Kek pisang lagi + resepi baked chicken yang best

Buat kek pisang lagi, tapi kali ni guna resepi lain. Saje cuba-cuba resepi banana muffin dari buku little cakes from the whimsical bakehouse. Banyak sangat stok pisang dalam fridge sebab my little girl pantang nampak pisang kat kedai, mesti suruh beli eventhough stok kat rumah masih berbaki.

Separuh adunan ditabur crushed walnuts, yang separuh lagi sprinkled with chocolate chips.

Ok, ni nak share resepi baked chicken yang sangat sedap. Resepi diadaptasi dari resepi everyday crispy chicken with sweet tomatoes from Jamie's Dinners cookbook. Memang kalau pokok sweet basil yang ditanam dalam pasu di balkoni rumah dah tinggi sikit je mesti teringin nak masak ayam ni.

Kat atas ni gambar sebelum dibakar dalam oven.

Resepi ni simple sangat. Ayam yang telah dibersihkan digaul bersama olive oil, garam dan serbuk lada hitam. Pastu campur daun-daun sweet basil dan baby tomatoes (kalau ada banyak variety tomato lagi best). Then masukkan 1 - 2 bulb of garlic, broken up into cloves tapi x perlu buang kulit. Gaul rata then bakar dalam oven pada suhu 175 degree celcius selama 50 minit atau sehingga ayam masak.

* Sambil taip resepi ayam ni sambil terliur teringat rasa ayam and garlic tu..this weekend kena repeat this recipe la nampaknya.

Moist chocolate cupcake with fresh cream

I made chocolate cupcakes last Thursday, with the help of my 2 1/2 years daughter. Nuha loves everything about baking, and she always be by my side from the beginning right through the end whenever I'm baking. I love seeing her face lights up every time I ask if she wants to make cake, cupcakes or cookies.

Anyway, I made these moist chocolate cupcakes for my mum-in-law's birthday based from the same recipe used for Faiz's birthday cupcakes. I love how moist the cupcakes turned out, and how easy it was to prepare.

I then whip about 300 grams of non-dairy whipping cream (I used rich's gold label whipping cream) to top the cupcakes and sprinkled some colored sugar strands on top.

Faiz's 6th birthday & recipe for the simplest moist chocolate cupcakes

Alhamdulillah, Faiz is now 6 years old. I made him chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing to bring to school, chocolate pavlova for us to celebrate at home, and my husband took us out to Bangsar Village for dinner and for Faiz to choose his own birthday present at Toys r Us.

I had asked him last week, whilst we were spending our evening at the kids playground, on what type of cake that he wants for his birthday. He told me that he wanted sonic the hedgehog cake. I thought of drawing the character using chocolate to place on top of the cupcakes but I didn't manage to do so. I had instead printed pictures of sonic to paste at the party favors. Come to think of it, I should had just paste it on a stick or something and place it on top of the cupcakes.. X ingat pulak nak buat camtu, bila dah petang baru teringat.

Anyway, I found a new chocolate cupcake recipe that I love, and I had used this recipe to make the cupcakes for him to bring to school. Not only that the recipe is very easy to follow, it yields moist and delicious chocolate cupcakes, definitely a keeper. Chocolate cake recipe adapted from The Farm Chicks.

Moist chocolate cupcake recipe:

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar (not packed)

1 3/4 cup cake flour

3/4 cup cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 medium eggs

1 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup boiling water

Preheat the oven to 175 degree Celsius. In a mixing bowl, mix together the sugar, brown sugar, cake flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add in the eggs, milk, vegetable oil and vanilla essence and beat using a mixer till well combined. Add in the boiling water and mix until just blended. Pour into cupcake paper/cup (I used medium sized cupcake cups) and bake for about 16 minutes (or until cook, depending on the size of the cupcake paper/cup used).

As for the decorations, I had adapted the buttercream icing recipe from Hasue, with some modification to the recipe.

