Gingerbread House Cake -2013-

Has everyone recovered from the 'food food food' Christmas period yet? I... ate too much and mainly filled my belly with cake, cream and sweets...

This year I was very determined to make something bit more than an ordinary gingerbread house.

First of all, I designed my gingerbread house on paper, then printed out the template and practiced making the house with paper before I actually built it with biscuits. Yes, call me a control freak geek...

The biscuits, the cake, and the building work... All went very well. By the evening of Christmas Eve, "The Tower" made it to Andy's mum and dad's house safely. ;D

The gingerbread house was built on a very light coconut sponge iced with cream cheese frosting and coconut flake to make it look like a snowy ground.

The stained glass effect ;D

Cotton candy for the chimney...

What's more special about this year's gingerbread house was it had a secret inside, which was revealed at the dinner table by breaking "The Tower"!

...., So....,

We broke "The Tower"

bang,

bang,

bang!

"The Tower" was filled with sweets!!

It was such a fun to make the gingerbread house from scratch then destroy, and just tuck in it!

Not only was I pleased with the look but also, taste wise, the cake was nice and light and the gingerbread was very moreish too.

I'm definitely up for doing this again. ;D

Calendar 2014 - Available now!

Christmas is around the corner and the new year is going to be here before we know!

Have you completed the to do list you for this year? I haven't...;(
Oh well, I've already started preparing for next year anyway. ;D

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Choose calendar format:

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Happy Birthday, Andy!

Happy birthday to you,

Happy birthday to you,

Haaapy birthday dear Andy,

Haaaapy birthday to you!!

It's my dear husband's birthday today. Happy birthday, Andy ;D xxx

Last Saturday we had Andy's birthday lunch, and I made this "Ultimate cream slice" as Andy requested.

It's made of three layers of puff pastry, a mixture of vanilla cream and custard cream and strawberries in between each layer, then topped with a layer of icing, pistachio meringues, sugar coated strawberries, and roasted mixed nuts brittle,... yes, now you know why it's called "Ultimate" cream slice!


Cream slice may sound an unusual cake for a birthday (I initially thought that too...), but it's one of Andy's favourite cakes, so I thought why not treat him with a very special cream slice.

The cake was a serious cream and sugar heaven. I probably enjoyed it as much as or more than the birthday boy...

Happy Birthday, Andy! xxxxx

Stollen - 2013 -

December is here and everywhere seems to be getting more and more Christmasy each day... and here I am... already started the Christmas bake!

As I did last year I made stollen again this year. ;D I prepared the rum soaked fruits way back in September, and I just couldn't wait any longer!

I've change the recipe slightly but the basics are the same as last year. Plenty of rum soaked fruits (plus ginger this year!) and roasted nuts and coconuts are the stars to my stollen, and they smell absolutely amazing even when they are in the oven!

I love the marzipan inside and the feel of incing sugar melting in the mouth with every bite.

It's such a rich and indulgent treat which I think is one of the must have treats at Christmas time... ;D

Caramelised apple & pumpkin crumble cake

This time of year all those nice autumn winter vegetables and fruits gives me a lot of inspirations to my baking. And I love it!

So, the other day our neighbour gave us some apples from her garden and I also had a pumpkin sitting in the kitchen for a while, so I decided to make a variation of my apple crumble cake. :D

First I caramelised the diced apple and pumpkin together, then the rest was pretty much the same as the apple crumble cake. (I replaced the apple confiture to the caramelised apple and pumpkin.)

Oh, I love using pumpkins in my cakes and breads!

The nice bits of apple and pumpkin, soft and light sponge, and the sweet crumble... it cannot go wrong.

It's really a perfect comfort cake on a cold gloomy day... ;)

Have you seen my other crumbles?

