Orange macarons and hibiscus creamcheese.

Just in time before X'mas.

Not many hours left before X'mas, is there anything in your wish list that you haven't baked it this year?.
I still have a long list, but I couldn't wait until next year to bake another batch of macarons.

I've heard that adding meringue powder into egg whites will help to produce a nice macs. Yes, I wanted to give it a try. Special thanks to Evecakesdiary who gave me some meringue powder plus some tips on how to make a nice mousse cake.

For my first experiment, I just used the recipe that I always bake and add 1 g of meringue powder to 60 g of egg whites. I didn't see any significant difference in the final appearance of my macs, but my macs is more chewy inside which is nice. I think my macs are more fragile this time because the shell is very thin.

It's my first experiment, so I still don't want to conlclude that all are the effect of adding meringue powder. It could be me!!! There will be the second trial next year.

I wanted to make a bright color macs for a joyful season, so I chose orange macarons with hibiscus creamcheese as the filling. We fell in love of hibiscus creamcheese after I tried it in my previous post of macarons.

I used the same baking method as in baking "Hibiscus macarons" , I didn't dry the skin. After piping the batter on prepared tray, I sent it to the oven. This time I baked for 18 mins and none of them cracked.

If you would like to add some colors on your party table, you still have enough time to bake macarons....it's fun, it's delicious and I'm sure everyone will love it.

Merry X'mas everyone.

Message from Huggie.

Hi everybody. Do you remember me?
I'm Huggie and I'm resposible for this post. Mommy is busy in the kitchen, so I will take care this blog for her.

Holidays are just around the corner. Many of you are busy shopping while some of you are busy baking.

That's true, it's really the most wonderful time of the year.

For being in QC department, I really love this time of the year when there are many types of cookies and cakes for me to sample. I'm sure you do like it too.

I'm not sure I will be able to post anything again before X'mas, so I wish all of you "Merry X'mas and Happy new year"

Thanks for visiting and see me again in 2011.

Cake for you.

Do we need the reason to bake?

My baking mode always turns on automatically when I'm at home. Is that the symptom of being in love'?

I think so....sometimes we just go crazy because of love. I didn't realize when my "baking love" got started. However, I started to record my love in the cyberspace first time in Dec 2009. Yes, my blog turns one year old this month. That's why I have the reason to bake this cake..."Happy Birthday" to my blog. I also have a few good friends were born in this month...If you are the one, happy birthday to you too....and you can have a bite.

Look back to the first day that I created the blog, I haven't developed much skills on cake decorating. My baking definition still can't include "cake decorating" in it.....but I've learned something, of course. You might not see many good examples to do but I'm sure there are plenty of "Don't do" in my blog.

One obvious change I can notice is that there are more baking toys piling up in my kitchen, my storage and almost everywhere in my house. Some of them are still in the original packages....that's why I think that we turn into unreasonable person when we are in love!

My cake wouldn't be completed wihtout any fruits or chocolate added. Same as this time, I baked coffee chiffon cake,iced with whipped cream, topped with strawberries and then fenced with chocolate lattice fence. I love making small pieces of desserts that we can enjoy in one sitting.

The beauty of baking at home is that we can mix and match anything we like at the way we want. If you bake , you know what I'm talking about . If you don't bake, you should try and you will be in love.....happy baking.

Enjoy.

Mulberry and apple crumble.

Mulberry and apple crumble....this is the first time I made crumble.

I don't know why I never had any interest to make crumble before. I never thought that this desserts would be good...maybe because of its appearance. The reason that I made crumble today because I wanted to use my new bakeware.Well, I had a reason to bake.

Some of you never see mulberry because it's not available in the market, but you heard about mulberry tea before,right? This fruit is not as pretty as the other berries , but it tastes just like them. It's tart when is it's not ripe, but it turns to be very sweet when it completely ripes.

I got about a half cup of mulberries everyday, so I wanted to make desserts out of it. Lots of them are in the freezer, I normally throw them in my smoothie to add more vitamin C to my drink.

Well, don't judge them only their appearance. This mulberry and apple crumble is much nicer than I expected. The tartness from mulberries and apple with a crunchy crumble are perfect together....good by itself but great when served warm with a scoop of ice cream, simply delicious.

Don't miss out this dessert. Apple or any tart fuits would make a lovely crumble.

Enjoy.

Still far from perfection.

Simply delight....green tea chiffon cake and cherries.

Green tea chiffon cake is nice by itself or with just a cup of our favorite tea, but I wanted to serve it a diffrent way. I spreaded some passion fruit jam in between the layers of chiffon cake,dressed it up in white and colored it with some cherries on top.....easy but yet delicous.

