Curly Lashes Treats

Exquisite Red Velvet

2012-04-27T00:08:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I last updated my blog. I haven't been baking a lot recently, as the kitchen at home was under renovation. Ever since its refurbishment completed last weekend, I had been so tempting to try a new recipe in my brand-new oven!! I couldn't express my gratitude more for my parents for buying the oven, and I decided to test a recipe that all girls would love - cupcakes. Originally I was going for the lemon cupcake with lemon curd filling, however, one of my colleagues suggested that I should try red velvet, and so - I made red velvet cupcakes. But I did make a little twist to it - I inserted lemon curd filling to balance the sweetness of the cupcake and I used mascarpone cheese to do the buttercream instead of cream cheese. And it came out perfect - the texture of the cake was so light and fluffy, the lemon curd matched well with the cake and the mascarpone buttercream was so smooth. It was truly exciting to see that the oven temperature was so stable that it allowed the cupcakes to rise beautifully. I loved it, loved it and couldn't be more satisfied :)

Thanks to all the positive comments from colleagues, family and friends. Your fulfulling expressions and happiness whilst eating the cupcake made my day!

Here's the recipe that makes 12 portions:

1 1/4 cups (125 grams) sifted cakeflour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoons (10 grams) regular or Dutch-processed cocoa powder

1/4 cup (57 grams) unsaltedbutter, at room temperature

3/4 cups (150 grams) granulated whitesugar

1 largeegg

1/2 teaspoon purevanillaextract

1/2 cup (120 ml) buttermilk

1 tablespoon liquid red food coloring

1/2 teaspoon white distilled vinegar

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and line 12 muffin tins with paper cupcake liners.

2. In a large bowl sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder.

3. In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter until soft (about 1-2 minutes). Add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes). Add the egg and beat until incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined.

4. In a measuring cup whisk the buttermilk with the red food coloring. With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and buttermilk to the butter mixture, in three additions, beginning and ending with the flour.

In a small cup combine the vinegar and baking soda. Allow the mixture to fizz and then quickly fold into the cake batter.

5. Working quickly, divide the batter evenly among the 12 muffin cups and smooth the tops with an offset spatula or the back of a spoon.Bake in the preheated oven for approximately 18 -23 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of the cupcakes comes out clean.

6. Cool the cakes in their pans on a wire rack for 10 minutes and them remove from pan. Let cool completely before frosting. Pipe Frosting as desired.

Source of recipe: red velvet cupcake from Joy of Baking

For the mascarpone buttercream:

227g mascarpone cheese

1 tsp vanilla essence

6 tsbp butter (softened)

1 cup of confectioner's sugar

Directions: use a whisk or electric mixer, mix the butter and confectioner's sugar until light and fluffy. Add in mascarpone cheese, vanilla essence and beat until smooth. Fill it to a pipping bag and pipe onto the cupcakes.

For the lemon curd (fills 6):
1 egg
26ml of lemon juice
50g sugar
19g butter
1tsp lemon zest

Directions:
1. In a stainless steel bowl placed over a saucepan of simmering water, whisk together the eggs, sugar, and lemon juice until blended.
2. Cook, stirring constantly (to prevent it from curdling), until the mixture becomes thick (like sour cream or a hollandaise sauce) (160 degrees F or 71 degrees C). This will take approximately10 minutes.
3. Remove from heat and immediately pour through a fine strainer to remove any lumps.
4. Cut the butter into small pieces and whisk into the mixture until the butter has melted.
5. Add the lemon zest and let cool. The lemon curd will continue to thicken as it cools. Cover immediately (so a skin doesn't form) and refrigerate for up to a week.

Source: lemon curd from Joy of Baking

Chocolate Banana Swirl

2012-03-03T05:23:00.000-08:00

After my boyfriend has departed for Australia, there's been so much time left to myself. As such, I have developed the habit of baking almost every weekend. Sometimes I try new recipes, but most of the time I love to get hold to my most frequently baked besties. And this include banana cake. I love the banana aroma filling almost every part of the house, it just makes me feel so enjoyable.

