Orange Iced Gems (and update on blackberry gems)

Now that Chinese New Year is approaching and Mandarin oranges are in abundance, why not try to make some orange iced gems :).

These were made from regular oranges but it can be substituted with mandarin oranges. Someone requested for orange and black/blueberry iced gems so I made an assortment of gems!

All prettily naturally coloured! 

Before I share the recipe for orange iced gems, I will provide a quick update on the blackberry gems. As you can see from my previous attempt, the blackberry gems were pale purple in colour and have more of a pinkish tinge. I had to add a teeny toothpick dip of blue to get it to look a bit more purple. My second attempt here is a much deeper and vibrant purple. I added a few dried blue pea flowers to the black/blueberry puree (about 1.5tbs puree), mashed them in and leave to steep for half an hour before straining. Very pleased with the result and it's all natural!

Feel free to double, triple or quardruple the recipe as this is a small batch.

Ingredients (makes about 30 gems):

Biscuit base

35g plain flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

5g icing sugar

Pinch of salt

1/2 tsp finely grated orange zest (I used 1 tsp and find it's a bit too much. Remember not to grate the white part of the skin or the biscuit will be bitter.)

12g vegetable shortening

14g milk

1/8 tsp vanilla extract (or orange essence/emulco if you wish)

Orange royal icing

56g icing sugar

4g meringue powder

8g fresh orange juice (Use more or less as required to get stiff peaks. Remember to add a bit at a time.)

2 drops of orange emulco (added to orange juice)

Steps:

Please refer to my fresh berry gems post for the steps with slight modifications....

Add orange zest after rubbing in the shortening. Mix well before adding in the milk.

Stamping out circles!

Freshly baked!

Freshly iced!

A close-up view of freshly iced biscuits! Remember to pipe some icing on baking sheet as a gauge of whether the icing on biscuits are dry.

I must confess that I had two failed batches of orange royal icing before I succeeded. The first time I tried adding orange zest, knowing that I might fail as orange peel contains oil. Oil and royal icing are not good friends. The icing will not dry if there's any trace of oil. I had trouble getting the right consistency on my second attempt and reduced the amount of juice as compared to other flavours for my third (successful) attempt. For some reason orange royal icing needs a lot less juice to have the right consistency.

I am having fun experimenting with different flavors of iced gems :). Keep a lookout for new flavours in my future posts!

With love,
Phay Shing

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'R2-D2 Head' Charcoal Chiffon Cake

This is a fun creation for my friend's son who loves Star Wars! I don't know if you recognize the cute robot from Star Wars who fights along Anakin Skywalker. I just made a small head for him as it was a last minute squeeze-in request to delight the boy!

The head is made from a ball cake mold using charcoal chiffon cake (just a tiny dip of charcoal for the grey) using a reduced egg yolk recipe to reduce the yellow color (to 1 egg yolk). The recipe can actually make 2 heads. I made another two layer chiffon cake (blue and red) to cut out all the cute squares and dots! It is also a pinata chiffon cake with hidden marshmallows for fun as I made a small hole in the middle :).

It was great joy to hear that he was very happy!! Happy belated birthday to Zethan!!

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Peppa Pig Lychee Chiffon Cupcakes

This is the third and last in a series of Peppa pig themed bake. I apologise for the lack of good photos for these cupcakes as I was in a hurry. Like Susanne, it has been a struggle for me to juggle family, cooking, housework and coaching of all subjects for kids' school work with this new school year on top of baking, so I am making a conscious effort to cut down on the number of baking requests I am accepting. I will be glad to take on any requests if I can cope and be assured that I will still bake to the best of my abilities :). Here's some of the Peppa cuppies!

The characteristic head shape is made with the help of eggshells so yes, each Peppa head was baked in an eggshell!

Lychee flavour was requested so I made some lychee puree...

Blended and strained canned lychee with syrup

I couldn't get hold of fresh lychees so I used canned ones. The good thing about this is the lychees can be blended in syrup that is saturated with lychee flavour, thus increasing the lychee flavour in the cakes. I didn't measure the exact amounts. I just blended about 9 lychees in enough syrup to cover the fruits.

