27 October, 2008
18 October, 2008
Teo Chew Porridge Set
This Teo Chew porridge set is one of my favourite dishes I cook occasionally especially when the weather is incredibly warm and humid. The Chinese believe that plain porridge could lower your body heatiness. It really helps to quench your thirst on a hot summer day.
I like to make use of the left over cooked rice boiled to plain porridge. The 2 dishes are:
1) Salted preserved vegetable fried with sliced pork and garlic; and
2) Fried egg omelet with preserved salted radish.
A complete 2 + 1 dishes will be ready in no time.
1) Salted preserved vegetable fried with sliced pork and garlic; and
2) Fried egg omelet with preserved salted radish.
A complete 2 + 1 dishes will be ready in no time.
14 October, 2008
05 October, 2008
2-Tier Fondant Cake Project
Happy Birthday Kyannda!!!
Last week I had another opportunity to test my skill of making fondant cake. I have never made any 2-tier cakes before. There would be about 50 - 60 ppl in the party and a 2-tier cake would be a better option than one big 1-tier conventional cake.
Kyannda is a beautiful young lady who is 14 years old and she likes pink. I found a book titled "Glamorous Cake" from the Library written by Eric Lanlard who is a famous pastry chef and his cakes are really beautiful. He has this light pink 2-tier cake with only simple decoration of white blossoms of 3 different sizes. Humm... I think this should not be so difficult to make. All I need are some blossom cutters which I didn't have at that moment.
So my home work was to go round Phoon Huat and BIY to hunt for these blossom cutters. To my disappointment, all were sold out and I only found the small size cutter. I bought it after all, cox I could never succeed without these cutters.
I planned to pipe the wording and make all the little blossom flowers 3 days ahead of her party (which was held last Sat 4 Oct). I would then bake 2 cakes the day before. She likes chocolate and her mother like cheese. So I decided to use chocolate cake and fill it with cream cheese icing. Finally, I would smoothen the whole cake with chocolate butter cream icing before covering it with the pink fondant.
I assume chocolate and cheese should blend well. I had never baked chocolate cake before ;> and I only rehearsed the process in my mind without testing it.... when I think back now, it is quite risky!
It went well on the 1st day when I piped the wordings and prepared the blossoms and butterflies etc. I also prepared the chocolate butter cream icing.
Although I expected things might not be all smoothly executed in the process, it turned out to be disastrous on the 2nd day as I baked the chocolate sponge cake. It failed to raise according to my expectation. I had to discard everything and immediately searched for another reliable chocolate cake recipe to bake 2 cakes... I was crossing my fingers... Luckily, I managed to patch up the mistake and have 2 cakes by midnight... phew!!... At that point, I wasn't sure if the cakes would taste good. The texture is a bit hard ... I had no choice but to use them the next day.
On the actual day (Sat), the 1st thing I did was to prepare the cream cheese filling before assembling the cakes. Gladly, Shanice volunteered herself to stay home (the 2 mei mei went out with daddy to zoo) and gave mommy a helping hand. So she helped whisk and prepare cream cheese butter cream. The next step was to smoothen the cake surface with chocolate butter cream icing. This is the part that I'm not confident in due to my lack of experience. I bought a turn table to help me in this but still, any imperfection like holes, uneven surface will mirror onto the top layer fondant. I just tried my best to make the cake surface smooth.
Another big hiccup: on Friday, I went to Phoon Huat and bought some baking materials and an extra pack of ready made fondant. On Sat when I was putting my baking stuff together, getting ready to start the last phase of works, to my horror, I couldn’t find the pack of fondant and I later discovered that I had left it at the cashier counter. It was one and a half hour prior to my scheduled assembling time. Oh no.... so my helper had to rush out and collect for me.... Well, a blessing in disguise, I could take a break and could do nothing but rested and enjoyed my lunch with Shanice.
At 2pm, I started assembling the cake. It was not easy to stack up a heavy cake without messing up the fondant laid on the 1st tier. Shanice kept asking me from morning why we still had not started putting the blossoms onto the cake. So after a few hours of anxious waiting, she was excited in helping mom glue a lot of flowers onto the cake. Although the cake turned out to have more flowers than what I planned to, seeing her eagerness and attention spent on this project, I must restrain my comment and let her participate in it rather than keep telling her "NOT this, NOT that".
