A Match Made In Heaven!

It's been some time since I last went anywhere near an oven and honestly I was itching to get back in business. But finding time once the semester starts can be pretty hard with tests, presentations and reports gobbling up much of my time.

Nevertheless, I decided that I was going to make something whether or not I had the time! Things fell in place nicely enough during the recess week that I could think about making something yesterday so I grabbed the opportunity with both hands!

I've been dying to try an orange-ginger based recipe after my friend put the idea in my head some time back. Ginger is one of those amazing spices that combines well with both sweet and savory dishes/desserts with its warm and gentle, "not-in-your-face" spiciness that I find kinda soothing. Ginger Snaps were my favourite when I was a kid and it still tops my list of favourite cookies.

So I decided to make an Orange Ginger Cheesecake! Though, I have to admit I wasn't exactly sure about where to bring the ginger element into the cake. Should it be in the cream cheese mixture or the base? I thought the base would be a safer bet so I substituted only half of the biscuits used for the base with ginger ones - I didn't want the spiciness of the ginger to overpower the zesty zing of the orange!

Thankfully, it went well and the cake was an instant hit! I was just glad that the combination worked since its not exactly one that is commonplace in cafes and such.

Woohoo! (Maybe I should have taken better pictures though...)

Wooden Treasure!

Making log cakes on Christmas Eve has become some sort of tradition for my mum as we go over to my uncle's house for Christmas. The cakes would then be the tea time "attraction", rounding off a hearty lunch and present swapping. Merry day indeed!

But scheduling conflicts led to the cancellation of Christmas gatherings for the past 2 years and this sadly meant no log cakes. However, the gathering was confirmed this year so the log cake was sort of resurrected and brought back from the...uhhm....cake graveyard.

I've always loved log cakes - something about them just sparks the festive mood in me! I'll sit at the table watching my mum roll the cakes, cream them and stick on the wonderfully colourful decorations to create these beauties!

So this year I thought it was about time I got stuck in and made my own logcake. I had a chocolate hazelnut cream one in mind months before Christmas Eve but I had to scrap the idea at the eleventh hour. The hazelnut powder I wanted to mix with the chocolate had been in the fridge for too long and it had become completely tasteless. I tasted the chocolate-hazelnut paste after mixing some and it felt like chocolate with bits of gravel...not cool.

Sadly, I had to be content with a plain chocolate log cake but oh well...there's always next year I suppose! My mum made the other cake a durian flavoured one that was white as snow! My whole house was filled with the heady scent of the king of fruits as the durian pulp was cooked, mixed in with the cream, spread over the cake and rolled into heavenly Swiss rolls...let me pause to empty my drool bucket.

After the the cakes were creamed and the "log lines" were drawn, all that was left was to decorate them and make them look all Christmassy. Thankfully both cakes turned out well in the end...though rolling Swiss rolls can be extremely stressful and terribly messy!

Anyways,

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Happy Days

Been almost a month since I baked and just thinking about getting stuck into flour, butter and sugar lifted my spirits tremendously so I decided that I NEEDED to bake something.

Something about scones keeps me coming back for more and the best part is having the recipe safe and secure in my ol' file! It's delicious, fragrant, versatile, terrible easy to make, requires little clean up...the list goes on and on really.

I had 3 types in mind but after making a quick run down to the shops, crossed out one of them and went with the other 2. Scones with jam are ridiculously yummy (the better the jam, the higher up in heaven you go!) and I've always wanted to try baking the jam inside the scones instead of slathering it on after it comes out of the oven. I've been toying with idea for so long that I knew I just had to try it!

It turned out alright but terribly messy and a little unappetizing I think. Looked like something exploded really...but I think taste wise it was pretty good with the sugar in the jam getting that little hint of caramel-smokiness after all that time in the oven!

The other type I wanted to try was a plain one since I've always done my scones with something added in. A little bit like back to the basics but not all the way back though, as I decided to top them with a little brown sugar.

I thought the sugar would melt but surprisingly the little crystals stayed quite firm so each bite of the scone had a sweet crunch to it!

Had a little bit of hazelnut powder sitting in the fridge for some time so I decided to add about 20 grams and upped the vanilla extract to 2 teaspoons....WOW! The whole house was filled with the heady scents of toasted hazelnuts and vanilla. Bliss.

