Another family gathering :)

During the long weekend, I've been so busy I didn't have time to update my blog. I feel I'm getting a little lerthargic. Am I getting old in age? Or maybe because DH is at home, thus I'm busier? I always feel that when DH is at home, I seem to have alot more work to do. Besides taking care of the 3 kids, I have an overgrown "kid" to take care of too. Maybe that explains why...

On the eve of Good Friday, I was on a baking marathon:- Honeycomb Cake, Lemon Yogurt Cranberries Chiffon Cake (again??) and 9 layer Nyonya Kueh (九层糕).

We had another family gathering at my parents on Good Friday. Sister E was supposed to do the 九层糕 but she msn-ed me on Wed to say she couldn't make it. I didn't dare to commit as I've got to do my regular marketing in the morning, rush home to cook lunch, bake the cakes and prepare dinner. What's more, with 3 rascals at home creating havoc, I wasn't sure if I can manage.

For the Honeycomb cake, I melted the sugar in the morning before sending DS2 to school, followed by a trip to the supermarket to do my grocery shopping with DD3. MIL called while I was cooking lunch to ask if the 2 elder kids want to go over for lunch and I readily agreed (who wouldn't since I can finally have some ME time)! Baked the Honeycomb Cake after lunch and while the the cake's still baking in the oven, I prepared the ingredients for the chiffon cake. As I've baked the Honeycomb Cake in a bigger size cake pan, it took a much shorter time to bake. I was panicking as I was halfway through my chiffon preparation. Nevertheless, I made it in time. I always tell myself not to multi-task but habits die hard :P

That night, kids slept late and I dozed off with DD3. When I woke up, it's already past midnight. I've got 2 laundry baskets of clothes piled up, waiting to be washed. Although sleepy, I dragged myself out of bed to dump them into the washing machine. And while waiting for the cycle to complete, I made the 九层糕.

Lemon Yogurt Cranberries Chiffon Cake

This is my all time favourite cake now. I just couldn't resist baking this cake and wanted very much for my materal family to try it.(I just realised I've made this 3 times within 2 weeks!!).


This cake didn't crack too much on me :)



All sliced and packed, ready to go ^-^


九层糕
My dad likes this kueh. The first time he tried this, he commented it's not sweet enough. Original recipe asked for 210g sugar but I've only used 150g (which I find it just right). But for this attempt, I used 180g sugar instead. Sister E commented that it's still slightly sweet, I could have used 170g instead. Oh bother, it's so difficult to please everyone...


I remembered to use the smaller Corningware this time round and I managed to get a higher kueh. However, I screwed up at the 6th/7th layer. I was probably distracted and before the 6th layer was set, I poured in the 7th layer. I saw the batter sinking into the layer below :( Thank goodness it's not the last layer, else I'll have lots of polka dots on the surface :P

I was left with only a packet of coconut milk ie 200ml so I substituted the balance with water. Another mistake as this makes the kueh extremely sticky. I should stick to my ususal 400ml coconut milk and 80ml water.

Honeycomb Cake II

After my first attempt in Honeycomb Cake making, I visited AK's blog to see her beautiful honeycomb effect. It's really nice of her to visit my blog and to give me some valuable advice. I'll like to thank Edith for her useful tip too.

I was multi-tasking while in the process of caramelization, preparing breakfast for DS2 and DD3. I thought I smelt something burning in the pot and was worried that the sugar may be burnt. Nevertheless, I went ahead to bake the cake. I can only keep my fingers crossed till I slice the cake.



After adding in the butter into the hot syrup, somehow the butter doesn't melt nicely (see pic below). I poured the caramel syrup over a sift before adding into the batter.

I was praying to get a good honeycomb effect before slicing it. I was jumping with joy like a little kid when I saw this. Definitley over the moon as it's almost perfect, at least to me ^-^

My camera is not doing a good job as I get 2 different tones of the cake. Probably time to invest in a new camera (I bet if any photographer reading this will say it's definitely user problem :P).

I'm posting the modified recipe here for my own records.

Honeycomb Cake

Makes one 8" round cake

Ingredients

(A)

200g caster sugar

240g water

60g butter

(B)

6 eggs

160g condensed milk

(C)

180g all-purpose flour

2½ tsp baking soda

* sifted together

Method

1. Caramelize sugar over low heat in a saucepan until it is golden brown. Stir at all times.



2. Add water to the caramel. Be careful as the hot caramel will splash when water is added. Continue to heat until syrup is homogeneous. Remove from heat.


3. Melt butter in hot syrup.




4. While waiting for syrup to cool down completely, lightly beat eggs with a hand whisk in a mixing bowl. Add condensed milk and mix well.


