Pandan Kaya Sponge Cake

This is the most basis sponge cake recipe uses only eggs, sugar and flour.  I flavored it with pandan paste or you can use pure vanilla extract for the vanilla flavor.  I made this because I just made a bottle of pandan kaya using my bread maker and I wanted to have it with some sponge cake.  I had used this sponge cake recipe for swissroll before and this recipe works well for me.  If you have been my avid reader, you should realize that I always stick to the recipe that works well for me.  Not quite adventurous as to try other sponge cake recipe.  Or simply put, just used the one easy sponge cake recipe that does not require to separate the eggs into egg white and did it like the chiffon cake method.

This cake was spongy and delicious with the double pandan flavors from the cake and kaya.  Quite fattening I must say, that's why it was served in small pieces, but one piece was never enough.

Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Glaze for Father's Day!

I want to wish all the dads a "Happy Father's Day" especially my dad.  Dad, I love you and may you have a wonderful time on Father's Day.

We are going to celebrate Father's Day with a bunch of friends (dads) tonight so I made this simple and yet yummy cake to bring along.  I made this cake before on Edda's first birthday and really liked how soft the cake was.  Instead of cream or frosting, I chose glaze instead since in my mind it was healthier.  :-P

 

This recipe made two round pans cake.  My girls wanted to put sprinkles on the cake and I obliged, I thought it would make the cake more colorful.  Instead of chopped walnuts, I used peanuts instead.  My girls loved this cake as they couldn't wait to taste one of the cakes and requested I make this on their birthday for them.

Kuih Bahlu 2 (Chinese Egg Sponge Cake, 鸡蛋糕)

 

I did a Pandan Kuih Bahlu before in year 2008 and never try it since.  Because I found the recipe a bit dry.  This year I had no plan on making kuih bahlu but while I was browsing and jumping blogs, I decided to check out Sinner's blog.  And then I saw her kuih bahlu recipe posted last year.  I quickly compared her ingredients with the one I made before and found that hers uses less sugar and flour and she also stated that hers produces soft kuih bahlu.  So, I got interested and prompted me to try out her recipe.  I was glad I tried because it is indeed soft and slightly chewy.  Edda and myself couldn't stop popping a few of this once it was cooled.  :-P  However, after I kept it in the container, it turned sticky and moist unlike the dry kuih bahlu we used to.  Almost like the mini egg sponge cake I did in 2007.  So, I don't think this can be kept long.  Guess I will have to play with the old recipe again, like adding oil.

Guess you have noticed the ugly looking kuih bahlu I have right?  I don't have the pretty kuih bahlu mould so I used the mini muffin pan to make this instead.  If you too don't own the mould and wanted to make this, check out my instruction on the next page.  The method is about the same but slightly different.  You can still enjoy the kuih bahlu without the mould.  I guess the next time I go back to M'sia, I need to buy myself two kuih bahlu moulds.

Steamed Nian Gao (年糕)

This is again something new for me this year.  I always did the baked Nian Gao like all the previous years.  The baked nian gao is delicious too but this year I stumbled upon a Vietnamese steamed nian gao recipe from a blogger friend.  I tried a few of his recipes before and liked it, so it encouraged me to give this recipe a try.  Truthfully, what got me interested was the steaming time in his was only 20 minutes for a rice bowl size.  Hey, you know me, always seek out the easiest recipe to try.

I used my porcelain ramekin to steam my nian gao as I believed this shape resembled the one that I was familiar with the most.  Looks good right?  I won't be eating this until after the Chinese New Year as I wanted to use this to bring good luck to my house.  I heard that since this is sticky, it means family reunion and togetherness.  Also of the Chinese word 年糕, the last word sounded like high (高), so it's like each year is higher or better than the previous. (年年高升)

Since I am not eating this yet so I have no comment regarding the taste.  Probably will do a post later when I slice it and pan-fry it.

This is how it looks like when I took it out of the ramekin to cool on wire rack.

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year and Gong Xi Fa Cai everyone!!  May this new year brings you much joy, good health and abundance wealth.  祝您 兔年快乐, 健康良好,  万事如意，恭喜发财!!!

P/s:  I recommend my new and improved super easy steamed nian gao recipe that I created in 2012.  Check it out!  :)

Boiled Fruit Cake

I adore fruit cake and it is one of the cakes that I wanted either to bake my own or buy from the store during the Christmas holidays.  As you know, I skipped any recipe that seem too troublesome to make for example too many different steps that ended out with lots of dishes to wash.

I saw this Boiled Fruit Cake recipe at JoyofBaking and decided to read through the recipe and it was surprisingly fairly easy with minimal dishes to wash.  I only need to clean the saucepan and since I already have all the ingredients at home, I was eager to try it out.  It was named Boiled Fruit Cake because half of the ingredients were boiled on the stove and mixing in with the rest of the ingredients.  I modified the recipe by adding Brandy.  The only downside of this was it tasted better after three days and longer.  I read that if wrap nicely, it can be kept for up to six months.

My verdict is I find this fruit cake a bit dry, I would prefer it to be more moist.  So, the next time I make this, I would substitute the water with milk.  Hopefully then it will make this fruit cake better.  

