Pie In The Sky!

I did mention that I had finally become the proud owner of a pie dish some days back...and today seemed like the perfect time to get the first pie out of it. My previous attempt at Pineapple Pie was quite a horrid failure, but I wanted to get that right since it's one of my favourites...so Pineapple Pie it was!

Set to work after lunch, starting with cooking the pineapples down to a soft mush with sugar and some vanilla essence for that heady smell. There's no aroma that comes close to caramelised pineapples cooking on the stove. Heaven!

The problem I encountered the last time around was with the dough for the crust, and I nearly got cornered by that again. Luckily my mum helped me roll it out without breaking the supersoft dough. Guess I must have over kneaded the dough. =X

Pineapple filling all in place and all that was left to do was to put the top on and slide it into the oven...

A good 30 minutes later, its done! Was pretty worried that the sides would get stuck to the dish but thankfully the pie slid right off...






This was my sister's glorious idea and it happened to also be the perfect way to serve a slice of pie in my mind's eye! That's a scoop of ridiculously creamy, tangy and delicious Haagen-Daz Strawberry ice cream sitting pretty atop a slice of the still warm pie.

Gooey. Sweet. Incredible.

Perfect I say!

Wish you were here to have a slice! =)

The Rainbow Connection

Felt like its been a while since I've baked anything, and I had actually decided to make just a normal chocolate butter cake. But as it turned out, I was in the mood for something a little more fancy. So I made Rainbow Rolls!



This is my most favourite roll cake recipe so far because of the bright colours and its also very much easier to do than it looks! Versatility and creativity can be added as you see fit as you can experiment with different colour combinations and patterns



Tried out a different recipe and although it cracked a little when I was rolling it, I think overall it was quite alright. Had 2 rolls in the end, one was duly filled with tangy mango cream filling and the other's insides were smothered with thick chocolate cream...yum yum!

"Trifle Pudding" : Take 2!

Decided to take it easy this weekend as I've still not really recovered from the flu yet. Nasty thing has lasted for a week now! Hope it'll be gone by Monday though...don't want to waste another week sick at home!



So no baking this weekend =( but I did get an idea for making a trifle pudding(again) with the left over cake that I scrapped last week. It wasn't fit to be a cake on its own so I gave it some sort of a new lease of life!



I think this has to be the easiest thing I've done that looks scrumptious. Its still sitting in the fridge though...but not for long!

Black Forest....OOO Scary!

Keeping to my A Cake A Week plan and since yesterday was Mother's Day, I decided to make a Blackforest Cake as it was my mum's favourite and since I wanted to make another cream cake!

One lesson I learnt the hard way over the weekend when making the cake, was that if your heart and mind is not in it, don't even think about starting on a cake. I had to redo the cake on Saturday night after making a mess of it the first time round. Don't know why but I was just extremely distracted!



Anyway, still managed to get a decent cake out past midnight on Saturday but then decided to leave the creaming to Sunday. Let me say that this is definitely one of the more tiring cakes I've done! Even after the creaming has been done, there is still tons more to do in terms of the decoration.

My creaming skills is still not there yet so I had alot of help from my mum again in making the cake look presentable! I would like to work on creaming alone but that would mean quite a load of creamed cakes sitting around the house!

Presenting: The Tangy Mangy

Now that I finally don't have to fret over tutorials/revisions/assignments/yadayadayada, I could turn my attention back to baking at long last! I was having a hard time deciding what exactly to do 'coz I hadn't had any practise in months and was a little worried that my skills had gotten rusty.

But then again, I had never done a cream cake before and I was itching to do one sooner rather than later. So...after some deliberation, I finally decided on making a basic sponge cake with mangoes as the filling! This way, I could practise getting a good cake out of the oven and also make my first cream cake!



The creaming process was not easy for me 'coz it requires sleight of hand that I just didn't have. My mom was helping me all along the way so it didn't turn disastrous! It's gonna take alot of practise to get it right...that means more cake to eat! =)



My sister came up with the design to spiff up an otherwise drab looking white cake and she christened it Tangy Mangy! HAHAHA!! She came up with the design and did it in all of 20 minutes! AMAZING!! My mom made us both do some icing designs along the borders and also on the top just to get the feel of it. Kinda messed up some of the designs! But hey, who cares!!