And yes, today, I made the classic soft and fluffy banana cake again. However, this time I gave the recipe a little twist, and added a layer of chocolate to it. It turned out great and I was quite satisfied with what came out of the oven. The only part that I was not satisfied was that the bottom of the cake was a bit too moist. You can see it from my picture below. Nevertheless, it was a very good cake, and it had a very nice natural cut on the top, which I believe was due to the good balance of mixing I have done.

To enable myself to make banana cake whenever I wanted to, I always store up very ripe bananas at home. Nobody at homes eat them because they look a bit too ugly with all "freckles" on the skin. But they are in fact the key to a good banana cake. So remember, next time if you see ripe bananas that are abandoned, do save it up, smudge it and store it in the freezer. It can last for a few months! If you decide to use it, simply defrost it and then you can mix it with the other ingredients :)

Here's the recipe which I have adopted from Shirley and twisted it a little - making it more healthy, and more delicious - you will find that, banana and chocolate are - very great friends, probably, the best of the best friends :)

Utensils:

Spatula

rectanguar baking tin

parchment paper

a bowl for mixing

electric mixer

sieve

Ingredients:

100g butter ( I used margarine and it turned out great)

90g sugar (I used brown sugar to give it the darker colour and also reduced to 70g only)

120g cake flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp vanilla essence (optional)

200g banana smudge

10g cocoa powder (I used valrhona and it makes a difference)

2 eggs

nuts (optional)

Procedures:

1. Leave the eggs to room temperature and soften the butter (it takes around 2 hours) and preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius.

2. Smudge the bananas if you use fresh ones. Otherwise, defrost frosted banana smudge.

3. Sieve cake flour, baking power and baking soda and set aside.

4. Use the electric mixer to mix the butter and sugar until it appear creamy white. It will take around 5 minutes on medium speed.

5. Add in the eggs one by one, and mix thoroughly before you add in the second egg. Add also the vanilla essence

6. Add in the sieved flour mixture. Gently fold in to combine the ingredients.

7. Add in the banana smudge and gently mix until combine. Do not over-mix. You may add nuts at this stage if you wish.

8. Take out 1/3 of the batter and mix with the sieved cocoa powder.

9. line the parchment paper in the rectangular tin. Pour half of the banana batter into the tin.

10. Pour in the chocolate batter and spread evenly.

11. Lastly, pour the remaining banana batter and spread evenly. You may use a knife to gently carve into the batter to give the cake a "swirl".

12. Bake for around 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool and ready to serve.

Tip 1: to prevent air bubbles to form in the batter, gently tap the tin against the kitchen table a few times before you put the tin into the oven.

Tip 2: to give it a nice crack in the middle, you may use a knife to carve on the middle from left to right when the top of the cake appears solid while baking.

PS. This cake is. really. good.

新年蒙福

2012-01-23T07:12:00.000-08:00

新年總要為擁有一切感恩。
今天是年初一，整家人運同澳洲回來的親人又一起到我家玩樂, 吃開年飯。
實在有太多東西要預備了，但因為下午有很多時間，每年初一就會成為我整餅的日子。
實在做過太多太多餅了都根本記不得自己做過什麼，但原來上年這個時候我就做了鬆餅，今年, 因為我買了椰絲，就決定做椰絲牛油曲奇。

到我開始落手落腳做的時候，才發現.. 我除了牛油和雞蛋外...我什麼都沒有..-___-
麵粉不夠，糖也不夠... 結果，我用了中筋麵粉和黃糖做這個曲奇，雖然有總統牛油... 就是覺得缺少了一份鬆脆。不過, 整體來說我都是滿意的，這個曲奇很香，為新年加了不少氣氛 :)

材料: (約60小塊)
牛油 226g
糖霜 113g
麵粉 282g
雞蛋 1隻

做法:
1. 牛油溫室放軟。
2. 把牛油與糖霜混合，用打蛋器打至牛油和糖轉奶白色並幼滑。
3. 加入雞蛋並打均。
4. 加入已篩的麵粉，混合至所有材料完全融合。
5. 放進唧袋並擠出曲奇，放入預熱至180度的焗爐內焗至金黃色 (大概10-15 分鐘)。
6. 自行裝飾，寫上福字。

祝大家新年快樂 :)

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers # 15: Auspicious Dishes for CNY (January 2012) hosted by Wen of Wen's Delight.