Little bit o' midnight grubbin' never hurt anyone! Hehehe...

Lemon Mousse Is Possible!

Busy days these past few days have been...and they'll get busier still.

My dad's birthday was over the last weekend so my mum and I made the customary cake which is a must..although my dad didn't want one! Hehe..

Went for something a little different this time with a lemon mousse cake. Although it was still a mousse cake, I tried a mousse recipe that was different from the one that I usually use. This one used whipped cream as the major ingredient instead of egg whites or fruit puree so it was a little thick and slightly rough.

Wasn't entirely satisfied with it in the end - it seemed a little tough to me and in my opinion, a tough mousse is a lousy one! 

But I had no idea mousses could be made from lemons! 

Every Birthday Needs A Cake!

My mum and I were thinking hard for ideas for my sister's birthday cake and it took almost a whole week before we decided on one. We had a rough idea of what flavour and type of cake to make but we wanted it to be a little unique, something we've never done before. We settled on making a strawberry cheesecake with a peek-a-boo center after seeing it in on of my mum's cookbooks

My mum got down to making the cake on Saturday but I didn't have much of a mood to get stuck in till much later. I stayed away after learning from past experience that if I wasn't in the mood, the cake would probably get destroyed in my hands somehow!

Getting the strawberries to stay in the pattern was quite a painstaking chore and quite unnerving too as we thought the cheese filling would drag some of the berries out of position.

Thankfully it turned out well in the end! Should have grabbed more pictures though.

Hangin' Up Them Oven Mitts!

Sigh.

With the semester just 1 1/12 days away, I think this will probably be the last time I'll set foot anywhere near the oven for the next couple of months. With that in mind, I jumped on the final chance I had to make something. This was of course, done under the pretext of clearing away the leftover flour/sugar/whatnot so that my mum wouldn't start nagging about me singlehandedly causing a rise in the number of diabetics. Heh...

Anyway...I had some chocolate in the fridge from making my friend's cake so I decided to make a Zebra butter cake. The chocolate really made the cake a thousand times richer than normal but also a thousand times more delectable! Ah happy days.

I saw this can of strawberry pie filling when I was trawling the aisles in a supermarket some weeks back and I bought it without having any really concrete plans as to what to make with it. It had been some time since I made a pie so I thought perhaps another was probably due about now.

But I was bored with the usual 'cover the top with another slab of dough' or 'open top' type of pies and I've always wanted to try the lattice pattern that I've seen some use to add a touch of uniqueness to their pies.

Usually the dough would be pretty soft and go all crumbly when I try to pick it up and arrange the strips to create the pattern but this time around it held firm and I was able to arrange the strips without too much of a fuss(though it did break here and there).

But it was all good after taking it out of the oven so I was pretty satisfied. It's a real boost to the spirits when what pops out of the oven matches your mental picture pretty closely!

Death By Chocolate

I heaved a huge sigh of relief when I handed the cake over to my friend...baking for others is pretty stressful! It's not that the difficulty has gone up; just that the stakes have skyrocketed.

If I bake something just for the fun of it like I normally do, then even if something goes horribly wrong, it either ends up in the trash or you can still eat it while consoling yourself. But if someone places an order for a birthday cake then you better hope to the high heavens that you have a good cake for them when they come round to collect it.

Can't just shrug my shoulders and say "Oh well...maybe next time I'll have a better one for you!".

Then there's the matter of taste. Your cake can either end up being the toast of the day or absolute drivel. The scary thing is that different people will have different expectations and tastebuds(?) so there's another problem.

My friend wanted as little cream as possible and more chocolate so I went for overkill by totally omitting any cream and overloading it with good ol' chocolate. Felt like I was making a Mud Cake instead of a chocolate cake really!

Thankfully I had my mum's help - I think she was more excited about my first order than I was! - especially with the decorations. It's great to have an extra pair of hands in the process guiding you like a lighthouse all the way from start to finish.

My friend either had extreme faith in me or was totally drunk when asking me to make the cake...I hope its the former rather than the latter...but I owe him so much for giving me the chance!

Woohoo!



Time for some soul soothing before hitting the sack.