White Chocolate & Coffee Marbled Loaf Cake

Reached out for my favorite baking book out of the lot I looted from Amazon.com. I love how Dorie Greenspan writes her books. Her instructions are always so detailed and clear, providing extra information on how the mix will turn out to be, so we can keep check of whether we're on the right track. I've come across recipes where they always call for that one particular queer ingredient, either too rare or way out of the budget, and you have to skip the whole page as you don't wanna buy a whole bag of it just to make that one recipe. But nope, not in Dorie Greenspan's recipes, her ingredients are easily available everywhere. Already bookmarked numerous pages in her book, so you'll be seeing more of her recipes coming up in my future bakes heehee

So for the September monthly zadankai, I took on the challenge of making my first marbled cake...and I think I'm addicted to marbling! So funnn!!! hahahah I like how the marbling is so unpredictable and volatile. And how the flavorings is entirely up to your imagination, so as long as the color contrast is there.

While I like the flavors very much, I thought the cake could be less dense than this. I figured that I must have probably overmixed the batter a little, resulting in a less soft texture. Nevertheless it would not stop me from the next marbled cake attempt. Thinking of all the possible combination makes me excited heehee

White Chocolate & Coffee Marbled Loaf Cake (adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours)

Ingredients:
280g plus 2 tbsp all purpose flour (I measured mine to be 293g)
1 1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
169g unsalted butter, room temperature
200g granulated sugar
4 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
120ml whole milk

Flavorings:
85g white chocolate, melted
1 1/4 tsp instant coffee powder dissolved in 1 tbsp of water

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 160°C (150°C if you're using a dark pan like me) and grease a 8.5" x 4.5" loaf pan, dust the inside with flour and tap out the excess
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt
3. In a separate bowl, beat butter until smooth on medium speed
4. Add sugar and beat for another 2 to 3 mins
5. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Don't be concerned if the batter curdles and stays curdled
6. Beat in vanilla extract
7. Reduce mixer speed to low and alternately add flour mixture in 3 additions and milk in 2, mixing only until each addition is incorporated
8. Divide batter into half
9. Stir white chocolate into one portion and coffee into the other portion
10. Spoon white chocolate and coffee batter out in alternating rows and plunge a table knife into batter and zigzag through the batter in about 6-8 zigs and zags (I did only 4)
11. Bake for 1h 20 to 30 mins. If the cake looks as if it's getting too brown, cover it loosely with a foil tent
12. Transfer cake to cooling rack and let it rest for abt 15mins before unmolding, then cool the cake to room temperature right side up on the rack

Fried Parmesan Chicken

Some time ago, bf and I agreed to have a cooking mission every weekend where we'll take turns to cook for each other. Have to say it's kinda ambitious with our busy schedule and the so-called resolution ended up being a flop for months :P So we're back at it, probably not going to be a weekly affair, but it's nice to show our concern for each other by making the other party fat through cooking.

Sometimes I find cooking much easier than baking. You can just eyeball your ingredients and if you make any mistakes along the way, you can make amendments for it, unlike baking. Or maybe I'm just a novice cook, so I don't have fussy taste buds for savory food.

So he made cream pasta for lunch while I made fried parmesan chicken for the fried-anything-crazed fellow for dinner...and he loves it! Even though we used chicken breast, the meat is tender and succulent. I was initially half worried I'll not cook the meat thoroughly at first as it's pretty thick. The crust tastes amazing with parmesan cheese, it remained crispy and tasty despite laying there for a while before we ate it. The chicken will go well together with thousand island sauce or even some lemon cream sauce.

Fried Parmesan Chicken

Ingredients:
1 egg
Pinch of salt
Pinch of pepper
1/3 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup parmesan cheese, shredded
2 pcs of chicken (any part up to your preference), approximately 200g each
Enough all purpose flour to coat chicken

Method:
1. Lightly beat egg with a pinch of salt and pepper
2. Combine bread crumbs and parmesan cheese on a plate
3. Heat up oil in a pan, oil level enough to reach half of the chicken piece
4. Tenderize chicken by pounding with a meat pounder
5. Coat chicken with a thin layer of flour
6. Dip chicken into beaten egg mixture
7. Roll chicken in bread crumbs mixture
8. Fry chicken in the hot oil on low to medium heat until cooked...profittt!

