Chocolate Chips Bun

Using the recipe I baked recently for the Hot Cross Buns and the balance toppings from them, I decided to modify the recipe by changing it to chocolate chips. Hoping that these buns would attract the girls more.

 To make the chocolate dough, I had added 1 tsp of chocolate emulco and added some chocolate chips to the dough. But I would suggest to add tne chocolate chips into the dough ONLY after the 1st proofing as we would need to knead on the dough before and after the 1st proofing. Otherwise the chocolate chips would melt a little and it would be rather unmanageable.

 As you could see in my picture below, I had added the chocolate chips before the 1st proofing and ended up with the uneven round dough.

 Fortunately, some of the "round" dough did proofed up a little nicer than the rest...hehehe....

Using the balance topping, I had also used about 1 tsp of chocolate emulco. Piped it around the dough.

  And here, specially chosen the most decent looking chocolate chips bun I had baked tonight.

These buns did not really captured my girls' attention except for Nat. She said it was delicious. And surprisingly, hubby told me it was great and he had asked me for another one... As for me, I did liked them as well.

These buns were soft and with the chocolate chips too..., yum yum yum...:))

Using the same recipe from the Hot Cross Buns with my own modifications.

Ice-Cream Cone Cupcakes

It was already about 9pm last night but Mimi had asked me to make thse ice-cream cone cupcakes we saw recently. So we made them and the girls waited patiently for them till about 1130pm.

 In the end, Mimi didn't finished it, probably it was too rich for her as she had only eaten the Hershey's Chocolate Frosting. Nat on the other hand, happily finished up hers. For me, I preferred the butter cake inside the cone...

 Nevertheless, these made a pretty little treats for all the children. I'm sure all of them would fanxy one of them. You may wish to use any cake recipe and decorate as desired. 

♡♡ Have lotsa of fun with them and your kids♡♡

Cutlery Cookies - The Fork & The Spoon Cookies

I was packing up the cupboard in my office and I found these cookie cutter. My colleague had visited China last year and she had bought this cutter for me as a souvenir. This is cute isn't it??? It came just nice for the new cookie that I had wanted to try out.

I realised that recently my girls had been pretty keen on the cookies that I had been trying out.. It had been quite a while since their last thrill on my baked cookies.. Probably this time round, all these new cookies attempts were very cute & interesting??? I would think so too.:-D

The girls were all very excited as these forks & spoons were very cute. And plus the fact that they can dip them into the chocolate sauce. Only one problem was that I couldn't find anything to let my cookies stand while waiting for the chocolate to set in... No choice, I tried using my cooling rack, with its little holes to hold them.

This cookie dough was much more easier to roll on as it did not have any egg contents. I had also cut down on the sugar level as I do not want the cookies to be too sweet.

After cutting out the shapes, I had used the letters to endorsed the girls' name on the cookies...

All of them can't wait to lay their little hands on the cookies and kept asking me if the cookies were ready..

Here's Mimi, she is one of the persistent one... as the elder sisters had to go to bed early for school tomorrow, Mimi had been hanging around the kitchen, waiting for the cookies to be ready..

These little cookies were all nicely packed up for school tomorrow.

While the 3 of them were enjoying the cookies in school, their classmates were also very envying them as the cookies had their names on it... A little time consuming to bake these cookies...but the thought of it, when the cookies were very popular with the girls and that they were gone the very next day, made all the effort worthwhile..:)

Recipe as adapted from 每天都是餅乾日 by 安星美 

Ingredients:

(yeilds about 20 pieces)

120g plain flour

30g almond powder

65g icing sugar (I used 50g)

pinch of salt

20g whipping cream (I used milk)

60g butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla essence

120g chocolate for dips

How to bake:

1. Add the butter, icing sugar & salt in a mixing bowl. Mix well.

2. Add in the milk until well corporated.  Add in the vanilla essence, stir well.

3. Add in the sieved flour and almond powder into the mixture, mix well until you get a dough.

4. Roll out the dough until 0.3cm thick and cut them using the cookie cutter.

5. Bake the cookies in a preheated oven of 170~175C for about 10 mins. Remove the cookies from the tray and let it cool on the rack.

6. Dip the cookies into the chocolate and let it set. Ready to be eaten & packed:)

HAVE FUN!!!

Happy Birthday Curly Fries... Let's have a Toystory Cake♡

Happy Birthday Curly Fries...

