Love Is In the Air

Love is in the air~~ ooo~~ Love is in the air~~ YYYYYY

V-day! The day when the significant other and myself decide not to eat out and let wily restaurateurs break into our purses.. keke~ He's goin to cook! UCOOK! FYI for the third year in a row. I can still remember the very first time he cooked for moi.

~He decided to prepare steak~

E: *looking excited* MN! How would you like your steak?

Me: Like as if i say i want 'medium' u'll give me 'medium' like that..

E: HEY! Don't look down on me K!

Me: Okay then... I'll have 'medium well'..

E: OKIE!

~After 10 minutes~

Me:*trying to cut thru a very well-well-done steak* \(m--)m

I'm NOT complaining! really. In fact i'm glad that he's the way he is because he will on no grounds (ever) to criticise MY cooking..hehe

OOO! and i made chocolate truffles for V-Day btw. Earl grey and Green tea. Just so happen to find the 2 Teas in the kitchen.. why not right:) I'm not a big fan of Earl grey.. but green tea?! not bad:) sounds healthier too~ ( i don't know why it sounds healthier to me. I'm not making sense anyway)

Anyways. Happy V-day to all! may all couples and couple-to-bes have a wonderful wonderful Valentines DAY!

ERT

V-day msg: dear xx, when are you goin to make it official with xxx?!?! (Ignore msg if you're not xx)

UPDATE! : Dinner prepared by Eric

Chinese New Year Treats

It's Chinese New Year! to meng, CNY is the time where you have free flow of gassy drinks, tons of pineapple tarts and when red is the new black. No more LBD.. more of RO.. (Red Overalls). OH! and other than the red packets (aka ang bao) there's also the CNY treats! I've made a few chocolate cookies for this festive season.

The first is the choc cookie with dark choc spread, sprinkled with hundreds and thousands.. so sweet, so cute.. (targeting the kids)

Followed by marshmallow and raspberry jam sandwiched between choc cookies and finally dipped in flowy creamy choc. sinful sinful.. but nothing sould be healthy on CNY.. keke..

Lastly choc mud cake sandwiched again between choc cookies. it's my fav btw, it's very chocolatey but not as heavy.

It's been a long day with all the chocolate melting and shopping with Christine. I need a rest.. but I'm goin to make more CNY treats soon and this time it'll be choc-free:)

p/s. I've just found out that the pair of heels i got from Zara is both of the same side (right foot). OH NO! They clearly reminded me that there'll be no exchange/refund watsoever. I hope they will let me change one shoe :(

Chocolate Cake SHOWDOWN!

VOTE FOR ME!!

It is the time of the year where tinsel tinged malls have erected their giant fir trees that have been put in mothballs for the past 12months and restaurants planning for dinner 'promotions' that will filch away couples' purses. It is the time where colour combinations of red, green and white IS THE à la mode. Yes. With just a little more than a month, the world will be celebrating Christmas!

Other than putting up pictures of our famous Saint Nicholas, chocolate cakes would be the definite must buy/bake/gorge during christmas. Though they usually loom in the form of log cakes, they are nevertheless made of chocolates. Btw, the best chocolate cake ever would be my first chocolate cupcake, baked by my mum, eons years ago. That was probably also the cause of my first toothache and puberty weight gain. Then again Mcdonalds' might still be the culprit (for the weight part)

Anyhow, what i want to blog about is that.. I partook in a chocolate cake bake off. I'm supposed to bake>decorate>photograph>blog>send in, easy as that. Since it's my first challenge, I really want to do a good (bake), dotting all the i's and crossing all the t's!

My Gustatory cells nearly died of happiness~

I'm not a great fan of buttercream, so i melted chocolates with (lite) sour cream instead for the filling, it's not as heavy and can pretty well used to frost the cake. For the deco I piped chocolate ganache over the cake to give a more desirable look. And for the sponge i've added ovalette to give it a smoother and softer texture.

I was actually introduced to Myers Rum by my baking tutor. i heard that the CEO of bakerzin Daniel Tay is also a great fan of that rum. It really satisfied my olfactory system, i would definitely recommend this to every baker.

