I bake what I like

Pumpkin Pie - The white, the brown and the in-between

2011-11-21T07:19:00.001-08:00

Pumpkin pie, the only thing I don't quite like about making this is the prep. Envisioning the steaming and mashing the pumpkin makes me feel exhausted before I start. And I hate it this morning when I bought the wrong kind of pumpkin that costed me twice as much of the normal one.

Of course you can use the 15-oz canned puree available on the shelf. Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury. My turf is not quite the area where people celebrate Thanksgiving.

I then digged out my pressure cooker I bought from Shanghai. Although it looks as if was built in WWII, it serves the right purpose of quick cooking and allows me to save time steaming bits and pieces of raw pumpkin within 10 minutes.

Is this real?

I usually make the pie crust well ahead of time. It can stay fresh in your freezer forever if you handle them properly. I normally fully bake the tart shells, let cool completely and keep in air-tight container like Super Lock container. And put in the freezer. Believe me, it stays good for months.

Sweet pie crust (blind baked)

180 g butter, cold, cubed
340 g cake flour
-----
40 g ground almond
110 g icing sugar
a pinch of salt
-----
80 g of egges (1 large egg + 1 yolk)

In the mixer with paddle attached, beat butter and flour until resembles sand. Add ground almond, icing sugar and salt. Blend swiftly. Add 1 egg first, if it appears that the dough consistency is pliable (looks like play dough), do not add yolk. Blend quickly until just combine. At this point, if the butter starts melting, pat down the dough and wrap with plastic. Rest in the chiller for 10 minutes.

Thinly flour working surface, roll out the dough into 2 mm thick. Line into 10-cm individual tart rings, press and then cut the edge with scraper or with the dull side of your knife. Fork the bottom of the tart shell, rest in the freezer for 5 minutes or in the chiller for 10-15 minutes. Bake at 180 C for 10-12 minutes. Rotate the pan half way through if you spot the tarts are not evenly heated. Let cool.

Filling - makes 13 shells (below recipe yields 1,050 g of batter. Each 10-cm tart shell holds 80 g filling)

425 g of pumpkin, steamed, mashed with fork
3 eggs
130 g light brown sugar
1 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 tsp of ginger
1/4 tsp of freshly ground nutmeg
1 tbsp of all purpose flour
1 tsp of vanilla extract
a pinch of salt
---------

120 g of unsweetened evaporated milk
240 g of half and half (or whipping cream)

In the food processor, blend together the first nine ingredients. Then pour in the liquid, or if your food processor is too small, transfer to a bowl and blend well. I incline to infuse the batter overnight for deeper flavor but was too keen to see how it comes out so I decided to bake it right away. The recipes that use brown sugar always make me nervous, I hate to see my goodies discolored. There are quite a few brown sugars in the market, wide variety of different colors, graininess and thus not very easy to judge which one would suit the recipe. I have not many choices though...after one of worst flood hits Bangkok, some of the grocery items suddenly disappear from the shelf....for good.

I compare the result of using dark brown sugar compared with the white one (I didn't have the 'light brown' sugar on hands). Here, I made two batches of batter.

The darker batch seems nicer..... however when it was baked, the color became a lot darker , brownish, way too brown (see the square tart below) which doesn't look very appetizing. There are small cracks too which I have little idea of why it happened. The upper left tart is the one with white sugar, the surface looks pale, clean and nice. It puffed too. The upper right is the combination of both batches with dark amber color, which I like best.

Baking - Bake @160 C for 25-30 minutes just until the rim firm up and the center is still wobble when you shake the tray. Always bake them in the tart pan or they'll break or perhaps leak. Keep in fridge until serve.

All of them tastes really good. The one made with white sugar has lighter taste (I tend to say , compare to their peers it was a bit boring.) while the one with dark brown sugar pronounced spices. Taste wise, I would put the red ribbon to the square tart. Too bad the look doesn't seem to be a winner.

I do love the combination of crispy tart shell and custardy pumpkin. I am glad the tart shell doesn't get soggy the second day around although I put them in a loose plastic wrap in the fridge. Keep in mind as well, you have to keep these tarts in the fridge until just before serving. I put them out on kitchen counter with 27 C room temp, it starts to get soggy.

It tend to weep on the surface when left out on the counter which makes it looks more shiny and I don't mind though as I'll put whipping cream on top at serving. Cook-illustrated recommends to pre-cook the pumpkin puree to get rid of water but I found my homemade puree is too thick and cooking them up would only leave me a messy sticky crust on my pan. But if you find the puree too runny, whether homemade or canned, a good practice is to evaporate some of the excess water.

Spices - The original recipe calls for only 1/2 tsp of cinnamon. I double that up because I feel ginger overly strike my tastes palate....so need to balance that out by adding more cinnamon. I do recommend you always taste the batter before baking and adjust spice according to your liking.

Family size pan - If you make the 10-inch deep dish tart, roll out the dough to 3mm thick so the proportion between thicker custard and the tart shell are satisfying in a bite (I think). The baking times varies, depends upon thickness of the pan. I recommend 40 minutes and check every 5-10 minutes.

Here is how it looks after baking.

With thin maple syrup layer and ginger snap cookies

With whipping cream and a touch of cocoa.

Bon Appetite !

My choux doesn't shine....my past (random) failure

2010-04-23T03:55:00.000-07:00

I have been successfully making choux a few times as of late. Then it struck me one day when my my batter just flopped in the oven. Well, they weren't really flopped, or deflated or anything. They just didn't rise at all.

The 10-cm fully-baked choux came out pretty much the same size as when they went into the oven, no puff, no air pocket for the filling or anything. Imagine bread sticks that waiters bring to your table when you visit Italian restaurant, that what they looked like. Despite disappointing result, they tasted great, tasty and buttery, a bit better than salty crackers. I was thinking whether they could perhaps become one of the most popular finger snacks ever made. Um, I got drifted away. However, the whole tray went directly to the trash.

There are a few things I want to share, not sure though if my theories are correct. I have been trying to google the instructions, to see if anyone talked about things that have been clogging my mind, none mentioned in details how the batter should be cooked in the pot , which I think IS the key to success. None even mentioned how batter consistency should be like before baking.

Here are un-confirmed theories of mine based on lecture in class and 7-8 repetitions at school and home.

- Choux batter needs to absorb as much as liquid as possible since it needs moist/steam to push up its structure in the oven (there are no other structure-builders such as yeast or baking powder here). This is achieved through gelatinization process where starch swells hot liquid while cooked in the pot, the target temperature of the batter is around 60-65 C.

- The swelling process begins when you dump all the flour, all at once, into boiling water (this is done off heat) Why "all at once"? I presume adding flour little by little would quickly over-cook the flour into dumplings. Also, the all-at-once thingy brings down water's boiling point to target gelatinized temperature around 65-70 C degree.

- The purpose of precooking/drying dough in the pot until it dries out/or so called "forms a ball and leave thin film at the bottom" is to

1) complete the gelatinazation process , to let the mass of clumped starch evenly heated. Also keep in mind that you need the dough to be as hot while stirring (optimum temp is 60-70 c, which is why most instructions advice medium heat***) . 2) to dry out the dough as much as possible so it can absorb liquid from eggs at its best capacity in later steps.

*** I have seen my classmate did the precooking at very high heat (we had exam, and she was in a hurry) I presumed she must have stirred it crazily quick, or the dough could have burnt. For me I used the medium heat and stir at my snails pace until the dough's consistency was similar to that of almond paste (or clay).

- Cool down the dough before adding eggs, little by little, otherwise they coagulate. Of course , you want choux batter, not omelet.

And here comes last part (but not least) before piping, it's when we add eggs. Yes, sounds simple but read this carefully, I believe this tip is the secret in making 1) well-puffed 2) well-shaped choux.

- When you add eggs half way through, notice whether the batter becomes too runny to pipe (see batter texture we want to achieve below). If it is, bad news, the dough is not sufficiently cooked/dried out in the pot, thus low-absorption ability. If this happens in class, chef would advice throwing this away and start over. If this happens at home, you may continue to add more eggs as called for and bake. It still puffs up nicely but keep in mind the batter is too runny, it won't hold any shapes as you wish it would. Alternately, you can fry Churros/Funnel cake using this batter.

- The goal we want to achieve - batter must be pipable, not too stiff/too dry to pipe that it rips off the piping bag, not too soft that it cannot hold the shape or flats out right away when piped on baking sheet. Below is a sample of the batter. To test, with the spatula, scoop up the batter, if it drops down and leave hanging V-shape , it's good to go. Or, when you drag finger to cut through the dough, it slowly pulls back on , covering the gaps.

Now, I found a lot of websites left out these critical parts of how the dough consistency should be like. Of course baking choux is easy, but making it nice and pretty is not as easy as it seems. Most amateur bakers don't cook the batter properly in the pot. And they continue adding eggs as the recipe calls for, no matter how runny the batter is and end up having flat choux (although they have satisfying big air pockets). Some instructions advice us to stop adding eggs whenever we achieve piping consistency/texture, regardless of (too) little eggs we've added. Result? too little eggs, not enough liquid, not enough steam in the oven thus no push-up for the choux. Final products are weird looking buttery bread sticks with no air pockets just like what I experienced.

- Oven temperature - If you have fan forced oven, 150-160c would be appropriate. For bakers oven , it's 180 c. Baking time depends largely on the shape of the choux and how crowded you lay them on the tray. So you may check for the doneness 1) surface is evenly golden brown, no white streaks appear on the cracks 2) it springs back when gently push and 3) the bottom is evenly brown out. Be careful not to open the oven door too early, before they fully rise otherwise the steam will escape and they will collapse. Nothing can be done to fix that.

Too hot temperature will prevent the puffing as well. I once baked them at 200 C as suggest by a website, it turned out that the choux burnt within the first 5 minutes. Sad.

I won't mention the process after baking such as poking /cooling down and filling. There are some other tips which I haven't tried such as spraying water into the oven before baking to increase steam. I personally do not think it would help largely because the steam that help pushes the choux is trapped inside starch molecules. Well, if anyone can back this spraying tip with your experiment, please do let me know.

And here is a very informative website I found, with lots of beautiful illustrations. He mentioned a good trick to prevent cracks on surface. I haven't tried the mix of bread+pastry flour, which is interesting. If anyone tried, again, please let me know the result.

Hope your choux shines !

Mogador - Who would have known it is de-li-cious

2010-03-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

What is Mogador?....I didn't have a clue of what it meant. Perhaps it was the name of a city somewhere, I thought. I wiki'ed it found out it was an isolated city of Moroccan where the French Troop disembarked in 18th century. Nothing much related to the raspberry puree soaked cake I was about to make. (!?) If anyone knows, educate me please.

By the way, I doubt why the French named quite a few of their cakes after their cities? I know we have some city-named cake with description attached to the cake i.e. Boston creme pie or New York cheese cake or Mississippi mud pie but do you know how Paris-Brest or Mogador look like? Um....may be it was their tricks to keep our curiosity alive.

I searched the key word 'mogador cake' and finally saw chocolate mousse cake topped with jam. Not as fancy as I thought. Fine, I had to make this in class anyway.

In the demo class, Mogador was made with chocolate sponge. Good news, it's not quite an artery-blocking/buttery-buttery cake. There is no butter added in the sponge. The sponge itself is pretty dry but later will be soaked with tangy raspberry puree. Chef insisted repeatedly, more than 3-4 times in the demo that all of 130 ml of raspberry puree must go in to an 8 inch by 3/4 inch high round sponge cake. Wow...that was a lot. But you know what. She is right. All the good tangy-sweet juice m-u-s-t be there, or you won't get happy customers. Here is what I meant by soaking the sponge. Notice the color, the sponge was chocolaty before.

