Blueberry cheesecake March 14, 2010

I’m beginning to wonder if E is really my daughter.

The other day, I gave her a bit of this truly awesome blueberry cheesecake. She twirled it around in her a mouth for a bit, looked nonchalant, and went straight back to watching TV. Like, what?! How can my very own flesh and blood not love cheesecake? What’s worse, I found out today that she has an aversion to all tomato-based food. Give her anything with the tangy taste of tomato and she’ll spit it out. This child is not mine! I demand a maternity test!

Thankfully, my friends have kids. And Ollie, who is 2-1/2 and a self-proclaimed “cake monster”, loved this cheesecake. He and his mamma M came by recently for a playdate with E, but he ended up more entranced by my oven offerings. After polishing off a big slice of this cheesecake, he asked for more – Oliver Twist indeed!

The kid has good taste. This Japanese-style cheesecake is wonderfully light and not too sweet. Instead of being smothered by a blanket of gooey blueberries, it has just a layer of the fruit tucked above the crust. A topping of sour cream offsets the sweetness.

My little fan Ollie is set to come back for more. Since we’re making their playdates a regular thing every Thursday, I’m gonna bake something for him each time. Those of my friends – that includes you, ST subs! – who wanna swing by for dessert are welcome every Thursday around lunch. After all, I love anyone who loves me. Or, at least, loves my cakes.

BLUEBERRY CHEESECAKE

(Adapted from Keiko Ishida’s Okashi)

65g Digestive biscuits, crushed

25g unsalted butter, melted

220g cream cheese, at room temperature

50g castor sugar

2 egg yolks

1 tablespoon whipping cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

80g canned blueberries, drained and lightly pat dry

130g sour cream

20g icing sugar

1. Preheat oven to 170 deg C. Lightly grease a 15-cm round cake pan with a removable base.

2. Combine biscuit crumbs with melted butter and press it down onto the base of the pan. Place pan in fridge to set.

3. Beat cream cheese, sugar, egg yolks, whipping cream and vanilla together until smooth (make sure cream cheese is well-softened at room temperature or you’ll get yucky little lumps),

4. Spread blueberries over the biscuit base, pour cream cheese mixture over it and bake for about 30 minutes (check from 20 minutes onwards) until surface is firm and springy to the touch.

5. Take out the pan and increase oven to 200 deg C. Combine sour cream and icing sugar, then heat mixture in microwave oven until it becomes smooth and liquidy. Pour over baked cheesecake and bake for about 2 minutes for sour cream layer to set.

6. Cool cake pan on a wire rack. Cover with cling film and chill in fridge overnight. Run a knife along the edge of the cheesecake to unmold.

Guilt-free Chocolate Chiffon Cake March 1, 2010

My husband Z turned 33 last week. When I asked him what cake he wanted as a present, he said a chocolate cake that’s “not too rich”. Ever heard of a chocolate cake that wasn’t rich? I haven’t. It’s like asking for steak without meat.

But that’s what you get when you suddenly find yourself with a health-conscious, iron-pumping husband in the house. It all started when a few of his b-boy friends dropped by a few weeks ago. Believe it or not, Z was a founding member of Radikal Forze, a pioneering breakdancing crew that started when hip-hop first took root in Singapore 10 years ago. He and his posse of breakers used to spin holes into the dancefloor in Zouk, sporting oversized jerseys and baseball caps way before it became standard attire for teenage boys everywhere.

He quit the group after two years but a few of the members carried on. F, who is now group frontman and one of the most respected b-boys in Asia, came by our house with three others for a visit. Because they pretty much make a living out of breaking, they have bodies as tight as pitbulls and, as Z described, rare muscle groups that were last seen on Brad Pitt in The Fight Club.

“Imagine if I’d continued with them,” Z said after they left, regaling me with tales of their conquests of overseas competitions and easy girls. And, as if to make up for the lost years, he started lifting weights every night, huffing and puffing in front of the bedroom mirror. In between sets, he would turn to me with triumphant shouts of “Bam!”

I’d ignore him, but inside, I found this recapturing of a former life a bit unsettling. Blame it on my postpartum hormones, but I began to wonder, could Z be regretting the life he chose when he married me? After all, I met him when he was only 26 and about to leave for London for an unscripted life of adventure. I was a greenie to his world of clubbing and all-night raves, an older woman with “Baggage” written all over my forehead. And yet, to borrow an expression from Beyonce, he liked it enough to put a ring on it.

