Week 12 Carrot Cake

This week we got to bake 3 cakes. First off we had carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. This is technically not a sponge cake but the method in which it is made is like a sponge cake. The eggs and the sugar are whisked until thick and pale before slowly adding in the oil. Then the grated carrots and then the dry ingredients. It is a rather dense cake as it uses oil and there are grated carrots and sultanas in it. 

Carrot cake just out from the oven.

Creaming away in the kitchen aid.

 The second cake that we baked was the Sultana cake. This cake uses the flour batter mixing method. The butter and the flour is first creamed together and at the same time, the eggs and sugar are whisked together in a separate bowl. Then added together with the sultanas before baking.

Sultana Cake.

 The sultana cake rose up nicely and was springy to touch. Then we dusted it with icing sugar before dishing up. 

Madeira Cake, I read about this cake so many times in recipe books and also searched about it on the internet. According to wikipedia, The Madeira Cake has a firm yet light texture and is traditionally flavoured with lemon. The Madeira cake is sometimes mistakenly though to originate from the Madeira Islands, however it was instead named after the Madeira wine, which was popular in England and was often served with the cake during the 18th century. Nowadays, it is often served with a cup of tea.

Madeira Cake

All 3 cakes of the day.

 The Madeira cake was made with the sugar batter or creaming method. This is where the sugar and butter are creamed together in the stand mixer until light and pale. Then the eggs are added in gradually and finally the flour is folded in. The crack in the middle is actually intended for this cake. It does look a tad too brown. We had to cover the top of the cake with aluminium foil so that it didn't go any darker. 

 Closer look of our Madeira Cake.

We did a cream cheese frosting for the carrot cake and coated the sides with almond flakes. The top of the cake was given a rustic look with just some waves with the spatula. We made little tiny carrots with marzipan to decorate the cake. The fat carrot is mine and the slightly thinner one at the bottom belongs to my partner. No two carrots look the same, right? Can't wait to make little figurines with marzipan. 

Our completed carrot cake. 

Close up on our marzipan carrots.

Roti Canai

Never in my life did I think that one day I will make roti canai. It is something so easily available and considerably cheap back home in Malaysia. Almost any time of the day or night, you can get roti canai. They are normally available at hawker stalls that we call "mamak stalls". Mamak in Malaysia refers to the Indian Muslim community. You can probably say that they monopolise the roti canai making industry. 

These mamak stalls sell many different kinds of roti but my favourite is still the original roti canai, freshly pan fried and served with curry. Sometimes these stalls can be very busy and they prepare the roti canai in advance. That is when everything goes wrong. Roti has to be served hot from the pan. The texture has to be crispy and flaky. If it is prepared in advance, it loses all that quality.

Preparing the dough for resting.

There are many variations to the roti canai, endless creations really. You can have roti with banana, also one of my favourites, roti with egg, roti with cheese, roti with milo, roti with sardine, roti with nutella, roti tissue where the roti is not folded when fried, therefore you get all the surface to be light and crispy or you can have the total opposite which is roti bomb where the dough is not  flatten much and fried thickly to get a doughy texture. That is the one that I absolutely do not like. 

Not so square plain roti canai.

 I guess you can say that I miss Malaysian food very much because I went searching for recipes to make roti canai. I found a few recipes from bloggers and decided to try ieatishootipost's recipe because he explained it quite thoroughly and he even had a video of him flipping the roti. It was a very helpful site.  It requires some skills to flip a good roti.

Roti for dinner.

It was really quite interesting that the recipe actually didn't use that much oil. I thought it will be so oily that I won't ever want to eat roti again. I rested the dough in the fridge overnight and I made fresh roti for dinner and lunch the next day. For dinner we had it with lamb curry and indian style thoran cabbage. Yummy.

A nicer square roti.

The roti turned out pretty good. It was crispy and not too oily. I still need to practise on the flipping though. I managed to get a nicer square after a few rounds of practise. I also made roti cheese and roti telur (egg) served with bacon. Next time, I want to try with vegemite and cheese. hehe....

Any orders?

Roti Telur with bacon.

Roti Cheese.

Japanese Roll Cake

I had a bake day with a friend. Remember how my swiss roll didn't turn out too nice when I did it in school?, well I wanted to try it again. I have always liked the japanese type of roll cake. It is very soft and airy. My friend who is a japanese found a recipe from a japanese website that we could try. It was really simple and apparently it had more than 3000 people who liked the recipe according to the site. There are only 3 ingredients. Eggs, Flour and Sugar. So I guess it is all about the technique then. 

