Basic Chocolate Cake

This recipe was adapted from Sue Lawrence's Chocolate Meringue Cake recipe but it produces a lovely, moist and light chocolate cake. Girl baked this recipe in cupcake-sized silicone baking cups and it also produced lovely little cakelets, all ready to be iced.

Ingredients:
115gms butter (softened), ½ cup caster sugar, 3 eggs, 50ml milk, 100gms self-raising flour, cocoa powder

Method:
1. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy (about 2-3 minutes usingan electric hand-mixer)
2. Add the eggs one at the time to the mixture and beat well after each addition.
3. Sift the flour and cocoa powder into the mixture.
4. Add the milk to the mixture.
5. Stir gently to combine everything.
6. Pour into a greased or lined cake tin or little cupcake papers or a muffin tray...in short, whatever you want!
7. Bake at about 160 degrees until a cake tester comes out clean when pushed into the middle of the cake.**

**Girl baked the cakes at about 160 degrees (instead of the usual 180) in a fan-forced oven because the recipe produced quite a wet batter. This way, the insides got a chance to cook while the outsides didn't burn...

Variations:
1. Add chocolate chips to the batter before baking to make a choc-chip cake.
2. Leave out the cocoa powder and substitute vanilla essence to make a plain butter cake.

Girl Gets All Tarted Up

Strawberries Fair....

Chocolate Meringue Cake

Girl was flipping idly through Sue Lawrence's Book of Baking when her eye fell on a recipe for Chocolate Meringue cake. Instantly intrigued, Girl read on and upon discovering that she had almost all the ingredients in her store cupboard, she immediately started making this decadent-looking cake...

The basic idea was to make a chocolate cake batter with egg yolks and then a meringue with the egg whites. The chocolate cake batter was poured into two cake tins and the meringue was spread on the chocolate batter. The two cakes were baked for about 30 minutes. The two layers were then assembled, sandwiched with whipped cream (Sue Lawrence suggested a lemon curd filling but Girl took the short cut).

To see a slightly different recipe for this cake...go over to Joy Of Baking...

Food Photography...

Girl was admiring the photographs and food styling on some of the many food blogs out there...and thus a desire was birthed in her to not only be able to make luscious food but also to take a photo of it that conveyed its lusciousness to all viewers!

And so...behold!

Want to know more? Click here: Introduction to Food Photography

God's Green Earth...

There is nothing like a bountiful harvest from Girl's miniscule kitchen garden to make her feel all smugly self-sufficient *giggle*



Here we have a cos lettuce and a frilly/loose leaf lettuce which would do in a salad dressed with balsamic vinegar and a veritable mountain of spinach which Girl plans to convert into either a lasagne or possibly try using to stuff cannelloni...oh, ambitions!

How to win friends and influence people...

It is said that everyone has their price. Mine could very well be this lemon meringue pie which consists of a crisp gingernut base, goey lemoney custard filling and a chewey marshmallow topping, all produced in only an hour. This bronzed specimen was made by a friend and scoffed by three people overnight...not that lemon meringue pie keeps very well...by most accounts, it should be eaten on the day it is made.

Girl's friend made this pie in a springform tin, which made it easy to release the pie from its confines. However, the crust was a little fragile and Girl's clumsy knife-work resulted in a layer of biscuit crumbs on the kitchen bench. Completely undeterred by this minor mishap, Girl and friend demolished a quarter of the delectable pie for afternoon tea.

If you would also like to make this pie and be seduced by its intense lemoney goodness and convert others as well, click here to see the recipe...however, Girl's friend uttered a word of caution, not to bring this pie to your workplace as a treat for your colleagues without counting the cost...because forever-after, you will be responsible for bringing this lemon meringue pie to every single work-do until you retire or are fired...but then again, who would fire you if you brought them lemon-meringue pie regularly? It's a vicious circle it is...

**UPDATE

Girl tried making the lemon meringue pie in her cupcake-sized silicone baking cups and this was the result...this time, only half a recipe was used.

The little pies were a little difficult to de-mould and the crust came apart at the slightest provocation. The taste was completely unimpaired, however, and Girl ate them with a teaspoon out of the baking cups. Girl had a few left over the next day and these unmoulded much more easily than the ones the previous day just because the crust was better consolidated.

