Maple Syrup Chiffon Cake

Last Sunday was Father's Day. I celebrated this occasion by baking a simple chiffon cake. Looking through my posts, I noticed that it had been almost a year since I last baked it, last September to be exact! Like other bloggers, I also hold much fear when baking a chiffon.... the beating of egg whites and the folding part.

Days before the bake, I went through this trusted video website 周老師的美食教室 for a better picture of the making of chiffon cake. The videos have 3 parts: Part 1-preparation & beating of egg yolks; Part 2-beating of egg whites; Part 3-folding of egg whites to egg yolks.

I think the videos are very good & informative to me. See, my chiffon cake didn't collapse after inverting. But, I wonder why there were so many air pockets on the cake itself? I did bang the cake pan several times before sending it to the oven for baking. Or, could it be the baking powder I used? This time round I used "Double-acting baking powder" as stated in the recipe by "孟老师的一百道小旦糕".

Nonetheless, the cake was soft and fluffy and a bit moist, but not as moist as my Green Tea Chiffon Cake. Taste wise, the cake had a slight tinge of maple syrup but not overpowering (which was good). My family loved it very much. My husband had a few slices, which was very rare! :) You must be wondering why my cake had no frosting? Well, my husband does not like any "make-up" ! :D


Wonder also why can't I unmold it beautifully like other bloggers such as Happy Home Baker. I like her perfectly "look alike pork floss" chiffon cake! Well, guess practice make perfect!

Super Soft Milk Toast

(This was using my bigger Pullman's tin with flour capacity of 450g.)

Yesterday evening, my husband came home telling me “哇！妳的面包好软！” (Your bread is very soft!). I was elated to hear that, since it was I who always asked him for feedback! And hey, this bread was made on Tuesday afternoon! It is able to "survive" under our current terrible hot weather and yet retain its softness... . I'm very pleased. :)

Unlike other bloggers who bake different kinds of healthy loaves with pumpkin or sweet potatoes, I can only bake simple plain/milk loaf for my family... simply because my family (especially my husband) doesn't fancy/like these kind of loaves! :( Another type of bread they will never want me to bake are those hard bread (European bread). See, a bunch of 吃软不吃硬的！ So I've been baking my usual milk loaf from here. Well, this is a very good loaf using very simple ingredients available in most home bakers' home. However, like all home bakers I'm constantly looking for bread loaf that stay very soft on the second and better still third day without additional of bread improver.

I chanced upon a recipe from a food blog which I frequent. It uses simple ingredients too, but with additional egg whites. Since I have leftover egg whites from my ice-cream making, I decided to give it a try. It's also a good way to use up the whites too. :)

Ingredients:
Bread flour 300g
Instant Yeast 3g
Castor sugar 45g
Salt 3g
Milk powder 4.5g
Fresh milk 138g
Egg whites 65g
Salted butter 30g

Method:
1. Use your usual kneading for bread. Make sure you knead your dough till smooth and elastic (window pane stage).
2. Cover and proof for 1 hour.
3. Divide into 3 portions. Round up the doughs and rest for about 10 minutes.
4. Roll into Swiss roll style once. Rest the doughs for a further 10 minutes.
5. Flatten the 3 rolls and roll into Swiss roll style one more time. (兩次桿捲)
6. Put the rolled doughs into you Pullman's tin and let it rise till 90%. (within 2 hours)
7. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 deg C for 30 minutes.
8. Unmold immediately. Let it cool off completely before slicing.

Note:
* This dough was rather wet & sticky. I wonder whether it was due to the salted butter used.
* During my first attempt, I used my stand mixer for the first 15 minutes. Thereafter, I hand kneaded and "throw & bang" for another 20 minutes or so before reaching window pane stage. Please remember to "lightly flour" your hand & working table. Do not be tempted to add more flour.

