I'm Back!

Yes I'm back to blogging, but not sure for how long. I've been baking all these while, just haven't updated this space due to a variety of reasons. Having nothing to blog about (at least "in public") was a major reason. The other reason is of course due to laziness and the lack of nice photos. Besides, I kept baking the same few recipes. However, I am continually inspired by the beautiful photos and wonderful experience by various bloggers.

Chiffon cake is one of my favourite to bake when I have time. I don't usually enjoy baking chiffon cakes at night as the cooling process takes too long, by which time I can hardly keep my eyes open. I'm home today as my son has fever. With news reports that say "1 in 2 flu cases is H1N1" don't necessary sit well with anyone. I was most recently a "close contact" of someone who tested positive and had to observe Leave of Absence of 7 days. During the initial days, I was rather worried that I may catch the virus. Not so much worried for myself but more for the children. What if they had to suffer as a result? Seeing my poor boy weak and sick yesterday brought on some strange feelings. He has grown significantly and he is not a small-sized child. He is big for his age and seeing him so weak made me feel helpless. He's no longer the tiny tot who relies on mummy for every little need. My boy has grown up.

His fever hovered between 39.1 and 39.8 deg C last night.Thankfully, after the first dose of medicine this morning, the fever subsided. He looked visibly healthy today, compared to yesterday. He was able to eat, which should be the case since he did not eat much yesterday. I took the chance to bake, on seeing that he was a little better. Since all I had were oranges, it would have to be orange chiffon. I have learnt that my weakness in the chiffon cake process was in "baking", ie, my cakes were mostly underbaked. I've recently discovered that for my oven, it would ideally need at least 55 minutes of baking time (at an average temperature of 160 deg C). I must have been muddled-headed today and forgot how long time has elapsed. I thought I had overbaked the cake but it turned out alright, thank God.

Looks like I have to seize whatever opportunity there is to keep practising chiffon cakes. For my next try, may be a rose or bandung flavoured cake. J had kindly helped me get a bottle of rose water which I have yet to try. Wonder what else can rose water be used for?

Practice Makes Perfect

You must be wondering what's the corelation between this picture and the title. Following the success of the Banana Chiffon Cake, I was so elated that I kept trying different flavours. The one flavour that I wanted to try was chocolate. From the near success of the White Mocha Chiffon Cake, I was determined to try a chocolate flavoured one.

Sad to say, I tried baking a chocolate flavoured chiffon cake TWICE, without success :( I followed closely to Rei's recipe, adding only more sugar.

My mistakes? For the first try, I was in too much of a hurry. I rushed home from work and set about weighing the ingredients and beating the yolks then the whites. I did all these before I had dinner. I learnt from this experience, never to rush a chiffon cake. Even though it rose beautifully, it was under-cooked.

For today's experience, I reminded myself not to rush through the process. I took my time and did everything according to how it's suppose to be done. I even checked the oven temperature and timing meticulously. However, I thought I got a whiff of something burnt in the air! Since the cake has risen reasonably high, I decided to lower the temperature a little. I increased baking time by another 5 minutes. I even let the cake cool inverted, in the warm oven, with the door ajar, for another 5 minutes before taking it out to cool, inverted of course. I only unmoulded the cake after more than 1.5 hours. Guess it's not meant to be as it was still under-baked! I will try again, but probably with another flavour. I bought some pandan leaves, perhaps I should try something that I had near success, huh?

Back to the picture, for the 2 attempts outlined earlier, I needed 10 eggs. Lo and behold! One of the eggs yielded 2 egg yolks! Wow! This was my second encounter, my first happened on my birthday. My daughter had her first encounter last night when she ate one hard-boiled egg with 2 yolks. She was tickled too.

Banana Chiffon Cake

Hmm, I'm so pround of myself! I've finally done it, I can now say that I have successfully baked a chiffon cake! In terms of taste and texture, I am very very happy with this cake. Especially after 2 back-to-back dissatisfactory results.