He cancelled London and all of its freewheeling possibilities. Now, seven years later, he is leading a far less glamorous life with me, changing diapers and coaxing our kid in an Elmo voice to finish her food.

“What do you think would have happened if you went to London?” I asked him the other day.

“I’d become a rock star,” he said.

“No, seriously,” I said.

“I’d probably end up dead,” he said. Okay, that was a bit morbid. But I took it that he prefers the life he has now. There are no regrets.

So anyway, about the cake. I actually found a recipe that met his odd request – a guilt-free chocolate chiffon cake taken from Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Cake Bible. Because it contained no butter, it carried only 110mg of cholesterol. Moist and light as air, it was absolutely delicious taken with some mascarpone whipped cream. Z has been wolfing down big slabs of it every night after his workouts, pleased as punch about this healthy birthday present.

But the cake is really just a red herring. Z has often grumbled about how I always make fun of him in my blog. So this year, my real birthday present to him is this rare public declaration of affection. Happy birthday, Ah Chut. You’re my hero and I’m glad you took the detour.

Sugar Underload January 7, 2010

This is what I made for Christmas:

Trifle with strawberries, peaches and an avalanche of mascarpone cream…

Creamy cheesecake topped with chocolate ganache and chopped Snickers…

Rice crispies bars with gooey peanut butter and chocolate ganache…

And finally, petite cheesecakes made with condensed milk on a crust of digestive biscuits.

Don’t ask me what was going through my head. But there I was, 9 months pregnant, and the night before Christmas, I was whipping up a tornado in my kitchen making all these things that I cannot eat.

I was definitely (over)compensating for the fact that I had gestational diabetes. Or I was trying to make my friends, whom the cakes were intended for on Christmas Day, really fat so I won’t be the only Michelin Man post-delivery.

Either way, I cannot say enough how much I’m looking forward to popping next weekend, when I can go back to eating like a normal pig again. I have already decided. The first thing I’m gonna plunge my teeth into, right there in the delivery suite when the doc is sewing me back up, is a bar of Snickers.

Kinako chiffon cake with red bean whipped cream December 17, 2009

This is shaping up to be a sucky Christmas.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been put on a low-carb, high-fibre, no-joy diet because I’ve been diagnosed with gestational diabetes — a (hopefully) temporary condition that afflicts pregnant women on the wrong side of 35. (Nawww, really? You always thought I was 28? Gee, thanks!)

I feel like blaming my husband Z for this. If he had appeared sooner in my life, I would’ve married him earlier, gotten pregnant younger, and not have to suffer this indignity of not being able to eat anything sweet for three excruciatingly long months.

Hello? I’m a baker! How do you expect me to live when I can’t eat my cakes? To make things worse, I still have one baking cookbook to review for the paper before I go on maternity leave. I have to test at least six recipes from it to see if it’s a worthy buy, and this is where I am convinced that the stars are all lined up against me. Because, for so long, I’ve been scouring the bookstores for an English-translated book on Japanese cakes but to no avail. And now that Keiko Ishida’s Okashi has landed on my lap, and I am paid to try out its recipes, I cannot bloody taste them!

Like when I made her delicious Japanese milk madeleines. I took a smidgen of a bite (about 20 molecules in my rough estimation), just enough to register that it was light, fluffy and buttery, then quickly shoved the rest aside before I gobble up the whole thing.

Or this chiffon cake you see before you. Made with kinako, or Japanese soybean powder, and covered with red bean whipped cream (both my favourite ingredients), it was one of the first recipes I wanted to try when I first laid eyes on this gorgeous book.

The cake turned out really well, although it could’ve risen taller (which my Pa, the chiffon-cake-guru Chris said could be because there wasn’t enough baking powder). But instead of using my God-given tastebuds to see just how moist and soft it was, I was like a blind foot reflexologist — tapping the sides of the cake to see how much it bounced back. Tragic but true.

But I knew the cake was a triumph because when I gave my mother a slice, she polished it off in 10 seconds flat. “So light and not too sweet,” she raved, before rattling off a list of friends she wanted to give the cake to. I managed to wrangle a minuscule piece to taste before the cake was whisked away forever. She was right. It was super light, and the heady kinako flavour was offset by the delicate, sweet frosting. So delicious, so cannot-be-eaten.

Don’t even dare ask me for the recipe. Go buy the book and leave me alone in my misery.

Cheesecake pops November 18, 2009

I admit. When I first learnt I was pregnant earlier this year, I sent a few upward missives that went: “Lord, please give me a son this time round.” My firstborn E is a girl, so out of the purely selfish reason of wanting one of each, I wanted my second to be a boy.

