Work catering #46: Citrus week~

Winter has arrived!!! Time to stock up on vitamin C~ haha so decided to use citrus in my bakes this week! I've used orange and lemon as I have an abundant supply at home (we have a lemon tree ^^). Disclaimer: the vitamin C levels in these bakes are probably not enough to protect you from the flu or colds =p and the sugar probably outweighs the health benefits.. but HEY! they are tasty ^___^

Orange Zested Cranberry White Chocolate Bliss Bars
(I just realised I named all my photos wrong =_=")
Recipe adapted from Mels Kitchen Café

Ingredients

Blondies
113g butter
1 1/3 cups brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp freshly grated orange zest
2 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup dried cranberries, coarsely chopped
113g white chocolate

Frosting and topping
250g cream cheese, softened at room temperature
3/4 cup soft icing sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
2 tsp freshly grated orange zest
113g white chocolate, melted
1/2 cup dried cranberries, coarsely chopped

1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Grease and line rectangular (20x30cm) baking pan.
2. Melt butter in microwave. Stir in brown sugar until well combined. Whisk in eggs one at a time until combined. Stir in vanilla essence and orange zest.
3. Stir in the flour, baking powder, salt and cinnamon until well combined. Fold in the cranberries and white chocolate.
4. Spread batter evenly in prepared pan. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (Be care not to overbake... I think I may have). Allow to cool completely in pan.
5. For frosting, beat cream cheese and icing sugar together using electric mixer until light and fluffy. Mix in vanilla and half the white chocolate.
6. Spread frosting on cooled bars. Sprinkle with cranberries and orange zest then drizzle with remaining white chocolate over the top. Refrigerate until chocolate is set.

having fun drizzling the white choc

new style of cut! the triangle!

should be "zested orange" T_T

Lovely colours... of autumn! hehe

Lemon Lemonies

Recipe adapted from Bakerella

Ingredients
1 cup plain flour
1 cup caster sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tbs lemon zest
3/4 cup (170g) butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs
3 tbs lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla

Icing
1 1/2 cups soft icing sugar
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tsp lemon zest

1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Grease and line 23x23cm square pan.
2. Mix flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and zest together with whisk.
3. Add melted butter, lemon juice, eggs and vanilla and stir until completely combined.
4. Pour into prepared pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and cool.
5. For lemon icing, sift icing sugar in medium bowl. Add lemon juice and zest and mix. Add enough water until you reach smooth consistency. Pour over lemonies and let rest until icing sets. Place in the fridge to speed things up.
6. Cut into small bite size pieces and enjoy~

I like the light and crumbly texture~

bite size lemonies!

with zesty icing!!

So hope you are all well and staying away from catching colds! I still have so many recipes to blog about!!!

This post is linked to the event Little Thumbs Up (June 2014 Event: Butter) organised by Zoe (Bake for Happy Kids) and Mui Mui (My Little Favourite DIY) and hosted by Jozelyn Ng (Spice Up My Kitchen)

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 ^^)

Pop Pop Pop!

Poppy seeds are a great baking ingredient! Whether they are in cakes or muffins or sprinkled on top of bread buns, they give a great texture of crunch and POP! =D One of the items on my "invisible-in-my-head" to bake list was an orange and poppy seed cake. I had been looking up a few recipes but none that I really liked (most of them used heaps of butter). Then one day a friend of mine posted a pic of some orange and poppy seed muffins she had baked! they looked perfect and she told me they didn't use butter but oil! the recipe looked quite simple so I decided to give it a go =D

Orange and poppy seed muffins
Recipe adapted from Cooking for One

Finished product =D

Ingredients
2 cups plain flour
4 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup oil (I used canola oil but I'm sure vegetable or any other oil is fine)
1 cup milk
1 whole orange
1 tbs poppy seeds
1.  Preheat oven to 200oC. Lightly grease 12 hole muffin tin.
2. Place orange in pot of boiling water and boil for 15 minutes. Take orange out of water and place in another pot of boiling water for another 15 minutes. Take out orange and allow to cool down.
3. Place flour in a bowl. Stir in baking powder, poppy seeds and sugar.
4. Whisk oil, egg and milk gently in separate jug. 
5. Chop cooked orange into small pieces and use stick blender to blend orange. If you don't own a stick blender you can manually chop orange into smaller pieces (I was lazy so I did this =p)
6.Stir oil and milk mixture into dry mixture and add chopped orange. Do not overbeat or muffins will be tough.
7. Pour muffin mix into muffin pan. Bake for ~25 minutes or until skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
8. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

Mmmm tastes best straight out of the oven ^_^

You can serve with cream cheese icing but they do taste quite nice just the way they are. If you don't have that big a sweet tooth, these muffins are just for you! not too sweet but lovely crunch of poppy seeds and orange flavour =)

cooling in muffin tin~

I am still looking for a good orange and poppy seed cake recipe so if you know any that you would like me to try out, just leave a comment ^__^ I'm happy to take any requests!!

Orange chiffon cake - second attempt at chiffon cake~~

We just bought a new MIX MASTER :D :D its a Kenwood patissier mixer!! I LOVE IT! :D so since it was my sister's birthday coming up I decided to try it out =D
I've always wanted to make a Chiffon cake so tried out a Green Tea chiffon cake... HOWEVER.. it failed =____=" it sunk because I didn't invert it as soon as it came out the oven!! also I think it was too strong in the green tea flavour.. so I will not be sharing that recipe unfortunately... till I fine tune it =p

so what do you do when you fail??? You TRY AGAIN :D

so the next day I decided on a different recipe and so here it is..

ORANGE CHIFFON CAKE!

Ingredients

7 egg whites
2 1/4 cups (225 grams) sifted cake flour (i just used Self-raising flour)
1 1/2 cups (300 grams) castor sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (120 ml) vegetable oil
3/4 cup (180 ml) freshly squeezed orange juice (~2-3 oranges)
2 tablespoons orange zest
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

1. Separate the eggs and place whites in one bowl and yolks in another. Preheat oven to 170oC.

2. Beat egg whites till foamy. Add cream of tartar and beat till soft peaks form. Gradually beat in 3 tablespoons of sugar until stiff peaks form (to test - the egg whites shouldn't fall when you tip the bowl upside down XD)

3. In a separate bowl add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt and mix.

4. Make a well in the centre and add yolks, oil, orange juice, orange zest and vanilla extract. Beat until smooth.

5. Using a spatula, gently fold the egg whites into the batter just until blended (don't mix too hard or else you will lose air and the cake will not rise as much!! - however you need to mix it through or else there will be swirls of egg white through the cake)

6. Pour mix in chiffon cake tin (i just saw that you do not need to grease the tin.. OOPS! i did that ><) and bake ~55-60 minutes.
IMPORTANT!!!!: when cake is cooked, immediately remove from oven and invert the pan and place on a bottle or flat surface so it is suspended over the counter. (i actually just inverted it onto the cake rack and it worked out ok ;p).
Let the cake cool completely before removing from pan - be patient ^___^

You may ice the cake if you like or even add some filling.. but I thought it was good just the way it was =D

Our new baby!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAT

btw we got a new PRO CAMERA!! so hopefully my food pics will be of better quality =p

http://www.joyofbaking.com/OrangeChiffonCake.html