Black Bottom Cupcakes (Recipe)



This is a very long overdue post. I was planning to post this last week, I think, but meh, procrastination got me. Remember when I baked Victoria Sandwich Cake? I got some leftover cream cheese and chocolate and some berries so tada. These cupcakes are DIVINEEEE, the soft cream cheese filling is to die for!! They're moist, light, and are tasty even without frosting.

CREAM CHEESE FILLING
Ingredients:
8 oz cream cheese
1/3 cup castor sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
1. Beat cream cheese until smooth.
2. Add sugar, egg and vanilla and beat until it's creamy and smooth.
3. Set aside and let's move on to the cupcake batter!


CHOCOLATE CAKE BATTER
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1 cup sugar (preferably castor sugar)
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup water
1/3 cup vegetable/canola oil
1 tablespoon white vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
PREHEAT OVEN: 170 degrees celcius
1. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda. 
2. In a separate bowl mix water, oil, vinegar and vanilla extract.
3. Fold in the sifted dry ingredients until nice and smooth.
4. Divide the batter evenly into your cupcake cups.
5. Spoon a few tablespoons of the cream cheese filling into the center of each cupcake. 
6. Bake for 22-25 minutes.
7. Enjoy your cupcakes!!!



Oh somebody asked me how I decorated these cupcakes. I found this really helpful video on Youtube on how to frost a cupcake without a proper piping bag and nozzle, and I hope you'd find this video helpful too! Hehe. Have fun!! ♥♥♥

Victoria Sandwich Cake (Recipe)


I was watching Gordon Ramsay's daughter, Matilda on AFC and she was baking a victoria sandwich cake for her British VS American desserts battle with her friends. So when she decided to bake a victoria cake with cream and strawberries that's when my mum and I decided to bake one too. Hahaha. This cake is simply just a sponge cake that has that pleasant butter+vanilla scent and it's really easy to make too.
(Fun fact: This cake was named after Queen Victoria ^~^) 

(Some of the ingredients)

CAKE
Ingredients:
220g cake flour (as you can see from the picture above, I used the Roses Brand superfine flour)
30g cornflour
A pinch of salt
250g castor sugar
250g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons golden syrup
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 eggs

Directions:
Before you start, preheat your oven to 160 degrees C.
1. Sift the first three ingredients and set aside.
2. Beat together butter, golden syrup and sugar until fluffy (on slow speed).
3. Add eggs one by one until incorporated.
4. Beat in vanilla extract (just for a few seconds).
5. Now fold in (USE A SPATULA!!) the sifted ingredients into the batter until the batter is smooth and well-combined.
6. Bake for 25-30 minutes. 
Okay, if you're baking one whole cake, the baking duration should be longer, maybe around 35-50 minutes, I'm not really sure so you need to check your cake every 20 minutes to see if it's ready. In this case I divided the batter into two so it would take shorter time to bake (hence less waiting time!!) hehehe. 

WHIPPED CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup non-dairy whipping cream
4oz cream cheese

Directions:
1. Beat the cream until it's stiff and fluffy.
2. Beat in cream cheese. EASY, RIGHT?

Assembling the cake:
1. Spread strawberry jam (or raspberry or whatever jam that you like) on the first layer of your cake then spread the frosting over the jam. You can put sliced strawberries on top or you can skip it. It's really up to you.
2. REPEAT STEP 1 FOR THE OTHER LAYERS!!! Hehehe. Decorate your cake. Make it pretty. Make it simple. Make it however you want as long as you're happy!!!


Have fun! You can always leave a question in the chatbox I have provided hehehe. 

Pandan Gula Melaka Cupcakes (Recipe)

(What do you think about this GIF that I made? Hehehe)

PART A - Pandan Juice
Ingredients:
About 10 pandan leaves
3-4 tablespoons of water

Directions:
1. Wash clean the pandan leaves and cut them into small pieces.
2. Grind the pandan leaves and add 3 tablespoons of water to the ground leaves.
3. Squeeze (as much as you can) the juice out and sieve. Set aside.

PART B - Pandan Cupcakes (About 24 cupcakes)
Ingredients:
2 eggs
200g cake flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (if you use the normal salted butter, leave this out)
125g unsalted butter (softened)
150g castor sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
65g coconut milk + 25g water
2 1/2 tablespoons pandan juice (from Part A)

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. 
2. Sift cake flour, baking powder and salted into a bowl. Put aside.
3. Mix (as in stir) well coconut milk, water, pandan juice and vanilla extract and set aside.
4. Beat butter and sugar at medium speed until creamy and fluffy.
5. Add eggs, one at a time until the mixture is incorporated.
6. Add flour mixture from step 2, alternating with the coconut+pandan mixture from step 4, in three additions. Mix until the batter is incorporated. Make sure not to overbeat the batter.
7. Bake for about 20-22 minutes. (I normally go with 20.)


PART C - Gula Melaka Syrup
Ingredients:
50g gula melaka
3 pandan leaves
2 tablespoons water

Directions:
1. Place together gula melaka, water and pandan leaves in a saucepan over low heat. 
2. Stir until all sugar is dissolved and mixture comes to a boil.
3. Set aside and let it cool completely.