Ingredients (makes about 15 eggshell cupcakes and one 7" square layer cake):
3 egg yolks
20g caster sugar
42g canola/ vegetable oil
45g lychee puree with lychee syrup
60g cake flour
Pinch of salt
1/4 tsp vanilla
Red, white and pink gel food coloring

4 egg whites
40g caster sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Steps:
1. Line 7" tray with baking sheet and arrange eggshells on a mini muffin pan lined with silicone cupcake moulds or use aluminium foil with holes poked in covering a baking tray to be your eggshell holder if you don't have what I used. Preheat oven to 160°C and set rack to second lowest position. The 7" tray is for the layer cake for Peppa's head features like eyes, ears, rosy cheek, mouth and nostrils. Make sure that the inner membrane of the eggshell is removed.

2. Beat egg yolks and sugar until pale and thick. Gradually add oil and whisk until thick like mayonnaise. Gradually add lychee puree and whisk until well combined. Gradually add sifted flour and salt and whisk until no trace of flour is seen.

3. Scoop out 1.5tsp of egg yolk batter into 3 small bowls. Add red, pink and white food colouring into respective bowls. Add pink colouring to main egg yolk batter.

4. Prepare the meringue. Use an electric mixer to beat egg whites until foamy. Add cream of tartar and beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold in meringue into each of the egg yolk batter in three additions. Add about 4tbs of meringue into each of the small bowls.

5. You may find it easier to transfer the main batter into a piping bag or batter dispenser to quickly fill all the eggshells to about 1/2-2/3 full. Scoop out the three coloured batter and some of the main batter into the 7" tray. Bake the layer cake for 10 minutes or until skewer comes out clean. Bake egg shells for 10 minutes at 160°C followed by 140°C for 7-10 minutes. Baking time may vary according to size of eggshells used. Mine were 60-65g eggs.

6. Immediately remove layer cake from pan and gently peel off baking sheet. Cool with another sheet over it. Leave egg shells to cool completely before cracking the shells and carefully removing them. Use a small sharp knife to make a cut on the eggshell baked cake to create the snout and face of Peppa.

Freshly baked!

7. Melt some marshmellows with a bit of water as glue to stick on the ears, eyes, rosy cheeks, mouth and nostrils. It was quite challenging to stick the mouth and nostrils on since the parts are so small and thin! Keep a small bowl of syrup handy to keep the cakes moist by brushing syrup on. Do use the lychee syrup if you have! It will enhance the lychee flavour of the cakes. Keep the cakes and small parts covered to prevent them from drying out. Dissolve some charcoal powder in water to make black ink. Use a chopstick to stamp on the blacks of the eyes.

Almost done! A little spooky without the blacks of eyes...hehe..

All packed and ready to party!

It was tiring and challenging to complete all three sets of Peppa themed bakes (cookies, macarons and cupcakes) for one party but very rewarding to receive very good reviews for the bakes :).

With love,

Phay Shing

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Rainbow Polka dot 'One' Chiffon Cake

This is a rainbow polka dot 'One' chiffon cake for my friend's baby turning 1 year old!! Her baby loves balls hence she chose the polka dots. I'm getting excited myself as Feb draws near. It's been a joy to watch baby Charissa and her friends grow :).

With love,
Susanne

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Frozen Chiffon Cake

It's been Frozen cake mania for me. I made two Frozen chiffon cakes the previous week, one for my jc's bestie and another for my lovely mummy friend, and will have another two coming up, including one for my son. Yes his birthday is coming this week and he loves Frozen too! But so do I ;).

The side profile of the cake with the Frozen toppers:

The top view of the cake:

Similar to my previous Navy Stripes Chiffon Cake, I have used blue pea flowers to reduce the amount of blue coloring used, and here also reduced the amount of egg yolks by half (to 2 egg yolks with 5 egg whites) to obtain a whiter chiffon cake. I found it many many times easier to make 'waves' simulating the snow-capped mountains at the sides than straight lines in the Navy Stripes cake! Just need to scoop the batter into 'humps' without much care :D.