5. Pour (4) into sifted flour and mix well. Set aside.



6. Add cooled syrup into batter. Pour batter into a greased and lined 7" x 9.5" cake pan. Leave batter aside for 20 minutes to enable baking soda to react prior to baking.


7. Preheat oven at 170 degC for 20 mins.


8. Bake cake with bottom heat only for 30 - 40 mins or until skewer inserted to centre of cake comes out clean.


9. Leave cake in pan for 5-10 minutes before turning it onto a wire rack. Let cool before cutting.

Strawberry Muffins

A few weeks ago, you can find punnets of strawberries from Korea in almost every supermarkets in Singapore. My personal preference is still strawberries from Korea as they are sweeter, or at least, not as sour as the ones from USA. I never fail to buy it whenever I see them on sale. I was doing my regular grocery shopping last Friday and saw punnets of USA strawberries on sale. I wasn't planning to buy any initially but the strawberries are so big and red, I just can't say no to them bwahahaha! The strawberries from this batch are sweet and juicy. I couldn't resist buying another punnet when I was at the supermarket yesterday. The kids love it and finished up 3/4 punnet last night. While I was at the supermarket again this morning, I bought my 3rd punnet within a week!

I had plans to bake another Strawberry Shortcake for DH's birthday but Auntie A gave me 3 big honey mangoes this morning. So, change of plan, I'll either make a Mango Mousse Cake or sandwich the mangoes into the sponge cake. Will see how it goes.

Back to the strawberries, the kids can easily finish up another 3/4 punnet today but DS2 was asking for strawberry muffins the other day, but I baked chocolate chips muffins upon DD1's request. So I should honour my promise.

I've not baked strawberry muffins for quite some time, maybe I should. I'm not a muffin person as I don't quite like the dense texture. I've made this muffin before, vaguely remember that this muffin is quite soft and fluffy.

Strawberry Muffins
Recipe from allrecipes.com

Ingredients
1/4 cup (60g) canola oil
1/2 cup (120ml) milk
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup (100g) white sugar
1 3/4 cups (220g) all-purpose flour
1 cup (155g) chopped strawberries


Method

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) oil an 8 cup muffin tin, or use paper liners.
2. In a small bowl, combine oil, milk, and egg. Beat lightly. In a large bowl, mix flour, salt, baking powder and sugar. Toss in chopped strawberries and stir to coat with flour. Pour in milk mixture and stir together.
3. Fill muffin cups. Bake at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) for 25 minutes, or until the tops bounce back from the touch. Cool 10 minutes and remove from pans

Own Notes using Tecno TEO 3400
Bake at 175C for 25 mins.

Strawberry Milk Pudding

This is my own creation. After some trial and error, I finally got the close to perfect pudding that I wanted.

BUT, today's pudding is a disaster. Why? I always make this using junior milk ie 200ml. I don't know what got into me but I used a standard pack of 250ml UHT milk instead. Although the pudding set, it's too wobbly to be removed from the moulds. I only know I'm suffering from insomnia, didn't know I'm suffering from dementia too :P

When I tried to unmould it, I knew there's a problem as the toothpick I used kept poking into the pudding and breaking it up. So I better take a pic of the puddings while they are still in the mould.


After I've unmoulded it, I can't even move them about as it's too wobbly. If I were to exert a little bit more strength, the pudding will break (look at the heart shape pudding, it's deformed).


I like this bear mould, so cute :)



Strawberry Milk Pudding
Ingredients
200ml strawberry milk
2 1/2 tsp - 3 tsp gelatin powder
30ml hot water

Method
1. Dissolve gelatin powder in 30ml hot water.

2. Stir cooled gelatin solution into strawberry milk.

3. Pour mixture into mould and leave it to set in the fridge.

Chocolate Chips Muffins

When it comes to muffin, there are so many variations. What exactly is the correct texture of a muffin? I've tried both the creaming method and also the wet mixture added into the dry mixture. The creaming method yields a much softer texture but of course, it takes abit more effort.

I'm always in search of quick & easy recipes and that explains why I always use the latter method but DH doesn't like such muffins. He finds it too dense.

I used to wake up 1/2 hour earlier in the morning to prepare freshly baked muffins for kids' breakfast. Not anymore now. I'm already suffering from insomnia and sleeping 4 -5 hours daily. If I were to wake up any earlier, that means my sleeping time will be further reduced. How can anyone survive with 3 - 4 hours sleep in the night and no naps in the day?

Since I'm suffering from insomnia again last night, I decided to bake some chocolate chips muffins for kiddos' breakfast. I do not want to dwandle away my time in front of the laptop, might as well make the best use of it.

I've got this recipe for the longest time but have never baked it before. Don't even know where I got this recipe from.