Chinese New Year!

2012-01-20T07:28:00.000-08:00

Chinese New Year is fun because it is a time for great family gatherings!

Each year we eat lots and tonnes of good food, and of course this would include the traditional chinese new year cakes! This year, I made my second attempt to make the turnip cake. It was very delicious, obviously, because I put soooo many ingredients inside! My mom almost wanted to kill me because I used sooo much of her very expensive dried scallops... lol

Anyway, I was very happy with the finishing product and it was a fun experience although it was very tiring to shred all the ingredients... and it was very sweet that my boyfriend did all these with me, and tolerated my bad temper throughout cooking.. shouting at him ... haha.

Here's the recipe!

CNY Turnip Cake

For one 6" pan:

Ingredients:
Turnip 1200g
rice flour 125g
corn flour/ corn starch 1tbsp
dried big mushroom (花姑) 10 pieces (or less)
dried scallops 10 pieces (or less)
dried shrimps 15 pieces
oil 2tsp
oyster sauce 3tbsp
pepper 1tsp
diced shallot 1 tbsp

Procedure:
1. Shred the turnip into ribbon like pieces and save up the water that comes out from the turnip.
2. soak the mushrooms, dried shrimps and dried scallops in separate bowls of warm water to soften them and then steam them for 20 minutes. Tear the dried scallops into little pieces. Cut the mushrooms and dried shrimps into little pieces. Save up the water that was used to soak the dried scallops and mushrooms.
3. Heat the pan with 1tsp of oil and add in the turnips plus the water that came out from the turnip. Stir-fry until the turnip pieces become soft. Turn off the fire and add in oyster sauces and 3 tbsp of water that was used to soak the dried scallops.
4. Heat another pan with 1tsp of oil and stir-fry the mushrooms, dried shrimps and dried scallops. Add in the turnip and mix well. Add pepper to taste. This is the turnip mixture.
5. Sieve the rice flour and corn flour/starch and add them into the turnip mixture. Mix well.
6. Put the mixture into aluminium foil bowls that are slightly scanted with oil. Steam it for approximately 40 minutes. You may pour all the water that was used to soak mushrooms, dried shrimps and scallops into the water for steaming the turnip cake. It will add to the smell of the turnip cake. :)
7. Add in the diced shallots.
8. Ready to serve or can be fried again to serve.

It can be kept for around 1 week in the refrigerator.

The original recipe can be found here.

Happy Chinese New Year to everyone! :)

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #15: Auspicious Dishes for CNY (January 2012) hosted by Wen of Wen's Delight.

Gingerbread treats

2011-12-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

Yes. This year I made over 80 gingerbread cookies with each and everyone of them having a unique design. It was a tough test of creativity but I really enjoyed the process although I spent more then 12 hours decorating them.. not to mention the baking time and preparation.

Yet, I was so glad that not only did the cookie taste well, the decoration were very impressive too. Everyone who got my cookie was delighted and amazed by the decoration, which gave me a lot of encouragement.

Thanks to all those who supported me and those who enjoyed the cookies. :)

The recipe is simple, same as my last post, I bought a gingerbread mix from City'super HK, (although I forgot the brand.. it was definitely not "gingerhaus" manufactured in USA - which tasted rather bad) and made the royal icing myself from the recipe here.

I got many themes for the cookies, and here it is:-

House theme

Christmas Charms theme

Christmas Tree theme

Christmas charms with santa!

Christmas tree with santa!

Gingerbread man

Gingerbread men theme

Sheep theme

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #14 Creative Christmas Bakes (December 2011) hosted by Hankerie.

