Black and white

Have not been baking for a long time .... cannot remember for wat reasons .. but here I am, with two recent bakes done last week and last last week.

The first is an easy Banana Chocolate cake from 手拌式蛋糕by Kevin Chai. I had very ripe bananas (so ripe that they fell off from the "don't know what to call". :-) . I am not sure if I failed or suceeded (but I baked it more than the time required), because the inside of the cake is so moist (or should I say wet) that it almost look like mud cake, or those super fudgy brownie? You see and you tell me.

The cake rises very well in the oven and it requires "tent-ing". However, after I removed it from the oven, it sank after a while. As it is a loaf cake, and I do not have a oven thermometer (my oven is very temperamental, haha) so I am worried that it will not be baked. With the aluminium foil tent, I purposely let the cake bake another 15 minutes more than the required time, so I hope the "wetness" is normal. Anyway my kids love the cake, I do too.

Look at that sunken "face".

Shortly after this bake, I remember my parmesan cheese is expiring soon, so I dig out the recipe that I had prepared long time ago ( I knew I would not be able to finish that tub before the expiry date). I followed the recipe and has Mini Cheese cupcake done with my girl in a morning. Pretty fast and fuss free, but the recipe isn't really complete because I did not jot down the temperature that I should bake the cupcakes in, so I just use any reading. Anyway, the parmesan cheese has passed its "Best Before" date (not expiry date), but I still went ahead to do it .. and eat it too! Its yummy, but oily. When they are in the oven, there are already alot of oil oozing out. My kids also love these and requested me to bake again. Look at the molehills.

and this "sunflower"

and the yummy inside.

I think I should learn from Happy Home Baker .. use more pictures, less words, esp when my command of english isn't very good. Now I am so tired to write in mandarin .. so this post will not have the mandarin part.

Here is the recipe.

Banana Chocolate Cake

Ingredients

90g SR flour, 90g plain flour

1/4 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp bicarbonate soda

1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder, 170g butter

1 tbsp corn oil, 150g chocolate

100ml hot water, 80ml milk

170g brown sugar, 3 eggs

200g banana flesh (sliced)

Method

1. Grease and line 10cm by 32 cm (4 by 13 inches) baking tin. Preheat oven to 170 degree celsius.

2. Combine flours, baking powder, soda and cocoa powder in a mixing bowl.

3. Melt butter, oil, chocolate, hot water and milk over low heat. Remove from heat, combine with brown sugar and eggs.

4. Stir egg mixture into flour mixture together with banana slices until well blended.

5. Spoon batter into prepared tin. Bake in oven for 40 - 45 minutes or until cooked. Stand for 10 minutes and turning on to wire rack to cool.

6. Decorate with decogel, banana slices and chocolate chips.

I have forgotten where did I get the mini cheesecake recipe from, so if anyone wanted it, do email me and I shall share it with you.

Now I really need to zzz...

Busy with beading

The kids had chicken pox, then I had chicken pox, and I am told to avoid food like egg, chicken, peas etc for minimum of a month.. so without eggs, I did not bake, just too lazy to find non egg recipes. So I spent some time on my other hobby, beading.

I feel that the previous earring that I made is not dainty enough due to the big loops, so I cut them up and made another pair.

Pearly Black Drops

Besides this, I keep bumping into ladies wearing earrings with a single pearl... that reminds me of the peach fruit, so I made a pair with my pearls and I added a green crystal to each pearl to symbolise the leaf. I do not know how to comment on this pair, but I think just a simple pearl, but bigger would be very nice. Simple is always nice.

Fresh Peaches

Besides doing something for myself, while reading the princess magazine with my girl, I have got an inspiration from a necklace clipart and made this bracelet for her. She is so happy and this is her new favourite.

Sweet Ivory

I hope I will find a time to get some supplies .. I wanted to make another necklace for myself.

Oh .. I miss eating cakes.