Just think of it. I will have a daughter to dress up and bake pretty cakes with, and husband Z will have a son to skateboard with and do all those smelly things that boys do. And at first, all signs suggested that we would enjoy this idyllic, life-insurance ad configuration.

My aunt, who has a track record of accurately predicting the sex of a foetus by using some mystical formula involving the mother’s age, month of conception, etc, swore it was a boy. We have friends who “just have a feeling” that it was a boy. Even the wonton noodles auntie in my office canteen, with just one glance at my front-tilting bump, was sure of it too.

Then we found out the baby is actually a girl. And, wow, nothing prepared me for the tide of disappointment verging on disapproval that followed when we broke the news. My aunt, looking like she had just bitten into something rotten, told me I should “bok” (gamble) again and hopefully hit jackpot the third time round. When I told the wonton noodles auntie that I actually quite like having another girl, she said, with her back turned towards me: “As long as you’re happy lorhh. It’s okay lorhhhh.”

Everywhere I turned, people above the age of 45 would console me, saying “It’s okay lah. These days, boys and girls are all the same”. But, funny huh? If boys and girls are really the same, you never hear anyone saying this when you’re expecting a boy.

I, for one, have totally embraced and am loving the fact that I’ll be having two girls. First, you save lots of money by recycling the clothes. Second, if our new baby is anything like her older sister, we will have a pair of mild-mannered, well-behaved, neat and tidy kids who will not turn our home into a crime scene on a daily basis.

Third, and on to the real point of this post, I will have twice the opportunity to make the cutest, prettiest cakes all year round.

I mean, check out these adorable cheesecake pops I made as goodie bag takeaways for E’s birthday party two weeks ago. Would a birthday boy have appreciated the heart-shaped sprinkles or the pastel-coloured non-pareils? I don’t think so. When he becomes a teenager, he will look back on the birthday photos and accuse me of instilling in him an unmanly penchant for pink and polka dots.

If I had a son, every special occasion cake I make will have to factor in boy colours and emblems. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think a cake shaped like a blue tractor looks all that appetising. A dinosaur cake? Sure, I can make one. Just don’t make me eat it.

But with two girls, I will have at least two birthday cakes to make a year, festooned with flowers, flounces, ruffles in all manner of lemon-yellows and rosebud pinks. Already, I am having soul-lifting visions of my two girls in cute little aprons, helping me in the kitchen with the whipping, kneading and washing. What absolute bliss.

Having said all this, I’ll wait till I pop in January before I celebrate. Imagine the back-paddling I’ll have to do if the ultrasound scans turn out all wrong.

Earl Grey Pound Cake October 26, 2009

Ever since I started this blog over a year ago, I’ve received lovely comments about how my posts are down-to-earth, unpretentious and self-deprecating.

Well, this is not one of those posts.

Today, I’m going to brag about what an utter genius I am for coming up with this most astounding of butter cakes, the Earl Grey Pound Cake. And get this: I didn’t just follow a recipe from some book that I bought or am reviewing, like I usually do. I pretty much made up this recipe myself.

Okay, so I adapted it from a new cookbook that’s out in the stores. But unlike many sneaky food bloggers out there who adopt published recipes as their own by changing something really small, like the amount of sugar, I changed a lot of this recipe, awright?

Having read Shirley O. Corriher’s BakeWise, I have become so clever that I knew, at one glance, that the stated 1/8 tsp of baking powder is way not enough. So I upped it. I also did away with ingredients A and B, because the cake would be too sweet with them. I also cancelled ingredient C and D because I wanted a finer texture, and I dropped ingredient E because it would overpower the Earl Grey tea flavour.

Please, hold your applause. I’m not done yet.

Last but not least, I increased the butter and cut the sugar so it had the perfect balance that’s super-buttery and not too sweet. And, ta-da, what did I get? A butter cake that is so tender, so moist and fragrant, I believe this is the thing that’s gonna make me my first million.

Call me smug, but I’ve been dreaming about opening a bakery that specialises in all variations of this stupendous butter cake – orange, lemon, green tea, five-spice, you name it – and cake-worshippers from all over the country would descend upon me to beg for a small slice. Like the institutional Lana Cakes shop in Bukit Timah, I would only need to open four days a week to support my two kids through school and my husband through full-time skate-boarding.

