Strawberry White Choc Cream Cheese Pinwheels

Another cookie bake! Another attempt at pinwheels! I swear, my brother is addicted to cookies. His default answer to: "What should I bake...?" is "COOKIE."

And he goes around the kitchen, lifting containers and sniffing for cookies. You would think he would remember that he was the one who finished all the cookies. Anyway, enough rant about my brother's cookie obsession. I baked these for my cell group the other day. They are my SWCCC pinwheel cookies, since the name is too long to type out.

I used cream cheese in the cookie dough, and coloured it pink with a few drops of strawberry paste.

I also added some chopped white choc, so my brother was practically leaping with joy. Come to think of it, it has most his favourite ingredients: cheese, white chocolate in a form of his favourite snack. If I swap the strawberry with mint he would be flying through the roof with ecstasy, LOL.

Rolling out the pastry was troublesome, as the dough was too sticky and I had to liberally cover it with flour to roll it out. But it was fun to do and I'm glad I baked it, just to see the smiles on my cell group's faces. One of them commented it looked like the fake seafood in udon noodles... -_-;;

Pumpkin Tart

My mum bought a WHOLE pumpkin the other day, and we're still eating our way through the last pumpkin we bought. So i decided to bake a pumpkin tart. I wanted to test the recipe for the dough anyway, and to make more use of my tart pan which I have only used once so far. The pastry turned out really well. It was flaky and melt-in-the-mouth. I chilled it in the fridge before rolling it out to give the butter time to incorporate into the flour. That's how the flaky result was achieved.

The pumpkin filling was smooth and custard-y. I made the right decision of blending the pumpkin first, or else the mixture would not be as silky.

This tart was delicious, filled with the scent of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon, each bite was a pleasure. Although the middle of the pastry was rather raw... I will blind bake it next time.

EDIT: Second attempt at pumpkin tart! I blind baked the pastry this time, for about 10 mins. Still golden and flaky, hahaha.

I also toned down on the spices this time, last time was kinda overwhelming with nutmeg, cinnamon, etc...

With the leftover custard, I just baked them in brulee cups, and they make a nice, creamy dessert on their own. =D

Jaffa Semolina Cake

Today was such a cold and cloudy day, not a nice day to go outside at all. But a perfect time to bake! My mum was having some of her friends and their families coming over for dinner, so I baked a cake for dessert. I was rummaging through the cupboard for flour when I came across semolina flour. I had no idea what it was, so when in doubt, google it. It is a flour made from durum wheat, and used widely to make pastas and bread. But I wanted to use it to make a cake, hence a Jaffa (chocolate & orange) semolina cake was born!

I made some caramelised orange slices to decorate the top of the cake.

My cake decorating skills still needs some work...

But wow, this cake is amazing. The texture is totally different from cakes made with all flour. It had a delicate crumb, was moist and slightly tart due to the sticky syrupy orange slices. The chocolate and orange flavours balanced each other out beautifully, making it a fantastic cake.

Everyone loved it and was delicious served with vanilla ice cream. ^^

Oh and I also made some naan bread to go with my mum's curry. It was easy, quick and requires no yeast!

Mochi choc cupcakes + Raisin pinwheels

I baked mochi cakes again! Chocolate cupcakes this time. The chewy texture is just too addicting... Sadly, there were cracks in them due to the white choc chips I decided to add in last minute. Shouldn't have done that! It resulted in holes in all the cupcakes...

Best eaten when warm, so the gooey white choc oozes out with the crispy top and chewy texture, yum~

Also baked raisin pinwheels. The shape was supposed to be round, and not... semi-circle. But because I had an hour to make them, so they had not enough time to firm up in the fridge. Oh well... No compromise on the taste though!

I love the raisin swirls in each cookie, there is a tangy-ness due to the orange zest I added in. Crisp and buttery, perfect with a cup of tea. ^^