Random bakes

Matcha Ice cream

Matcha again I guess, haha. The first ice cream I made was vanilla, so original huh? I then made this vegan ice cream afterwards. It was...not to my taste, the recipe called for coconut milk instead of milk which was too over powering for me. The coconut over powered the matcha and the maple syrup was too sweet on top of the coconut milk too. Coconut milk naturally has a sweetness to it as well as milk, but coconut milk is much stronger. My brother's fiance and her family enjoyed the ice cream a lot though compared to me, they polished it within one day of bringing it back to her home, haha. 

Checkered biscuits, 2nd time round. 

They're square shaped this time! Was so over joyed they came out looking more like the photos shown in the recipe book this time round. I made two batches of these cookies from William Curley's recipe.

These were part of the assorted baked goods gifts I made for my family over in Hong Kong. They know I love to bake and I've always wanted to bake something decent for them, so when my mum travelled to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year I did my best to put together a few boxes of baked goods. Unfortunately I didn't take photos of everything that was in the boxes, next time perhaps?

Carrot cake cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies and a chocolate birthday cake

Mmm. This was for a friend's birthday. In the UK, we don't have block cream cheese and so making cream cheese frosting to pipe is always hard. I added gelatin to help stabilize it a bit but should've been more patient and waited for it to set then whip it so it has more body to pipe. Other than that, the taste was lovely. 

Opera slices and Japanese strawberry shortcake cupcakes

I've made opera cakes so many times but I believe this is the first time it's actually appearing on my blog. Opera cake is one of my favourites, chocolate and coffee marry so well together. Its definitely a rich cake. It's very popular among my family and friends too. The buttercream had a few cracks here and there because I popped the cake in the freezer to set up before slicing it which froze the buttercream too much. It should have been kept in the fridge over night instead, ahh. patience, patience. I will be making it again for my cousin's upcoming birthday in September. 

I made these bakes for a friend since he said he hadn't tried my baking in a while. So I made my two favourites. I didn't want to carry a whole big strawberry shortcake to university though so I made them into cupcakes. Results: the cupcakes needed way more cream. Even though I had hollowed out the middle of the cupcakes to fill it with strawberry and cream it wasn't enough. The cream is very light and fluffy and tastes just like ice cream. 

To finish this post off, I will end it with a heart shaped Japanese short cake (there can never be too much). I made this for my dad's birthday. I didn't have a heart shaped pan so I had to do some construction work. Yep, so big haha. The biggest cake board we had just about fit the cake...even so, this cake was finished within 2 days of eating.