Happy birthday

Another year older, another year.

A light fresh cream cake from our favorite cakery Prima Deli. The amount of sweetness is just right for those who do not have a very sweet tooth. 

Strawberry classic cream cake. 

Tiramisu Hero

http://thetiramisuhero.com/

(screenshot of tiramisuhero menu selection on its website)

Grin Affair

Chocolate cake in a bottle from Grin Affair.

Traditional wedding cake

How retro can you get?
This is from Gin Thye cake shop at Bukit Batok. Someone gave it out as a pre-nuptial cake. Tastes good!

Peach Teacake

I rarely get in the mood for baking as I find it quite labourious - precise measurements on the ingredients, followed by washing up.

My recipe is modified from the Sheila's Pudding recipe found in Jamie Oliver's The Naked Chef Takes Off. Mine isn't heavy like a pudding, and is more like a cake.

The ingredients :

• 1 can of peaches
• 1/2 cup sugar**
• 1 cup self-rising flour
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 eggs
• 150 g butter (unsalted)

Note : oven to be pre-heated to 180 degree celsius
**you can lessen the sugar amount and add in some syrup leftover from the canned peaches, and in which case, you should add a little more flour

• Grease the baking pan with some butter, and dust with some flour. Lay the peach halves into the pan

• In a bowl, add the eggs, sugar, butter and vanilla essence

• Whisk the ingredients till light & fluffy

• Add the flour (sift it)

• Fold the flour in, and mix thoroughly

• Spread the mix over the peaches and even it out

• Bake at 180 degree celsius for 45 mins . The pretty patterns on the surface are due to lesser batter that sit over where the peaches are, so if you want your cake to look pretty, arrange the peach halves well in the pan first

• Remove from oven, and serve with hot custard or something cold, like vanilla ice-cream

• Burp!

Wait! If you still have some syrup left from the canned peaches, use it in place of sugar for your morning or afternoon tea. Mmmmmmmmmm ...

Serious orange cake

I chanced upon this cake recipe which Chubby Hubby had taken from Damien Pignolet's Serious Orange Cake recipe in his cookbook French.

The recipe called for the ingredients to be measured out by weight. I didn't have a kitchen scale then, and thus spent a good part of one night trying to figure out how to measure the ingredients out using a 250 ml cup.

Here's the recipe, with my own notes in blue and at the bottom of this post. I didnt have all the ingredients, and thus made some minor adjustments here and there.

This cake is good ! Serious ! Citrusy, bitter-sweet, moist. I think I could have added more alcohol than the recipe called for.


Serious Orange Cake

• 1 orange*, weighing around 150g, washed well and diced, pips removed
• 200g sugar (or 4/5 cup of sugar)
• 3 eggs
• 150g self-raising flour, sifted (or 1 cup + 3 tbsp of flour)
• a small pinch of salt
• 180g butter, melted and cooled a little

orange syrup

• 60ml orange juice (roughly the juice yielded from 1 other orange)
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice**
• 1 tablespoon caster sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons Cointreau***

1. Preheat the oven to 170ºC.
2. Grease and line a 24cm diameter springform cake tin**** with baking paper.
3. Place the diced orange in the bowl of a food processor# with the sugar and process until very smooth.
4. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well between additions.
5. Add the flour and salt and combine for 30 seconds.
6. With the machine running, add the butter all at once.
7. Transfer to the prepared tin and bake for 35-40 minutes****; test for doneness by inserting a bamboo skewer--it should emerge clean and dry.
8. While the cake is cooking, make the orange syrup. In a small saucepan, combine the orange and lemon juices and the sugar. Bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, and simmer for 1-2 minutes. Add the Cointreau to taste and simmer for 1 minute more.
9. When the cake is ready, remove from the oven but leave in the tin to cool for 5-10 minutes.
10. Use a bamboo skewer to pierce the cake all over, then slowly spoon the syrup over the cake and leave until completely cool before turning out.

* use the whole orange, including the skin (this gives the cake the slight bitter tangy flavour)
** I didnt have lemons, so I skipped this
*** I didnt have Cointreau, and used 2 tbsp Bacardi Dark Rum in its place.
**** I used a 21 cm baking tin (non-springform, i.e. the normal kind), and since the tin is smaller (meaning the ingredients are less spread out), I baked the cake longer - for 50 mins. I think you can try up to 55 mins too if you care to watch over the oven.
# I used a hand-blender, as the bowl for food processor is too small to hold all the ingredients. With the hand-blender, I could blend the ingredients in a oversized bowl.