Blackberyy crumble muffin

Apple crumble cake

Chestnut crumble cake

カステラ - Castella

I can't believe it's been a month since I last posted here! It's not I haven't been baking. In fact, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen... but I just don't get much chance to sit down and write nowadays... ;(

Anyway, this is one of my recent hit cakes called 'かすてら(Castella)'. It's a very simple Japanese cake which originally came to Japan from Portugal in 16th century. (History is not my strongest subject so don't ask me anymore please...)

It's a sort of very light sponge cake but I would say it's more like a cross between cake and loaf.

This time I used brown sugar instead of white, then added stem ginger and a bit of rum to give the popular Japanese cake a 'Yumi twist'. ;D

It worked... It was divine...
It filled my Japanese food craving hole in my stomach...

The method of making Castella is pretty similar to a classic sponge cake (cf. my Basic Swiss Roll). However, there are a few important things that make you bake an authentic tasting and looking Castella. For example, you need strong flour not plain, and you bake in a lower temperature for a longer time than a usual cake....
Anyway, all those tips are going to be illustrated on BON APPETIT soon, so just bare with me! ;D

For now, they are the ingredients:

Strong flour 100g

Dark brown sugar 100g

Egg 4

Honey 3tbsp

Stem ginger 30-50g

Rum or water 1 tbsp

Happy Halloween - Pumpkin cookies!

Happy Halloween! Tick or Treat!

Following my Jack-o'-lantern black cream puffs, I made Halloween pumpkin cookies!

I say 'Pumpkin' cookies, but they actually have no pumpkins in it...sorry...
They are made of one of my favourite biscuits, the Almond Ball Biscuit (recipe is on Biscuit Assortment). I added a bit of orange food colourings and shaped them like mini pumpkins.

It was a little bit time consuming to shape them but it was worth the effort. I was very pleased with how they came out. ;)

I used a chop stick to make the lines and put a pumpkin seed on the top.

I also made one Dokin-chan for Lana. ;)

(It's a famous cartoon character in Japan.)

Before drawing the faces. They looked so cute. :)

I can see myself making other shapes...

(This could be on my Christmas baking list....)

Halloween Cream Puff

Scary looking pumpkins and fancy dresses... yes, Halloween is here again!

I've been doing some Halloween baking this week and this is one of them.... Halloween special black Jack-o'-lantern cream puffs1

The pastry itself is my usual choux pastry with black food colouring. However the cream inside is the special thing of these guys! It's Pumpkin Cream! I added pureed pumpkin to custard cream and combined with whipped cream.
They are seriously, dangerously tasty!

It was very difficult to see if the pastries were going brown or not, but I think I judged it well. ;) They looked a bit like giant snails... ;D

Happy Halloween, everyone! Don't open the front door to strangers...;)

Happy Birthday to Pete!

Happy Birthday to Pete ~♪
It was my dad-in-law's birthday last Friday, and we had his birthday dinner on Saturday.

And, this is the cake I made for him! What shall we call it, 'face cake'? This is probably one of my favourite birthday cakes I've ever made. ;D

Andy and I made a stencil cut out of his face on a piece of paper and placed it on the cake, then I sprinkled cinnamon icing sugar to make his face appear on the cake. How cool is that! Even we, who made the cut out, was amazed how good it came out and how much it looked like him!

I kept the other decoration simple. The cake was coated with cream and funfetti macarons were placed on the bottom.

For the inside, I did checkerboard cake (I made it for Ony's birthday too, that was vanilla and chocolate...), this time I made brown sugar and mixed spice sponge cake, and hazelnut sponge cake.

Although we were very full after the main meal, we managed to squeeze a small slice of cake;)

I'm so up for doing this 'face cake' again for other occasions. In fact, I might start taking orders for it...

Happy birthday to Pete, and thank you for the lovely dinner! ;D

Orange brioche

So, as I mentioned before (on my Orange custard cream post), here is my orange brioche made with my banana yeast starter. It has a orange jam sauce mixed in the dough and orange custard on the top.

