White chocolate and raspberry...eggs??

My friend's birthday is tomorrow, so I wanted to bake her something special. Cupcakes seem perfect, but I had a twist. I would bake them in eggs! Granted, the appearance is questionable.

"It looks like you baked chicks still in their shells." My brother remarked. And I agree, it's slightly horrifying. BUT! Once you crack them open, there is no question that these are white chocolate cakes with gooey raspberries! In Chinese tradition, we normally have eggs on our birthdays anyway, which symbolises happiness and renewal of life, so the concept is perfect. Never mind that my friend is not Asian.

Making these are so troublesome. Even though the results are excellent, I wouldn't bake these again in eggshells. It took me 2 weeks to get 20 egg shells. It needed to be poked with a knife to create a small hole for the egg yolk and egg white to come out. After the 2 weeks, I was so happy to be able to crack eggs normally again.

The cupcake batter went everywhere when I was piping it in the eggs, it was so sticky! It must be due to the white chocolate in the mixture. I also filled it too much, so during the baking process it overflowed out of the shells like larva out of a volcano. But I trimmed the edges, thus it looks decent.

The taste is delicious! Super soft, with the rich taste of white chocolate paired with raspberries. Those two flavours are like a match made in heaven, they pair with each other so well. There are actually three layers to this egg cake: the bottom is the white chocolate mix, middle is raspberry puree and top is the batter mixed with green tea powder. The green tea taste is not really apparent, as well as the colour. I should have added more, perhaps.

Really can't see the layers... *sigh* I cut it in the wrong place, so the raspberry filling can't be seen either. Oops!

My friend really liked it. The first reactions were generally, "How do I eat this?" It's amusing to see them peel the eggs, hahaha.

Kimchi

Kimchi craze again! Do you know that Koreans says "kimchi" instead of "cheese" when they have their photo taken? Hahaha ^0^ It really is a national icon.

Once we finished the last bit of kimchi, my mum and I felt like making it again. Trying a different recipe this time. Last time was without sweet rice flour, we had used an apple and a pear instead. But this time, we made two different kinds of kimchi: Nappa (cabbage) kimchi and Oisobagi (cucumber) kimchi.

We mix the paste with carrots and spring onions. Because there were so many varieties of kimchi, like sushi, we just throw in whatever we can thought would taste good in kimchi. Which is a lot.

Here are the cucumbers, pre soaked in salt water for 1-2 hours, rinsed and drained.

Toss cabbage with paste like tossing salads. =)

Make sure to spread paste inside cucmbers, coating evenly...

Place them in glass containers overnight...

...and into the refrigerator the next day. It takes about a week to ferment.

Can't wait to taste!

Pork puffs and...cheesecake again!

My mum and I made meat puffs this morning. We cheated with frozen puff pastry, 'coz really, who can be bothered to go through all that rolling and folding and rolling and folding... only to roll and fold again. Thank goodness for the frozen aisle of the supermarket. =)

Easy to make: Place filling on a square of pastry, fold into triangle, press fork on sides, brush with egg, sprinkle on sesame seeds, and voila! Done.

This is the minced pork filling, with spring onions and carrots.

Yay! Golden meat puffs fresh out of the oven.

They look and taste yummy; crispy on the outside, delicious moist filling on the inside...

I baked Japanese cheesecake for my Mum's cell group again. They really liked it the last time I made it, hahaha...

I am a really slow baker, taking my time to weigh out everything and making sure I have my measurements correct. So just making the cake batter took me 50 minutes! I have to speed up next time.

I provided step-by-step photos this time so the processes can be followed. =DDD Here is the beating of egg whites and sugar to form soft peaks.

And mixing the egg yolks in...

...add the flour and mix! Look how airy the mixture is, I was careful not to over mix or the bubbles of air will escape.

Pour it into a cake pan, crank up the oven to 160 degrees and bake.

Ta-dah! Cottony-soft cheesecake ready to be eaten. Tastes moist, soft, melts-in-your-mouth kind of cake.

I wonder how the bakers in bakeries bake so fast? And to produce so many too! I would love to see a professional baker, marvel at their speed...

