A try on Nigella's Cherry Cheesecake

This is an overdue post too.

This block of cheese has been sitting in my fridge for ages. I bought it when the cheese is on sales and now it is near expiring again. Looks like expiring food will always be my motivation to bake.

This block of cheese is initially intended for a baked Japanese cheesecake recipe which is found in a copy of Popular magazine. However, Nigella says that Japanese cheesecake is like a new born baby, very difficult to "look after" ... so I tried out her version of non baked one first - Cherry Cheesecake. By now you should know that I got the recipe from watching her show.

Making the base is a breeze, because the digestive biscuits are much more easier to crush then oreo one. She did not mention in the show that I need to freeze the base. The steps from her site did not mention too. Good, save some time. So I went on with making the filling.

The filling gave me some "problems". Recipe asked for 300g cheese, I only had 250. Recipe asked for 250g of double cream, but I had no time to go cold storage to buy it, so I can only make do with Bulla Pure cream from my nearby NTUC. It comes in 200g tub! So I went to buy two tubs. It cost $4 a tub and now, this homemade cheese cake becomes more expensive than store bought!

It is almost to completion, then I realized I have only put in 250g of cheese. I guess this will slightly affect the height of the cake.

Here's the final output.

My kids love Sara Lee's cheesecake .. so what do you think they have to say about this one. Nothing but just equally loving it even though I did not put any topping.

No doubt it is a nice cake, but I do not like the oily feeling I had while eating it. It is like you are eating an oily plate of kway teow. Now I still have that tub of cream, waiting to be used on making scones.

Chocolate cake

This is a very very long overdued post.

I have to use up my expiring chocolate buttons (they are meant for brownie but I never made it). Not purposely looking but happened to see this chocolate cake recipe from Olivia's blog and seems quite straight forward, so went ahead with it.

I love that this cake has the height but mine sinked slightly in the centre. This one that I baked also shrinks at the side, wondering if it is due to me"buttering" the side of the cake pan.

"crater" in the centre of cake.

Cake cooling on the rack bottom up! Looks nicer, ya?

I am too lazy to do any frosting as usual, but the chocolate buttons are not all used up, so instead of making a big fuss, I just melt the chocolate with milk and pour it over the cut cake before eating.

It really looked alot more appealing with that dripping chocolate sauce .. pity I lost that picture that I took.

The kids love the cake. Although my taste bud is not sensitive, but I still feel the funny feeling of "metallic surface" when I run my tongue over the back of my lower front teeth after I eat it (wonder if you know what I mean). I will always have that feel when I bake with that certain brand of cake flour which I avoid now, but now also with self raising flour? Is baking powder the culprit? Got to bake more and pay more attention to find out.

Since I can bake this cake with this height this time, next time when I need to have layered chocolate cake, I think can try this out, cut this into two halves, frost it and decorate. Maybe for my girl's birthday?

I think I better note down the recipe here since it is a keeper .... I am suppose to jot down separately the recipes that I want to use again and again (incase broken links in future and can refer it offline) ....

Ingredients

115g plain chocolate

50ml milk

150g unsalted butter

150g light brown sugar

3 nos eggs

200g Self raising flour

1 tbsp cocoa powder

Method

1. Grease a 8 inch cake tin and line the base with baking paper.

2. Place the chopped chocolate and milk in a bowl. Place the bowl over a simmering pan of hot water. Leave for 3 mins until chocolate softens. Turn off heat and stir the mixture till smooth.

3. Cream the butter and brown sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in the chocolate mixture until well combined.

4. Sift the flour and cocoa over the mixture and fold in batches until evenly mixed. Pour the prepared batter into the cake tin and bake at preheated oven at 180dC for 35 - 40 mins or until cooked.

5. Cool cake in tin for 5 mins before removing from tin and place on cooling rack to cool completely.

6. Slice cake into 2 layers. Spread a thick layer of ganache on the 1st layer. Spread the remaining ganache over the whole cake.

Thanks to Olivia again.

3 works combo post - Chocolate mousse, chocolate coated cornflakes, lemon cupcakes

I am still making and baking but too lazy to blog. What have I done?

I made Nigella's instant chocolate mousse. I spent quite some time finding mini mashmallows and gave up after awhile and bought big ones to cut into smaller pieces. I think the reason behind using mini is for easy melting? Anyway, I got to try reduce mashmallows to see if it affects the final product. The mousse is oh sooooo sweeeet.

