Essence of Orange-Chocolate Wafer Cake - THB #17

It's time to bake again with The Home Bakers

This bake, we have Essence of Orange-Chocolate Wafer Cake, chosen by Eileen of Hundred Eighty Degrees.

I had baked mine in my own version and modification, reason being that I do not have any food processor to process the whole orange and the raisins. Thus, I had omitted the "processing" with the fresh oranges segments into the cake, omitted the raisins as I had ran out of them, and topped them up with lots of chocolate chips(my fav!!!)

I had baked a 8" removable cake mould and a cuppie.

I will personally prefer the one in the cuppie as the above picture as it had a nice cake texture, really really soft. Love this cake to the extreme, and with the fresh oranges inside the cuppie if you can see them clearly.

Nevertheless, the cake was fantastic as well, but being overly soft and fluffy, I will still think that baking them in a cuppie will be a wiser choice and much easier to eat them..hehehehe...

Have a slice of this cake with some low-fat yoghurt topped with orange zest and fresh fruits...Yummy!!!

So have you baked yours yet???

Try it and share with us your opinions for this lovely cake:)

For the full recipe, please visit Eileen from Hundred Eighty Degrees and to view other members' bake, drop by The Home Bakers (THB).

Orange Frosted Sponge Cake - THB #15

For some of you whom are new to this THB - The Home Bakers, it is a group that Joyce had set up. By owning the same recipe book of Coffee Cakes by Lou Seibert Pappas, you can simply join us in the wonderful bakes with the rest of the other bloggers. The rule of this bake is that only the host of the chosen bake can post up the recipe.

Should you like to have more details, please feel free to contact Joyce from The Home Bakers ^-^

This is another excellent recipe from Coffee Cakes by Lou Seibert Pappas. I had chosen this recipe as I personally preferred sponge/chiffon type cake, enjoying its ever soft & fluffy texture.
As I was preparing all the ingredients, I suddenly got worried as I thought I might had missed out the "oil" ingredient as usually, sponge cake will required oil. I read the ingredients once more, to make sure I hadn't missed out the "oil"... And I really didn't. I was rather surprised and wondered how the sponge cake will turned out.

As you can see from my picture below, I had used an 8-inch chiffon tin for my bake. My sponge cake did rise VERY well. I was really amazed with it... I thought this in fact was one of my few cakes baked in a chiffon tin that had gotten a nicely browned skin on the outer and sides of the cake... I was happy...:))

But after taking a bite of the sponge cake, I thought that my sponge cake tasted abit like the鸡蛋 糕. My colleagues and hubby who had tasted my sponge cake, had agreed that it did really have the 鸡蛋糕 texture and had a very mild orange taste, which I failed to detect it myself..  Strangely....

I have referred to THB post for the tips and read that everyone's gotten a excellent soft, fluffy texture of this cake... Something went wrong somewhere... I had then, realised that probably it was the plain flour and too little orange juice, and my accidentally overdosed the cake with additional 1/2 tsp of baking power... So just before posting up this recipe, I had to bake another one!!! This time round I had used top flour and increased my orange juice, and added 1 orange zest.
And YES!!!!
The sponge cake did turned out excellent, soft as everyone had mentioned. 

Instead of coating my whole sponge cake with the orange frosting, I had prepared 1/3 of the frosting and coated ONLY 1 slice of the sponge cake for photgraphy purposes.
By sprinkling some orange zest on the frosting made it even more tastier... I really enjoyed this great combination...Yum Yum...♡♡♡

Let us all share a slice of our Orange Frosted Sponge Cake by starting to bake yours now^^

Recipe as adapted from Coffee Cakes by Lou Seibert Pappas

Ingredients:
(Makes one 10-inch cake: serves 16)
(With slight modifications to my own measurements)

1 1/4 cup cake flour (150g)

1 1/2 cup sugar (I used 150g, 100g & 50g)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

6 eggs, yolks & whites separated

1 tsp cream of tar tar

1/4 tsp cup orange juice (70ml)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 325F (165C).

