SimPle PleaSures (in EveRy BiTe)

Ingredients:

• 1.5 cups of cake or pastry flour (editted)
• 6 medium eggs, separated
• 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar, combine with egg whites
• 1 cup of fine sugar
• Almond essense
• Strawberry essence
• 1 cup Cedar cheese, grated
• 8 tablespoon butter
• 4 tablespoon sour cream + 1/2 cup of milk or
• 1 cup of milk without the sourcream.

  You will also need:

• Cup cakes moulds
• a water bath in the oven
• love

Filling:

• Pitted cheeries (cut, about 1 cup)
• Strawberry cream cheese (1 cup)
• Icing sugar (1/2 cup)
• 2 egg yolks
• Combine cream cheese with icing sugar and yolks with mixer until soft, add cherries.

Instructions

Heat water bath in the oven. 

Melt butter or margarine at low heat, add milk or sour cream.  Remove from heat.  Let cool for about 10 minutes.  In the mean time, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff. Then beat sugar and egg yolks until white and fluffy.  Add shifted flour into the sourcream/butter mix, stir vigourously.  Put into egg yolks mixture.  Beat manually but thoroughly.  Add almond extract into the mix.  Mix well. 

Fold in egg whites into the egg yolk mixture, making sure not to fold too agressively, the mixture needs to still be light and fluffy. Devide it into 2, one with the addition of strawberry esence.  Put the almond one into the cup cake moulds.  Then drop some of the pink/strawberry one to the mixture.

Next, drop 1 tbsp filling in each of the cup cakes.

Then put mold into our (your) lovely oven at 350 F for about 45 minutes. 

Put into the oven (already set at 350 F) on the water bath (should cover the mould about 2 to 4 cm). 30 minutes into the baking, sprinkle some cheese on the top of the cup cakes and switch from bake to broil. Watch so that the cheese doesn’t burn.

Take out of the oven about 45 minutes into the cooking. 

Hope you like it.  I definitely say this is a keeper.  This cake is interesting as the texture is so soft it melts in your mouth!

Ugh.  Hate it when I fail to make the real thing. 

Well then again, what can ya do, when you only have (read: can only afford) certain ingredients and missing other important ones such as Mascarpone cheese, which, pretty much, well.. let’s just say.. mark the existance of a dessert called Tiramisu, somewhere in Italy.

Can you believe it, they even feed the cows special food to produce mascarpone.  Just like how they feed special food to the cows in Japan to make KOBE steaks. Apparently this type of steak melts in the mouth at first bite!

Anyways, back to my mission of making Tiramisu (haven’t had it in years, I think 6 for sure), I had the good old cream cheese instead, whipping cream, eggs (of course), and strong coffee.  I also had left over cake from my cup cake experiment the other day.  I looked at my cake book and it says that you can substitute the flour to make cake with something else, such as crackers … or other left over cakes, crumbs, etc.

So I made a sponged cake from left over, dried, cup cakes!  The result, man, it’s pretty moist!  I love it!

So, I thought of perhaps making some sort of tiramisu, and this is what it turns out:

The taste?  Let’s just say the husband wanted a second plate!  (He couldn’t wait until tomorrow, you’re supposed to leave it overnight..BUT..I guess that’s not happening, no sirry!.. ).

It’s close to the real thing, but if you really really want to taste how Tiramisu is supposed to taste, go with the real thing.  Get some special cow love and get mascarpone!

In addition to the ganached top cupcakes I made for my co-worker Dharshan, I managed to squezze in time to make marble cupcakes.  The recipe is from the Good Housekeeping collection of cakes and dessert, and I have to say I am a bit dissappointed with what it turns out to be. 

The cake was dry and was not as tasty as my regular sponge cake.  Perhaps it’s because the recipe did not include any egg yolks, which usually makes the cake with softer texture and more moist.  I should have tried to bake this one with water bath. Oh well, I mean it wasn’t bad, but I would definitely prefer the other one…

Dharshan commented that he wanted to take this one home for the wifey, and the cook (moi, yours truly) immediately stopped his plan and said to take the one with the ganache instead…. he tried to convince the cook by saying, “..but I prefer the ones with the little heartssss… “.. These are engineers, people, and they VERY seldom talk cute like this.  Cute is not a word for them. Logic is.   

It’s amazing what food can do to one’s mood. 

:)

How does black sweet rice from Japan taste like? 

