Little Teddy Bear

Here's the teddy bear. Hopefully I'll be able to make one that's as cute as Forever Friends teddy soon. Full story at the TeaRoom blog.

An Extreme Strawberry Cheesecake

Another birthday celebration in the office. I love this cake, I knew it's going to be very delicious when I was making it. Too bad, there was not enough cake, so I only took a few bites from 4 different people. If you like strawberries and cheese, this cake is simply heaven. It consist 3 boxes of strawberries. Yummy...

I always enjoy bringing indulgences and surprises to the office, to the people I love working with. But lately, there has been people I don't like in the office and the thought of them (now only one person left lah) sharing this piece of passionately made cake upsets me most of the time.

Oh well, I'd say she won't last long. Mwah hahaha...

Chilled cheesecake which appears to be pink because of the mashed strawberries inside the cake mix. This was my first attempt. I find the cake a bit too soft, more gelatin is definitely required. It has a smooth and creamy texture, every bite is full of strawberries. Very indulging :)

Birthday Cake for A Pretty Mum

This is a mango cheesecake with oreo dark chocolate base. Surrounded with sponge finger and decorated with little pink hearts made from fondant. The special message was written on a specially made chocolate plaque.



The message is so cute right? Only creative customer would be able to send in such request :). But TTB nearly messed it up because her mind was else where when she wrote those wordings, and the first version read like this...

OMG! Totally different message. Luckily I checked my notes before packing up the cakes. Haha...

Thanks for ordering dear. I hope you and your mum liked the cake. And hope you've had a great celebration. :)

To auntie: May you live pretty forever! Happy Birthday!

Two Tier Cake

Here are the cakes! The top layer is a sponge cake sandwiched with longan custard. Coated with agar-agar milk pudding (which MC said should taste better with fresh milk instead of full cream milk - agreed). Topped with fruit and jelly (I feel that the cake will be tastier with a thicker layer of jelly).

In order to hold the pillars for the tier-ing, the bottom part has to be cake with dense and stronger texture.

I've made 2 butter cakes, into 4 layers sandwiched with custard - to form a 3 inches base.

Topped with fruits and decorated with the fishes. The fishes are a bit melted because I wanted to have the fishes swimming in water (jelly) but it cannot be done.

The 2-tier cake.

Kahlua Chocolate Cheesecake

The last time I made this cake, I used rum and chocolate glazing. That was because I didn't have any Kahlua and I didn't have any Creme Fraiche supply.

This trip to Hong Kong, I got my Kahlua from the duty free. It only cost about RM70 and it's delicious, I can drink it on it's own. This time I got Creme Fraiche for the topping and more Kahlua was mixed into the topping. The cake was decorated with strawberries (the Korean strawberries are delicious by the way).

The result was a dense, rich and indulging cake with a tinge of coffee flavour.

The best of Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is here! The first day of the year of the Ox will be officially here in precisely 40 minutes. I've been baking pineapple tarts and pineapple tarts for the pass one week since I was back from the trip. I am really glad that the pineapple tarts I made were not too bad and they do have their fans, but we are facing a short supply at home. There have been some increase in orders hence not enough pineapple jam. No, I can't get pineapples in the market as you know, pineapples are actually one of the popular or shall I say must have items for CNY. Besides, making pineapple jam takes hours and I'm not about to spend so much more time in cooking up more.

Pineapple tart has always been something that reminds me of CNY. Used to. Now a days, I can actually bake them whenever I like instead of waiting for CNY. Anyways, I decided to limit pineapple tart baking to only CNY and Hari Raya.

Mandarin oranges also give me the feel of CNY a lot. We used to have cartons and cartons of oranges in the house and they will be gone before the end of CNY. I used to have a lot of visitors, relatives and friends to the house. Lately, CNY has been quite peaceful, with only those few relatives visiting and since we are now very weight conscious, we actually don't eat as much as last time.

And yes, we will always have one or two "kat chai" trees in the house (tangerine). Loads of red decorations, lighting and all types of cookies.

One of the major topic nearing CNY I notice is actually traffic condition. Me being a KL girl had never needed to experience travelling hours to get back to hometown. But I've colleagues and friends around me who'd told me how many hours they spent in the jam just to get back to home for the reunion dinner.

CNY is actually about reunion; about the feeling of togetherness and closeness when each member of the family takes a break from their duties and lives, to be back to where their roots is for this special moment to celebrate a better year to come.

It's not about how much money you give your parents, it's more of how much time you can spend with them (for those who stay away from their family). It's most of the time not about how much wealth we have (of course we want loads of wealth lah) but it's more of how healthy we can live. So, take good care of yourself and your health k.

On this special occasion, I wish you happily and safely united with your loved ones. May you have a super fit year of the Ox with great success, good health, loads of wealth and total prosperity! Have a great celebration and Gong Xi Fa Chai!

