Lego Chiffon Cake

This is a lego chiffon cake I made for my cutest son-in-law who just turned 3 years old! Erm.. as for why I have such a young sil.. that's another long story altogether! Haha :p

This is an updated and improved version from my 4-flavour Lego Chiffon Blocks, mostly in terms of the natural food colouring. Over the past months, I have discovered Bunga Telang flowers that makes wonderful blue colouring (top row in collage below) as well as blueberry powder (second row in collage) and beet (together with red yeast powder, bottom row) for intense purple and red natural colouring. For the green colour, I used a combination of home-made (from blended pandan leaves' juice allowed to settle overnight) as well as store-bought pandan paste for the colour. The different sectors are hence different flavoured to make use of the natural food colouring like the original post. I was also able to borrow my lovely friend Evon's square chiffon tin, so I was able to bake a taller chiffon cake. Like the previous post, I used aluminium foil as separators and removed them before baking.

Top to bottow: Blue, purple, green and red.

The picture below shows the colour of the batter from the natural food colouring alone. Really not bad at all! Mainly the blue colour needed adjustment from blue colouring.

The yellow block above was made from orange chiffon cake, coloured with orange juice and orange paste, and then adjusted with yellow colouring (cake batter is already yellow so not a lot is required). 

It is actually quite a challenge to get the different sectors straight, looking like blocks! I had to bake twice in order to get a chiffon I felt was good enough ^_^". I also had a little bit of browning for the purple chiffon at the corner so I ended up painting a bit with blueberry powder in water. But thank God it turned out well. Happy birthday to Joash!!

Thanksgiving: 

Thank God that the chiffon cake was very well-received! This message below was taken from my friend's whatsapp. I am really so thankful for the message! 

With lots of love,

Susanne

30/8/2014

This is another Lego chiffon cake I made with a different colour scheme inspired by Lego Legends of Chima. I just wanted to share this cake because I find black much better for natural food colouring than purple (which may possibly have some browning). 2 tsp of charcoal powder is all that is needed to do the trick :).

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Longevity Peach Pandan Kaya Cake

My friend requested for a longevity peach birthday cake. I was hesitant to agree to bake this at first as I knew that it would be tricky to form the shape of peaches without using fondant. In some cases, they were not cakes at all but steamed buns. When I had an inspiration and came up with decent longevity peaches made in the form of snowskin mooncakes, I was more confident that it's possible to make this without relying on fondant. Here's my longevity peach pandan kaya cake!

I chose pandan kaya as the cake flavor as I feel that this mellow Asian flavor goes well with the mature theme of longevity peach. My previous pandan kaya bake was very well received so I will be using the same recipe for the fudge but change the pandan cake to a regular pandan chiffon recipe instead of using the cooked dough method. This elimimates the use of butter too.

Making this cake involves baking the pandan cake layers, baking the patterned cake (for the words), making the snowskin peach mooncakes, making the pandan kaya fudge and assembling everything. As you can see this involves many steps so needless to say, this took me a few days to complete as I have other duties as well. This will be a long post so bear with me :p. If you are making a simple pandan kaya cake you can skip all the unnecessary instructions.

Recipe for making pandan juice
Ingredients:
16-20 pandan leaves (I didn't actually count but used 2 small bunches.)
100ml cool boiled water

Steps:
1. Wash and cut the leaves into 1cm pieces.
2. Place the leaves together with water in a blender and blend until the leaves become mush.
3. Sieve the blended leaves with a fine meshed sieve.
4. Place the blended leaves in a clean cloth and squeeze as hard as you can to extract as much juice as you can. Discard the leaves.
5. Let the juice collected settle in a transparent bowl/container in the fridge for a couple of days. Use the dark green part settled at the bottom for the 9" pandan cake layers and the top clear liquid for the patterned pandan cake.

Recipe for two 9" round pandan cake layers
Ingredients:
Pandan egg yolk batter
4 large egg yolks
20g caster sugar
46g vegetable oil
25g pandan juice
42g coconut milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp pandan flavoring (optional)
76g cake flour
1/8 tsp salt

Meringue
6 egg whites*(divide ingredients for meringue into 2)
60g sugar
1/2 tsp cream of tartar

Steps:
1. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius.**( Preheat to 160 degrees Celsius if you are using an aluminium pan. I only had a black non-stick 9" springform pan so the temperature has to be lower to avoid over browning). Line the base of the tin with baking sheet.
2. Prepare the egg yolk batter. Whisk egg yolks and sugar until pale and all the sugar has dissolved. Add oil and whisk until thick and well combined. Add pandan juice, coconut milk, vanilla extract, pandan flavoring and salt. Mix until well combined. Gradually add in sifted flour and whisk until no trace of flour is seen.