Yummy.  That’s for sure.

Slightly less sticky from the glutinous black rice famously known in Indonesia as ‘ketan hitam’, this sweet black rice gave me the idea of baking a type of cake that I certainly cannot find here. 

After trying for the second time, adding a little flour to the recipe, the cake finally expanded.

Not bad eh, for a beginner try? 

The taste is even better, especially if you like bubur ketan hitam!

 

Oh yeah, here’s the recipe:

• Sweet Black Rice (about 2/3 cup, boiled with 2 cups of water, until soft and water is completely absorbed)
• 1/2 cup of cake flour
• 1/2 cup of coconut milk
• 3/4 cup of butter or margarine
• 3 eggs, seperated
• vanilla essence
• salt to taste
• 3/4 cups of sugar

Directions

• Put black rice mixture in blender, until soft, set aside and let cool
• beat egg whites until stiff
• beat yolks with sugar until white and fluffy
• add vanilla essence into egg yolk mixture
• add black rice mixture and flour into the egg yolk mixture
• mix well (mixer low speed)
• fold egg whites into mixture
• Pour into cup cake molds.
• Put in oven with water bath, 350 – 380 F.
• Take out when tester stick is dry (About 45 minutes to an hour).

Srumptious!

Hey! 

I made these babies.  From scratch.  Without help. With husband continously asking if they are done because he had to bring them to a gathering this afternoon.

I.. didn’t.. even.. got to try one.  Oh well maybe next time.

Recipe?

•  1 cup of cake or pastry flour
• 3 eggs, seperated
• 1/4 tsp of cream of tartar, combine with egg whites
• 1/2 cup of fine sugar
• Almond essense
• Strawberry essence
• Cedar cheese, grated
• 4 tablespoon butter
• 4 tablespoon sour cream

You will also need:

• Cup cakes moulds
• a water bath in the oven

Instructions

Heat water bath in the oven. 

Melt butter or margarine at low heat, add milk or sour cream. 

Remove from heat.  Let cool for about 10 minutes.  In the mean time, beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff. Thenbbeat sugar and egg yolks until white and fluffy.  Add shifted flour into the sourcream/butter mix, stir vigourously.  Put into egg yolks mixture.  Beat manually but thoroughly.  Add almond extract into the mix.  Mix well. 

Fold in egg whites into the egg yolk mixture, making sure not to fold too agressively, the mixture needs to still be light and fluffy. Devide it into 2, one with the addition of strawberry esence.  Put the almond one into the cup cake moulds.  Then drop some of the pink/strawberry one to the mixture.

Then put mold into our (your) lovely oven at 350 F for about 45 minutes. 

Put into the oven (already set at 350 F) on the water bath (should cover the mould about 2 to 4 cm). 30 minutes into the baking, sprinkle some cheese on the top of the cup cakes and switch from bake to broil. Watch so that the cheese doesn’t burn.

Take out of the oven about 45 minutes into the cooking. 

Hope you like it.  I definitely say this is a keeper.  This cake is interesting as the texture is so soft it melts in your mouth!

I was never a cake fan, until farely recent.  And finally I had a chance to make that strawberry mousse cake I wanted to make ever since strawberries are emerging all over the place here in Ontario.  Perhaps it’s all over North America too, I am sure.

We got organic strawberries from St. Jacob’s market in Waterloo, as well as fresh and unpasteurized buckwheat honey (yipee!!), and I wonder what I should do with all the strawberries we bought. 

I have always liked mousse cake.  Manggo, Strawberry, chocolate, even tiramisu types.  But, I have never made one!  Partly because it is so hard to find halaal gelatin around the neighbourhood. 

So when I finally got some from a far-far away land, I decided I should only use 1 tablespoon a month.  .  Guess what, I found some later this week at a halaal store near our place!!  Haha.   Of course it’s about 1.5 times more expensive.  About $4 a package, each package contains 4 little sachets.  Each sachet can make one jello dessert (a small one I may add).

But, I was a happy camper, I must say.  So when a couple of good friends of ours came this weekend (Hello Sermin and Firdaus!!  ).  I finally had the guts to make a strawberry mousse cake. 

I think I half failed since the mousse kind of melted. 

Lesson learned:  Use more cream and gelatin than you think.  Whip hard, and refrigerate hard. 

Alhamdulillah, I think they liked the cake though.  Next time, I have to make a sturdier one.  Happy eating!