Hayle Is 1 !

This cake is made for Hayle's 1st birthday. She has the same birthday as Singapore, who turns 43 today ! It's a chocolate cake, a whopping 3kg. Her mummy requested for this '1' cake for her little princess.
My niece's name is Hayley too & she just turned 3 years old on August 4.

I looked through my decoration books & found this idea of drawing alphabets on the cake, think it's nice on kids' cakes. I whipped up a batch of vanilla butter cream, divided it into few bowls & tinted them in different pastel shades for piping onto the cake. Loved the butterflies & the little fairy deco too, all thanks to Jeri, who brought it back from Australia.........

A Cake For Naldo !

I remembered Naldo had a soccer theme cake for his birthday last year. When his mummy called me this morning to order a chocolate cake, she asked if I could draw a badminton racket & a shuttle cock on it ? My reply to her was I'll try my best. Looked up the net for images that I could refer to, found one simple one finally as time is running short. The order came in at 9am & she wanted the cake by 5pm. At 1pm, the cake has been iced, wordings & the little design done. Back to the fridge the cake went, to firm up & off to a party at 5pm.

Bluberry Chiffon Cake

After drooling at the yummy bakes Mandy had at her blog, I decided I should bake ourselves a blueberry cake too ! Since I still have frozen blueberries in my freezer, I settled on a cake that's on the lighter side, a blueberry chiffon cake.
This chiffon cake recipe is adapted from a Taiwanese blog.

Ingredients :

95g Flour
8g Corn flour
5g Baking powder
20g Sugar
60g Olive oil
60g Milk
5 Egg yolks

5 Egg whites
3g Cream of tartar
95g Sugar

In a large bowl, combine flour, corn flour, baking powder & sugar, add olive oil, milk & egg yolks, stir until smooth, set aside.

In a clean dry bowl, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until soft peaks form, add sugar gradually, continue to beat until firm & glossy.

Fold half of the egg white mixture into the egg yolk mixture to lighten it. Fold the egg yolk mixture back into the egg white mixture until well combined. Pour batter into a 22cm tube pan, bake at preheated oven of 160C, bake for 40-45 mins. Once cake is done, invert the pan & let the cake cool down. Run a spatula through the side of the pan to loosen the cake.

* I found the taste of olive oil too strong, so I changed it to canola oil & added 1 tsp of vanilla essence. I've added 100g of blueberries into the batter, fold them in before baking.

Passion Fruit Sorbet

Project No. 3

The last 2 cups of passion fruit pulp have been in my fridge for a week now, the girls have been asking me to make ice-cream out of it but I think sorbet is a better choice, fat free ! I finally have time to make it yesterday afternoon, went through my cookbooks, there are so many passion fruit sorbet recipes, decided on this easy one from Hamlyn Complete Cook.

Ingredients :

10 passion fruit
1 Tbsp lime juice
100 ml water
1 egg white
1 tsp sugar

Sorbet syrup :
300g sugar
300ml

First prepare the sorbet syrup. Place the sugar & water in a pan, heat to boiling point, stirring continuously to dissolve the sugar, allow to cool.

Scoop the flesh out of the passion fruit. Liquidize with the lime juice & water for about 10 secs. Strain the juice into a freezer container & combine with the sorbet syrup. Place the container in the freezer & freeze for 2-3 hrs or until almost solid.

Whisk the egg white & sugar until stiff. remove the sorbet from the freezer & beat in the egg white. Return the sorbet to the freezer for 1-2 hrs or until set. If the sorbet has been in the freezer for 24 hrs or longer, transfer to the refrigerator 15 mins before serving to soften slightly.

* I've used 2 cups of pulp, that should be more than 10 passion fruit. I've omitted the lime juice as the passion fruit is sourish enough. After straining the juice, I added the remaining pulp & some of the seeds back to the juice, together with the sorbet syrup & I've reduced the sugar to 250g. After freezing it over night, my girls & I had the sorbet in the late afternoon, it was very refreshing !

Pumpkin Bread

This pumpkin bread is so tender & moist, full of all the goodness that pumpkin has to offer. I like baking with pumpkin, the natural colour of the pumpkin is so pretty & bright.
This recipe is adapted from Celebrity Chefs' Cookbooks, Don Yong's Bread Winners. I remembered buying this book few years ago as a Christmas present for myself because it was then that I discovered that I can bake !!

Ingredients :

500g Bread flour
20g Milk powder
8g Bread improver *
14g Instant dry yeast
110g Sugar
8g Salt
2g Mixed spice
450g Pumpkin paste
100g Eggs (without shell)
70g Cold water
100g Shortening *

With an electric mixer on dough hook & low speed, blend the dry ingredients together for 1 min. Add 150g of pumpkin paste, eggs & water, mix on low speed for another min. Add shortening & mix on medium speed until dough is fully developed. Let rise for 1 hour until the dough doubles in bulk.

Punch dough down, divide the dough into 3 pcs, each 350g & mould round, leave for 10 mins. With a rolling pin, flatten each dough into a sheet 30-cm wide, spread remaining pumpkin paste onto each dough equally, roll the dough up like a swiss roll. Stretch the roll slightly & fold in half, give the roll 2 or 3 twists & place into a tin.

Prove the dough in a warm place for 1 hr or until doubles in bulk. Bake in preheated oven on 200C for 25 mins.

* As usual, I left out the bread improver & changed the shortening to butter. I halved the recipe to make only one loaf. The pumpkin paste can be easily prepared by steaming pumkin & mashed with some sugar until it forms a paste that is easy to spread (add sugar according to your taste).
I find the temperature of 200C too high, I've reduced it to 190C & the bread is done in 20 mins.

Vanilla Cupcakes

I have been trying few cupcakes recipes for vanilla cupcakes, which I'm going to bake for a wedding next month. Finally, after few attempts, I got the perfect cupcake which rises beautifully to a nice height, good texture, moist, not super oily & sweet !
I still need to practice on my piping skills though......

Squid With XO Sauce

We had dinner @ Fish & Co last Saturday, the rubbery fried calamari rings that I sent back to the kitchen left me thinking about squid these few days. Of all the seafood, squid is my favourite, I could just have a plate of fried squid, nothing else, for a meal, I'll be so satisfied !
Since I couldn't get it off my mind, I ended up with 6 squids this morning, they must be about 1kg. Frankly, I hate cleaning squids, which could be quite messy & leave my fingers stinking !
I make diagonal cuts on the squids so they will curl up after cooking.

Ingredients :

6 squids, cleaned & cut into pcs
4 Tbsp XO sauce
3 cloves garlic, sliced
5 sprigs spring onions, chopped
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp soya sauce
1 Tbsp Hua Tiao wine

Season the squids with 1/2 tsp salt, dash of pepper & 1 Tbsp corn flour, set aside for 10 mins. Bring a pot of water to boil, add squid quickly, blanch & drain. I found that seasoning the squid with cornflour leave the squid soft even after cooking, not rubbery & they won't be soggy after frying, I remembered watching my mum frying squids, there's always liquid coming out from the squids even after cooking. But after the seasoning & blanching, there's none !

Heat some oil in a wok, add XO sauce & garlic, cook till garlic is browned & aromatic, return squid to pan, add soya sauce, sugar & the Hua Tiao wine, stir to combine, add spring onions & turn off heat.