I think these buns are a perfect example of how versatile the sourdough starter can be. They've got such a nice soft texture and buttery richness that I'm sure they are pretty different from what you imagine as sourdough bread;)

Being quite a wet dough, it's pretty tricky to handle it so I strongly recommend using a mixer for kneading. You will also need to knead (oops..;D) longer than ordinary loaves (such as my Strawberry yeast bread) and it might be difficult to judge whether the dough is ready or not. But don't worry, when in doubt, we always go back to the basics. Feel the dough, stretch it to see it's nice and stringy and doesn't break.

This rich dough takes more time to prove too. I left the dough overnight to let it prove (it was about 10 hours on a warm day, so it can be longer on a cooler day) and then rested it in the fridge for half a day. This resting action is quite important to make it easy to shape the bread.

I haven't got brioche tins but tartlet tins worked ok. I added some orange custard on the top, then put a small piece of dough to cover it.

Not only were they a good energy booster in the morning, but also they were an excellent treat with coffee in the afternoon. :)

Ingredients:

Starter (banana) 125g

Very strong flour 250g

Salt 3g

Honey 50g

Butter 50g

Egg1+Egg yolk 2 + milk = 168g

Orange jam sauce 2-3tbsp

*I will post the brioche recipe some time but for now, please refer to the Banana buns Recipe for the method.

Gluten-free Coconut Lemon Tart

Coconut is one of the great alternatives to flour when it comes to gluten-free baking. I use just the coconut flour as a substitute of flour for my Coconut Swiss Roll, which works very well. However, for tarts or cakes that requires more height, you do need some more fine flour substitutes such as gluten-free plain flour or rice flour.

With this coconut tart, I used gluten-free plain flour, same as my Gluten-free Bakewell tart, but replaced some flour with the coconut flour and I also used coconut flour in the filling. When the tart was in the oven, the kitchen was filled with the smell of beautiful coconut and refreshing lemon... I couldn't wait to taste it!

Ingredients:
Pastry

Gluten-free plain flour 200g

Coconut flour 50g

Butter 100g

Sugar 100g

Egg 1

----

Lemon filling

Lemon 2 (juice and zest)

Sugar 150g

Egg 1

Butter (melted) 85g

Coconut flour 30g

1. Prepare the pastry. (follow the Sweet pastry recipe).

2. Preheat the oven to 180ºc. Blind bake the pastry for 10 minutes.

3. Make the filling. Combine all the ingredients together, and mix well.

4. Pour the filling in the blind baked tart. Bake 35 minutes. (If the top of the tart start to brown, cover with foil.)

5. Chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours, or overnight.

The crusty coconut pastry is a perfect match with the sweet lemony filling... ;D

More tart?

• Lemon Meringue Tart
• Nut About Nut Tart
• Chestnut Tart
• Pumpkin Tart
• Apple Almond Cheese Tartlet
• Glten-free Bakewell tart
• Plum tart

Gluten-free Orange & Poppy seed Swiss roll

With the orange custard and orange 'jam sauce' thing on my previous post, I made this gluten-free cake, Orange & Poppy seed Swiss roll.

I'm getting quite into the gluten-free baking and wanted to see how my basic Swiss roll sponge would come out with the gluten-free flour (I use Doves Farm plain white flour.). It worked so well that I could barely tell the difference and so did some people who ate the cake. Only thing was with the gluten-free flour the sponge cake was softer, which made the rolling action a little tricky.

The recipe for the sponge cake is the same as my basic Swiss roll. I just replaced the flour to gluten-free flour, then added a few table spoon of orange jam sauce, and folded a good amount of poppy seeds in the sponge.

For the cream inside, I mixed orange custard with whipped cream. Oh, I love custard and whipped cream together, and with a nice orange flavour with it, it simply cannot go wrong!