Time had really passed by that quickly... I remembered she was just borned and it seems just like yesterday that she was still a little baby... 3 years had passed, and she is a little grown up gal.. A little gal with lots of imaginations, being very independent of her own...

We wish her to have a happy & healthy life ahead of this year, and may she be smarter, more obedient, become more gentle...and what have we..., love us... XOXO

Mimi had requested for a Toystory Theme for her cake. And for me, I had long gave up my fondant cake as I reckon I wasn't a great expert in that... So this is what I made for her..

A normal cream cake, 5 different layers of sponge cake, topped with whipped cream, strawberries and Mimi's Toystory cake toppers. I hadn't had much ideas in decorating the cake as well.. So just a little simple one... I thought it wasn't made that beautifully, but I was glad Mimi was very thrilled about it, and she loved the cake...

Besides the cake, I made some chocolate cuppies, the "Aliens" from Toystory...

How do they look like? Do they looked like what they are supposed to be???
Initially, Mimi didn't want to eat it, but in the end she tried it, all because of the green gummies and chocolate chips on the cuppies:-p. As for Nat, she liked the "Aliens" cuppies very much.

There, our very own little party for Mimi's birthday...

Just the 5 of us, Daddy, Mummy, Nic, Nat & Mimi...

We had even bought the Toystory balloons for her, the paper plates, cups, napkins & hats.

Her little cheeky face...

And the great smile from her is what we wanted...:)
She was so happy with her little party...

And of course her favourite strawberries...:))

Happy 3rd Birthday my littlest Princess...

May all your wishes come true.

Love us... XOXO

I am such a dark chocolate chips cookie and I am overly sweeeeeet.....

I am trying out a new recipe from one of my new cookie recipe book. The German Cookies I made the other day ain't my gals favourite. But for the adults, they loved it very much. Well, the gals preferred Chocolate Cookies...Nic had asked me to bake chocolate cookies instead. So browsing through my new book, I saw these chocolate cookies...

These chocolate cookies used quite a fair bit of chocolates. I had used baking chocolates, cocoa powder & chocolate chips. Thus these cookies had became the awfully chocolates cookies.

Are you a chocolate fan too???

I feel these chocolate cookies are far too sweeeeeeet for me. And also, please watch the cookies, don't over baked them as they will be burnt.... That was what happened to me... hahahaha....

Overall, these chocolate chips cookies scored fairly well with the gals... Except for being exceptionally dark brown....:))

Ingredients

230g butter

150g soft chocolate (i use baking chocolates)

75g sugar

300g flour

50g cocoa powder

chocolate chips

Method

Cream butter, soft chocolate & sugar until soft and creamy.

Add in the sieved flour+cocoa powder, mix well until well combined.

Roll the cookie dough into small little balls and flatten them to about 1cm thick. Put 3-4 chocolate chips on top of the cookie dough.

Bake in a preheated oven of 170C for about 20-25mins.

Do keep a llokout for the cookies. Do not over bake as they will be burnt.

My Not-So-Red-Velvet Cupcakes

Two and half weeks more to Christmas Day, and I was thinking what gifts I should prepare... I thought I should try baking a Red Velvet Cupcakes with Frosted Cream Cheese as a gift, instead of stressing myself of what gifts I should get.

Browsing through a few recipes for these Red Velvet Cupcakes, I decided to use this recipe that I had came acroos from Baking Wonderland. This recipe did not use cocoa powder, and only red coloring. Modifying the recipe a little here and there gave me these cupcakes today...

But these cupcakes ain't that velvet as they should be... It was probably due to too much cocoa powder I had added in... However, the cupcakes texture were excellent, soft & moist:-)
As for the cream frosting, I thought they were a little too sweet for me, but they overall complimented well with the cupcakes as I had reduced the sugar amount.

Here if you may see, the Red Velvet Cupcakes looked more like Chocolate Cupcakes instead:-p

Never fear!!!! I will make another attempt soooooon..., hehehehe....:))

Meantime, do enjoy these little cuppies 1st.....!!!

