Devil Food Chocolate Cake

The last time I baked for my boyfriend was 4 years ago. We had just started dating and it was his birthday. I wasn't that enthusiastic as I am now with baking but I still baked him cupcakes. It were mini cupcakes, I don't remember what flavour, with peanut butter frosting. The frosting was hideous! And watery! I tried to draw on the small cupcakes but all went fugly.

But it still was my first ever homemade cupcakes/cake for him.

I decided to surprise the boyfriend yesterday so I baked him a cake. Not the usual humble cakes I usually baked. It was a chocolate cake!

My piping skills sucks T_T I really don't know how to decorate a cake. Seriously, it took me a longer time to frost than baking!

And the boyfriend and housmates and officemate (Oh now I am blushing) loved it!! Sumpah tak tipu!

I drove in the middle of the night from my house to KL just to meet him but I couldn't resist to had one slice of it. So I brought along a knife and a tupperware, for me! Hahahahaha.

And this is how it looks like :) Pretty, no?

Devil Food Chocolate Cake
From Kitchen Guardian

Cake:

1 cup flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
65g butter
1 large egg
1tsp vanilla essence
1/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup warm water

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. Sift together all the dry ingredients; flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
2. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg.
3. Add dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk+warm water mixture in three batches begin and ending with the flour.
4. Add in vanilla essence and continue mixing.
5. Pour into a greased pan and bake for 30 minutes. I used a 9 inch heart shaped pan and had to baked twice. Double the ingredients or use a smaller pan if you want a higher cake.

Cream Cheese frosting:

250g cream cheese at room temperature
125g butter
1 cup icing sugar (Yikes! I use 1/2 cup. Enough with all the fat :p )
1 tsp vanilla essence

Beat cream cheese until smooth. Add in butter and continue mixing until light and creamy. Add in sifted icing sugar and mix well. Lastly, add vanilla essence.

Chocolate Ganache:

250 ml double cream/whipping cream/ thickened cream
300g dark chocolate/baking chocolate chopped

In a double boiler, warm the cream until it is hot enough to melt the chocolate. Remove from the heat and mix in the chopped chocolate. Stir until melted. Let it cool before use.

To assemble:

After both of the cakes has cooled down (remember I baked twice?), spread few big spoon of cream cheese on top of the first cake. Spread evenly. Arranged slices of strawberries on top of it then spread another layer of cream cheese.

Take another cake and put it on top of the first one. Spread evenly cream cheese frosting all over the cake, at the sides and on top of it. Put it in the fridge for 15 minutes. Take it out and pour ganache all over the cake.

Deco it as you wish ;) Good Luck!

Cookies galore!

Christmas is coming. We're going back to our hometown, Sabah. I know I have to bake something for them. And I baked, as usual, my famous M&M's cookies :)

And also the regular Chocolate Chips Cookies.

Sorry. No recipe for this one :) But I can assure, this is the best cookies you'd ever had! I have few secret ingredients which make it even more 'Amos'!

And I found this recipe from a blog. It was claimed to be the almost Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies, I tried it and blergh. It didn't taste the same at all! I baked an even better cookie!

I substitute chocolate chips with one cup of chopped Daims. Although I still like the praline-like, fudgy caramel, I hate it when it tasted a lot like a kuih raya, not a cookie. So sad.

But if you insist in baking it;

Almost Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Bisousatoi

250g butter
1 cup light brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp coffee oil
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup blended oats
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
1/4 cup ground almons
1 cup chopped daim/chocolate chips
2 cups self raising flour

1. Two hours before bakng, beat in the egg with vanilla and coffee oil. Let it stand at room temperature.
2. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add salt. Mix in the egg and stir in blended oats, ground almonds, walnuts and daim. Fold in the flour.
3. Bake for 10 minutes (mine was 15 minutes) or according to your oven, for small cookies.

Pear and Walnut Cake

I have few entries/recipes to post today actually. Before I go for a holiday with the family, I better post all or I won't post it when I get back :p

Found this recipe few months ago. Actually I google-ed for an upside-down pear cake then I stumbled upon this recipe. It was from Su from Delectable. I love love love her artwork (as in the cakes. Hey, baking is an art okeh!).

Anyway, Pear and Walnut cake tasted a lot like a carrot cake. Maybe because of the spice in it. I love it! But maybe I could make few adjustment from the recipe, and hey, I think this is a great recipe for orang tua ;) But of course, reduce the amount of sugar ay.

This is not a doughnut!

Pear and Walnut Cake
Adapted from Su Delectable

150g butter at room temperature
1 1/4 cup caster sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 pear juice (I used Orang juice :p )
2 large peckham pear diced roughly (I used 3 small ones)
1/2 cup walnuts (chopped)
1/3 cup raisins/sultanas
2 tsp ground mixed spice (or all spices)
2 tbsp honey (I omit)

1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
2. Sieve together all the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder and mixed spice). Mix into the butter mixture alternately with the pear juice. Stir in walnuts, raisins/sultanas and pear.
3. Spoon the mixture onto a 9 inch pan (I used a bundt pan which I think you can use less than 9 inch to get a higher cake). Spread evenly and bake for one hour at 170 degrees.
4. For the frosting, beat 100g cream cheese with 1tbsp honey and chopped walnuts until smooth. Spread on top of the cake when its cooled.