2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, 1 cup of sugar, salt & baking powder and stir to blend. In another large bowl, combine the egg whites and cream of tar tar and beat with an electric mixer on high speed until soft peaks form. Gradually beat in the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar until stiff, glossy peaks form.

3. Add in the egg yolks, orange juice and vanilla  to the flour mixture and beat on medium speed for about 1 minute, scarping down the sides of the bowl once or twice. Stir about 1/4 of the egg whites into the yolk mixture, and then fold in the remaining whites until well blended. Pour the batter into an unbuttered 10-inch tube pan and smooth the top.

4. bake for about 50 minutes, or until the cake is golden, springs back when lightly touched, and a cake tester inserted int he centre comes out clean. Invert on a wire rack and let cool completely. Unmould and transfer to a serving plate.

Orange Frosting

3 tbsps unsalted butter at room temperature

2 cups confectioners' sugar, sifted

1 tbsp thawed orange juice concentrate mixed with 2 tbsps of water

(As I do not want to coat the whole cake with the frosting for fear that my girls will not eat them...and I was absolutely right about it...!!! I had used 1 tbsp of butter+100g icing sugar+1 tbsp of fresh orange juice instead. I had also coated the orange frosting with the orange zest which actually enhanced the light tasted sponge cake.)

Method:

In a medium bowl, combine all the ingredients and mix until blended. Spread over the top and sides of the cake and let it set for about 1 hour. Cut into wedges to serve.

Do join us along in the wonderful bake with our co-founder, Joyce from The Home Bakers and also Kitchen Flavours, and do make sure to check out othe bloggers who had participated in this Home Bakers theme as well.
Have fun everyone...!!!!

Apple Walnut Mosaic Coffee Cake

Making it in time for the THB bake before we had a month's holiday... hehehe, Sounded like we are having school holidays:-p

This month, Mich, Piece of Cake had selected this bake and I must say it is another wonderful recipe as well. Mich had done up a very nicely walnut stresuel cupcake style, and they looked very appealing.. Do hope over to her blog for the recipe:)

I had baked mine in a 8" bundt pan, halving the ingredients, and modifying some of the ingredients like replacing the wholemeal flour to wheat flour, cranberries to raisns, brown sugar to golden caster sugar, reducing quite abit of the sugar level.

The batter was abit stiff as mentioned in the book, but to my surprise, this cake was so soft & moist. I like this cake very much, indeed. As I had reduced quite a fair bit of the sugar, the apples & raisins compliment the sweetness in the overall cake. Definitely another recipe for keeper

Do click here to see what the other THB members had baked for their version of this Apple Walnut Mosaic Coffee Cake

Banana, Macadamia Nut, And Coconut CupCakes

I was browsing my blog this morning and I had saw the THB was on.. I had missed a couple of the THB bakes and I didn't want to miss this again...I had gotten ready the conversion for this bake and I had quickly prepared all the ingredients.

 For those of you whom are unaware of this THB (The Home Bakers), it is a baking club set up by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours. For Bakers whom owned a "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas, and we will all be baking the same cake in each theme, sharing our experience & tips. 

If you will liked to join us along in this THB bakes, please CLICK HERE for more information.

This time round, Kit has chosen this bake, and it was really delicious...

Fresh from oven today, I had made them into cupcakes instead of cake as cupcakes are easily managed(eaten), and for my small little oven, it would be definitely better as my cupcakes will be easily "cooked" rather than cake form...:-p

 Followed all stated in the recipe, I had blended all the wet ingredients using my blender. Mixing everything in with the flour, and oh, I have used dessicated coconut instead of the flakes. Just before pouring the batter into the cupcake cases, I realised I had forgotten to add in my oil with the wet ingredients...!!! Oh my... Thank goodness, the cucpakes were still edible... hehehehe, silly me...:))

As you can see, I was still able to get a very moist nice texture of the cupcakes. The best part of the cupcakes, were of course the macadamia nuts topped with the cinnamon sugar... So crunchy & yummy:))

Would you like to have one too?

Please visit Kit from I-Lost-In-Austen for the full recipe.