* For my second attempt, I used my bigger Pullman's tin with 450g of bread flour. This time round I used unsalted butter. I found it was easier to work with unsalted butter. I used my bread machine to knead for 30 minutes. I feel my bread dough usually don't reach window pane stage even after 30 minutes of kneading. So, I'll take out the dough and hand knead it. I'll also adopt the "throw & bang" method （甩打面团). I find this method works very effective than hand knead alone! Guess what I "throw & bang" and count to hundreds!

I always keep my home baked loaf in an airtight container at room temperature. Likewise, my husband will pack his bread in an airtight container and bring to his office. So please keep your bread properly.

I hope you will try out this wonderful recipe and enjoy this loaf as much as I do. :)


Recipe source: MARS 烘焙園地

Minced Ginger & Spring Onion Dipping Sauce

Made this dipping sauce to go with our chicken rice dinner last week. Hmm..... very 惹味! This sauce is also very suitable for steam fish, i.e. after steaming the fish, just spread some of the sauce over the fish. A plain steam fish instantly turns into a special dish! Sedap!

Ingredients:
200g young ginger (peeled, diced, mixed with 100ml water and blended into puree)
100ml oil
2 tbsp chopped spring onion

Seasoning:
1 tsp chicken stock granules
1 tsp salt
a little sesame oil

Method:
1. Heat up oil and put in ginger puree and seasoning.
2. Stir and cook until boiled.
3. Add in chopped spring onion. Stir well and remove from heat.
4. Leave to cool before storing.


Recipe source: 大牌档酱 作者： 郭子仁

Vanilla Ice-cream

All along I've been making yogurt ice-cream. Thought of giving the "real" ice-cream a try last week. Also a good excuse to try my new bottle of vanilla extract which I bought some times ago. :)

I used a recipe from "冷冻甜品“. I think this is the most simple recipe from the book.

Ingredient A:
3 egg yolk
60g caster sugar
2 tsp vanilla essence
150g dairy whipping cream (or 100g fresh milk, if you don't like strong milky taste)

Ingredient B:
250g non-diary whipping cream

Method:
1. Mix (A) until well combined and double boil until thicken. Remove from heat and leave to cool.
2. Beat (B) until stiff. Mix all mixture together and stir well.
3. Pour into a prepared container and freeze overnight or until set.

As I didn't have any dairy whipping cream, I substituted with 100g fresh milk (low-fat). This ice-cream was very smooth and creamy. And yes, I'd put the vanilla extract to good use! :D This is definitely a keeper!

However, we found it to be on the sweeter side. So the next round I make, I'll adjust the sugar content accordingly. Well, that's the best part of "Homemade", isn't it? 甜咸酸辣自行加减! :)

Steam Hakka "Ki Ban"

This is a hakka snack. For our hakka clan, we call this "Ki Ban". "Ki"- means "rise" and "Ban" means "kueh". So this is something like a "Huat Kueh" or "Fatt Koh". Some bakeries do sell this, but is labelled as "Ang Bao". However, it is not available most of the time.

For hakka, we usually buy this to pray to our ancestors. So last week I volunteered to make this for my mum for her praying during the "Qing Ming Jie". All went well except the colour.


Everything was done at my mum's place, except the dough starter. She had the rose pink powder form which I wasn't used to. As I hand kneaded the dough, the powder was not fully dissolved and as a result, we added more powder ... :( When I open the wok, I see RED instead of pink! Anyway, my mum was happy to see that the "Ki Ban" did "Rise"! For older generation, due to superstitious, if the "Ki Ban" never "Rise", it symbolises not bad luck but "BAD OMEN"!

I made another batch yesterday at my home. With the convenient of a mixer, the dough was ready in a very short time. This time I used the liquid rose pink, mixed together with the water before adding to the dough. And I was able to get the pink that I want. :) but not the shape! :( The whole process was very straight forward but I found it was not easy to round up into a pretty shape. Recipe over Aunty Yochana. Hers is so much prettier and smoother too.

Sponge dough (@ 9.40 pm): after mixing, very sticky

The next morning (@ 8.30 am): after proofing overnight

After mixing the sponge dough with the main dough (@ 9 am)

After 1 hour (@ 10 am), the dough expanded.