I must try it again next year :)

Christmas Nativity Story

2011-12-27T07:32:00.000-08:00

This year I decided to make a nativity story with gingerbread cookies. Thanks to a friend who gifted me a set of nativity story cookie cutters on my baptism, I was able to use some imagination and complete the nativity story. It was indeed a test of decorating skills because the cookies were small and not easy to decorate at all, especially the facial expressions.

To save time, I used a gingerbread mix bought from City'super HK which required adding around 30g of water and 30 g of butter, and I made approximately 80 cookies. It tasted really good and I was quite satisfied with the outcome. I made the royal icing using the recipe from here. I liked the icing's consistency, but beware that if you use liquid food colouring, the royal icing cannot last for another day as it will turn more fluid and not good for drawing anymore.

Christmas is my favourite time of the year, because of all beautiful decorations, christmas trees, exchanging gifts and most important of all, it's the birth of Jesus. I am so glad everyone enjoyed the cookies and I was able to spread message of "Love, Peace and Joy" in Christmas!

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #14: Creative Christmas Bakes (December 2011) hosted by Hankerie.
Merry Christmas to everyone!

Cupcake mania @ Double Chocolate Cupcake with buttercream icing

2011-11-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

Here it is! I made another double chocolate cupcake with buttercream icing and chocolates for a friend's party and they were fantastic! Loved the English plates that my friend provided, they made the cupcakes even more appetizing!

I followed the recipe of chocolate cupcake from Shirley @ 原味生活 but used my own buttercream icing recipe which is done by mixing 188g of butter with around 150g of icing sugar (to be adjusted to your own sweetness) and some food colouring (if desired).

Cupcakes are definitely an all time favourite!

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

Farewell - Lemon Cupcakes with cream cheese icing

2011-11-12T06:56:00.000-08:00

Last Friday was my last day in my department and so, I was thinking of making farewell cakes instead of buying cakes. I didn't actually realize it was indeed so tiring and difficult to make 80 portions of cakes until I started working on it two nights before my last day. I had a total of around 7 hours to work on the cakes and in the end, I made it! :)

Out of all kinds of cakes I made, I received great comments on the Lemon Cupcake with cream cheese frosting. Because of the shortage of time, I used a 250g pack of original flavour cake mix (adding 4 eggs and 30 g of water) and DIY the recipe a bit, by adding the zest of one whole lemon and 1tsp of lemon juice. The cream cheese frosting was made by mixing 225g of cream cheese together with 55g of butter, adding then 200g of icing sugar and mixing finally with 2.5ml of vanilla essence. The aroma of lemon filled my nose after the cupcake was baked and my colleagues loved it!

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

A business idea?

2011-10-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

I was quite pleased with my first crafts of cake pops. Although the decorations were not perfect and there were many flaws due to the bad handling of chocolate and coating... my friends were still very amazed when they saw the cake pops.

I came up with the idea of making them when I was thinking what to bake for my colleague's birthday party. Having known that other friends are going to buy cakes for them, I decided that I shouldn't bake any thing extra as there would be too much cake for everyone! Instead, I came up with the idea of making birthday pops. I loved them!! Although I was a bit lazy and due to time constraint, I made the cake inside with cake mix, I still spent a lot of time shaping the cake and decorating the cake.

My efforts paid off as my colleagues were very very impressed and they loved it. I was so blessed and happy that I could bring joy to them. Thank you God, for giving me a pair of hands that could bake and decorate.

And I do realize that in Hong Kong, cake pops are not that popular. But this is such a cute and pretty sweet for parties!! Maybe I could specialize in that.. if I would ever open a shop in the future...!

Inspried by Bakerella.

Fruit Pastry Cake

2011-10-17T08:01:00.000-07:00

Recently I was very attracted to making a fruit pastry cake, as it seemed sooo appetizing and delicious.

Finally, during the first week of October, I made it! It smelled sooo fruity and good when it was in the oven. And I was quite satisfied with the outcome and outlook of the cake. Everyone loved it and one of my colleagues even said she wouldn't mind eating tens of it. I felt so blessed I have the gift to make good cakes and share the enjoyable moments with my friends and family.

