Strawberry Swiss Roll

It's been a long time since I had the motivation to bake a 'frosted cake' in the evening. Since I came back from my Australia trip after our National Day, I had been busy with the usual bakes and watching Korean Dramas. >v<

However, last evening, there was a sudden urge to want to eat swiss roll, so I decided to bake one myself. I had wanted to have pandan swiss roll, but I've used up my pandan extract. So ended up, I made a Strawberry Swiss Roll. The swiss roll was really soft and fluffy with the nice chantilly cream. I was satisfied.

Recipe for Strawberry Swiss Roll.
(Makes a regular roll)

Swiss roll cake sheet
Ingredients: 

4 Eggs (weigh 50g with shell each)

70g Caster sugar

40g Cake flour

25g Butter, melted

20g Milk, warm

1 tsp Strawberry extract

A few drops of red colouring

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C.
2. Line the base of 30x30cm cake tray with baking paper.
3. Warm butter and milk till butter has melted. Set aside.
4. Using hand mixer, beat the egg white with sugar (add the sugar gradually) until stiff peaks form.
5. Pour the egg yolks into the egg white, beat with low speed for 1 minute.
6. Sift the flour into the bowl and fold to combine.
7. Add the strawberry extract and red colouring into the butter mixture and mix well.
8. Scoop 1/4 of the egg batter into the melted butter and stir well to combine.
9. Then pour the mixture back into the remaining egg batter. Using a spatula, fold to combine well.
10. Spread it evenly into the prepared cake tray.
11. Bake for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven.
12. Remove the cake sheet and let it cool on a wire totally.

Fillings

120g Whipping cream

15g Sugar

8-10pcs Medium Strawberries halved.

Method:

1. In a clean mixing bowl, add whipping cream and sugar.
2. Beat on high speed until thickened and spreadable.
3. On the cake sheet, spread out the whipping cream evenly, leaving 1 inch each at the front and end.
4. Arrange the strawberries on the cream.

5. Roll it out evenly.
6. Chill and slice it before serving. Enjoy!

Strawberry Cheese Tart

A colleague of mine ordered a flourless orange cake from me for her son's birthday. As she requested to have it decorated with strawberries, I bought two punnets of strawberries and chose the best decoration for her. As I found USA strawberries not as sweet as Korean ones, I decided to "get rid" of the remaining strawberries. Hahaha...

There's not much variety to bake with strawberries. Instead, I cook it into strawberry coulis and make a cheese tart just for my strawberries. To my surprise, the combination was really good, I'm happy with my strawberry cheese tart.

Recipe for Strawberry Cheese Tart
(Makes for a 9" flan tart)

Almond Tart Crust
57g Ground almonds
142g Plain flour
45g Fine sugar
100g Unsalted butter, cold & cut into cubes
1/8tsp Salt

Method:
1. In a large mixing bowl, add in the dry ingredients. 
2. Add the butter and use fingers to gently rub it into small bread crumbs.
3. Gather the crumbs together to form a dough. Do not overmix them.
4. Place the mixture into a plastic bag, and press it together.
5. Refrigerate for at least 30mins or until firm.

Cream Cheese Fillings
250g Cream cheese
30g Sugar
25g Liv unsalted butter, room temperature 
1 Egg
25g Whole milk
20g Plain flour

1. Cream cheese, sugar and butter until light and smooth. Add in egg and cream until well blended. 
2. Add in milk and mix until well combined. Lastly add in flour and mix until well incorporated and smooth.

Strawberry Coulis
450g Fresh Strawberries, cut cubes
100g Sugar
2 tsp Fresh Lemon juice

1. In a medium saucepan, combine the strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and continue stirring for about 8-10mins on low heat. (Do not stir or boil too long as it will create a lot of liquid).
2. Turn off the heat and let it cool completely before refrigerating.

