Saturday, May 29, 2010

Pineapple Upside-down Cake again.

Oh I made this again..Yup, pineapple upside down cake. I made this on last Wednesday night so that we could celebrate our boss' belated birthday on Thursday morning. I didn't know that our boss birthday was on a few days back (until one of my colleagues told me).

My colleagues wanted me to bake something simple and nice to surprise him. Thus, I've decided to bake this upside down cake with a little modification in decoration. I knew the taste was great and texture was just perfect from my 1st bake ( That's why I didnt think twice and promise my colleagues so fast that I will bake this cake :D :D ). In order to make it more presentable, I've added dark pitted cherry in the middle of pineapple. Instead of square pan, I used 8" round pan with removable bottom.

I have adjusted the baking time to 1hour and 10 mins as my round pan type is aluminum which heat absorbent is not as good as black color square pan. And brush with mirror gel after cooling down and that's done. My boss seemed very surprise to receive the cake. Everything went smoothly and the cake was well accepted by my colleagues. I am very glad that they like it.
Pls visit my previous post for detail recipe.





Friday, May 28, 2010

Choco Banana Muffins



Chocolate banana cup cakes were in my " to bake" list since a couple of weeks ago and now only have a chance to fulfil my wish of making them. These cup cakes are very popular among food blogger as I notice quite a number of them made these. Thanks HBS for sharing the recipe.

My cup cakes didn't look so good compare to hers (Didn't rise enough. I didn't do any changes to original recipe but something was not right I guess). However, the taste was great.


Here the recipe.

Ingredients (makes 14)
250g unsalted butter, room temp
200g caster sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
300g all purpose flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
80g unsweetened cocoa powder
200ml fresh milk
300g very ripe banana flesh, mashed
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
2 ripe bananas, peeled and cut into 2 cm in length, dust in 1 tbsp of all purpose flour

Method
  1. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside
  2. Cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy.
  3. Add in one egg at a time , scrape down and mix well before adding another.
  4. Add vanilla extract and stir well.
  5. Fold add in the flour mixture ,alternate with milk into the egg mixture. Pls make sure to start with flour and end with flour.
  6. Add in the mashed bananas and stir well. Then sift in the cocoa powder and again blend well. Lastly stir in the chocolate chips.
  7. Scoop the batter in to the muffin paper liners to about 3/4 full. Then insert a banana wedge into the middle of the muffin. Repeat till all the batter has been used.
  8. Bake in 170 degree preheated oven for 25 minutes or till the tester comes out clean.

Before Baking
After baking



Sunday, May 23, 2010

Pineapple Upside-down Cake

I have so many cakes in my "to bake " list and was wondering which cake should I start up with. I was so confused and couldn't make up my mind until Friday (I need to meet my two friends during weekend and I need to bake something for them). And you know what, I ended up with this pineapple upside down cake. (No, it wasn't in my list)


When I browsed through some recipes online and I found this cake in Joy of Baking by chance. The name and presentation of the cake really attracted my attention. Moreover, not many ingredients are needed and preparation steps were pretty easy as well. Thus, I decided to give it a try.

It turned out to be really great and it was way too delicious. Very light butter cake and the sweetness from pineapple and sugar caramel make it even tastier. The recipe really is a keeper for me. Pls try it out. Highly recommended.

Here is the recipe (Make 8"x8" square cake- I've adjusted the recipe slightly. Kindly visit to this site for original recipe)

Cake Batter
  • 200 grams all purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 113 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 180 grams castor white sugar
  • 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
  • 3 eggs, separated
  • 120 ml milk
  • 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
Topping
  • 55 grams unsalted butter
  • 160 grams light brown sugar
  • Canned pineapple (drained and cut it into quarters)

Method,

Topping:

  1. Place the butter and brown sugar in a small saucepan and stir over medium heat until the butter has melted and the sugar has dissolved.
  2. Continue cooking for a few more minutes until the sugar starts to caramelize. Then remove from heat, and pour into your prepared cake pan.
  3. Evenly arrange the fresh pineapple slices on the bottom of the pan.

Cake Batter:

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside
  2. Cream the butter with the sugar until light and fluffy.Scrape down the sides of the bowl and then beat in the vanilla extract.
  3. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
  4. Fold in the flour mixture (in three additions), alternately with the milk (in two additions), ending with the dry ingredients.
  5. In a clean bowl, whisk the egg whites with the cream of tartar just until the whites hold a firm peak.
  6. With a large spatula, gently fold the beaten egg whites into the cake batter in two additions.
  7. Pour the batter into the cake pan, smoothing the top. Bake in preheated 160 degree oven for 45 minutes,or a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean
  8. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool for about 10 minutes. Run a sharp knife around the edge of the pan and then invert the cake onto your serving plate.