Bananas are quite tricky, evident from the last 2 cakes, my anniversary banana cake as well as the hummingbird cake. I realised that the variety of bananas used for these cakes (local name is "ang bak jio") were extremely mashy and caused the cakes to be very sticky. While the banana cake was somewhat dense, the hummingbird cake was "sticky". I have to admit that in an attempt to not waste the bananas, I had used one too many.

So, for today, I followed closely to Rei's recipe, but added a little more sugar (5g) as the bananas were not sweet, as well as 1 tsp of banana essence. I used the small bananas (baby petey) from Phillippines, available at Shop n Save. I was a little worried, as the eggs I used this time were extra large. I had wanted to use only 4 egg whites, but decided I should add another. The batter filled a little more than 80% of the tube pan.

From today's experience, I found that my oven's temperature can be quite a challenge. For future baking, especially for chiffon cakes, I will preheat the oven to 200 deg C, bake for 20 mins at 180 deg C and another 25 mins at 160 deg C. I covered the cake with foil after 25 mins and left it covered till the end. I turned the cake over to cool inside the oven for about 20 minutes, while we had dinner.

I am happy that I achieved this result today. See what my kiddos made for me :) Happy Mothers' Day!

White Mocha Chiffon Cake

I used the same recipe by Rei to bake this White Mocha Chiffon Cake. I wanted to bake something for my wonderful mom for Mother's Day. So I embarked on this second cake, improvising as I went along. I replaced the orange juice with unsweetened soya milk (that was what I had in the fridge, healthier than fresh milk anyway) and some super duper white mocha powder.

Well, I made the same mistake as Orange Chiffon Cake this morning. The cake collapsed as well, and has a similar cheesecake texture. This one was even more underbaked :( I had to put it into a warm oven for a few minutes *sobbing* However, my boy LOVED it, he said it reminded him of something his kindergarten used to serve them on Mondays. What a sweet boy, he is in P4 this year. My girl likes the cake too, but said that she may not eat it any more if I rebaked it.

I'm glad I used a good quality white mocha powder, although I added another pack of 3-in-1 coffee as well (to enhance the coffee flavour). The result was a tasty cake, not too sweet either. I was so hopefully when I took the pan out of the oven (see the picture on top left), look how tall it was in the begining! Imagine my disappointment when I saw the cake (picture on top right) after I came home from dinner. My heart sank, just like the cake. I went on to unmould it, cut it and taste it. That was when I knew I didn't bake it enough. It was too moist and soft while it was tasty.

Now that Rei had diagnosed my possible "problem areas" I should try again. Next time, I should preheat the my (Sharp) micorwave/convection oven* to 200 deg C, then bake at 200 deg C for 10 minutes then 180 deg C for another 20 minutes before reducing the temperature to 160 deg C for another 10 minutes. Her idea of tenting the cake initially is good and I may retain that. After 40 minutes, I would bake at 130 deg C for another 7 to 10 minutes to brown the top. I hope this will work, keeping my fingers crossed.

At this point, I should place a question here for all my shifus: This happened for all 3 recent chiffon cake. The egg yolk mixture became lumpy when flour was added. I tried to add flour in batches, there wasn't any difference. As a result, I tried to press the mixture against the side of the mixing bowl. Not sure if that would cause "overbeating" of flour or egg yolks :S

*I have to rely on an oven thermometre to help me with this. I realised how off the temperature was today!

Orange Chiffon Cake

I was on fire today, I baked TWO chiffon cakes using the same recipe. Thanks Rei for the great recipe. While linking to her post, I read her reply to my comments. From Rei's analysis, she pointed out where I could possibly have gone wrong. Indeed, I suspected as much, I had not baked it enough :( The texture turned up looking like cheesecake... Of course, the cake collapsed as well.

Even though it was underbaked, the cake is still edible and soft. I will have to increase sugar when I next use this recipe as Rei's family does not have sweet tooth. Also, this time I had used some mandarin oranges which I bought from the supermarket. They were sooo sour and I figured the only way to finish them up would be to bake with them. As I was a little conservative with sugar, the result was still not up to mark, in terms of taste. Also, the mandarin oranges were quite soft and getting the zest was quite a challenge. Having my helper zest the oranges was probably a mistake, as there is a bitter aftertaste.