I live in the tropical. Raspberry is somehow a luxury kind of fruit (just like when I lived in Shanghai, my Durian-no-thanks is considered precious fruit of all times for Shanghainese durian lovers). The puree we used in class is of Boiron, of course, imported from France. Judging from fancy, nice, stylish packaging, I am sure it would cost me quite a bit to buy this finished product. After class, I swung by a wholesale grocer near by to check it out. I was wrong.

A pack of frozen raspberry costs me 1/3 less than Boiron. Imagine me making my puree at home i.e. boiling+ squishing frozen fruit, discard rough meat, then I would probably end up only 2/3 of what I bought. Which doesn't make much difference had I bought the fancy packaging puree, let alone the fussiness and kitchen cleaning at home. Well, don't bother, I buy Boiron then. Okay, soak them up ! zzzzchzzzz.

Oh, just in case if anyone is keen in making raspberry puree at home, here is what my chef suggested off the class.

Raspberry Puree (10% sugar)
120 g Frozen raspberry
15 g of sugar

Bring these two ingredients to a boil. Squish with mixer and strain into fine puree. Let cool completely before use.

Back to the cake. On top of the sponge, here comes dark chocolate mousse. Raspberry and chocolate are always paired up well together, believe me.

Here is the sad part. Sounds simple but stupid me I made lame mistake making split mousse in practical class. Yes, it split !!!. I saw meself hitting me head ('me head', sounds like cute reggae accent, doesn't it?) , didn't know what went wrong. Having lost my mind for 3 seconds, I wanted to scream but was conscious enough there after not to panick the class.

Chef Geraldine, the savior, walked around, saw my poor thing clumping up badly. She gave me a dry but encouraging smile and say 'you probably need to do that again so that we have good mousse in the cake." [I agreed]

You know what, almost all the ingredients in class (except eggs, milk, sugar and salt) are imported from France. Although this has been incorporated into my (reasonably high) tuition fee but I did feel guilty to waste the whole bowl of President creme and Cocoa Barry's 58% dark chocolate. Oh dang it, all the goodies.....I was then envisioning under-nutritioned children in the third world and that I was asking them to forgive me that I wasted this much of food.....unintentionally.

What went wrong: I did temper the ingredients by adding 1/3 of cold creme into warm chocolate but guess I didn't do it properly. Chef Geraldine guided that whipped creme was way to cold and it clumped up chocolate, especially when I put the whipped creme bowl over ice bath before the mixing procedure and that also made the bowl itself colder that it supposed to be. That's it. (!?) Well, I actually had a lame excuse to use ice bath...I fear that the creme would melt , that's why....silly me! :-P

I corrected the second batch by, of course, I threw away the ice-bath right away after I was done with whipping the creme. Then put 1/3 of whipped creme into (room-temp) chocolate bowl, fold fold fold until well blended. Then added the rest of creme into chocolate bowl. Happy ending. Thanks chef.

Quite an adrenaline rush when you see the rest of the class was proceeding to decoration while I was still struggling with the mousse. Who cares, I got good mousse and I learnt how tiny detail could have spoiled the whole thing....of course I was so glad I made silly mistake. (Although it was very tempting to learn from mistake again, I will opt to do it right first time around).

So I piped out smooth chocolate mousse in the ring before filling it up to the top and flatted out surface. Sure, I needed to do it quickly before this little monster set up into a chocolate bar. I wondered if the practical room was way to cold that day or it was just me that worked at snail's pace....chocolate mousse did set up pretty fast.

Apologies that I cannot publish recipe from the class here. Indeed, these are not fancy things. I suggest you get chocolate mousse recipe from my hero's page Alton Brown. It would yield pretty much same good result. But be sure to use good quality chocolate though.

Decoration is something new to me. I always use this word to describe my lousy decoration...i.e. because it was 'new' to me which is why the deco is tilted here and there and etc. Well, it's how I sooth myself. Somehow I thought this is just a matter of god's gift , a bless to some people. I noticed many in the class are really talented at masking , decorating the cake and yes we are all started at the same point, zero. I envy them. I rally do. For me, I am sure am not gifted (shoot!) , I believe I just need one word..... practicing. I'll push myself a bit on that.

And here is the finish product of Chef Geraldine in the demo class. It's classy, isn't it. See, now you know what I meant by 'it just the matter of practicing'.

Bon Appetit!

What I love most - It's the croissant day!!!

2010-03-04T08:39:00.000-08:00

Last week was what I'd been looking forward to, making croissants. Wow...wasn't that g-r-e-a-t to finally make this goodie. My past experience is dated back 10 years (or more perhaps?) that I tried to make croissant out of a 20-lined recipe. Well...it was a total flop considering hot/humid weather in Bangkok that made the butter ran out in every possible ways starting from rolling and proofing. Now that I know a how-to, all I can say is that it's all about the little tips and techniques. Those who want to get start, I suggest you get a recipe here and see useful discussion here

Some observations.

- If you cannot source fresh yeast, use instant dry yeast, just weight up 33% of what required for fresh yeast.

- Coldness is your very best friend. If you live in the tropical, prep this in air-conditioning room. Or if not, use margarine instead of dry butter. I myself don't compromise for margarine as the after taste is not so pleasant. so, margarine is a no-no for me.

- Proofing the dough is tricky. Comfy temperature for yeast to grow is around 25-30 C. I would say 27 C to be precise. Also, at 27 C, butter stays nice and cold and is trapped in croissant layers. If you don't' want a soggy croissant dough, 25-27C is safe zone as butter melts nastily at around 32C.

- Rolling it a little tight. Press down gently as you roll would be a big help in making handsome croissants. I found out stretching the the tail while rolling is not necessary. But may be you can try both ways to see the difference.

I brought these goodies home. My sister and my mom just loved them, they raved about it for days. The crust was crispy and the crumb was soft and chewy. They said these are even better than the ones bought at the Oriental Hotel (one of our favorite bakery shops) and requested me to make this at home. Hey..hey, my arms are still aching from the class. Spare me, please! :-D Actually, I'm flattered, and of course , the school and the my pastry instructor should get the full creditability for this. Salute to them all.

Here are some variation you can make with croissant dough, decorating with pastry creme and fruits (in syrup). Nice, aren't they?

At Le Cordon Bleu Dusit, Become a s-tu-dent again !!

2010-02-17T06:56:00.000-08:00

It has been almost half a year that I haven't updated my blog. Inevitably, tons of things that get priorities than blogging . Moving back to Bangkok was a one of the excuses. And you can imagine running errands from places to places indeed take (long) time especially under extremely extremely and extremely jammed traffic. I need to tone down my schedule a bit after all I couldn't finish 4 tiny errands as in my typical days Shanghai.

And yes, I took Basic Pastry class at Le Cordon Bleu Dusit. Although I wanted to yell out in my blog about my typical days at school or how my life is like at the turning point (from a banker to a wannabe-baker) or that I had a bad madelines day and etc., I was too torn out after 6 hours in class.

I will continue this blog to share my baking experience. For the time being , I think it's time to study for the practical class tomorrow. Phew..w..w.

Chocolate chip cookies

2009-09-25T03:19:00.001-07:00

Oh my...my. It has been a big while since my last post. Not that I was travelling or busy with my work. I was busy baking, photographing and researching (of course, food-related). There are long long long list of items that I wanted to blog about. I wrote down on paper and post-its that I sticked around my kitchen walls. Okay, one by one. phew..w..w.

Chocolate chip cookies is a sinful snacks. Or you can consider it a meal if you have them from Levain. Here is my version with less fussiness. I just melt the butter in micorwave rather than cream it for 15 minutes as usual recipe calls for. I also opt to use bread flour, which tend to absorb more liquid than normal all-purpose flour. The reason i use bread flour is that , in shanghai, it is a lot easier to source bread flour (as you know, steamed buns are popular here.). Also, if you need the chewiness, bread flour would not hurt the texture. However, if you have all-purpose flour, you can simply use it , with same portion.

I like this recipe, especially with a touch of salt. It is just good that way. I normally reduce sugar to 90% (see recipe below). Storing: they are good 'outside' the fridge for a couple days. Best is to munch right away from the oven. So far I failed to keep them moist beyond day 3 even if I put them on Ziploc back. On day 4, they just turned into crisp and hard cookies no matter how they were stored, i.e. in Ziploc bag, in air-tight container, in the fridge or on kitchen counter. I found a tip on a web site that recommend putting a piece of fresh apple in the cookie jar. It claims this would help maintain the moist for a few days. But I wonder if those pieces of apple would turn rotten after 1 day (???). Would the cookies moist and molded? I don't know. If anyone try this, let me know.

This recipe makes 750 g of dough. So , if you make 30-g dough (for 3-inch diameter cookies), this batch yields 25 cookies.

No fuss Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies -

2 C of bread flour (255 g or 9 oz) or alternatively, all purpose flour
1 tsp of baking soda
½ C of brown sugar
1 C of granulated sugar
1 tsp of table salt
1+1/2 sticks or ¾ C of butter (170 g or 6 oz)
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
2 tsp of vanilla extract
52% (dark) chocolate chuck, chopped.
Salt (sprinkle on unbaked cookies)

Sift dry ingredients together in a bowl, set aside. Make sure the brown does not clump up.

Micarowave butter in medium heat until completely melt (should not bubbling), mix in sugars. Stir with fork until they are completely incorporated and that you cannot see streaks of butter. Before mix in eggs, ensure butter mixture is not too hot. You can just simply poke a clean finger in the mixture and feel if it is too hot for your finger tip. If it is okay, pour in the eggs. Stir vigorously for half a minute until well-blended. Add vanilla extract, stir to combine

Add wet ingredients to the dries (or do it the other way around if you do not want to dirty too many bowl). Stir with fork until well blend. The good thing about making chewy cookies is that, it is a study animal, you don’t have to be kind. Just stir, smash, flip or do whatever to mix the dough.

Cover the cookie dough with plastic wrap. Push down the plastic so that it touches dough surface. And rest in the fridge until firm to make a ball, around 2 hours. For best color and taste, NYtimes recommend 24-36 hours rest in the fridges.

Talking aboug fridge, mine is not working well lately. I guess it is one of the very old models when anti-frost has not yet invented. So, whenever it was frosted, it stopped working. It just died. Then one day I found out my congee turned into “Gee” (as in "Gee! What is that smell!").

When you are ready to bake, pre-heat the oven to 325 F. If you want giant cookies, say 4-inch diameter, make 40-45 g of dough and then add dark chocolate chunks. I normally make 25-30 g dough, which yields 3-inch diameter, the right size to cure my crave.

Put the dough on the tray, lined with un-greased parchment paper, 2-inch apart. Flatten them down a bit. ***This is important*** Sprinkle salt very lightly on surface before you put the tray in the oven.

****this is also important (yes, notice 4 asterisks here!)**** bread flour differs in each location. Their ability to absorb liquid differs and this results in wet or dry dough that later reflect on the shape of cookies. The dough may not flatten at all. So, I suggest you try baking one cookies first and see if it flats out properly.If not, in the next batch, you can just flatten them down with your finger tips to the desired shape before baking.

