Naturally Coloured Rainbow Iced Gems Biscuits

I have the honour of baking some items for the dessert table at one of my church's event :). Rainbow coloured iced gems is one of them. All coloured naturally with purees, juices or plant extracts!!

I thought this fits the event theme of "Colour God's world" well as I colour these little treats with items from God's creation. These treats are also flavoured naturally, unlike Khong Guan types that are vanilla flavoured only. As Victoria of Victoria Bakes can attest, these iced gems taste really close to what you get commercially except that you can tell it's homemade with the rustic biscuit base. These biscuits were served along with Pandan kaya gula melaka flower pot cupcakes and Christian themed Easter macarons.

I have made naturally coloured iced gems before. You may check out my orange iced gems and mixed berry iced gems. I strongly recommend you to refer to my original old school iced gems biscuits post for more notes on what you have to take note of when making these little treats.

There's
Pink: raspberry puree
Orange: concentrated orange juice
Yellow: concentrated lemon juice
Green: Pandan juice
Blue: lychee puree coloured with blue pea flower
Purple: blackberry and blueberry puree with blue pea flower

The orange and yellow colours needed some help to get a stronger hue so I added a few drops of natural liquid food colouring from Queen's.

Biscuit recipe (makes about 100 biscuits cut out with 2cm round cookie cutter)
Ingredients:
105g plain flour
15g icing sugar
1/16tsp salt
1.5 tsp baking powder
36g vegetable shortening (you may replace with unsalted butter if you prefer buttery flavour but original iced gems is not buttery)
42g fresh milk (may not use up all of it)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Steps:
1. Sift the first 4 items together. Preheat oven to 170°C fan mode.
2. Rub in shortening until mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

3. Add vanilla to milk. Gradually add milk to mixture until a dough is formed. You may not need all of the milk.
4. Roll dough to about 3mm thick. Use a 2cm round cutter to cut out circles and place on baking tray lined with baking paper.

5. Bake for 13-15 minutes or until golden brown, rotating tray halfway through baking. Cool completely before icing or storing in airtight container.

Freshly baked! Looking rustic!

Royal icing
190g icing sugar
14g meringue powder
1.25 tsp of juice or puree for each colour.

Purees/juices
Raspberry puree:
Press fresh or frozen thawed raspberry through sieve

Concentrated orange juice:
Squeeze orange juice and let it sit in fridge for a couple of days with paper towel covering. This allows water to evaporate from the juice. Add a few drops of orange emulco.

Concentrated lemon juice:
Boil juice of a large lemon for a few minutes with its zest using low heat. Sieve the juice. Add a few drops of lemon paste

Pandan juice:
Blend and sieve Pandan leaves with some water. Let the liquid settle in fridge for a few days. Use the dark green liquid settled at bottom

Lychee puree with blue pea flower:
Blend and sieve some canned lychees. Soak some blue pea flowers in puree overnight in fridge. Remove flowers and squeeze out puree from flowers

Blackberry and blueberry puree:
Same preparation as raspberry. You may want to mix in a little blue lychee puree and raspberry puree to liven up the purple hue.

Note: orange zest can't be used in royal icing due to the oil in the zest. The icing won't be able to harden.

Steps:
1. Sift together icing sugar and meringue powder. Divide into six equal portions.

2. Add 1.25 tsp of puree or juice into each portion. Use a hand whisk to whisk continuously for 6 minutes. Stiff peaks should form. This will give your arm a good workout! You may use electric mixer for this if you prefer but it's optional.

3. Transfer icing into piping bags fitted with a star tip. Pipe small dollops onto biscuits and some on baking sheet.

4. Dry in oven with fan on at 60°C for a few hours or until icing is dry. Take a piece of icing on the baking sheet and bite into it. If it is dried all the way to the center, it should be done. Do taste test the iced biscuits as well. If they are not crispy, dry for a longer time in the oven.

Piping icing with star tip

I had plenty of extra icing as I used about 1.5x the recipe I typed here.

All packed!

