Little Doggie Azuki and Cream Cake with Matcha White Chocolate Hearts

When my friend knew that I was baking for other people, she wanted a bake from me too, especially after seeing my post on the Ombre Matcha White Chocolate Hearts. So I decided to use up my remaining ingredients from the weekend bake to make a cake for her, with lots of Matcha white choc thrown in. She likes dogs and has an absolutely cute one at home so I made a doggie cake for her :). This cake is the result of a failed swiss roll. Can you believe it? It is the first time I baked...

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Orange "Korilakkumma" Ogura Cake

Doesn't it look so comfy snuggling in bed? I fell in love with these cute Japanese Rilakumma bears ever since I saw them. Those huge eyes! My family loves the melt-in-the-mouth, soft ogura cakes, so I was inspired to make these cute orange ogura "bears" for them :)

I adapted the recipe from my turtle matcha ogura cakes with reference to Anncoo Journal's orange ogura recipe, using freshly squeezed orange juice :)

Ingredients (makes one 4" round bowl and a 6" tray)
2 egg yolks + 1/3 whole egg
22g corn oil
37 ml orange juice
1/8 tsp salt

2 egg whites
25g castor sugar
1/6 tsp cream of tartar

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 150^oC. Prepare a tray of water at the bottom of the oven (I used the lowest rack to bake the cake).
2. Whisk egg yolks, whole egg, corn oil, orange juice and salt until well combined.
3. Sift in flour and stir till smooth batter formed.
4. Aliquot out 6 tsp of batter for patterning and divide batter into 3. To 2 of the portions, add charcoal powder till desired colour and a tiny dip of wilton pink coloring for the pink batter. Add 1/3 tsp cake flour to each batter and mix well.
5. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar until foamy using an electric whisk. Add in sugar in 2 additions and beat until firm peaks are formed (or just reach stiff peaks). The peak formed doesn't flop over but it's not overly stiff either. Scoop over meringue over into patterning batter (2 tbsp per 1 tsp batter) and fold gently.
6. Fold in the rest of the meringue into the rest of the batter gently in 2 additions.
7. Pipe the black and pink batter onto the bowl and tray (for the eyes and ear) and bake for 1.5 min, then pipe the plain batter (for the mouth patch) and bake for 1 min.
*Steps 5-7 must work very quickly. If take long to pipe, then best to make meringue with 1 egg white first specially for piping. After that then make meringue for the main cake batter.
8. Pour the cake batter into the glass bowl till 2/3 full and the rest into the tray. Bang the bowls/tray on the counter top 3 times each side to get rid of big air bubbles.
9. Steam bake at 150^oC for 40 min or when skewer comes out clean.
10. Remove from oven and invert immediately on cooling rack.

That's how it looks fresh out of the oven (top), and inverted on the cooling rack (bottom) ^_^

11. Unmould gently with hand and peel off baking sheet when the cakes have cooled completely.

12. Cut out and shape the ears using a combination of cookie cutters and knife carving. “Glue” the parts onto the cake using melted white chocolate.

It was a healthy, loving creation for my family! Hope those big eyes bring a smile to your faces too! ^_^

This post is linked to the event, Little Thumbs up organised by Bake For Happy Kids, and My Little Favourite DIY, hosted by Ann of Anncoo Journal.

With love,

Susanne

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Matcha Azuki Cake with Azuki Cream and Ombre Matcha White Chocolate Hearts -- Birthday and wedding anniversary cakes

My neighbor loved my Matcha Azuki layered cake with Azuki cream so much that she wanted this flavor for her hubby's birthday! So I made this cake with more red bean cream as requested by her and made some green tea white chocolate hearts for decorating the cake, ombre style. A friend knew of it and would like me to make a small cake with the same flavor for her wedding anniversary. I ended up making two cakes for the weekend! My friend has kindly helped to take a nice photo of a slice...

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40 min "Piggies-On-Merry-Go-Round" Azuki Buns

A bread that only takes 40 mins from start to your mouth! How good is that! This 40 min bread has been going around the circles in culinary kitchenette after domestic goddess wannabe shared this lovely recipe and I had to try! Verdict: it does make bread that is really soft and keeps soft next day! Her blog is a must-read for it's excellent troubleshooting guide and tips.

I adapted the recipe to make 6 azuki buns, my family's favourite, and piggy buns, requested by my daughter ^_^. This recipe includes a quick shaping tutorial using cutters for piggies with azuki filling to shape the buns in just 10 mins (inspired by a friend's piggy buns).

Ingredients (makes 6)

1/2 cup plus 1 tbsp warm water
1/6 cup oil
1 tbsp instant yeast
1/8 cup sugar
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 egg
1 3/4 cup bread flour

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 220^oC.

