Pandan Chiffon Cake

One of our favorite cake is pandan chiffon cake. I have difficulty to make a good pandan chiffon cake. Despites my effort to do some trial and error or trying out several recipes, it seems that my pandan chiffon cake was always somehow shrink or not big enough for my cake form.

Some time ago, I posted about how I tried to modify the recipe using design of experiment (DOE) principles by changing 2 different variables. After some trials, I seems to get the correct amount to fill in my cake form. So this time, I got a big enough cake compared to my cake form. 

For the cooling of the cake, I made use of a bottle and a couple of mugs. The bottle was used to hang the cake form upside down, while the mugs were used to hold the sides of the cake form, just as an extra support. After the cake was cool enough, I turned the cake form back.

Luckily this time, the cake turned out quite nice. The texture was soft, airy and the shrinkage was also minimal. I was quite happy with the results. I  used no fan-forced method when I put the cake batter in the oven. 

As usual, despites the imperfectness, we still enjoyed this cake.

Ingredients:

A

9 egg yolks

25 grams fine granulated sugar

180 grams cake flour

1/2 tsp salt

100 ml vegetable oil

150 ml coconut milk

a few drops of pandan paste (you can also use fresh pandan leaves - obtain first the juice to use)

B

9 egg whites

100 grams fine granulated sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar or 1 tbsp lemon juice

How to make:

1. Shift the flour. Put aside.
2. Mix the ingredients (A) except the dry ingredients and pandan paste until it mixed well.
3. Add the dry ingredients step-by-step while mixing the ingredients. After all the dry ingredients are mixed add the pandan paste, mix everything until it reaches smooth consistency. Put aside the egg-flour mixture.
4. In another bowl, mix (ingredients B) the egg whites until it is frothy. Add the cream of tartar and sugar until it becomes medium peak (peaks hold their shape pretty well, except that the tip of the peak curls over on itself when the beaters are lifted).
5. Mix briefly the egg-flour mixture (A) to make sure that it is still smooth. Fold in the egg-flour mixture into the egg whites mixture (B) in three batches. Make sure that the (A) and (B) are fully incorporated.
6. Preheat the oven (160 degree Celcius). I used fan forced to preheat the oven but switch to lower heat only when baking the cake.
7. Pour the mixture into a chiffon cake pan (I used 25 cm cake pan). Baked the cake using lower heat (160 degree Celcius) for around 30 minutes and then switch to upper and lower heat for the last 20 minutes to get a nice brown surface. 
8. Do a prick test, by pricking a satay stick into the middle of the cake. If it is still wet, bake it a bit longer.
9. When it is done, turn off the oven. Let it cool down in the oven for around 5 minutes. 
10. Remove the cake pan from the oven, invert it upside down using bottle to hold the center of the cake pan. Or you can also use mugs to support the sides of the cake pan, while inverting it and during the cooling down.
11. After the cake is cooled, remove the cake from the cake pan. Serve the cake. 

Pork Bread with Fresh Cream

Having lived most of my early life in South East Asia, I was pampered with varieties of good food. One of my favorite snacks is Asian type sweet soft bread filled with varieties of filling. The filling can be sweet or salty. 

One of my sweet childhood memories is when my parents brought me to buy baked filled bread from Teck Kee Tanglin Pau. I loved the smell of the freshly baked bread, the taste of sweet meat filling of the bread and the trips to the shop with my parents. 

Although we lived in other continent now, we also introduce our kids to varieties of food, including Asian food and snacks. The baked bread filled with sweet meat has also become one of the children favorite snacks or to-go-lunch options. I sometimes fill their lunch box with this type of bread. 

Usually, I used tangzhong bread recipe to make this bread. However, I felt that it was sometimes quite troublesome to prepare the tangzhong in advance. Therefore, I searched the internet for the possible replacement for the tangzhong. An idea for that is using either sour cream or fresh cream with minimal 25% fat content. I saw some bread recipe in the internet using either sour cream or other thick cream.