Method:
1. Remove tart crust from the fridge.
2. Roll it and fit it into a 9" flan pan.
3. Fill up with cheese filling.
4. Bake in a preheated oven of 190C for 20mins, or when the cheese filling start to brown.
5. Remove from the oven and let it cool completely. 
6. Refrigerate the tart.
7. Before serving, topped the tart with strawberry coulis completely. Drizzle the sauce when served.

Strawberry Surprise Chocolate Cupcakes

This post is sponsored by Liv butter. Try Liv today!

I've seen many bakers adding jam to their cupcakes in some of the blogs. It looked rather interesting though. So I decided to try baking some myself, to have a taste of how it's like. Since owning "Fabulous Cake Business" for quite a while, I didn't have the opportunity to try any recipes from this book. Therefore, I decided to modify one of their recipe - Blueberry Cupcake to bake my Strawberry Surprise Chocolate Cupcakes.

Recipe for Strawberry Surprise Chocolate Cupcakes, modified from Fabulous Cake Business by Alex Goh.
Makes 27 regular cupcakes (No. 8 paper liner from Daiso)

Ingredients:
(A)
250g Liv Unsalted butter, soften
160g Caster Sugar
(B)
50g Plain flour
(C)
4 Large eggs (weighs 60g per egg without shells)
(D) (sift together)
140g Plain flour
30g Cocoa powder
30g Corn flour
1 tsp Baking powder
(E)
50g Whole milk
(F)
180g Strawberry jam

Frosting:
Chocolate Buttercream

Method:

1. Beat (A) with a k-beater at medium speed until light and fluffy. Stop to scrap the sides and bottom of bowl with rubber spatula frequently.
2. Add (B) and cream until well blended. Gradually add (C) in 4 batches and cream until light and smooth. Stop to scrap the sides and bottom of bowl after each addition.
3. Add (D) and (E) alternately and mix at low speed until well blended.
4. Line the muffin moulds with the paper cups.
5. Scoop a small amount of the batter into the cups, then add a small teaspoon of the strawberry jam into the batter. Topped it up more batter and smooth the top.

6. Bake at 190C in the middle rack for 20 minutes.
7. Remove the cakes from the moulds immediately after baking and set aside to cool.

8. Decorate it by piping chocolate buttercream on top of the cake.

Strawberry & Red Bean Mochi

It was the same day I baked the Okashi's Black Sesame Chiffon Cake, I made Okashi's Strawberry & Red Bean Mochi. Okashi seemed to have conquer my Sunday. Before I decided to make the Strawberry & Red Bean Mochi, I recalled I have seen it somewhere before. Then I realised it was at Shirley's blog.

When I read the recipe, I thought it looked pretty easy. Being ambitious, I wanted to make 5x of the recipe, so that I can give away as a birthday present to my sister-in-law. However, I was wrong. It was truly not easy to do the moulding and rolling! In the end, I only managed out 3x of the recipe, making only 13 pieces in total! Here's sharing my experience on the making this "looks-easy-but-hard-to-perfect" mochi!

Original recipe for Strawberry & Red Bean Mochi, extracted from "Okashi" by Keiko Ishida

(Makes 4)

Ingredients:

160g Red Bean paste

70g Glutinous rice flour

110g Water
Potato starch for coating

4 Strawberries, small, washed and hulled

Method:

1. Combine glutinous rice flour and water in a bowl. Mix well. Microwave at 600W for 1 min. Stir the mixture again. Microwave again for 1 min.
2. Divide dough into 4 portions. Coat dough with potato starch, then flatten using hands.
3. Weigh out 40g of red bean and wrap a strawberry with it completely.
4. Place each filling ball in the middle of each piece of dough. Cover the filling and gently using your fingers, stretch the dough over to cover the fillings.
5. Coat rice ball with potato starch and serve immediately.

Notes and tips:

1. You can make more than one recipe. However, stick to one recipe of the glutinous rice when you heat up. Meaning, if you make 2 recipes, weigh out two times and heat up separately. So that it remained warm when you roll it up.