And, like Lana bakery (I’ve been allowed inside its bowels before! One of the better privileges of being a food writer), I would have a little air-conditioned room tucked way at the back where I mix my batter and keep my secret ingredient away from view.

Yes, friends, this recipe has a secret ingredient, one that keeps the cake so incredibly moist even after a few days. But I’m not telling. Many of you have asked for recipes in my previous posts, and in the spirit of fraternal goodwill and generosity towards all baker-kind, I have happily obliged. But not this one, folks. This one is mine.

Go ahead. Beg, plead, or appeal to my soft, vulnerable 6-months-pregnant heart for my classified recipe. But I will only have three words for you – Get cher own.

This mamma’s not budging.

Pineapple and coconut crunch cake April 9, 2009

Dear all, since the last time I wrote about cake decorating, my piping skills still suck so bad it could frighten small children. But! *cymbal clash!* I have found a solution to my dismal handicap. And it’s really quite simple.

Don’t know how to pipe? Don’t pipe!

There are other types of cakes in this world that don’t need buttercream rosettes to look good. And, as in the case of this cake, they can even taste better.

Tired of Western cookbooks that don’t work, I’ve been turning to Asian titles for a change. One of the first cookbooks that landed on my desk when I was a food writer was Asian High Tea Favourites by Malaysian author Betty Saw. I remember making her Chocolate Crinkle cookies that came out smelling and tasting like Famous Amos (no joke). So surely her cakes wouldn’t be too far off.

Mysteriously named Surprise Cake, this cake is basically butter cake covered with a moan-inducing topping of minced pineapple, dessicated coconut and crushed cornflakes. Yeah yeah, so it uses canned pineapple, which is loaded with sugar, preservatives and other life-threatening stuff. But I love how it’s so Malaysian/Singaporean/Thai. I mean, South-east Asia is serious about their fake fruit. I can’t think of another region in the world (oh, okay, there’s also China) that has entire industries that peel, deseed, sweeten and basically falsify fruits like longans and lychees to resemble flawless fishballs.

(I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, the best thing about Chinese wedding banquets was dessert – I’d wolf down the canned longans in double-quick time and leave the pukey almond jelly untouched.)

Consider the mutated marvel called stuffed rambutans. How on earth do they remove the seed and present the flesh as if the seed never happened? As if such technical wizardry isn’t impressive enough, they then proceed to stuff them with delicious chunks of pineapple. I love!

So anyway. When you bite into this cake, there is the expected moistness and softness of the butter cake. But then, there’s also a crunch of cornflakes here, and bits of coconut and pineapple there. If pina coladas are to be reborn as cake, this is it.

25 Random Things About Food February 19, 2009

For four long years, I asked this question every week for a Sunday food column I used to write: What would your last meal be? Invariably, the personalities I interviewed would give some blah answer, like Teochew porridge or their mother’s steamed egg or some such boring throwaway.

If I were asked this question, oh-ho-ho, I would say: A ginormous strawberry shortcake that I could jump into and eat from the inside out. When I’m done, I’d throw myself into a bath-tub filled with Thai chilli-and-lemon dried cuttlefish, Kettle’s honey and dijon potato chips, honey cashew nuts and sticky barbecue fish sticks. Then, I would lock myself up in a Nonya buffet.

I could go on and on. Which is why I’ve always secretly wished that someone, anyone, would ask me this question for a change, so I could unleash my long pent-up list.

Well, since we’re in the season for lists (you know,  the pandemic spread of self-love in Facebook known as “25”) , I thought I’d just help myself and publish it for all to peruse.

Here is my “25 Random Things About Food”.

1. The best strawberry shortcake in the world can be found in Tampopo Deli in Liang Court.

2. The best French fries in the world can be found in your neighbourhood McDonald’s.

3. Nothing, nothing, is worse than undercooked red beans in ice kacang.

4. I can eat raw oysters, raw fish, raw prawns and raw beef, but never raw beansprouts.

5. If my house were on fire, the first thing I’ll grab (other than husband Z and baby E) is my Ruffles cakestand, which Z ordered from the States as my Christmas present last year. (See photos – ain’t it pwetty?)

6. If I were the Prime Minister of Singapore, I would decree that the annoyingly floppy thick noodles in laksa be replaced by beehoon. No more stains!

7. In an ideal world, all grapes and watermelons are seedless.

8. Cornflakes are best eaten at night.

9. If I were stranded on an island, I could live on canned sweet corn alone – yummy, fibrous, and no need to cook. 

10. I bear no shame for cooking with Lee Kum Kee oyster sauce. It really does make everything taste better.

11. Yes, there is something even better than Maggi chilli sauce. Its name is Lingham’s.

12. If I could choose which country I could be born in to enjoy the national cuisine, it would be Thailand, Indonesia or Japan (in this order).