I tried to incorporate the cream as replacement of tangzhong in my to-go filled bread recipe. The result was satisfying. It was soft and as airy as the one using tangzhong. The advantage of using cream is that we do not have to make the tangzhong in advance. But, of course the use of cream increases the content of fat in the bread. If you don't mind the fat content, you can use this recipe instead of the recipe with tangzhong method.

My family, who always acted as my tester, found this recipe was also a keeper. 

For the filling, you can also refer to my previous recipe hier.

Ingredients:

125 grams fresh cream

250 ml milk

1 egg

500 grams bread flour

65 grams sugar 

7 grams yeast

50 grams butter

1 egg for brushing the bread

roasted black sesame seed

How to make:

1. To make the dough, combine all dough ingredient (note: this can be done because the yeast used here is instant yeast) except the fresh cream and butter in the stand mixer bowl.  Using the hook attachment, knead the ingredients until you get a dough form and the gluten begins to develop.
2. Knead in the cream and butter until the dough is smooth and does not stick to the wall of the bowl and to your hand. To double check if the gluten has developed enough, you can stretch the dough. If the dough can be stretched easily to form a thin membrane, and you can light through the membrane, then the dough is ready.
3. Shape the dough into a ball shape. Put it back into the bowl, cover with cling film (plastic wrap) and place it in the refrigerator to proof until the next day or put it somewhere warm until it's doubled in size. As an alternative, proof it in a warm environment (the best is 28 degree Celcius) for 1 hour, or until it's doubled in size.
4. After the dough rise double in size, punch down the dough and roll into a long shape. Cut into 16 equal size pieces (around 55-60 grams per piece).
5. Roll the dough into a thin layer and fill in the dough with filling. 
6. Cover the filling with the dough and pinch the edges and press it to make sure that the filling will not leak out.
7. Carefully pinch up the edges and press together, ensuring the filling is well sealed.
8. Place the pressed side down onto the baking trays lined with baking paper. Cover them with damp tea towel and let them rest for around 1 hour for last proving. (I sometimes use cling wrap to cover them and keep them in a warm cabinet. At least that method works for me).
9. Preheat oven to 180°C.
10. Brush the top of the bread with beaten egg, sprinkle the bread with roasted black sesame seed and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown. I usually bake two trays with upper and below heat sources and exchange the positions of the trays halfway the baking time.

Chocolate Chiffon Cake

One of our favorite cake is pandan chiffon cake. I have difficulty to make a good pandan chiffon cake. Despites my effort to do some trial and error or trying out several recipes, it seems that my pandan chiffon cake was always somehow shrink. 

A few weeks ago, I discussed this with an old school friend. She gave me idea to let the cake cool in the oven instead of letting it cool outside the oven. 

So, this time I tried a modified recipe while also cooling the cake in the oven. I know, I know. According to design of experiment (DOE) principles, it was a wrong thing to do: Changing 2 different variables at a time without making the DOE table first. I am lazy, hahaha.... Anyway, I did modify the recipe because my cake pan was actually bigger than the recipes I had. 

The chiffon cake I made this time is not our usual pandan chiffon cake but chocolate chiffon cake. I seldom made chocolate cake since I found that chocolate cake, in general, is difficult to handle. It tends to be wetter (literally) than vanilla or pandan cake. And usually it is quite sticky, difficult to roll (in the case of roll cake). This time I encouraged myself to make the chocolate variant because my husband asked for chocolate instead of pandan.

Luckily this time, the cake turned out quite nice. The texture was soft and the shrinkage was also minimal. I was quite happy with the results. What I think I need to improve next is minimizing the crack at the surface of the cake. I have decreased the oven temperature and also used no fan-forced method, but the cake still had cracks at the surface. 

Despites the imperfectness, we still enjoyed this cake.