My snowflake cutters came in very useful this time. I had to manually cut snowflakes (from layer vanilla chiffon cake) in my previous Frozen cake which was incredibly difficult! The snowflakes cutters are really beautiful. I also made some white snow-covered Christmas trees to make the backdrop for the toppers. I had shared how to make chiffon Christmas trees before.

I also experimented with making sugar glass. I only made a small amount to try. They are really easy to make.

Easy Sugar Glass (from Pam's Party Tips - Elsa's Ice Candy)
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/3 cup water
A pinch of salt
Blue pea flower extract (or blue food coloring)

1. Cook the sugar, syrup, and water on medium heat, stirring to make sure that all of the sugar dissolves.
2. Boil the sugar mixture until it reaches 300°C, or until it hardens into threads when a dropped into cold water.

3. Remove from the heat, and add a few drops of blue pea flower extract (or blue food coloring). 

4. Pour into a baking paper-lined baking tray. 

5. Allow to cool (picture below) and then break into pieces.

The blue sugar glass was meant for the backdrop of Olaf to contrast his white body, while the white Christmas trees for contrasting the blue dresses of Elsa and Anna.

Thank God my bestie and mummy friend both shared everyone loved the cakes!

I may also take this time to share that I may be blogging/writing less due to the demands of family (I have 3 young children), baking and blogging. It's been difficult juggling all three. However, I will continue to share my passion as and when I have the energy. Thanks for journeying with me the past year :).

With lots of love,

Susanne

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Lavendar Iced Gems

I have a request for Lavender flavoured iced gems along with other flavours of iced gems. Giving the Peppa pig series a break with this before resuming. Too many pig posts :p. Here's my all-natural lavendar gems without any artificial colouring or flavouring!

These are fragrant and crunchy, with a pleasant lavendar flavoured aftertaste that is not too strong (being hit by a soap box) or too mild.

The beauty about homemade iced gems is you can make about any flavour you can think of. I flavoured the milk used in the biscuit base by steeping dried lavendar flowers in hot milk, and by powderizing some dried flowers to add to the royal icing, in addition to using lavendar tea to make the icing.

The recipe and steps for these gems is almost the same as my earl grey gems. I only made a small batch as the requester wanted an assortment of gems. So feel free to double, triple or quadruple the recipe.

Ingredients (makes about 30 gems):
Biscuit base
35g plain flour
5g icing sugar
Pinch of salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
12g vegetable shortening
14g lavendar milk tea (steep 1 tbs dried flowers in 45ml of hot milk for 5 minutes. Sieve out the flowers and squeeze out as much milk as possible.)
1/8 tsp vanilla extract

Lavendar royal icing
1/4 tsp powdered dried lavendar, sifted (you may use mortar and pestle to grind half a tbs worth of dried flowers)
56g icing sugar
4g meringue powder
10-12g lavendar tea (steep 1tbs of dried lavendar flowers in 45ml of hot water for 5 minutes. Sieve out the flowers and squeeze out as much tea as possible)

 If you are unable to get hold of meringue powder, you may prepare royal icing using egg whites.  If you are concerned about using raw eggs, you may dry the iced biscuits in the oven at 90-100°C for half an hour to "cook" the egg whites as well as dry the icing.

Steps:
1. Add vanilla extract to the milk. Set aside to cool if milk is hot.

2. Preheat the oven to 170°C (fan mode).
Line baking tray with baking sheet.

3. Mix all dry ingredients together and sift into a large bowl. Rub in the shortening with your finger tips until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

4. Gradually add in the milk until you can form a ball of dough. You won't need to use all 45ml of it. Roll it to thickness of about 3mm. Use a round cutter to cut out circles of about 2cm in diameter (or any size that you have).

