Gingernuts

I am actually not a fan of ginger. I do like the aroma and taste of ginger but won't eat ginger per se. I remember there was this one time where I got a few free pieces of free sample of Crabtree & Evelyn's ginger cookies and it was like wow, very tasty! Love it but only thought of baking some myself now. Also recently got to know that gingernuts are BIL's favorite.

So this is basically the inspiration and story behind TeaRoom's gingernut.

I would most probably bake this again, not only because I quite like the taste, also because I need to perfect the baking time. The cookies are a bit hard I thought but would be quite perfect for coffee dipping. As I've told SSB.

Chocolate Almond Biscotti

I have so far only one confirmed biscotti recipe - Almond Chocolate Chips. Having said that, I had experimented with different cut size, different baking time etc. I think (I hope) I know which is the best combination. Since both MC and MFG also liked that recipe, it's a sure pass.

I've tried baking a chocolate base biscotti the last time, with pecan and chocolate chips (I can't seem to be able to forgo chocolate chips), but it was not good, leave alone a very troublesome baking method.

For curiosity sake, I want to try baking a chocolate base biscotti one last time (at least until I find a recipe that is so convincing, or maybe something from Jamie Oliver. MC, does Jamie has biscotti recipe? Don't remember coming across one).

Anyways, I thought this is quite a believable recipe and don't seem to be that complicated. Actually, compared with my confirmed recipe, this seems less troublesome since no electric mixer is required. And so I thought wrong... this recipe required kneading the dough and it was a very though dough! Didn't expect that type of consistency.

There was also one tricky instruction - the ingredient list says 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk. The method says "... add almond, and the eggs....". EGGS? The 2 eggs, or the 2 eggs AND the yolk? At the end of the recipe, it says "brush the dough with egg yolk".

So I guess just the 2 eggs without the yolk. But after kneading for a while, I realize that some of the flour couldn't be mixed together, so I added the egg yolk as well, and brush the dough with another egg yolk before baking.

Whatever do we want to brush egg yolk? I actually don't like the outcome of the egg wash. It's rather erm... yellow. See...


I didn't think the biscotti looked "pretty" with the egg yolk wash even after slicing them. One thing about slicing biscotti - if you slice them when they are just baked, it's easy since the dough is still soft, but since it's soft, the biscotti will crumble. Leaving the biscotti for about 5 minutes makes slicing a bit more difficult but you will find that the biscuit slices are more intact.

Sliced biscotti ready for second bake. If you want really crispy slices, cut them as think as possible and bake for a longer time (the dryer the crispier), but I also discovered (and according to feedback) that it will be a bit hard. Something like crispy equals hard. MFG said he likes it crispy, but the parents finds it a bit hard. A baking time of 10 to 15 minutes maximum would be just nice for the second baking.

Biscuits look presentable, looks yummy enough and I'm sure would be great with dipping into coffee. I've reduced the sugar a lot since I've substitute half the almond with chocolate chips. Cousin sis said it's not sweet enough and a bit tasteless, plus she doesn't like almond nut, just for the sake of helping me food taste. Texture wise, she said just nice, crispy enough but not too hard.

MC said, she still like the previous non chocolate base version. But since this is a rather big batch, MC and BIL will be forced to take one jar each to work (and then after force their colleagues to try), a small portion for MFG my official guinea pig. And if successful, Carebear to try since she has coffee as her default drinks daily.

Rum and Raisins Cake

Baked with raisins which were soaked overnight in rum and lemon peel. The aroma of this cake alone is so very indulging.

The egg whites were beaten separately before folding into the cake mix, it should give the cake a slightly lighter texture.

A delayed good deed

If you call it a good deed at all.

We have meant to visit the orphanage for some time. Like months ago? But kept delaying because we were busy. Lame excuse, I know. What made me gave the lame excuse was the lack of time to bake for the children. Yeah, I really want to bring them something I bake instead of just buying them something from the supermarket, or just giving money to the principal.

So, finally, this was the week we decided that there should be no more delay. I can't really remember how many children were there in this shelter, MC suggested that I bake two cakes. We just found out from one of the aunties who takes care of the children that three cakes will be ideal since the boys are quite big eaters. Haha... boys are cute huh? I got a bit erm... uncomfortable (to put it mildly) by another aunty (not the formally mentioned one, but a new one) when she started demanding for four cakes, and then cheesecakes - the ones with biscuit and Philadelphia cream cheese. Geezz... okay, she really knows what the kids want, but wait ya, I need more funding before I can afford four cheesecakes, not to mention not having enough fridge space to chill four cakes. Humph... Maybe when TeaRoom is commercialized.

Anyways, besides delaying the so called good deed, someone up there decided to throw in a couple more challenges before I could finally make it to the visit WITH the cakes. For starter, I was really juggling time between work, project work and baking. Short supply of flour (because I threw away a few packets which had grown bugs - what do you call them?), castor sugar (luckily mum has some stock of her own) and icing sugar. I didn't get so lucky with icing sugar because non of the grocery shops in my town sell it, one very promising shop was short supplied itself. So instead of getting ready the cakes on Saturday night for our Sunday visit, I had to do some last minute decoration after I got the icing sugar.

And you think I had just went out to Jaya Jusco and got my supply. No, they were facing shortage as well. Okay, what are you guys doing with buying up ALL the icing sugar? When I finally found my supply at Econsave (yeah, had to go that extend), I had to queue up for 45 minutes just to pay for 2kgs of icing sugar. Therefore running extremely late on the visit, which had later made my trip to my hair cut a super rushing one.