Ingredients:

A

8 egg yolks

20 grams fine granulated sugar

40 grams chocolate powder (without sugar)

150 grams cake flour

1/2 tsp salt

100 ml vegetable oil

150 ml milk

B

8 egg whites

100 grams fine granulated sugar

1 tsp cream of tartar or 1 tbsp lemon juice

How to make:

1. Shift the flour and chocolate powder. Put aside.
2. Mix the ingredients (A) except the dry ingredients until it mixed well.
3. Add the dry ingredients step-by-step while mixing the ingredients. After all the dry ingredients are mixed, mix everything until it reaches smooth consistency. Put aside the egg-flour mixture.
4. In another bowl, mix (ingredients B) the egg whites until it is frothy. Add the cream of tartar and sugar until it becomes medium peak (peaks hold their shape pretty well, except that the tip of the peak curls over on itself when the beaters are lifted).
5. Mix briefly the egg-flour mixture (A) to make sure that it is still smooth. Fold in the egg-flour mixture into the egg whites mixture (B) in three batches. Make sure that the (A) and (B) are fully incorporated.
6. Preheat the oven (150/160 degree Celcius). I used fan forced to preheat the oven but switch to lower heat when baking the cake.
7. Pour the mixture into a chiffon cake pan (I used 25 cm cake pan). Baked the cake using lower heat (150 degree Celcius) for around 30 minutes and then switch to upper and lower heat for the last 20 minutes. 
8. Do a prick test, by pricking a satay stick into the middle of the cake. If it is still wet, bake it a bit longer.
9. When it is done, turn off the oven. Invert the cake pan inside the oven. Let it cool down in the oven. 
10. Remove the cake from the oven and from the cake pan. Serve the cake.

Chocolate chiffon cake - just out from the oven

Chocolate chiffon cake - ready to serve

Aubergine in Garlic Sauce

My children love having aubergine dishes. I also find it delicious as Indonesian dish, e.g. cooked as lodeh. However, the kids usually ask for aubergine in balado sauce (cooked in Indonesian tomato sauce with a tint of chili). I also find it delicious but too tedious to cook. It is because we need to fry the aubergine first. 

Another favorite style of cooking aubergine for us, is aubergine in (spicy) garlic sauce. I usually buy the instant sauce (Singapore brand) to make it. This aubergine dish also needs us to fry the aubergine first before making the sauce. 

Last week, I wanted to cook aubergine we had but I did not have other ingredients either for aubergine balado or lodeh. After browsing for the possible alternatives, I decided to try making the non-spicy variant of the aubergine in garlic sauce. I did not have the instant sauce, but I had the ingredients to make the sauce.

It turned out to be quite nice and the whole family loved it. Although it still involved frying, I found this dish quite refreshing. I did plan to slowly add some chili so that my children can learn to appreciate spicy food also.

Below is the recipe of this dish.

Ingredients:

1 aubergine, cut into medium strips

oil to fry

corn flour

2 stalks spring onion, cut into small pieces

6-7 cloves garlic, minced

1 cm ginger, minced

3 tbsp (light) soy sauce

1 tbsp black vinegar

1 tsp white pepper

1-2 tsp white sugar

How to:

1. Dust the aubergine strips in corn flour, put aside.
2. Heat the oil. Not too much, just enough to fry the aubergine, but not deep frying it. Fry one side for around 3 minutes or until it is brown. Then, fry the other side also until it is brown. Drain the excess oil and put aside.
3. Heat 1 tbsp of oil. Brown the minced garlic for 1 minute.
4. Add the minced ginger until fragrant.
5. Add the aubergine.
6. Add the soy sauce, black vinegar. Mix until the soy sauce and vinegar well incorporated with the aubergine.
7. Add a bit of pepper and sprinkle the sugar on the aubergine. Mix them well.
8. Add the spring onion.
9. Add a bit of chili powder or cut chili if you want something spicy.
10. Taste it. If needed adjust the taste with salt/pepper/sugar. 
11.  Serve the dish with warm steamed rice.

Enjoy it with warm steamed rice.

Cheesecake Brownies

Chocolate cake is one of everybody's fave. OK, almost everybody.

I usually bought either supermarket or bakery brownies since it is convenient. But, having 2 young boys who start to appreciate the difference of ingredients' quality, I looked to some alternatives. I was actually quite amazed, how they could detect which brand of ingredients I used for some cases. So, for certain ingredients, when possible, I bought the higher quality ones to avoid arguments with these young boys at home.