Not sure what got over me, but the process in making did not go so smooth. First, I am not sure if I measured the chocolate chips correctly. I am using my going to expire coverture chocolate buttons. I totally forgot how much did I measure out just 5 minutes after measuring (blame it on pregnancy). I also over whipped my Bulla Pure cream, and even thou I sourced for recovery way (which is to add more cream and whip somemore - according to internet searches) but I did not have enough "raw material" to try. So in order to try bringing it back to a more liquid state, I try adding milk. Sorry, that doesn't quite work. So in the end, I still go ahead to add the melted chocolate and then just stir and fridge the final product. You may click her website to get the recipe or refer to below.

Nigella's Instant Chocolate Mousse (Serving Size : Serves 4–6)

INGREDIENTS 150g mini marshmallows 50g soft butter 250g good dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids), chopped into small pieces 60ml hot water from a recently boiled kettle 1 x 284ml tub double cream 1 teaspoon vanilla extract METHOD 1. Put the marshmallows, butter, chocolate and water in a heavy-based saucepan. 2. Put the saucepan on the hob, over heat, though keep it fairly gentle, to melt the contents, stirring every now and again. Remove from the heat. 3. Meanwhile, whip the cream with the vanilla extract until thick, and then fold into the cooling chocolate mixture until you have a smooth, cohesive mixture. 4. Pour or scrape into 4 glasses or ramekins, about 175ml each in capacity, or 6 smaller (125ml) ones, and chill until you want to eat. The sooner the better! Here is sharing my Nigella's Instant Chocolate Mousse. I still have marshmallows, and I hope to try again since I did not whip my cream properly. It still taste very much a mousse thou. I hope I can get a 284ml double cream too. The Bulla Pure Cream is 200ml only and I have to adjust the recipe according. Next in line, I made Chocolate coated Cornflakes cookies (ya, trying to use up the expiring chocolate buttons). My son got 2 packets of K-diet (I think so) cornflakes from his school's health event. Cornflakes sure do not go well with coffee that I need every morning. I google for recipes, and some uses butter, some just use chocolate. So to simplify my job, I chose one with just chocolate. I melt the chocolate over hot water, and crushed the cornflakes a little before I pour them into the melted chocolate. After much stirring, I put them into the paper cups, then put them into the fridge after the kids sprinkle the color balls. I think without the colours, the chocolate cornflakes are so boring. (Sad annoucement : the cornflake cookies turn moldy the next day in the air tight container. Likely reason (after much discussion with friends in FB) : condensation happened after I took them out to room temperature as advised by the recipe, so the mold. Damage : half portion gone.) In remembrance of the tasty chocolate coated cornflakes cookies. (Maybe I used wrong chocolate too? Perhaps the normal eating chocolate will do better.) Besides the above, I baked the lemon cupcakes again. It is still a hit. Just out from oven, the kids ate two each, and today (2nd day) they ate 2 each again. They still say the cupcakes are yummy. I did not have time to do the frosting, but previous batch, I did the frosting. Here are the frosted cupcakes. Very pretty with the color balls though the frosting are not well done. Has sandy texture in the mouth perhaps due to the icing sugar as it is just whip by hand. My friend advised me to whip by mixer, so I hope to try again and have the extras on swiss roll or something. The kids love the frosting! So back to the 2nd try. This time, not much different from the previous. I am not busy today so I can witness the whole baking process. The batter starts to "melt" about 5 minutes into baking, and starts rising about 15 minutes into baking. The cakes finally looked baked with brownish top after 30 minutes. I think I must buy a new oven thermometer to test the temperature of my oven. Ta Da! The cupcakes. This time, the batter is nicely distributed (by luck and chance!) resulting in a good shaped cupcake. My kids asked for frosting, but I really do not have time. Hmm... now I am hungry.

Rachel Allen's Lemon Cupcakes

Tada! Very on recently hor, baking and baking.

I have been watching Rachel Allen's and Nigella's show. So the recent episode has Rachel teaching her students lemon cupcakes and I have lemon at home, so .....

I involved my girl in my baking recently, but after the works, while baking, I have to carry on washing and preparing meals so my girl is still neglected.

She helped me to sift in the flour and read the readings on the weighing machine.

My kids had a bite right after the cupcake cool off and they say yummy. Let's see what they say tomorrow.

The steps for this cupcake are simple and since I have them all done in a mixer, the time taken is not too long. However, I do not have a oven thermometer now, so I set the temperature according to the table on the oven manual. The cupcakes took much more longer to bake to a brownish top. Almost 10 minutes into the 20 minute baking time, the cupcakes still not risen. It is almost 20 minutes before I see the cupcakes rise and I think my batch took almost an hour to get the brownish top. The brownish top of individual cupcakes are also not even in colour and I see specks of brown (I assume they are sugar) too. Perhaps I should soften the butter longer, or to cream the butter and sugar longer? The sugar just doesn't melt into the butter. Can creaming melt the sugar into the butter anyway? Any experts out there want to answer the question?