It took us 3 hours to finish decorating the cake. It looked good and not bad at all. Taste good also. I put less sugar in the chocolate cake because the sugar paste is a pile of "sugar". It should compensate the sweetness as a whole. Christine is right. She commented that you should eat the cake and the cream cheese with the sugar fondant in one mouthful. The taste blends well. But I feel that I can further improve on the texture of the chocolate cake as it is a bit hard. Also, if there is one more layer of cream cheese butter cream, that will make the cake taste perfect.
My mission accomplished and here I wish Kyannda enjoy herself on the party night and wish her remain pretty always. Happy Birthday!!!
Last week I had another opportunity to test my skill of making fondant cake. I have never made any 2-tier cakes before. There would be about 50 - 60 ppl in the party and a 2-tier cake would be a better option than one big 1-tier conventional cake.
Kyannda is a beautiful young lady who is 14 years old and she likes pink. I found a book titled "Glamorous Cake" from the Library written by Eric Lanlard who is a famous pastry chef and his cakes are really beautiful. He has this light pink 2-tier cake with only simple decoration of white blossoms of 3 different sizes. Humm... I think this should not be so difficult to make. All I need are some blossom cutters which I didn't have at that moment.
So my home work was to go round Phoon Huat and BIY to hunt for these blossom cutters. To my disappointment, all were sold out and I only found the small size cutter. I bought it after all, cox I could never succeed without these cutters.
I planned to pipe the wording and make all the little blossom flowers 3 days ahead of her party (which was held last Sat 4 Oct). I would then bake 2 cakes the day before. She likes chocolate and her mother like cheese. So I decided to use chocolate cake and fill it with cream cheese icing. Finally, I would smoothen the whole cake with chocolate butter cream icing before covering it with the pink fondant.
I assume chocolate and cheese should blend well. I had never baked chocolate cake before ;> and I only rehearsed the process in my mind without testing it.... when I think back now, it is quite risky!
It went well on the 1st day when I piped the wordings and prepared the blossoms and butterflies etc. I also prepared the chocolate butter cream icing.
Although I expected things might not be all smoothly executed in the process, it turned out to be disastrous on the 2nd day as I baked the chocolate sponge cake. It failed to raise according to my expectation. I had to discard everything and immediately searched for another reliable chocolate cake recipe to bake 2 cakes... I was crossing my fingers... Luckily, I managed to patch up the mistake and have 2 cakes by midnight... phew!!... At that point, I wasn't sure if the cakes would taste good. The texture is a bit hard ... I had no choice but to use them the next day.
On the actual day (Sat), the 1st thing I did was to prepare the cream cheese filling before assembling the cakes. Gladly, Shanice volunteered herself to stay home (the 2 mei mei went out with daddy to zoo) and gave mommy a helping hand. So she helped whisk and prepare cream cheese butter cream. The next step was to smoothen the cake surface with chocolate butter cream icing. This is the part that I'm not confident in due to my lack of experience. I bought a turn table to help me in this but still, any imperfection like holes, uneven surface will mirror onto the top layer fondant. I just tried my best to make the cake surface smooth.
Another big hiccup: on Friday, I went to Phoon Huat and bought some baking materials and an extra pack of ready made fondant. On Sat when I was putting my baking stuff together, getting ready to start the last phase of works, to my horror, I couldn’t find the pack of fondant and I later discovered that I had left it at the cashier counter. It was one and a half hour prior to my scheduled assembling time. Oh no.... so my helper had to rush out and collect for me.... Well, a blessing in disguise, I could take a break and could do nothing but rested and enjoyed my lunch with Shanice.
At 2pm, I started assembling the cake. It was not easy to stack up a heavy cake without messing up the fondant laid on the 1st tier. Shanice kept asking me from morning why we still had not started putting the blossoms onto the cake. So after a few hours of anxious waiting, she was excited in helping mom glue a lot of flowers onto the cake. Although the cake turned out to have more flowers than what I planned to, seeing her eagerness and attention spent on this project, I must restrain my comment and let her participate in it rather than keep telling her "NOT this, NOT that".
It took us 3 hours to finish decorating the cake. It looked good and not bad at all. Taste good also. I put less sugar in the chocolate cake because the sugar paste is a pile of "sugar". It should compensate the sweetness as a whole. Christine is right. She commented that you should eat the cake and the cream cheese with the sugar fondant in one mouthful. The taste blends well. But I feel that I can further improve on the texture of the chocolate cake as it is a bit hard. Also, if there is one more layer of cream cheese butter cream, that will make the cake taste perfect.
My mission accomplished and here I wish Kyannda enjoy herself on the party night and wish her remain pretty always. Happy Birthday!!!
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