3. Divide the egg yolk batter into 2 equal portions.
4. Prepare one portion of meringue (3 egg whites). In a clean metal bowl, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer 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.
5. Fold the meringue into one portion of egg yolk batter in three additions. Fold until no trace of egg white is seen but be careful not to deflate the egg whites by using quick but gentle strokes.

6. Slowly pour the batter into the 9" pan to pop any trapped air bubbles. Tap the pan a few times on the table to release any more trapped air.
7. Bake for 16-18 minutes or until skewer comes clean. Let it cool for a couple of minutes in the pan before turning it out onto cooling rack to cool. Cool the cake with a fresh sheet of baking sheet over it.

I love the natural green color!

8. Repeat steps 4-7 for the other cake.

You may store the cakes in the freezer after wrapping them in cling wrap and storing in airtight bag/ container until it is time to assemble.

Recipe for patterned pandan cake
You will end up having excess cake but for simplicity I just used the same recipe and portion as the above, except that I used the clear liquid of the pandan juice instead of the dark green part. Portion of ingredients for cake base is the same as the above.

Ingredients for pattern:
Red batter
1/4 tsp beet root juice powder (replace with red gel food coloring if you don't have)
1/2 tsp cake flour
1 tsp egg yolk batter (taken from main batter)
3 tbs meringue

Black batter
1/4 tsp charcoal powder
1/4 tsp cake flour
1 tsp egg yolk batter
3 tbs meringue

Meringue for pattern
1 egg white
A pinch of cream of tartar
10g caster sugar

Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Line base of 10" square cake pan with template and baking sheet over template. Grease the baking sheet with oil.
2. Make the egg yolk batter using the 2 yolk 3 egg white recipe in the previous section (just half everything).
3. Prepare the red and black batter by first mixing all ingredients well excluding the meringue. Prepare the meringue for the pattern and fold into each colored batter.

4. Transfer the colored batter into piping bags fitted with wilton #3 tip. Pipe the patterns following the template. Usually I would pipe a thick layer to ensure good transfer of pattern onto cake but because the details are fine,  I couldn't do so to prevent smudging (I have backup plan for touching up if it turns out ugly.)
5. Bake for 1.5-2 minutes or until dry.

I must admit that the final one wasn't this one. I overbaked this one and re-did the pattern. Didn't take photo of the second attempt.
6. Prepare the meringue for the main batter. Fold in in three additions. Transfer a small amount into piping bag and pipe the batter into spaces between details that are fine in the pattern to prevent air bubbles from forming. Slowly pour the rest of the batter over. Tap the pan a few times on the table to release trapped air.
7. Bake for 14-15 minutes or until skewer comes out clean. Immediately remove cake from pan and gently peel baking sheet off. Cool with another sheet over it.
8. Cut the design out, wrap with cling wrap and store in freezer until time to assemble.

This is not perfect especially since it's made from second round of patterning and the batter had been in the piping bag for a few minutes. But this will do fine with some touching up after assembly. Still learning :).

Recipe for longevity peach snowskin mooncake

Please refer to my previous post for this. I won't type it out here to prevent this post from being uncecessarily long. The only difference was I boiled some water with pandan leaves instead of using pandan flavoring. Just to share some photos...

Recipe for pandan kaya fudge
Ingredients:
(A)
478g coconut milk
250ml pandan water (boil a few leaves with 1L of water)
115g caster sugar
1/2 tbs + 3/8 tsp agar powder
1/2 tsp liquid green food coloring
1/6 tsp liquid yellow food coloring

(B)
47g custard powder
250ml water
1/6 tsp salt

Steps:
1. Mix (B) and stir well.
2. Mix (A) in a sauce pan and bring to a boil using low heat. Keep stirring.
3. Gradually pour (B) into (A) while stirring continously. It is important to pour slowly and stir continously to avoid lumps in the custard. Stir (B) before pouring into (A) as the custard powder would have settled. Cook until mixture thickens a bit.