13. If I can have only one accompaniment to rice, it would be sambal fishcake.

14. The Japanese do everything better – the best ribeye steak (Angus Steakhouse), the best curry rice (Tampopo), the best pasta (mentaiko spaghetti), and the ultimate best salad dressing (sesame flavour by We Love Salad! brand).

15. But if there’s one thing the Koreans do better than the Japanese, it is instant noodles (spicy mushroom flavour).

16. I have a secret weapon when it comes to stir-frying kangkong. It is called Cantonese XO sauce.

17. Three things I must always have in my fridge: Eggs, cold water, Nestle’s mango lassi drink.

18. Things I eat because of the dipping sauce: chicken rice, oh luak (oyster omelette), yong tau foo.

19. When I was on a 7-day detox fast a few years ago, the first thing I hallucinated about was nasi padang.

20. To me, the holy trinity of fruits is Mountain King durians, ‘harumanis’ mangoes from Indonesia, and ‘lor mai chee’ lychees from China.

21. Of the tiresome appetiser platter that’s served at ALL Chinese wedding banquets, I actually quite like the prawns in mayo sauce.

22. If the secret to good skin is not water, but Ribena, I could run for Miss Universe.

23. I’ve taken the dump in the toilet of Phoon Huat (bakery supplies store) in Holland Village four times – more than in any retail shop on earth – because I’m always very excited when I’m there.

24. Bovril in rice porridge is totally underrated.

25. I always wanted to marry someone who can cook. Z can’t cook. But he can dance. So that makes up for it.

PS: Okay, now it’s your turn. I’ve always wondered who you people jacking up my hit counter are. So drop a comment about your last meal (or anything at all). Just don’t say it’s Teochew porridge.

Green Tea Chiffon Cake February 17, 2009

Go ahead, laugh at my chiffon cake. Say that it looks like an Egyptian pyramid that’s been chopped off and pried open for easier access to King Tut. Because once you’ve had a taste of this cake – complete with that  glob of unmixed egg white on the inside *see it?* – you’re not gonna be laughing, but crying from sheer joy and admiration. It tasted that good.

Okay, so it’s a little on the wet side. After all, it was underbaked by about 15 minutes. But when I inserted a skewer into the centre, it came out clean what. And when I touched the surface, it bounced back… (okay, maybe not bounce back hard enough.)

But still I’d say this fine specimen of structural collapse is a triumph for my first attempt at chiffon cakes. The texture was springy and soft, it wasn’t too sweet, and it had just the right whiff of smoky green tea.

This recipe is taken from Korean pastry chef Young Mo Kim’s cookbook A Collection Of Fine Baking. Its delicate, beautiful taste just adds to my case that I should just forget about angmoh recipe books – what with their diabetes-inducing sweetness and overall unreliability – and just go with Asian cookbooks for the rest of my life.

To be doubly sure, I actually made this cake a second time to see how much better it’d be if it were given its full baking time. Result? Just perfect.

But I didn’t take a picture of it though. It looked like any other perfectly made chiffon cake. This undercooked specimen, in all its downtrodden glory, looks a lot more interesting. No?

P/S: Message me if you want the recipe. I’m too lazy to type it out now. Zzzzzz.

The Ultimate Butter Cake February 4, 2009

Some people eat lots of bread. Some people load up on rice. Yet others just stuff themselves full and hope something sticks. What am I talking about? I’m talking about what food to eat prior to a night of drinking so you won’t get so drunk that you wake up the next morning with your kidneys missing.

But I’ve discovered something that’s 100% resistant to the effects of alcohol and it tastes way better than rice or bread – Amy Scherber’s Simply Delicious Yellow Cake. It is buttery, eggy, moist and fluffy, easily the best butter cake I’ve ever made.

Apart from some leftover rice and steamed egg, this cake was the only thing I ate last Saturday before I went out on the town with 5 of my girlfriends.

Ostensibly, it was to celebrate 3 of our birthdays. It was also for us to catch up, now that new jobs/marriage/children have set us on different paths over the past few years.

But seriously, we just wanted to get sloshed.

We wanted to dump our husbands/boyfriends for just one night, and relive the same stupid antics we were up to years ago – you know, the kind of foggy revelry that makes dancing the conga thoroughly fashionable.