This was how the dough looked like, after 4 hours of proofing (@ 1 pm).

Shaped dough waiting for steaming. (Next time must remember not to apply too much oil on the dough.)

Finally, the steamed "Ki Ban".

The texture of "Ki Ban" - Soft & chewy.

This batch was specially made for my father's death anniversary tomorrow! I'd never made anything for him in my life.... I hope he likes it! 老爸，这是女儿亲手做的，献给您。。。

Before March end..

I must record this before March end.... so that I remember I made this very first cake with so called "frosting" for my elder boy's birthday, his 8th birthday on 12 March. I had asked him in advance whether he wants a chocolate cake or something else. He wanted a chocolate cake. :)

I have collected a few chocolate cakes recipes in my file. However, since I have no confident in sponge cake, I opted for this "Steam Moist Chocolate Cake". Look easy and straight forward to me. Best of all, steam one! This cake recipe has been around quite sometimes ago. It received many good reviews from many blogger.

True enough, this was the best chocolate cake! It was very soft and "super super moist"! :) Everyone who tried it gave their thumbs-up! :)

I'd "frost" the cake with "chocolate fudge topping". As it was my very first time using chocolate, I didn't know whether the consistency is correct or not. I spent nearly an hour "cooking/stirring" the chocolate. Occasionally, I cheated a bit, using medium/big fire to speed up the process! :(

I tried to slice the cake into half, but with my clumsy and lousy skill, the cake became lopsided...! After that I tried to drizzle the cake with the "chocolate fudge", but the chocolate kept dripping down the cake board! Now, how to transfer the cake to another clean cake board? Any suggestion from you?

However, due to the high oil content, I'll only make this once a year or even longer. You see, originally recipe uses 250gm + 125gm butter or corn oil in a 9 inch baking pan or 2 x 9" sandwich pan!! I made a half recipe using an 8" cake pan and I chose corn oil. But still the oil content is on a high side. I felt guilty after making this cake..... :( Guess, ONCE a while is fine....

Recipe is available at Yochana's Cake Delight.

Dim Sum Bao - 2nd Attempt

I made another attempt to make this bao the other day. This time round I omitted the "ammonia powder" entirely. I read around the web and came to know that this ammonia powder actually made the baos "split or smile". Once the baos are steamed, the ammonia smell will evaporate.

In my first attempt, all my steamed baos came out very well and without any trace of ammonia smell. However, a few bloggers encountered the presence of ammonia smell in their steamed baos, strange!

Back to my second attempt. Having heard so much of how stinky this ammonia was, and partly out of curiosity I open the bottle cover and sniffed... Gosh!!!! So I decided to omit it entirely, after all it only make the bao split, not a problem to me as long as the baos are soft and fluffy, right? Well, I was quite disappointed and stunned when I open the wok!


All the baos STILL split but not as pretty as my first attempt! It was not fluffy at all, though it was still soft but not as soft! :( On a closer look, these baos resemble a picture in a "pau flour" available in our supermarket. ;)

Well, at least I learned something (but through the hard way): Nothing venture Nothing gain.

For this batch, since I didn't have enough "Hong kong flour", I substituted some with "Cake flour" also a low-gluten flour.

For the fillings, I used the same char siew recipe from Gina of KC. This time I bought the char siew pork from a different vendor and used the same seasonings. The taste was real fantastic! Very similar to "Tiong Bahru Pau" fillings! :))


Though the baos were not as soft and fluffy as the previous attempt, my two kids love them any way. They commented that my baos were very tasty! :D They could gobble up 2 pcs at one go!

This bao definitely will not stick in your teeth! :) I believe how you knead the dough determine the texture of your final product, just like bread. :) For your info, this bao remained soft after several hours in my wok, with cover on, a pleasant surprise to me when I had a bite in the late evening... :)

After rounds of baos pleating, I think I can pleat better now. Thanks to my husband who loves to watch food related programmes. In fact, he was the one who show me roughly the technique to pleat. :)