Assembling cake
1. Place the patterned cake top side down in the 9" springform pan and carefully pour some fudge around and over it using a ladle. Cover the cake until the fudge layer is level.
2. Place a plain pandan cake in the pan and carefully scoop some fudge to cover the space between the cake and pan. Cover the cake with fudge until completely covered.
3. Place the other piece of pandan cake in the pan and fill the sides with fudge. Refrigerate for 2 hours.

4. Carefully unmould the cake from the springform pan and place the cake on cakeboard. I accidentally made a hole in the fudge when removing the base. *Sigh* have to touch up later.

5. As my patterned cake needed touching up, this was the time to do so. This step is optional if you have done the previous steps perfectly. I made some red paint using milk powder, beet root juice powder, red gel coloring and water. The black paint was made using charcoal powder and water. I added a black border to the words to improve contrast and used a brighter shade of red. Starting to look better *phew*. I melted some leftover fudge with low heat over the stove and patched the hole in the fudge.

6. Add dessicated coconut onto the cake on the sides and top (optional).

7. Arrange some longevity peaches on top. Use toothpicks to anchor the peaches to the cake and warn the cake recipients about it ;).

Finished at last! Be sure to keep the cake in the fridge until ready to serve.

My friend said the cake was delicious and has kindly taken some photos of the cake. Here's how it looks like sliced.

There was a pastry chef at the birthday party who sampled the cake and this was his comment:

 "Sponge cake is soft,  texture is very smooth, side coconut flakes are of right quantity not overkilled, pandan kaya fragrance significant!"

He gave a thumbs up! :D The cake was finished quickly and the kids snapped up all the peaches.

Thank God it was well received even though there were hiccups along the way!

With love,
Phay Shing

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Rainbow Shortbread Cookies

I made these colorful rainbow shortbread cookies for my younger kid to share with his friends in school. Kids love them and they are so easy to make!

The basic shortbread recipe contains just 3 ingredients: sugar, butter and flour in the ratio of 1:2:3. Thank you Guai Shu Shu for this very helpful tip! I shall not forget the recipe for shortbread from now on! I followed the recipe wholesale from that blog so I will not type it out here. I will instead show you how to make the rainbows :).

You begin by portioning the dough into 6 portions and coloring them with gel food coloring:
Red - 81g
Orange - 69g
Yellow - 56g
Green - 44g
Blue - 31g
Purple - 19g

I worked out the math for you so you don't have to figure out how to portion each color :). To make your life easier, place the dough into quart sized ziplock bags. You can even work at coloring the dough while reading the newspaper, which I did! Place the dough in the fridge after you are done. The dough can keep up to a few days in the fridge so if you need to run off to do something, you can just chuck the dough into the fridge without having to worry that your bake will fail.

Make another small batch of uncolored dough using 1g of icing sugar, 2g of butter and 3g of plain flour, and put it in another ziplock bag. Roll this into a thin log with the width of the ziplock bag as a guide. Refrigerate this dough until it becomes rigid.

Take the purple colored dough out of the fridge and leave it out for about 5 minutes. Roll it flat with the dough still in the bag, filling the whole width but not the length of the bag. Cut the bag open and wrap the uncolored dough with the purple dough. Cover the whole assembly with the cut opened ziplock bag and put it in the fridge. Proceed with the blue dough and so on. I have used the yellow dough to illustrate this process:

This is how a completed rainbow log should look like:

Again, you may store the cookie dough log in the fridge until you are ready to bake the cookies. Perfect recipe for busy people who can only afford short periods of baking time! Just make sure that you keep the dough tightly wrapped to prevent it from drying out.

When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Cut the log into 15 slices, and cut each slice into two to form rainbows. If the dough gets too soft to work with, place it back in the fridge for 5 minutes before resuming your work. Place the cookie dough on a baking tray lined with baking sheet:

You may wish to cut out the center uncolored dough if that's what you prefer. It is necessary to include that in the log of dough for shaping the rainbow. Bake it for 15-20 minutes and you are done! Just be careful not to overbake or the colors will not show up well.

Enjoy!

Update: I made these cookies again but with clouds added! Use 160°C to bake instead to prevent the cookies from browning. You may replace some plain flour with cornflour for a more tender bite.