2. On the other hand, the glutinuous rice dough is not easy to roll up when it's too hot. Dust with too much potato flour, it won't expand and stick. Too little, you'll have it stick to your fingers and hands easily. Go 'light" with potato flour. Feel the dough yourself to decide how much flour to add.

3. With one recipe of the rice dough, the recipe stated to divide into 4 portions. However, I found that the portions were too thick. I felt that 5-6 portions should be just right to cover the fillings.

4. I used ready made red bean paste. The recipe called for 40g, however, I used about 23g as I didn't want the mochi to "grow" too huge. Then, I realised that my dough was too thick and the fillings were not sufficient, resulting in the mochi being bland. So it might be good to use at least 30g of red bean paste.

5. It'll be better to use really small strawberries though. The strawberries I used were relatively small, however after wrapping, the mochi became very huge! It's almost like 3/4 of my fist! You defintely cannot put the whole mochi into the mouth!

6. The mochi is best consumed immediately, or at most, keep it in the fridge and consumed the following day. Otherwise, the washed strawberry will produce water and make the paste watery.

I'm submitting this to the Aspiring Bakers #5 Fruity March hosted by Bakericious.

Strawberry Fondant Cake

On my return journey from the airport to my house last sunday, my nephew told me he wanted Avatar with Aang as the main picture for his birthday cake. My sister quickly added that she will send me the pictures as reference. As they have seen my previous work on the Ariel, they wanted something similar. I also had the same thoughts when they discussed the main cast with me.

However, when the day drew nearer, I realised that I didn't have the time to colour out Aang! I panicked. Then I decided I shall do fondant instead. And so, I created the head, a Aang-look-alike. Based on one of the picture which my sister sent, I thought the arrow was grey colour. Subsequently, I realised that it was blue. *gosh*

He also asked for a strawberry cake, which was quite rare. I had earlier told my sister that it will be a challenge because I don't want to buy strawberry essence just for this cake. Also, I personally don't believe in artificial flavourings. So in the end, I tweaked the lavender teacake recipe to include fresh strawberries into the cake. I used this cake as I felt that it'll be strong enough to hold the fondant frosting which I want to decorate. I like the result of the cake as the strawberries were very well spreaded.

I used fresh cream and strawberries to sandwich the cake together. Then cover the cake with chocolate fondant. I also used some stencil, which I bought from KC, to print the background. Okay, got to admit that I didn't do a good job here. I hope to improve on it the next time I try again. My daughter also suggested that I put "happy birthday" around the base, which I had initially thought of using a "happy birthday" tag instead. Good suggestion made by her though.

The taste of the cake was pretty good, except that I have slightly overbaked it a little. The lightness of the fresh cream and the partial sour strawberry was a good combination to the cake. I asked my nephew if he liked the cake. He nodded and told me "but the strawberry is very sour!"  Okay, at least that wasn't my fault! My sister told me he was expecting a pink strawberry flavoured cake. I had told her to explain to him on my behalf about using artificial flavourings. Being a brilliant boy he is, I'm sure he understands why his Er Yee (二姨) didn't give him a pink strawberry flavoured cake. Lastly, I want to wish him a very happy 9th birthday!

Sunburst what?

One fine day, I received an email from a lady, recommended by another friend, who wanted to order a cake for her spouse. She told me her spouse loves guitar and asked if I could do a "Sunburst" guitar shape cake. I was like "Sunburst"?? Gee, I've never been musically inclined, nor do I know anything about musical instruments. The only muscial instrument I played was recorder in my primary school. And the sound that came out from me just went "pee pee pee pee". So I've decided playing musical instrument is not my forte.

Back to the cake order. So finally, she was kind enough to send me a picture of the Sunburst guitar. We discussed how she wanted the picture to be, the wordings and the colour. Thanks to her suggestion, I made the "body" bigger instead of having it in proportion. It was a chocolate cake with strawberry jam and whipped cream. I was glad the couple liked the cake. In order to protect their privacy, I have masked out the wordings written on the cake.