It's my second attempt fencing the cake with tempered chocolate....it's not as easy as I thought. If you never tried before, try to make it ahead of time....or make it at night and let it sit overnight. I didn't have enough time to let the chocolate harden, so some parts of it cracked when I peeled off acetate. I still have another 2 cakes in the fridge, this is the first one I did. They look better than the this one....yes, practices make perfect ( For me, I mean practice many many times).

I wish I could wait a little bit longer to peel off acetate, but the sun didn't let me do so. The sun almost set, I had to take one of them out to take some photos. There would be nothing left if I waited until tomorrow.

I looks pretty simple, right? However, it needs a little bit of piping skills to sqeeze the chocolate on acetate. It's more difficult than piping the buttercream because we have to be quick, if not the chocolate will be harden. I wasn't aware of that fact until I finished the first one.
Once we wrap it up aroud the cake, make sure you tie it and let it sit in the fridge until it really set ( if you don't want and ugly fence like mine).

For information on how to temper the chocolate, click here. Make sure you get all the tools and chocolate thermometer ready. If not, you will end up something like this.

Enjoy.

Fruit tart........my style.

An intimate dinner with family and friends wouldn't be perfect without desserts or seasonal fresh fruits. With so much luscious fresh fruits available in the supermarket, I had a difficult time choosing which one to bring home. Finally, I brought them all.

Fruit tart is on the top list when I think about colorful desserts that can be easily served and prepared in advance.The perfect fruit tart starts with the crisp and buttery crust and ends up with beautiful fresh fruits. I love the the crust of my tart to be as thin as possible.

The most labor-intensive step for fruit tart (for me) is making the crust from scratch, but it's worth making the extra effort. The mixing process is done in food processor. Not a nice looking crust as the storebought tart, but the taste and texture is up to expectation.

Besides being rich in nutrients, these bright-colored fruits provide the perfect flavors for desserts. Strawberries are famously delicious with whipped cream,but they are more versatile than that.

I chose whipped cream for the filling since we will enjoy it at home. I made crust in advance and then fill the whipped cream and decorate with frsh fruits just before serving.

I normally don't glaze the fruits....it's another way to reduce unnecessary sugar intake. The flavour of fresh fruits is perfect on its own, I think. However, if there is a showmanship involved, you can glaze your fruits with apricot jam for a shinny look like those in the bakery store.

My fruit tart....small in size but big in flavour!

Hibiscus macarons.

Finally I made it.....hibiscus macarons.

My baking wish list was getting longer and longer, but hibiscus macs passed the other items and came up on the top list. I have dried quite a lot of hibiscus and I made them into powder. My food processor is not powerful enough, so it's no as fine as the storebought powder.

I added about 7 grams of hibiscus powder for 50 gram of egg white,but its color didn't show up in the batter. Finally,I decided to add a tad of red powdered coloring to boost up the color and sprinkled some hibiscus powder on top of the batter before sending them to the oven.

Have you ever wondered if it's necessary to dry the skin of macs before baking?
I've tried the method of drying the skin in the oven at the temperature about 180F and then rebake again at 300F until cooked. The two step method works fine for me...but I still want an easier method.

In case you want to do some experiment.....let'see what I did.

I did not warm up the oven.....just set the tempertaure to 300F (or tempertature that you used to bake your macs). After piping the batter on silicone baking mat, I sent them to the oven and then turned on the oven. Yes, you read it right.....I didn't warm up the oven. Once the oven reach 190F, it took another 16 mins to bake the macarons. I just let my macarons sit inside the oven from start to finish without taking it out during the baking process. The feet shrink a bit when taking them out from the oven, but they were quite high in the oven. None of them cracked....and the result is what you see in this post.

To be honest, I am not sure that it was successful by accident or by luck......... but I did it. If I ever do it again, I will not forget to rotate the tray after the feet are fully developed in order to get an even color on my macs. I will keep you posted if I get lucky with this method next time!

As for the filling, I use cream cheese with some hibiscus powder added. It's really really good...tart but creamy. This flavour is a keeper....enjoy it with me!

No artificial coloring.

Would you beleive me if I tell you that there is no artificial coloring added in this swiss roll?

No kidding.... this sweet pink swiss roll is made from hibiscus or roselle. I also couldn't beleive that it could produce a nice shade of pink in the final cake. My first inteniton for growing this hibiscus was to add the color to my garden. The flower is beatutiful, isn't it? Now I have too many of them in the garden....gotta do something with it.

