Macaroons

This macaroon failed miserably. Initially I was so happy when I saw the "feet" or "skirts" around the macaroons. But then, the feet/skirts rose higher and higher and it was very alarming! I believe the cause could be the raise in temperature in the oven. Didn't know why the oven shot up to 16C. It is really very difficult to control the temp via oven thermometer.

Feets coming up!

The feet seems worrying

that's very alarming!

Seems ok when stacked up... Didn't do any cream filling for it

The ground almond was very coarse and therefore the macaroons didn't have a smooth top.

Almond Cake

This cake recipe is from the library.

250g unsalted butter
300g caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
200g self-raising flour
50g ground almonds
2 just ripe peaches, stoned, halved, then each half cut into 3
100g raspberries
handful of flaked almonds
1 tbsp icing sugar, to dust

Butter and line a traybake or small roasting tin about 20x30cm
Heat the oven to 180C/160c fan. Gently melt the butter in a large pan, cool for 5 mins, add the sugar, vanilla and eggs, then beat until smooth with a wooden spoon. Stir in the flour, almonds and a pinch of salt.

Tip the mix into the tin, then lay the peach slices evenly on top-that way each square of cake will have a bite of fruit. Scatter the raspberries and almonds over, then bake for 1 hr-1hr10 mins, covering with foil after 40 mins. Test with a skewer; the middle should have just a tiny hint of squidginess, which will firm up once the cake cools. Cool in the tin for 20 mins, then lift out on to a wire cooling rack. Once cold, dredge with icing sugar, then cut into squares.

Per sq 385 kcals, protein 5g, carbs 43g, fat 23g, sat fat 12g, fibre 2 g, sugar 31 g, salt 0.22g.

Didn't follow the recipe as I did only 2 eggs. The recipe calls far to much butter and it was oily. I think the fat portion can be reduced. Didn't put peaches and replaced the raspberries with dried cranberries. The taste is good and I love it. However, it was still very sweet even though I have reduced the sugar a lot. Maybe this is due to the sweet dried cranberries. Shall tweak the recipe so as to reduce the butter portion and sugar level.

Blueberry Yogurt Muffins

Used cake flour instead of top flour. Baked at 170c for 25 mins instead of 180c for 25-30mins. Verdict? Oven too hot for these small little muffins, maybe partly because the pan I used is dark in colour, and thus affected the temperature. However, simply love the brown top and brown muffins! I wouldn't have achieve this without my saviour, the oven thermometer!

Loved the sourish taste from the blueberries, and the muffins taste good! :)))

one egg could make so many mini muffins

Muffins are a little burnt

Nice.... and they taste good :)

Green Tea Chiffon Cake, for the last time

Today marks the expiry date for the green tea powder, so here's my last attempt at making it.
Baked longer than the previous time using 170c. However, the longer I bake, the middle started to pull away and it's scary! It is because when it shrink, it won't be a nice flat cake definitely......

Rising a little too high for comfort.

dunno why there's a hole on top

Looks a lot better than the previous time!

new plate with new mat from daiso

Green Tea Chiffon Cake, again

This green tea chiffon is another failure.
Partly because I believe I under bake it, or should I say I didn't bake long enough.
The recipe calls for 180 deg C for 30 mins, or 170 Deg C for 40 mins but I baked it for 20 mins at 170 deg C.
However, I did the following
1. followed the 2 mins egg white beating time (to achieve soft peak)
2. having slightly more than an inch or so space in the pan with batter for baking (the batter didn't over flow)
3. omitted sugar for the egg yolk batter (the cake is not so sweet)
4. increased the matcha tea powder from 6g to 11g (still not much taste, maybe should get from phoon huat)
4. mixed the egg white more thorough than the last time (no egg white can be seen this time round)
5. placed the pan on lowest baking rack (the top temp is not so hot, so no more chao tah top)

The taste is good but overall quite disappointing....

inside the oven

the bottom is a little dense by looking

not in a very good shape

Green Tea Chiffon Cake

Again, I did this cake just to see if the sides and top will be brown. I did a pandan cake once and the problem I had was I couldn't get a brown top and brown sides. 