Tarty

Since last week, I've had this craving to eat chocolate tarts. I prepared the dough, left it in the fridge. Then the next day, I baked the tart crusts. Then I kept it in the air-tight container. Then, came Tuesday...Wednesday...Thursday. And I haven't gotten the chance to add my chocolate! Finally on Friday, since it was a public holiday, I finally decided to add my chocolate.

Initially, I wanted a dark chocolate tart. And thought of adding some Bailey's Creme Caramel. However, it ended up I used the leftover Strawberry ganache from my chocolate workshop on Tuesday. It turned out to be really nice. My sister liked it very much, and bought some home too!


My parents and sister came over to my place for dinner on Friday. I prepared some simple fare - baked pasta and oriental salad. The recipe for the oriental salad was given to me by Amy, who was our instructor for our Wedding Cake Decoration in BITC. She has given us quite a number of recipes for salads and dips. She's really very good.



To backtrack a bit, I baked pita breads last week. It was a bit too thick. My sister requested for it for her hummus. I've not heard of, or taken hummus until she made it. It was supposed to be taken with pita bread. It was really healthy and good! It wouldn't be my last try too!

Fulfilling Saturdays

Saturdays have always been fulfilling for me. If I don't have appointments or other engagements, I like to spend the morning till noon baking, or finding some recipes to bake. Since I had an order for Strawberry Shortcake, I was up early frosting the cake. I like strawberry shortcakes, they are light and soft. The lightness and mild sweetness of chantilly cream blends rather well with the (sometimes) sour strawberries.


It took me about two hours to get the cake frosted. I still have lots of time on hand. Without hesitating, I took out the bread book by Alex Goh and decided on the easiest recipe - Scones. However, I think it wasn't so well done, I had it too flat? Maybe because I wanted to have more quantity, thus, I compromise with the thickness?


Having baked that scones, I proceeded with baking double chocolate cookies. Heehee... I wanted to give some free samples to the lady who ordered my strawberry shortcake. And so, I did just that!


That was a fulfilling Saturday - a cake, scone & cookies!

Strawberry Shortcake

A cake for no occassion. There was no special occassion, no birthdays, no celebrations. Just felt like making a cake since I bought strawberries yesterday. I was quite happy with the softness of the sponge cake. However, when I tried to place some strawberries on top, the cake slice wasn't too stable. They were almost like dominoes. I guess I didn't really "press" them down when I put the final layer on. Nevertheless, it's quite presentable overall!

Cinderella Cake

Last weekend, I asked my niece what cake she would like for her birthday. She told me she wanted Cinderella. I went "huh?" and gave the excuse that it was too late for me to find pictures. Then I asked her what flavour did she want, and she said "strawberry" and I went "huh?" again. Gee... I though children like chocolates rather than strawberries. I thought to myself, if she wants strawberries, meant that I have to bake a vanilla cake. My vanilla sponge cake skill is still not very good. Somehow, with chocolate based, it's easier to mask the cake should it not turned out very well. Heehee...


Well, having promised her that I'll bake her a cake, though didn't elaborate what, I had to keep my promise. Initially, I decided to make all full chocolate for her (quite different from her request leh?!) Then I decided to at least, try tracing a cinderella? Or at least, did what I had done for Aloysius previously. Somehow, the chocolates just refused to be removed from the plastic (forgot to take picture of this). In the end, I had to use my free hand to draw the Cinderella. As I didn't position poor cinderella properly, her dress was not enough to cover the cake.

Then I thought to myself, since it's already damage done, then I'll have to do damage control. Might as well extend her dress down to the side. Suddenly, I was quite proud of myself for coming up with such a brillian design! Hahaha... not creative I supposed, not original too! But at least I was sober and was able to think slightly faster than normal! Hahaha... Funny thing was, I frost the cake with pink whipping cream instead of the usual chocolate ganache on a chocolate based sponge cake. Another brilliant idea I did was to place a tart crust in the centre of the cake, so as to give the "crispy" taste when eaten. True enough, it did! There were four layers of cake, the filing was-sponge, strawberry jam, sponge, chocolate ganache, tart crust, chocolate ganache, sponge, strawberry jam, sponge & whipping cream. Quite cool right? I'm pretty happy with a couple of firsts on this cake- tart crust and drawing till the side. I'm so glad my niece, Crystal, was very happy with the design and the taste of the cake.