The part that I used are the red calyces of the plant. I harvested them fresh and let them dry. Dried calyces can be grinded into powder or we can keep them like that to make herb tea. I soaked them in the water before adding them to the cake batter. The deep dark purple red tea got mixed with egg, flour and other ingredients and finally turned into pink cake. Since it was the first time using roselle in my cake, I had no idea about the right quanity to be used. " The more is the better", I thought!

I also processed the calyces into small pieces and added in to the batter. I'm glad I did it......those little pieces is nice to chew. However, it's quite a challenge to get a nice slice of the cake because of those chewy bits.

Don't let my messy looking cake stop you from trying hibiscus to any of your desserts. If you love the natural tart flavour that comes free with the beautiful shade of pink, you should consider playing around with hibiscus. I already added hibiscus macarons in my wish list. I think it would produce an interesting color on the macarons.

Hibiscus swiss roll with creamcheese and walnut.....yummy.

Blueberry muffins.

Warm blueberry muffin and a cup of coffee or tea in the morning is heaven.

Let's start our day off with these flavorful blueberry muffins. I normally measure all dry ingredients and put them together at night. It will become my muffin instant mix the next morning.

Now, there are many sizes and shapes of muffin pan available in the market. I don't even know which size is considered a standard size muffin cups. I prefer to use paper cups which are easy to clean up and they are also beautiful to look at.

I don't make picture perfect blueberry muffins because I always fill the batter until full cup. I think the blueberry juice that oozes out along the cup makes it more tempting. Well, it's just a personal preference.

We can make it as healthy as we want...use wholewheat flour, add oat meal, add fresh fruits, add nuts or whatever we can imagine. Today I prefer just a simple but moist and flavorful muffin...so I use only fresh blueberries, but lots of blueberries. Look at them...they are oozing out!

How to resist?


Would you like to try some at home, here is the recipe.

Blueberry Muffin.

100 g all purpose flour
80 g cake flour
50 g white sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/4 tsps baking powder
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2/3 cup buttermilk
1 egg
200 g fresh blueberries

1.Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Prepare muffin cups.
2.Sift all dry ingredients together and take about 1-2 tbsps of this flour mixture to mix with blueberries in a separate bowl and set aside.
3.Make a well at the center flour mixture and set aside.
4.Mix together oil, buttermilk and egg in separate bowl and then pour into the well of flour mixture, mix just combined.
6. Fold in blueberries and mix with spatula.Do not overmix.
7. Fill the batter into prepared muffin cups about 3/4 cupful for pretty muffin or until full if you want it to ooze out like mine.
8. Bake in preheated oven for 20-25 mins, depends on your oven.

Note:
1. The amount of sugar depends on the quality of your blueberries.
2. Don't try to increase the amount of blueberries, this is the maximum amount that yields a perfect bluberry muffin in my opinion. I 've made this muffins many times with more or less amount, but this amount is just perfect.

Then sit back, relax and enjoy your warm bluberry muffins.
Have a wonderful day.

Chocolate chip cookies

Is there anything you're allergic to when you go shopping? I am allergic to these words....."on sale", "discount", "promotion" or "buy 1 get one free". These words always bring me to the next level of spending. Sometimes I overbought what I needed to to buy because of all those words. What a nonsense shopper I am!

I don't use much of butter in my cooking or even baking...but I have stocked up quite a lot of butter in my fridge. I need to do something to free up the space on my fridge...something that use butter and it must be something most people like.

Well, everyone eats cookies , so I decided to bake a big batch of cookies and bring them to share with my colleages at works. This cookie is our family favorite...it's easy to prepare and requires just a simple ingredients that are always in our kitchen.

If you want to try some at home, here is the recipe.

Chocolate chip cookies.

113 g unsalted butter, soften
85 g brown sugar
30 g granulated sugar
1 large egg, room temp
170 g all purpose flour
1 teaspoon instant coffee granules, grounded
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking powder
70 g almonds, lighlty toasted
80 g bitter sweet chocolate chips

1. Warm the oven to 360 F and line parchment paper or silicone baking mat on two cookie pans.
2. With electric mixer on medium speed,beat butter and both sugars until light (about 2 mins) Then add egg and continue beating for less than 2 minutes.
3.Stir together the flour, coffee granules,baking soda and salt, then add them into the batter. Mix just combined on low speed. Lastly, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts.
4.Scoop the cookie dough and onto the baking pan, leave 2.5 inches apart. Flatten the top lightly. The dough doesn't spread a lot.
5.Bake for 10 minutes for soft cookies or 12 mins for crispy cookies.
6.Take out from the oven and let sit on the baking pan for 5 mins before transfer to the cool completely on the wire rack.

This cookie is best to eat fresh but it can be kept in airtight container for upto 3 days.

Enjoy