Coconut Jelly Noodles

~ August 2009 ~

Actually its just coconut (hard set) jelly sliced into thin strips to make them look like rice noodles. Quite fun to eat!

The transparent one on the top is "Sea Coconut", a kind of canned exotic fruit you can buy from any Chinese food stores. One of my favourite! Smooth and sweet, if you haven't tried this before, you definitely should!

The black hearts are Grass Jelly, cut out into heart shapes. Grass Jelly has a slight hint of mint, normally eaten with syrup. Again, you can buy them (cans) from Chinese food stores. These are the uncut ones, when you pour it out of the can it look just like the can! Or you can buy the ones that's been cut into cubes.

Sweet Potato Thousand Layers Pastry

~ September 2009 ~

Recepie adapted from Mrs. Wai

Swan Choux

~ October 2009 ~

Swan shaped Choux (Profitterolls)

References:

Choux Puff Pastry recipe from Claire Clark's Indulge
Assembly from Le Cordon Bleu's Desserts

Custard & Chocolate-Hazelnut Buttercream Chocolate Cake

~ October 2009~

Combo:

Dark Chocolate Cake (Recipe)

Chocolate Hazelnut Buttercream

Custard Cream

Glazed Hazelnut

Recipe modifed from Vanlily's

Opera Cake

An early X'mas Cake for my husband's collegues.

Combo:
Joconde (Almond Cake)
Coffee Syrup
Coffee Buttercream
Joconde
Coffee Syrup
Chocolate Ganache
Joconde
Coffee Syrup
Coffee Buttercream

Served with Coffee Cream Anglaise (Coffee Custard)

Recipe from A La Cuisine who adapted her recipe from this book


I've used half of the amount to make an 8" round cake, and then trimmed it into the above shape.

With half the amount of Joconde batter I could make another 1-2 layers to be honest, but I ended up making thicker slices instead. Will make sure I'll keep the layers thin next time.

Also I should have soaked more syrup into each layer, the cake layer should be at least half soaked with syrup but mine are still really white.

This cake's total height should not be over 3cm.

Make sure you choose a good quality dark chocolate and coffee for this cake, any aftertaste such as sourness from these ingredients will come through.

I've deducted some sugar here and there as we prefer a less sweet cake. You can do so as well if you like.

The cake is quite heavy to eat on its own, but the custard has served its purpose in lightening the cake.

Coconut Mousse Pandan Cake

~ October 2009 ~

Pandan cake with coconut cream, decorated with lemon Macarons. I tested the coconut mousse myself without a recipe, and added too much gelatine in it, but it still taste alright!

For the pandan juice (enough for 2 cakes)

If you use Pandan Essence, you can skip this step

8-10 Pandan Leaves, cut into small pieces
120ml Warm Water

- Blend the leaves and water together. Drain and keep the juice
- Use half for the following recipe, and you can either refrigerate or freeze the rest.

(Make 7" cake or 9" Bundt cake)

100g Weak Flour
1tsp Baking Powder
85g Caster Sugar
35ml Vegetable Oil
~60ml Pandan Juice or 1/2 tsp Pandan Essence
3 large Eggs, seperated
1-2 drops Green Food Colouring (if you like)
1/8tsp Cream of Tartar (I didn't use this)

Line cake tin with greeaseproof paper, or lightly grease the bundt tin
Preheat oven 180C

1. Mix flour, baking powder and 2/3 of the sugar, then sieve into a big bowl.

2. Add pandan juice/ essence, oil, egg yolks, and colouring (if you are using) into 1. then beat until there are no more lumps.

3. In a seperate bowl, Beat the egg whites and cream of tartar until foamy. Then, in 3 seperate times, add the rest of the sugar. Continue beating until the peaks are really stiff.

The mixing is done when 1) you can turn the bowl upside down without any of the mixture flowing down; 2) the point of the peaks stays pointing up. If it curls down, keep beating.

4. Fold 1/3 of the egg white into 2. The fold in the rest of the whites.

5. Pour the mixture into the tin and put this into the oven, close by the door. Bake for approx. 40 - 50 mins.

6. Once removed from the oven, immediately turn the cake and tin upside down and cool completely on a cooling rack.

7. Before serving, carefully use a warm knife to cut away the brown layers and discard them.

Pandan Chiffon Cake recipe from Leisure Cat (Edited)

Coconut Mousse

The amount of mousse you need depends on how you want to decorate the cake. You might ended up with extra, or you might need more.

65g Coconut Milk
25g Whipping Cream
Caster Sugar
1 Gelatine Leaf, soak in cold water until soft

Base on 1.2g gelatine leaves per 100g liquid. You can adjust the amount according to the packaging or replace with gelatine powder

1. Whip the cream until it reach soft peaks and leave in the fridge until needed.

2. Heat the coconut milk until it started to bubble. While its heating up, add a tsp of sugar at a time until it has reached your desired sweetness, bearing in mind that you will be mixing this with the whipped cream and eat it with the cake.