And boy did we max out our night. We started off at Overeasy, walked over to One On The Bund, popped by Bellini Grande and revisited our old haunt, Zouk. It was non-stop partying action from 9pm to 3am.

I was expected to be the first to succumb. After all, even in my partying prime 5 years ago, I was a self-proclaimed “cheap date”. I was proud of it too, because I was cost-efficient – just buy me two lychee martinis and I’ll be thinking I’m Beyonce.

And now that two years of abstinence has reduced my alcohol tolerance to almost zero, I was positively a “free date”. I could probably attempt her Single Ladies dance routine on the strength of one whiff of champagne.

So this is what I drank that night:

3 Sex On The Beach shots, 1 sundried tomato and raspberry margerita, 1 Bellini, 2 apple vodka shots, part of a Flaming Lamborghini, 2 Cowboy S*** D*** shots, and 1 Tequila shot.

How drunk was I? Let’s put it this way. I was even more sober than Obama’s bodyguards on Inauguration Day when he and Michelle were walking unshielded down the parade path.

My girlfriends? Oh, they drifted onto a higher realm. They were bear-hugging each other, happily doing the bitch-slap atop the podium in Velvet, and making up a new hybrid dance move that’s part-Vogue and part-Walk Like An Egyptian.

And what was I doing? I was doing what losers always do at parties: I was guarding the bags.

All because I ate a big slice of that cake.

The ultimate chocolate cake January 27, 2009

I read in a cookbook that some American auntie has this saying: “A sad cake is a happy cake.”

Say what?

Like how an ugly cake is also a beautiful cake? Or a sunken mess is also a risen sponge? These Americans are crazy.

But I take back my words. Now I fully understand what she meant after I made this cake, taken from Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito’s cookbook, Baked: New Frontiers In Baking.

It was meant to be the Salty And Sweet Cake, their signature item in their funky New York bakery. But, I tell you, their recipe for the salty caramel frosting was a complete farce.  Already, I wanted to kick Nick Malgieri’s rotund behind for making me make rock sugar instead of caramel a few weeks ago (read diatribe here). What should I do to these two jokers who told me to make caramel by heating the sugar up to the Hades-like 350 deg Fahrenheit? The caramel was so burnt it smelled of putrified rodents. It’s supposed to be Salty and Sweet, dudes, not Rabid and Radioactive!

But I’m relinquishing my right to shove the vile sludge down their throats: They are saved by their recipe for the chocolate cake layers. I’m not a fan of chocolate, but even I totally swooned when I sank my teeth into the cake. It was moist, it was tender, it was super chocolatey. It was possibly the best chocolate cake I’ve ever made.

But here’s the “sad cake is a happy cake” part. The three layers have to be baked individually, and while each rises to a grand 1-1/2 inches, it sinks by 1/2 inch with 10 minutes to go before it is done.

They emerge with slight ridges around the sides. But still, stacked together, they make a tall, delicious cake with a slight bounce. There was no salty caramel frosting so I piled on some leftover buttercream from the freezer. It worked just as well.

I cut a slice for myself and gave the rest to my husband to share with his colleagues in the office. I am proud to report that, ahem, the cake was a bona fide hit.

Don’t believe me? Read comments below.  (C’mon, people of Discovery Inc, show me some love!)

(….)

(Or no more cake for you.)

Milk Chocolate Malt Ball Cake January 14, 2009

HERE’S a question for all you bakers out there. Who do you blame when a cake turns out badly?

The cookbook author? For having the balls to charge $60 for a book that contains a dud recipe?

The shopkeeper? Because, you know, how could she run out of 65g eggs?! Using 55g eggs will adversely affect your batter’s proportion! Doesn’t she know?

Your oven? Because the thermometer is wonky, and you’re too cheapskate to buy a digital thermometer?

Or yourself? For not being careful because you just had a tiff with your husband and you see his face in the batter and you end up overbeating it?

Or your husband? Because, ditto?

I couldn’t decide whom to blame when I made this cake, taken from Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito’s funky new book, Baked: New Frontiers In Baking. It was a cake I had to make because it contains one of my favourite ingredients, malt (Horlicks, that is. I swore off whisky long ago after it made me hug a toilet bowl for one whole night).

Check out the end product above. Looks pretty good on the outside, yes? Well, wait till I show you a photo of it with a slice cut out. The bottom half of each of the three malt cake layers were completely gummy. (I didn’t have the courage to publish that pic, folks. Alas, my skin is thin.)