Not long ago, I saw a cheesecake brownies recipe from Sara (www.dinneratthezoo.com) and thought that it looked good. Accidentally, a few days after that, a friend of mine made her cheesecake brownies using Sara's recipe. Based on my friend's comment, I was motivated to find a time to try the recipe out. Especially since I needed to provide more snacks for the boys during that (Covid-19) lockdown period. 

Since I used different size of baking pan than Sara's and some of the ingredients were not quite easy to find here, I modified her recipe a bit to cater to our situation. The recipe is easy to follow and the result is also delicious. It was quite a heavy cake, so I cut the cake into 16 squares. The baking pan I used was the baking pan for the Lapis Surabaya cake 22 x 22 x 4 cm. 

Ingredients:

Brownies layer 

170 gr butter

125 gr dark cooking chocolate (I used 74% choc content)

150 gr fine sugar

3 eggs (medium size)

2 tsp vanilla

125 gr all-purpose flour

4 tbs cocoa powder 

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbs of hot water

Cheesecake layer

300 gr cream cheese

50 gr fine sugar

1 egg

1/2 tsp vanilla

How to make:

Brownies batter

1. Melt the butter and the dark cooking chocolate. It can be microwaved at 800 Watt for 30 sec (you may sometimes need longer) and stir the mixture until smooth. Or alternatively melt it using double boiler. Let it cool.
2. After the chocolate mixture is cool enough, add sugar, eggs, and vanilla, mix until the ingredients are incorporated.
3. Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and mix until it is well combined.
4. Put aside 1/4 of the brownies batter (for the decoration).

Cheesecake batter

1. In a bowl, mix the cream cheese and sugar. Beat it for a couple of minutes before adding the egg and vanilla. Mix again until it is well combined and smooth.

Baking the cake:

1. Preheat the oven at 180°C using upper and bottom heat.
2. Prepare the cake pan, line the bottom and sides with baking paper. 
3. Pour 3/4 of the brownies batter into the baking pan, level the batter.
4. Pour the cheesecake batter on top of the brownies batter.
5. Mix the brownies batter (1/4 of the batter) that we put aside with 1 tbs of hot water, mix to get a smooth mixture. Spoon this on top of the cheesecake layer.
6. Using skewer or a knife or fork (whatever you can find), make a pattern for a decoration purpose.
7. Baked the cake for around 30-35 minute or until the do the prick test, by pricking a skewer into the middle of the cake. If it is still wet, bake it a bit longer.
8. Let it cool before cutting the cake.

If you do not want to finish everything at once, you can freeze the cut cakes. Leave it in room temperature for a few hours before serving it or alternatively you can microwave it if you prefer a warm cake.
Enjoy the cake!

Serabi Saus Kinca

One of my favorites things to do in Indonesia and Singapore, or if I can say in most of Asian countries I have visited or lived, is getting delicious snacks almost all day long. I love going to the traditional market, looking for local snacks. In Indonesia, we call them: jajan pasar. Jajan means snacks, while pasar means market.

There are different types and styles of jajan pasar. For the same jajan, there could be different styles to prepare it. Why? There are several reasons. One of the reasons is adaptation of the taste to the preference of certain region. Sometimes, it can also be difficult to trace the real origin and history of the jajan.

One of the jajan pasar I like is serabi. In other place, it is also called surabi. The main theme of this jajan is the combination of coconut milk and palm sugar/javanese sugar.

There are a few variants of the palm sugar. I prefer gula jawa/javanese sugar. It is usually darker, and the taste is a bit different than other variants. I have difficulty to describe the taste in words.

Serabi consists of a pancake like snack and the sauce. Both the pancake and sauce are made with coconut milk. The difficult part of making the pancake is to make the holes of the pancake appear. It is actually similar with the trick to make martabak manis, another Indonesian favorite street snack. What I have done to make the holes appear on the pancake is: by beating the batter a few times using the ladle before pouring the batter to the pan. After a few serabis, sometimes we need to add a bit extra baking powder to initiate again the making of the holes on the serabi. It surely needs practice. I still make mistakes that prevent the holes to appear on the serabi.