Well, the cake did have a brown top but no brown sides. Not only that, it nearly burned! Needless to say, this cake was a failure. Firstly, the egg whites weren't properly mixed into the egg yolk batter. I didn't want to over mixed it so I only mixed them a few times after each additions. 

Secondly, the pan is too small. I had prepared some baking cups as I have anticipated that the batter will be too much for this 6" pan since the batter I did was for a 7" pan. As I was pouring in the batter, the pan seems to be able to accommodate all the batter. Since I thought the pan could accommodate, I might as well pour everything in. As a result, the pan only have about 1 inch room for raising. The cake rose so high that it cracked and nearly burned. I took out the cake around 25 mins when it was cooked. I believe if I continued to bake the cake for another 5 mins I'll get the brown sides. But I can't do that as the top was already starting to burn. I did think of doing a tentage but decided to take out the cake in the end.

As for the taste, there was only a slight tinge of matcha taste. I increased the amount of matcha powder but I didn't want to increase it further as I'm afraid that it will alter the cake proportion. The cake was sweet too. I shall use lesser sugar for the egg yolk batter.

The top cracked like crazy!

See the egg whites?

Decorated Swiss Roll

Trying out the swiss rolls. What I have been doing now is to re-do all the cakes or bakes which had failed me. I want to try whether they'll be successful now that the oven thermometer is in place and the oven temperature is of the right degree.

Initially, I wanted to do a normal roll but later changed my mind and tried to do some heart shapes designs. Some hearts turned into polka dots as it was not easy drawing out the hearts with a spoon. For the hearts batter, I wasn't sure if the egg white was beated the correct way, but it seems ok as I was looking at the end results. For the roll batter, I feel that the whites were not mixed properly and therefore I still see some whites in the finished cake. For the filling, I wanted to do butter cream filling but didn't. In the end, I just spread peanut butter on it.

The end result of the roll was satisfactory as a whole. It rose up quite nicely in the oven and everything seems ok. However, when the roll was cooled, it kinda cracked. I realized that I should have roll it while the swiss roll was warm. Nevertheless, I have no problem rolling it and I stored it in the fridge all wrapped up with the baking paper.

Butter Cake

Tried to do a simple butter cake just to see if the cake will turn brown naturally at the sides and on the top. Well, it did! No words can describe how I feel about that oven thermometer! My life saviour!!!

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake

Japanese Cotton cheesecake from little teochew blog

-only used 5.5g of corn flour cos not enough
-didn't really beat the egg white for a long time, but achieving soft peak
-placed a tentage in the oven but when taking it out to brown the top, the top heat is too much (1-2 min only @160c) and resulting in near burning. So quickly switched the temp to very low and it dropped very fast, plus with door opening ajar. So the cake shrunk. (maybe the main reason...?)

But the end result is a good fluffy and soft cake.

Too bad, didn't manage to take any photos....

Choux Puffs

Did some choux puffs. A baking blog once said it's the easiest of them all. Yes, the puffs are really easy to make. I did the puffs simply because there are left over durians.

Air Fryer

Bought an airfryer and did some frying. Indeed you don't have to use any oil. I'm not sure if it is due to the fact that I fried the food for too long, the food is a little hard. But come to think of it, it uses no oil, therefore it will not be "juicy" isn't it?

Baking

Has been watching parents cooking and baking since young and therefore I have developed a liking for cooking and baking. I have been trying to bake muffins but sadly all my muffins turned out bad. So I tried baking cake and I really enjoy it especially when I use the right recipe and people said they are nice :)

Recently I did a cake. I tried to make a choco cake with choco drops, dried cranberries and almond. It's really a "greedy" cake! I tried doing what oka-san has told me, that is to beat the butter and sugar for at least 20 mins to achieve a smoother texture and the end result was good! (But 20 mins arm aching heh!) I used to beat the butter for only 5 mins or so. Next, I'm thinking of trying out pandan cake and fruit cake. Maybe I'm going to venture into Chinese desserts too. Things like egg tarts. I love egg tarts! :D 拭目以待吧！:)