Bake for 10-15 minutes for smaller cookies (25-30 g ball) , or 25 minute for giant cookies. Rotate the tray half way through to get them evenly browned.

They should be just a little dry out on the edge/surface but soft in the center. If you have thermometer, it should register 85C in the center. Do not over-bake or they will be just dry and hard. If the oven is too hot, the cookies will get burnt before they are done.

Remove from hot tray and cool on the rack.

Enjoy while they are warm. Got milk?

Sticky bun

2009-08-03T04:22:00.000-07:00

After watching a clip on YouTube, Throw down with Bobby Flay- Sticky bun, I marked down my calendar on the upcoming weekend, "occupied all day". I needed to make this.

The recipe comes from a successful Flour Bakery-Boston. Joanne Chang, who runs the place and if you watched the clip, she won the challenge, of course. Since then, I started to google the famous Flour's sticky bun. People raved about it. The reviews/comments on Flour's pastries are something like this: to die for, extraordinary, worth all the time and effort, sticky buns on steroids, and much much more. The only complaint is about the place being too crowded that people described it as a madhouse, which, I find this rather be a compliment than a disappointment. No one can blame the place of its popularity. (!?)

Joanne uses Brioche dough. I had my first brioche years back. It was not impressive, a greasy type that left some kind of waxy feelings in my mouth. I doubt if this this recipe would throwdown my past brioche disappointment. Before I started , I read the recipe and I sighed. Butter butter butter, this was it. Brioche is born rich (of butter and egg) compare to other kinds of breads. Flour to butter ratio ranges between 50:100 and 100:100. Joanne's falls in the first category known as poor-man brioche. I am glad to start with the leaner version. The result was very satisfying and I do not think I would alter for richer dough. In other words, I do not want to spend my week end on the thread mill, if not necessary.

Brioche Dough:

2 1/2 cups bread flour
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1-ounce cake yeast = 0.4 oz of active dry yeast, = 0.30 oz of instant dry yeast
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt (or half the portion if table salt is used)
1/2 cup ice water
5 eggs
11 ounces butter, softened

Filling:
2 cups brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped

Goo:
1/2 pound butter
15 ounces brown sugar
5 ounces honey
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup water

First thing first. It's summer time. The weather is hot and humid. Kitchen temp is around 31 C and humidity is above 60% as it had been raining all week long. I was thinking that I might not need all the wet ingredients so I cut back half of the water in recipe.

Also, since I was skeptical of the result, I halved the recipe and used only 2 eggs (supposed to be 2.5 eggs as called for in the recipe) which weighed 95 g. So, in order to replace missing half egg, I added 25 g of water instead (well, egg white contains water, right), apologies for my love of convenience. I use the combination of bread and all-purpose flour as instructed. The cake yeast seems to be the problem for home baker like me. I used SAF instant yeast, reduced it to one-third of cake yeast which was around 0.15 oz. Be reminded that I halved the recipe. The tiny amount of yeast was almost beyond my scale capability to measure. I guess the scale accuracy is 0.05 oz so it blinked back and forth between 0.10 and 0.15.

As mentioned before, I cut back the water by half knowing that adding butter would make the dough soggy later on, especially in a warm/humid kitchen. The dough was really dry at first. But when added butter (it was half liquid-solid state and I think it was over melted. The instruction calls for soft stage), it became very wet and sticky.

I attached the hook to my stand mixer but finally changed to paddle. I continued to beat at medium speed for 15 minutes. The dough, or should I call it batter (?) was wet and it did not pass window pane test. And yes, even that I reduced the water by half the dough was wet. So I added 2 tablespoons of flour, beat further for 5 minutes. Well, ya I know....I was mumbling to myself that this was a disaster. I should have figured it out sooner that more flour was needed. Professional bakers who are reading this are so ready to whip me to death. zzchez...z..

The dough finally came off the bowl , which was a good sign. It almost passed the window pane test. I decided to stop the machine, feared that beating it further would mess up the leavening. The dough looked oily, soft and pliable. I rested the dough over night in the fridge. Note that the recipe requires to rest the dough for 5 hours.

Goo – Put butter and sugar in a non stick pan, medium heat. Reduce until very thick. Let warm. In a separate bowl, stir together honey, cream and water. Stir cream mixture into butter+sugar mixture, stir until well blended. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for next day, it will become more solid after resting in the fridge.

Baking day – Turn on the oven to 350 F. spread goo on roasting pan, at least 2.5 inch tall, set aside. I have an 8" x8"x2” pan which was not tall enough. I later found out the goo boiled and overflew, a bit messy there .

On a flour surface, roll out the dough into approximately 1/4-inch thick. I would recommend 8"x8” rectangular perhaps? Combine the brown sugar, cinnamon, pecans and sprinkle evenly on the brioche. Or alternately, I sprinkled cinnamon generously until it covered up the dough then sprinkled brown sugar. I think I used around half cup. Keep in mind that the bun will be topped with Goo, so make it skimpy on sugar at this point, just enough to make nice brownish layer. Roll the dough up as tightly as possible as it will unwind during rest period. I wonder if it is possible to seal the edge? Some suggested to brush edges lightly with egg to seal. Well, I did not try that.

Warnings for those who work in warm kitchen. The dough tends to be sticky as you roll. So you'd better work quickly. I did so, tried my best to roll the dough into a nice rectangle but ended up rolling the dough unevenly into Oklahoma-state shape, approximately 8"x12", yielded 8 large rolls, 1 mid-size roll and 3 tiny rolls. Yes, I know I'm such a novice.

Each roll was around 1-1.5 inch thick. I placed 9 buns, evenly 1/2-inch spaced in the pan. For the 3 small rolls, I put them into individual muffin cups which are 1.5 time as large in volume. Cover with well-greased plastic wrap and allow rising until they expanded 1.5-2 times of original size. It took around 1.5 hr in my kitchen.

See, the bun hugged each other nicely in roasting pan. Zzch ! one photo shot for nicely proofed buns.

Place the pan in the oven and bake until light golden brown, about 30-40 minutes. I smelled the burnt caramel (as well as trouble) when the goo was sizzling and dripping out of my 2 inch tall pan. Oh no, I was hoping that my neighbor who are pensioners would not knock my door with walking stick and ask what was burning. If you have taller pan, do use it.

I rotated the pan at 25 minutes to get it cooked evenly. After 40 minutes, the top turned light golden brown. I took them off the oven, let cool for 20 minutes and then invert onto a large plates.

For the 3 tiny pieces that I placed in muffin cups. I baked with the rest of proper-sized buns. They turn out to be nicely shaped, wrapped up tightly in muffin cup. When inverted, the goo did not make them soggy. This was because I poured goo just enough to coat, around them. The ugly ducks finally turned out to be swans.!

The buns that I baked in 8'x8' pan, top bits were a bit soggy. The dough texture however was very impressive. I would say ‘extraordinary’ soft , light and fluffy. It is worth all the effort and the messy (goo) that I need to clean up . I took a bite and I thought it made my day. So I took the second one....(on and on). Before I munched them all up, I decided to put it down and finally finish some photo shoots.

Then, I was thinking about the last 2 tablespoon of flour that I added in later stage of kneading. Um...may be it was just small amount and didn't ruin the rest of the texture. Maybe?

The goo is just lovely, it gives milky aroma. I added a pinch of salt by the way. My Chinese colleagues said it’s totally too sweet. They had it cold the next morning i.e. took right out of the fridge, and told me the texture was good. It is so wrong that they had it cold, don't you think?

Some notes on the goo :
- It makes the bun soggy. Not sure what have gone wrong. Next time I will spread just enough to brown the bun. Think we can always put some more on top of finished product.
- It is too sweet for Asian taste, perhaps. But I think I am totally fine with it as is.
- I may experiment replacing butter with cream. But probably need to reduce further until it becomes very thick.

The sticky bun is addictive especially when it was warm. I could not put it down after the photo shoot. Best is to walk away. Well, there is nothing wrong with occasionally enjoying some indulgence as long as you don't go overboard. Moderation is what you need to repeatedly whisper to yourself.

To do after munching the second bun, sign up for half marathon in December. Yes! run baby run, baby run...n.

Mini Tart - Fresh Blueberries

2009-07-18T19:07:00.000-07:00

I have to say big thanks to Mr.Art who showed me the techniques and a step-by-step of how proper tart shells are made. The method he demonstrated was an original way using pastry blender. But those who has problem with cutting ice cold / hard butter into flour, food processor could be a really big help.

I did a little research on tart recipe with the same smearing technique. Some use whole eggs which I found out that the dough turn out to be too wet. Others use normal white sugar which does not provide neat final product as sugar does not dissolve and thus crystals appear on the tart shells.

Along my web-browsing, I came across a very nice and beautiful blog, Chocolate Shavings, who posted pretty photos of individual blueberry tarts. Thanks Chocolate Shavings for inspiration. I tried his pastries crème and it indeed is very mild and smooth. However, it did not set in the fridge and a bit too runny. So I did not use it finally.

Thanks Mr.Art again for tart shell recipes

Tart shells
400 g of all purpose flour
200 g of butter, cubed and chilled (or frozen)
60 g of icing sugar (Normal sugar is okay but you will see sugar bits in the final product)
2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
1/2 tsp of salt
1-2 tablespoon of very cold water (optional)

Be forewarned, this must be made in a cold cold and cold room. If your kitchen is warmer than 24 C, turn on the air-conditioner. If you don't have one installed, eh...I don't want to say this, but you can alter butter with other kinds of fat with higher melting point, like magarine. But of course, it doesn't taste as nice as butter.

Sift the flour, sugar and salt on in a chilled bowl, make a well. Put in the very cold butter. Incorporate butter into flour using pastry blades or pastry scraper until the dough clumps with the size of yellow splits peas, or even better, fine sand. You have to work quickly and ensure the butter does not melt. If it does, put the bowl in the freezer for 15 minutes and continue.

I prefer to use my tiny food processor that holds upto 2.5 cups of flour. It helps a lot especially if you are not ready to go physical with this task. I put 1/3 of flour mixture and 1/3 of butter and pulse for few seconds. Repeat for the rest.

Once the dough resembles small peas/sand, pour the flour on work surface, make a well in the center. Add eggs in the center; lightly fork around until dough comes together loosely. Then use both of your hand to form a pile of dough. If it seems to be too dry such that a portion of the ball falls apart, sprinkle 1 table spoon of very cold water, one at a time, until they come together. I would add probably up to, say, 2 tablespoons, not more than that. Or one might perfer, spray on the dough to distribute it evenly. But I wouldn't bother.

Smear the dough - From the top of the pile, use the heel of your hand, smear it out completely onto the counter surface. It should take a spoonful at a time. This process makes sure the butter is well incorporated into the flour and makes the dough easy to work with. Once done, put the dough together into ball, it should be smoother and more pliable. If you see butter chunks in the dough repeat the process. This can be done up to three times. For those who have warm hands, work quickly as we do not want butter to melt.

Form it into 2 balls and press down to form discs. Wrap with plastic wrap rest in the fridge for at least 1 hour.

