked it on a lower rack position this time. I also used less sugar, only 165g as compared to the 206g stated in the recipe. However, it still took another 10mins more for the cake to be done. The recipe stated that the baking time should be around 35mins. My oven always seems to take at least another 5 to 10 mins longer for most of my bakes :(

After the cake was ready, I let it cool in the pan for around 5mins. Then, I unmould it and let it cool Inverted. That is, the cake was placed on the cooling rack with the bottom side up. I couldn't recall where I have read it...but it was mentioned in some cookbooks that the cake should be let cool inverted so that a slightly domed top could be flattened, and the final cake will be very even and nice. True enough, the cake looked great when I flipped it over :))

I sliced the cakes into 3 layers and filled with whipped cream and canned mixed fruits. Everything went well until I was ready to cover the exterior with cream...I realised that I didn't have enough whipping cream to frost the entire cake! I was thinking whether I should go get some more whipping cream from the supermart...but my elder boy told me not to bother. He told me as long as the cake tastes good, why bother about the appearance. Well, after giving it some thots, I kind of agree with what he said, and left the cake as it is...with only a thin layer of frosting on the exterior. Luckily, the taste and texture of the cake didn't disappoint us...it was light, soft and not too sweet :p

Oreo Yogurt Cake with Chocolate Crumble

Made this cake for my husband's birthday. His birthday falls on the later part of the week, but as he will be travelling (again!), we celebrated the occasion earlier. Well, this is the first ever birthday cake I have baked for him. It was kind of difficult to decide what kind of cake to make. When I made him cheesecakes, he commented that it was too cheesy for him...and when he tried my sponge-layer cake, he suggested that a biscuit base would taste better!?

Eventually I came up with this "mix & match" cake. The base is made with a layer of Oreo biscuit crumbs, the middle is a yogurt filling and then topped with chocolate crumbles. The recipe for the yogurt filling was from taken from this blogger. It's a very interesting recipe as it uses Yakult, yogurt and whipping cream...no cheese or eggs involved. Instead of Yakult, I used Vitagen. My elder boy insists that they could only drink Vitagen as it has less sugar!



The texture of the yogurt filling is very soft, silky and smooth...my younger one thinks it's like eating tofu (soft bean curd). Overall the cake is a rather refreshing dessert...light and not too sweet. Most importantly, there were no complaints from the birthday "man".

Here's the recipe for the chocolate butter crumbles:

Ingredients:

50g butter
30g caster sugar
15g brown sugar
50g flour
20g cocoa powder

Method:
1. Sieve flour and cocoa powder. Mix all dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl.
2. Rub in butter to crumble stage. If the mixture gets a little too sticky, just add in a little more flour to form dry crumbs.
3. Bake in a baking tray lined with parchment paper in a pre-heated oven at 170 degC for 35 mins.

Chirpy Breakfast

Yesterday morning, while having our breakfast, my elder boy requested for a "full" English breakfast for this morning. We don't usually have English breakfast as I find bacon, sausages and ham too high in sodium. Since the last time I did one for him was ages ago, I agreed and we bought the necessary items while out shopping for our groceries.

This morning, our kitchen smelt wonderful when the bacon was sizzling away in the frying pan...in no time, I had the sausages, sunny-side-ups and toasts ready.

I am a very fortunate mum as my kids are not fussy eaters from young. I didn't have to "dress-up" their food to entice them to eat their meals or greens. When I came across these adorable animal-shaped toasts from a Chinese cookbook, I told myself I should try making them for my boys someday. Since I was already "full force" in the kitchen, I spent a few more minutes to come up with these:


A chirpy looking chick...you just need to make a diagonal cut about 2~3 cm from the top right corner of a slice of bread all the way down to the bottom right corner. Then make 2 cuts on the cut-out piece of bread to make the beak and the wings and the eye. Simply arrange to form a chick and toast it. I used the left-over crusts from the car-shaped toast to form the legs.


This "sad" little doggy is made by cutting 2 small squares from each corner, and then make a cut on each side to make the ears. The left over squares (just the crust) are use to make the mouth and eyes.

For these 2 cars...just need to remove the crust of a slice of bread, then cut it into 2 rectangles. Next cut out a square & triangle from one corner, use the square for the window and one rectangular piece for the head-light. Repeat the same for the other car. Decorate with jam, peanut butter, etc. I cut two pieces of sausages for the wheels.

I admire the author of the cookbook for the genius way of doing the above. You will notice that there are not many left-over or unwanted pieces of bread...what ever little pieces are put to "good use". How clever!

We had a very hearty breakfast and you know what, we had to persuade my little one to eat the toasts as he found the doggy and chick to adorable to eat :)

Colour My Day!

My kids have been pestering me for brownies for weeks. Since Easter is round the corner, I baked a batch of Rainbow brownies for them yesterday.

I followed a simple brownies recipe from Hershey's website, frosted it with chocolate ganache (simply melt 125g of chocolate with 3 tablespoon of milk) and topped it with M&Ms and rainbow rice.

