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. 

Recent bakes 1

So it's been aaaaaaages since my last blog post...whoops. Been on holiday and have been very, very lazy since coming back! Although I also have been rather busy considering how I have started uni since September! Yay~ unis been great, except of course the boring lectures (although there are one or two interesting ones that pop up ever so often) however i've got more excuse to bake now! almost everyone I talk to keeps asking me to bake for them, this request almost never escapes as soon as I mention my hobbies. Anyways! Since my friend Nicole gave me a lil nudge on making a blog post here it is! My recent bakes and possibly will do other posts on some of my old bakes too. 

Chocolate and vanilla checkered biscuits

I made some of William Curley's checkered biscuits! To be honest this was a last minute decision...I baked these for a charity cake sale in raising money for Philipines that a society was holding in uni. It was a horrible day in fact besides the fact that I got to see my friend however this was my first time making these cookies so im glad I didn't fall flat on my face failing aha. 

I made swirly, marbled biscuits with the left over dough that I had, should have been more brave and marbled it more but was afraid that the marbling would look weird, ack next time, next time. 

As you can see in the photo, the 'checkered-ness' of these biscuits aren't so accurate and precise and these biscuits looked no where near as lovely as the one in the photos in the recipe book (obviously) but im still glad the pattern stayed put (ish) throughout although the vanilla bits started blending into each other after cutting through the dough more :(. 

These biscuits have a high fat content and this recipe calls for the butter to be softened, which is why I think requires more chilling time (usually I only chill my dough to around 25 minutes, yes im just impatient and cant be bothered to follow the recipe), so if you have a warmer kitchen then it would be best to chill for the amount of time stated and work fast with the dough to prevent the butter from melting. Since my kitchen is forever cold (besides summertime) the butter didn't melt as the kitchen temperature was cold enough to make the dough sloppy and horrible, it was warm enough but cold enough which made it malleable. 

We have a gate ish kind of door which is awful with keeping warmth, we also have no warming devices (forgot the word for this furniture ahaha) whatsoever besides when we're cooking and the wok hobs are on although even then our kitchen is still cold T__T. So cold that I would consider my kitchen outdoors instead of indoors...a great thing when working with pastry but just awful when working with bread dough :(. 

-recipe at the end of blog post.

First red velvets!

When making this, I thought wow...this..looks like poison. My friends are going to look like strawberries after eating these, and certainly after eating these cakes I noticed that some of them had a red tinge to their lips, hmm food lip tint? c;.

 The recipe called for 1 tbsp of red food colouring but didn't specify which kind of food colouring, if you have tried to put strong colouring in any of your bakes, you would know that the liquid food colouring you get in your standard supermakets are absolute piss -excuse my language-. I would say colouring powder or food gel are the strongest, although I would prefer to use powder as they are highly pigmented once they get in contact with any form of moisture, it's also easy to use, and if you need it in liquid form you could just mix it in with a bit of water and make a concentrated form of liquid food colouring that beats the crappy stuff you get in supermarkets. 

So as I was saying, the recipe called for 1 tbsp of red food colouring, usually I would use the normal metal spoons we use to eat our food, but...I ended up using a plastic chinese tbsp. Now...if you're chinese you would understand the difference. If not..a chinese tbsp is just way deeper, my family would usually use it to drink our soup or any liquidy foods. So..whoops I guess again. tehe.

Finished product! Piping was awful I gotta say. Cream cheese frosting weren't stiff enough I didn't add the second cup of icing sugar because they were already sweet enough and too much sweetness is just uck. I would recommend making the cream cheese frosting at the start before you move onto the cake, this way the frosting has time to set for a bit and would result in a more precise piping. Piping here is inconsistent and rather sloppy. Thank god I had crushed cake to cover up. Aha. Taste wise, moist cake, tangy frosting, I liked it and my friends liked it, someone even asked me for the recipe so i'm happy with the results ^-^. 

Red velvet recipe

Checkered biscuit recipe by William Curley: 

Makes about 25 biscuits

For the vanilla dough: 

• 250g plain flour
• 150g unsalted butter cut into cubes and softened
• 75g icing sugar
• 1/4 vanilla pod split lengthways (can substitute with other vanilla bean paste, vanilla essence if preferred) 
• 25g egg yolk 

For chocolate dough

• 140g plain flour
• 15g cocoa powder
• 90g unsalted butter, softened
• 45g icing sugar
• 15g egg yolk 

And finally egg white to brush between biscuit dough to make them stick. 

1. To make the vanilla dough, sift the flour into a bowl. Put the butter and sugar in a bowl, scrape in the seeds from the split vanilla pod and cream together until light and fluffy. Mix in egg yolk and beat until smooth. Add the flour and mix to form a homogenous mass. Wrap in cling film and rest for at least 1 hour in the fridge. 
2. Repeat what you did with the vanilla dough, once the egg yolk beaten in and the mixture is smooth, add the flour and cocoa powder and mix to form a dough. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for at least an hour in the fridge. 
3. To assemble, set aside one quarter of the vanilla dough. Roll out the remaining vanilla dough and all of the chocolate dough to 1cm (half an inch) thick and cut into 1cm wide strips. Carefully place a strip of the chocolate dough in front of you on the work surface. Lightly brush with the egg white and place a strip of the vanilla dough alongside it. Lightly brush with the egg white again and place a strip of the chocolate dough against the vanilla strip. 
4. Repeat with two more layers on top, alternating the flavours in a checkerboard fashion until you have a block of dough, three strips high and three strips wide. 
5. Roll out the remaining vanilla dough on a lightly floured surface to 3mm thick and about 12.5cm wide. Trim to neaten. Place this is on top along the edge of the dough rectangle and wrap it around the checkerboard filling, joining neatly. Trim to neaten. Transfer to a baking tray (sheet) lined with silicone (baking) paper, loosely wrap in cling film and chill for an hour in the fridge. Preheat oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4)
6. Cut the log into slices 1cm thick, place on a baking tray lined with a non-stick baking mat and bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes until lightly golden. 

Image shown in the recipe book

I find it easier visualizing what I'm suppose to be doing when working with more technical bakes, so here is a scan from the book to help. 

Technique for marbling (properly xD), scanning for images only as most of you probably won't be able to understand chinese. 

I will post some of the equipment I bought from my vacation in Hong Kong~ when I get around to it...