Vanilla buttercream icing recipe:

50 grams butter

450 grams krimwell

300 grams icing sugar (sifted)

1 tablespoon vanilla essence

Beat in the butter and krimwell for a few minutes, then add in the icing sugar and continue mixing. Add in the vanilla essence and beat until well incorporated.

Party favors

Okay, got to go for now, already too long a blog post. Will blog about the chocolate pavlova that I made for Faiz next. Till then, here's a sneak preview of the chocolate pavlova, yumm :-)

Banana cupcakes with cinnamon and chocolate chips

Yesterday afternoon, whilst on our way back home after fetching Amirul from school, I asked my two boys on whether the want to do any baking in the evening. Of course both said yes, but there were both arguing on what to bake. Faiz wanted cupcakes whilst Amirul wanted cookies.

And I get to choose because I don't want to bake both. It will be too much and possibly too tiring for them, and for their mom, since they both will need to attend fardhu ain class at 8 pm. I choose to make cupcakes as we have some ripe bananas around, and we can make use of the ripe bananas if we make banana cupcakes.  But to not disappoint Amirul, I told him that we will make cookies next, which means that I will be making cookies either today or tomorrow.

The cupcake recipe that I used was based on a recipe found online, but I had tweaked it a little here and there. The original recipe for banana and cinnamon cupcakes can be found here. I had however used cake flour and baking powder to substitute the self raising flour, reduced the sugar, added in some chocolate chips and skipped the icing.

Here's how I made the cupcakes:

Ingredients:

2 cups cake flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup caster sugar

1/4 cup milk

125 grams butter, melted

2 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla essence

2 to 3 large ripe bananas, mashed

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 180 degree celcius and line cupcake pan with cupcake liners. 
2. Sieve the cake flour, baking powder and ground cinnamon into a bowl and combine with caster sugar.
3. Add in milk, melted butter, eggs and vanilla essence and stir to combine.
4. Finally, add in the mashed bananas and chocolate chips and spoon the mixture into the lined cupcake pan.
5. Bake for 12 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cupcake comes out clean.

Perfect vanilla cupcakes

I made these cupcakes last Monday for Faiz to bring to school, to celebrate his birthday with his friends. Recipe taken from here. The cupcakes does rise beautifully every time, just like what mentioned in the original blog entry:

I doubled-up the cupcakes recipe and managed to bake 7 x 24 mini cupcakes.

I also follow the frosting suggestion and made the vanilla cream cheese frosting. However, I found the frosting to be too sweet to my liking.

Here were the cupcakes made for Faiz to bring to his school. I originally wanted to frost the cupcakes and draw some design on top of them, but changed my plan as it was too sweet, and had made swirls instead:

I tied ribbons to the gift to be given to his classmates. Hope they love the oil pastel.

As we had a lot of extra cupcakes, I frosted some for my husband and me to bring to office, and Amirul had requested for the un-frosted ones to bring to school.

Recipe - oreo cheese cupcakes

Had always wanted to give a baked cheese cake a try. I've done chilled cheese cake before but not the baked version.

Found this recipe online for oreo cheese cupcakes (original recipe from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes), but I had made several changes to the amount of ingredients since I only had 250g of cream cheese.

This is a very simple recipe, yet it yields cupcakes with great flavor.

Ingredients:

Oreo cookies

250 g of cream cheese

1/4 cup of caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 large egg

1/4 cup of sour cream

a pinch of salt

Preheat over to 140 degree celcius.

Line muffin tins with paper liner and place one whole oreo cookie at the bottom of each paper cup.

With a mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth and add in sugar, followed by vanilla and sour cream. Beat until well combined.

Add in about 2-3 crushed oreo cookies into the batter.

Scoop the batter and fill in the paper cups until almost full. 

Bake for about 22 minutes until the mixture is almost set. 

Transfer to wire racks to cool and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

Enjoy with a cup of coffee... mmmmm yum!!

* the above yields about 15 cupcakes.

Cupcakes for aqiqah

Made about approximately 1300 mini cupcakes for the ceremony, and packed it (8 mini cupcakes - 4 choc and 4 vanilla) in each individual pack. 


