The mixer is sick, so am I.

It has been a month since I last posted.

There is this fine day, while trying to beat the egg white for a cake I can't remember now, I saw speckles of black dots, tiny tiny little ones on the foam. Then when I tilted the mixer blade away from the batter, a curvy shiny piece, 1/4 of a small circle's circumfrence drop out from no where. The mission is immdiately aborted and investigation is carried out but no result. The mixer has been shelved since then. Should I get a kitchenAid now? My mum suggested to block out all the outlets on the mixer motor body with cloth and continue to use, after all, the output is only for own consumption.

Why kitchenaid? Cos I like the mixer bowl and the balloon whisk. Most mixer comes with a rather flat base mixer bowl and I think balloon whisk gives a better mixed batter. My current kenwood did not give me that. Can my baking friends and readers give some comments and suggestion?

Besides mixer being sick, I am also down with a fever for 10 days now. It started last thursday with 38.5 then went up to 39 and 40 degree celcius. I am totally handicapped, relying on hubby to manage the kids with my mother and mother doubles up as cook. I have finish at least 30 capsules of panadol and has also lost my voice. Just when I decide to do a blood test today that the temperature fell to 37.5. Will wait and see now.

Been wanted to post this necklace up. It has been strung since quite some time back but I did not do the finishing till late.

I hope to recover soon and have the decision confirmed on the mixer.

When can I restart my baking

Its a long while .. since the CNY .. so many goodies to finish and just me to do it (oops) .. then now my kids are sick .. looks like it gonna be another week before I can start baking. I have yet to try out the CNY peanut cookie .. ingredients bought before CNY .. cant imagine I have another round of CNY goodies to finish.

Chocolate semifreddo

This dessert recipe came from Simply Her Aug 2008 magazine. Again, I made it because I have to finish up my whip cream and the packet of couverture chocolate. The couverture chocolate is bought wrongly and my friend told me it can only be used in making fondue. So when I came across this recipe that requires this ingredient .. I quickly make use of it.

I do not know what is this but by reading the recipe, it seems like making an ice cream or mousse. The definition from the wikipedia is here. Its a frozen mousse to me after I tasted it.

Here's my cold dessert in a bowl top with crushed hazelnut and chocolate rice.

This dessert is very very sweet ..... so, for those who likes sweet cold dessert .. here's the recipe.

Chocolate semifreddo (serves 4 - 6)

Ingredients
4 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
180g dark chocolate couverture, chopped
500ml whipping cream
2 egg whites
Pinch of salt
10 pieces Almond Roca
A handful of cherries, sliced





Directions

1. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Place the yolk mixture and chocolate in a heatproof bowl placed over a pan of simmering water. Stir the chocolate continuously until it melts. Remove from heat.
3. Whisk the cream until soft peaks form.
4. In a dry bowl, whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form.
5. Once the chocolate mixture is cool, stir in the cream till the mixture is evenly mixed. Then fold in the egg whites.
6. Pour the mixture into a loaf tin lined with cling film. Freeze for at least 8 hours.
7. Before serving, place the Almond Roca n a plastic bag and crush with a rolling pin.
8. Invert the loaf tin on a plate, unmould the cake and remove the cling film. Top with Almond Roca and cherries.

Tip : Use only good quality dark cooking chocolate ; regular chocolate bars give a grainy texture.

Jewelry tip - cleaning silver accessories

I must jot this tip down before I dispose my magazine. This tip is from Simply Her Jul 2008.

"Powder a cotton pad with Hai Tang Fen (at chinese medical shops) to brighten silver accesorries."

This tip is contributed by Tan We Ee as written on the magazine and the writer of this section, Lim Tsiao Hui even tested the tip and said that this tip works, and that its quick and fuss free. All the oxidised silver pendant and necklaces regained their sparkle immediately.

Hmm .. shd be time for me to try it out. Ok, tip jotted down for my reference. The magazine can go to the recycle pile now.

Cookies - Melting moments and cocoa pinwheels

My kids saw me flipping through my bakery recipe book and has requested to have this "cherry in the middle" biscuit to be baked. I have baked this cookie before this blog is born. After some consideration, I decide to bake the cookies with the kids. I have also added another type of cookie into the job list since the instructions look pretty easy to me.

I started off with this cocoa pinwheel biscuit. It is originally a mocha pinwheel but I did not put in coffee essence. I like this recipe because it only involves mixing, and two sets of dough, one for each kid, no fighting. However, I am a slow coach, so for the whole saturday morning, we only managed to do up the dough into a roll and no time to bake it. As this dough is freezer friendly, I simply leave it in the freezer and go to the kids' enrichment class.

We are finally free to bake the biscuit at around 9pm and since its so late, I did all the rest of the work (including the "cherry in the middle" biscuit) all by myself.

The process of making these two types of biscuits is not difficult and I enjoyed it. I must remember to sandwich the dough for the pinwheel biscuit in between two plastic sheets for easy handling. No sticking to roller and easy peel off.