Here is the actual recipe as adapted from Wai Soh Man from Baking Wonderland

(with slight modifications)

Ingredients:

165g flour (150g flour + 1.5 tbsps cocoa powder)

150g sugar (125g)

1/2 tsp baking soda

pinch of salt

1 egg

150g corn oil (canola oil)

118g milk

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

1/2 tsp white vinegar

1/2 tsp lemon zest

dash of red coloring

Cheese topping

100g cream cheese

15g soft butter

50g icing sugar

Method:

1. Combine flour, sugar, baking soda & salt. Sieve & set aside.

2. Combine remaining ingredients and mix well. Fold in the flour mixture from step 1. Mix well till smooth & velvety.

3. Scoop batter into paper cups, 75% filled, and bake for about 25-30 mins in a preheated oven of 170C.

To prepare cheese topping, combine ingredients and mix well till smmoth. Place mixture into a piping bag and pipe as desired.

Have fun with these cuppies while I will attempt another cuppies soon:)

Chocolate & Coffee Cupcakes

Recently Nat had a change of taste bud... Suddenly she just like coffee flavor. Amongst my 3 gals, she is the one who has an exotic taste, like enjoying durian, coffee, enjoying even red wine & beer... Hmmm, that's pretty unusual for a little girl though...

Nevertheless, she had been quite supportive of the bakes that I had tried, and she will always be the one whom is willing to try, unlike Mimi, who used to "test" my cakes, simply just tell me these days that those cakes are not her favourite.. :-p

These Chocolate & Coffee Cupcakes were quite tempting.. Being chocolate & coffee..

But I guess I didn't fare quite well on these cupcakes.

Firstly, I felt that my chocolate flavour wasn't too much

Secondly, the coffee smell was there but not too satisfying to me

Thirdy, my cupcakes came out abit hard

... ...

But the consolation was, the coffee cream was yummy!!!!

I used my own combination of the whipped cream + instant coffee mix, and topped with chopped peanuts!
hahahahahaha.....

If I hadn't mentioned those cons, these cupcakes would look extremely fantastic isn't it???

Recipe as adapted from Kevin Chai:

Ingredients:

250g butter

180g sugar

4 eggs

200g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

150g melted chocolate

2 tbsp canola oil

30ml kahlua

Method:

1. Beat butter & sugar until fluffy. Add in eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

2. Fold in sifted flour, baking powder & soda.

3. Stir melted chocolate with canola oil, then pour into flour mixture with kahlua, mix well.

4. Spoon the mixture into the cases. Bake for 20mins in a preheated oven of 175C. Remove cupcakes & cool on a rack.

Coffee Cream:

200g butter

150g icing sugar

1 tsp instant coffee powder

100g melted chocolate

Prepare the cream by beating butter, icing sugar and coffee powder until light & smooth. Stir in melted chocolate and pipe on top of each cupcake. Decorate with chocolate.

Steamed Chocolate Cupcakes

Yes, Steam Cakes are indeed in trend this month in my home... And I am enjoying it very much. I had given alot of steamed cakes to my friend, and her hubby mentioned that I seemed to be enjoying doing so... So I told my friend, this month onwards my daughter will be starting her school vacations, plus my boss is not in SG, so taking all these time available to bake again...

I had bought this "Steamed Cakes" recipe book when I was in Penang last October, but I had never tried any of the recipes since I bought it till today.

From this book, I had selected the Steamed Chocolate Cupcakes as the ingredients were rather basic. Some of the other recipes required evaporated milk and condensed milk, which I wasn't too keen in them.

A full ingredients could actually fetch quite a number of cupcakes, depending on the size of your paper cups.

*Note: It is better to use those "paper" cupcake cases as compared to the other cupcake cases as the paper cups will "opened" up during steaming.

These steamed chocolate cupcakes were not too bad. I had modified some of the ingredients. Cutting down a huge amount of the icing sugar, using margarine instead of butter, and replacing the hot water with milk too. The cupcakes did turned out well, soft and moist, but a little not so sweet.. So perhaps I should increase a little more sugar...hehehehe...
The gals loved these cupcakes too. I was glad that they liked it. Mimi had 2 of them and she said it was yummy. My friend who tried the cupcakes said they were delicious as well.

Would you like to try one as well?