A matching earring for my pearl sandwich necklace

I have the intention to wear my "sandwich necklace" for a wedding coming up in Nov, so it cannot go with my current silver earring. I do not intend to have a pair of earring that looks the same as the necklace, so I just use the same colour theme and I match the pearl (that I used in the necklace) with a black drop bead. Here goes :-

Not very satisfied, but will do for the time being. The loops are too big, thus seems to make the earring "very empty" (wonder if you will understand). I do have one or two other variation in mind, but has no pearl pressence. So if only black, wonder will it be seen when my hair is hanging down.

p/s : Can you see the flaws? (the difference size of the loops is a big giveaway, not counted)

My third loaf from Breadmaker

To use up the frozen pandan juice, I made the pandan bread again. This time I used the new brand of yeast, use pandan juice instead of coconut milk and remember to add pandan paste (instead of essence, because I don't have).

Normally, with my skills, I do not venture far from the recommended recipe, but this time, I just want to use up all the frozen pandan juice. With the new yeast, my hubby says there is still a slight hint of sourness .. anyway I did not detect anything.

This time, the bread is softer than the first try. Not sure if it is due to the egg. My kids are having chicken pox, so cannot consume any eggs, thus I just empty the whole egg into the mixer bowl, a total of 46g instead of what is asked for. The bread looks bigger as compared to the first time too. However, I just can't seem to get a smooth top.

By the way, anyone know what is the difference between pandan paste and pandan essence?

你認為我做麵包上癮了嗎？ 不是啦。是我懶。用麵包機做麵包，就好像煮一鍋熟的餐。全部材料倒進去，開機，按鈕，等三小時，就有麵包吃了。這次沒用椰奶因為想用完椰水。 蛋也多過食譜寫的。這次的斑蘭麵包比第一次來的軟，也比較大。新鮮的麵包一定好吃的。

My second loaf from the breadmaker

Happy with the first loaf, I continued to make the 2nd loaf. This time a chocolate flavour one, because it is my boy's favourite. I took the recipe from HappyHomeBaking again, Chocolate Hazelnut Bread.

She mentioned in her post that she bought the wrong type of hazelnut (grounded instead of chopped) but I like to use grounded hazelnut because I know that my family (accept me) cannot accept a bread with nuts.

Previously, I am using Red Man Yeast but my hubby thinks that the first loaf that I baked has a hint of sourish taste, so I am determine to change the type of yeast, from RedMan to Bake King (since it is readily available at the nearby NTUC).

This Red Man breadmaker only allows me to choose the crust and type of bread, so basic and light crust is what I have chosen, thou I know the crust will turn out not light!

At the end of 3 hours, I got this.

I love the look of the bread, the inside but not the outside. I still do not have a smooth top. Is it the standard for breads out of breadmaker? The bread is still soft, but the crust is cripsy then when cooled, chewy. Anyway I love this bread. The chocolate inside makes it so tasty and I love the little bits inside. My girl ate it while it is fresh and said is nice, hubby also say its nice (but he doesn't like the bits), but my boy got chicken pox and has no appetite. Anyway, on 2nd day, no one asking for it. it is a little drier.

According to the manual of this breadmaker, the liquid ingredients will go first follow by the dry ones, then butter, but this recipe calls for melted butter and it is liquid ... so shd it be first, or last? In the end I put it in last, since i m going to turn on the maker right away.

It was after that then I realized I may have added the hazelnut in the wrong order. Hazelnut can be considered as "other ingredients" that should only be added after the 2nd kneading, but I put it in together with the dry ingredients. I wrote to ask HappyHomebaking for advices. She mentioned if the hazelnuts are grounded to very fine, I can add in with the flour. If it is in bits, adding it too early might make the dough dry as it may absorb up the moisture. If I ever had the chance of baking this bread again, I hope I remember to add the hazelnut in later.

很高興上回的麵包不錯，所以乘勝追擊，再來個巧克力口味的。

My first loaf from the bread maker

This breadmaker is not a new addition. My mother bought it from Phoon Huat many months ago. Today is the first time I use the machine.