Spiced Pumpkin Walnut Cake

I cannot get enough of this cake, it is soft and moist and left you wanting more.  This is almost like my Best Ever Pumpkin Cake except it's has a little more egg with added walnut and one additional spice.  This cake is smaller and I used a 8-inch square pan to bake it.  I created this when I used 1 cup of the pumpkin puree to make the cookies and left with one more cup of pumpkin puree.  I loved pumpkin cake above all others, more than pie, cookies, soup, etc.  So of course I got to make it into a cake.

If you have canned pumpkin puree at home, give this recipe a try.  I am waiting for the Libby's canned pumpkin puree to go on sale so that I can stock up and make more of this cake.  YUM! YUM!  Oh yeah, need to buy more of the chopped walnuts too.

Pandan Chiffon Cake 2 (Healthier Version)

 

Pandan chiffon cake was my childhood favorite cake.  I remembered I always asked my mom to buy it at the bakery shop for us to have as breakfast.  It was great being a kid without having to worry about counting calories and just consumed however much we liked.  I seriously would not have known what went into making a cake, a bread, or a dish without me being a cook and a baker myself.  Once I learned that, I have to be careful at what to cook for my family and how much portion to consume in a day, you know to watch my diet and not over eating certain food that is high in saturated fat.

This recipe is adapted from my Pandan Chiffon Cake recipe but because I want to make it healthier with less saturated fat content, I omitted the coconut milk and used 1% milk instead.  I also changed the all-purpose flour to cake flour, just for experiment.  Glad to say it turned out well, still fragrant with Pandan smell and not much difference from the Pandan chiffon cake made with coconut milk.

I didn't do a nice job at dismounting my chiffon cake from the tube pan, this really takes patient and skill.  LOL!

Peanut Butter Banana Cake

I am not sure whether you have noticed.  I have been baking lots of banana cake lately, ranging from just plain, marble, chocolate and now I am trying with peanut butter!  I needed variety so that even though I have been baking almost the same thing but it tasted different.  As I was figuring what else I can put into the banana cake or how to make it different and peanut butter came to mind.

I added chocolate chips per my daughters request, but I didn't add much.  You can add more if you like.  Since the top was kind of bland, I decorated it with heart shape chocolate chips design.  It turned out well don't you think?

This turned out great!  We all loved it and we could definitely taste the peanut butter in it even though it was subtle.   Evy even ask me to make it again.  If you are a fan of my banana cake recipe, give this a try too, providing of course you have no peanut allergy in your household.

Step-by-Step Zebra Cake Guide

I promised my friend, SIG to show her the step-by-step pictures guide the next time I made the zebra cake, so here it is girl friend.


Two different colors batter.


First, put a dollop of white batter in the center of the pan.


Next, put a little dark batter on top of the white batter.


Then, you add another dollop of white batter on top of the dark batter.


Again, add another layer of dark batter on top. Just keep alternate different color of batter on top of each other until all batters are used.


I didn't do a great job on this as it was not center.


Example of how it would look like when baked and cut. Good Luck!

Recipe of this marbled banana chocolate cake can be found here.

Coffee Chiffon Cake

A lot of people liked my Pandan chiffon cake recipe. I also created a lot of other recipes based on this recipe and here sharing with you another variation of chiffon cake, I called it Coffee Chiffon Cake. Really soft and spongy!

Marbled Banana Chocolate Cake

My need to experiment in the kitchen again. I used to make a Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread four years ago which I loved. Then, I kind of stop making it because I don't always stock up on chocolate chips. Also I rather prefer the cake texture instead of the bread texture. So, I played with the recipe and created this. I always have cocoa powder in my pantry so I used that instead of chocolate bar or chocolate chips. But I think the chocolate flavor will come out more with chocolate bar or chocolate chips instead of cocoa powder. I hardly taste the cocoa powder, this cake tasted like a banana cake with a pretty marbled effect.


See the marbled effect? They called this Zebra marbling effect.

As you can see, I tried out a new marbling effect which they called zebra. It does look a lot like zebra and very pretty. I made this cake to have for breakfast and afternoon snack so I didn't really pay a lot of attention when doing the layering. Thus, I was actually surprised that it turned out pretty good even with how careless and little care I paid on it. Hence, anyone can certainly do the zebra effect on her cake with ease.


Whole cake view from the top. See how careless I was with it, uneven striped when layering.

Strawberry Yogurt Cupcakes

What happen to you when you learned that you are going to have visitors at your home in few hours? And you have nothing to serve them with tea? Of course I have to think of something to make quick with whatever I have at my house at that moment. I found some strawberry yogurts that I bought for my girls in the fridge and my mind was set. I whipped this up in as little time as possible as this recipe only required a hand whisk and a big bowl. The end result was some soft and moist strawberry yogurt cupcakes. This recipe gave me 17 cupcakes.

Steamed Pandan Sponge Cake

I have some orange sugar and Eno salt and thought of making a rice flour steamed cake with these two ingredients. The fermentation of rice flour overnight with yeast didn't smell good at all. And the result of this steamed cake was bad, even though it had nice honeycomb effect, but it was hard, smell bad and tasted yucky. I had to give it all to Ms. trash can.