To view the others members bake on this cake, do drop by The Home Bakers (THB).

Blueberry Walnut Cupcakes (Strawberry Coffee Cake)

Hehehehe, I am back again... My boss is back in Korea for the next 2 weeks, so my timing is more flexible now till Sep...:-D I think I had missed quite abit in the Bake-Along since then... And I hope I am not too late in baking this Strawberry Coffee Cake in The Home Bakers.

This time I had chosen to use blueberries instead, reason being, the strawberris ain't in season plus they are more expensive than the usual days. And almost I have 3 strawberries monsters at home, so keeping my 2 punnets of strawberries for them seem to be a wiser choice for this time. It's kinda weird too, blueberries seem to be expensive too, cos usually it will be like 2 punnets for about $4.00..? When you want the berries, you can't find them... Murphy's Law... hahahaha....

Besides replacing the strawberries, I had used walnuts instead of chopped almonds. I had used the full portion of the recipe as stated, made about 9 regular size cupcakes & a 7"x3" rectangular pan.

These cakes are indeed yummy, it's fluffy & soft. With the juicy blueberries and the toasted walnuts sprinkled with brown sugar, it really compliments very well.

Kids & Hubby didn't get to touch the cakes at all as that day I had overly stocked with alot of bread and cakes I bought from the stores. So anyhow, I had brought the girls to watch a movie, "Brave". It was a very touching story, we all loved it very much. It is a great movie to watch together with your family:)

Do click here to view the whole recipe from Alice from I Love.I Cook.I Bake.

Mocha-Cappuccino Marbled Cake

I finally found a way to load up my pictures using my office PC... plus blogging in the office is a huge challenge for me as the blogger did not seem to function "well" in some areas... Not too sure if it was the security settings from office or...??? Kekekeke... Anyway, here I am with my cake & posting...:))

Time really passed very quickly, I had actually "prepared" myself for this cake since last week and I thought I do still have some time left before the "due" date... I baked this cake last night, not remembering that today is the date to submit our post until I saw Lena's, Joyce, Anuja's, Mich's & Emily's postings...

THB - The Home Bakers , a bakers group created by Joyce. And we will be baking all the recipes from a chosen book on every 3 weeks. For this time, they had chosen "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas.

Each member from the group will be selecting one recipe from the book and only the host for the selected recipe will be allowed to post the recipe, while the rest will try to bake it and link on the host's page. Giving tips and advices on the bake, will allow everyone to learn something new.

For those of you whom like to join us in this fun bake, please do contact Joyce from THB.

This time, Lena, from Frozen Wings was the chosen one, and she had selected this Mocha-Cappuccino Marbled Cake. It was indeed a great choice as this cake was absolutely soft and moist. Not too a fussy cake to handle, everything was quickly whipped up and off it went to the oven for about 1 hour.

In fact, this is my 3rd time using my 10" bundt pan as I dislike using it. Due to the "stick" of the cake or burnt outcome, I had never fancy using it. So this time, I took my chance, greased it with butter and lightly floured, it worked like MAGIC... and I was rather pleased with the outcome for the bundt cake:-p

My 1st every nicely baked bundt cake from this bundt pan:))

Getting a nicely browned outer coat for my cake I would say... Don't you think so too??

While the cake was baking in the oven, the aroma of the coffee lingers around the house.... Absolutely not a coffee lover at all, it was a temptation... I kept checking on the cake to see if it was ready to be EATEN!!! The cake was almost done by 45mins, but I let it continued baking for another 15mins to make sure it was fully baked.

Coffee wise, I had used as indicated, reduced the amount of sugar and replacing sour cream with low-fat yoghurt.

Results of the cake was good. Hubby actually came back to the kitchen to ask for another slice... And Nat liked this Mocha-Cappuccino Cake as well. As for me, I thought it was a little bland...??? Maybe my sore throat has caused me lost my taste buds for the time being...:-p

Do try this if you are a coffee lover:)

Almond-Crusted Butter Cake

This is the 5th bake from the THB. And here we have the Almond-Crusted Butter Cake.