Sunday, May 16, 2010

Pandan Kaya Custard or last session

Yesterday session was the last session for Cake Principles at BITC. We baked total of 16 cakes (including this Pandan Kaya Cake) in this 2 1/2 months duration. I really enjoyed it. As long as baking is concerned, I am always very active to participate..I hope I can bake at least once in a week on my own as well.
Below is my cert and I will try to continue my baking journey at BITC




Thursday, May 13, 2010

Marble Cake again


Currently our house is under renovation and it is really a in a mess now. I really have no mood to bake in this situation even though my kitchen is not affected. However, just to show my appreciation to all the helpers in the renovation, I made this for their tea time snack. Hope they like it.


It was the same recipe as I used for butter cake. Just the baking tin is different and I used 8" tin for this. And baked at 180 degree C for 45mins.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Cottage Pie

ခုရက္ပိုင္း ဟင္းမခ်က္ၿဖစ္တာအေတာ္ၾကာေနပါၿပီ။ တင္စရာ ဘာမွမရွိတဲ႔အဆံုး အရင္ ရိုက္ခဲ႔ဖူးတဲ႔ ဓာတ္ပံုေတြကို ေမႊေႏွာက္ရွာရင္းနဲ႔ ေတြ႔ပါၿပီ။ မတင္ရေသးတာေလးတစ္ခု။ Facebook က အစ္မတစ္ေယာက္လုပ္တာ ကိုသေဘာက်တာနဲ႔ လုိက္လုပ္ထားတာပါ။ ဘယ္သူလုပ္တာလည္းေတာ႔ နာမည္အတိအက် မမွတ္မိေတာ႔လို႔ မထည္႔ေတာ႔ဘူးေနာ္။

လုပ္နည္းကေတာ႔လြယ္ပါတယ္။ ၾကက္သားၾကိတ္သားကို ဆား၊ ၾကက္သားမွဳန္႔၊ ငရုတ္ေကာင္းမွဳန္႔ နဲ႔ နယ္ထား။ ၿပီးရင္ ၾကက္သြန္နီနဲ႔ ဆီသတ္ ၊ ေၿပာင္းဖူေလးေတြပါထည္႔ၿပီး မီးေပၚမွာ ၃မိနစ္ေလာက္ထားေပးပါ။ ၿပီးရင္ မုန္႔ဖုတ္တဲ႔ ဗန္းထဲၿဖန္႔ထည္႔ေပးထားပါ။

အာလူးၿပဳတ္ၿပီးသားကို ညက္ညက္ေၿခေပးပါ။ ၿပီးရင္ ခုနက ၾကက္သားဗန္းေပၚမွာ တစ္ထပ္ၿဖန္႔ခင္းၿပီး ၁၈၀ ဒီဂရီ oven မွာ မိနစ္ ၄၀ေလာက္ဖုတ္ရင္ရပါၿပီ။


ဒါကၾကက္သားနဲ႔ ေၿပာင္းဖူး။ အာလူး မခင္းခင္ပံု
Pie နဲတြဲစားဖို႔ sauce ကိုေတာ႔ ခါတိုင္း ၾကက္သားနဲ႔ စားရင္လုပ္တဲ႔ sauce အတိုင္းလုပ္လုိက္ပါတယ္။ ဆီ လက္ဖက္ရည္ ဇြန္း ၂ဇြန္းကို ဆီသတ္ ၿပီးရင္ ဂ်ံဳမွဳန္႔ ထမင္းစားဇြန္း ၂ဇြန္း ကိုထည္႔။ နဲနဲညိဳလာတဲ႔ အထိေမႊေပး ဆား၊ ၾကက္သားမွဳန္႔ထည္႔ ေရ နဲနဲထည္႔ ၿပီး ဆူေအာင္ထား ရင္ရပါၿပီ။

ၿပီးရင္ပန္းကန္ထဲမွာ sauce ေလးကိုထည္႔၊ veggi ေလး နဲ႔ Cottage pie ၿပင္ၿပီးရင္ စားလုိ႔ရပါၿပီ။ တကယ္႔ cottage pie ကေတာ႔ ဒီလုိ အသီးအရြက္၊ sauce နဲ႔တြဲစားမစားမသိပါ။ ကိုယ္႔ဘာသာကို Modify လုပ္လုိက္တာ၊ စားလုိ႔ေတာ႔ေကာင္းသား။

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

BITC 3rd Week Training and Chocolate Cake

This is another overdue post. These cakes were made in very early session of BITC basic cake training. To be exact, we made these in 3rd week of BITC training. Recently, I didn't bake any cake and have been slacking for two weeks already. Thus, I don't have any cake photos lately. It was great that when I browse through all my photos, I found these little ones. Now I have at least something to share with you guys. Here they are. Hope you enjoy them!

