Coffee Macadamias Nut Cupcake

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #13: Enjoy Cupcakes (November 2011), hosted by Min of Min's Blog.

Recipe

Ingredients
Crumble topping:
20g butter
20g brown sugar
20g flour
10g ground almond

Cake batter:
125g unsalted butter
90g caster sugar
1/4tsp salt
2 eggs
135g cake flour
1/2tsp baking powder
30g milk
2tsp instant coffee powder
50g macadamias nut (toasted and chopped)

Steps:
Crumble topping:
1. Sift flour in a bowl.
2. Mix sugar and ground almond into flour.
3. Use your fingers to rub butter into the flour mixture until it resemble bread crumb.
4. Cover and chill in the fridge.

Cake batter:
1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Line muffin tin with paper casing and set aside.
3. Warm up milk and mix in coffee powder and set aside to cool.
4. Sift flour and baking powder together, set aside
5. Beat butter, sugar and salt until light and creamy.
6. Slowly add in egg and beat until well combined.
7. Fold in flour and coffee mixture alternately until well combined.
8. Lastly add in chopped nuts and mix well.
9. Spoon batter into paper casing until 70% full.
10.Sprinkle crumble topping over.
11.Bake in preheated oven for 20-25mins.
12.Remove cupcakes from tin and cool on a wire rack.

Orange Chocolate Marble Cupcake

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #13: Enjoy Cupcakes (November 2011), hosted by Min of Min's Blog.

Recipe

Ingredients
120g unsalted butter
90g caster sugar
1/4tsp salt
2 eggs
140g cake flour
1tsp baking powder
juice of 1 orange (about 60g)
zest of 1 orange

1 1/2tsp cocoa powder

Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Line muffin tin with paper casing and set aside.
3. Sift flour and baking powder together, set aside
4. Beat butter, sugar and salt until light and creamy.
5. Slowly add egg and orange zest, beat until well combined.
6. Fold in flour and orange juice alternately until well combined.
7. Scoop 3tbsp of batter into a small bowl and mix in cocoa powder.
8. Pour cocoa batter into orange batter.
9. With a spatula use a cutting stroke to mix the two batter and stir once or twice will do.
10.Spoon batter into paper casing until 3/4 full.
11.Bake in preheated oven for 20-25mins.
12.Remove cupcakes from tin and cool on a wire rack.

French Style Sponge Cupcake (法试海绵小蛋糕)

Soft and irresistible, I ate half of the cupcake before I took the last shot hehehe... ;p

Recipe source from '孟老师的100道小蛋糕'.

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #13: Enjoy Cupcakes (November 2011), hosted by Min of Min's Blog.

Recipe

Ingredients (yield 6 cupcakes)
60g egg white
15g caster sugar

40g egg yolk
30g caster sugar
1/2tsp vanilla paste
30g cake flour
20g corn flour

adequate amount of desiccated coconut/grated cheese

Steps:
1. Preheat oven at 175C.
2. Sift flour and corn flour together, set aside.
3. With a hand whisk, whisk egg yolk, sugar and vanilla paste till sugar melted, set aside.
4. Use a cake mixer, whisk egg whites till frothy.
5. Gradually add in sugar and whisk till stiff peaks form.
6. Fold in 1/3 of the meringue into the egg yolk batter until combined.
7. Then fold in half portion of the meringue follow by half portion of the sifted flour, repeat process.
8. Pour batter into a piping bag, pipe batter into cupcake cups till 80% full.
9. Sprinkle top with desiccated coconut/grated cheese.
10.Bake in preheated oven for 15-18mins.
11.Remove cakes from oven and cool on wire rack.

Tropical Pineapple Cupcake

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #13: Enjoy Cupcakes (November 2011), hosted by Min of Min's Blog.

Recipe

Ingredients
125g unsalted butter
70g sugar
1/4tsp salt
2 eggs
75g cake flour
1tsp baking powder
20g desiccated coconut
1/2tsp pineapple essence (optional)
2rings pineapple (canned)

Steps:
1. Preheat oven to 180C.
2. Line muffin tin with paper casing and set aside.
3. Sift flour and baking powder together, set aside
4. Beat butter, sugar and salt until light and creamy.
5. Add egg slowly and beat until well combined.
6. Fold in flour and desiccated coconut until well combined.
7. Cut pineapple ring into 4 pieces and place 2 pieces into the paper casing.
8. Spoon batter into paper casing until 3/4 full.
9. Arrange pineapple pieces on top of the batter.
10.Bake in preheated oven for 25mins.
11.Remove cupcakes from tin and cool on a wire rack.