Note:

• Reduce the amount of the sugar. I think this cake was a tad too sweet for my liking. I don't like a spiced cake to be sweet. Maybe you can use around 1 cup.
• Use brown sugar instead of the white sugar. It will enhance the flavour of the pear. Even much better, beat 3/4 sugar with the butter. Use the remaining sugar (1/4) saute it with the pear for a while until it turns brown. Remove from the heat. You'll get a crunchier pear afterward.
  

Condensed Milk Pound Cake

I first saw this cake on Mykitchensnippets. Although I was tempting to bake one, but half of me was trying to justify sponge cake is not my kind of cake. I hate spongy cake. And I hate chiffon cake even more. I hate it when everytime I took a bite of a spongy cake, all I can taste is - air.

And so I found another recipe from Bisousatoi. I checked the recipe twice, completely differ from the previous one. I scrutinized both pictures from both recipes, and so I baked the later one.

And it was awesome! You can't even taste the condensed milk of course. (What was there to taste? It was all sugar in thick yet thin milk. Got what I mean?) It was buttery. And soft. I think this is another version of a butter cake.The best butter cake so far.

I sprinkled some chocolate chips on top of it. Hoping it would be a prettier cake. But all went to my stomach. And I had to cut my sugar and carbs intake for a week. Super joy.

Click on the link for the recipe ;)

Banana Chocolate Cake

My boyfriend loves buying banana. But nobody eat that too many banana in the house, only me and my brother what do you expect? So most of the time I would let it ripen for few days and bake it rightaway.

Remember when I made the blueberry chilled cheesecake for my brother? On the same day also I baked another cake: Banana Chocolate Cake.

We drove back to Jb right after its done, and it still warm when we arrived 3 hours later. Its a habit of me, I just thought that I should brought home a homemade cake everytime balik kampung.

And I love this cake! Seriously! The 2tbsp milk powder, although small quantity, you can tasted it. Milky but not overpowering. It is moist, milky, not that chocolatey and the banana flavour is just right for the cake. This is so far my best banana cake :)

I always scared of any recipe that uses egg whites that beaten until fluffy. Wrong technique of folding or if you don't beat it until it stiff, your cake will sink. And I have a phobia of sinking cakes. But to my surprise, though I had to hand-whisked my egg whites, the cake turn out really really well!

Sorry for the low quality pictures though.

Banana Chocolate Cake
Adapted from Bisousatoi

200g butter
200g brown sugar
6 eggs yolk
2 eggs white (whisk until stiff)
200g flour sifted with
1/4tsp baking powder and
2tbsp full cream milk powder
1 cup chocolate chips
4 medium sized bananas - mashed
1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Grease and line your pan, I used an 8inch round pan. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees.
2. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add in yolk, one at a time, beat well until incorporated.
3. Fold in the flour, milk and baking powder using a spatula.
4. Gently, fold in eggs white.
5. Add in mashed bananas and the chocolate chips. Pour the batter onto your pan.
6. Bake for 35 minutes or more until it is done.

Dark and red.

I uploaded these pictures few days ago while trying to find the recipe.

Sorry! I couldn't find it! Seriously! Usually I would jot down everything - the recipe on my recipe book. But these brownies, I baked it for a friend in the morning, during raya haji. Kelam kabut bagai so I just baked by directly following the instruction from Allrecipe.com

And now tak jumpa :(

Because I love the browniesssss! Especially when I put marshmallows on top!

And red velvet cake. I don't really like it so I won't post the recipe :p Although my sister's friends love it.

Chilled Blueberry Cheesecake

My brother loves cheesecake. There's just something between him and cheesecake. Especially raspberries.

One day, I was going to leave him for the weekend. Him and exam week. Grrrrrr I know! And that was when I decided to bake make him a cheesecake. Chilled cheesecake! But since I was left with a can of opened blueberries from pancake sauce leftover few days before, I said sorry to him and pour the whole 3/4 of the sauce on top of my beautiful chilled cheesecake.

I don't know if its a good idea or not but at first I thought it would be awesome.

Even my boyfriend couldn't resist the temptation right after he got home from work.

But the sauce just couldn't stop dripping all over the cake. Now, I know it wasn't a good idea. Too much blueberries.

But it was a perfect chilled cheesecake. Perfect perfect perrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....!

I used the leftover brownies from previous baking (I skipped I know! I couldn't find the pictures!), pulse it in a food processor until it becomes crumbs. Pack it at the base of your tin and refrigerate it while you make the filling.

As for the filling, I just used the exact method and ingredients from the box: beat 2 cream cheese together with 1/2 can of sweetened condensed milk, 2tbsp sugar, and 2tbsp gelatine dissolved in 1/2 cup warm water for at least 15 minutes before using. Pour on your base then continue refrigerate it for overnight.

There. I made two of my lovely boys smiled that day.