Yes. This cake is so addictive that I am going to make it again, again and again!

It actually reminded me of Maxim's pineapple cake. But my colleague said they were way better than Maxim's cakes. :P and on second attempt, I made it with cake flour and brown sugar. It still tasted fantastic! Wow!

The only thing I was dissatisfied was that I shouldn't have added the raisins and cranberries on top. Cuz after baking, they went really hard and wasn't quite delicious anymore!

Little fruity cakes!

With peach and kiwi

Fruit Pastry cake in fisheye!

In my present boxes hehe

Cinnamon rolls

2011-10-05T07:11:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a lot of baking blogs lately, especially excited about seeing the round ups of Aspiring Bakers #11 Mid-Autumn Treats for September, hosted by Happy Home Baker. There were so many nicely decorated and baked/ iced festive treats and I was also happy to see my own submission in the blog. This is indeed a very fun and meaningful activity for those who loves to bake.

In fact, in the past two weeks I have been baking sometime too. But I was too busy to update what I have baked. Anyway, most of the times they were just easy stuff like cookies and muffins. I have long awaited for this Chung Yeung Festival (which we get a day off from work) to bake something that is pretty time consuming. And, I decided to do what I did with Marianne, my flatmate back in Copenhagen when I was off to exchange studies, Cinnamon Rolls, recipe following that of Happy Home Baker. I read some reviews and thought it was quite easy to make. But things didn't turn out exactly what I have hoped for, haha. The dough was much more moist than I thought it would be and I had a really hard time rolling it out and shaping the roll. I sprinkled a lot of flour already, and I really want to know what was the problem. Also, I was stupid enough to buy cinnamon stick, thinking that it would be so easy to extract cinnamon afresh.. but I had a super tiring time scraping the cinnamon stick to the grater (which was the only thing I had to extract cinnamon)... then mom told me to use the electric mixer.. so we chopped the cinnamon sticks into little pieces and put it in the mixer. Just when I thought it was successful, because I saw the sticks turned into power-like products, then I realized that I have broken the mixer because the plastic stub under the mixer was too hot and it kind of melt and broke...:(

Anyway, I was able to extract fresh cinnamon.. and the cinnamon rolls that I made were very small and cute. My sister ate two and she said it was really good. I hope so.. but the bread became hard after a few hours. I decided to put it into the freezer, and I think we could still eat it whenever we want by reheating it in the oven again. It was a nice try though, I had great fun making the rolls :) And I really missed the times in Copenhagen when me and Marianne made like 4 dozens of cinnamon rolls in one go!!

I had a really hard time rolling out this dough.. it was very sticky :(

but the cinnamon were sooo fresh!! I added some raisins too

Just before baking. In fact, they are very small rolls only! hhehe. Less than the size of my palm.

And here is the completed cinnamon rolls :) Not too bad!

Crazy me and marianne

And these were the cinnamon rolls I made with Marianne back in Copenhagen!

And now I am so looking forward to the weekend! I am going to try a fruit pound cake, hopefully!

Stay Hungry. Stay foolish. 求知若渴，虛心若愚

2011-09-26T01:40:00.000-07:00

Today I read an article in the newspaper which gave me great insights. It was written by Steve Jobs when he gave a speech at the 2005 Graduation Ceremony of Stanford University. In the article, he mentioned that he had three stories to share with the graduates, one about cconnecting the dots, the other about love and loss and the last one about death.

He dropped out of college adn went to a calligraphy class to learn about typography. And he found great application of the skill when he designed the first Macintosh computer.

"You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever."

There are so many external factors and influence that pulled us back from pursuing something by gut feeling and by will. A girl reads law and it was expected that she would become a lawyer. Her parents have spent so much money in supporting her to go to law school, to pursue a career that seemed to have a glamourous and successful future. It seemed to her that although she did not like law that much, it would be wasteful to pursue another dream, after so many years of study. So she continued to become a lawyer... We have heard so many stories of these, and is it too sad to realize that this is the state we are in?