As usual, I did not do the frosting (but an improvement, I measured out the butter for the frosting) today, not sure if I will do it tmr. I do not know how to store the cupcakes if there are frosting.

Here is how mine look and as for the recipe, I can't provide one because I copy as I watch the show. I tried googled and a few links came out. So maybe you can google and follow anyone of them?

Non fancy lemon cupcakes.

Perhaps I will update the taste after I taste them.

I am still baking - Honey Cornflakes

Wonder if you would consider me cheating if I tell you I am still baking but they are honey cornflakes.

I have four packets of cornflakes sitting in my cupboard for a long long time. I got them when I had Mcdonald's breakfast in Mcdonalds Malaysia. I had always wanted to try honey cornflakes but it make no sense to buy a packet just to try for once, so I reserved those for the purpose. It is not until I see Aimei's post on her attempt on the honey cornflakes that spurs me to try it. Thanks Aimei.

So on this weekend evening where I did not cook, and not heading anywhere with the kids, I quickly set to try this out. I promptly use my phone to keep her page in sight, measure out the ingredients and start working. (Oh, actually I also read the comments in the post that she took the recipe from.)

I added about half a teaspoon more of honey since I am worried the flakes may not stick. I also purposely scooped the sweet sticky mixture sticking on the base of the saucepan into the cases for the same reason. Then, I send the little cuppies into oven. I am suppose to bake for about 5 minutes, but I did not see any changes to the flakes so I thought, perhaps a little while more and soon, I see changes. There are bubbling liquid filling in the cases. I started to panic and switch the oven off. I still see the flakes half submerged in the bubbling liquid when I took it out. However, after it cooled down, I did not see it anymore. I happily think that I have successfully done it.

So when I tried on one after it cooled down..... I find that they stick very well and am so happy until I find them sticking to the paper cases as well. I have to play tug of war with the flakes because there is a layer of thick sticky yellowish honey like substance underneath the flakes.

See that? Not sure if that is alright, but I certainly do not see such "remains" in those that are sold during the Hari Raya or was it Haji?

Anyway, the kids love the honey cornflakes. They bring them to school for snacks. Don't you find them sweet looking, esp with the colourful sprinkles.

Here are some other stuffs that I am busy with (thus cannot find time to bake) ..

Making snacks/simple "bento" for kids

recess bentos

snacks (must remember not to use orange - 2nd pic, in agar agars)

Doing crafts with and for kids

The routine cooking

ok ... end of sharing ... and hope to shorten my to do list in baking (not forgetting beading too). :-)

Beading challenge #3

This is done 2 days before it is due. It is suppose to be for Mothers' Day. My girl is tired and I asked to nap. In that 1.5 hour, I tried and tested various ways I wanted to hook up the pearl and the shell. I finally decided (or forced to decide, since with my poor skills and knowledge, this is the only possible way) that this is the way.

I can only say this thing looks simple to make, but it requires alot of my effort. Furthermore the eye pin I used are not of high quality and they broke easily. If someone is interested in this design (fat hope), I will go buy the highest quality eye pin I can get hold of and remake one more. Hahahaha.

Since it is for Mothers' Day, I chose pearl. I had another design at first, it is still a WIP in my working tray ... then this idea came along and I decide to try it since it is easier than the previous.

Here it is.

So what would you think after you see it? Tell you frankly, to me it looks pretty awful. I think I should not use the half pearl that are drilled (the hole of the pearl I mean) this way. It should look better if the head of the eye pin is hidden at the bottom. Now it looks like a pair of eyes staring at you? Or to be more apt to the Mothers' Day theme, they look like a pair of motherly breast? :-)

Anyway, I am not too happy with this pair of earring. One of my friend encourages me, and says that the first one is usually not so nice. Anyway I did put in my "better" (maybe not best lor) for this project. Now awaiting the next challenge which I asked my friend to think about.

By the way, to have nice finish products, the raw materials should be nice first, agree? Imagine this earring only comprises of a shell piece and pearl piece, and if both the raw material is not right, the combination will not be right, isn't it? *sigh* still trying to find excuse and can't come to terms that I produced such work. I hope the next one will be better.

Double Chocolate Cupcakes (take 2)

No volcanoes this time. I half the recipe and it yields 16 cups, of which 3 are slightly taller cups (brown ones at the far end).

I also reduced the sugar. Hubby says this time is not as tasty as the first, but my kids still love it the same. I know the sugar and oil ratio affects the bake, but not sure by how much. Perhaps the sugar has changed something so hubby says not as tasty.

I noticed something weird this time. The chocolate chips seemed burnt. Look at the picture below, did you see a rim of black around the melted chocolate of the chip?

Can any expert visiting my blog enlighten me?