3. Turn off the fire. Squeeze out excess water from the gelatine leaf and quickly stir it into the coconut milk.

4. Remove from fire and leave to cool slightly.

5. Gently fold the whipped cream into 4. and set aside to let it thicken until its spreadable.

Make sure you don't leave it to set for too much or it will become lumpy when you try to spread this over your cake.

If it takes too long for it to thicken up, you can put it in the fridge and check it every 3-5 minutes, stirring the mixture each time.

6. Quickly spread the mousse on the cake and leave to set properly in the fridge.

Delux Strawberry Cream Chocolate Cake

~ August 2009 ~

A luxurious chocolate cake, great to eat on its own, or with whatever topping! Its a big hit with my family and friends!

Delux Chocolate Cake recipe from Hong Kong blogger Vanlily's previous blog

(Make 18cm round cake)

160g 70% Dark Chocolate, broken in pieces
100g Unsalted Butter, diced
50g Egg Yolk
60g Caster Sugar (A)
100g Egg Whites
40g Caster Sugar (B)
32g Weak Flour, sieved
( I only know McDoughall's Super Supreme Flour is the correct type in the UK, there could be another one I'm not sure)

Line cake tin
Preheat oven to 170C

1. Heat a pot of water and keep it on simmer. Put the butter and chocolate in a bowl and put the bowl over the pot to melt the butter and chocolate.

2. In the meantime, Beat the egg yolk and sugar (A) in a big bowl until pale and creamy.

3. Remove 1. from the pot, and gently fold 2. into it.

4. Fold the flour into 3.

5. Beat the egg whites in a seperate bowl, and gradually add sugar B. Beat until stiff peaks form.

6. Fold 5. into 4. until just combined.

Do not overfold or the cake will become tough

7. Pour 6. into the lined cake tin and bake for approx. 30 minutes.

The cake is done when 1) you insert a skewer it will come out clean; 2) the top of the cake springs back when you press it gently with a finger

8. Remove from oven and cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then remove the cake and cool on a cooling rack.

For the topping here, I've fold Chantilly cream into slightly sweetened Strawberry puree.

Assorted Macarons

~ Summer 2009 ~


Rose Buttercream Macarons

First ever try, according to all the comments (on other blogs) on how hard they are to make, this isn't a bad attempt at all hehe!



Purple - Lavender Buttercream, Green - Pandan Buttercream, Pink - Rose Buttercream

Second batch, couldn't be bothered with sieving the ground almond, and the result for being lazy? Macarons with bad skin condition! Lesson learnt! At least this time I got a better timing so the colour remains vibrant hehe.



Chocolate Hazelnut Ganache Macarons

These are fantastic! Macarons tend to be way too sweet to eat without a nice cup of coffee or tea. But these, made with 100% pure cocoa powder, are just right.



Lemon & White Chocolate Ganache Macarons

Tried to be a bit creative with the deco for these mini Macarons and dusted them with edible gold powder.


Although too sweet, they are still nice to make and a great way to use up left over egg whites! (And quicker to make than Meringues ;) )

Stained Glass Cookies

~ Summer 2009 ~

These cookies look great and are fun to eat! (Interesting enough, its the adults who love them more than the kids!)


Method

Any cut-out cookie dough recipe
(I use the one from Nigela Lawson)
1 big and 1 small Cookie cutters
Hard boiled sweets
Lined baking sheet

1. Preheat oven to the adviced temperature from your cut-out cookie recipe.

2. After chilling and rolling out the cookie dough, use the large cookie cutter to cut out the shape, and lay it on a lined baking sheet. Then use the small cookie cutter to cut out a hole from them.

3. Bake the hollow cookies for approx. 5 mins till half cooked, then put a piece of hard boiled sweet in the middle of each cookie.

The longer the sweets are in the oven, the more bubbles there is which will create an uneven surface. Hence only add the sweets after they are half cooked.

If the sweets are too big, you can crush them with a nut cracker.

4. Turn the oven to 160C and bake for the rest of the amount of time stated in your recipe until golden, and the sweets are all melted.

Keep an eye on the cookies while they're baking. You might need to add more crushed sweets to cover some holes!

5. Remove from the oven and leave them on the baking sheet until the sweets has harden before moving them on a cooling rack.

References:
Nigela Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess
Hong Kong blogger Vanlily

Five Alive Citrus Burst Cheesecake

~ Summer 2009 ~

I used the Five Alive Citrus Burst juice to make this cheesecake, really refreshing!

Valentine's Day Chocolate coated Strawberries

~ February 2009 ~

These strawberries are really big, sweet and juicy. Can't even get these during the Summer season!