Happy Birthday!

It's a wonderful feeling you get when someone asks you to bake a birthday cake for their friends or for someone in their family. To me, that's a great deal of trust that someone places into your hands. Trust that you will give them a cake worthy of a birthday party, and trust that you won't disappoint them.

Birthday cakes are pretty stressful to make. That's a fact - well at least to me it is! I think it's because without the cake, there can be no real celebration. I can't imagine having a birthday party with no cake to blow the candles out from or having a cake that looks nothing like a birthday cake...it just doesn't make any sense!

So when my friend asked me for one I was initially hesitant to accept but I decided to go ahead with it since it was for a dear old friend's 21st birthday! You'll never know if you don't try I guess!

Chocolate overload was requested and chocolate overload it was! Basically, it was a chocolate cake with 2 layers of chocolate whipped cream sandwiched in between and topped off with a chocolate ganache covering the top and sides of the cake. No make that smothering instead of covering.

There were hitches aplenty along the way but luckily I had loads of help from my mum and sis! Thankfully it came out alright in the end!

For Mum

Mother's day is an occasion celebrated like no other isn't it? The outpouring of love and affection for the one person that we hold so dear to our hearts is almost overwhelming. But mothers deserve that I think! Over at my house, its almost tradition to celebrate Mother's Day and Father's Day, along with birthdays, with a cake so I had been planning one for quite some time now.

It helped that I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted so I decided to go for something that I've never tried before instead of sticking with the safe choices. After searching online for ideas and recipes, I settled on a Gula Melaka Mousse Cake, which was sort of a new experience for me as it was the first time I was using palm sugar though I already was an ardent fan of its smoky rich flavour.

If it didn't turn out...well I would be disappointed but then again, you have to try at least once! This was going to be the first Mother's Day that my sister wouldn't be around to make the cake with me since she moved out, so I was kinda worried about that to be honest!

I meant the cake as a surprise though my mum was expecting one(since its tradition!) but in the end I had to tell her because I was kinda afraid it wouldn't turn out well. Darn it...in the end, she helped me from beginning to the end! So much for surprises eh? But I was extremely grateful for her help as I would have gotten stuck couple of times without her guidance!

Thankfully, I was able to find a recipe online that seemed pretty reliable and had quite a few positive comments so I knew I could trust it to turn out well. The danger that comes with using online recipes is that sometimes the cake/cookie/whatever just doesn't turn out like the glorious looking picture on the page.

But this one was pretty good - simple, very few ingredients needed and easy to replicate. Try it!

Everything I know thus far about baking and cooking, I learnt from my mum and I owe it all to her. I think perhaps she passed on her intense passion for the culinary arts when she was carrying me in her belly! So this one is for you mum, Happy Mother's Day!

Back In The Groove - Pineapple Cheesecake!

It's quite clear to me now that baking makes me happy. Unfortunately, there just isn't time during the semester to go anywhere near the oven with peace of mind. So I decided that now since the semester is done and dusted, I should get back to baking to put the semester's disappointments well and truly behind me.

Moving on...

My mom had her eye on this recipe for a Pineapple Cheesecake for quite sometime and I was just happy to get stuck in! Pineapples are a personal favourite of mine but they don't get turned into cheesecakes or mousses as often as they should due to their pretty high acidity which doesn't let the gelatin set. And no one wants a runny cheesecake or mousse now do they?

This recipe called for canned pineapples which are great but don't really come close to the taste of the real McCoy if you ask me. Cream cheese made way for the ridiculously creamy Mascarpone cheese which just makes everything a thousand times more sinful!

The recipe was pretty complicated...alot of mixing Mixture A into Mixture B and cool in ice water baths or heat over simmering water..stuff like that. But then again, I felt that the creamy, heavenly end product was well worth all the extra effort here and there. And I stumbled on an excellently rich and delectable custard recipe along the way so all in all, a good day at the office I must say.

One regret I had was adding the rum flavouring...just 1 tablespoon of that stuff which didn't seem like much at first, but it made the cheese mixture taste a little like cough medication. Argh! But I think adding a tablespoon of rum instead of rum flavouring would have done the trick. After all, pineapples and rum goes pretty well together!

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!