Nevertheless, we did enjoy eating this during the lockdown time (Covid-19 related lockdown) in our region.

For the kids, since they are not as a big fan of coconut milk and gula jawa (palm sugar) as I am, I modified the serabi. Instead of eating it with the coconut milk/gula jawa sauce, I put different toppings, such as: slice of ham or slice cheese or chocolate, on top of the serabi while cooking the serabi.


Ingredients:
For the Serabi
150 gram all purpose flour
50 gram rice flour
25 gram sugar
1 tsp salt
3.5 gram instant yeast
1 tsp baking powder
250-300 ml coconut milk

For the sauce/kuah Kinca
250 ml santan (coconut milk)
1/2 tsp salt
70 gram palm sugar
2 pandan leaves (you can skip it if you don't have)

Alternative topping: cheese, ham, chocolate sprinkle.

How to make:

1. Mixed all the serabi's ingredients in a bowl until everything the mixture is smooth,
2. Set aside the serabi's mixture and let it rest for a minimum of 30 minutes,
3. Warm a non-stick pan (I used a small teflon pan) without oil/butter,
4. Beat the batter with ladle and pour around 1 ladle of batter into the pan,
5. Wait until holes appear on the serabi, then colse the pan using the lid of the pan. 
6. There are two variants:
• If you eat them with the coconut sauce: check until the bottom of the serabi golden brown before putting it aside.
• If you want to add topping: before you close the lid of the pan, add slices of ham or cheese or chocolate sprinkle. Close the lid of the pan for a while (not too long), check if the bottom of the serabi is already golden brown, then put it aside.
7. Continue with the rest of the batter. 
8. To make the sauce:
• Mix all the ingredients for the sauce,
• Boil the mixture 
9. Serve the serabi with the sauce. If you make the modified ones (with slice ham/slice cheese), serve them without the coconut/palm sugar sauce.

I hope you enjoy them!

Serabi with kinca (coconut milk/palm sugar) sauce

Serabi with cheese topping

Marble Cake

Marble cake is a classic cake. It is easy to find in local supermarkets and bakery. The advantage of this cake is that it is easy to make and does not need special skills to make.

Since we have been staying at home for almost 2 months now because of the Covid-19 limitation of movement, I thought that it may be a good idea to let my children learn to make a cake. This cake is good choice to start learning to bake.

My youngest boy was interested to make something. Since it is his first time making cake by himself, I helped him a bit with preparing the ingredients and when he needs extra help in handling the tools and mixing the ingredients.

In this recipe, I used cream fraiche. The addition of cream fraiche will make the cake moist.

Ingredients:
200 gram all-purpose-flour
200 gram butter (room temperature)
150 gram sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
0.5 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
4 tbsp cream fraiche
3 tbsp chocolate powder (if you do not like stronger chocolate taste, you can reduce it to two tbsp)

How to make:

1. Preheat the oven at 180 Celcius,
2. Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla until we have an almost white mixture,
3. While waiting for the mixing of the butter and sugar, mix the flour, salt, and baking powder. Put aside,
4. Add the eggs one by one to the butter and sugar mixture, and mix until it is fully incorporated. Scrape the side and bottom of the bowl regularly,
5. Add the cream fraiche and mix until it is fully incorporated,
6. Divide the batter into two portion. Add the chocolate powder into one of the portion and mix it using spoon until it has a smooth texture and the chocolate is fully incorporated into the batter,
7. Prepare the cake form. Pour the white batter first. Then, pour the chocolate batter in the middle of the white batter. Using a knife or spoon or fork, make a zigzag movement a few times,
8. Bake the cake for around 30-40 minutes or until it is golden brown. Do a prick test, by pricking a satay stick into the middle of the cake. If it is still wet, bake it a bit longer,
9. Remove from the oven and let it cool on a wire rack before serving.

My children found the cake delicious, but still thinks that the chocolate was not strong enough. They are pure chocolate lovers. That is why, if your taste is in the sweeter side, you can also increase the sugar content to around 175-200 grams. 

Let me know if you also love classic cakes and if you have other ideas of baking to fill in this stay-at-home period with family.