Phew. But it's all done now. And enough for my long winded story. Here are the cakes.

Chocolate chips butter cake with butter icing

Marble cake with chocolate butter icing

Cheesecake Brownies

Got an invitation to Zaza's open house. Since the open house was on Saturday afternoon, I only had time to bake on that very morning. Normally brownies would be on the top of my list when I need to bake something within limited time or last minutes.

Choose a new recipe for this occasions since this is the best time to get opinions from many people. It was quite well received. Thanks for the support guys. This shall be a confirmed item on The TeaRoom menu under the brownies list.

Giving the brownies the marble effect.

Soft creamy cheese on a sticky rich chocolate base.

Need some workout!

Will you be there tomorrow? :)

It feels great to be able to finish baking before midnight. In fact, when I finished cleaning up the kitchen just now, it was only 10.00pm. For me that's "only" lah. Still need to ice and decorate a cake tomorrow for next week's birthday celebration and the rest of the time I should be focusing on the part time work. Tomorrow going to a pump class, hang out a bit, and back to the part time job. Looking at my schedule, there is simply no time to be missing anyone, is there?

Full story on the cuppies tomorrow. Stay tuned ;)

Raya Bake

Pineapple Tart

Cornflakes Cookies

Chocolate Brownies

Thanks for ordering KG :)

When cupcakes are more "serious"

Have been making really cute cupcakes, I'd to say. These would be the more "adult" version.

Chocolate coated coffee beans for MFG. Drizzled with dark chocolate sauce.

Marshmallows drizzled with dark chocolate sauce.

Can't wait...

Congratulations to the soon to be Mummy.



Thanks Lady Nina for placing the order with TTB. This is such an honour :)

Bread Pudding for Pool Party

After the last farewell party at SC and Bernsy's, I thought perhaps I'll make the chocolate cake or chocolate cupcakes for the second farewell party - which we just had last night! But due to limited time (had to prepare cake for my last cake decoration class) I had to choose a less time consuming option. My all time favorite (other than the brownies) would be the bread pudding which doesn't take too much time to prepare. The only challenge normally will be getting the croissants to make the pudding. Croissants are normally popular item and will be sold off in the bakery very soon, so must get to bakery early in order to grab some.

I was also up to trying out my new "toy". Actually it's not that new, MC bought this for me when she came back. In fact, I've used the ramekins that came with it and I've only not used the torch before.

Wanted to use it to caramelize the brown sugar on top of the pudding.

Okay lah, not too bad, but I must sieve the brown sugar the next time to get a more even colour on the surface. Actually, I think it's actually better still, using the oven.

Finally the vanilla sauce, with a little bit of brandy.

Project Clown

There was a birthday cake order. The request was chocolate moist cake and the design requested originally was 2 stick man, one fat and the other thin. But erm... The Baker is not good in free hand drawing. So at the end settled with random design that look fun.

However, so happened I just got to learn how clowns are created, I've asked if my "customer" would like having clowns on the cake, one thin, one fat perhaps. Haha...

So here are the clowns!

I've also put one of my new tools in use - the cake leveler. It makes spliting cakes evenly a very easy job and we are talking about extremely even, even.

The cake leveler:

Adjust height of the layer (of the cake you want to cut) by changing the location of the catch:

Just "saw" the cake with the leveler, supported by the working surface:

Perfectly even cake:

A piece of cake!

Musical Birthday Cupcakes

I think this is the first time I took order for non relatives, friends or gym members. I've found a new "customer" and a new regular blog reader through TD.

This was what she wanted:

Colour theme: light purple and bright orange. I wouldn't have thought of such combination myself.

Additional decoration: Musical notes. And yes, I've learnt music before - piano. But I dropped out before my first exam. Hated the theory, only like playing (the piano). So I bet my piano teacher would be so glad that I remember my notes. Hehe...

Marshmallow flowers for the 3D effect.

The wordings were in pink instead of black (dark brown) because I didn't want the wordings to "fight" with the musical notes. But they do look a bit plain and didn't stand out in the picture. So I've later added some borders to the letters.

I hope you have had a great celebration!

Have you ever felt this way before?

Specially for SSB...

Rum Chocolate Cheesecake

A very muddy and rich dark chocolate cheesecake on chocolate biscuit base. The rum adds to and enhances the flavour of the cream cheese and chocolate. As the recipe had described, this is an "adult cake".

If you don't have a spring form baking tin, this is what you can do also. Line a normal cake tin with aluminium foil before pressing in the base and pouring in the cake mix. When the cake is done, just simply lift up the whole cake by lifting the foil.





Cheesecakes are actually very easy to handle. The imperfections can always be easily "repaired". For example the uneven surfaces can always be smoothed with running a hot metal knife (soak in hot water and wipe dry) on the surface of the cake.

Before

After

There was a crack on my cake and it was rather deep. Instead of filling that up with the chocolate glazing, I had "repaired" it before the glazing. Just need to gently push the surface together. It's quite possible because the texture of the cake is quite soft - do all these after the cake is chilled, just before decorating.

Before

After

Add chocolate cream glazing and decorate with white chocolate flowers. Since I have the moulds, I could simply melt some chocolate and cast them into whichever kinds of shape I want to use for decoration.