Creamy Mushroom Pasta with Beef

I feel like I am making dinner more and more lately. Is this a cunning plan formulated by my Mum to get me to cook so she doesn't have to? Hahaha.

Well, there was some leftover cream in the fridge from the last baking adventure. Now that I know it is just regular cream, I can use it to make a white creamy sauce for spaghetti instead. =DDD

This pasta is different from the normal spaghetti-sauce-from-the-bottle pasta, because it was made with real cream and cheese. Hence, we rarely had white sauce spaghetti; it was always cooked the easy lazy way.

Actually, this pasta isn't so hard to make. Packed with loads of vegetables because they are so good for you. =)

I need to add more seasoning next time, not salty enough.

Green Tea Swiss Roll

I baked a swiss roll today! The thing that had me most worried was of course the sponge cake roll. The rolling part I was not so fussed about. It was the beating of the eggs, and folding in of flour; like what if I over mixed and the mixture lost its airiness? It'll just become a dense cake instead of it being light and fluffy. And I was careful not to over bake it either, or it would form cracks and not roll at all.

So here I am, watching it like a paranoid parent hawk. Constant Vigilance!

Woohoo it's out! I rolled it up immediately once it was out of the oven, and set it aside to cool. I was really pleased with it, it rolled up nicely with arguably minimal cracking. That crack in the picture does not look as bad on the cake, really. Heh.

Now for the filling. I had a bottle of cream, but it was unlabelled. So I couldn't be sure if it was whipping cream, or just normal heavy cream. I decided to mix it with an electric mixer anyway.

After 6 minutes....the mixture still looked the same. "Yea, It's not whipping cream." My brother helpfully supplied. Thank you, Captain Obvious. So into the bin the failed 'whipped' cream went, and I just spread some jam over it.

The cake is a bit crumbly, so I should have added in butter.

The combinations are endless with swiss rolls. For a chocolate sponge, add cocoa powder instead of green tea. Fillings could include, chocolate butter-cream, nutella. peanut butter, or ice cream for an ice cream roll. Hey, maybe I should try that next time.

Another plus: This cake has no fat at all, totally guilt free! I made it with just flour, sugar, eggs, and baking powder.

Oh yes, my mum made Kimchi. It's fermented cabbage, which sounds odd, but tastes so good! It's actually one of the healthiest foods in the world. It really packs a punch, because it's so spicy! I'm training my tongue to withstand spicy food, and I think it is working? Then I can eat laksa without drinking a litre of water next time I go back to Singapore, haha.

Cream Puffs

Oh yes, Cream Puffs! I've been dying to make my own since trying out Cookie Puffs from Puffy. They have many flavours that I have yet to try, i.e. Mango, Taro, Durian, Green Tea... and they even have Ferrero Rocher which caught my eye and made me buy it in the first place, haha.

But this post is about making these yummy babies. My friend's Mum is the expert in making these, and they invited me over for baking lessons! I was super excited, I whooped with joy~^0^

First we lightly grease some cupcake moulds. We made 50+ puffs, so these were not all of them.

Here is the puff mix, careful not to overbeat!

We put a spoonful of mixture in, and swirl it around with a chopstick so it rises up in the middle. They look so cute. =)

The golden, soft, puffy puffs are out of the oven! These are just amazing to smell, and even more amazing to taste!

But before I can eat it, we have to make the chocolate custard. This custard has got to be the healthiest and easiest custard I've ever seen. Butter-free, oil-free, and cream-free. Needed lots of egg yolks for the amount of puffs we had to fill.

In the dark chocolate pieces go! My favourite kind.

Now I can eat it! Look how soft and fluffy it is. =DDDDD

I tear it open to put the custard in...

And it's ready for me to sink my teeth into, promising to sent me to puffy heaven, lol.

I actually stopped myself devouring it so I can take a picture.

And then it's gone! I will be making these in the future definitely. I have learnt from the Master of Cooking. (Seriously, my friend's Mum should be in Masterchef or something. She is that good.)

Sushi

Made sushi for lunch today. It's my second time so far, still not perfect looking, haha.