Extra candy!!

Thank God that these were very well received! This is the last post for my series on high tea bakes for the theme "Colour God's world". Hope these colourful and meaningful bakes have delighted you as much as it had delighted the recipients!

With lots of love,
Phay Shing

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Safari Themed Macarons with Milo Swiss Meringue Buttercream

I have a request for safari themed macarons. Any animal and quantity at my convenience.... My kind of request when I have many other macarons to bake as well :). Thankful to have such a thoughtful requester! These were baked as and when I had the capacity while I baked for the creative macaron book. There are hippos, zebras, tigers and giraffes :)

For your convenience, I will just type out the recipe.

Ingredients:
200g almond powder/ground almond, preferably superfine
200g icing sugar
200g caster sugar
160g egg whites, divide into two equal portions
1/8 tsp white powder colouring (optional)
1 tsp carrot powder (optional)
1 tsp Queen's natural sourced yellow food colouring powder (optional)
1/3 tsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp charcoal powder
Yellow, blue and orange gel food colouring
75 ml water

Here's a photo of the carrot powder my hubby bought from Akari at Anchorpoint!

Steps:
1. Make the mass. Sift together icing sugar and almond powder. Add 80g of egg white and mix well to form a thick paste.
2. Divide the mass into the ratio of 2:2:2:2:1:1 for white:blue:orange:yellow:brown:grey.
3. Add sifted natural powder colouring to the respective masses and mix well. Add additional gel food colouring to get the desired shade. It is optional to use natural food colouring if you don't have but it helps to reduce the amount of artificial colouring needed. Here's how the orange mass looks like when coloured with just carrot powder...

4. Make the Italian meringue. Heat caster sugar and water in a small sauce pan without stirring until the syrup temperature reaches 115°C. In the mean time, beat 80g of egg whites in a clean metal bowl with electric mixer at medium-low speed until foamy and opaque. Do not beat past the soft peak stage. Turn the mixer speed down if necessary to keep egg whites moving. Once syrup reaches 115°C, remove from heat, turn mixer speed up to medium-high and slowly pour the syrup into the egg whites. Keep beating for 10 minutes until meringue is stiff, glossy and cool.
5. Divide the meringue into the ratio for the various colours, or follow this formula that I use for meringue: mass ratio by weight, I.e. weight of meringue/weight of mass=0.55. By following this formula, you will end up with a little meringue leftover, which can be used to stick the baking paper onto the tray. Fold the meringue into the masses in two additions, with the first addition using about a third of the portion. Do watch my video demo for the macaronage process and how to test if the batter is ready. Fold until batter moves in a slow-moving lava-like manner.

6. Transfer batter into piping bags fitted with a Wilton #10 tip for most of the piping, except for fine parts where you may want to transfer about 1-2 tbs of batter into piping bags fitted with a Wilton #5 tip. You may refer to the video tutorials here for piping simple shapes and here for piping complex shapes. Remember to bang the tray a few times on the table after piping.

Zebra piped!

Hippo piped!

Tiger and giraffe piped! Ok I must admit that the number of animals is not the same for each type because I made these while baking macarons for my creative macaron book:p

7. Dry the piped shells under a fan or in an aircon room for 1-2 hours or until the shell is dry to touch.
8. Bake in preheated oven at 130°C for 17-22 minutes for white and light blue shells and 135°C for 17-22 minutes for orange and yellow shells with oven rack set at lowest or second lowest position. Bake for a few minutes more at 120°C if the shells are still stuck to the baking sheet. Let the shells cool before removing from baking sheet. They should be able to come off the sheets easily if properly baked.

Baked shells!

Decorate the shells with royal icing and edible marker.

I made a few bears as well!

Fill the macarons with Milo swiss meringue buttercream. Recipe for the buttercream can be found here.

Refrigerate the macarons in an airtight container for at least 24h before serving.

Another look at these assembled cutie pies!

All packed and ready to party!