With love,
Phay Shing

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Mickey Mouse Vanilla Chiffon Cake

This cake was created for a very special boy who loves Mickey Mouse. He has a smile that melts hearts and looked absolutely adorable with Mickey ears on his birthday! 

The base of the cake was made from vanilla chiffon cake coloured mostly with beetroot. The mickey mouse head and shoes were made from the same vanilla chiffon cake recipe, but with batter divided into black and yellow in 2:1 ratio baked in a big round mould and 2 smaller bowls.

Recipe for the base vanilla (beetroot) chiffon cake is below:

Vanilla Chiffon Cake (17 cm chiffon tin)
3 egg yolks
20g sugar
39g vegetable oil
36 ml boiled water
5 tsp beetroot powder (dissolved in boiled water above)
6 ml vanilla extract
60g cake flour

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

1. Preheat oven to 160°C.
2. Beat egg yolks with sugar with whisk till pale yellow before stirring in oil, water (with 5 tsp beetroot powder dissolved in it) and vanilla extract.
3. Add in sieved flour and whisk till no trace of flour found. I further added some red yeast powder/red colouring to adjust the red hue deeper as beet may turn out pink or brown if insufficient.
4. Meringue: Beat the egg whites with ¼ tsp cream of tartar till stiff peak, mixing in caster sugar in 2 additions.
5. Fold the meringue into the red batter 1/3 at a time and gently pour into the chiffon tin from a height. Gently tap tin on table 3x to remove air bubbles.
6. Bake the chiffon tin to 160°C for 15 min then at 150°C for 30 min.
7. Invert the chiffon tin once it removed from oven and leave to cool on a cooling rack.
8. Unmould the chiffon cake by hand. Gently pull the cake from the sides of the tin at each angle and push the removable base up to unmould the sides. To unmould the cake from the base, gently lift up the cake from the base using hands, repeating this at each angle before turning the base over. (Watch The Baking Biatch for an excellent video tutorial on hand unmoulding chiffon cakes).

Freshly unmoulded vanilla (beetroot) chiffon cake!

And then I filled the chiffon hole with mini oreo cookies for a hidden surprise! ^_^

Using the same vanilla chiffon cake recipe, divide the batter 2:1 and add 1.5 tsp charcoal powder (to black) and a dip of yellow colouring (to yellow). I baked the black chiffon cake in a 14 cm round mould and the yellow chiffon cake in 2 smaller bowls with OD 11 cm filled to 2/3 full. The baking conditions for the large round mould was 15 min at 160°C and then 20-25 min at 150°C, and that of the smaller bowls were 15 min at 160°C and then 15 min at 150°C respectively. The remaining black batter was just nice for a small 6-inch tray cake (baked for 15 min at 160°C) from which I cut out the ears later. Unmould all the cakes by hand in a similar manner to the chiffon tin by gently pulling the cake from the moulds and flipping it over. After the cakes were unmoulded, I made 2 small slits into the black cake on top and secured the ears into the slits using melted chocolate. 

Tada! My Mickey mouse... almost!

The finishing touches were made by painting white buttons onto the base vanilla chiffon cake. First make a paint-like paste using a mixture of royal icing and snow powder. Then use a fine brush to apply it on.

Here’s the Mickey mouse cake for the special boy!

And one last note: the oreo cookies will become a little soft after a day with the cake even airtight so make sure to add them in on the actual day itself! This is something I learnt from hindsight :p.

Happy birthday to Kinley!

This post is linked to the event, Little Thumbs Up organised by Bake for Happy Kids and My Little Favourite DIY, and hosted by Diana from the Domestic Goddess Wannabe.

With love,
Susanne

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Ombre Lime Chiffon Cake with Lime Curd & Cream Daisies

After my aunt saw the ombre lime chiffon cake with lime curd and cream that I baked a while ago, she wanted one too! Just for fun! Since it's not for any special occassion, I decided not to do the layers the "leceh" (troublesome) way with a few rounds of baking and washing, but instead take a risk and do it the way that Susanne did for her Ombre Hello Kitty birthday cake with one round of baking. My aunt is keen on trying it with lime curd so I had to come up with a creative way of including the curd without hiding all that ombre. So here it is! A lime flavored ombre green field with daisies!

Do pardon the amateurish piping :p

Close up view of a daisy against a background of different shades of green!