Steve Jobs metnioned that he got fired from Apple and he started his own comapny NeXT. Suprisingly, in a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT and so he returned to Apple again. Yes, loosing a job was an awful tasting medicine, but the patient needs it, he said.

"Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith... You have got to find what you love... Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do."

When I read to this, there was only one thing that kept pondering in my mind. The thing that I loved to do... and sadly it was not my present job. I had a very perplexed feeling, as I felt that I was so stuck in my present job and I do not see that I would be able to pursue what I love to do at least in the next 5 years. Is that why people say we should plan for a ten year goal? I suddenly realized what I wanted to be in 5 years and in 10 years could be so different. 10 years do appear to me.. truly as another stage of life. And as I wrote, deep in my heart I really hoped that when I look back to this post after 10 years, I would really be doing something I am dreaming of.

We all fear death. But it as so true, as played in Midnight Paris, the movie, that if you fear death, you could never be a great writer. I believe this is so even if we are not writers. We fear death and that's why we try to avoid thinking about death. But death can be so close to us. And although I have heard it many times, Steve Jobs reminded again that. remembering you will be dead soon is the most important tool you can encounter to help you make the big choices in life, because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, they all fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

"Remebering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

This actually echoes his first story and second story about finding what you truly want to do and love what you do and simply just do it. Because they will all happen if you truly follow your heart and intuition. He reminded me not to be trapped by dogma, living with the results of other people's thinking, and drowning out your own inner voices by noises of others' opinion. I guess inside our hearts, we do really know what we want to become, it's just that we are afraid to achieve it, or couldn't care less about our dreams because of all sorts of reasons.. e.g. we can't make a living of it, we are not talented enough, we do not have the necessary capital to achieve.. etc. Yes, these may be the factors hindering the achievement of dreams. But isn't there a saying "When there is a will, there is a way?"

Set our souls free, and oh yes, I feel lighter. And I know, one day, soon, I will see my dream come true.

The full script of Steve Job's script can be found here.

100% home-made

2011-09-22T08:32:00.000-07:00

I got this little stamp for making cookies from my boss last Christmas as a Christmas present. I absolutely loved the gift and never thought he was so observant and got me a gift that I really liked!

At last, I used the stamp to make butter cookies today. I haven't been making butter cookies for a very long time, because it was not too healthy, and it uses up a lot of my time to stamp good-looking cookies. I realized that it wasn't as easy as I thought, and it turned out that my rolling of the dough was quite uneven such that the cookie surface was not very level-ed. Anyway, it was still a good attempt and I loved the stamped effect with the words "home bake". Yes! It's real 100% HOME-BAKED full of love and sweetness and the smell of very well mixed butter. My mom loved it!

Recipe: 印模牛油曲奇@ Shirley@原味生活

Belated Happy Moon Festival

2011-09-13T08:12:00.000-07:00

Happy Moon Festival!

This year I just spent the night with my family and we played mj!! It was a fun night and we tried all sorts of mooncake.

In fact, I did make some mooncakes, most of them being pink in colour, with a flaky texture. It's chiu chow style, following the recipe of Happy Home Baker and Carol 自在生活, and I would call them pink swirl flaky mooncake (can't really think of a rather more professional term for it...LOL). It turned out quite nice and I was quite satisfied with the appearance of them, although some of my family and friends thought it looked a bit weird. :) I made the moon cakes with three kinds of fillings - lotus seed, taro and sweet potato. The mooncake was not too sweet, they were just perfect after a heavy festive dinner !!

Love the arrangement!

I really enjoyed the time baking these little things. I had great fun searching for the boxes, making my own labels of "Happy Mid Autumn" and packing them nicely :)

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #11: Mid-Autumn Treats (September 2011) hosted by Happy Home Baking. I started reading her blog a while ago and tried a few of her recipes. They are great and it was her very edible pictures of these cute little mooncakes that encouraged me to bake my own mooncakes for the festival! This is the first time I am making public of my blog. Although I am not sure if anyone really does read my blog, but the attempt of participating in Aspiring Bakers is certainly boosting my confidence of what I can achieve and an encouragement to myself by sharing my joy of baking with others who feel the same.