The recipes made 18 cookies each. The "cherry in the middle" biscuit (is called "melting moments" in the cookbook) are all consumed, however, my boy commented that the pinwheel biscuit is too hard, so I have quite alot of these left. My hubby says that the biscuits are nice and I am pretty happy with this round of cookie making.

I hope to try my hands on some CNY cookies .. but meantime, I got to finish hiding all my messy stuff so that the house look presentable for CNY.

Here are the pictures of the cookies.

Recipe time!

Here's the recipe for the mocha pinwheel cookie that I promised SSB. SSB, sorry for the delay.

1 hour preparation, 20 minutes baking, makes 18.

Vanilla layer :

50g/2oz butter or block margarine, softened
25g/1oz caster sugar
75g/3oz plain flour
A few drops of vanilla essence

Mocha layer :
50g/2oz butter or block margarine, softened
25g/1oz caster sugar
75g/3oz plain flour
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp coffee essence

Method:
1. Place the ingredients for the two doughs into separate bowls. Bring the ingredients for the vanilla dough together and bind to a soft dough with a tablespoon of water. Wrap and freeze for 15 minutes.

2. Bring the mocha ingredients together and bind to a soft dough. Wrap and freeze for 15 minutes.

3. Roll out each dough to a rectangle 18 x 25cm / 7 x 10 inches. Brush the mocha dough with a little water, then place the vanilla dough on top.

4. Roll both doughs together like a swiss roll form the narrow end. Wrap the dough and chill for 30 minutes or freeze until firm.

5. Preheat the oven to 180 Dc/350F/Gas 4. Grease two baking sheets. Cut the dough into 18 slices each 6cm/1/4 inch wide.

6. Place on the baking sheets and space well apart. Bake for 15-20 minutes until firm and pale golden. Cook on the trays for 2 minutes to firm, then transfer on to a wire rack.


The end. :-)

Baking for the kids

I did the nutella cupcakes again because the kids have nothing to bring to school as snacks. This time I use the mixer, quick and easy, but the swirls of nutella are still not pretty. I find it not easy to swirl because both the cupcake batter and nutella paste are thick. Here are the results.

I went on to try Moist Coconut Cake in Kevin Chai's Easy Stir n Bake Cakes. Very nice, very tasty but really very oily. I also cut down sugar since it has white chocolate. So the next time I try, I will try cut down on oil and sugar. The cakes in this book are really easy, just mix and stir and viola, edible cake. Here's my oily cake. Look at the oily cup, it is actually waxed type but the cup is still soaked with oil.

The moist interior

Last bake of 2008 - Chocolate Cup Cakes

I baked this before, but couldn't find the entry, so I guess I may have did it before the birth of this blog. The post it slips with comments sticking on the recipe page should be sufficient to support my guess.

The comments mentioned that the cupcakes were bitter so this time round I only reduce the sugar by 20g (it was a 50% reduction previously).

I was lazy to do the washing of the mixer so I manually whisk the eggs, butter and sugar so now I still have an aching arm even though the cupcakes are done beginning of last week.

I baked two batches because the first batch is polished up on the same day and my kids still ask for more. However, the 2nd batch took 3 days to finished, perhaps due to the additional choice of cheesecake which I baked the same day as the first batch. I did not do any icing this time, even though I originally wanted my kids to decorate the cupcakes. I only added white chocolate droplets into the first batch and let them sprinkle on some sprinkles on the 2nd batch.

The cupcakes are really tasty (to me) since they are chocolate flavour. Spongey on the inside and a little crispy on the crust.

Here's how mine looked.

The first batch



The 2nd batch


And here's the recipe from the book "Complete Cookery - Baking" by Ann Nicol

Ingredients :-
100g/4oz butter, softened
100g/4oz soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
100g/4oz self rasing flour
25g/1oz cocoa
50g/2oz plain chocolate chips

Icings :-
25g/1oz butter. melted
25g/1oz cocoa
1 tbsp milk
100g/4oz golden icing sugar
50g/2oz milk chocolate mini buttons

Steps :-
1. Preheat the oven to 190dC/375F/Gas 5. Line 18 buns tins with foil or paper cases.
2. Sift the flour and cocoa into a bowl. Add the butter, sugar and eggs. Beat until smooth, then stir in the chocolate chips.
3. Divide the mixture between the lined bun cases. Bake in centre of the oven for about 15 minutes, until the buns spring back when lightly pressed. Remove the buns to a wire rack to cool.
4. To make the icing, beat the butter with the cocoa, milk and icing sugar until smooth.
5. Spread over the tops of the buns and sprinkle each one with a few chocolate buttons. Leave to set for 30 minutes before serving.

p/s : Oh, I found the picture I took of my previous chocolate cupcake attempt. They are done in Aug 2007 with a couple of other bakes like the doggie biscuit and some lemonly stuff. Now I miss my doggie biscuits.