Pastry crème
4 eggs
100g icing sugar
4 tbsp (40 g) all purpose flour
4 tbsp (32 g) corn flour
600 ml milk
a few drops of vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

Cream the eggs and sugar together until really thick and pale in color. Sift and beat in the flour and corn flour and a little cold milk to make a smooth paste. Heat the rest of the milk and salt in a sauce pan until almost boil and pour on egg mixture, whisk well all the time. Through sieve, return mixture to the sauce pan, discard the curd left on sieve. Stir over low heat until mixture starts to boil. If you are not quick enough, makes sure the heat is low or the curd will form up at the bottom/corner. I normally switch between whisk and spatula, to ensure I reach around the corner. Add vanilla extract to taste and cook further for a few minutes. The consistency should be a little thick just like that of pancake batter. Before putting off from heat, be sure to taste if the flour is cooked through. If it tastes a little grainy on your tongue, cook further and stir constantly for a few minutes.

Cover and allow to cool completely before filling in the tart shells.

Bake the tart shells

Take the dough from the fridge. If it appears to be too hard to roll out, leave it out for a few minutes. Or massage it on the board with rolling pin. I read on a Recipezaar that someone actually shaves pie dough on the tart pan and press it on. Quite an interesting technique but I have never tried that as yet. Roll out the dough on a lightly-floured parchment paper. Press the rolling pin on the dough, start from the center. The idea is to spread out from the center, then extend to the edges

Do not worry if edges are thick and ugly, we will get there later. For me, the dough was really difficult to roll when it was cold; I pressed the center down, just to ensure I did not have to squeeze it out in later rolling. Then turn the dough less than a quarter, repeat rolling from the center. Again do not bother if you don't yet reach the edge. If needed, lightly flour the work surface on the dough if the it seems to stick to parchment paper or to rolling pin. Once roll for about 4-5 turns, roll from center to the edge. Turn the dough while you roll. Repeat until it the dough is about 1/8 inch thick.

Consistency check – cut through the edge with pizza cutter and check if there are any spots thicker than others. If there are, roll to spread out dough evenly.

Use cookie cutter to cut to desire size that fits individual molds/tart pans. Place the dough on molds loosely. With unused dough tapped with flour, press the dough against the mold. Use knife, slash out unwanted dough on the edge. Prick bottom of the dough with a fork a couple times. Place a small parchment paper (a little bigger than the mold) in the center of the dough and weight down with beans. Bake blind for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. When the shells are firm to touch, and turn golden pale yellow, remove parchment paper and beans. Continue baking around 2-3 minutes more to let inner shell dry out. Allow to cool completely before put in fillings.

Topping
Fresh blueberries
Jam of your choice.

Microwave jam in medium heat until just melt, press it through sieve. Letcool until warm to touch. Toss 1 tablespoon of jam with 1 cup of blueberry to coat. Set aside or wrap with plastic in the fridge.

Final assembly
Fill in 2/3 of tart shell with paster creme. Chill for a few hours. Do not place the blueberries right away or they may sink to the bottom. When ready to serve, put blueberry on top.

Ideas for decoration – garnish with little mint leaves or curls of orange zest on top.

enjoy !

Caramel Custard Cake

2009-05-25T21:53:00.000-07:00

If custard cake to be displayed among other moussy creamy chocolaty cakes, it may not get our attention. Little had we known that one little fine jewel is sitting…. shining right there. The caramel cake, whether or not it glows out of display, it deserves our bites. As I recall, I never bought home this goodie. But once I tried, I was hooked. Believe me, it make you sing in the shower.

I lost the recipes a while back. So, this time I looked up custard recipe from the Internet, scaled down sugar and paired it with my favorite chiffon cake recipe. Here is how.

Caramelized sugar

½ C of sugar

Pour sugar in 9” cake pan set over medium-low heat. Sugar crystals should start to dissolve slowly. Keep close eyes on, as it tends to burn easily. Remove from heat, when it turns yellow. Tilt the pan back and forth to ensure it was browned evenly. The goal is to obtain dark mahogany color. I personally like it dark brown because it will be a bit paler when baked and melted later on. Stir with tooth pick occasionally if you see any spots darker than others. Remove from heat immediately if it starts to bubbling and turn light brown. Swirl the pan to level out caramel. Set aside.

Do: Pyrex glass pan is a good use, make sure the type you use is direct-heat resistant. The pan should be at least 2-inch high.

Don’t: use bottom-removable pan as the batter will leak in the oven. Non stick or Teflon is not a good idea, as dark color pan wont' allow you to see the color of caramel if it is ready or not.

Turn on the oven 330 F. Position the rack at the lower third. Put in a 12x12x1.5 inch tray half-filled with hot water.

Custard

2 cups unsweetened condense milk (or fresh milk)
1 tsp vanilla
2 yolks
2 eggs
1/3 cups of sugar
1/8 tsp of salt or a pinch

Beat yolks and eggs in the bowl, set aside. In a medium sauce pan , put milk sugar and salt over low heat, stir until sugar dissolves. Through sieve, pour milk ingredient over eggs mixture, whisk constantly for a few minutes. Stir in vanilla. Set aside.

Chiffon cake
(A) – sift together these ingredients.
1 cups (scoop out 1 tbsp) of all-purpose flour
½ tbsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

(B) –In a big bowl, beat yolks and sugar until pale and creamy. Most chiffon recipe allows you to beat flour, yolks, oil and milk together, I never tried that. It gives me peace of mind if I cream the yolk first so that I ensure that sugar crystal dissolves and the yolks are airy.

4 yolks
¼ cups of sugar

(C) – mix together the following liquid ingredient. Gently stir liquid in yolk ingredients, mix well. Set aside.
½ tsp vanilla
¼ cups of vegetable oil
½ cups of milk

(D) Beat egg whites until foamy. Gradually add sugar , 1 tbsp at a time, beat well each addition. Add crème of tartar. Whisk well unit it reaches soft peaks. Oh again, I forgot to take photo of my soft peaked whities..! And while you are whisking the whites you will hear cracking noise from the pan as caramel hardens.

4 egg whites
¼ cups of sugar
¼ tsp of lemon juice or vinegar (I used 1/8 tsp crème of tartar)

Add flour into egg-milk mixture into 4-5 batches, alternate with whipped whites. I used whisked to 'cut-thru' the flour first, ensure all the lumps break up and well-mixed into runny liquid ingredients. When the batter gets thicker (thick enough to fold), switched to spatula and added 1/3 whites. “Fold in” remaining flour and whites gently while rotating the bowl. It’s a good idea to fold from bottom to make sure no lump ingredients left unmixed. Set aside.

Through sieve, pour custard ingredients on hardened caramel. Then, pour batter over custard gently and evenly. Don’t worry if it seems to sink into milk mixture. It will spring back up in the oven. Now the 9" cake pan is filled with all the liquid and batter. Be very careful when place it on tray with half water. The water in tray should be hot and steamy.

Bake for 45-60 minute. This cake is better slightly over-baked than under-baked. Be warned, if custard layer is not fully cooked …… everything goes to the bin.

Check point: at 45 minutes, jiggle the top of cake with you hand. if it seems to be wobbly inside, continue to bake for 10 minutes. Cover the top with foil or baking paper if it is browning on the top. Repeat the test after ten minutes.

Once done, remove from oven and wait until it completely cools. Do not flip when it is hot as custard needs to be set in its container.

Tips: Once remove from oven, don’t cut across the edge otherwise melted caramel will leak to the side which will discolor custard and over-soak chiffon layer.

I rest the pan in the fridge for 2-3 hours until it completely set before I invert to serve. Before invert, dip the pan in a bowl of very hot water for 30 seconds. If you notice the cake does not shrink from the side, run the knife around to loosen it from the pan. Keep in mind you just want to free up the cake, don't run it all the way through custard layer or it won' t have a nice clean cut.

Left over melted caramel that dripping off is good as sauce, dont' wasted it. This cake is best eaten cold.

Variation of Flourless Chocolate Cake

2009-05-12T03:59:00.000-07:00

This is one of variations you can play around with Flourless Chocolate Cake. The cake actually looks handsome when naked, without topping, with cracky crusty look. However, this would give more creamy texture. And , if you happen to misshape the cake during the process, cover it up with whipped creme would be a quick fix.

See how gooey it is inside?

The one is my all time favorite, you can find cake recipe over here. For the whipping cream, you can use Cool Whip or the following.

1 teaspoon gelatin bloomed in 2 tbsp cold whipping creme for 10 minutes

2 cups of whipping creme

1 tbsp icing sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Once gelatin is bloomed, melt over low heat, until completely dissolved, don't bring to a boil. Let cool at room temperature. Set aside.

Pour cream into the chilled bowl and whip it vigorously until it just begins to hold its shape. Add about 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract and 1 tablespoon icing sugar, and continue to whip until it holds very soft, peaks. Drizzle cooled gelatin all at once to cream during whipping. Stop whipping when it forms soft peaks. Use immediately.

Butter cookies-sables à la poche-sand in your pocket

2009-05-08T01:07:00.000-07:00

I always call them butter cookies. Apologies for the love of convenience. I recall a few years back I received a big bag of these for New Year gift. It was so rich and was really really and really hard-to-put-down. The whole family loved it and we finished a 2-pound bag in only a few days.

I used to have the recipe with egg yolks but again…. I lost it. The problem back then when making this cookies was that the dough tended to melt very fast while piping. The hot/humid weather in Bangkok was to blame.

I found a recipe using egg white and strong bread flour that caught my interest. I doubted how bread flour would help with piping. Here is what Apple Pie Patis Pate quoted in this web site “…..The sandy texture reminiscent of shortbread is achieved through the use of small amounts of liquid and sugar to minimize gluten development. The spread is also limited through the use of strong bread flour, allowing the piped cookies to hold the star tip pattern during baking….”. Genius huh !!!

The recipe below is from Apple Pie Patis Pate who adapted it from Michel Suas’ Advanced Bread and Pastry. What I did differently was adding a few drops of vanilla extract and decorated with chopped dried cranberries.

For the wet ingredients:

12 ounces / 340 grams butter, at room temperature

4 + 1/2 ounces / 128 grams powdered sugar

1 +3/4 ounces / 50 grams egg whites

a few drops of vanilla extract

For the dry ingredients:

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I omitted this)

13+ 3/8 ounces / 380 grams bread flour

2/3 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

For decoration

Dry cranberries , chopped

Sift the dry ingredients together and set aside. Cream the butter until pale and cramy then mix in the powdered sugar. Add the egg whites and vanilla extract slowly and mix until thoroughly incorporated.

Add the sifted dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Mix just until thoroughly incorporated, taking care to prevent over-mixing. Using a pastry bag with a large star tip, pipe into 1 1/2 inch wide mounds.

I decorated each cookies with dried cranberries.

Bake the piped cookies at 325ºF for 15 minutes, or until lightly golden and well-browned on the edges.

Orange cake

2009-04-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

I was obsessed with chocolate cake for while. Now it is time for light and fruity dessert. This one is really refreshing. It is also guilt-free as low in fat content.

Sponge cake (I use 7-inch oval-shaped non stick pan)

50 g of cake flour

a pinch of salt

2 eggs

50 g of sugar

3 g of melted butter, warmed at room temperature (you can omit this, but for me it really makes difference)

Sift flour and salt, set aside.

Beat eggs and sugar until creamy/foamy and pale. Add butter, I don't directly pour melted butter as it will end up sinking to the bottom of the bowl. I scooped out 2 tablespoon of batter and whisk in butter, incorporate them well.

Then pour it back into egg mixture, fold in gently about 3-4 times, Don't over work. Sift in flour, in 3 portions, fold from the bottom to the top by moving spatua along the side of bowl. I do this from left side and alternate with the right. Rotate the bowl as you go. Some may suggest to use spatula cut in the middle of bowl and scoop up along the sides which is one of many's most favorite folding method. I found out that it tends to deflate the volume. You may try out a few times which technique suits you most.