Emily, from the Emily's Cooking (Makan2) Foray will be the host for this bake. Do click on the link to find out the exact recipe.

I have tried and baked many butter cakes, and most of them are very oily and with lots of crumbs. But this butter cake... I just fell in love with it... Maybe I'm just a very "dry"person???? Hahahaha.... 

Even without the baking powder, the cake risen nicely and it's texture really did turned out so superb!!!

A very unimaginable result I'd get from this recipe...

Mmmmm..., We all loved it very much!!!

I had used half of the portion stated in the recipe as it yields a very huge loaf. So halving the portion, I had used a 5"x8"x4" cake pan as seen. Coating the bottom and sides of the pan with butter, followed by the almond flakes.

Here we have, the bottom of the cake, all coated with almond flakes...

And the sides of the cake. As I did love almond flakes very much, so I had also sprinkles the flakes onto of the cake. And being very generous with the almond flakes, I think it goes so well with the butter cake...;-p

A very well-baked butter cake I would say. Unlike the usual ones that I had baked before.

Cake texture was excellent, plus the fact that it was NOT oily, a slightly-dry cakey texture... I really love this cake very much and I foresee myself baking more in often:-D

I'm not sure about you, if you do like the slightly dry texture, unless the normal moist, oily butter cake that we always have..., but I would say this butter cake suits us very well:-p

Click on the badge to bring you to THB;-D

And of course, here is MiMi, can't wait to try the cake. Having a few bites, she left the cake on the floor. Both Nat & Mimi were more interested in the toasted, crispy almond flakes instead... hahahaha...

If you are a butter cake lover, do try this recipe. I am sure you will love it as much as we all do:))

Pear Pinwheel & Hazelnut Cake

I was browsing Joyce's blog, Kitchen Flavours that day, and I came across this little badge on her blog.

THB - The Home Bakers , a bakers group created by Joyce. And we will be baking all the recipes from a chosen book on every 3 weeks. For this time, they had chosen "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas.
Each member from the group will be selecting one recipe from the book and only the host for the selected recipe will be allowed to post the recipe, while the rest will try to bake it and link on the host's page. Giving tips and advices on the bake, will allow everyone to learn something new. That's all:))

So here I am, joining them in this group, to try out all the recipes from this book. I ordered mine from Fishpond. So far I had baked 2 of the recipes, and I do quite like the cakes. Pretty unusual ones and yet delicious.

For this post, this is actually the 4th bake for this book, and I managed to bake in just in time before the deadline.. Hmmm, school holidays will be over by this weekend, and I think I am trying to bake as much as I can within this week. Schools start and I will have lesser time to bake as I need to supervise Nic's homework, and plus the girls need to go for the enrichment class. Good bye holidays and back to the hectic school life... :-p

Alright, back to the main point... The Pear Pinwheel Hazelnut Cake will be host be Zoe, Bake for Happy Kids. Do click on her link for the recipe.

I had used almond meal instead of hazelnut. As for the pears, I had bought them from the supermarket, and it was called "Blush" Pears?? Not too sure, but the pretty colors on the pears did caught my attention, so here they are with me, ready to be baked into this lovely cake.

Batter's all ready, with the sliced pears arranged as pinwheel. I had used a 20cm round pan, coated with butter. Well, in fact, this is my 2nd time coating my pan with butter. And then only I realised that, it was so much easier to do so, plus it is definitely cheaper than using the parchment paper. :-p

As my cinnamon powder had longer expired, I did not get any new ones. So what I have now is the ginger powder. So with a dash of the ginger powder + the confectionery sugar, I tossed them up with the pears before arranging the on the batter. Taste wise still ok... hehehehe....

I had made a half portion of the original recipe. Do refer to Zoe's blog for the exact recipe.

Overall about this cake : it was really tasty. A soft, moist, nutty texure.

It does reminds me of the Pear & Frangipane Pie I made last year, using the almost same ingredients, but the difference was that it was on a "pie" version. It tasted as good as this Pear Pinwheel & Hazelnut Cake too:))

Hope you do have fun trying out this recipe.:))