Zebra Cupcake - 斑马杯蛋糕

After seeing so many Zebras being "borned" (a lot of my blog mates were baking this), i thought of baking it too, as it looks so nice. But after making the batter than i realised that the batter is too little for my 9'' pan. So instead of making Zebra cake, they became Zebra Cupcakes.
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The recipe called for emulsifier but i don't have that so i left it out. In the end, my cake turns out to be quite rubbery and dense..
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Zebra Cake Recipe

INGREDIENTS:
Makes one 8" round cake

6 small eggs
110g castor sugar
150g cake flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ tbsp emulsifier
100g butter, melted
30g condensed milk
2 tsp cocoa powder
3-4 tbsp water
1 tsp chocolate emulco
Dissolve cocoa powder and chocolate emulco in water.

METHOD:
(1) Preheat oven at 170 degC. Sift flour and baking powder. Set aside.
(2) Beat eggs, flour, castor sugar and emulsifier on high speed for 10 minutes or until batter turns light and creamy, i.e. thick ribbon state. To test, lift beater. Batter drops from beater should disappear when you count from 1 to 10.
(3) Pour melted butter, condensed milk. Mix at slow speed.
(4) Divide batter into 2 equal portions. Fold chocolate solution into one of the batters.
(5) Using tablespoon, scoop 3 tbsp of uncoloured batter into centre of cake pan. Then, scoop 3 tbsp of chocolate batter onto the uncoloured batter you just scooped into the pan.
Repeat until you have finished about half of the batter. Reduce to 2 scoops each now and continue layering. Reduce the amount of batter gradually until you only pour 1 scoop of each batter finally. The circles become smaller and smaller.
(6) Bake at 170 degC for 35 minutes.

Source: from Jo's Deli & Bakery

Cupcakes for my granny

Green Tea with Red Bean
Chocolate Chip and Peanut Butter

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As i don't know want to bring for my granny, so i decided to bake some cupcakes for her and my relatives. Thinking that my granny will not like too "modern" flavour, so I baked two flavours - Green tea with red bean (especially for my granny) and Chocolate chip with Peanut butter.

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I used basic Vanilla Butter cupcake recipe, just added some green tea powder and redbean as filling. The taste was not bad, except that it does not have green tea flavour nor the green colour. The texture was dense, i think this could be due to over mixing of the batter. I used the Chocolate cupcake recipe, but altered some of the ingredients. As i do not have buttermilk, so i substitute this with yoghurt (as i search on the web that this is ok to do so). And instead of melting the chocolate as what the recipe descibe, i just fold in the chocolate chips. Outcome: weird tasting cupcakes. It was slightly sour because of the yoghurt. What could have went wrong, perhaps was because i did not melt the chocolate (which could have covered the taste of the yoghurt). But when i ate it on day 2 - the sour taste subsided as compared to fresh from oven. Overall, the cupcakes were too dense.

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Muffins n Cupcakes (consolidated post)

I have been wanted to post my baking adventure but didn't have the time to do so. Here are some of my baking "experiments" consolidated over a few weeks...

My 1st Muffin from scratch - Cuppucino Muffin

That was my very first muffin from scratch. Before this muffin, i have been using the premixed formula. I followed a recipe from book, but the muffin didn't turn out well. It's not sweet enough and it was over baked. The recipe book indicated 200 degree celsius for 20 minutes, but it seems temperature was too high for 20 minutes. And there was not much coffee flavour.

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For Cupcakes Lovers - Raffles Culinary Academy - 18 May 2008 (1 Day Workshop)

That was my very 1st baking lesson. I was so excited as i was so into baking that i wanted to learn from the pro. The class was very fun, not only did i get to learn about baking but also cupcake decorations. And we even got to bring home our own creation!

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We learnt to bake Banana Fudge Cupcakes, Tropical Island Cupcakes and Citrus Cupcakes. All are very nice, i like the Banana Fudge Cupcake the most! It was very delicious!

Donut and Muffin - Raffles Culinary Academy - 25 May 2008 (1 day workshop)

My 2nd baking class to learn about muffin and donut. It was another fun lesson. Learnt the importance of using quality ingredients to produce quality food.

We learnt to bake Chocolate Muffin, Orange Apricot Muffin, Cinnamon & Sugar Donut and Fruit Donut.


Replicates of Chocolate Muffin and Orange Apricot Muffin

After the class on sunday, i was very eager to find out if the recipe works. So i tried to reproduce the muffins that i have learnt the very next day. The outcome was not too bad. It was close, except for the marmalade that i used was too dry. The muffins also turned out dry , i think it was dued to my dry batter.

Corn Muffin

I tried making corn muffin using my blueberry muffin recipe. Except that i replaced some of the cake flour with corn meal and also added some honey. To my surprise, it turn out quite well. Not too sweet and nice to chew due to the cornmeal added.













Blue Berry Muffin
I used the recipe from my favourite chef, Nigella Lawson. The muffin was very good. The recipe called for fresh blueberries and i tried both the fresh and the canned ones. Both turned out well, the fresh berries will "bleed", therefore the muffins were being "dyed" to purplish - very nice. And the canned berries makes the muffin not so dry, but slightly too sweet.

(The muffin on the very first RHS was dued to i mixed the canned blueberry together with the batter, therefore it was purplish in colour).