Even in the pantheon of cocao, this is one helluva chocolate intense cake. From the sponge, filling to the fudge, i admit, it's quite a choco rich bake. All chocoholics would just find it all soooo lovely.

p/s. The winner gets a box of chocolate flown all the way from the other side of the hemisphere!

p/p/s. i'm not sure if it's goin to be a voting event. But if there is, VOTE FOR ME!! if you wanna share the chocs with me!:)

Ingredients

Sponge cake
4 eggs

105g caster sugar

110g flour

20g unsweetened cocoa powder

60g melted butter

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ovalette

1 tsp vanilla essence

45g low fat milk

Rum

Chocolate Frosting

160g 60% (bittersweet) chocolate chopped

160g milk/semi-sweet chocolate chopped

1 1/2cup lite sour cream

Chocolate ganache

80g semi-sweet chocolate chopped

100g heavy cream

Method

Chocolate sponge cake

1. Beat the eggs and milk at low speed.

2. Add the dry ingredients and ovalette, and continue beating at low speed for 1 min then swith to high speed and beat for 6 minutes

3. Add vanilla essence and melted butter to mixture and beat at medium speed until well mixed

Chocolate Frosting

1.Melt chocolate in a double boiler/heatproof bowl over barely simmering water.

2. Beat in the sour cream until well mixed.

Layer cakes to about 1cm (my preference) divide frosting accordding to the number of layers you are planning to set. e.g 3 layers, divide frosting into 4 portions. 4 layers>5 portions so on and so forth.

Dot a little rum on each songe cake layer before spreading the frosting. Use remaining to frost top and sides of the cake.

Chocolate ganache

1. Heat heavy cream to boil.

2. pour heated cream over chocolate and mix until homogeneous.

3. Let it cool a little, and pour over cake. (You can choose to cover the whole cake with the ganache. But be warned, it's goin to be very rich!)

4. Chill for about 15mins.

5. ready for devour

Chocolate Lemon Roulade

Last month I had a bottle of lemon peel mailed to me, i nimbly cached it in my cupboard and completely forgot about it.... It was until yesterday, in my attempt to clear my cupboard that i saw that cute bottle sitting in a corner. The bottle were dusted off and ready for use - Lemon Cake. To be exact, lemon sponge cake layers. I did a little twist for the layering, instead of the 'one above another method' I rolled the lemon sponge cake in a roulade fashion sandwiched in 2 layers of chocolate sponge. Nothing special with this cake accept for the spongeeesnesss.

Btw, the lemon peels originated from France ( in case the words on the picture were too faint) but i bought it from hong kong. This particular store in Tuen Mun sells all kinds of bakery products! I left it with my sis and she mailed it to me last month. It's really unlike those mushy/sticky peels you find at the supermart and btw, you'll only be able to find fruit peels off the shelves (in Singapore) and they are all cut up and mushy. I think the only place that you can find quality peels are from baking stores.. or.. make it yourself.. which might give you a migraine for the long cooking and threaten to burst your gas meter.

I used chocolate ganache for the lemon sponge layers and butter cream between the sweet pastry, chocolate sponge and lemon roulade to 'stick' them together. And lastly, frosted the cake with the leftover buttercream:). One side note, marmalade can be used as a substitute for the buttercream to 'stick' the layers!

It'll take sometime to do the roulade effect but the product is just SO worth it.. For the report, it took me 4 hours to put together the cake.

cut cut~

When rolling the cake, the idea of 'butterfly effect' came to me.. so i scurried to the fridge, found some strawberries, and tried to knife out a butterfly... keke~

Ingredients

Lemon Sponge cake

4 eggs

105g caster sugar

110g flour

10g milk powder

60g melted butter

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ovalette

1 tsp vanilla essence

50g lemon juice

1tbsp lemon peel cut into small pieces

Chocolate Sponge cake
2 eggs
50g caster sugar
55g flour
10g unsweetened cocoa powder
30g melted butter
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ovalette
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
25g low fat milk

Chocolate ganache
80g semi-sweet chocolate chopped
75g heavy cream

Sweet Pastry
100g Butter

50g Icing sugar

1/2 Egg

220g Flour

Butter Cream

50g Water

1oog Sugar

1 tsp Lemon juice

500g butter

Method

Chocolate and lemon sponge cake
1. Beat the eggs and liquids at low speed.
2. Add the dry ingredients and ovalette, and continue beating at low speed for 1 min then swith to high speed and beat for 6 minutes
3. Add vanilla essence and melted butter to mixture and beat at medium speed until well mixed
4. Bake in a 9' cake tin for 35-40mins at 170 degrees celsius

Chocolate ganache
1. Heat heavy cream to boil.
2. pour heated cream over chocolate and mix until homogeneous.
3. Let it cool a little, and spread over lemon sponge strips.