Mocha Chiffon Cake

I'm back from sunny Phuket! Lovely place packed with random cool people talking to you on the streets, asking where're you from. My first time there, and it's not going to be my last. The only crap that happened over there was my 2+year old canon camera took a dip in the Phuket sea. Being heavily reliant on my camera - I'm pretty much a trigger-happy kind of person on my camera - I was really disappointed. Good thing the SD card didn't give way so I managed to retained some pictures.

Last picture from my camera before taking a plunge into the sea -_-

Boy, I miss my oven LOL So it's going to be a stay home bake-athon for me this weekend. I'm sorry that I'm baking chiffon again as I don't have time to make notes of my baking books since my holiday so I'll just make do with a familiar recipe with minor adjustments.

Same good ol' light and cottony texture. I find that chiffon with cocoa tend to be more spongy, probably due to the higher protein content. And I like how lasting these cakes are. I placed one of them out in the open overnight and it remains fluffy and moist the next morning. I wouldn't call this a real mocha chiffon as there's no milk. Wonder if it's possible to sub water for milk in chiffon cakes. hmm.
Mocha Chiffon Cake (modified from Keiko Ishida's Okashi)
makes 3 10cm chiffon

Ingredients:
24g cake flour
8g natural cocoa powder
2 egg yolks
8g caster sugar
30g coffee, room temperature (3 tsp instant coffee for 1 cup)
24g canola oil

2 egg whites
36g caster sugar
4g corn flour

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 160°C
2. Sift flour and cocoa powder twice
3. Beat egg yolks and sugar until well mixed
4. Add coffee and canola oil to the yolk mixture and blend well
5. Add flour mixture to yolk mixture until the batter becomes sticky
6. Combine sugar and corn flour in a separate bowl
7. Beat egg whites until frothy and add half of the sugar mixture, and continue to beat
8. Slowly add in the rest of the sugar mixture and beat until egg white stiff peaks and is glossy but not dry
9. Add one third of the meringue into yolk mixture and fold in lightly
10. Pour in rest of the meringue mixture and fold until well combined
11. Pour the batter into chiffon tins and bake for 22 mins
12. Invert the chiffon tin on a wire rack and let it cool for 2h before releasing the cake for serving

Espresso Shortbread-by-the-Dozen

By the time this scheduled entry is posted, I'll be in sunny (hopefully) Phuket! Bf and I snagged the air tickets way back in January during a sale. What a long ass wait! It would be a short getaway for us, we spaced out the activities so we'll have no agenda for some of the days to waste ourselves away. I'm gonna miss my ovennnnnn lol

One last bake before I fly. Grabbed this off one of my baking books. Espresso shortbread! Once I started splitting the dough up in 7 pieces, I was reminded how I dread baking stuffs from the cookie and shortbread family. Sticky messy dough...accidentally flicked one or two bits onto my baking book. The good thing is, however, now my baking book is 4-dimensional - when I read the recipe, I can smell the page to remember how the bakes turn out to be LOL

Think I've underbaked them a little as I pulled them out from the oven at the 45th min mark. A few more mins shall make them the texture even better. Nevertheless, this crumbly shortbread melt in your mouth, leaving a rich buttery taste coupled with sophisticated coffee flavor. The salt also adds a new dimension to the sweetness. You can leave out the espresso powder if you want plain shortbread, but I'll prefer them with it.
Espresso Shortbread-by-the-Dozen (adapted from Flo Braker's Baking for All Occasions)

Ingredients:
255g all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
225g unsalted butter, room temperature
120g sugar
2 tsp espresso powder, ground
1 to 2 tsp vanilla extract (I use 2)