Verdict for this cake, if one were not an expert on cake, one would probably not be able to tell the hosts of mistakes in this bake. Afterall, the cheesecake texture wasn't all that bad. I could also try one of Anna Olson's switch up techinques to glamourise this humble cake :)

Pandan Chiffon Cake II

I am a happy gal, I can now say I have tasted a small success with the Pandan Chiffon Cake compared to my previous attempt. This time, I tried using a recipe posted on KC by Gina.

The recipe calls for mixing blended pandan leaves with milk instead of water. Also, there is one more egg and less flour. Sounds good to me! With this try, I discovered that pandan leaves from the supermarket are bigger than those I bought from the market. Perhaps that explains the fragrance of pandan. I brought some to the office this morning to share but ate 3 pieces at one go. I saved the rest for some friends, and the pandan fragrance permeated the air around my workstation the whole morning. I could hardly concentrate and it being the day after public holiday and with so many people out of office, didn't help, at all.

The cake is tasty and fragrant. I am sure the milk and extra egg helped. I like the idea of it having so little flour as well. The cake is soft as well and even my daughter loves it. She asked me to bake it again, wow!

I had a chat with Rei and she told me that chiffon cakes are addictive. I'm sure they are addictive to eat as well as to bake. I was so motivated, I went to PH at Jurong East and bought a 21-cm tube pan, with removable bottom. I had resisted from buying it for so long. I'm so happy to finally buy it. There was so much residue on the bundt pan* when I unmoulded the cake last night. That was after cooling the cake for at least 1.5 hours. I told myself that I would get a conventional one so I can run a palatte knife along the sides. Gina told me that with a silicon pan, one can press the sides of the pan to remove the cake. How come I didn't think of that?

*I bought the bundt pan from Robinson's at the members' preview sale early this week. It costed less than S$10 and there was an additional 20% discount. That was a real steal and I also bought a 22-cm springform pan as well. I have set my eyes on this cheesecake (from KC).

Pandan Chiffon Cake

After missing half of last week's baking class, I couldn't wait to try baking the pandan chiffon cake. I remember tasting it in class and when told that there wasn't any coconut milk, I was amazed! The taste of pandan was so distinct and fragrant.

So, I went out early this morning to the market to get pandan leaves. As I had very limited time to bake, I told myself not to waste any time. But I had a shock when I mixed the dry ingredients with the egg yolks, oil and pandan juice. It came together as a paste! Omg, I had missed this part of the class and wasn't sure if this was to be expected. I tried to stir the paste hoping to "loosen" the paste. Instruction read: "mix till satin smooth" :(

I tried not to think about it but images of my first try at baking the banana cake came flooding to my mind. But this time, I am very sure the ingredients are regular and according to the recipe. Anyway, I think the egg whites reached stiff peaks. I made sure I took a photo for my shifus to comment. With a silent prayer, I went on to mix the egg whites to the egg yolk mixture. I could have deflated the egg white somewhat, and the batter became less pasty and more runny.

Finally, the batter was in the oven. I managed to fill 2 cupcake trays and one oval baking pan, which I collected last week. (This time I didn't take any pictures of my new toys.) As I had to rush out to pick my boy from tuition, I left the cakes to cool in the pan, on the table. I would probably not use these cupcake trays for chiffon cakes or sponge cakes anymore. There isn't enough fat and I'm not sure if I should grease the pans for chiffon cakes (I read that trays should NOT be greased when baking chiffon cakes).

Taste-wise, it's a far cry from the original :( Other than the absence of pandan taste (it was aromatic while baking, alright), the cake was dry. Perhaps I had over baked the oval tray. The first cupcake tray (roses) turned out alright, thought they were somewhat sticky (I baked it for 15 minutes). Perhaps 40 minutes is too long for the tiny oval tray. The final cupcake tray was so over baked, they were HARD (baking time 15 mins, cool in oven 10 mins).

Overall, I guess this is a really good learning experience. Perhaps to avoid getting the paste, I should perhaps mix the dry ingredients with eggs first, then add oil then pandan juice. Hopefully that would solve the mysterious of the "dry" cake as well. As Rei told me, must practise more.