Sunday 20 November 2011

Easy doughnut balls

I bought blueberries and bananas during lunch last Friday and wanted to make muffins for breakfast. However, my kids ate all the blueberries and bananas that night before dinner so I have no choice but to defer my plan in making blueberry and banana muffins to some other time.

I end up making doughnut balls for tea yesterday. This is a very easy recipe, seriously, I made about 25 doughnut balls in less than 1/2 an hour. It took me about 10 minutes to mix the ingredients together, waited 15 minutes for the dough to rise, and another 5 minutes to heat the oil and fry the doughnut balls.




For those who wanted to give this a try, here's the recipe:

Doughnut balls recipe:

Ingredients:
  • 2.5 cups of flour
  • About 2 tablespoons of butter
  • About 5 grams of dry yeast (I used a little less than 1/2 packet of mauri-pan dry yeast)
  • Warm water
  • 1 tablespoon of icing sugar, and more to serve
  • Vegetable oil for frying

Method:
  • Mix dry yeast with warm water and put aside.
  • Mix flour and 1 tbs of icing sugar, then rub in the butter.
  • Mix in the yeast and warm water mixture into the flour mixture, add in water as necessary to make a smooth dough.
  • Form small balls using the dough and wait for about 15 minutes for the dough to rise.
  • Deep fry the doughnut balls and serve with icing sugar.


Sunday 13 November 2011

Carrot cake

I ate carrot cake at my brother's house last weekend and determined to bake one since it's been years since I last baked any carrot cake.


I googled recipes from the internet and read through my cookbooks but decided on this recipe that I had previously tested.






Carrot cake recipe:
Adapted from bbcgoodfood's website but with changes here and there.


Ingredients - for the cake:
300 g plain flour
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
200 g brown sugar
4 eggs
250 ml vegetable oil
zest of 1 lemon
zest of 1 orange plus juice of 1/2 orange
200 g carrots, grated (approximately about 2 medium carrots)
mix fruits and flaked almonds, approximately about 1/4 cup each


Ingredients for the cream cheese frosting:
120 g butter at room temperature
50 g icing sugar
250 g cream cheese


Heat the oven to 150 C. Line a 10" x 7" rectangle cake pan. Sift the flour, cinnamon powder, baking powder and baking soda and mix in the sugar. On a separate bowl, beat the eggs, oil, lemon zest and orange zest. Stir in the carrots and mix in the flour and sugar mixture. Stir in the orange juice and fold in the mix fruits and almonds. Spoon the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 50 minutes or until the skewer comes out clean.


To make the cream cheese frosting, beat the butter and the icing sugar until soft and beat in the cream cheese. Chill the mixture until it comes to a spreadable consistency and spread on the cake.



It's ok if the cake cracks a little as you're gonna need to trim it anyway
Visible flaked almonds and mix fruits, yummy

Spread the cream cheese frosting, cut and enjoy!

Saturday 5 November 2011

Victoria sponge cake

Made victoria sponge cake for my husband's birthday last month. However, since we were out of fresh cream, I used fresh strawberries and strawberry jam for the filling, topped with icing sugar.




Happy birthday sayang!!