Coffee Ogura Cake

I have baked many Ogura cake but all failed. Every cake collapsed on me and is inedible. I have to throw them away. Heart pain. For this attempt, I baked it in a tube pan as I usually have better luck with tube pan chiffon cake.

This cake rose beautifully in the oven and kept its height upon cooling. However, the texture of the cake looked so different from the blog. Her cake looked so fine and cottony whereas mine has so many big pores. My cake tasted just like any chiffon cake. Tasty and fluffy. I guess I will try again until I got this cake right in non tube pan.

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Swiss Roll - Honey Yogurt Swiss Roll and Chocolate Swiss Roll

Long overdue post as usual. I made the Honey Yogurt Swiss Roll in celebration of 2013 Father's Day. It is made using the chiffon method with a yogurt based cream. I added some chopped strawberries to balance the sweetness in the cake and cream.

This cake is moist and flexible. I could roll up this swiss roll without any cracks (thank god). This cake has a fine texture and it tasted even better when chilled.

I obtained this recipe from 孟老师的美味蛋糕圈 page 106.

After celebrating Father's Day, it is my hubby's birthday. I asked him what type of cake does he want for his birthday. To my surprise, he requested for a simple chocolate swiss roll but it must be coated with lots of chocolate rice. He told me this is his favorite cake from the local bakery. Of course I agreed to his request.

I obtained this recipe from 孟老师的美味蛋糕圈.

Matcha Chocolate Marble Cake

Finally I got hold of matcha powder and I can't wait to inject it into my bakes. Browsing through my bookmarks, this green tea choco marble cake from No-Frills Recipes caught my eye. I am not in the mood to try something adventurous as I am going out later in the day. This cake only need two bowls and the method used is fuss-free. ^^v

I also got to use the moulds that I bought a few years back. Roses and hearts, perfect for Valentine's Day. This batter is a bit thick so it trapped some air bubbles. And my cakes have pock marks all over it. Sad. Nevertheless, it tasted great. This matcha powder does not have a strange after taste. I like the combination of matcha with chocolate. I had two of them with teh tarik for tea. Yum.

Pineapple Cream Cheese Cake

This is an overdue post. As usual. Haha.

Happy Birthday Daddy.

My whole family doesn't fancy the whipping cream on cakes. We will scrape away the cream and eat the sponge cake and the fruits, if there is any. Unless... the cake is extremely expensive or it is coated with chocolate ganache (my favourite), then we will send it down to our esophagus. That's the main reason why I have yet to make any layer cake. Maybe I should step out of my comfort zone soon. Mother's Day? My own birthday? Mummy's birthday? Hubby's birthday? ;)

Staying in my comfort zone, I chose the Pineapple Cream Cheese Cake from Dailydelicious, a site that I trusted. I accomplished this task quite easily (phew), if not, I would have to rush out to get a cake from the bakery. Everyone loves the cake, especially the birthday boy, I mean old boy. Haha. 

Baked in a Bundt Pan. Uneven browning. :( I planned to sprinkle some icing sugar on it but my hubby said then it proves that it is made by me. -_-"

Cream Cheese Pound Cake and Black Bottom Cupcakes.

The block of cream cheese in my fridge is expiring soon. I bought it to make the Strawberry Jelly Hearts but somehow I just don't have the mood to make it this weekend. Craving for some cakes, I began to go through my to-do list and look for cakes that uses cream cheese. I stumbled upon the Cream Cheese Pound Cake on Little Teochew's Blog. It looks so appetizing. I decided to bake this. However, it uses only 140 g of cream cheese. What am I going to do with the rest? I searched in her blog and saw the Black Bottom Cupcakes. I halved the recipe to use up the
remaining 110 g of my cream cheese. Hee hee. I managed to bake both cakes before lunch.

At about tea time, my parents came over to get my bakes and bought me 4 egg tarts from Tong Heng (my fav). So sweet of them.

I guess I am an inconfident baker. I only have the courage to offer my bakes to my parents, my brother and my husband. It is not that I cannot accept criticism, in fact I want them to comments on my bakes so that I can improve in those areas but normally they don't. Only my parents, brother and husband do. I am worried that if I gave the

m and they don't enjoy it, it will be a torture to them and I will be very upset to know that. I really enjoy cooking and baking for others and see them enjoying or giving me feedback on my food. That's the way to learn.

8 inch Cream Cheese Pound Cake

A peek at the texture

This cake smells and tastes fantastic. Soft and moist. This recipe is very forgiving and suitable for novice baker like me.

Black Bottom Cupcakes

I prefer to have more cheesy taste to it. Nonetheless, the texture is great and not too sweet.