2. In your mixer bowl, combine the water, oil, yeast and sugar (top left) and allow it to rest for 15 minutes to let the yeast come to life (top right). During this time, I divided the azuki paste into 40g balls.
3. Add in salt, egg and flour (bottom left). Using your dough hook, mix and knead until will incorporated (bottom right) and dough is soft and smooth (less than 5 minutes).
4. Oil your hands and work surface so that the dough doesn't stick to them. Shape dough into 6 piggies balls with azuki paste (10 min).

- Roll dough into 2-3mm thick sheet.
- Use a cup (I used McDonald's cola cup) to make 6 big circles for dough and 3 cm round cutter to make 11 small circles.
- For the noses, make 2 small holes using toothpick in 6 of the small circles.
- For the ears, cut 3 of the small circles into quarters (each quarter is a ear).
- For the tiny feet, cut 2 of the small circles into quarters, then further divide each quarter into 2 to make a feet.
- Place each azuki ball into the big circles, seal and pinch tight, and place in a greased 17 cm chiffon tin with its pinched side facing down.
- Stick on the noses, ears and feet.
- Use a toothpick to carve out piggy eyes on the buns.
5. Allow to rest for 10 minutes. Glaze lightly with egg wash.
6. Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.

Don't the piggies look so comfy snuggling together? That's my happy girl eating her piggy bun! :)

With love,
Susanne

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Piggy and Elephant Strawberry Ogura Cupcakes

My animal ogura cupcakes are having a silly conversation! :p Aren't  they kawaii? ^_^ I made them for a dear friend's son who loves cute animals. His favourite was elephant so here is my attempt though I'm not too good with it. She liked pink so strawberry flavour was the natural choice (natural food colouring :)). The recipe was adapted from both my Froggy Pandan Ogura Cakes and Hundred Eighty Degrees strawberry ogura as I didn't have strawberry powder. Ingredients (makes...

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Chendol Agar Agar "Cake"

My hubby who isn't a fan of cakes in general loves chendol so I decided to make a jelly "cake" for his birthday some time last year. Yes, this is an old "bake" but Susanne thinks this is too pretty to keep it to myself :p. This post shows my second attempt, which is an improved version of my first. I tried to incorporate all the components of chendol goodness... sweet red beans, chendol jelly, gula melaka, fragrant pandan, rich coconut milk flavors, all into each bite :).

I made the round jelly in a 4" springform pan and the small slices in a loaf pan. The agar cake is made up of 5 layers. Beginning from the top: clear agar with chendol and red bean jelly designs, caster sugar layer, gula melaka layer, chendol layer and finally, red bean layer. All layers contain coconut milk except for the top layer. Making this is really simple as it does not require any skill (you just need to know how to boil water) but requires patience because you have to wait for each layer to set before pouring the next. The whole process took about 2-3 hours.

To begin, boil some water with pandan leaves for a few minutes to make pandan flavored water. I usually don't count exactly how many leaves. About 1.5L of water and a few leaves cut to 2-3cm strips should suffice. You may vary the amount of sugar and gula melaka used, depending on how sweet you want the dessert to be.

Ingredients:

Red bean jelly decoration
100g pandan water
50g red bean paste (I used homemade one but you can buy red bean paste without oil added)
1 tsp agar powder
10g caster sugar

Red bean jelly layer
50g coconut milk
120g pandan water
50g red bean paste
1 tsp agar powder
10g gula melaka
Pinch of salt

Chendol layer
50g coconut milk
125g pandan water
35g caster sugar
1 tsp agar powder
100g chendol (Discard water in box, scald the chendol jelly in boiling water for a minute and drain)
Pinch of salt

Gula melaka brown layer
50g coconut milk
150g pandan water
40g gula melaka
1 tsp agar powder
Pinch of salt
A few drops of liquid brown food coloring

Caster sugar white layer
50g coconut milk
150g pandan water
35g caster sugar
1 tsp agar powder
Pinch of salt

Clear jelly layer
200g pandan water
35g caster sugar
1 tsp agar powder
Some chendol jelly and red bean jelly decorations

Steps:
1. Prepare the red bean jelly decorations. Boil all the ingredients in a small saucepan until sugar and agar powder dissolves. Pour into loaf pan and let it cool. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes and set aside.
2. Prepare red bean layer. Boil all the ingredients and pour into loaf pan/ springform pan/ mould (if you happen to use). Refrigerate until set. When the layer has set, use a fork to scratch the surface. This is to help the layer on top anchor to the bottom layer. Proceed with the next three layers (chendol, white caster sugar and brown gula melaka) in the same way.
3. Prepare the clear jelly by boiling the pandan water, sugar and agar powder. Line the red bean decorations on top of the white layer and carefully pour the clear jelly over. Add some chendol jelly into the clear jelly layer.
4. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

We had enough to share with our neighbors and they loved it too :).