5. Place the cut out dough on baking tray. They can be placed pretty close together as the dough will puff up and not expand much sideways. Press it down a little in the middle. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on tray for 5 minutes before transferring to cooling rack.

Freshly baked!

6. Prepare the royal icing. Sift icing sugar, lavendar powder and meringue powder into the mixing bowl.  Use a hand whisk to mix the powders for a minute. Gradually add lavendar tea and whisk for about 5-6 minutes until the icing turns pale and opaque, and stiff peaks form. Add a bit more icing sugar if it is too runny and add a bit of tea if it is too dry. This quantity is too small to deploy an electric mixer so hand whisk will do.

7. Transfer the royal icing into  piping bag fitted with a star tip. Pipe the signature dollop of icing on each biscuit. Dry the iced biscuits in the oven at 70-80°C using the fan mode for half an hour or until the icing is dry. You may pipe extra icing onto the baking sheet beside the iced bicsuits on the same tray as a test to see if the icing is dry. If you can easily lift the icing off the baking sheet, it is dry. Let the biscuits cool completely before storing them in airtight container.

Icing lavendar and earl grey iced gems at the same time!

Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of these gems in a bottle. These little treats are lovely with a cup of lavendar tea!

With love
Phay Shing

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Peppa Pig Macarons with Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream & Chocolate Ganache

This is the second in a series of Peppa pig themed bake. Here are my Peppa macarons with raspberry swiss meringue buttercream (smbc) and chocolate ganache!

Have to show the preassembled pieces to see the chocolate ganache...

After my Mickey mouse macaron bake, I was waiting for a chance to make fancy macs again! Honestly, I was pretty nervous as usual but glad that they turned out well!

In order to pipe the shape of Peppa pretty regularly, I placed a template under the baking sheet:

(Update 20/8/2015: checkout my video tutorial for macaronage and testing of batter consistency).

Macaron shells
Ingredients (makes about 30 macarons, 60 shells):
163g almond meal (preferably superfine)
163g icing sugar
60g water
163g caster sugar
2x65g egg whites (preferably aged. I aged for 4 days but this is optional.)
Pink gel food colouring
1/4 tsp Strawberry paste (optional)

Royal icing decorations:
30g Royal icing sugar (or 28g icing sugar mix with 2g meringue powder, sifted)
Water
Charcoal powder
Red gel food colouring

Steps:
1. Sift together icing sugar and almond meal in a large bowl. Add half of egg whites (65g) into the mixture and mix well until a thick paste forms. Add pink food colouring and strawberry paste until desired shade of pink is obtained (right photo below).

2. Place caster sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to boil without stirring while beating the rest of the egg whites with and electric mixer until foamy. When syrup temperature reaches 105°C, increase speed of mixer but be careful not to let meringue go past soft peak stage. Reduce speed of mixer if need be. Once syrup reaches 115°C, remove saucepan from heat. Turn speed of mixer to high and slowly pour syrup down the side of the mixing bowl. Continue beating on high speed until Italian meringue cools and stiff glossy peaks form. About 10 minutes. See left picture below.

3. Fold the meringue into the almond mixture one third at a time, until the batter moves slowly when the bowl is tilted and is able to fall off the spatula in a continuous ribbon. Be careful not to overfold. I left about 1/4 cup of meringue unused as I felt that the consistency of the batter would be too runny if I used everything.

4. Portion out about 2 tablespoons of batter and colour it dark pink. It is ok to overfold this small batch. Transfer this into piping bag fitted with a tip that is about 3mm in diameter. Place about 3 tablespoons of light pink batter into a piping bag fitted with a Wilton #5 tip or any tip with 3mm opening. Place the rest of the batter into piping bag with 5-10mm tip. Pipe rounds for the base shells. Pipe Peppa by beginning with the head, followed by the snout. Pipe Peppa's ears with the small portion of batter and the rosy cheek.

A little tricky to pipe!

