Something sweet and simple

Cupcakes! It started off when I was doing a St John's duty at the Baby expo two weekends ago. There was a cake decorator there and she was selling cupcakes. Since my sponge cake didn't turn out as good as it had looked in the oven when I was making my nephew's cake, and the cupcake was suppose to have used "sponge", I bought one just to taste the texture of it. Their vanilla sponge looked good because a cadet and another adult with me had purchased one each, but mine, which was a caramel cupcake wasn't as soft as I had expected. So I got home and started searching for good-looking cupcakes (no, i don't mean guys, either)!

But it seems that most cupcakes uses a recipe that is not much different to a pound cake recipe. My pound cake recipe works for me everytime, so I decided to give it a go. Thanks BeeChoo YiYi for giving me this recipe.

Pound Cake Cupcakes with Pistachio Buttercream Frosting

Ingredients:

4 oz butter
4 oz sugar
4 oz superfine self-raising flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 tbsp fresh milk
chocolate emulco

Method:

1. Cream sugar and butter until thick and creamy.
2. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
3. Add vanilla essence and milk.
4. Sieve in flour and baking powder.
5. Fold the flour into the butter mixture.
6. Scoop out half the mixture into another mixing bowl and stir through the chocolate emulco until thoroughly combined.Fill muffin tray half full.
7. For small muffin trays, bake at 190 degrees Celcius for 15 mins or until skewer comes out clean.
8. For regular muffin trays, bake at 190 degrees Celcius for 20 mins or until skewer comes out clean.

Pistachio Frosting

Ingredients:

125 gm butter
1 egg white
70gm icing sugar
30ml fresh milk
60 pistachios blendered into pistachio meal

Method:

1. Cream butter and half of the icing sugar together.
2. Mix the remaining icing sugar with the milk.
3. Continue creaming the butter while slowly adding the milk, beating well after each addition.
4. In a separate clean greasefree bowl, whisk egg whites until soft peaks form.
5. Fold the egg whites into the butter mixture.
6. Fold the pistachio meal into the butter mixture.
7. Buttercream frosting is ready to be iced onto the cupcakes.

Note: Half of my mixture is mixed with 1 tsp honey, and explains why some of the frosting is white.

The Humble Pancake

Haven't cooked for the last few weeks because I was too busy with work, volunteering, job applications and dad's accounts, and this morning, I woke up itching to do something quick and easy. So decided on pancakes.

Pancakes

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup self-raising flour
2 eggs
2 cups fresh milk
1/2 Tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon vegetable oil

Method

1. Combine all the ingredients into the blender or juicer and blend until there are no lumps of flour in the batter.
2. Heat up wok / skillet / frying pan with just enough oil to form a film on the cooking medium.
3. Once cooking medium is hot, pour in some batter (about 2-4 Tablespoon) and swirl your pan if you want your pancake to be thinner.
4. Once the pancake has roughly 75% of its surface covered with holes from the reaction between the self-raising flour and heat, use an egg flipper to flip over the pancake.
5. Cook until the bottom is slightly golden.
6. Repeat steps 3 to 5 until remaining batter is used up, occassionally spraying some oil on the cooking medium if required.
7. Serve with maple syrup, nutella, jam of your choice, lemon juice with sugar, or even plain.

Say Cheese!

This was made a while back but was never posted up because I didn't get my hands on it until now. This cake is for those who love their cheeses and it is a combination of savoury and sweet.

Double Cheese Cake

Ingredients:
300gm thickened cream
145gm condensed milk
Marie biscuits (chocolate / coffee / cappucino / plain)
125gm cream cheese
1 1/2 tbsp extra condensed milk
30gm shredded cheddar cheese

Method:

1. Lightly mix the cream and condensed milk until it is well combined.
2. Dunk the marie biscuits into the cream mixture and line it in a prepared 6" square cake tin, filling in the gaps between the biscuits with some crushed up marie biscuits.
3. Continue to Layer the cake with the marie biscuits prepared similarly to step 2, until the desired height or when the cream mixture runs out.
   
4. In a clean bowl, combine the cream cheese and the extra condensed milk until thoroughly mixed.
5. Spread the cream cheese mixture over the biscuit cake and decorate with shredded cheddar cheese.

Note:

• For those who do not like cheddar cheese, you can omit decorating the top with shredded cheese.
• For those who are lucky enough to obtain different flavours of marie biscuits, you can also alternate the layers to be of different flavours. I always do that to mine, but unfortunately, I wasn't there to take a picture of it when it was cut.

My Nephew's Birthday

This was taken on 1st October. It was LR's 5th birthday and he absolutely jumped with joy when he saw his cake. I wasn't there to see his reaction but when he saw me next, he said to me, "I only got one piece. Next time, you tell my teacher that I can have two pieces, ok?" I was too shell-shocked to answer him, but I ought to have said, "If you are so greedy, next time, you get none!"

The cake was to feed around 42 people and my sponge cake shrunk from the sides of the cake tin so I couldn't chop off the sides too much. After much consideration, I edited the photo to take LR's name out of the pic for privacy reasons.

It's actually a chiffon cake recipe, but I think a butter cake would have been much better in terms of holding its shape when it comes out of the oven. Thanks VPV for the cream recipe. Will be doing something for my niece's 4th birthday coming up on 17th November.



Vienna Cream
Ingredients:
500gm butter
4 egg whites
280gm icing sugar
120ml fresh milk

Method:

1. Cream the butter for about 1/2 hour or until the butter is pale yellow and has doubled in volume.
2. Sift half of the icing sugar into the butter.
3. Combine fresh milk and the remaining icing sugar until the sugar partially dissolves.
4. Slowly add the fresh milk mixture into the butter, creaming well after each addition.
5. In a greasefree bowl, beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.
6. Fold the egg whites into the butter mixture until thoroughly combined.
7. The recipe is enough to be sandwiched between a 30cm x 40cm cake and to cover the cake as well.