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 150°C and prepare a 8" square baking pan with parchment paper
2. Sift flour and salt and set aside
3. Beat butter on medium speed until creamy and smooth
4. Add in sugar and ground espresso and beat until mixture is light and fluffy
5. Add in vanilla during the final moments of mixing
6. Divide the dough into 7 equal pieces. Place 1 piece close to each corner of the prepared pan and the 3 remaining just off the pan's center
7. Using your fingertips, spread the dough evenly over the bottom of the pan. To hasten the spreading, you can place a sheet of plastic wrap on the surface of the dough and use a pastry roller (or even a soda can - I use this) to help spreading it evenly
8. Prick the surface all over with a fork
9. Use a knife and cut the dough into six 1 1/4inch-wide strips and all the way through the midpoint to form 4-inch long rectangles
10. Bake the shortbread 45 to 50 mins, until pale gold but yet brown and transfer to wire rack
11. Without delay, gently cut the warm shortbread along the marked lines with a small sharp knife (This prevents the squares from breaking once the shortbread has been cooled)
12. When completely cool, using the ends of the parchment as handles, lift the shortbread out of the pan. If necessary, carefully break the shortbread into bars along the marked lines

Pandan Chiffon Cake

This has been an eventful week for me. A car crash greeted us on Monday late night on PIE when my bf sent me home. We were involved in a 4-way car butt kissing accident - we were the 3rd car. Our car is basically like bacon between toast, thankfully we were not hurt. Poor dude was badly shaken though.

A little baking to calm my nerves. Bought 10cm mini chiffon tins as I thought they look really cute. I notice mini chiffon cakes in neighborhood bakeries and this chiffon specialty cake shop selling mini chiffons in interesting flavors along the new Raffles City B2 link to Suntec. Thought I'll just jump the wagon and join in the mini chiffon craze too.

I know, I know...I should have used pandan leaves and extract the juice out for au naturale goodness, but I'm lazy I didn't have the time to visit the market to grab some, so I settled for pandan paste.

Really pleased with the results. I would like to think I've mastered the art of meringue beating (and folding I hope?) as the chiffon cake was significantly softer and cottony than all my previous attempts, even though they were already considerably light and fluffy in texture already. Pandan flavor could be strong though, will add more the next time.

Pandan Chiffon Cake (modified from Keiko Ishida's Okashi)
makes 4 10cm chiffon

Ingredients:
32g cake flour
2 egg yolks
8g caster sugar
1/4 tsp pandan paste
28g water
24g canola oil

2 egg whites (weighed mine to be 84g)
36g caster sugar
4g corn flour

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 160°C
2. Sift flour twice
3. Beat egg yolks and sugar until well mixed
4. Add pandan paste, water and canola oil to the yolk mixture and blend well
5. Add flour mixture to yolk mixture until the batter becomes sticky
6. Combine sugar and corn flour in a separate bowl
7. Beat egg whites until frothy and add half of the sugar mixture, and continue to beat
8. Slowly add in the rest of the sugar mixture and beat until egg white stiff peaks and is glossy but not dry
9. Add one third of the meringue into yolk mixture and fold in lightly
10. Pour in rest of the meringue mixture and fold until well combined
11. Pour the batter into chiffon tins and bake for 20 mins
12. Invert the chiffon tin on a wire rack and let it cool for 2h before releasing the cake for serving

Soufflé Cheesecake

Today marks a milestone for me - Completed my 2nd half marathon at Army Half Marathon. Was slower by 9 mins than my first timing of 2 h 11 mins clocked at Sundown earlier on this year, but I'm still happy that I completed it given that I was running with a cough. Was still fooling around with my colleague taking jumping jack pictures after the run. But damnnnnn my knees are hurting and cracking like an old man's now =S And now I fret for my upcoming full marathon at the end of the year.

Second happy event for the day. Bf is back! Yay! Despite having laosai on the last 2 days of his trip and landing at an awkward 5+am in Singapore. He stayed up to wait for me to finish my run and came to look for me immediately. Touched :D Poor dude was always the guinea pig for my initial fail bakes, ate my numerous chilled cheesecakes till the poor fellow got so sick of it hahaha. He has told me that he'll love to try a water bath-ed one someday. So the day before his return, I prepared this. Wasn't really expecting anything from this chinese cheesecake baking book I grabbed off Popular, but it turns out great!...though ugly.