With love,
Phay Shing

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Barnyard Farm Animals Tier Chiffon Cake

This is my first attempt making a chiffon cake Barnyard with so many chiffon cake Farm animals! I was rather nervous about so much detailing required for the various animals and barnyard, so thank God for really helping me through this! The animals were cut and carved from small chiffon cake pops and I took 1 day to bake and 1 full day of carving and assembly for the various animals. In addition, I made a ‘Moo-moo’ top tier with Vanilla chiffon cake and Charcoal black patches, as well as a ‘Sky-green grass’ bottom tier with Vanilla Blue pea flowers chiffon cake (on top) and Pandan chiffon cake (below), and fencing made of Chocolate chiffon cake strips. The Barnyard was made from Strawberry Chiffon Cake. These took another 1.5-2 days. Really thank God the cake was very well-received in terms of taste and looks. Happy Birthday to Janelle!!

With lots of love,
Susanne

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'Rainbow over Lake' Rainbow Tiers Chiffon Cake

This is a very special cake for a dear friend’s Rainbow Baby's manyue. The baby is the beautiful Rainbow after the rain and God’s special gift because God Heard. As I knew her personally, the Rainbow Baby and the cake has special meaning to me and all of her family and friends who love her.

The top is inspired by a Rainbow arching over a Lake after the rain. I made the center hole of the chiffon cake into a lake with blue cake. Too bad it can't be clearly seen from this picture angle.

The tiers making up the chiffon cake are made from Rainbow colors from the top to the bottom. The different tiers have different flavors as I prefer to use natural food coloring to reduce the amount of coloring used. I also thought that it would be nice to have a multi-flavored cake so that there’s a flavor for everyone and also the multi-flavored Lego chiffon cakes were well-liked.

The top tier is made from Strawberry chiffon cake, the orange layer is made from Orange chiffon cake. The second tier is Lemon chiffon cake with zest, and the green layer is Pandan chiffon cake. The bottom tier is Vanilla chiffon cake with Blue pea flowers. The flowers themselves are not vibrant enough so I had to top up with gel food colouring, and lastly the purple layer is made from Blueberry chiffon cake (remember to filter the juice). I had to bake many rounds of different chiffon cakes and it’s my first time baking so many different types on a big scale, so needless to say, after a while I was trying hard not to get confused and it took one tiring day just to bake finish everything.

I hope it will be a special memory for them. Super thankful she shared everyone loved the cake! There was lots of love seen at the party too. 

Happy full month to Rainbow Baby Samantha!! You are dearly loved.

The recipe for a smaller cute version of the Rainbow Tiers Chiffon Cake is now in Creative baking: Chiffon Cakes. You can find a detailed recipe with picture guide on how to make it there.

With lots of love,
Susanne

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Apple Strawberry Chiffon Cupcake 'Apples'

After a couple of months busy with requests for cakes, mooncakes or cookies, I finally have a week free! Yay! Time to bake things on my to-bake list that have been sitting there for a long time! Ever since my first attempt at making apple look-alike cupcakes half a year ago, I have been contemplating trying them again with a different recipe that is less dense, more chiffon-like.

Can you tell which is real and which are cakes?

Now that I am more aware of other natural coloring options, I tried using a combination of them with a pinch of artificial red to achieve vibrant red apples. These are pretty quick and easy to make if you are making a small batch. Baking these in large quantities for parties would require a few rounds of baking as some "art and craft" with batter is required.

The recipe is adapted from any generic chiffon cake recipe with a flour to liquid ratio of about 65%.

Ingredients (makes about 6-8 cupcakes):
Egg yolk batter
2 egg yolks (65g eggs with shell on)
15g caster sugar
28g canola oil (or any vegetable oil)
34g applesauce
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp cinammon powder
A pinch of salt
40g cake flour

Food coloring/ flavoring*
1/2 tsp strawberry paste
1/2 tsp beetroot powder
1/4 tsp red yeast powder
1/8 tsp red color powder
Yellow gel food coloring

Meringue
3 egg whites
45g caster sugar
1/5 tsp cream of tartar

Steps:
1. Prepare the applesauce or you can use store bought ones. I made mine ahead of time for another bake. As it was quite coarse, I had to sieve it first. If you prefer bits of apple in your cake you can skip the sieving. The recipe for applesauce can be found here.

