Choc banana squares

I realise that I make a lot of recipes using banana! hehe! Ever since there was a shortage of bananas here - due to flooding/cyclones, I realise how much I missed bananas!! I love bananas! I eat them almost everyday and I love using them in cooking ^^ Or just to top off pancakes or waffles.. Mmmmm~~

Anyways saw this recipe for Chocolate-Bottom banana squares on Small small baker and it looked DELICIOUS =D I loved how there were 2 layers~ and cut into little squares for a bite size snack!

Chocolate banana squares

Recipe adapted from Smallsmallbaker

Ingredients

113g butter

60g caster sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 tsp vanilla essence

3 bananas, slightly mashed

180g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarb soda

1/2 tsp salt

25g cocoa powder

2 tbs milk

1. Beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
2. Add egg, vanilla essence and mashed bananas. Beat until creamy.
3. Sift flour, baking powder and baking soda together and fold into cake mix. Mix well.
4. Divide cake into 2 equal portions. Add cocoa and milk to one portion.
5. Pour chocolate batter into lined cake tin first and spread evenly.
6. Pour plain batter on top of chocoalte batter and spread evenly.
8. Bake in pre-heated oven (180oC) for 25-30 minutes or until skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.

square for you!

If I had chocolate chips, I would sprinkle them over the top ^_^ But these were still a yummy and simple snack to make :)

Orange and poppy seed cake - a classic bake

I finally got around to baking one of the classic cakes on my to-bake-list.. the orange and poppy seed cake! After my orange and poppy seed muffins, I wanted to look for a good recipe for a cake version and stumbled across this one after googling many recipes!

It's funny that it came from an "Australian Rules Football Star" =p I think it was a recipe book made for charity :) so here it is~ his original recipe was for orange AND lemon but I didn't have any lemon xD

Orange and Poppy seed cake adapted from (http://www.cuppaforheartkids.org.au/downloads/recipes/Dipper_Orange_and_Lemon_Cake.pdf)

Ingredients
1/3 cup poppy seeeds
1/4 cup milk (60ml)
125g butter, softened
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
zest of 1 orange, grated
2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup orange juice (60ml)

1. Mix the poppy seeds and milk in a small bowl and leave to soak.
2. Preheat oven to 160oC. Grease a round cake tin (or a bundt tin).
3. Beat butter and sugar until pale and creamy using electric mixer. Add orange zest and eggs one at a time, beating well after adding each egg.
4. Add flour, milk, orange juice and poppy seeds and mix until just combined.
5. Pour into cake tin and bake for 40-45 minutes or until skewer inserted into the middle of cake comes our clean.
6. Cool in tin before turning onto wire rack.

Inside of Orange and poppy seed cake~ nice and fluffy ^^

You can choose to ice with cream cheese icing but I found it tasted nice just like that =) I like this recipe because it's simple (because I think meant for kids ^^)

Ooo Ooo Ahhh Ahh MONKEY BREAD!

When I first saw this recipe, the name caught me! Monkey Bread.... what a strange name? What is it? It's not shaped like a monkey.. do monkey's eat it? hehe.. so I wikied it and found out the reason why it is called monkey bread! Firstly because the bread looks like a monkey puzzle tree (who knows what that looks like =S) and secondly because of the way you eat the bread is similar to monkeys - pulling apart each piece. It was a cute name and the photos from Dailydelicious looked too good to resist!

So here is the recipe for:

MONKEY BREAD (recipe adapted from Dailydelicious)

Ingredients

240g plain flour

60g self raising flour

7g (1 sachet) yeast

20g caster sugar

pinch of salt

1 egg yolk

175ml warm water

20g butter

40g melted butter

40g walnuts

70g brown sugar

1 egg white

1. Mix egg yolk and water together.
2. Place flours, sugar and yeast in a bowl and mix to combine. Add salt and mix again. Pour egg and water mixture into the bowl.
3. Mix ingredient together and knead to bring to form a dough. Add more water if dough is too dry. Knead dough for around 2 minutes until it is elastic.
4. Add butter and knead the dough for around 10-15 minutes until dough is soft, pliable, smooth and slightly shiny.
5. Place dough in lightly oiled bowl and allow to rise in a warm place until double in size (1 - 11/2 hours).
6. Place walnuts and brown sugar in a food processor until powdery.
7. Preheat oven to 180oC and grease tube pan.
8. Take dough out of the bowl and deflate by lightly touching it.
9. Cut dough into 30 pieces and roll into balls.
10. Dip balls into melted butter, nut mixture and egg white, then place in prepared pan.

bread balls --> melted butter--> nut mix --> egg white

Bite size pieces! YUM!

11. Let dough rise (40-50minutes) or until double in size. Bake for 30-35 minutes. Cover with aluminium foil if top of bread becomes too brown.

Pull apart bread~~ like a monkey xD

The bread turned out nice, soft and sweet and nutty ^^ I think next time I would put some filling inside the bread balls such as jam or chocolate, just for a nice surprise :)

Wedding event baking~ Special guest: Debby from Bluebakeblog!!