The most cupcakes I've ever baked so far, thanks to my mum, my hubby and my 2 boys for helping.


I didn't snap any picture though. Tak teringat pun nak snap any picture of the gift packs.

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Since the first 2 rounds of cupcakes making doesn't yield perfect result, I tried cupcakes recipe from 'The Whimsical Bakehouse' cookbook. I made both the chocolate and vanilla cupcakes based from the book. Too much efforts required though, as the recipe requires the chocolate to be melted, or the milk to be warmed and things like that. As such, a lot of time required to prepare the batter, and since time is something that I don't really have much, I can't afford to continue doing so. 


After the initial stage of baking the two recipes above, I looked through my cookbooks again and decided on a simpler recipe. I prepared the cake batter based from Dede Wilson's book. I love her recipes as there are all easy to prepare, and doesn't require much preparation. 


I made the 'essential yellow cake' and 'essential chocolate cake' from her book, and the process of making the cupcakes had become much faster and easier from thereon.

Cupcakes - practice #2

Since the last cupcakes were made using a cake recipe and not a cupcake recipe, I tried these using a cupcake recipe.

Made the Chocolate Butter Cupcakes - recipe from Rose Levy Beranbaum's book, Rose's Heavenly Cakes.

Same thing happened. The cupcakes doesn't stick that well to the cupcake liners. But the cupcakes tasted good though.

My quest for a perfect cupcakes, that will stick perfectly to its liner is still on.

Cupcakes - practice #1

Remember this chocolate cupcakes? Tried the recipe again, but this time, I made mini cupcakes instead.

I'm actually preparing myself to baking more than 1 thousand cupcakes for my kids' aqiqah ceremony, to be given as door gift.

I found the cupcake pan (hold 24 mini cupcakes) for only RM12.50 at Bake With Yen. It's a real bargain, and the quality of the pan is also really good.

The recipe was originally a cake recipe, and not a cupcake recipe. It tasted so good and (another plus point) really easy to prepare.

However, since this is a cake recipe, the cupcake doesn't stick that well to the cupcake liner. It's good to be eaten the day that it is baked, however, not the next day as most of the cupcakes will most probably detached from its liner the following day.

This is in contrary to the popular belief (or is it just my own belief?) that all cake recipe will work for cupcakes (or is it just this recipe?). Will practice with a cupcake recipe next and see whether it yields the same result.

Chocolate cupcakes for year end party

Baked petite chocolate cupcakes for the kids' year end school party that was held on 10th Dec 10. 

Iced them with chocolate ganache...

and sprinkled them with hundreds and thousands...

One more cake please....

This time around, Faiz requested for a chocolate cake instead.

I baked the "perfect all-American chocolate butter cake" for him, recipe from The Cake Bible. Made it into cupcakes, reduced the sugar by 10% and added in some chocolate chips, mmmmm yummy. 

 

Chocolate and vanilla cupcakes

Made these chocolate and vanilla cupcakes yesterday, topped with chocolate ganache.

And a few chocolate flowers to decorate the cupcakes, using dark and white chocolate. New method that I discovered earlier this week.

Cake Decorating - my first attempt

I’ve been baking for the last couple of months now, every weekends without fail. And here were some of the results:


My very first attempt in cake decorating, cupcakes for my mum and sister's birthday. Made these vanilla cupcakes with strawberry jam filling and buttercream icing. Happy Birthday mama and nad!!

My next project was for my brother in law's birthday. This time around, I made these delicious chocolate cupcakes with italian buttercream icing. Unlike normal buttercream, the italian buttercream requires more efforts, but it was worth it. Happy birthday Ari!

I'm now officially addicted to baking and decorating cupcakes. So, the week after, I baked more chocolate cupcakes and decorate them with italian buttercream icing.

Now that I've decorated a few cupcakes, I wanted give cake decorating a try. So, this was my first ever decorated cake - Carrot cake with almond flakes, and lemon creamcheese icing. Made this for my sister, to congratulate her for her degree :), congratulations akin!