Lemony Cupcakes with Tangy Lemon Curd

I was mesmerized by the photos in Daily Delicious but I know that with my skills, I doubt I can recreate most of her bakes. When I saw this, I was delighted because it looks basic enough for my standard. So here I go into my kitchen, armed with the ingredients, I managed to bake these cupcakes within 3 hours (I know I am slow, it runs in the family), including filling it with the lemon curd that I made a day before. I omitted the mascapone frosting and replaced it with a wedge of strawberry. I love the taste. Well balanced. My mum loves them and she finished a jar of lemon curd by spreading it on crackers and toast. I feel satisfied whenever she enjoy my creation. :)

A Weekend Afternoon Tea

Today, I invited my uncle and aunt to my house together with my parents to have a simple afternoon tea and also a bonding session. Haha. I have baked a blueberry pound cake yesterday. I need to bake in advance because I am a slow worker. Sigh. I inherited this from my mum as what my dad always says. :) I think I slightly overbaked this cake as you can see that the crust is rather thick. Other than that, I love this cake. It is so fragrant, fruity, buttery and tender. High cholesterol but I can't resist it. Love it. My mum brought back what was left as she didn't have enough of it too. I got this recipe from Seasaltwithfood. Thanks so much.



I think my skill still have lots of room for improvement. See the big holes there? I will definitely make this cake again. The next dish that I prepared is the savory dish called pearl balls. It is actually meatballs coated with glutinous rice. I got my inspiration from Honey Bee Sweets. It is a very simple dish to prepare. I made the meat mixture in advance and coated them with glutinous rice when I wanted to steam. I modified the recipe a bit by replacing the prawns with fish paste to make my life a little easier. As usual, lazy. ;) I am still not very confident with my seasoning skills so I boiled some water and cooked two meatballs to have a taste of it. Luckily the taste is well-balanced. Good enough to treat my parents and guests.


Pretty morsels. Looks elegant and cute. Easy to eat too. I think I will omit the grease paper next time and just simply grease the plate to prevent them from sticking.


Lastly, I also baked two hasselback sweet potatoes. The slicing of the potatoes is really a challenge to me. The sweet potatoes are so hard. I cut through it twice. So sad. No skill. After struggling for half an hour, I finally did it. Haha. Filled with satisfaction. I prepared according to what Seasaltwithfood has blogged. Towards the end of the baking, a familiar smell struck me. Roasted chestnuts. It must be the smell of the burnt sugar on the aluminium foil. This dish is also well-received. Just that I need to eat more spinach to gain more arm power before I do it again. ;) But I think I will make this again because my hubby likes it.

Banana Cake

Last Thursday my mother gave me the ripen green banana that she used it to bai tian gong (pray to Emperor Jade) on Lunar 9th. With so many bananas in hand, I decided to make banana cake. I made once before but the cake is not very nice so I did not blog about it. I blog hop for more recipes. Then I stumbled upon Wendy's recipe here. What attracts me was the simplicity of the recipe. I decided to gave it a try. I do not know what is pisang emas so I just use my pang jio, literally translated from Hokkien is fragrant banana.


The whole kitchen was filled with the fragrant of the banana, from the mashing stage to the baking stage. It even attracted my hubby to the kitchen. When the cake is baked, strange enough, it smell like fried nian gao. Haha. I love the smell and when it is slightly cooled, I cannot wait to have a taste. I love everything of this cake, from its taste to its texture. With minimal ingredients, minimal steps, minimal washing, the result is fantastic. I will definitely make this cake again for my friends and family. My mother also love this cake and she promised me she will supply me with more bananas for this cake.


Great satisfaction. :)

I am Back!!! (Again)

Ever since I started this blog in 2008, I have not been updating it as regularly as what it should be. I am really guilty of that. Sigh... Never place my blog under my to-do list and I began to forget about it. I still visit my own blog very often as this is the door to my food blog-o-sphere. I hoped from one blog to another during my lunch time but could not leave any comments. I suppose the computer at my workplace barred us from doing that. Sad. :(

Though I was not actively blogging, I am actively cooking and baking as and when I have the time to spare. Now that I have a kitchen of my own, I stock up with equipment and ingredients that I used to dream of having in the past. I was very happy with my house until this morning when I discovered that I was invaded by ants. I kept all my things clean and tidy but where do they come from. The worse thing was I could not find the source of these invaders. Anyone has any solutions to get rid of these ants asap? I could not stand the sight of them and not to say cohabit with them.

Back to my food blog. One of my New Year resolution is to update my blog every fortnightly and leave comments in the blogs that I visit. I even set alarm in my handphone to remind me of that. Really serious this time. (Hope so :p) Another reason is because I bought a toy that I was dreaming of every day. Kitchen Aid. Haha.

This is my most treasured toy. Most expensive too. I chose the gray one because of the Matt finish. And the first recipe that I tried out with this toy is kuih balu. I made this once last year but failed terribly. All my kuih got stuck in the mould. To make the matter worse, I used a recipe that called for 6 eggs. Crazy mess. How come I never thought of halving it at all. Never mind. Lesson learnt.