Chocolate cake
Ingredients
  • Castor Sugar 180g ( You can reduce if you find it too sweet)
  • Butter 120g
  • Eggs 120g
  • High Ratio Flour 200g
  • Cocoa powder 7g
  • Milk powder 10g
  • Baking powder 7g
  • Water 110g
We used all in method for this cake. Mix all ingredients on low speed for 1min, medium speed for 4 mins and finally low speed for 1 min. Line 8" tin with parchment paper. Pour the batter into the tin and bake in 180 degree C preheated oven for 30 to 40mins. Leave it to cool and Cover with choco fudge icing if you prefer, (however I find it too sweet for me)







Sunday, May 2, 2010

May day, day out and Vietnamese Noodle

မေန႔က အိမ္မွာဘာမွမခ်က္ပါ။ မနက္စာစားၿပီး အိမ္ကထြက္လိုက္တာ ေန႔လည္ ၂နာရီမွ အိမ္ၿပန္ေရာက္လာပါတယ္။ အမွန္မွာေတာ႔ မနက္အၿပင္ ထြက္ဖို႔ အစီအစဥ္မရွိဘဲ ကိစၥ တစ္ခုေၾကာင္႔ထြက္ၿဖစ္သြားတာပါ။ အိမ္ၿပန္ေရာက္ေတာ႔လည္း ခဏနားၿပီး ၿပန္ထြက္ၾကပါတယ္ (ဒီစေန မုန္႔ဖုတ္သင္တန္းနားပါတယ္ ၊ေမေဒးမုိ႔လုိ႔) ။ ညေနအၿပင္သြားဖို႔ကို လြန္ခဲ႔တဲ႔ ၂ရက္ကတည္းကစီစဥ္ထားၿပီးသားမို႔ပါ။ အေရးၾကီးကိစၥ လုိ႔ေတာ႔မထင္ၾကပါနဲ႔။ ထံုးစံ အတိုင္း အစားအေသာက္ကိစၥ ပါဘဲ။ စီစဥ္ထားၿပီးရင္ သြားကိုသြားရမွဆုိတဲ႔ ေပကတ္ကတ္ အက်င္႔က ၂ေယာက္လံုးမွာရွိတာမို႔ ညေန ၆နာရီေလာက္မွာ ၂ေယာက္သား Holland Village ကိုခ်ီတက္ၾကပါတယ္။

နီးနီးနားနား ပါပဲ။ ၁ နာရီ ေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္ေလာက္ကိုသြားလုိက္ရပါတယ္။ ေရာက္ေတာ႔လည္း ဟုိဆိုင္ၾကည္႔ ဒီဆိုင္ၾကည္႔ နဲ႔ ေနာက္ဆံုး ဗီယက္နမ္ ဆိုင္စားဖုိ႔ သေဘာတူညီခ်က္ ရသြားပါေတာ႔တယ္။ Singapore မွာပထမဦးဆံုးအၾကိမ္ စားဖူးခ်င္းပါ။ အရင္ ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီလ ခရီးထြက္တုန္းကေတာ႔ တစ္ခါ သူငယ္ခ်င္းေခၚသြားလုိ႔စားဖူးပါတယ္။ အဲဒီတုန္းကတည္းက ၾကိဳက္သြားလုိ႔ Singapore ၿပန္ေရာက္ရင္ ရွာစားမယ္ဆိုတဲ႔ အၾကံရွိႏွင္႔ၿပီးသားပါ။ ဒီလိုနဲ႔ ႏွစ္ေယာက္သား ေခါက္ဆြဲရယ္ Appetizer ရယ္မွာၾကပါတယ္။ portion က ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားပါတယ္။ စားလုိ႔မဆိုးပါဘူး ေကာင္းတယ္။ ဗမာၿပည္က ေရစိမ္ေခါက္ဆြဲ ဆန္ဆန္ပါဘဲ။ ေစ်းလည္းသင္႔ပါတယ္။ ဆိုင္နာမည္က Pho Hoa ပါ။ ရွာရွာေဖြေဖြစားခ်င္သူမ်ား ရွာရလြယ္ေအာင္ နာမည္ပါ တင္ေပးလုိက္ပါတယ္ ။ ေနာက္ဆိုရင္ေတာ႔ အိမ္မွာစမ္းလုပ္ၾကည္႔မလားလုိ႔ (ၿဖစ္မၿဖစ္ေတာ႔မသိ)။

ဒါကကိုယ္႔ပန္းကန္ ။ Chicken Pho

ဒါကေတာ႔သူ႔ပန္းကန္ အမဲသားအစံုနဲ႔ ပြဲအၾကီး


ေခါက္ဆဲြနဲ႔ ထည္႔စားဖုိ႔ အခ်ဥ္၊ ငရုပ္သီးနဲ႔ အသီးအရြက္ေတြ


ဒါကေတာ႔ Appetizer , Vietnamese Style Chicken Satay။ အရသာမဆိုးဘူး။


ဒါကကိုယ္႔ပန္းကန္ အဆာပလာေတြထည္႔ၿပီး မစားခင္ပံု