Gumminess, in my book, is the second most horrifying thing to see in a cake. It ranks just behind a beautifully risen cake sinking the second you open the oven door. (And, perhaps, watching someone at a party wolf down the last slice of strawberry shortcake from Tampopo Deli).

A quick search on the Net revealed that the gumminess was most possibly due to underbaking. But how could it be? The cakes were pulling away from the sides of the pan when I took them out. Shrinkage is a sure sign that a cake is cooked. Right? Riiiiight? (As you can see, friends, just reliving this is hurting me real bad).

So I can’t blame myself. But I can’t blame the authors either. Maybe the cakes really were underbaked?

I had measured the ingredients and followed the instructions carefully, and my husband wasn’t home during the making of this cake. So I can’t blame them either.

*Thunder clap…* Life is hell when you got no one to blame!!!

But if there’s one good thing about this cake, it is the milk chocolate frosting. Oooo yeah. Dare I say it is the best chocolate coating I’ve ever tasted? It is a typical ganache (chocolate and cream) but with chunks of butter whipped in. So the texture is way smoother and silkier than regular ganache. It was absolutely yumm-meh.

Let’s just dwell on that and not think about the debacle that lies within. Mmmmm… I’m feeling better already.

The great American pound cake January 7, 2009

If there’s one thing I’ve learnt ever since I started this baking thing, it’s this: One man’s meat is another man’s poison. Or shall I say, One man’s perfect pound cake is another man’s putrid pound cake.

Shirley O. Corriher’s latest cookbook BakeWise, which I reviewed last month for the newspaper, opened with this tantalising tale: She reckons she has developed a recipe for the ultimate American pound cake.

Yeah, right. Just about every cookbook I own has a recipe for a “perfect pound cake”. So what. But what sets Corriher’s apart is that she adapted hers from four other perfect pound cake recipes.

She found that recipes taken from a relative, her step-daughter’s friend’s mother, and two from professional bakers – who all proclaim their recipe is “the best” – are essentially the same! Is your heart beating faster now? Mine sure did.

They all have 3 cups flour, about 3 cups sugar, 1-1/2 to 1-3/4 cups fat, 5 or 6 eggs, under a teaspoon of leavening, 2 to 3 teaspoons flavouring, and 1 cup liquid. Each recipe uses a different liquid – sour cream, buttermilk, heavy cream, milk.

So what happened was, she tweaked the recipe here and there – like substituting some butter with veg shortening, substituting some flour with potato starch, adding a bit of canola oil, egg yolks, and whipped cream – to create this suped-up, super-charged pound cake that’s ultra sweet and moist.

Is your jaw on the floor yet? Are you convulsing at the thought of finally sinking your teeth into the ultimate pound cake? Crawling out the door to get a copy of this book?

Well, of course I had to give this recipe a try. And my verdict? It’s okay only lah.

First, Corriher has a notoriously sweet tooth so one bite of this cake could send you straight to NKF (National Kidney Foundation). And, true, it is quite moist. But still, it doesn’t quite hit the spot for me. If this is the great American pound cake, I ain’t going to America. 

My perfect pound cake is one that has big holes in it. It glistens from an unearthly amount of butter added in, it’s not too sweet, and it springs back when I bite.

In short, my perfect pound is the one I grew up eating, brought home by mum from some ching-cheong bakery in the neighbourhood market. Don’t need no fancy-schmantzy canola oil or whipped cream.

I recently had a taste of it when my colleague Pat made her signature butter cake and gave me a slice at work. Believe you me, I begged her for the recipe even if it meant organising the dreaded office party for her for the next 10 years. 

The tragic thing is, even she can’t get it right all the time – something about not creaming it too long or the texture will be dense. Well, I’ve tried the recipe three times – by varying oven temperature and amount of baking powder – and they all bombed.

But one day, world, I’m gonna get there. And then I’m gonna call it the great Singapore pound cake.

Mini layer cakes December 31, 2008

Phoon Huat & Company (Pte) Ltd
231A Pandan Loop
Singapore 128419

Dear Sir,

Re: Urgent enrolment into the Wilton Method Cake Decorating Course

I am writing to make an urgent request. Can I be slotted into your Discover Cake Decorating (Course 1) class scheduled in March?

I was very disappointed to learn from your staff that the class is fully booked, and I have to wait to be informed about the next class. But I cannot afford to wait. I need to take the class AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Let me explain.