5. Tap the tray a few times to release any trapped air bubbles. Dry the macarons either in aircon room or oven. I had always dried my macaron shells in aircon room until I saw someone made beautiful ones with oven drying. I thought why not give it a shot! I dried mine at 60°C fan mode for about half an hour. Ideally, they should be baked once dry but I still have kids to take care of so I dried mine for a longer time than necessary. Oven drying is really much faster! I usually need to dry in aircon room for about 2 hours. Make sure that the shells are completely dry to touch with a finger before sending them into the oven to bake. Never bake sticky macaron shells! Mine always cracked or have no feet when I was impatient and sent them for baking when they were still a bit tacky to touch.

6. Bake in preheated oven at 130-140°C with the rack placed at lowest position for about 17-20 minutes. Let the shells cool on the tray for 5 minutes before removing them.

Freshly baked! Always happy to see feet!

7. Once the shells have cooled, proceed with drawing on the face. Prepare some royal icing that is of flooding consistency. Leave one portion white and colour the rest red and black. Pipe or paint on the facial features.

Finally done with shells!

Store in airtight container if you are not assembling yet. They can keep for up to two weeks in the fridge. But it is not necessary to refrigerate unassembled shells.

Raspberry SMBC
100g smbc*
20g raspberry puree

* Refer to this post on how to make the basic smbc

 Make raspberry puree by pressing fresh or frozen raspberries through a sieve. Gradually add to smbc and whisk until well combined.

You may make this in advance and freeze or refrigerate until it's time for assembly. Bring to room temperature and re-whip before using.

Chocolate ganache
136g milk or dark chocolate, finely chopped
7g unsalted butter, cut to small pieces, softened
95g whipping cream

1. Place chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl. Bring whipping cream to boil.

2. Pour cream onto chocolate and butter. Use a spatula to stir until chocolate is melted and smooth.

3. Leave the ganache to firm up for a couple of hours at room temperature. You will have leftover ganache. I made a slightly bigger batch to store some in the freezer for future use.

Assembly
1. Arrange the macaron pairs on a tray as shown in the second picture of this post. Place ganache and smbc in piping/ziplock bags with a corner snipped off.

2. Pipe a ring of smbc, followed by ganache in the centre on the round bottom shell.

3. Cover the macarons with Peppa shells.

4. Refrigerate at least overnight for flavours to develop. Let it sit out for 5-10minutes at room temperature before consuming if you prefer softer filling.

All packed and ready to party!

Update: checkout my next attempt at Peppa pig macarons along with three friends that join Peppa in my first attempt at making assorted macarons in one session :). I used natural source of pink food colouring for Peppa too!

With love,
Phay Shing

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Two Princesses 'Hidden Rainbow' Castle Chiffon Cake

This is a Princess Castle made for 2 princesses to live in! One princess stays in the polka dot towers while the other stays in the hearts towers. Everyday, they meet together in the main castle where a big beautiful rainbow resides! This is the tale of the two princesses and this is their dream castle =).

I had the great privilege to build the dream castle for my friend’s two princesses who dreamed of having this castle. The two little girls decided on the design of the swissroll towers as well as the details of the cake. One girl wanted a rainbow cake while the other didn’t want, hence we ended up with a hidden rainbow peeking out from the castle door. One of the princesses even wanted hidden m&m’s so I hid some colourful m&m’s under the main castle tower!

This Two Princess Castle Chiffon Cake is similar to my previous creation Princess Castle Chiffon Cake, except that this time I used Ochikeron’s decoroll recipe for the polka dot and hearts swissroll. In addition, I wrapped a Rainbow Chiffon Cake with a wall of vanilla chiffon layer cake cut with jagged edges.

It was one crazy cake to make! But a very special one!! I was really thankful that I pulled through and the two princesses were very happy (best reward at the end of the day)!!

Happy birthday to Charlotte and Chloe!!

With lots of love,
Susanne

PS: I have to thank dear Evon for lending me her silicone mats!! ♡

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PAW Patrol Chiffon Cake

This is another PAW Patrol Chiffon Cake for my lovely friend's son Cayden who likes PAW Patrol! The cartoon seems to be very popular among boys his age! My son likes it too :).