Rolling the cake with loads of strawberries inside.

Well, it seems simple enough but we actually failed the first time. We over whisked the egg white and had trouble folding it in evenly and it deflated a little. Yes, we made another one. The second time, we were careful not to over whisk the egg white. Folding in was much easier. 

I get to practise rolling the swiss roll and I was really happy that it didn't crack this time. We actually cooled the cake completely before rolling it. 

Yippie! This time it didn't crack.

I think a little more whipped cream will make it a nicer roll or maybe just cause I like whipped cream. Ha Ha. 

Strawberry Roll Cake.

I am thinking maybe I will try to use a slightly smaller tray for this recipe the next time.  I would prefer the cake to be thicker.

I am very happy with the result. Even though it is not yet perfect, at least it looks quite pretty and taste yummy. It was good practise. 

Pistachio Macarons

Macarons! Yes, people say you should do the basic macarons and get it right before playing with colours, shapes and designs. Well, I admit I am not an expert with macarons yet. I have only made them a few times and not once did I play with colours or explore with any shapes except round. 

This time, I wanted to make pistachio macarons so I said to myself, it was time to colour the macaron shells. Pistachio = green colour. I was determined to make green macarons. Since I am playing with colour, maybe I can play with shapes too. 

I've seen many bloggers creating very cute shapes like Hello kitty, little pigs and teddy bears. I am not really sure how they do it but I felt adventurous and I wanted to make some shapes this time. I don't care if I am not an expert with macarons. It's ok if I don't get it right but I wanted to have some fun. 

So.... pistachio macarons = green colour, so green colour = Frogs! Yes... I wanted to make froggy macarons. I searched for some frog cartoon pictures and started drawing my froggy template on a cardboard. Then I traced it on the baking sheet and used it as my template. 

Happy froggy

Well, I wouldn't say that my froggy macarons were a success because there were so many cracks and it turned brown at the sides. The macarons were not smooth because I dont have a food processor to blend the almond meal finer. Well, at least it was still generally green, it did look like frogs and it tasted like pistachio macarons. Like all the expert macaron bloggers say, it doesn't matter if it is not perfect, it is still yummy! 

I didnt have those edible ink pens so I had to draw the eyes with melted chocolate.

Angry froggy

 The crack on the angry froggy's face kind of gave him a little character. It looks like it was so angry, it cracked its face.  Ha Ha.... (I guess this is called looking at the bright side of things)

Best smile froggy.

Oh no! She picked me!

It took so long to make this batch of macarons but I sure had fun making them. 

Week 11 Sponges

After two weeks of holiday, I was excited to finally get back to the kitchen and learn. This week we made four types of sponges. We learnt a few ways of making sponges and I am not too sure what the difference is as to the end result because we only got to eat  two of the four that we made. The other two had to be frozen for later use. 

Sponge, also known as Génoise in French is different to cake, as it is lighter and airier than a cake. The name Sponge says it all, it is like a sponge.

First one we made was Vanilla Sponge where the whole eggs were whisked with the sugar till pale and frothy before folding in the flour. The end result looks good, it rose up beautifully. Not sure about the taste because this is one that we had to keep for later use. 

Vanilla Sponge

 Next one we made swiss roll. For this sponge, we used cake emulsifier in the recipe. Emulsifier is an ingredient that is used in a lot of commercial bakery because it helps make the sponge to be airier, smoother in texture, softer with finer crumbs and it extends the shelf life too. It is also cost efficient because it requires lesser eggs in the recipe. It is an all in method, where all the ingredients can go into the mixer at once, except the melted which is added in last. 

Our swiss roll turned out ok, the texture of the cake was soft like all the store bought cakes. I was just not too happy with the cracks and I think I put in too much strawberry jam in it. It was too sweet for me. I will have to make this again at home to get it right. 

Swiss Roll

The third one that we made was a Chocolate Gateau with strawberries and créme chantilly. Gateau is a French word which means layered cake. In German it will be called Torte. So in our patisserie course, not only do we learn how to bake, we learn French and German as well. 