This time round, I did my homework before hand and I decided to use the recipe from Elinluv's Tidbits Corner. The sweetness is just nice for me. However the texture did not pass my mark. It looks like sponge inside, big holes. I believed that I should have used a lower speed to beat the eggs instead of the highest one. And my folding skills as well, need more practise. Lesson learnt - even though you have a good piece of equipment, you still need skills to produce good results. I will definitely try again.

Back To 2010 Valentine's Day

Let's rewind back to 13th Feb 2010, Chinese New Year's Eve. I woke up at 5am even though I do not need to work that day. I wanted to make my first Kueh Lapis. I even went to Jia Lei Training Centre to learn how to make Kueh Lapis.

I had everything ready. Once I finish washing up, I started to bake at about 6am. I referred to the recipe closely and measured every ingredient as if I am doing some chemistry experiment. This is because I scared I might fail. I promised my mum to give her Kueh Lapis that evening. Still, there were hiccups here and there. The biggest one is when I first switched to the grilling mode, I burnt the entire layer as the temperature is too high. As I could not adjust the grilling temperature, I reduced the baking time from 3 minutes per layer to 1 minute. Then everything went smoothly till I finished the last layer. I waited it to cool before I unmould it. I was so nervous. I wondered if the layers will be distinct. Finally, the moment arrived. I did it carefully and slowly. I had to trim off the edges before I see the layers. I was quite happy with result as this is my first attempt. The taste is good. Not too sweet and I like the texture. All the edges went into my stomach. Haha. The only thing I am not satisfied is the height of the cake. Cake tin too big so my Kueh Lapis is a bit short. Nonetheless, I was delighted with my creation.

As the recipe was given by the training centre, it wouldn't be nice for me to publish it here. If you are really interested, do keep a look out for the course in their website. The recipe calls for so many egg yolks. What am I going to do with the egg whites? Do keep a look out for the next post.

Chocolate Sponge Cake

I found out this video from Kitchen Corner. After which, I saw this recipe in many other blogs. Since there is a video to guide me the steps to make a sponge cake, I decided to try it. I charged my laptop the night before. The next day, I bought my laptop to my kitchen and play the video. I paused and played and paused and played... till the cake is ready to be sent into the preheated oven. I prayed hard that it will rise and stay spongy just like what others did.


The cake did rose beautifully. My only mistake is forgetting to line the springform pan with parchment paper at the bottom. It got badly stuck to the base. I used a plate to invert the cake and the beautiful top got stuck to the plate as well, resulting in a botak cake. Nonetheless, the cake is spongy and moist even though I did not add in glucose. I will recommend all the beginners in cake making to try this recipe. I love this Taiwanese auntie's cooking show. She is so cute. I went to youtube to search for more of her video and saved them. Wish to try the rest of the cakes.

Soft Cheesecake

This cheesecake recipe is obtained from Kitchen Corner, which she tried recently. Being a novice in baking, you don't expect my cheesecake to turn out as beautiful as hers. I tried my best but I still make few mistakes which I am going to share with you here.

My cake is sunken and a bit soggy at the base when I unmoulded it 2 hours after baking. It rose beautifully for the first 30 minutes of baking but I made the biggest mistakes in cake-making, which is opening the oven door while the cake is baking inside. I was so afraid that the water will dry up so I opened the door to add it hot water. Big mistake. Regretted doing that as the water level is about the same after the whole baking process. Second mistake. The water seeps into my springform baking tin which made the sides and base a little soggy. I realised that to avoid this situation, I should have wrapped aluminium foil around it before placing it in the water bath. Luckily the cake is still edible and quite nice in fact. Just that is not soft and fluffy, rather it is a bit on the dense side. My family still finished the whole cake. I will try it again. Hee hee.

My First, considered successful, Chiffon Cake

I haven't been really successful in cake making. I only started baking in September 2008 so I guess I need more failures before I can have a taste of success. As this week I have more free time, I decided to try baking a chiffon cake. I browse through a couple of blogs. Initially, I wanted to make a pandan flavour one but I am afraid that this bottle of essence will sit in the fridge until it expires. Since I have cocoa powder that will be expiring in May, I decided to hunt for a chocolate chiffon cake. Then I came across the chocolate marble chiffon cake from Cooking Crave. Her cake looks so beautiful. I decided to make this but omitted the marbling effect as I think I better keep it simple. This is how my cake looks like.


As I have experienced so many sunken cakes, I was so afraid that I might over-mix my batter. So I folded in the egg white very carefully and decided to stop folding it after all the egg white was covered by the batter. But actually there was still lumps of egg white in it which formed the white patches that you see in the picture. Luckily it did not affect the taste. It is moist and soft. Not too sweet. My mum says she loves it. So encouraging. It is a good attempt for me at least it is recognisable as a chiffon cake, unlike my previous attempts. 加油！:)