This is similar in concept and design as my previous Paw Patrol Orange Chiffon Cake except that this was a 9-inch and vanilla-flavored as I wanted to try a more cream colour scheme to get greater contrast. I also took the chance to try out the PAW logo. It is also a pinata cake with hidden marshmallows under the PAW crest!

There are dog bones running all over the sides of the cake. These were cut out from vanilla chiffon cake baked in layer trays using a bone cutter and attached on using melted marshmallows.

Happy belated birthday to Cayden!! How time flies!

With lots of love,
Susanne

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Peppa Pig Family & Friends Brown Sugar Cookies

This is the first of a series of Peppa pig themed birthday bake. Peppa and family cookie pops, Peppa pig door gift cookies and Peppa's friends as regular cookies!

That's not all... I made 20 Peppa door gifts...

That's less than half of them!

Five of each: Suzy sheep, Candy cat, Rebecca rabbit and Danny dog (iced a couple of days before the rest of the friends)...

All these took me a few days to complete!

The recipe for brown sugar cookies and royal icing is the same one that I have been using. I will just highlight some pointers and share some works-in-progress pictures of my hard work.


Making cookie base
As you can see, all the cookies are not standard shaped and you probably can't find a set of cookie cutters that are that specialized. I made my own template by printing out the figures to the size that I want and then tracing the outline on a rigid clear plastic sheet. Cut out the outline and I have a washable and reusable template :). Here are some pics of it in use which I didn't get to record in pictures for my Barney cookies...

I needed to use 3-4 times the quantity specified in the recipe link as this is quite a large batch of cookies.


Cookie pops
It's my first time making cookie pops but this concept is not new. In order to make these, I stacked 2 cookie cut-outs with an ice-cream stick sandwiched in between. Make sure that enough of the stick is sandwiched to ensure a good grip. Instead of rolling the dough to 5-6mm, I rolled each piece to 4mm such that the cookie is about 8mm thick when the two pieces are stacked together. Lightly press the two layers of cookie cut-outs together to ensure a good seal. Baking time is about 14-15 minutes for Peppa and George (small pops, ~1.5-2") and about 18-20 minutes for Daddy and Mummy pig (large pops, ~3"). Best gauge for baking time is still visual.  When the cookies are lightly browned, they are ready.


Icing the cookies
Nothing really new to mention here except that the rosy cheeks should be iced while the base icing of the head is still wet. Hubby commented that Danny dog looks like he has a large pimple on his face! I iced Danny before all the other friends and did my usual wait-till-bottom-icing-dries-before-icing-on-top. You can see the difference in the results from the earlier photos.

I used flooding consistency throughout. It helped to prepare a big batch of icing (royal icing made from about 400g of icing sugar) and refrigerate it. I kept the remaining icing in an airtight container with clingwrap touching the surface. Remember to stir the icing before use each time. Royal icing can be refrigerated for month but try to finish using as soon as you can as fresher icing is better to work with.

Fine features like the limbs and facial features were painted on using toothpick or a fine paintbrush. Charcoal and cocoa powder were used whenever there's black and brown involved. I only used a Wilton #2 tip for outline of the Peppa door gift. Everything else was just piped from a ziplock bag with a small hole cut at the corner.

Last but very important tip...always keep a damp paper towel handy to wipe off any mistakes! All these are iced by freehand drawing so there's bound to be some mistakes. Unless you are a superb artist, which I am not :p.

Here are some works-in-progress pictures...

Danny dog

Candy cat

Suzy sheep

Rebecca rabbit

Peppa and family

Peppa pig

Yes it takes an awful lot of patience to do this but the end result is rewarding :). If you don't have the patience to do all this artwork, do try this soft cookie recipe anyway because it is simple, not too sweet, yummy and stays yummy for a month in airtight container. I have mummy friends asking for the recipe for the cookies after their kids can't stop eating them.

Peppa with birthday message!

With love,
Phay Shing

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