Basic White Loaf

Ingredients:
3 cups plain flour; 1⅛ cups tepid water; 1 tsp salt; ½ Tbsp sugar; 1 pkt (8gms) instant yeast

Method:
1. Put all the dry ingredients (except the yeast) into a big bowl
2. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and pour the water and yeast into the well
3. Mix the ingredients together until a dough forms
4. Tip the dough onto a lightly floured flat surface and knead the dough for about 10 minutes (time yourself if you have to...this step is crucial)
5. Put the kneaded dough into a lightly oiled bowl and cover the bowl with clingform. Let the dough rise in a warm place for about 1-2 hours [apparently, the dough can be left to rise in the refrigerator for about 12 hours]
6. After 1-2 hours, the dough should be twice its original size. Knock it back to its original size and shape into either a rectangle or a round shape and lay the dough on a sheet of baking paper on a baking tray. You can also put the dough into loaf tins...whatever you fancy
7. Leave the dough to double in size again (should take ½-1 hour but don't rush it...)
8. Bake at 230c for about 35-45 minutes. If you take the oaf out of the oven and tap the bottom and it sounds hollow, it should be done
9. Let the loaf cool before cutting into it

Afterword...Eat as it is (the way I do sometimes!) or slather with butter, jam or cream cheese or sandwich strips of crispy bacon and fresh lettuce and juicy tomatoes straight out of your vege garden between two slices of the fresh bread

Basic Icing

Ingredients:
50gms butter; Tons of icing sugar; 2 Tbsp warm water

Method:
1. Melt butter in warm water and stir until the butter is all melted
2. Sift in as much icing sugar as needed to make icing to the consistency you want

Basic Cookie Recipe

Ingredients

125gms butter; 125gms sugar; 225gms flour; baking powder; vanilla essence; 1 egg


Method:
1. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy
2. Add the egg and vanilla essence and mix thoroughly
3. Sift the flour and baking powder into the wet ingredients and mix thoroghly
4. Shape dough using cookie cutters and place on oven tray
5. Bake at 180c for about 10-15 minutes (bake longer if necessary)

Variations:
1. Add a teaspoonful of ground ginger to the mixture along with the egg and vanilla essence
2. Add lemon juice into the mixture
3. Make a batch of simple butter icing and ice the cookies

Using My Loaf...

Girl has finally produced a loaf of white bread worthy of being called a loaf...All others she produced before were imposters, mere lumps of yeasty flour masquerading as loaves of bread...Girl's transformation secret?

It's all in the kneading...ten minutes of firm massaging had Girl's loaf of bread rising in ecstasy...

Pretty in Red...

Girl's latest acquisition...a set of weighing scales that looked like the ones her grandpa used to use when Girl was a littler girl...

Girl isn't, as a rule, in favour of commercialised nostalgia but she espied this red, shiny

contraption in a shop-window...and fell in love...

Birthday Cookies

The Cookie Results Are In!!!

But the jury is still out on this lot...

Here are the cookies that Girl and Friend made today. The whole process took about 5 and a half hours long and Girl can only be thankful that the weather wasn't quite as blistering hot today as it was yesterday...The cookies were a simple butter cookie and the icing was butter, icing sugar and water combined and tinted with food colouring.

There was only one piping bag and even that sprang a leak after awhile...so we were down to using plastic bags with the corners cut off. Girl was not enamoured of the recycled plastic bag method of piping icing as she felt that it did not give her enough control over the icing...and being a real novice, this lack of control had disastrous results...

Girl thinks that Friend definitely did a better job on the cookies...the white icing base she used really made the colours pop!

On the way home, Girl went to a supermarket and purchased 5 cheap piping bags...she was taking no chances with the cookies she planned to make for her friend's birthday...

Tenaciousness

Girl's second attempt at baking a loaf of bread...






The funny round loaf owes its shape to a springform cake tin. It reminds Girl of the loaves of potbrood she used to produce in a saucepan on a gas stove!

A snippet of bread with a hunk of cheddar cheese...yumminess!

Some you win...

...and some you don't...

It's kinda a little hard to put a finger on just what's wrong with this loaf of bread, isn't it...


Perhaps its the unusual shape of the loaf...?


Or perhaps the dimpled crust...so horribly reminiscent of cellulite!


Anyhow...all that Girl knows is that somewhere along the line, she made a boo-boo while making this loaf of bread...



Here's what Girl put intothe loaf of bread...

3 cups of strong flour; 16gms of instant yeast; approximately 300mls of warm water; half a tablespoon of sugar; a pinch of salt




And here is what Girl did...
The warm water and sugar and yeast were mixed together first and left for about 5 minutes. Girl then put all the flour into a large mixing bowl and made a well in the middle of the bowl. The sugar water and yeast mixture was then poured into the middle of the well and then the flour was mixed into the liquid to form a dough. The dough was kneaded and then placed into a well-oiled bowl to prove. When the dough was twice its original size, it was knocked down and kneaded again...