Continue on....the batter will deflate a little, don't panic. Continue to fold from edge of bowl, while rotating. Make sure no lumps of flour left. Again, do not over work. Making basic sponge is not as simple as it appears. Believe me, this is just the matter of practice. After countless of disasters in the past i.e. lumps of flour all over the cake, I finally did it right.

Bake at 175 C for 15 min or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Wait until it completely cool. The cake will shrink from the side. Cool on the rack. Cut by half and apply jam of your choice. I used raspberry jam.

Orange glaze

150 g of water
50 g of concentrated orange juice (I used sunquick)
12 g of cornstarch
1 tbsp of sugar
a pinch of salt
10 g of butter

On low heat, put everything in a pot except butter. Stir constantly for 5-8 minutes. When the mixture is heated up, you need to stir more quickly to prevent the curd at the bottom, or remove the pot away from heat. I finished mine in 15 minute, on very low heat. The consistency should be thick, honey-liked. Stir in butter and stir well. Pour on the cake immediately as it will set at room temperature.

If the glaze is thick, you can set over very low heat and stir until it reaches pouring consistency. I actually waited until it was very thick and pour on cake in one go, with one direction. If you pour back and forth, it may leave ribbon trail or bumpy look which is not desirable.

I sliced in pieces, using serrated knife and here it is. For clean cut, clean the knife after each cut with clean towel.

Nectarine Strusel Upside Down Cake

2009-04-12T05:45:00.000-07:00

What would you do if you cannot sleep at night? watching TV? reading?

Last week, I read a cook book at 10 pm. And as usual, instead of putting me back to sleeping mode, it woke me up. I wanted to strap on apron right after I read through the paragraph how streusel was baked. My CPU inside my head started to revolve at 65536 rounds per second. I bet, if there is 24-7 supermarket opened, I would have run out to buy 4 nectarines and eggs which I used up a few days ago.

The cake, baked with 10-inch pan, is big enough to serve 10 people i.e. one piece for each. But if your guests are sweet-toothers, you may need to sacrifice your portion. The cake is meant to be basin-liked, slope towards the center, which is how nectarines were arranged. The surface was pretty with the nactarin pattern, browned by butter and sugar. It was nice...just nice. I know if this is put for sale it may not look very attractive, but as I made this out of scratch, some how I managed to see it as a a rustic beauty.

The recipe also allows apples or bananas if nectarines are not available in your area or if they are not in the season. I love nectarines though. Their sourness goes really well with the cake. The streusels in the center are chewy and crumble. My only complain to this is that I prefer thicker cake batter layers.

I suggest you to bake streusel first as it needs to be cooled down completely before use.

Below is streusel recipe. I actually “doubled” these up as you can see thick streusel in my photos. You may stick to the original portion and see if you like it.

1/4 cup of almonds, chopped
1/3 cup of all-purpose flour
1/4 cup of (packed) dark brown sugar
1 tsp of cinnamon1 tsp of ginger
1/2 stick (2 oz) of unsalted butter , cut into small pieces
1/2 cups of rolled oats (not instant)

Turn oven to 350 F. Toast chopped almond until golden brown. Mix flour and cubed butter with forks until resembles crumbs. Add brown sugar, nuts , cinnamon and ginger, toss a few times to mix in. Spread unbaked streusel onto the largest tray so that it won’t pile up and is cooked through easily.

Bake the streusel for 10-15 min 350 F stirring into piece after it slightly cool down

Topping:

1/2 stick (2 oz) unsalted butter, melted
1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
3-4 ripe medium nectarines , each cut into 8 pieces

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 F.

Pour melted butter over bottom of 10-inch pan wrapped with foil at the bottom (to prevent leaks). Sprinkle brown sugar evenly and arrange nectarines as shown in the photo. You can arrange clockwise and the other row as counter clockwise. Set this aside and prepare the cake.

The sponge:
1 cup of all-purpose flour
1 tsp of baking powder
1 tsp of baking soda
1/4 tsp of salt (or 1/8 tsp of table salt, don't even think about omitting this tiny portion)
4 egg yolks
6 egg-whites
1 1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup of fresh lemon juice

Sift flour, baking powder and baking soda together

Beat half of sugar, salt and yolks until pale and creamy, then whisk in vegetable oil and lemon juice (I actually replaced with concentrated orange juice and cut down sugar by ¼ cup). Do it gently but quickly until no oil streaks left. Don’t worry if the batter deflates. The recipe actually instruct to mix in 1 cup of flour into the yolk mixture but I think that would dense the batter so I fold in only 1/3 cup of flour then I turned to beat egg whites.

Beat egg white until fluffy, add a 2-3 table spoons of sugar, and continue beating. Gradually add sugar as you whisk. The whites should form light-foamy stiff/ shiny peak when it is ready to use. I whisked by hand and it took around 8 minutes.

Add 1/3 of egg white mixture into yolk mixtures; fold from the bottom of the blow with spatula quickly but gently. Do this in different directions such that you flip the batter up from left and next you fold and flip it up from the right. After adding the whites, batter will be runnier and ready for more flour. Fold in 1/3 cup of flour. Alternate between flour and egg whites in 3 batches until both ingredients are used up. Ensure there are no lumps left.

Pour half of batter onto arranged nectarine. Use spatula to spread out to cover fruit base. Sprinkle streusel evenly to make layers. Pour the rest of batter on top of streusel. Use spatula to spread evenly. I was tempted to cover up all the fruit so I mistakenly over poured the first batch and I almost had too little on the top to cover streusel. Don’t make the same mistake as I did.

Bake at 350 F, for 45-50 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. My cake browned quickly during the first 15 minutes (I wondered !!!), so I covered with waxed paper. It didn't help much and was and burning. Oh my gosh, I was devastated. I put a disc from removable pie pan onto the wax paper. Fortunately, at that time the cake was firm enough to hold the metal disc. And of course it stopped browning. phew...w..w..w.

Once done, be sure not to flip the pan right after or the topping will slide down. Let it set in the pan until warm to touch or until completely cool. The cake will shrink from the sides. I flipped it over when it was still warm. I was excited as I am always nervous when cooking with fresh fruits. What a pretty surface it had, I murmured to myself.

I leave the cake on the counter top for a few hours and it dries out a little. So, I put gelatin glace on it.

1 tsp of gelatin plus 30 g of cold water, let it blooms for 5-10 minutes.
30 g hot water, not boiling.

I let gelatin blooms in cold water then added hot water, stir well. Let it sit over the counter (room temp was around 15 C). When it started to form up as half jelly half liquid, with rubber brush, touch up nectarine surface. Let it cool in the fridge before slice.

The cake is best served the first 2 days it is made. Of course, with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream (imagine me running to the near-by Häagen-Dazs) The streusel filling was scrumptious. I will definitely make this again ! (soon!)

Toffee Nut Cake

2009-04-07T05:58:00.000-07:00

This recipe uses emulsifier, SP (Ovalet is interchangeable). If you cannot find these in your location, butter cake should be fine too. I don't recommend low-fat content sponge, like genoise because it tends to dry out before topping is browned.

Most people love chewy/crispy nut topping, and so do I. The cake is coffee-intense. And yes, I am a coffee drinker. I prefer to use instant coffee powder rather than espresso shots as I think it gives outstanding aroma. My favorite brand is the green-label (decaf) Taster's Choice. The best I've discovered so far.

Here is cake recipe.

100 g of all-purpose flour
2 tsp of baking powder
1 tbsp of cocoa powder
4 eggs
1 tsp of S.P.
120 g melted butter
½ tsp of salt
1 1/2 tbps of instant coffee powder, with 1 tbsp of warm water

Preheat oven to 200 C. Grease and line 9-inch round pan or 9x7 inch square pan with wax paper. I use 9x9 square pan and folded up wax paper to get 9x7 mock-up tray.

Sift flour, baking powder and cocoa powder.

Beat eggs, sp, sugar and salt at high speed until fluffy about 5 minute. Reduce speed to medium and beat until pale and creamy. Gradually pour in flour in 3 portions, alternate by coffee solution, whisk well.

Tada , done with the sponge. Bake for 20-25 minute.

Note: Good thing about using SP is that it allows the batter to sit outside oven longer than genoise or chiffon cake. SP also helps cake to rise evenly and yields more delicate texture.

Topping:

100 g butter
100 g sugar
2 1/2 tbsp of all-purpose flour
45 g unsweetened evaporated milk (or whole milk)
125 g of cashew nuts
1/4 tsp of butter extract (optional)

(Next time, I will double up topping. )

Preheat oven to 220 C.

Put everything except nut and butter extract in double boiler until sugar dissolves. Off the heat, mix in butter extract, stir well. Mix in nuts. The mixture will be thick and pale in color. It will brown out in the oven.

Scoop mixture gently on to baked sponge cake. Return to the top rack of oven and baked for 12-15 minute. The recipe recommends putting heaps of soaked newspaper under the pan to prevent burnt bottom. I didn’t do that though. You will need to keep an eye on it as it tends to burn quickly. Ensure not to bake topping longer than 18 minutes as sponge tends to dry out after during second bake.

Let cool completely in the tray.

To cut - Flip the cake so that toffee nut topping faces down against chopping board. Use serrated knife slice through sponge, (leave out nut topping). Then use normal 8-inch knife cut through the toffee nut , just press it against chopping board.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

2009-03-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

Call me a Timbuktu'er, I never had flourless chocolate cake. I have heard a hundred times that people went ohh-ahh over it. I read the recipe a while ago. The fact that eggs are main ingredient ....er...this doesn't impress me very much. I was visioning eggy taste with some kind of dry sponge, nothing fancy.

Until one day I met with a diner/food guru who writes food-related articles in a magazine. She said that she looooooove flourless chocolate cake. Okay , that's it. I will bake this myself. I 've got to trust her taste buds. Why not, she is a guru.

The recipe I tried was of Martha's web site. There are several great recipes available but I chose this one because less butter is required. Reason? I know you can guess. And of course, there are many others who prefer butter-rich recipes, but ....let me tried this one , the photo on Martha's looks really nice.

Here is recipe , From http://www.marthastewart.com/)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter or nondairy margarine, plus more for pan
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
6 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
3 tablespoons instant espresso powder
1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter bottom of a 9-inch spring form pan, and line with parchment cut to fit. I also lined parchment paper on the side so that it's 2-inch higher from the pan as the batter tends to double in the oven (then deflates when cold). See below is my first batch, without extra parchment wall. The batter almost overflew.

Melt butter and chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Or, for me, I microwaved them in low heat, just half melted.

With a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat egg yolks with 1/2 cup sugar until thick and pale and creamy. Add espresso and salt, and beat for 1 minute, just to combine. Add vanilla and chocolate mixture, and beat for 1 minute.

In a clean bowl , whisk egg whites until foamy. Slowly add remaining 1/2 cup sugar, beating until stiff peaks form. Fold whites into chocolate mixture in 3 additions. The first addition, I used whisk, to make chocolate mixture thinner. It's okay if the batter deflates a little, whisk in gently just until blend. Do not overwork, white streaks left in the bowl are so okay. Now switch to spatula, add the more whites, fold in gently but quickly, turn the bowl while folding.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake until set, 40 to 45 minutes. When it was baking half way through, I could see the batter almost double in volume and that my extra walls of parchment paper came in to play. 10 minutes later, my kitchen smelled like chocolaty heaven. Once done, the side will slightly shrink from edge. To check the doneness you can insert too pick and see if it comes out clean.