My girl is the only person in the family who likes pandan bread (I eat any flavour thou) so instead of buying just for her, I used this chance to bake one for her since I have the pandan juice. I followed the Pandan bread recipe from HappyHomeBaking's blog. I only have 50ml of coconut milk left over from my pandan chiffon cake attempt last week, so I top up the rest with pandan juice (extracted from pandan leaves on my own). I just happily dump all the required ingredients into the machine (mum helpped too), let the machine do some mixing before I stopped it to do some scrapping of the ingredients off the wall of the bread bucket. Then I choose the option for basic bread and light crust, and waited patiently for 3 hours and this is what I have got.

The bread does not have a nice uniform shaped top. Could it be due to the size of bread (using only 250g of flour). After slicing it up, I still think the crust is a little thick. The green colour is not nice, and not much of pandan smell (unlike the bonjour brand pandan bread). See! Anyway I forgot to add in the pandan essence.

The bread texture looks good in the picture right? The bread is ok, but it just doesn't taste like the gardenia bread, or bonjour bread, or even sunshine bread. Those commercial bread are soft and when you tear a slice, you feel like tearing cotton wool, doesn't require much effort. However when I try tearing this homemade one, it is like tearing cheese .. you will feel some pull (if you understand what I mean). Nevertheless, the bread is still soft and fluffy. I wonder how it will taste tomorrow morning. As for the taste test, this bread only passes my girl's. My boy says yucky and the daddy finds that it somehow a slight hint of sourish. I think I need to change the brand of yeast.

Now that I finally tried making bread , I think I gonna find more of such simple bread machine recipes, like chocolate, nutella (from happyhomebaking website) flavour etc.

我終於烘焙麵包啦。成品不是很理想。可能是麵包太小了（才用250克粉）外觀有些怪異 。皮也厚了點。用了椰奶和班蘭汁取代牛奶，但口感對我而言还不錯，當然不能比美外面賣的。期待下次的嘗試。

Chocolate Cheese Cake the 2nd

Last sunday was my granny's birthday. No, I did not bake the birthday cake, my "Kungfu" still not there yet, but I baked a cake to add to the list of existing food. I had no confidence that the cake will make it, so I did not tell my relatives at all. Finally, after much meddling with that new baby, I got an 8" by 8" product.

I used alot of time making this cake because I can't decide if I should use the K beater or the wire whisk. Finally, I choose the K beater. Since I only have one beater and one mixer bowl, I have to wash after I cream the cheese part. When I am about to start my cake batter portion, I realise my SR flour has expired and I have to google for a substitute and finally settled with mixing baking powder and plain flour. The "formula" that I used is to add 1 and a half teaspoon of baking powder to 140g flour to make 140g of SR flour. The recipe called for 120g flour, so I just estimate and mix. I also, out of convenience, reduce the butter by 6g. I also used icing sugar for the cheese mixture rather than caster sugar.

The outcome? The cake has many bumps on the surface, not sure why. It did not rise alot, and I tent it throughout after half the baking time because it is chocolate cake and it is difficult to see if the top is burnt. Since it is for other's consumption, I think I want to see how it taste before letting other people eat it. So I tasted a corner. The chocolate part is rather dry, but the cheese part is defnitely super yummy.

After the gathering, I brought back an empty container. My 2nd aunt took the remainders. All of them who ate said they love the cheese portion and said the same thing "the chocolate part is dry".

My kids did not get to eat any (besides the little bit of sampler) so I baked for them again the next day. This time I use SR flour with the right amount of butter and it resulted in a cake with very moist and soft chocolate part with the same super yummy cheese part. I gave some to my boy's classmate's mum and she also said the cake is very yummy.

The whole cake is gone on the 2nd day. I think the chocolate part taste close to Sara Lee. Wonder if I can just bake the chocolate part portion and "serve" as Sara Lee to my kids. They have finish 4 boxes of Sara Lee this month.

Cake made from SR flour. Rises better.