When you make Swiss rolls for customers or as a gift, I need to trim the ends, and they are, obviously, for me! ;D This time I put them in the freezer and had them a few days later. I couldn't wait for the cake to be completely defrosted so I had it half frozen, and guess what... it tasted amazing! It really was a treat for the baker! Please try it when you have Swiss roll next time;D

Basic Swiss Roll Recipe

More Gluten-free Swiss roll;
Coconut Swiss Roll

Orange custard cream

The other day I made orange custard cream... well, I was going to make orange curd but as I didn't have specific recipe in mind and I was kind of going with the flow, I ended up making more like an orange custard than curd, which turned out to be rather tasty! ;D

So the recipe goes like this...
Ingredients:

Orange 2

Sugar 50g

Butter 25g

Cornflour 1 tbs

Egg 1

Egg yolk 1

1. Squeeze the juice out of oranges. Keep 1 tbsp of the juice aside and combine the rest of the juice with sugar and butter in a pot.

2. Bring the pot to boil and strain the liquid.

3. Mix cornflour and 1 tbsp of orange juice.

4. Add 3 into 2 and mix well.

5. Beat the egg and egg yolk and mix into 4. Put the pot back on a low heat.

6. Stir constantly until the liquid thickens.

I'm not a big fan of orange skin so I don't add zest of orange but if you want more punch, then please go for it.

After squeezing the juice, I boiled the remaining of oranges with water, and then pureed in the food processor. I cooked the pureed oranges again with some ginger syrup (approximately 4 tbsp) and strained the liquid to make orange and ginger jam-sauce type thing (it wan't as thick as jam...)

This by-product was also very nice! I used it in the bread and cake, both of which had really nice refreshing orange flavour. :)

I used the orange custard cream as a filling of my Match macarons. And oh yes! Holly molly, the combination of match and orange tasted amazing...

Recipes for the gluten- free cake and brioche I made with the orange cream and 'jam-sauce thing' will be coming soon! Don't miss them;D

Cinnamon Roll Loaf

I made my regular Milk and Honey loaf dough with a good intention of making cinnamon rolls with it but instead ended up making a loaf...

When I wake up early in the morning to bake, my body is up but my brain is sometimes still left in bed, and that's what happened when I was making this bread. I made the cinnamon butter filling then spread it on the rolled out dough. Next thing I knew, I was folding it as I do when I make a marble loaf... By that time, I said to myself it would be like a big cinnamon roll and taste pretty much the same...

So that's how the Cinnamon Roll loaf was made! It was actually very nice. In a way a slice of this loaf was much easier to eat (especially for a little person, it's not as sticky as normal cinnamon rolls.)

The cinnamon butter filling is a great option for those who are avoiding sugar as I use honey instead of sugar. It can, of course, be used for usual cinnamon rolls, or spread it on a slice of toast and you will have an instant cinnamon roll toast! ;D

The cinnamon butter filling:

Butter 3 tbsp

Cinnamon 1 tsp

Honey 2 tsp

Mix well all the ingredients together.

Strawberry yeast bread - 3

It's already September but we are still enjoying the summer heat here in England, which is great for being out and about, but not so great for my sourdough starters...

While it's hard to maintain sourdough starters on hot days, there is an advantage that we can take in this heat. Instead of making and keeping a fully matured starter, I often do the straight method by using a liquid starter.

Because of the hot weather, the liquid yeast gets very active and ready in much shorter time, and the dough rises much more easily.

My strawberry starter took 3 days, and banana starter was ready in only 2 day! By using this method not only will nice crusty sourdough bread be ready in 3 to 4 days but also you have less job in maintaining the starter (therefor less likely to fail...).

You can use any fresh or dried fruits (make sure they aren't coated with oil) or vegetables, but the ones with high sugar are easier to get started. Strawberries are perfect as they are cheap in summer and have a really nice flavour to it. Bananas are good all year around too.

All you've got to do is to follow the steps of Strawberry yeast starter until step two, then use that liquid to make your dough.

I made strawberry one again... this time with the strawberries that I used to make the liquid starter. Look at this beautiful crust! :D

Good bread and cheese is my ultimate sandwich combo...

More about strawberry yeast bread? Have a look at:
Strawberry yeast bread - 1
Strawberry yeast bread - 2