Curly treats*

2011-09-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

Last week I spent some quality time baking brownies. They were so amazing and delicious that my family and friends could not help but eat non-stop. Although it was a bit over-baked, I am still so glad I found another great recipe from Tony Wong.

Today, when I thought about it again, I realized how much I enjoyed baking. Yes, it takes up a lot of my time and effort, and sweats, but they are all worth it when I see satisfaction in people who bite on it. I could bake a whole afternoon and not realize it was time for dinner!! I would give up answering calls from boyfriend and focus on making my delicious treats. This is dedication, and this is what I truly want to be dedicated to. Baking just makes me feel... so refreshed and satisfied and most important of all, happy!!

As I have just opened my own blog a while ago, I would like to share some pictures of my treats I did in the past which I loved and enjoyed most. Thanks to all the friends who gave support by eating my treats, giving me very positive encouragements, I was most delighted when I saw smiles and yummy looks on your faces :)

chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing :)

MACAO PUDDING

banana muffin

fudge brownies!!

chocolate lamington

strawberry mousse cake!

first attempt of swiss roll..

my favourite chocolate pudding! its melting inside warms the winter!

blueberry tarts!

mini strawberry chocolate cakes!

strawberry and blueberry tartlets

chocolate truffles

Last of all, I loved the presentation using English style plates!!

butterflies in stomach

2011-09-06T08:15:00.000-07:00

I had always loved to make palmiers, because they are so easy yet so sweet and crispy. Everyone of my friends love it and it's definitely a lovely treat to make after a long, hard and busy day.

Those little butterflies delight me always and I loved the process of painting butter, vanilla essence and sugar on the pastry :)

Simple as it is, here are the ingredients:
1 piece of frozen ready-made puff pastry
approximately 20g melted butter
1 few drops of vanilla essence
60g of granulated sugar

Method
1. roll sugar all around the pastry.
2. add a few drops of the vanilla essence to the melted butter
3. lightly roll butter onto the sugar filled pastry until evenly distributed.
4. do the same for the other side of the pastry.
5. divide the pastry into 4 rectangular portions and fold each side of the pastry for 1/4. fold again so that both sides meet at the center.
6. put some sugar and butter on the folded pastry again.
7. further fold the pastry (either left to right or right to left) so that one side overlaps the other side.
8. cut into small pieces of around 1.5" each.
9. refrigerate it a bit if it's too soft to handle.
10. until it's slightly hardened, bake it inside a preheated oven at 180c for around 15 minutes until one side turns golden brown. flip the palmiers to the other side until the other side also reaches golden brown. Set aside and ready to serve.

夢想與現實的爭戰

2011-09-02T21:23:00.000-07:00

終於決定起個自己的blog,，原因很簡單，想開始為自己的夢想爭戰。這一刻竟覺得心情很複雜，因為知道距離夢想的終點路途還十分遙遠，但經過3 年來，焙烘已從一個活動成為一個嗜好，一個我下班後還會有動力去做的事。當我發現自己會捨得花很多很多時間研究這一門藝術，(我稱之為藝術因為當中包含了個人的創意、心思及技巧，集藝於術)我發現自己對此的興趣有增無減，我就開始明白.. 什麼是夢想了。那種對焙烘濃厚的興趣，是我在這麼多年的學業裡都沒有產生，但每當我完成一次的焙烘並看見親友吃得高興滿足時，那種喜悅及成功感實在不能在現有的事業上找得到。所以我說，這是夢想與現實的一場爭戰，因為我明白自己在不久的將來都沒有可能實現自己的夢想，然而，我每次焙烘都在努力，努力掌握更好的技術，為要實踐我的夢想。懂我事業的人，也許會認為我若為夢想放棄現有的事業是很笨的一回事，但我知道，活在現實裡依然可以堅持夢想!

從小到大，我都不曾知道自己的夢想是什麼... 也沒有很強烈的擁有過一個夢想，但當我決定開此blog的一刻，我知道，我找到夢想了。

請支持我。