Let cool completely in pan on a rack. The cake will defalte in the center, that is how it is suppose to be. Remove parchment. Be gentle as the cake is fragile.

I skipped The Glaze as mentioned in Martha's website. But it would be nice for decorating. Here is glaze recipe.

Make the glaze: Place chocolate, butter, and vanilla in a bowl, set aside. Bring remaining ingredients [cream, sugar, espresso,salt] to a boil, stirring, remove from heat, and pour the boiled ingredients over chocolate mixture in the bowl. Whisk until smooth. Serve glaze warm with cake.

Verdict: Anyone see me tasting my first-bite would have called an ambulance. My pupil overwhelmingly dilated with surprise. The bite was tiny but the tasted was packed. It's chocolaty and very very and very light. I drifted away.

I baked this goodie on March 18th. It was not weekend but it indeed was a special occasion. It was my mom's birthday. Her favorite cake is always something associated with fruits i.e. fruitcake, orange-curd cake, blackforest (of course with cherry filling). She also like chocolate cakes especially the fluffy one. I am so sure she and her gangster would love this.

This is my mom, my sister, and me, 9-month old.

Some facts about my mom vs. her culinary world

- She collects baking wares. (repeat.... "collects").

- She bought a then-state-of-art oven in 1980s, but she never used it. I found this treasure "x" years later when I was 18, And that was my starting point of baking addiction. Note that it is not common in Asian household to have an oven. Free-standing style could be bought in store, with limited choices. Built-in oven was considered luxurious. So imagine 20 years ago (!) As if she knew, I would use it more frequent than my MP3. And I have to tell her, the oven is worth every penny she spent.

- Not long after I discovered the oven, I digged out for more, I found a hand mixer and some other rusty items, and a swirling copper whisk ! I tried to find a photo of that wierd-looking whisk which is non-existent nowadays.

One week later, I found a bag of expired pancake flour. OMG, since when did she became a amateur baker. As far as I recall, she was a busy entrepreneur who had two little monsters running around.

- Don't scream if I tell you I am still using "that" oven and "that" hand mixer I digged out from store room. And yes, everything you see on this blog was baked /made/whisked out of almost-20-year-old oven hand mixer. So far, they serve me very well. They are Moulinex's.

- I recalled that, the one and only cake my mom baked was made out of instant cake flour (I think when I was in pre-elementary school and my sister was a third grader?) It was dense and burnt. Well, the oven was good for reheating pizzas but not baking (which is why it burnt). My mom gave a piece to my sister to taste. My sister vanished quickly without a trace. I tasted and I told my mom that it tasted really nice and yummy. What happened next? my mom told me that I was lucky and that I could have to whole tray of (burnt) cake. I stood there trying to figure out what to do....I cried (come on, I was six!)

- She is really good at making ba-jang or Zong zi 粽子, steamed sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves with marinated pork and mushroom. I am certain she could made her fortune out of this if she turned this hobby into business.

- A few years ago, I told her I needed to lose weight. She prepared such healthy and unbelivably delicious breakfasts for me and my sister every day. I lost 4 pound in 2 months without being bitterly skipped meals.

- My mom complained whenever I baked at midnight. She feared of short-circuit as the oven was old. Ya, she has made her point. Unfortunately, I got inspired by nice-looking photos in my cooking book at 10 pm and...I do what I have to do....sorry.

- My old habit persists. Whenever I have free time on weekend, I digged out in store room with the hope to discover interesting (unused) baking equipment.

- I never could have found out what I love to do until that "oven-discovery" day. Thanks mom.

I wish I had a few candle on the cake. The piece below contains zero calories, if you consume it by eyes only.

Mmm..should I sing a birthday song a bit?

(me singing) Happy Birthday to you...Happy birthday to you....Happy birthday...happy birthday..y...y.

Happy birthday to Mami..i..i.

Cherry Cream Cheese Pie

2009-03-13T02:19:00.000-07:00

When I was in college, I recalled my Sunday mornings started with a 4k jog. You know, every girls want to get tiny, including me. What I did after the regular jog was irregular. I drove to my favorite bakery house and had a piece of blueberry cream cheese pie. Oh no, don't judge me as yet, until you try this. Don't' ask me if I succeeded in getting slim. Well, I was not in a bad shape after all.

Prep time: 1hr and 2-3 hr to chill

Pie base
200 g graham cracker or cookie crumb
100 g butter, soften or melt it in to room temp liquid.

Filling
250 g cream cheese, room temperature (I use Philadelphia, don’t use low-fat)
200 g sweetened condensed milk
75 g lime juice

Topping- 1 can of cherry filling. (I used up 350 g for topping)

9-inch removable pie pan or disposable foil pan

Put crackers in electric mixer, pulse until become fine crumbs or until sandy, set aside in a medium bowl. Soften butter in microwave under medium heat. It is okay if it melts, but try not to over heat it. Pour butter on the cracker crumbs, mix with spatula or if you don’t mid getting your hand greasy, feel free to play with it. Mix these thoroughly, ensure no big chunk of butter left.

Now, grab about ¼ cup of the mixture, squeeze it lightly in your palm and see if it holds together nicely. If not, add 10 g-15 g of melted butter. The ratio of butter: cracker I have here yields pretty good base. But again, it depends on crackers available in your neighborhood, if they have low fat content, you may add more butter. However, I find out that more is better than less. Imagine when you cut the pie and that the base falls apart in crumbs, that wouldn’t look very nice huh?

Press crackers in removable pie pan. I prefer to press firmly against bottom and sides. In a 9 inch pan, pie crust will be 0.5 cm thick and the sides are 1 cm high. If you use 8-inch pan, you’ll have a little thicker crust. Wrap with plastic and rest in fried until firm, around 1-2 hours.

Filling – I use Philadelphia cream cheese. which comes in a 250 g bar. Once, I tried the low-fat version. It turned out cream cheese batter was too runny. And no matter how long I refrigerated it, it was not firmed and could not hold the topping. Meaning?….cherry sank to the bottom and create bruise -looking pie.....which suits for Halloween.

Before you beat cream cheese, ensure it is soft enough to twist. I usually bring it out directly from the fridge and warm in microwave under low heat for 1 minute. I mixed with hand mixer for about 10 minutes until fluffy. Add sweetened condensed milk. Beat until well blend. Scrape the side and bottom of the bowl. Continue beating until there are no lumps.

Gradually add lime juice. My advice for those who don’t like sour taste is to add half portion, beat until just well blend and taste. For me, I would go for the whole 75 g (4 limes). I love tanginess. It goes so well with mild sweet cherry topping. So I didn’t scale back the lime. Note also that the sourness varies with seasons and locations. I made this a few times and it is difficult to keep it tastes the same every time. For me, I just trust my tongue, mix-in ¾ lime juices, then taste, and gradually add juice depends on my mood at the moment.

Pour cream cheese batter in prepared pie crust, chill until firm, preferably 2-4 hr. It is important to let it completely set in fridge, otherwise it won’t be able to hold cherry topping.

A few hours later, lay cherry topping softly and evenly. Refrigerate until serve.

This goody can be made one day ahead.

Cut into 10 pieces : 330 calories per serving . Meaning, my 4 k run is pretty much to make room for a small piece of pie....which is .......WORTH IT!

Strawberry roll with sweet coconut topping

2009-03-08T09:30:00.000-07:00

The strawberry roll itself is really good. It is even better with the coconut crust. Ya, I've just made coconut cake a few days ago. I'd call it a coconut week.

Oh by the way, Last week was international women day. Salute to you all, ladies ! I know you are grabbing forks, but does anyone making tea? Come on dig in!

You know what, I never liked jam roll. It's not attractive. I have no idea since when I like it. But I've been making 4 pans of rolls within these two weeks. I think it is a real challenge whether or not I would roll it up nicely without breaking the sponge, let alone leave the brown skin in attached nicely on it. It really is.

Taste wise, the strawberry roll itself is good, not overly sweet given jam layer is extra thin. It comes to a surprise with brown coconut crust. Seriously, I haven't thought that a jam roll could be any fancier then putting butter cream on top .... but this brown coconut thing is interesting, don't you think?

Here goes the recipe

Sponge

150 g of cake flour ( I replaced 30 g with corn flour for milder texture)
6 egg yolks
80 g water
50 g sugar
2 tsp baking powder
100 g vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla

6 egg white
50 g sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar ( I skipped this)

Filling - 1 cup of your favorite jam + 1 tbsp of lime juice.

Crust
100g butter, melted
60g sugar
2 eggs
120 g dried coconut flakes
30g milk
4 tsp baking powder
2 tsp vanilla

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Grease 9x12 inch roll pan

Sift flour and baking power, set aside.

In a big bowl, mix in yolks, oil,50 g of sugar, water,vanilla. Whisk until sugar crystals dissolve. Whisk in the flour lightly until well incorporated or until no lumps.

In another bowl, whisk egg whites, cream of tartar and 50 g of sugar until it forms soft but stable peak. Fold 1/3 of egg white mixture into flour+egg mixture, using whisk. This is to make flour mixture a bit runny so that it is easier to fold in the rest of the whites.

Fold in the rest of white, in 3 batches, using spatula. My technique is to cut in the middle and fold along side while the other hand is rotating the bowl. Do the cut-fold-turn quickly but gently. To check, drag spatula in the bottom of bowl if there are flour lumps. Again, do not overwork, as the cake relies on egg white bubbles to rise, folding too much will deflate them. Plus, overworking will agitate the gluten, the cake may turn a bit rubbery.

Once done, pour batter in prepared tray. Bake for 15 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove from tray and cool down on rack. Do not leave this on hot tray as it continues to cook that way.

Flip and roll- cover cooling rack with plastic wrap. Now the flipping part, you have to be quick. One hand over the cake, flip, then lay the sponge cake on working table. Or you may cover the tray with plastic wrap, put the rack over the tray , then flip.

Now imagine you are about to roll up, arrange the long side (12 inch) facing you. Start rolling up by pulling plastic wrap and roll up firmly. You can see how to roll up the roll here. . What I did differently from the clip are that I rolled up from the long side while youtube clip started from the short side. And I used plastic wrap instead of tea towels.

Let it sit for a while about 1/2 hr, to let it curl up. Then, unroll it, spread jam thinly and evenly. Roll it back to shape firmly and wrap with plastic wrap. Set aside while preparing topping.

Preheat oven to 200 c.

For the Crust - mix everything in the bowl. Beat until well-incorporated.

Spread crust mixture over and on the sides. Return to the oven, place on the top rack, and bake until the crust turns brown.

Once done, it tends to loosen up a bit. Don't' worry, I just let it cool down until okay to touch. Then wrap it up firmly with plastic wrap to reshape it. I put in the fridge for a while until it cools down completely or until serve.

My kitchen smell nice for hours!

The roll is good for a few days in the fridge. Lovely is it?

Coconut Cake

2009-03-08T06:18:00.000-07:00

I missed fresh coconut badly. If you happen to visit Thailand, do not hesitate to try one(s). I'm sure you'll get addicted to it, just like me.

Too bad I live in a city where coconut is considered an exotic fruit. All I have was dried young coconut meat I bought from Thailand. Nowadays I've seen quite a few bakery shops make this kind of cake, and of course they are so..o..o good. I tried to replicate one with vanilla sponge, filled with self-made coconut creme paste. Here is the recipe.