I am an avid baker who writes a cake blog at crummb.wordpress.com. As you will see on the site, I have not made any cakes with elaborate piping work because, frankly, I don’t know how to. Whenever a cake called for buttercream decoration, I always adopted the “dab-and-fake-it” method. This involves using a spatula and dabbing on buttercream in a random manner to achieve a casual, free-flowing effect.

It is a look that is popularised by many cookbooks today, and it has even earned me a few nice comments from my readers. But deep down in my heart of hearts, I know I am a fake. I can’t do the basketweave or the fleur de lis. I don’t even know how to pipe a ruffle. Not even a damn leaf.

To illustrate my predicament, I have attached a photo of three mini layer cakes I made recently. For the first, I utilised the ‘dab-and-fake-it’ method which, as you can see, I’ve perfected to an artform. For the second, I attempted a more complicated style that required greater upper-arm dexterity – by pulling the spatula upwards to create even, vertical stripes. The result was okay, though not spectacular.

For the third, I decided to bravely confront my demons. I took out my piping tip #16 and created a shell border on top of the cake. But instead of looking like neatly graduating swirls, they resembled the rounded behinds of a bunch of gorillas bending over side by side.

It was such an eye-sore that my husband, who takes the photographs on my blog, relegated the cake right to the back of the picture, where the circle of shiny posteriors could be obscured by soft focus.

As you can see, my piping skills are in URGENT need of improvement. Only you, by immediately putting me in your class, can take me out of this deep, dark abyss. My reputation, my conscience, my very sanity!, are now in your hands.

I await your good news.

Yours most sincerely,

Crummb

——————————————————————————————————-

P/S: Happy new year, everyone! Thanks for dropping by this past year 🙂

Whipped Cream Layer Cake November 20, 2008

OKAY, it’s confirmed. I’m a cakezilla. And I knew when I started having violent thoughts about Nick Malgieri.

This guy is a revered American baking expert who had written books called How To Bake, Perfect Cakes, and Perfect Pastry. With titles as audacious as these, you’d expect his recipes to be  workable, yes?

Well, no! This is what happened.

My boss asked me to review his latest book, The Modern Baker, for the newspaper. And I was bordering on delirious when I scanned the contents and came across this recipe – Whipped Cream Layer Cake. Regulars to this blog would know by now how much I love whipped cream. And this cake has another ingredient that stirs my loins – caramel. Whipped cream and caramel in one cake! It’s like Christmas every day!

The cake itself went really well. Whipped cream is used in place of butter to provide tenderness and it emerged from the oven firm yet moist. But trouble brewed when I tried making caramel, which is to be whipped into the frosting.

The recipe says 1/2 cup of sugar to 1 teaspoon of water. Mix it up and heat it until it caramelises. Problem is, there’s too little water so instead of caramelising, it crystallised and turned back into coarse sugar.

But this cannot be. We’re talking about Nick Malgieri – graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, pastry chef of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria, winner of numerous James Beard Foundation awards, named one of the top 10 pastry chefs in America by Chocolatier magazine, and 1996 inductee into the Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. How can Nick Malgieri be wrong?

So I tried again. And again. Five times I heated the sugar and water and five times I got the same blood-boiling result. 

With steam shooting out of my ears, I turned to another cookbook for a proper caramel recipe. I whipped up the frosting, covered the cake, and it tasted absolutely divine.

But still I was mad. While washing up, wild thoughts ran amok:

Call yourself an award-winning cookbook author? Can’t even make bloody caramel!

Charge US$35 for that cookbook? Use summa that to hire a recipe tester!

Look at all these sugar I’m throwing away. Those sugar canes died for nothing!

Don’t let me meet you in person, Mr Malgieri, or I’m gonna smear all that rock sugar on your bearded face. Take that for James BEARD!

Husband-photographer Z came home and told me about his day at work. Mmph, I responded. He told me a joke. Mmph, I attempted a laugh. My baby daughter could have launched into a Riverdance routine, executed a 2-half somersault in pike position and a perfect landing, and I would’ve just said, Mmph. I was that grumpy.

I am cakezilla. Hear me roar.

——————————————————————–

P/S: On a completely separate note, can somebody please drop a comment about how gorgeous this photo looks? I mean, it is pretty damn good, right? I think husband-photographer Z did a great job. But hardly anyone ever paid any attention to his photos. And he is sad. Every time I check in for stats and comments, he’d go, “No one say anything about my photo?” I’d look at him in silence,  he’d look back, and we’d hear crickets chirping from a faraway distance.

C’mon guys, show him some lerv.