The recipe is adapted from Susanne's rainbow chiffon cake but I decided to scale it down to see if it works with large eggs. I find it's still better to stick with her 5 yolk 7 white recipe for a 17cm chiffon tin after baking this but I will just type out what I used here. I decided not to stick with my original cooked dough recipe as I personally prefer the more bouncy texture of regular chiffon, although the cooked dough method yields a very soft cake and goes well with multiple separate layers of cake and cream.

I didn't make a fresh batch of lime curd as I still had some leftover from the previous round that I froze. Recipe for yummy and super smooth lime curd and cream can be found here. I used non-dairy cream as I had some on hand as well that needs to be used up. Lazy me! :p

Ingredients (makes one 17cm ombre chiffon cake):
4 large egg yolks (65-68g)
24g caster sugar
52g canola oil
30g fresh milk
26g lime juice
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
Zest of 2 limes
80g cake flour
Green and brown gel food coloring

5.5 egg whites (use 6 if you find it troublesome to measure)
50g caster sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Steps:
1. Wrap the 17cm chiffon tin with homemade cake strips made out of wet newspaper wrapped in aluminium foil. (Optional but it helps the cake to rise slowly and results in a taller cake. Reduce baking time by 5-10 minutes if you are not using.) Preheat oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Place the oven rack at the second lowest position.

2. Use a hand whisk to beat the egg yolks and sugar until pale and all the sugar has dissolved. Add oil and mix well until thick. Add in fresh milk, vanilla extract, lime juice and salt. Whisk until well combined.  Gradually sift in flour and whisk until no trace of flour is seen. Mix in lime zest.

3. Divide batter into 5 equal portions and add in green/ brown coloring into 4 of them with varying shades of green.

4. Prepare the meringue. Beat egg whites with elextric mixer in a clean metal bowl 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. Quickly but gently fold in the meringue into all 5 portions of egg yolk batter in three additions. This may be tricky.

5. Carefully scoop the batter with darkest shade of green into the chiffon tin and gently level it with a teaspoon. Repeat with the other shades of green from darkest to lightest shade. This is my first time doing it and I tried to work as quickly as I could but I think it's still a little too slow as the batter did not fill the tin as much as I expected for a 4 egg yolk recipe.

6. Tap the tin a few times on the table and bake for 20 minutes before reducing the temperature to 150 degrees Celsius and baking for another 30 minutes. Immediately invert the tin to cool. Carefully unmould by hand. I managed to unmould the sides beautifully but got impatient and used the spatula for the base. Ended up with a slightly shaggy appearance for the base. O well :p.

7. I piped some daisies with lime cream as petals and lime curd as flower centers.

I left the cream in the piping bag in the fridge for too long (busy with kids) so it set into mousse-like consistency. As a result the cream petals appear a bit rough. But I like the fact that these flowers are decorative as well as refreshingly tangy.

Hmm... I think aunt would prefer more cream and curd on...so I continued piping more flowers and some dots around the borders. I packed the leftover curd and cream for her just in case she wanted something with stronger lime flavor as I used much more curd and cream for my previous ombre lime cake. The great thing about baking just for fun is it doesn't have to look perfect. As long as it tastes good and looks decent enough, who cares :p.

My aunt only managed to eat the cake 3 days after I baked so the cake did dry out a bit in the fridge (store chiffon cakes at room temperature or freeze them. Refrigeration tends to dry it out. If you have to chill the cake for a more refreshing taste, do consume within 1-2 days of baking.) She said it was delicious and refreshing with extra lime curd and not dry at all. The texture was very much like my pulut hitam chiffon that's popular among my extended family.

 This post is linked to the event, Little Thumbs Up organised by Bake for Happy Kids and My Little Favourite DIY, and hosted by Diana from the Domestic Goddess Wannabe.

With love,
Phay Shing

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Lego Snowskin Mooncakes

I made these lego mooncakes on the spur of the moment because I lost my mooncake plunger and my new ones were such a pain to use (never buy small square ones!) =p.

I had fun with this one, using my rectangular ice cube trays to mould the mooncake into a rectangular block. I bought the Redman Snowskin flour this year but modified it with Ann Low's recipe to boil the shortening with water. Indeed I find that it is much easier to mould the snowskin into a smooth dough compared with the rubbing in method. I'm rather interested in her "mochi" quality so I might fully follow her recipe next time.