For the sponge

(A) Ingredients - The Dries

90 g cake flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

35 g sugar

1/4 salt

(B) Ingredients - The Yolks

4 egg yolks

32 g coconut milk ( I replace this with unsweetened condensed milk, or just milk)

25 g coconut juice ( I replace this with water)

32 g vegetable oil

4 egg whites

1/4 tsp creme of tartar

35 g sugar

Preheat the oven at 180 C. Prepare 9x12 jelly roll pan with wax paper, greased.

Sift together the dries (A). Set aside.

In another bowl, whisk together (B) ingredients, just to incorporate until sugar crystals disappear. Don't need to whisk until it gets fluffy though. Set aside.

Put (A)-the dry ingredients into (B) egg yolk mixture. Well, some prefer to do the other way around, by putting the wets to the dries as the flour won't dust up the counter top. For me I prefer to wet one bowl. Gradually whisk together make sure there is no lumps left.

In a big bowl, whisk 4 whites and creme of tartar together until it forms white foam. Gradually add sugar and beat until it forms soft peaks when you lift the whisk.

Fold in the whites mixture to the egg yolks mixture. But wait, the egg yolks mixture is thick and the whites mixture is thin. Folding these together all at once need more strokes thus deflate the batter. In order to get the same consistency, I scooped out 1/4 of whites in the the egg yolk mixture then use the whisk , stir lightly. Now the batter is a bit runny, fold in the whites ,in three batched. Use spatula to mix in each batch just to incorporate. Each time you add the whites, it is okay that the batter leaves whites streaks. Try to fold quickly but gently as possible. The final add should yield consistency batter with no lumps of flour or streaks of whites.

Pour in prepared pan, put in the lower rack for 15-20 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the middle of the pan comes out clean.

Let cool completely on the rack.

Coconut filling

125 g of coconut creme (I used milk)

125 g of evaporated unsweetened milk (I used milk)

150 g of young coconut juice (I used water+2 tablespoon of sugar)

40 g sugar

15 g corn flour

1/4 salt
1-1.5 cups of young coconut meat

30 g butter

Topping

1 cups of White chocolate bits , melted

2 tbsp of milk

2 cups of Coconut flakes

Put everything in the pot except coconut meat and butter. Stir well. Put on double-boiling and stir continuously. The golden rule of making this, as most of you are well-aware, is to pay full attention so as to not getting it hard-cooked. I don't have double boiling, so I put the pot on direct heat on a very low low heat (unless you have quick hands). Ya...keep stirring. And no....don't pick up any phone calls, you can do that later. Once it is thicken remove from heat for a while, stir for half minute. Put it back to heat, it will be creme-liked. I tasted creme at this stage, while continue stirring to check the doneness. If you taste the floury / starchy taste in your mouth, put it back to heat.

Once done, stir in butter until incorporates well. Then stir in the coconut meat.

To assemble the cake, cut the 9x12 inch cake in half so that you yield two 9x6 inch cake sheets. While the filling still warm, spread it on the cake evenly. Put the other half on top, press gently.

To make topping, microwave white chocolate bits and milk in medium heat until they melt. Stir until they are well blended and have nice spreading consistency. Brush it on the top of of cake. Immediately sprinkle coconut flakes on top and press gently.

Leave until completely cool before you make the first cut.

Notes on coconut - Coconut meat I used in this recipe is of the young ones. If you go the the supermarket and see brown/hard shell coconut without its fluffy-spongy white jacket, it is an aged coconut. Its meat is used to for coconut creme which is high on fat content. The juice of aged coconut is not editble/drinkable.

If coconut is not avalilable in your area. You can whip up whipping cream and fold in flaky coconut. This is good for filling and topping as well.

Sesame Walnut Bread

2009-03-01T05:34:00.001-08:00

I am huge fan of nuts and I am a chewing-monster. I have been planning this for a big while but never had a chance. Making bread is somehow time-consuming (3-hr prep time). I am agree .... but the result worths it.

Walnuts go so well with bread. No reason, they just good with bread texture. Imagine if I put almonds (?) ehhh...na ! peanuts...ehh...ne! My favorite walnut bread is store-bought which is very very and very buttery. Since I intend to make a loaf of hearty bread, I put just enough butter as you can see in the ingredients below

Dough

500 g of wheat flour

140 g of cold water

5 g of instant active yeast

3 g of bread improver ( you can skip this)

1 egg

80 g of brown sugar.

1/2 cup of ground black sesame

1/2 cup of lightly roasted walnut (broken into pieces by hand)

a pinch of salt

Filling - Mix everything together to form paste and set aside.

3 tablespoon of melted butter

1 cup of ground black sesame.
1/2 cup of lightly roasted walnut (broken into piece by hand)
1/2 - 1 cup brown sugar - depend on your preference

Put together dry ingredients in the bowl, except salt and ground black sesame and walnuts, stir briefly. Add salt, this is to ensure yeast and salt are not put next to each other. Stir in 135-140 g cold water and 1 egg. Knead roughly until the dough comes together in one lump, 2-3 minutes. Don’t worry if the dough seems dry and tough. It will be pliable once add butter. Add soften butter. Continue kneading until the dough is flexible enough to stretch into window pane. I used small hand mixer with dough hooks, it took me around 20 minutes. Once I kneaded with hands, it took pretty much the same time, but my shoulders were worn out. That was a great work out but I would prefer that off-the kitchen.

Sprinkle ground sesame on the dough and knead by hand until well blended. The dough now turns to grayish/ spotted dough. Be careful though, the more you add dry ingredients like ground sesame, the dryer the dough becomes. So, be sure to stop if the dough is not workable with your hands or it will become a brick. My experiment, next time, I will make it a pitch dark bun, I wonder how far I can go.

Form a ball and put the dough in a well-greased bowl, wrap with plastic. Let it rise in a warm place for 30 min. My kitchen was 12 C , way to cold for the yeast to leaven. So I warmed up the oven to 160 c for 3 min then turned off , splash some water to make fog. I doubt if one-day my mini-oven would go short-circuit as water leaks into the place where it is not supposed to be!. Anyway, I get used to stick my hand in the middle of oven, to feel it's not too hot. This is just to mimic a cozy home for my lovely dough. Kids...don't follow my instruction on this and you should not do this at home. This applies strictly on my oven , it is difficult to advise how long you should turn you oven on though. If you have thermometer, the ideal temperature for the unbaked bread to rise is around 80F or 27 C , preheat the oven accordingly.

I put the bowl in the middle rack. Be sure to put some cloth under the bowl as it tends to be overheated by direct contact to the hot iron grid that supports the bowl.

Before I go further, you can follow instruction from baking911 on how to let the dough rise in the warm oven. Be careful, I have made many disasters before. Okay, I see your curious eyes...what I did was turning on the oven a few minutes, splash water in. The oven was then foggy and temperature in the oven was rising...great! I put the dough inside. Then someone called, I thought it was a just 4 minutes, I came back, and dough surface was cooked. I was C-R-U-S-H-E-D. I wish I had an undo button, but too bad this was at no point of return. What did I do? First, screamed. Second, put myself together and third,.....everything went to the trash. And believe it or not, I did that twice ! Raise your hand if youhave made the same silly mistake. (dang it! no one?)

Once the dough has rest for 30 min, it should be 1.5 or 2 times of original size. Lightly sprinkle flour on table. Deflate the dough. Knead the dough briefly. Why? As we rest the dough, yeast is digesting sugar. Kneading the dough will re-distribute yeast's food evenly after the its big meal. Remember we have another rest , once we shape up the dough.

Break or chop 1/2 cup of walnuts, knead into the dough briefly. Roll out dough to a rectangle shape, 1/2 inch thick. Rotate the dough every other few strokes. This helps the dough rise evenly in the oven and also helps ensure it is not stick to table. Sprinkle some flour under the dough as you go.

Spread the filling , leave out 1/2 inch edges on all four sides so that you can seal. Roll up as tight as possible , push it forward with the lower part of you palm. Imagine now you are making strawberry roll. Seal up the edge to nicely.

If the rolled dough is kinked, you can straight it up. For final touch, cover it up with rolled oats or other grains of your choice such as sesame. Just lightly brush the dough with water, roll it over the oats.

Let the dough rise in warm place, cover with greased plastic wrap or damp cloth for 1 hour. The dough will double in size or maybe 2.5 times if your kitchen is hot and damp.

Put on the lower rack, 180 C for 20-25 minutes. If you have needle thermometer, you can check the doneness if the center of the bread reaches 88-99 C (or 190-210 F).

Let cool on the rack. Sesame smells so nice. It really is nice. I mean it. Ah ah! don't cut it while hot, it will ruin the textture and I call it disaster number two.

I myself like it a lot. My colleages love it....and no I didn't pay them to say so.....no no...never.!

Chocolate Pistachio Shortbread

2009-02-08T02:17:00.000-08:00

Another can't-put-down goodie from Cook Illustrated. Raise your hands if you are addicted to afternoon biscuits.

The Chocolate Shortbread is bitter and cookie-liked. I baked blind until the dough was firm to touch. Then, let cool for a while, poured melted semi-sweet chocolate and topped with chopped pitachios and raisins.

This one is good in bite-size as well. Next time I'll cut it when warm as it broke up in pieces when I cut them when completely set.

For final touch, splash with white chocolate or caramel trails which also helps keep nuts and raisins in place. Well, for me, maybe not, I like it bitter this way.

I have just now realized, while I'm posting this in internet cafe (as I'm away from home), I'm missing my buddy, a small / huggable oven in my shanghai apartment. Poor me, I miss baking, kneading dough. I wonder , what I am becoming ?

Almond Roca Ring

2009-01-11T06:21:00.000-08:00

For the past few months that I have been searching for glossy chocolate frosting around food blogs, I finally found it in my drawer, from my 1980s cook book.

I made this last week. It was a the first in my wish-to-bake list. There are actually a few goodies that I baked during Christmas left unblogged. I will try my best to get them up here.

Almond Roca Cake( From the Joy of Chocolate 1982)

6 eggs plus 2 yolks

1/4 C granulated sugar

1/2 C brown sugar

1/2 C ground toasted almond

1/4 tsp of almond extract

1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

1 C sifted all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

3 tbsp unsalted butter , melted and lightly brown

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9-inch tube or bundt pan

Beat eggs , yolks and sugar over simmering water until the mixture becomes warm and sugar crystals dissolve. Then off the heat, beat until egg mixture form heavy ribbon trail.

I got nervous every time I made sponge cake. For me, it is one of the most easy-to-go wrong cake. Seemed like, if I happened to pick up a 1-minute phone call while folding the batter, I would make myself belive the cake would be dense and ugly, and I would be screaming to whom ever called me at that moment "I'm making my baby, I'll call back asap"......ohhh, am I being exaggerate. Well, I belive it just a matter of repetition, and pratricing. Maybe I need to bake it frequently to get some confidence. Okay, where are we ?

Gently add almonds , vanilla and almond extracted and zest, beat briefly. By hand, fold in the flour and salt in 3 portions with whisk (or you may do so with spatula, if you like, but every time I used spatula I ended up with lumps of flour). Work rapidly and gently so as not to deflate the egg volume. Then incorporate the melted butter. My trick is to beat melted butter with about 1 cup of fluffy egg mixture in a separate bowl (I used fork, don't worry that you deflate this 1 cup of mixture , you have the whole bowl to lift the cake) ... then pour it back to the batch and fold gently with spatula (now I switch to spatula). By doing this, melted butter tend not to sink to the bottom.