Sweet Pastry

1. Cream the butter and and icing sugar.

2. Add the egg and continue to cream until light.

3. Add in the flour in a few batches and mix until a dough is formed

4. Bake for 10-13 mins at 190 degrees celsius

Butter Cream

1. Combine water, sugar and lemonjuice and bring it to boil. Set aside to cool.

2. Beat butter until light. Then add the liquid mixture and continue beating until light and fluffy.

Layer cake: sweet pastry>buttercream(thin layer)/marmalade>chocolate sponge>buttercream(thin layer)/marmalade>lemon roulade>buttercream(thin layer)/marmalade>chocolate sponge>frost>deco

Ultimate Chewy Double Chocolate Cookie

(It's a tiring Friday)~ Got my new mixer this morning-Kitchenaid. By word of mouth, it's more powerful and suitable for heavy duty mixing such as bread dough or other tougher dough. Ha~ and the more important part is that i got it at a promotional price.. saved $300 by the way.. keke. So with the help of my new machine, i baked double chocolate cookie!!! I personally swear by Valrhona Chocolate, so went to do some chocolate shopping before going to clementi to meet Chris to buy the organometallic text. Seems like oragnometallic is a never ending story by itself. First the review, then the lecture notes/textbook/syllabus to study for exams and finally 2 literature studies which i haven't even downloaded yet. What is dear Ms Zhao thinking? We are not doing our masters' or whatsoever, so why the overloading?!?! *Sigh* I really have no mood for it.

Anyways, we went to clementi bookshop and couldn't find the book that we wanted. So we have to go all the way back to NUS to get the text. The text is not cheap, and it's really not worth it thinking that we are graduating soon and we really have no interest in organometallic stuff unlike Jiaen. So, we performed some magic *it shall remain as a secret between us.. hee..* and got what we wanted for $5. How did we do it? THINK!

Satisfied with our evil *accomplishments* we went back home and i started preparing for my COOKIES! It's not the traditional kind.. it's suppose to be chewy and soft. My recipe was from a collection of America's Premier Chocolate Maker. I didn't really like the way they list their ingredients. e.g. 1 cup of packed all-purpose flour. hmm... see the problem? my definition of packed may not be the same as theirs... so to me it's not baker friendly. i would prefer them to state the weight? grams? ounce? anything.. but lightly/tightly packed? ermm... as a chem student we read our burette to the 2nd decimal place leh!

*sigh* and the worst part is after recalculating the ingredients that i need.. ( i'm planning to use 1 packed of chocolate plates but recipe requires 1.5 times.. so i have to scale down the ingredients) i realize that i need 2.3 eggs. Darn.. i'm not going to put 2 eggs.. cos that will make my cookie dry and i'm certainly not going to waste 0.7 egg(s).. for the reason that many people are starving now.. (actually i shouldn't even be stating any reason.. wasting food is BAD!) plus 0.7 egg(s) is not worth the time to heat another pan--> scramble--> remove from pan --> clean pan.. so i added all three eggs into my mixture.. turned out that my cookie became too soft.. *sigh* i had a bad feeling about it.. and yes.. it was confirmed by sheena.. BUT! looking on the brighter side, it's really chocolatey.. the way i like it.. haha! i'm a chocolate fan! i think most girls are..

By the way, this series of photos were taken with a lousier camera. The one that i like to use was taken by my dad to a forest to take pictures of trees...tsk tsk.. Good cameras are really a cook/baker wanabe's best friend. It can make mediocre appear delicious and okay food look like delicacy of the year. Not that my cookings rely on good cameras, they really have standard one k~~

Hmmm.. But i guess i shouldn't be complaining. at least there are still pretty pics that i can use right.. keke..Btw, I'm going to have a new "toy" tomorrow.. look forward to my next post!! Now... to study for my organometallic

p/s. Now that i know that there are actually people (other than eric and my anonymous bro) reading my blog.. i really feel motivated to blog more.. heehee..

p/p/s. Dear Chris, we forgot to pay for the grad dinner.. wah lau~ what's wrong with us huh? i thought we mentioned it twice in the morning and we still forgot about it.. Damn..