Anyway since I had so much fun, I will share how I moulded the snowskin mooncake into cute lego blocks! May we never see mooncakes the same way again :).

Ingredients (makes about 15 lego)
250g snowskin flour (Redman premix)
50g shortening
100g water
Extra kou fen for dusting
Pandan paste
Strawberry paste
Orange paste

270g white lotus paste

1. Weigh out snowskin flour into a large bowl.
2. Add water and shortening together and bring them to boil until shortening has melted, stirring with a hand whisk. *I just added hot water and stirred until the all the shortening has melted (top left pic in collage).
3. Pour the hot liquid mixture to the snowskin flour and use spatula to stir mixture to soft dough and leave dough to cool.
4. Knead in the different flavour/colour paste to a smooth dough, add more kou fen to it if the dough is still too sticky (top right pic in collage). *Do not overwork the dough.
5. Chill the dough clingwrapped for 5-10 min.
6. Measure out 18g white lotus paste in 24g snowskin.
7. Roll it into a ball, cling wrap the ball and push the ball hard into a rectangular ice cube tray (bottom left pic in collage).
8. Pinch the corners with your fingers for more defined edges.
9. Roll out 6g snowskin into a long roll and slice into small discs (6 per lego) for the lego protrusions. Attach them onto the rectangular snowskin mooncakes (bottom right pic).
10. Chill the lego snowskin mooncakes in an air tight container before consuming.

Have fun! =)

I'm joining Best Recipes for Everyone August 2014 Event Theme: Dim Sum hosted by Fion XuanHom's Mom.

With love,
Susanne

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Longevity Peach Snowskin Mooncake (寿桃冰皮月饼)

I have requests for birthday cakes for the older folks and the longevity peach is a popular theme among this age group. As usual, I try to avoid the use of fondant due to the high sugar content. Since Mid-Autumn festival is coming, ingredients for making mooncakes are readily available and I thought "Hey why not make a snowskin mooncake version of longevity peach!" So here it is :)

The tiny mooncakes were shaped with the help of heart-shaped silicone ice cube tray and the bigger one was shaped by hand and a few simple kitchen tools. I will show you how to make these gorgeous peaches without sophisticated equipment.

Silicone heart-shaped ice cube tray

I adapted my recipe from Ann Low's recipe for the snowskin this time and I love it! The skin is much smoother than my previous attempts and the texture is slightly mochi-like. This is a trial "bake" so I only made a small batch of mooncakes.

Ingredients (makes about 5-6 peaches):
12g kou fen plus extra for dusting (cooked glutinous rice flour a.k.a 糕粉)
57g snowskin premix
12g icing sugar
12g shortening
72g water
1/4 tsp pandan flavouring* (alternatively you can boil some water with 2-3 pandan leaves and let it cool)

90-100g white lotus paste (or any other flavor)

Pink gel food colouring
15ml Cool boiled water
Green liquid food colouring

Steps:
1. Mix snowskin premix and kou fen together in a large bowl.

2. Combine water, pandan flavouring, shortening and icing sugar in a small saucepan. Boil until shortening is melted.

3. Pour the liquid mixture into the flour mix and use a spatula to mix well, forming a soft dough. Let it cool before kneading until smooth. Add more kou fen if it is too sticky.

4. Take about 30g of dough and colour it green. Dust with more kou fen as necessary. Set aside.

5. Divide the rest of the dough. As for how to portion it depends on how big you want your peach to be. For ice cube tray moulded ones, the skin should be about 9g only and filling about 7-8g. Larger hand moulded ones can be about 25g with 22g filling. Don't be over generous with the filling as the peach will not turn out nice.

6. Assemble the peach body.
i) Flatten a ball of dough on a baking sheet. Wrap a ball of filling with the plain dough.

ii) Make a pointed end using your fingers and the baking sheet (dough tends to be quite sticky). Twist the point to one side instead of pointing straight down.

iii) Flour a butter knife and use the blunt edge to make an indent as shown in the 4th picture. Rock the knife left and right to create something like a heart shape.

iv) Use a toothpick to create an indent on top (5th picture).

v) Mix some pink food coloring with water. Dip a toothbrush into the water and knock off the excess (this is important. If there is too much "paint" on your brush you will get huge specks of pink on the peach). Spray the "paint" onto the tip of the peach with your finger and the toothbrush.

vi) Dust a baking sheet with kou fen. Place the green dough on top and another baking sheet over the dough. Flatten it. Dust some kou fen on top and use a leaf shaped cookie cutter to cut out the leaves.

vii) Attach the leaves onto the peach body.  You may dab a bit of water if you find it not sticky enough, add some kou fen if it is too sticky to handle.