2. Preheat the oven to 160°C. Place 6-8 round-bottomed glass bowls (8.5cm in diameter, 6.5cm in height) on a tray.

3. Make the egg yolk batter. Whisk egg yolks and sugar together until it turns pale and sugar has dissolved. Add oil and whisk until thick and well combined. Add applesauce and vanilla extract and whisk until well combined. Gradually add in sifted flour, salt and cinnamon powder and whisk until no trace of flour is seen.

4. Divide the egg yolk batter into 2 portions. Add a tiny dip of yellow gel coloring into one. Add strawberry paste, beetroot powder, red yeast powder and red powder into the other. Mix well. *If it is difficult for you to get natural food colouring or any of the above coloring ingredients, just use whatever you have to achieve a desired dark shade of red.

5. Prepare the meringue. In a clean metal bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar and beat until stiff peaks form and the bowl can be overturned without the meringue falling out. Gently but quickly fold in the meringue into each egg yolk batter in 3 additions using a spatula.

6. Fill the glass bowls in the following manner:

Begin with a teaspoonful of yellow batter at the bottom of the bowl. Add a teaspoonful of red batter on the left and right side of the dollop of yellow batter. Add a teaspoonful of yellow batter at the top and bottom of the dollop of batter. Spoon red batter around circumference of bowl and fill the middle with yellow batter. Fill the bowls until about 1/2-2/3 full.

7.  Dip a chopstick into the centre of the bowl and drag it radially outwards to create the pattern of the apple skin. Repeat until you have completed one round of the bowl. Drag the chopstick down towards the centre sometimes to create a more natural look. You can observe the marbling effect by looking through the glass bowl. Clean the chopstick before proceeding to the next bowl. Try to work quickly to prevent the egg whites from breaking down too much.

8. Bake at 160°C for 15 minutes followed by 150°C for 10-15 minutes or until skewer comes out clean. Immediately invert onto cooling rack. If your cakes rise above the rim, cool upright first until they shrink below the rim, then invert to cool.

9. Carefully unmould by hand and place cake onto paper cupcake holders. Gently press the tops of the cakes down a little at the centre with your finger or a chopstick. You may want to pinch in the base of the cakes so that it doesn't flare out so much.

Insert a piece of cinnamon stick in the middle and you are done! Remember to store the cakes in airtight containers to prevent them from drying out if you are not consuming them immediately.

Update: my neighbour whom I gave the "apples" to said that the cakes were moist and soft :).

This post is linked to Little Thumbs Up event organized by Bake For Happy Kids with My Little Favourite DIY & hosted this month by  I-Lost in Austen.

With love,
Phay Shing

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Pastel Rainbow Chiffon Cake

The recipe for this Rainbow Chiffon Cake is now in Creative baking: Chiffon Cakes and makes the cover! Very happy that my Rainbow Chiffon has now been popularized all over Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and many other countries though the cookbook! 

My Rainbow Chiffon Cake has also been featured in Motherhood magazine Feb 2016 issue (below) and Smartparents.sg (formerly Mother & Baby) (Mar 2016). Even Polar has started to introduce this into their range (June 2016). Why don't you try it too? :)

At the time I made this cake (in 2014), it was thought not possible to make 6 neat rainbow layers in a chiffon cake!

Presenting my first Rainbow chiffon cake with 6 colours!

This Rainbow chiffon was made for one of my besties from MGS for her daughter's "manyue"-cum-Daddy's birthday.

Hope you will enjoy it too! 

With lots of love,

Susanne

Creative baking: Chiffon Cakes: step-by-step pictures for each step, available in all major bookstores, and on Amazon, Book Depository and Kinokuniya online. The cookbook made Straits times best seller's list in Feb 2016!

Motherhood magazine (Feb 2016)

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