Some time back, I bought a packet of converture droplets (bittersweet) by mistake (it's the staff's fault as I was told this is the one for making ganache). Instead of using 100% chocolate chips, I used 50% converture droplets and 50% chocolate chips.

While the muffins were baking in the oven, I saw oil oozing out from the muffins! Eiks! It seems very oily to me. Told myself this is probably the first and last time to bake them. When the muffins are finally done, I couldn't wait for it to cool and took a bite. It's not as oily as I thought. Hmm.. looks like I may bake this again.

DD1 didn't like it as the convertures were too bitter for her (I personally prefer bitter chocolates). Surprisingly, DS2 likes them. So now I'm in a dilemma if I should bake these again.

Chocolate Chips Muffin

Ingredients

115g butter

30g caster sugar (sugar already reduced)

30g brown sugar

2 eggs

175g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

120ml milk

150g chocolate chips

20g chocolate chips, extras to sprinkle on top

Method

1. Sift 2x plain flour and baking powder, set aside for further use.
2. Cream butter until soft.
3. Add both sugars and beat till light and fluffy.
4. Beat in eggs, one at a time and mix well.
5. Fold sifted flour into butter mixture, alternating with milk.
6. Add chocolate chips into batter and mix well.
7. Spoon muffin mixture into muffin tin and sprinkle some chocolate chips on top.
8. Bake at 180C for 20 - 25 mins or till skewer comes out clean. Stand for 5 mins before removing to cool onto rack.

The baking time & temp is set for Tecno TEO 3400.

Lemon Strawberry Yogurt Cranberries Chiffon Cake

This is a very addictive cake, at least to me. And since I've received good reviews from my inlaws in my first attempt, I decided to give this another go. However, I used homemade strawberry yogurt as that's the only yogurt I have in the fridge. This time round, I coated the cranberries with some flour first, praying hard they will not sink. The waiting time is a killer, it took almost an hour for the cake to bake and another 2 - 3 hours for it to be totally cool.

Along the way, I took some pics, just for memorial sake, and probaby as a guide for my DDs in future if they are into baking.

Beaten egg yolks. I thought I took pics of the egg yolks mixture after adding in the flour. Apparently I did not as I can't find any such pics in my SD card.

Egg whites beaten till stiff, took me about 7 mins (running on max speed) on a 200W mixer (courtesy of Auntie A).

Invert the mixing bowl, the whisked whites should stay in place.

Baking in the oven, I can't see any cranberries on the surface so I got a little worried. I hope it won't end up like the other time. Fingers crossed.

Using 4 Chwee Kueh moulds to cool the inverted pan.

My 8" round pan is getting more "seasoned" but I still have slight difficulty removing the cake from the pan. It's evenly browned except for some slight holes that I've poked while trying to remove the cake :P

I'm very happy to see the cranberries "floating" all over the cake :)

I was expecting a pink cake since I've used strawberry yogurt but the cake turned out to be orangy. Taste good too but I still prefer the plain yogurt version.

This box is for Auntie A.

Great cake! Will definitely bake this again!

Lemon Strawberry Yoghurt Cranberries Chiffon Cake
Ingredients
(A)
4 egg yolks
40g castor sugar
1/4 tsp salt
40g corn oil
120g strawberry yoghurt
2 tbsp lemon juice
80g dried cranberries, coated with 1/2 TBSP flour
zest of 1 lemon

(B)
120g Cake flour
1/2 tbsp Baking powder
*Sift 2x

(C)
5 egg whites
50g castor sugar
1 Tbsp lemon juice


Method

1. In a bowl, using hand whisk, whisk yolks and sugar till sugar dissolves.
2. Add oil and salt, whisk and add yoghurt, lemon zest and lemon juice. Stir well.
3. Fold in sifted flour, cranberries and mix well.
4. In another bowl, using an electric mixer, beat till the whites are frothy. Add in lemon juice and beat till soft peaks.
5. Add in sugar gradually and beat till stiff peaks.
6. Fold in 1/3 of the whites into the yolk mixture using a rubber spatula till incorporated.
7. Pour the mixture to the remaining egg whites and fold in gently till incorporated.
8. Pour the batter into a 21cm chiffon tube pan. Bang the pan on the table to get rid of bubbles.
9. Oil a piece of aluminium foil and cover the pan loosely. Bake at 170 deg.C for 15mins.
10. Turn down the temperature to 160 deg.C and bake for 20mins.
11. Remove the foil and reduce the temperature to 150 deg.C and bake for a further 10 to 15 mins to brown the surface.
12. Remove from the oven and invert the pan. Remove the cake from pan when it's completely cooled.

*Note : For convention oven, preheat and bake at 170 to 180 deg.C for 40 to 45mins.

Lasagna Sheets

Jackie, as promised, this is the instant lasagna sheets that I'm using. Sorry I took so long to post this.