...and Girl thinks that it was at this stage that she made the fatal mistake by not being organised with her baking tins...by the time Girl had found her baking tins, the dough had started to prove again and when Girl tried to transfer the dough to the baking tins, she found herself with sticky handfuls of dough mixture...the resultant mess was then transferred to an *ahem* baking tray...

...the dough was then left to prove on the baking tray and when it was pouffed up, it was put into an oven and baked at 200 degrees for about half an hour...


Girl dislikes being bested by anything...even bread dough! She is resolved to try again tomorrow...

Girl's Baking Weekend...

Girl is going to a friend's house on Friday afternoon to bake cookies and then try and ice them using royal icing. Given the fact that Girl has never done royal icing before, Girl is feeling extremly apprehensive that the whole project will come a cropper....

Sweet dreams are made of these...

...but how will Girl's cookies turn out...??

Girl has a birthday to attend on Saturday afternoon and she is planning to spend Saturday morning making pear and ginger muffins and icing them with either a lemon buttercream frosting or creamcheese frosting and decorating them with either fondant cutout flowers or royal icing butterflies...

...or if she is feeling very demoralised by the previous day's results, she may not bother at all, but instead, lie down in a darkened room with a load of aspirin and a bottle of rum!

Disclaimer:
The incredibly sweet and pretty cookies in the picture above were made by Louise over at cakejournal.com...Read it and be inspired!

Chocolate Porn...

If chocolate be the food of the gods...

...eat on

Faff 'n Palaver...

Girl swung up on the back of the Bakerella bandwagon as it trundled past her...that is she decided to have a go at making the famous cake pops. The basic idea seemed straight forward enough...chocolate (or butter or yellow or red velvet etc...) cake mixed with frosting to form a paste-like substance which is then shaped and coated with chocolate before being decorated.


Well, in cake-land, things are never quite so straight forward...

Girl baked a chocolate cake yesterday (click here for the fuss-free recipe) and kept it uncovered in the fridge overnight to cool down completely...


Mistake number 1: Always keep cakes covered...or else they become as dry as a baby in a disposable diaper...





The cake was crumbled into a bowl and a whole 250gm block of cream cheese was beaten into the cake crumbs...



Mistake number 2: Never underestimate the amount of cream cheese needed...



The mixture was then shaped into hearts (using a cookie cutter) and balls and then put into the fridge. After 20 minutes or so, the hearts were dipped into melted white chocolate...

...and then promptly disintegrated as they had not been refrigerated long enough...

Mistake number 3: PATIENCE~~!! Or suffer the later consequences of the lack of it...and oh, by the way, make ABSOLUTELY sure that no water gets into the melted chocolate



The rest of the hearts and balls were then dipped into melted dark chocolate and decorated...

And yes, Girl's cake pops were stuck into oranges as she did not have styrofoam blocks...far more environmentally friendly and healthy as the oranges were eaten up once they were no longer required as a baking aid *giggle*

The end result? Three and a half hours of work for 20 cake pops...Too much faff and palaver? You decide... *grin*

A Belated Christmas Present~!

With The Girls...

Girl's sister and friend and Girl went out to a big hotel for ice-cream and cake one night. We were going to order lemongrass and ginger ice-cream but ended up getting a cake and tea combo instead...two slices of cake and a choice of either tea or coffee. We chose a slice of the cheesecake and black forest cake and a little pot of Turkish Apple tea and another pot of Berrylicious tea...

The cheesecake was definitely the better of the two cakes, although the topping was a little too sweet for Girl. The black forest cake, however, was a little disappointing for Girl, who cherishes in her memory the rememberance of a particular black forest gateau assembled with light sponge cake and soft, sweet cream studded with slightly sourish cherries. The ganache frosting on this particular cake seemed to be a little on the heavy side and the taste of which almost overpowered everything else...the "cream" layers looked to be a mousse-like concoction and the sponge cake seemed to be on the dry side. However, it was a decent enough chocolate-type cake and was eaten rapidly...as the pictures of the two ravaged slices show...

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words...

So this post should be worth a couple of thousand words at least...Girl decided to try making an almond, pistachio and honey puff...

Melted butter and honey, ground almonds and chopped up pistachios stirred together and used to fill the ubiquitious white rectangles of puff pastry Girl is so fond off...