Anyway, this Chocolate Sponge is made with a method where the egg white is whisked with the sugar and then the yolks are added in. Then the dry ingredients are folded in. 
After the sponge is baked, it was cooled completely and divided into 3 layers and  whipped cream was spread on each layer. We were suppose to use strawberries in each layer but there wasn't enough strawberries so our trainer found some canned cherries for us instead.  We were only given three strawberries to decorate the gateau. 

Chocolate & Strawberry Gateau

 The fun part was the chocolate decoration. I remember how much fun I had when we did chocolate filigree in Stage One. This time, we get to do chocolate shavings, chocolate cigars, ruffles and whatever designs you can think of. When our trainer did the demo , it looks simple and easy. It was actually harder than it looks. The temperature of the chocolate has to be right to get the chocolate to curl. Ours was either too soft or too hard. So in the end we only managed to get some shavings and some odd shaped curls. If only we had more time that day, I would love to try it a few more times. 

"Piece of cake"

If you look close enough, you will notice that there are only cherries on the bottom layer. There wasn't enough cherries for the top layer. 

The last sponge that we did was an Almond Coffee Génoise. This one was where the egg whites and egg yolks were whisked separately before folding in the flour. We actually did this cake twice because the first one didn't rise properly, most likely because we didn't whisk it long enough. The second one that we did came out beautiful but unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it. This one we don't get to eat either. So I don't know how it tastes like yet. 

This week was a crazy week, I was not too happy that the management of the school decided to combine two classes together. It was way too crowded in there, it was actually more like a zoo than a kitchen. Hopefully next week will be better.

Holiday Bake - Chocolate Cupcake

Cupcakes are just so pretty to look at. They come in all sorts of sizes, colours, toppings, flavours and beautiful paper cases. 

Now this is my first cupcake. I wanted to make the most basic chocolate cupcake with frosting so that I have some fun piping the frosting. 

When I was searching for a recipe from other blogs, I found so many that I got confused and wasn't sure which to pick. I ended up using Nigella Lawson's recipe which wasn't even a cupcake recipe but it was recommended by a blogger which I like. I used this recipe mainly because I had some leftover sour cream in the fridge which I had used for another chocolate cake a few days back.

The way Nigella made the cake was rather interesting, it is a method that I have never tried before. She just put all the ingredients into a food processor and blended it until smooth and then baked it. I was curious as to whether it will really work so I tried it.

 It worked alright but I didn't get a really nice looking cupcake, I think it was probably because I over baked it. My mistake was that I forgot that my cupcakes were rather small. It came out with a high dome and I cheated by cutting off the top bit. Ha Ha. The cocoa powder also plays an important part in this recipe, mine wasn't too good quality thus resulting in a not very chocolatey flavour cupcake.

Then I thought I better make sure the frosting is good or else the cupcake will be a disaster. I needed something that has a richer chocolate flavour. So instead of cocoa powder, I used chocolate ganache and then whipped it. It was a rather thick and a stable frosting. It wasn't too sweet either. Then I sprinkled toasted pistachio on top. 

Overall, it was nice but I would be happier if the cake was more moist and more chocolatey.  

Holiday bake - Cheesymite scrolls

After the exam we got 2 weeks break and without realising it, it is already a week into the holiday. I just want to share with you what I baked this week. I made Cheesymite scrolls but the result wasn't good. It wasn't soft and the texture was more like a cake. I was also a little too generous with the vegemite, so it was quite salty. To make it worse, I overbaked it a little too. So triple failure for this bake. Oh well, I will just have to try it again. 

Vegemite is very Australian. It is the same as what we call Marmite back home. I remember when I first visited Australia many years back, I bought vegemite as a souvenir to bring home. Cheesymite scroll is a very Australian bun. It is a spiral bread with vegemite and cheese on the inside. I really like eating Cheesymite scrolls but not these that I made.

Simple Bun Dough.

The dough that I made was a simple bun dough which I proved for 1 hour until it doubled in size. It looked well risen but I am not sure why the end result of the texture wasn't soft. 

Rolled the dough flat.

Spreaded the vegemite and sprinkled with cheese.

 I didnt know how much vegemite to use, but now I know, this is too much. After I was done spreading the vegemite and sprinkling the cheese, I rolled the dough up and cut into 4-5cm thick. Placed them in a tray and let it prove again before baking them.

They have risen and are ready to be baked.

 They actually look quite nice except for some burnt bits. But too bad, it wasn't as tasty as I wished it was. 

Ready to eat.