Pandan Two Tone Steamed Buns

Recipe

Ingredients
30g warm water
1 1/2tsp instant yeast

250g Hong Kong flour/ pau flour
65g icing sugar
1/2tsp baking powder
80g pandan water (Boil few blades of pandan leaves with 150ml of water for 10mins.)
15g shortening

few drops of pandan paste

Steps:
1. Mix yeast and lukewarm water together, set aside for 10-15mins.
2. Sift flour, icing sugar and baking powder onto a clean surface and make a well in the centre.
3. Pour yeast mixture, pandan water and shortening into the centre of the well.
4. Stir in flour and knead with your palm till a smooth and soft dough is formed. (You may need to add some flour if the dough is sticky.)
5. Cover and set aside to rest for 40mins.
6. Place dough on a floured surface and knead for a while.
7. Divide dough into two portions (210g and 238g).
8. Knead few drops of pandan paste into 210g dough while leaving the other dough plain.
9. Place pandan dough on floured greased proof paper, flatten dough and roll out dough into long rectangular, trim 4 edges to get straight lines.
10.Flatten plain dough on floured tabletop and roll it into long rectangular, trim 4 edges to get straight lines.
11.Together with the grease proof paper, flip the pandan dough onto the plain dough and remove grease proof paper.
12.Press lightly and roll it up from the wider side.
13.With a shape knife cut into 10 slices.
14.Place it on a square(6x6cm) grease proof paper.
15.Cover and let it rest for 30mins.
16.Preheat steamer, bring water to a rapid boiling, drop in few blades of pandan leaves.
17.Arrange buns on steaming rack with some gap in between buns for expansion.
18.Steam buns over medium heat for 10mins.

Note: The dough is very soft and slight sticky. Don't add too much flour during kneading as this will cause the buns turn hard.

Kuih Dadar

Recipe

Ingredients
Batter:
200g plain flour
2tbsp corn flour
400g grated white coconut
400ml water
1 egg
1/4tsp salt
1/2tsp pandan paste

Filling:
300g grated white coconut
120g palm sugar (chopped)
1/3tsp salt
3blades pandan leaves
100ml water

Method:
Filling:
1. Boil water, salt, palm sugar and pandan leaves together til sugar dissolved.
2. Add in grated coconut and stir till dry.
3. Discard pandan leaves and set aside to cool.

Batter:
1. Add water into grated white coconut and extract 600ml of coconut milk.
2. Sift plain flour, salt and corn flour into a big mixing bowl.
3. Make a well in the center of the flour.
4. Add in egg and coconut milk, mix well. (Batter must be thin, runny consistency.)
5. Add in pandan paste and mix well.
6. Strain batter.
7. Heat up non-stick pan and lightly greased pan.
8. Stir batter and ladle some batter onto pan.
9. Rotate pan so that batter cover the base of the pan.
10.Leave crepe to cook over low heat.
11.When you move the pan around and crepe is able to slide around the pan, it cook.
12.Carefully remove crepe onto a plate, leave to cool and repeat process.
13.Spoon some filling onto one end of the crepe,
14.Roll up one end a little, fold in both ends and roll up the crepe like a little parcel.

Steamed Malay Cake (马来糕)

I added in a few more drops of colouring after the last stage of mixing and it resulted a strong yellowish 马来糕. :(

Recipe

Ingredients
3 eggs
110g caster sugar
1/4tsp salt
125g Hong Kong flour
20g custard powder
1tsp baking powder
1/2tsp baking soda
1/4tsp vanilla paste
65g veg. oil
few drops of yellow food colouring

Steps:
1. Sift flour, custard powder, baking powder and baking soda together and set aside.
2. Whisk eggs, salt and sugar together until thick and fluffy.
3. Lightly fold in flour into egg batter.
4. Cover and rest for 45mins.
5. Mix vanilla paste, colouring and oil together.
6. Lastly fold in oil mixture into batter until well blended.
7. Fill well greased moulds with cake batter till full.
8. Arrange moulds in steamer.
9. Steam in a preheated steamer over medium high heat for 30mins.
10.Remove cake from mould and cool it on a wire rack.

Note: It important to well greased the moulds for cakes to rise tall. If not the cakes will stick to the mould and result a heavy texture.

Whisking Egg Method

The above photo shown the stable stage of egg batter, thick and fluffy.

Method:
- Firstly, whisk egg and sugar together at high speed for about 5mins till it double in volume.
- Then reduce speed to medium-low and continue to whisk till egg batter is stable. When you lift up the whisk, the egg batter will slowly flow down and about 3-4cm of egg batter hanging at the tip of the whisk. You can also notice that the dripped egg batter in the mixing bowl will stay in position for a while. Approximate whisking time is about 10-12mins depend on your cake mixer, number of eggs and size of the eggs you used.
- Last stage, reduce speed to low and continue to whisk for another 1-2mins. This is to minimize the air bubbles. And it ready to fold in other ingredients.