PART D - Gula Melaka Meringue Buttercream
Ingredients:
3 egg whites
50g castor sugar
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
150g unsalted butter (softened)
5-6 teaspoons gula melaka syrup (from Part C)

Directions:
1. Place egg whites, sugar and salt in a mixing bowl over a pot of simmering water. (Like the double boil method)
2. Whisk continuously until the sugar is dissolved.
3. Transfer into a mixing bowl, and beat the mixture at medium high speed until stiff peaks are formed and until the mixture has cooled to room temperature. You can check by touching the bottom of your mixing bowl.
4. Turn your mixer to medium speed and add butter, piece by piece. Beat until mixture turns creamy.
5. Add gula melaka syrup 1 teaspoon at a time, until incorporated. Now this is really up to you. If you don't really fancy sweet frosting you can add maybe around 3-4 tablespoons of syrup.
6. Frost the cupcakes any way you like and drizzle the leftover gula melaka syrup over the frosting!


Pheeewww that is one long recipe. IF you're not a fan of sweet desserts (really sweet) you should cut down the sugar for the cupcake batter or maybe you could leave out the syrup drizzle over your frosting. The syrup alone is already so sweet!! But the cupcakes, I promise you they're really moist. Anyway, good luck and have fun trying! (If you ever wanna try.. Hehe)

Pavlova (Recipe)

Totally too red, that's what I thought too when I saw this. Hahaha.
 I had no idea the compote is gonna be this RED. 

I bought this packet of frozen berries and made some sauce out of it. I'd say using some fresh berries would be a better option. You know how frozen berries get kinda icy when you pop them into the freezer so it kinda ruin the taste. But making a compote (the sauce) out of it isn't a bad idea, after all.

Ingredients:
4 egg whites (No yolks at all!)
1 cup of castor sugar
1/2 tablespoon of cornstarch
1 teaspoon of vinegar (or cream of tartar)
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

Directions:
1. Make sure your mixing bowl, your whisk attachments, and all the other utensils you're using for this dessert are clean and dry.
2. Preheat your oven to 130 degrees C.
3. Okay now you can move on to your egg whites. Beat the egg whites on medium speed until they hold soft peaks.
4. Continue beating on high speed, add sugar A TABLESPOON AT A TIME, until the meringue holds stiff and shiny peaks. Make sure all the sugar has dissolved, you can check by taking some of the meringue and rub it between your fingers. If it's not gritty, you're good to go!
5. Beat in vanilla extract. This is optional. If you don't feel like using it, you can always skip this step.
6. Now switch off your mixer, and sprinkle vinegar and cornstarch over the top of the meringue.
7. Get a rubber spatula and gently fold in the mixture.
8. Whether you've got a circle drawn on your parchment paper or not, spread the meringue on it and make sure the edges are slightly higher than the center.
9. Bake for 60 minutes.

Once you're done baking, turn off the oven and leave the door slightly ajar, leaving your pavlova to cool completely.

Patience is the key! Good luck!

The Glorious Pavlova


Why do I call it glorious?
Here's why. Pavlova was one of the earliest desserts I tried when I started baking, maybe around last three years, and trust me, that was the ONLY time my pavlova turned out perfect. The only time and it was my first time. The next hundred times consisted of only failures, where my pavlovas turned out gooey and mushy, sticky even, and some were miserable failures, to the point I stopped baking for a while due to the absence of hope in me. I don't know about you guys, but meringue is one heck of a sensitive dessert. A little contact with water AND THERE YOU GO, goodbye four egg whites. And then you can feel the four egg yolks next to you laughing at you. 

Long story short, my best friend, Lara one day pm-ed me and said she was going to bake a pavlova and that it would be fun if we could bake it together, (as in not physically together but you know) but I was hesitant at first. No fruits were available too at that moment so I didn't really wanna join, but my little heart insisted me to join, telling me that "It's okay you can buy the fruits tomorrow." And of course I fell for it. 

So I took out my mixing bowl and cleaned it thoroughly making sure there was not even a drop of water sticking around, and separated the egg whites from the yolks. I was so pessimistic about this I kept telling myself THIS IS NOT GONNA WORK I'M NOT GONNA EXPECT SO MUCH FROM THIS. My meringue was glossy and white, and at that time I started hoping. Baked it for an hour, resisting the temptations to open the oven door occasionally, and when it was time to stop baking, I saw a perfect PERFECT crispy pavlova. Got so excited I actually took a lot of pictures for this pavlova hahaha. Thanks Lara, I owe you a huge one. 

A glorious day for me, it was. Hehehe.

You see guys, it's never wrong to take chances~

Art Expo 2015

My sisters and I are a huge fan of arts, we draw and paint together, we appreciate art exhibitions and I think we got it from our dad. Our dad is REALLY good at arts, I'm thankful the 'artsy' blood runs in our family. About a month ago we visited the MECC for the well-known Art Expo 2015. It was our second time there, the first time was for Art Expo 2013. Missed out last year's expo because time was limited for us. This year's exhibition was different, and much bigger. The crowd wasn't big, so it was a peaceful trip for us. I loved that they played classical music throughout the event. The paintings were amazing! Even the Malaysian artists displayed spectacular paintings. They actually deserve more recognition.

KL

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)