Hosomaki (thin rolls):

It is, however, my first time making these:

What are they? It's my attempt to make Uramaki (Inside out rolls). Very, very bad. It stuck to the cling film and I ended up with sticky bits of rice all over my hands. As you can see, it's falling apart, probably because I didn't squeeze hard enough? A quote from a site, "This style is certainly more advanced and I suggest starting off with hosomaki and trying this only when you are more experienced." Ok, I'm not experienced enough, so I'll stick with hosomaki rolls for now... T^T

I used typical sushi fillings, like cucumber, egg and crab meat. Because I was lazy. I will try different fillings next time, like tuna, pickles, enoki mushrooms, and wakame seaweed. This seaweed is one of my favourite fillings, but so so expensive.

Oishi~

Apple Cinnamon Bundt & Vanilla Orange Cupcakes

Baking frenzy! I had just came home from watching Toy Story 3, (It was an intense movie. I totally blew my wallet as I paid $20.50 to watch it in VMAX and 3D. Ouch. Never again. But wow, it was good. I cried a bit, hehe.) and my mum told me to bake something to bring to my aunt's place for dinner. A Masterchef scenario immediately played out in my head:

"Bake a dessert suitable for winter. It should be sweet, warm and homey. You have an hour and 30 minutes. Time. Starts. Now!"

I am not obsessed with that show, I swear. Anyway, I decided to bake a bundt cake, trying out my new silicon cake mould.

Oh my gosh, this cake took forever to bake. It's because it was so dense, the middle took longer to cook then the outside. So when I pulled it out of the oven and flipped it over, the top was a bit charred. I had to cut the burnt part off.

In the last 30 minutes, my mum was worried it might not be enough to feed 15 people. So she told me to bake some cupcakes. I've been wanting to try out this cupcake recipe anyway.

Good thing too. My younger cousins weren't too keen on the apple cake, but they gobbled these cupcakes up. Guess they must be good then?

I really like the orange flavour of these cupcakes. It gives a citrus-y tang. Plus they were moist, soft and fluffy. Very happy with these.

Slicing up the bundt cake, I was worried the middle would still be raw. But it was perfectly cooked, thank goodness. The cinnamon smell was strong, stimulating taste buds before you sink your teeth into the cake. The adults liked this cake a lot. Cake was moist, apples were tart, and it had a crisp crust as all bundt cakes do.

I have never baked so much in such a short time, haha.

Macaron: Test #1

Macarons are tricky. You'd think such light, pretty cookies would be easy to get right, but they are deceiving little buggers.

I would like to say that my macarons turned out as perfect as the picture above, but things didn't turn out that way. I wasn't expecting a perfect macaron, but I expected something that at least looked like a macaron.

I shifted the dry ingredients, beat the egg whites to perfect peaks and mixed it together. Here they are piped on a baking tray and setting.

'This isn't so hard.' I thought. Boy, was I wrong. When they came out of the oven I was dumbfounded. Did I accidentally make almond cookies instead of macarons? They are laughable almost, at how different they are compared to how they supposed to be.

I consulted my trusty friend Google as to why my macarons turned out... well, flat. Sheepishly, I found many blunders I had made in the process of making them. I have underestimated these cookies big time!

Mistake number one: grainy mixture. I only shifted the dry mixture once, so when I added it in with the egg whites it turned out grainy. That's why the macarons did not have a smooth top covering, and instead had a bumpy and rough surface. *sigh*

Mistake number two: This mixture was still tacky after setting. It had been setting for almost an hour, yet it was still sticky to touch when it should have been hard. I chose to bake them anyway, thinking it won't matter. Heh, my bad.

Mistake number three: I used icing mixture instead of icing powder. I'm still kicking myself over that one.

Mistake number four: Egg whites were supposed to be set 48 hours before use. I only set it for a few hours before use. But then again, in Masterchef they used egg whites fresh out of eggs too, so maybe it doesn't matter? Hmm...

So to comfort myself, I ate gummi bears. One can never have too many gummi bears. =D

Amused at how different the bears were. A super tall one plus three dwarf sized bears.

The macarons tasted like macarons, which are good. Soft and chewy. I will keep trying to make them until I get them right. These cookies won't beat me!