Creamy yet light and refreshing with a hint of lemon. It can easily pass off as Fiesta's light cheesecake. And all it takes is just a box of cream cheese. The recipe is a keeper. But I would suggest add a aluminum foil to prevent a burnt cracked top.

Soufflé Cheesecake (adapted from Junko Fukuda, Yasuyo Shida & Kumiko Yanase's 我爱乳酪蛋糕)
Makes 7" cake

Ingredients:
Cheesecake filling:
250g cream cheese, room temperature
60g sugar
30g unsalted butter, melted
3 egg yolks, room temperature
100ml milk, room temperature
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp corn flour

Meringue:
3 egg whites, room temperature
30g sugar

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease a 7" (I use 6") springform pan and wrap the bottom with aluminum foil to prevent seeps from water bath
2. Whisk together cream cheese and 60g sugar until creamy and smooth
3. Pour in melted butter and mix well
4. Add egg yolks one at a time until incorporated
5. Add milk and stir until well combined
6. Add in lemon juice and blend well
7. Sift in corn flour and mix well, then strain the mixture and set aside
8. In a separate bowl, combine salt and egg whites and beat until soft peak
9. Fold in 1/3 of the meringue into strained mixture, then fold in lightly the rest of the meringue until well combined
10. Pour batter into the prepared springform pan and bake for 45~50mins in water bath
11. Let cake cool completely before chilling it for >3h in the fridge for serving

Basic Biscuits

Feeling adventurous, I tried making biscuits. The first I ever had was from Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits when I was in USA. They were so good (waaaaaaaaay better than what we have here in Singapore) that we went to Albertsons and bought a tube of Pillsbury's biscuits to bake in our apartment. Thereafter I had cheddar bay biscuits at Red Lobster too...those were godly! So in my honorary Biscuit Hall of Fame, the ranking goes like this: 1. Red Lobster, 2. Popeye, 3. Pillsbury.

So mine are actually really-pretty good as well! Crispy on the edges, soft and flaky on the inside. May I also say...It's so FLUFFYYY I'M GONNA DIEEEEEE!!! Damn, you should see the multiple layers of flakes, oh wait a minute, there're pictures Pretty impressed with the recipe. I'll rank them uhh...better than Pillsbury as it's just a basic biscuit without any flavoring or spices. But texture wise, they're comparable to the tops. They go well with butter and jam. I prefer them to be served warm, so I'll heat them up before eating if I'm not feeling too lazy.

Even though Dorie suggests it's okay to use our hands to handle the dough, I try not to use them over here where it's practically summer all year round. It's a race against time to send these babies into the oven before the cold butter melts, so I'll rather use my equipment. This recipe going to be in my bake-again list.
Basic Biscuits (adapted from Dorie Greenspan's Baking From My Home to Yours)
Book states it makes 12 biscuits. 16 for me.

Ingredients:
280g all purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
85g unsalted butter, cold and cut into 12 pcs
180ml milk, cold

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 220°C and prepare a baking tray with parchment paper
2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, sugar and salt
3. Add in cold butter into the flour mixture
4. Work with your finger tips or a pastry blender (I use this) to rub the butter into flour until the mixture is pebbly
5. Pour in milk and use a fork to gently toss over and turn the ingredients until you have a nice soft dough
6. Reach into the bowl with your hands and give the dough a quick gentle knead, abt 3-4 turns to bring everything together
7. Light dust a work surface with flour and turn out the dough
8. Use your hands to pat or roll the dough with a pin (I used a pin) till abt 1/2 inch high (Don't worry if dough is not completely even, a light quick touch is more important than accuracy)
9. Use a 2 inches biscuit cutter to cut out as much biscuits as possible and transfer them to the baking tray*
10. Gather together scraps and repeat step 8 & 9 until the dough is used up
11. Bake for abt 14 ~ 18 mins or until they are puffed up and golden brown, and serve warm

* At this stage, the dough can frozen on the baking sheet for up to 2 months. For baking without defrosting, just add a few more mins to the baking time.