Here's a peek at a sliced peach!

I had fun making this although it's more time consuming than regular mooncakes. Glad to share this simple technique. Remember to store the peaches in an airtight container to prevent them from drying out.

 I'm joining Best Recipes for Everyone August 2014 Event Theme: Dim Sum hosted by Fion XuanHom's Mom.

Update: This snowskin recipe is good for 3 days, after which the skin becomes dry and hard. Here's the updated version that can keep for a week but still as smooth.

With love,
Phay Shing

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Earl Grey Infused Mickey Mouse Butter Cookies

Susanne's friend wanted a Mickey Mouse themed birthday party for her little boy and I am helping out with making Mickey Mouse cookies for the teachers. Since it's the teachers and not the kids who are consuming the cookies, I took the liberty of infusing earl grey tea into the cookies ;).

The cookies smell lovely! Can you find Mickey among the Minnies?

I did some trial cookies with earl grey tea leaves in the cookie dough instead of steeping the tea bags in milk. The result was not visually nice although the earl grey flavor would be stronger as the spots of tea leaves makes it hard for the Mickey mouse imprint to stand out.

I didn't have Mickey cookie cutters when I did the trial, just in case you are wondering :p.

This type of cookie goes well with a cup of tea or coffee. My hubby and dad sampled some extra cookies that I baked and said it's yummy as butter cookies with milk tea flavor. The flavor kicks in when the cookie crumbles and melts in your mouth. The tea flavor is mild since I didn't use the tea leaves directly. If you are not aiming for good looking cookies, do include some earl grey tea leaves in the cookie dough for a stronger bergamot flavor. My dad could tell that it's earl grey flavored but hubby couldn't.

The recipe is adapted from here.

Ingredients (makes about 56 cookies):
5 earl grey tea bags
100g fresh milk (will use only 54g worth in cookie dough)
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp salt
186g unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
110g caster sugar
210g corn flour
210g plain flour

Steps:
1. Heat up the milk until hot over the stove or in a microwave oven. Steep the tea bags for 5 minutes.  Squeeze as much tea infused milk out of the tea bags as possible. Reserve 54g. Add vanilla extract and salt into the milk and mix well. Chill in the fridge.

2. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy by hand or with electric mixer.

3. Gradually add in tea infused milk and mix well, lightly beating the mixture.

4. Gradually fold in sifted corn flour and cake flour with a spatula until no trace of flour is seen.

5. Divide the dough into 2. Put the dough between 2 baking sheets and roll to 1/4" thick. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes or overnight.

6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Dust the surface of the dough evenly with some plain flour before cutting out the Mickey Mouse shapes. Place the cut-outs on baking tray lined with baking sheet. The cookies won't expand much during baking so about 1-1.5cm spacing between cookies is sufficient.

**Tips: 

- Flouring the surface evenly is important to prevent the dough from sticking on the cookie cutter. You get nice clear imprints this way :). You may flour the cookie cutter too but make sure that the excess flour is knocked out of the nooks and crannies. Or dig it out with a toothpick.

- You may wish to place the dough on flat freezer packs to keep the dough chilled as you cut out the shapes. Soft warm dough is very hard to handle.

- Separating the dough into 2 batches is optional but I find that it is more efficient to do so. While the leftover dough from one batch is being re-rolled and chilled in the fridge, you can cut out more shapes from the other batch of dough. When the two batches of leftover dough are small, you may combine them and continue cutting out shapes. By then, the dough is still workable and not one soft lump.

7. Bake for 12-14 minutes. Cool on tray for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack. Cool completely before storing in airtight container. Mine were packed in pairs for the party :).

24 pairs of Mickey and Minnie all ready!

 This post is linked to the event, Little Thumbs Up organised by Bake for Happy Kids and My Little Favourite DIY, and hosted by Diana from the Domestic Goddess Wannabe.

With love,
Phay Shing

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