Potluck kat rumah Che Nitt

Yesterday, we had potluck cum gathering at my friend's house near Sunway. Best sangat sebab memang dah lama tak jumpa kawan2 lama.

I brought chocolate cake decorated with smarties for the potluck, freshly baked yesterday morning.

Ni gambar gathering semalam:

Last night, both my kids told me that they enjoyed the evening dan ajak pergi lagi. Diorang suka sebab ramai sangat kawan2, seronok main. Bila balik rumah, dalam kereta lagi dah tido, malam baru jaga :)

3 tiered cakes

A few months back, when I first started to decorate my cakes, my sister-in-law had requested me to bake a wedding cake for her sister's wedding. The wedding is scheduled for Dec 09, so at that point of time, I still have plenty of times to decide.

I have not decided actually, until the matter was brought up again when we met at my grandma's house last month. I then agreed to bake the cake.

After a lot of thinking, and since my sister-in-law did not specify the type / flavour of the cake or the design required, but had only informed me of the colour theme, purple, I have decided to make chocolate cake with cookies and cream filling, covered with chocolate ganache icing.


So, here's the cakes:

the top tier

the middle tier

the bottom tier

Swiss buttercream butter cake with strawberries

Whilst browsing through the internet, I found this entry @ smittenkitchen.com on swiss buttercream.

Since I'm still in the process of experimenting buttercream recipes to search for a suitable ones to keep and use and had never tried swiss buttercream before, I've decided to give it a try.

So, I baked a small 6 inch butter cake and proceeded to prepare the buttercream.

I would say that the process is much more easier that preparing the italian meringue buttercream, and it tasted quite similar too. Not too sweat and I actually love the taste. The instructions given on the website is very clear and straightforward.

My 2 children helped me with the decoration. I iced the cake with buttercream and they both had fun decorating the cake with strawberries.

Blueberry muffins with streusel topping

First time sebenarnya buat muffin dengan streusel topping nih, dulu2 adalah juga buat blueberry muffin, tapi tak pernah terfikir nak letak topping kat atas dia.

Blueberry muffin tu kat bahagian bawah, letak 3/4 batter dalam muffin cups, pastu tabur streusel topping kat atas dia. Then bake macam biasa.

One of the ingredient for streusel topping nih ialah cinnamon powder, so ada rasa cinnamon kat atas muffin, and rasa blueberry kat bahagian bawah muffin.

I bawak muffin nih balik rumah nenek. Semua kata sedap, sekejap jer dah abis :)

Cream Puffs

We had a potluck last week at the office and at first I wanted to make some cupcakes to bring. But since it was on a week day and due to the time constraint, I've decided to make cream puffs instead.

During the party, quite a number of my colleagues had requested for the cream puffs recipe. The recipe was a combination of 2 recipes from 2 of my cookbooks, and with some changes here and there. 

I'm sharing the recipe here in my blog, so that the rest can benefit from the recipe as well. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
100 g butter
250 ml plain water
Pinch of salt
200 g all purpose flour
1 ts vanilla extract
5 large eggs, beaten to mix


Combine the butter, water and salt in a saucepan and bring to the boil. As soon as the mixture is boiling, remove the pan from the heat and add in the flour.


Return  the pan to moderate heat and stir (for about 1 minute) until the mixture start to form dough.


Transfer the dough into a mixing bowl and beat on medium speed for about 5 minutes. Add in the vanilla extract and then the eggs ( a little at a time) and beat in well.

Shape the cream puffs by piping the dough on a baking sheet, and bake at 170 degree Celsius for about 20 to 25 minutes.

As for the filling, you may want to make your own custard or you can also buy instant custard powder (available at bakery ingredients supply shop) and just add water to the custard powder and mix vigorously to make the custard. (approx. 250 ml water to every 100 g instant custard powder). To fill the above cream puffs, you will need about 150 g to 200 g of instant custard powder.

Enjoy, and do share with me the outcome.

My first tiered cake

I've been dreaming to do tiered or stacked cake for quite some times. Last weekend, I finally managed to pull myself together and finally constructed a tiered cake. My 1st tiered cake to be exact. Original plan was to do a stacked cake, with buttercream decorations.

I baked 2 chocolate cakes (8" and 6") and filled it with cookies and cream. Made Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMBC) earlier that week, but I must have overwhipped the egg-whites. My buttercream felt so soft and cottony, and lumpy when it's cold - not suitable for spreading. Tried to repair the damage but not able to do so. So, to the dustbin it went.

I'm too lazy to work on the sugar syrup to make another batch of IMBC (since I don't have any sugar thermometer, and if the sugar syrup is left too long, it will start to caramelized, and the buttercream will be more yellow that what it was supposed to be) and was thinking to just work on buttercream with no egg whites in it. But the buttercream recipe that contain no egg whites that I've tried before was way too sweet. Wanted to try a different buttercream recipe, but unsure whether it will be overly sweet as well. So, I decided to make chocolate ganache instead to cover the cakes and then try the new buttercream recipe for decoration purpose.

The chocolate cake turns out moist, the cookies and cream filling was delicious, chocolate ganache - yummy, and to my surprise, the buttercream icing was not that sweet.

So, here's the upper tier = covered with chocolate ganache, decorated with buttercream roses, and side decorations using white chocolate.

And here's the bottom tier = covered with chocolate ganache, and decorated with small flowers (design inspired by Yatt from Yatt's Lilkitchen).

And here's my 1st ever tiered cake (using pillars):

For my beloved husband, Happy Birthday Sayang!!