Pour batter in prepared bundt pan. Bake for 35 minute or until cake shrinks slightly from the side. Let cool for 10 minutes. Then unmold cake on the rack. Let cool completely before you apply chocolate frosting.

The recipe calls for syrup (which I skipped). The ingredients are simply 1/3 cups of sugar and 1/2 cups of water. Bring to a simmer for 3-5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool briefly. Stir in amaretto or liqueur of your choice.

If you choose to make syrup, cut the cake by half, drizzle hot syrup over the cut side. Let cool, then spread on chocolate glaze. Here is the recipe for chocolate glaze.

4 oz. semi sweet chocolate glaze

1/2 C granulated sugar

1/4 C light corn syrup

1/4 C hot water

5 tbsp unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

4-5 tbsp confectioners' sugar

Put everything except butter and confectioners' sugar in the saucepan. Cook over medium low heat. Stir constantly. I have to confess....I was screaming when I saw lumps in my sauce pan. I doubted if I did not stir constantly. After trying fix it by stiring heavily, I ended up having bubbles in the glaze and all the lumps were still there. Well, it was okay to have some bits to chew after all...er..r that was a silly way to comfort meself (yes "mee-self" as in Jamaican accent) when thing goes wrong.

Let the mixture cook at low heat for 3 minutes. Off the heat. With spoon (as mentioned earlier, do not use whisk as it traps bubbles in the glaze) stir in butter 1 table spoon at a time then add vanilla and confectioners sugar. Stir until glaze cool slightly and is a nice spreading consistency.

I used spatula to pour glaze on the cake. Remember to let the cake cool completely otherwise the glaze will be runny. I also put some toasted nuts and crushed caramel candies around the edge to

dress up a bit

Chez Panisse Almond Tart

2008-12-18T20:17:00.000-08:00

I need to confess. I misspelled Chez Panisse, for a few times before I got it right.

David described the famous tart in his website. While reading, my mind was wandering, sitting at the patio, fork-digging the tart...then the fork bent (as David mentioned, this pie was removed from the menu as customers complained they had trouble eating it with fork), I then use my hand grabbed it up...put it my mouth...chew...w...w. Okay, wake up to reality. I was inspired, it was time to strap on the apron.

I agree with David, this one is a bit tricky (and sticky). I would really really and really love to make it again, but...(yes, there is a but) I will need to stand in front of the oven at all times. You'll see why.

Find the recipe here

The crust was easy to make. The dough I made was not as soft as David's. I prefer to make it dryer as easier to handle that way.

Once finished rubbing butter into flour, I added water by spraying water into the flour(instead of pour 1tbsp directly into the bowl as I found it is almost impossible to get all bits well-combined with 1 pour of tiny amount of water). While spraying, toss the bowl to dampen dry crumbs.

Talking about spraying, I counted how many times I sprayed into the bowl, how many strokes would turn crumbs into dough. It counted 75. -_- I intended to measure ….75 puffs was equal to how many tablespoon or water(?) . I know, I got my agenda. The day passed by, I forgot to do this. Then My sub-consciousness reminded me, in my dream that I needed to do this first thing in the morning. So next morning, I did. [Are you envisioning me, getting up in the morning, running in PJ , crazily puffing water into a tiny tablespoon? My neighbor might have seen me , which explains why they looked at me in a odd way.

[now go back to procedures.]

I stopped spraying when the crumbs held together when I squeezed them in my palm. I think I used more than 1 tbps of water as directed. I was surprised though that unbaked dough came out drier than expected. May be the humidity was low? See below, humidity in my kitchen was only 30'ish (in summer it was 70'ish, and FYI, in Bangkok it was 80'ish in a non-rainy day).

I poured the dough on the working space, as the rule of thumps in making pie, I didn't knead. I wrapped the dough and it went directly outside the window. No, I dint’ throw away, I just rest the dough in a cold place. Outside was colder than the fridge. I set alarm clock not to forget it there, an hour later, before I went shopping.

Can I confess one more thing? I used bread flour instead of all-purpose flour. I have a (lame) excuse; bread flour is a lot easier to buy (here in shanghai) and a lot cheaper. I did try to source cake flour produced locally. No luck. Bread flour should be okay, I thought. I barely kneaded it, plus there was very little liquid in the dough, I was just crossing my fingers that gluten wouldn’t develop. And I’m glad it came out okay.

After I came back from shopping (gee, it was cold out there. I couldn't feel if my ears were still attached to my face. Especially, after an old guy pointed at me...gossipped with his grandson at the mall, maybe my ears fell off the ground !?). I checked myself in mirror and I looked fine (and pretty). So, I strapped on an apron and started to roll the dough.

The dough was easy to handle. I pressed the dough up to fully cover the side. Once done, I chilled the pan for half an hour. Put it out, slid inside the oven and baked blind. After 15 min, the side of the dough shrank quite a bit !!! I kind of expected this but...oh gee, please don't shink further. I wanted to decored it up to the edge, made it nice...but boyd, the oven was hot! So, I just hoped that it left some edge for me enough to hold the filling.

While baking pie shell, I made filling, which is super easy. But hold on, once you pour the filling and start baking....someone got to do the dirty job.

In the oven, once the filling started to bubbled...I smoothed it out to prevent ugly top as described in David's website. It was not easy but it is a must. And when you open oven door frequently, temperature was , I think, a bit difficult to control.

And this was when I think how baking new recipe is interesting. There are a few factors out of control. Sometimes I just scream when things went wrong in the midst.

And , I found it very difficult to make top crust as nice the original. Eventhough this was a pain, I made this twice with in twon weeks. It was a big hit , maybe my (male) colleagues love something crunchy ? I myself like it very mooch (much) too. I will definitely make this again.

Thanks again David.

Note: David Lebovitz is my latest culinary hero, besides Alton Brown. :-D

Gingersnaps

2008-12-16T03:37:00.000-08:00

Gingersnaps had me at hello. If I recall it right, I was on US domestic flight and they served crisp, flat, cookies. I didn’t even know what it was called back then until I flipped though the empty package....gingersnap(???). Apologies for my ignorance, I was not quite an epicure.

Recently, I bought ginger cookies from IKEA store, not bad at all. I understand that they are imported from Sweden as with the rest of the goodies on the shelf. My visits to IKEA lately didn't always end up buying housing stuff, but always carried back a few packs of cookies.

So far, I haven’t had bad gingersnap (and I wouldn’t wish to). I wonder if I could make one of my own. Since Christmas is around the corner, I have good excuse to strap on my apron.

Got Hardware? Ginger-man cookie cutter, checked. Rolling pin, checked. Hand mixer, checked. Got Software? Ground ginger, checked, Ground cinnamon, checked. Nutmeg, unchecked (uhh !).

See recipe from David's Website (Chez Panisse Gingersnap) here

I sprinkled cinnamon sugar on unbaked cookies. I have no quota on spices so…put them on!

The good thing about ginger cookies is that you can fearlessly play with it. It won’t go bad-shaped. One thing need to be care full is the room temperature that may soften the dough and that cutting and re-rolling becomes a messy task.

Verdict: I smiled when I had a bite. The sweetness is just right. If you roll thinly, it melts in your mouth. I will double ginger and cinnamon power next time. This is just the matter of personal preference. You may stick to recipe and adjust spiciness later on.

Comments from a freind of mine, Kate - "could you please next time don't make cookies resembles human shape ? I feel like a monster biting out those gingerman's litlle arms and legs."

Me - "okay, I'll make them round-shaped next time"

Kate - (silence, grabbed the last gingerman from zipbag) Ngawm..m..ngawm..m (chewing).

Me - 8-^

Miniature Cream Scones (Gourmet Magazine, March 1990)

2008-12-15T06:31:00.000-08:00

Before I gave up, I had to finish this business, baking scones. The first time after two scones-disasters, I finally got nice, light, buttery, flaky scones. Thanks Epicurious for publishing this recipe (it was first published in Gourmet magazine , March 1990).

Ingredients

1/2 C of heavy cream plus additional for brushing the scones (I use egg+1tbsp of milk for brushing)

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 tbsp of sugar plus additional for sprinkling the scone

2 1/4 C of cake flour

1/2 tsp of salt

1 tbsp (or 3 tsp) of double acting baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda.

3/4 stick (6 tablespoons or 90 g) of cold unsalted butter, chopped into tiny bits.

1/2 C of dried currants (I used dark raisins)

In a bowl, whisk together 1/2 C of cream, egg , vanilla and 3 tablespoon of sugar until they combine well. I warmed up cream in microwave so that sugar dissolved easier. In another bowl sift all dry ingredients. I sifted twice so that wet ingredients can soak in quicker.

Now the key procedure, working with butter. I don't have food processor. And I cannot work with my bare hands as they are too warm to smash the butter directly into flour. The bottom line we want is coarse crumbs of flour+butter with the size of small tiny peas. My method is to chop up butter into little pieces, as if you are chopping onion for stir fry (some people use cheese grater, but butter must be freezing cold enough to grate) . No surprise, butter will stick to blade and chopping board, so sprinkle sifted flour, set aside in the bowl, would be a good idea. Once chopped, my butter cubes are just as small as 2 x 2 millimetres (oh yeah, they were that small). Feel free to sprinkle more flour while chopping as these will be all scooped back to the bowl. Once done , in the bowl, use pastry blade to cut in butter and flour mixture to coarse crumbs. This process should be quick as the butter cubes are very very tiny and they incorporate into the flour in shorter time. Be careful not to let butter metl, especially if your kitchen temperature is warmer than 25 C . Luckily, my kitchen was freezing cold, 12 C (imagine next week is Christmas !).

Warm up the oven to 200 C. Put the tray in the middle of the rack, no need to grease the tray.

With the fork, stir wet ingredients into the dry, slowly mix in. Don't over stir. How ? pause every 3-4 strokes and let the wets soak in. You'll see that once you pause, flour absorbs humidity around them and becomes lumbs. Continue stiromg, just until combine. Add raisins or other dried fruits of you choice. Some part of the dough will look a bit sandy or dry, that is okay.

On a lightly flour surface , knead the flour for 30 second , approximately 20 strokes, not more than that. I am a gluten nerd, I would do anything to prevent gluten formation as I don't think anyone likes chewy scones. (right ? right?)

Pat down the dough, roll into ½ inch thick. Make sure you roll it evenly; otherwise, the scone will be tilted when baked in the oven. Cut with cookie cutter, set aside. I used the 1.5 inch diameter cutter, yielded 9 scones.

On pre-heated tray, put scones next to each other, don’t leave spaces. Putting them shoulder-to shoulder will help them rise better (crowd them so they have no choice but to sit straight!) Some website suggests to thumb-press on top of scones to prevent domed structure. I didn’t do that, I forgot.

You can brush with cream as advises in the recipe. I brushed with egg, lightly beaten with 1 tbsp of milk. Be careful not to brush on the side as it prevents the edge to rise. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until brown.

Got Tea?

chocolate mousse

2008-12-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

One day, I got bored and felt like I needed to make something nice out of my my left over creme in my fridge.

I love chocolate and so do my freinds. So , here it goes. Nothing fancy about it.

I was in search of gloossy chocolate frosting. (which obviously, this one is really not). But it does look pretty, doesn't it?