Recipe as adapted from the Steamed Cakes by Mdm Zubaidah Bte Chepa

Ingredients:

Yields about 16 medium size cups & 16 mini size cups

250g superfine flour (I use self raising flour)

1 tsp baking soda (omitted)

75g cocoa powder

350g icing sugar (I used 200g)

250g butter (I used margarine)

3 eggs

1 bowl of hot water (I used 250ml cold milk)

Method:

1. Beat butter & sugar until smooth.

2. Add in the egg one at a time, mix well at each addition.

3. Add in the flour+cocoa powder, alternating with the milk. Mix until well blended.

4. Pour batter into the paper cup cases and steam over high heat for about 10mins.

(If you are using my ingredients, you can fill the batter till full as the cupcakes will shrink a little after removing from heat)

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #25 – Steaming Hot Cakes (November 2012) hosted by Miss B of Everybody Eats Well in Flanders

Orange Cheesecake (Non-Baked)

I have never fancied adding orange essence into my cakes somehow as I do not like the taste of it. It seems to make me feel like as if I was taking those very bitter medicine when I was young... Hahaha... But to others, this orange essence was rather pleasant to them and in fact they do quite like it. How about you?

Reason of baking this cheesecake was because I have a pack of whipping cream which is due to expire soon. So I found this cheesecake using whipping cream... Hmmm but all ended up quite a mess as the whipping cream that I bought, did not whipped up as my top whipping cream...

In fact, being a non-baked cheesecake, this cheesecake is very easy to prepare and it should be ready by 15-30mins time.

I probably had exceeded the amount of whipped cream and I put in 250g of cheese instead of 200g. Thus the texture of the cheesecake was abit soft, more of like a mousse texture. Overall, it was quite yummy. My hubby had taken 2 slices of it, and my friend say it was delicious too. And she said she like the "orangey" taste of it:)

Ingredients as adapted from Kevin Chai.

Base:

140g crushed chocolate marie biscuits

70g melted Butter

Combine all ingredients. Press into a 7" square tin.

Cheese Filling:

200g cream cheese

70g sugar

2 tsp gelatine

2 tbsp water

200g fresh whipped cream

3 tbsp orange compound

Beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth.

Melt gelatine with water over simmering water. Add into cheese mixture until blended.

Fold in whipped cream, add in orange compound, mix well.

Spread cheese filling into prepared tin.

Topping:

80g crushed marie biscuits

40g melted butter

Combine all ingredients and sprinkle over the top.

Wrap well and refrigerate until set.

Chocolate Chips Cupcakes 2

I had joined the Baking Wonderland Malaysia in Facebook, and from there, I have bookmarked lots of recipes in my phone... And I better updated those baked items into my blog before my phone is overloaded with all those recipes.

I had gotten this recipe from Michelle Heong from Baking Wonderland. These chocolate chips cupcakes were a delish! Soft texture... But 1 regret... I didn't add enough chocolate chips.. Hehehe, else it would have been heavenly delish with plenty of chocolate chips!!!

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

100g Butter

80g Sugar (75g)

2 eggs

120g self raising flour (125g)

1 tsp baking powder (omiteed)

20g cocoa powder

50g chocolate chips (can use more)

Adequate chocolate chips to sprinkle on top of the batter.

Method:

1. Cream the butter and sugar until well combined. Adding 1 egg at a time and make sure they are well-blended in each addition.

2. Add the flour into the mixture, mix well.

3. Gradually add in the milk.

4. Fold in the chocolate chips.

5. Pour the batter into the cupcake cases, about 80% full, bake in a preheated oven of 150C (180C) for about 35mins.

Chocolate Marble Cake

I must say this Chocolate Marble Cake is one of the best that I had ever baked... Unlike some, this cake is not too oily and most importantly, this cake texture is very soft and fluffy. This cake remains soft even on the next day.

If you are a butter cake lover, this one will suits you well...:)

Here is the original recipe as adapted from GoodFood Magazine (August 2012 issue)

Ingredients:

225g butter, softened

225g caster sugar

4 eggs

225g self raising flour

3 tbsp milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 tbsp cocoa powder

Method:

1. Heat oven to 180C. Grease a 20-cm cake tin and line the bottom with a baking paper.

2. Beat butter & sugar, followed by the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Fold through the flour, milk & vanilla extract until the mixture is smooth.

3. Divide mixture between 2 bowls. Stir the cocoa powder into one of the mixture, mix well. Take 2 spoons and use them to dollop the chocolate & vanilla mixes into the tin alternately. Take a skewer or knife & swirl it around the mixture to create a marbled effect.

4. Bake the cake for 45-55mins. Turn out on a cooling rack and leave to cool. Will keep in 3 days in an air-tight container.