French Sponge Cake

I happen to be at the Community Library the other day and spotted a Alex Goh's cake baking book and upon flipping the pages, I am amazed at the bakes within. And yes, I will try to get my hands on the books for my own mini library too, soon hopefully.

Meanwhile, rather than just baking chiffon cake, I was eyeing the receipe for French Sponge cake and thought it looked simple for me to try and hence I whipped up and baked the cakes in muffin cups rather than cake tin in less than 1.5hrs.

The sponge cake are spongy, soft,light and just the right sweetness. This is a better and easier receipe to follow than the regular sponge cake receipe which I had attempted earlier.

My siblings and Mom's likes this cake and even my sister's colleagues enjoyed the sponginess and looking forward to more bakes from me to please their palate. Its free sampling for them coz I have baked quite a fair bit.

Sweet bitez.

Orange Pineapple Cake

Came across this receipe of a flavour mix of orange and pineapple cake with sour cream or yoghurt from a library book which I borrowed from the National Library and decided to give the receipe a baking trial today.

Though the receipe calls for orange extract and pecan nuts, which were omitted, the bake turned out rather moist probably due to the extra liquid which was added during the final stir.

If you zoom in abit more, you can see the orange zest and the cubey pineapple slices within the texture.

Interesting mix nevertheless. Enjoy!

Abacus Beads (Chinese Yam Gnocchi) @Shuan Pan Zi

Its been some time since I last did this home made Abacus Beads, Shuan Pan Zi, a festive delight for Hakka or Canto during CNY. Its symbolic for good fortune, prosperity... of coz... ker ching.... $$$$ abundance....

Mom and younger sister has been nudging and craving for this dish. Those sold outside were costly and not as delightful compared with the generous servings of ingredients and flavour which I will usually dish up.

So, over the weekend, I bought a round yam from NTUC and the tapoica and rice flour and minced meat freshly purchased this morning. And all in all, I spent 3 hours in the kitchen today. Yupz, there was a slight mess of flour on table and the kitchen floor coz I was abit 'rough' when kneading the dough and it was kinda windy today.

But it was funny coz I enjoyed the messed up look. Probably deprived of masa masa kitchen during child hood days.... its 'payback' time. Well, the cleaning up was done by myself as well, so nothing gained... but more work to do after the mess I made.

After the slicing, pounding, boiling, marinating, soaking, frying etc, heres the end product of 2 plateful of fresh home made abacus beads with lotsa minced meat, dried shrimps, Chinese mushroom.

Mom had 2 bowlfuls and was full of praise with compliments that pleases me very much. It was delightful to see that she enjoys the dish as much as I enjoyed the process of making even though I had to skip lunch just to complete this dish to satisfaction.

Mom had asked me to prepare this dish for next CNY coz this is a festive dish.

Well, I will definately try.

Peach & Mango Yoghurt Cake

And ever since the first whiff of strong delish from a can of Australian Golden Churn Butter which I chanced upon when contemplating on the ingredients to get for my next bake, theres no turning back. The rich, strong buttery taste gives much 'umph' to the bakes. I have yet to lay my eyes on President butter which I hear is as good, then again, it is not available from the nearby NTUC, hence, its Australian Golden Churn butter for now.

With 2 cuppas of Peach and Mango Yoghurt sitting in the fridge, it got me thinking to re adapt the Lemon Yoghurt Cake receipe for Peach & Mango Yoghurt instead. A good alternative replacement I would say. If you look closely, you can see the bite size peach and mango within the cake. Healthy way to get my siblings and Mom to eat yoghurt in the cake indeed.

Though there are obvious bubbles in the texture due to my overmix, but otherwhich, the texture is moist, soft, delish cake which goes well even with plain Japanese Matcha green tea.

Nice. Really enjoy the moment of indulgence into bake and space away from the work hazards.