With love,
Phay Shing

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"Hidden Eggs Garden Hunt" Pandan Chiffon Cakes

A dear friend of mine wanted to give her kids a nice school treat when she was going to do craft with them, so she asked me to bake something related. I decided to do a fun "hidden eggs in the garden" theme to delight the kids with hidden eggs in the chiffon cake. Flower designs in the pandan chiffon would be used to represent the garden.

These cakes took me about 2 days to finish. Using the vanilla layer cake recipe from my earlier post Hidden Rainbow Strawberry Chiffon for Baby Shower, I baked 4 trays of 10"x10" layer cakes with piped or layering designs of different colours. After that, I used egg-shaped and flower cookie cutters to cut out "eggs" and "flowers" for the cake (picture below).

Don't they make you smile? :)

These "eggs" and "flowers" were then baked into the pandan chiffon cake using the same method as my previous post Valentine's Day Hearts-in-all-directions Strawberry Chiffon Cake.

Before I baked my pandan chiffon, I did quite a bit of research into what makes a good pandan chiffon and finally decided on a recipe that incorporated ssb baker's (less cake flour - for moisture and softness), ellena guan's (more egg whites - for softness) and ieatishootipost's (salt and vanilla essence - for the extra flavour). I made sure to use fresh coconut milk and homemade pandan juice and paste from pandan leaves. I was pretty pleased with the soft. fragrant end result, so I thought I'll share the recipe :). Below is the recipe for plain pandan chiffon cake without patterns and hidden designs.

Pandan Chiffon Cake (for 17cm tin)
3 egg yolks
20g sugar
35g corn oil
13ml pandan juice
30ml coconut milk
¼ tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp (2.5ml) pandan paste
60g cake flour
A pinch of salt

Meringue:
4 egg whites
45g sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Method:
1. Prepare fresh pandan juice by blending fresh pandan leaves (10 leaves cut into small pieces, omitting the tips) with 50 ml water. Strain with a sieve and press out all the liquid with a spoon.
2. Preheat oven at 160°C.
3. Beat egg yolks with sugar with whisk till pale yellow before stirring in oil, coconut milk and pandan juice. Add pandan paste and vanilla extract. Mix well.
4. Add in sieved flour and salt and whisk till no trace of flour found.
5. Meringue: Beat the egg whites with ¼ tsp cream of tartar till stiff peak, mixing in caster sugar in 2 additions.
6. Fold in the meringue gently into the batter 1/3 at a time.
7. Pour the batter into the chiffon tin from a height.  

8. Gently tap the tin on table 3x to remove air bubbles
9. Bake the cake for 15 min at 160°C then 35 min at 150°C.
10. Invert immediately once out of the oven to cool
11. Unmould after the cake is cool.

I had fun dressing up the cakes in my new boxes!

I was a little nervous on how the cakes would be received but thank God my friend said that the kids were delighted! She was also really encouraging and generous. I was also really happy that I managed to pack enough "eggs" to appear in every slice of the cake. From this bake, I learnt something about the size/curvature of the hidden objects as there were some small bubbles above "eggs" in some slices, something I did not observe for the hidden hearts or rainbows. Probably next time for larger and more curved objects, I need to bang the tin more to release the bubbles. This was probably my most complex and challenging bake thus far. 

I had enough leftover batter for one small cake, shaped to look like a cross on a hill, to remind the family about God's love displayed through Jesus' death on the cross for our sins.

1 John 4:10. "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins."

Happy Easter to all!

With love,

Susanne

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Mandarin Orange Chiffon Cake with Orange Frosting and Candied Citrus Peel Decorations

My friend was planning a "C" themed party with a few of her colleagues and requested for a pretty cake from me! I was really excited to get started on this project and gave some thought to the design. As I am still new at baking for other people, I didn't want to do something that is too complicated but has to be special and pretty. My mandarin orange chiffon cakes have consistently been getting good reviews so I decided on mandarin orange flavor for the cake. In order to fit in with her...

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"Empty Tomb" Earl Grey Cake

".. on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen." Luke 24:1-6a

This is such good news! We celebrate Easter because Jesus was raised from the dead and had conquered death. I made a simple earl grey ogura cake in the shape of the empty tomb to share with the kids this good news :).