Rainbow Swiss Rolls

I have been quite slackened in updating my posts this week. Mainly because I have been baking everyday, till I have no time to update. Otherwise, usually I baked alternate days so that the following day, my post will be up. So now, I'm updating for the bakes that I made for this week.

I made the Cookies & Cream Ice cream earlier this week. Unfortunately, I was too eager to mix them up, that I didn't wait for the custard to be cool before I added the whipped cream. Ended up, the mixture was like "curds". Not a good sight to see and have. The texture, of course, was affected by that. My eldest son helped me in the preparation. A good helper to have for simple tasks! ;)


The following day, I made Rainbow Swiss Rolls. I used the emulsifier cake as the base, then separated them into three containers and added colours to two of them. As there was still half of the batter left, I made them into cupcakes and frosted them with chocolate ganache. For the swiss rolls, I filled them with whipped cream and strawberry jam. They were really good! ;) Even I like the rolls.

Rainbow Strawberry Swiss Roll


Rainbow Cupcakes

"HUAT" Ahhh...

Last weekend, my parents-in-law (PIL) gave me a big sieve, a cake pan & a cane "basket" for baking. It all started when we discuss about steaming "ji dan gao". So since they have stopped baking long ago, they decided to give me their "inheritence" so as not to go waste. For me of course I'll gladly accept. Anything to do with baking, I'll be glad to be "garbage" collector!

I remembered I had a recipe of the Pandan Delight Fatt Koh from Yochana. So I decided to steam this tonight, so that I can give my PIL tomorrow when they drop by. I had a packet of HK flour which I didn't use since the last time I made pao! This recipe was pretty easy and nice. I hesitated for quite a while, don't know if I should use muffin trays for smaller Fatt Koh or the cane basket. Finally, I decided to use the cane basket. I lined it with baking paper, and steam it in the wok. It took much longer than what is in the recipe because mine was a big basket, about 7". However, I was very happy with the result when I opened the wok cover! My Fatt Koh "smiled" at me!! Yippee!! But I steamed until my wok was dry, lucky it was ready!!


The nice green was from the pandan leaves. There was no colouring added.

While waiting for my Fatt Koh to proof, I did up the Almond Cream or Frangipane for my Strawberry Tarts. Baked the tart crusts last weekend, but haven't filled them up yet. I wanted to fill them up so that I can finish them. I filled them with frangipane, and had Strawberry Frangipane Tarts!

Strawberries in Season

The strawberries are in season lately. It seems like I've been baking strawberry-related pastries lately. But it's alright, nobody is complaining anyway! Early Sunday morning, I woke up to make Strawberry Flan. Just feel like eating some pastries, so I decided on strawberries since I bought them yesterday and cannot be kept for long.

Initially, I had wanted to do Apple Crumble Flan, but I changed my mind after seeing the strawberries. In the afternoon, I had wanted to just bake my Cinnamon Rolls. However, my hubby suddenly told me it will be his mum's birthday this coming weekday, and asked if I was baking any cakes. I told him I had no time since I'm baking my breads. But I thought for a while, I should have time to manage both. So I decided to use the remaining strawberries for the cake. I quickly whipped up a vanilla sponge cake while the dough was proofing. Actually, I was quite fast. From 1pm, I started the bread dough, by 4.45pm, I had finished frosting the cake for my mother-in-law, and baked the cinnamon rolls.

Standing on my feet for almost four hours, I was really dead tired! But I'm happy that I managed to churn out a cake for my MIL. :) I hope she liked it!

Morning Produce: Two Strawberry Flans



Afternoon Produce: Strawberry Cake for my Mother-in-law


Cinnamon Rolls


Unfortunately my cinnamon rolls turned out to be quite dry on the surface.