My younger boy did the decoration. He was very liberal with the candies..scattering as much as he could. I had to stop him when the brownies got really too busy. It was like a colourful, dazzling piece of artwork from a pre-schooler! I must say it certainly looked very cheerful with those fireworks of rainbow rice and M&Ms.


The brownies looked much better when they were cut into squares...less fuzzy and more appealing to me :))

We had these colourful squares for breakfast early this morning...a good source of energy much needed for our outing to the HSBC Tree-Top-Walk.

We ended our outing with a light brunch at the famous Jalan Kayu prata shop...and not forgetting the tasty otah and soya bean drinks from the shops along that stretch of shophouses at Jalan Kayu. It was a great morning for all of us!

Strawberry Sponge Cake

I attempted to bake a "proper" layer cake that is fully frosted and decorated with fresh cream today. Although I know that piping with whipped cream is not as easy as buttercream, I went ahead with my little project as I find buttercream too sweet to my liking. Little did I know that my project turned out to be such a tedious task!

I started off making the sponge cake using a recipe from a Chinese cookbook. The recipe is slightly different from the usual ones that I have came across. It uses quite a large amount of sugar (1 cup), salad oil instead of the usual butter, with the addition of fresh milk and some salt. As my intention was to make a strawberry layer cake, I thought it was ok for the sponge cake to be on the sweet side, as the strawberries that I bought were a little too tart. I was hoping the recipe would give a moist sponge unlike those genoise which tend to be dry.

All went well until the cake was in the oven for 20mins. The cake top started to brown quickly, likely due to the high sugar content. The baking time is supposed to be around 35mins as stated in the recipe. After another 5 mins, coupled with the cake top "going-to-turn-black" and a slight burning smell, I made the decision to change the cake to a lower-rack position. When the recommended baking time was up, the cake was still not ready. It wobbled when I gave the cake pan a slight jerk. As such I let it baked...and baked...and baked! The cake was only done after it was in the oven for more than 55mins! I didn't know what went wrong, but I think having closed and opened the oven too many times to check, lowered the temperature too much. I had to slice off the slightly burnt top before frosting it.


I engaged my little assistants to help me assemble the cake. They took turn to fill the cake with whipped cream and lined the layer with circles of strawberries.


I arranged the strawberries vertically, thinking that the effect would be great on the cake slice. But with this arrangement, it was not easy to fill up the strawberry layer with the cream. I poured and filled the cream haphazardly and top it with the other cake layer...keeping my fingers crossed that the cake would be ok. My elder boy was eager to frost the exterior and so I let him have a go. Eventually I got to shoo them off as they were merrily "scraping" away the crumbs instead of frosting the cake! I proceed to cover the sides with toasted almond silvers. I didn't know it would be such a challenging affair...I had to tilt the cake a little with one hand, and cover the sides with the almond silvers with the other...and all the while taking great care not to drop the entire cake.


The final step was to pipe some rosettes to decorate the top. ***Sigh***, sad to say the result was not too satisfactory. With the lack of skills and technique, plus, the fact that the whipped cream was not stiff enough(good excuse isn't it?) the rosettes appeared like some weired tornadoes :'(

I was dead tired after the whole cake was finally done! The photos didn't turn out well too, as it was too dark...not much naturally light in my house as it was a rather gloomy day. Nevertheless, the entire project was a great experience for me. By the way, the cake tastes good with the cream, strawberries and nutty almond combination. The sponge layer is sweet and moist, overall a tasty and yumilious cake ;-))


Ingredients:

4 eggs, bring to room temperature
206g caster sugar (advisable to reduce sugar amount by half, see comments here)
4g salt
140g cake flour
30g salad oil
30g fresh milk

filling & frosting:
300ml whipping cream (I used non-dairy)
250g strawberries

Method:

1. Sift cake flour, set aside. Grease and line a 20cm round pan, set aside. Pre-heat oven to 180degC. Position rack at the lower bottom of the oven.


2. With an electric mixer, whisk eggs and sugar & salt on HIGH speed for about 5 to 7mins, until the batter double in volume and is ribbon-like (the batter should leave a ribbon-like texture when the beater is lifted up). Turn to LOW speed and whisk for another 1 to 2 mins. Whisking at low speed helps to stabilise the air bubbles in the batter.


3. Add sifted cake flour into the batter. With a spatula, gently fold in the flour until well blended.


4. With a spatula, mix about 1/3 of the batter with the salad oil in a separate bowl. Fold in this mixture into the remaining batter. This method will help to ensure the oil will be fully blended and at the same time will not deflate the batter.


5. Add in fresh milk and fold in gently with spatula.


6. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 35 mins, or until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. Unmold and cool completely.

Assemble the cake

1. With an electric mixer, whip the whipping cream still stiff.
2. Slice the cake horizontally into 2 layers. Place one of the cake layers cut-side down on a cake plate. Spread the whipped cream over the layer.
3. Arrange rings of strawberries to cover the whole layer.
4. Fill with some more whipped cream. Top with the other cake layer, cut-side up.
5. Spread the whipped cream over the top and side of the cake. Decorate as desired.