You may scratch your head and say "Is this really ogura cake? It does not look like one!". I agree! It was an experiment I had with baking ogura cake in a chiffon tin (people don't usually do that and I wanted to find out why). And through some unintended "mistakes" and "divine intervention", the cake ended up looking more tomb-like than I envisioned... LOL! I placed the tin on a rack that was probably too high and I whipped the meringue to stiff peaks this time (but not very ramrod stiff). The cake ended up looking like a very "huat" chiffon cake but the texture and softness is unmistakably ogura. It's so soft that the cake can't hold its own weight well!

I adapted the recipe from Ann Low's orange ogura cake. I used a 17cm chiffon tin and a small round bottomed glass bowl to bake the cakes.

Ingredients:
70g fresh milk
2 bags of earl grey tea
45g Canola oil
55g cake flour, sifted
4 egg yolks + 1 whole egg

155g egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
60g caster sugar

Steps:
1. Heat the milk and tea leaves until warm (not boiling) and let the tea leaves steep in the milk. Set aside and cool.
2. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius with a tray of hot water at the bottom rack. Set the rack for the cakes at the second lowest position. I placed mine at the middle. That was probably too high.
3. Whisk egg yolks, egg and oil until frothy. Whisk in tea with milk. Gradually add in sifted flour and whisk until no trace of flour is seen.
4. Beat the egg whites until frothy. Add cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add in sugar and beat until firm peaks form. I beat until stiff peaks form, which explains why the cake did not collapse even though it has very low flour content but cracked like nobody's business at the top.
5. Add one third of the meringue into the egg yolk batter and mix well. Fold in the rest of the meringue in two separate batches quickly but gently. You may find the hand folding method more helpful when folding in the meringue for ogura cakes as the egg yolk batter is more runny than chiffon batter.
6. Spoon 3-4 tbs of batter into the small glass bowl and slowly pour the rest of the batter into the chiffon tin. Bang the chiffon tin on the table a few times to release any trapped air. Put them in the oven and reduce the temperature to 150 degrees Celsius. Bake for 45-50 minutes. Invert to cool.
7. Carefully unmould the cake from chiffon tin using a combination of hand and spatula. Unmould the small cupcake using a metal teaspoon.

8. Cut the big cake into half. You can see it buckling a bit under its own weight because it's really soft.

9. Arrange one half of the big cake and the small cupcake as shown in the photo to form the empty tomb. You may have to cut the cupcake a bit if it is too big to fit the tomb opening. I also had to stuff a bit of cake into the hole of the "tomb" to support its weight as the arch was threatening to collapse.

10. I attached some candied lime peel to form the vine on the tomb using royal icing sugar. The candied peel was left over from my previous bake for my friend's party, which I will blog about soon.

We enjoyed the lovely aroma and softness of this cake very much! The kids also recognize at once what I was trying to depict using the cakes because the assembly really looks like an empty tomb!

May we find joy that we can be sure of our salvation because Jesus did rise from the dead, not only during this Easter season, but everyday of our lives :).

With love,
 Phay Shing

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Froggy Pandan Ogura Cakes

I really love the soft, cottony texture of ogura cakes, so I absolutely had to try the pandan version! I was inspired to bake ogura froggies for my little kids and couldn't resist experimenting patterning with ogura batter. I adapted the recipe from Cooking Pleasure for pandan zebra ogura but halved the original recipe which was for a 9-inch tin. I pre-piped the eyes, mouth and cheeks and then baked the ogura cake over them. Don't the froggies look happy basking in the sun? :) Pandan...

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Heart-Shaped Hot Cross Buns

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16 I was thinking about this well known Bible verse as Good Friday approaches and wondered what meaningful bake I can do to remind the kids about God's love displayed through Jesus' death on the cross for our sins. Shops are stocking up on chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies as Easter approaches, and I thought it would be good to teach my kids from young...

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Earl Grey Salted Caramel Teddy and Koala Macarons

We were walking past a macaron shop in town and the kids reminded me that I "owe" them a macaron bake and hubby found the salted caramel macaron particularly attractive. I said it would be cheaper if I made them instead of buying from a shop that sells something which can be finished in a bite but costs a meal. And that was how this bake came about :). Can you believe that I made these earl grey salted caramel bears with a batter that has way too much water content? I will share how I...

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Black Sesame Panda Bread

I am always on a quest to look for good recipes to make soft and fluffy bread and I think I found one from The Baking Bee with the Breadtalk pork floss bun recipe. I copied the recipe with some minor changes since I don't have milk powder at home. I also reduced the amount of sugar as I prefer bakes that are less sweet. Instead of a plain loaf, I decided to have some fun and hide a panda face in it ;). See the panda staring at you from every slice! ...

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