Then, I thought of using the 7-up to make some steamed cake because I remembered I once had a steamed 7-up cake and it was pretty good. This recipe has no butter and oil and the method is like sponge cake. The texture of this cake is spongy and not too sweet. For those who do not have Pandan extract, you can substitute it with pure vanilla extract.

Summer Fruit Cake

Summer time comes with abundance of peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, melons, etc. This is also the time when these fruits are cheap and at its' sweetest. I made a similar cake before and this is my other version. Not too pretty looking because some of the fruit sank but nevertheless it's still delicious. This time I used the sour plum and peach for my choice of fruit and thus I used 1 cup of sugar for my cake to counteract the sourness of the fruit. If your choice of fruit is sweet, you can use 3/4 cup of sugar. And remember to put this cake in the refrigerator as the moisture from the fruit will turn moldy if not.

Banana Cake

The only time I would make a banana cake is when I have some banana freeze up in the freezer. Sometimes we would have one banana left that was too ripe and nobody wanted to consume it. So, I put it in the freezer bag and left it in the freezer. When I have two in the freezer, that's the time I would make this cake for breakfast. This banana cake is made with butter and thus it's not that oily. Don't get me wrong, I like banana cake made with oil too as it's very moist but sometimes it can be quite oily.

Green Tea Castella or Matcha Kasutera

We were going away for a three days two nights camping trip and I wanted something easy to serve as breakfast. What easier than having two pieces of cake and a cup of instant 3 in 1 coffee or milk tea? Since I made the Castella cake earlier and we all loved it, that sponge cake was my easy picked. I read that the original Japanese sponge cake does not called for oil/butter/margarine so I was interested in experimenting. However, I was too careful to remove all the oil because I was afraid that it might be too dry thus I reduced half of the oil and some sugar. I added 1/2 tablespoon of green tea powder for a change too. Since I reduced the oil, I also tried the method mentioned in my previous post that was to place the cake in the refrigerator while still warm but I didn't brush the top with honey water (I didn't want it to be sticky).

The resulted cake had fine crumbs and more compact than my previous one. Still soft and light like a sponge cake with the tint fragrant of green tea. Still tasted good after reducing the oil.

Castella Cake (Japanese Honey Sponge Cake)

Yup, my turn to make the Castella Cake (Japanese Sponge Cake). I was made aware of this cake because of the special ingredient used, honey! My hubby drink a glass of honey water before he goes out for his sport so I always have a bottle of honey at home. Honey Sponge Cake sounds good to me as I like the soft and spongy texture of sponge cake. I got the recipe from Notes From My Food Dairy and made a few changes to it. I just wanted to try the original taste of this cake before attempting other variation. Would certainly love to try the matcha flavor next time. The Castella Cake is all soft to goodness spongy. This cake has fine crumbs and very irresistible because it is so light and soft, I just want to eat more.

You can read more about Castella cake at Wikipedia here. I also found an extract here that is useful for my next attempt:

"In the meantime, mix together the 1 tablespoon of honey and a little hot water, to make a glaze.

As soon as the cake is out of the oven, brush the top with the honey-water mixture.

When it's cool enough to handle but still warm, lift it out of the pan, paper and all, and put into a plastic bag. Seal the bag and put into the refrigerator, for at least several hours. This step is critical to ensure the kasutera has a moist texture. If you let it cool to room temperature before putting it in the plastic bag, it will end up a bit dry." Extracted from Just Hungry. Cool tips ya! :) 

Cheesecake Cups

I loved to buy cream cheese when it was on sales, just for the "just in case" I need it moment. Then, often time because of my laziness, the cream cheese will left untouched. I really need to do something before the cream cheese past the expiration date and I found this mini cheesecake cups very easy. I used my roasted edamame cookies as base for these cheesecake cups, if you asked me, any round cookies would do. Then prepare an easy cheesecake mix and it was all set. I would recommend you to decorate the cheesecake cups as you desired as it will make it prettier and more presentable. ;) This is definitely an easy party dessert or treat for little kids. I like the bite size serving too!


Plain ones

Banana Pineapple Cake

Banana and pineapple pair well together and I simply adore banana pineapple cake. I happen to have some leftover crushed pineapple and some banana at home so what a great way to use up my crushed pineapple and make this delicious cake. This cake would be our breakfast and afternoon snack. :)

Condensed Milk Pound Cake

I decided to try this cake because of the rave reviews. Also my fellow blogger friend did such a great job on this cake that it prompted me to try. Her cake texture was so fine and yummy looking, check it out here. Her recipe was in gram which I converted to cup to suit myself. My cake didn't turn out as fine texture as her, not sure what went wrong (maybe it's my conversion?). I did over bake this cake resulted in my middle sinking and a bit dry, which I checked at 32 minutes. So, I reduce the baking time for that size of loaf pan to 25 minutes. Just check the cake when you can smell the cake fragrant emits from the oven. Nevertheless, this cake tasted great with the fragrant of condensed milk. I will make this cake again.