White Chocolate Lychee Cheesecake

I was at the supermarket shopping for the cake ingredients to bake a birthday cake. Since it was near Chinese New Year, one big section of the shelf was taken over by can lychee display. I thought lychee could very well go with the cheese, hence this white chocolate lychee cheesecake.

The base of the cheesecake was the standard white chocolate cheesecake, the one with Mascaporne cheese. I love the taste and it was really well received. Got some marks for being some what creative too. And of course the best was when someone special requested for a second helping :)

The base was still oreo biscuit which is delicious and it is an all time favorite.

Decorated with some fruits. I would have to work on a more creative decoration in the future. And too bad I only managed to have two tiny pieces.

Chocolate Moist Cake - Yellow Flowers

Though many of you like this chocolate cake, I still think that it can be erm... improved further. The milk chocolate icing is very indulging but also sweeter compared with dark chocolate icing. I tried using double cream to create a richer icing instead of using milk but it didn't turn out right. So back to milk. The icing looks a bit dry after a while which doesn't give the cake the appeal.

Made this for a birthday at the office and I made everyone wait till after I microwaved it back before eating the cake. Definitely much better when eaten warm.

Okay, if I have the time, I will experiment with a different method of making the glacing. I want to add something to the cake as well. So, tasters, I hope you have not had enough of this cake yet. :)

Chocolate Fruit Cake

An early presentation of a Christmas cake, which was actually for a birthday. The choice of this birthday cake as requested by the birthday gal.

The ingredients: Since I don't like mix peel, I've chosen this recipe where you can pick and match the type of dried fruit to include. So I had plums, dates (though okay but the taste did not blend in that perfectly), cherries and raisins. In addition, chocolate chips had been added to intensify the chocolate aroma of this already chocolate based cake. Ground almond was also added hence giving a very solid texture.

The decoration: With brandy butter icing (though originally I planned to get the ready to roll icing, but didn't have time and more inclined to the butter icing taste than fondant icing) and a few Christmasy ornaments.

Happy Birthday Swee!!!

Birthdays should always be full of little surprises (occasionally big ones, but limited to other people's birthday only and not mine) so since one very important birthday was coming up, I've gathered myself some partners in crime and was planning for this about a week in advance.

First ones to be contacted via the wonderful friend finder tool were LGM, BO and LP. Later also looped in Wookie and Jr. when I saw them in last week's Monday pump and LGM informed a few. Sounds like quite a strong surprise-party squad, no? Oh yeah, lacking some "insider" to perfect the coordination. We thought the birthday gals BFF would be great! But since she did not confirm my FB friend request, therefore, "no access" to her.

Finally, got Colin to help. He said this in one of our FB message, which I thought was extremely impossible: "Let me try to find a nice strawberry related silly hat to put on her head." - Got such thing on sale? And surprise, surprise... Wookie also told me later that he'd contacted our "chosen insider" and everything should be in order. Fantastic!!

Anyways, since the "theme" was supposed to be strawberry, so here goes the chocolate cake decor. And chocolate cake for the obvious reason.

So everything was in order - cake, strawberry, the "hat", insiders, partners in crime... Suddenly on that day, birthday gal announced that she was on MC.

Huh?? So how?

Okay, tactfully asked her then shall I pass her the "birthday present" like the following week, but belated. Thank god she said she was still going to teach.

Then came the Plan B just in case she doesn't turn up. And we shall not tell her what Plan B was, potentially we can keep that idea for next year. Mwah hahaha...

So after some 50 over FB messages and threads, including discussion on buffalos and cows, we were all set for the surprise. For the event, check here.

For a very special "inside" picture, continue reading...

The strawberries were initially supposed to be chocolate coated, but the coat didn't turn out good so I then only changed them to honey glazed as you've seen above. So, the original cake actually looked like this.

Happy birthday again dear, may all your wildest dreams come true and may the best man wins your heart. ;)

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

My new chocolate cake design

Got the idea from this...




The original look, with fresh raspberries on a white cream frosted cake.

I've got these soft candies that looks like raspberries (don't they?). Not only they are not as expensive as the real berries, they are also easier to handle, no need to glaze or preserve.

If you want to pipe a few different designs from a same colour icing, the best is the use the coupler, that allows you to interchange nozzles.

Pipe a bed of "leaves" and "stick" the candies on them.

Pipe some veins and more leaves randomly. I tried not to overdo the cake. Haha... Trust me, piping leaves can be quite addictive.

Drop some veins and leaves to the side if you want to decorate the cake more. I couldn't stick the candies on the side of the cake because my icing will not hold anything. Besides, the candies are too heavy.

So I had the candies resting on the base of the cake board.

There! The final look, complete with birthday tag - There's no more space to write birthday message anyways.