Hi everyone!! I'm so happy that I got the chance to bake with DEBBY of bluebakeblog =) So she is my special guest for this blog entry today!
It's been just over a month since we baked for her cousin's wedding - but only now that I blogged about it =_=" It was really fun to bake for an event! Debby had a really good idea to make cookies on a stick using her Milo Doggie Cookies recipe but instead of making dog faces, we made bride and groom faces! =) It was a bit of improvisation.. but hey! that's what baking is all about! Being creative and trying new things~

Baker Debby in action~~

So I'll just share the recipe with all of you or you can visit bluebakeblog =)

Malt Bride & Groom cookies

Ingredients
180g butter, softened at room temperature
80g malt
200g cake flour
25g corn flour
25g milk powder
Chocolate chips
Chocolate sprinkles
Milo cereal (duo - so white and brown colours ^^)

Ingredients and equiipment all ready to go~~

1. Preheat oven to 140oC. Line baking trays with baking paper and set aside. Soak wooden skewers in water.
2. Sift cake flour, corn flour and milk powder.
3. Cream butter and malt for ~3 minutes. Do not overbeat.
4. Add in the flours and beat to form a dough - it may be easier to just mix with a spoon if you don't want flour all over your kitchen floor xD
5. Divide dough into round balls around the size of a 20c piece. Place on baking tray and decorate with chocolate sprinkles (for eyes and mouth) and milo cereal for hair. Just BE CREATIVE! Insert skewers into cookies.
6. Bake for ~25 minutes. Leave to cool on wire rack.

Its the groom! he is happy ^u^

The brides~

Cookies on a stick~~

Baking with friends is so much fun! hope to do it again some time :)

the CRAB CAKE!

When my colleague walked in the office holding this cake... My jaw dropped in awe!!! it was so AWESOME! I think she realised as well because she said "look at your face!" HAHHA Well who wouldn't have that expression when you saw this cake! It looked like a REAL CRAB!!! I think she should be a professional cake decorator! ;)

So much detail went into the decorating!! Look at the different tones of orange!

Although she didn't actually make the cake or icing from scratch, there is a lot of skill in shaping and painting it to look like a crab. She used mini jam rolls for the cake and pre-made frosting to decorate the cake. Then used a paintbrush and food dye to get the great colours :D

I made some fishyrons to go with the cake~

Poor fishies going to get eaten by Mr crab ><

Oh and if you are wondering.. why a crab of all things? This cake was for a friend as a congratulations on getting an award =) She is researching on Shellfish allergy, hence the crab!

Green tea layered cake

So this month's Aspiring Baker's theme is "layered cakes", hosted by Sam of Sweet Sensations, something I don't often bake so thought that this would be a good challenge! I think the last layered cake I made was a Victorian sponge cake.. and before that an Opera Gateau. So, to try something different I started looking up recipes for Green tea layered cake. The recipe I chose looked quite simple (haha! yes I go for easy and simple recipes =p) and in the end tasted pretty good. It didn't turn out as "green" as I would like and an aunty even commented "Is it green tea flavour? Why is it brown?" >_< but I think maybe I didn't add enough green tea or maybe other's put green tea colouring.

Well the icing was green =p and the cake was nice and moist as well :) It was lots of fun! Here's the recipe so you can try it out as well! I don't think this is limited to green tea flavour, you can add cocoa powder for chocolate, or vanilla essence or even do different colours! Have a go!

Green tea layered cake

Recipe adapted from www.greenteatoday.com/recipes/green-tea-cake-recipe

Ingredients

1 cup plain flour

1 cup self-raising flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp bicarb soda

5 tsp green tea powder (add more for a more pronounced flavour!!)

1 1/4 cups caster sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

1 cup yoghurt (I didn't have any so substituted this with 3/4 cup milk)

2 tsp vanilla essence

3 eggs

Green tea icing (double or even triple this for thicker layers of frosting)

1 1/4 cups icing sugar
2 tablespoons margarine, soft
2 teaspoons green tea powder

1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Grease and line round cake tin.
2. Sift flours, bicarb soda, salt and green tea powder into large bowl.
3. In another bowl, beat sugar, oil and eggs until smooth. Stir in vanilla essence.
4. Gradually beat in the flour mixture, alternating with the milk.
5. Mix well and pour batter into prepared cake tin. Bake ~50-60 minutes or until skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.
6. Cool cake on cake rack for ~30 minutes before slicing.

Looks nice just as it actually =p

7. Meanwhile, make green tea icing by beating icing sugar, margarine and green tea powder together until smooth. Keep in fridge till use.
8. Slice cake into 3 even layers.

3 even layers~ I even used a ruler!! ^^

 9. Spread icing on bottom layer and top with second layer. Ice second layer and sift over green tea powder. Add final layer, spread over icing. Sift over green tea powder and white chocolate ganache (i had some leftover so might as well put it to use =p).

First layer iced~

Second layer iced and sprinked with green tea powder~ just for some extra flavour~

Complete! Drizzle with white chocolate ganache for extra drippy effect :P

Slice for you!!!!

Take 2!

There are many times when I have tried out a recipe and failed (yes! it's true!) or it doesn't turn out quite as expected. There are always room for improvements and so this blog entry is dedicated to my second attempts and 2 particular recipes: the cantonese egg tart and banana bread. If you recall from my previous blog about egg tarts, I didn't have the proper egg tart tins so they didn't turn out so well. The pastry was quite thick and the tarts didn't look very presentable.. BUT thanks to K who bought the egg tart tins for me from Hong Kong~~ we were able to bake them again =)

You can find the recipe for cantonese egg tarts here.

Baking in the oven~~

Ta da~~ done ^_^ they could have been a bit more brown...

but they tasted delicious :D

My first attempt at banana bread did go quite well but it didn't look that great. So when I tried again I decided to decorate the top with sliced bananas and a few oats! Much better :) You can find the recipe for banana bread here.

Cooling in the tin~~

Mmm.. I can smell the banana ~~

sliced up! you can see the chunks of banana goodness ^^

So when you think u have failed.. just try again :) I mean.. that's what baking is about yeh? Experimenting.. trying out new recipes... and improving them!