Eggless, Dairy and Gluten Free Cupcakes

My success with mixing my own gluten free flour mix makes me want to experiment more with this mixture. Unfortunately, it is currently limited to chocolate sponge cake only. For some reason, without the addition of cocoa powder, the taste, texture and end result is very disappointing for a eggless, dairy and gluten free vanilla sponge cake. My guess is that the fat content in the cocoa powder somehow enhances and improve the overall result. Either that, I need to readjust the ratio of all the other ingredients. It is definitely something that I will continue to work on, so that I can create more cake flavour combination.

For these cupcakes, I also tried something new - making a chocolate ganache icing without cream. It is somewhat less tasty than the dairy version but on its own, I would say it is very good, especially for people who can't enjoy the regular version. For easier spreading, I left the ganache to set outside at room temperature, rather than in the chiller.

Dairy, Egg and Gluten Free Cupcakes! Due to the low rise of the cake mix, I needed to put more in order to have a decent height for the cake. This resulted in 8 cupcakes per recipe, instead of my usual 12.


The overall verdict? They not only looked good, but tasted yummy too! I ate one and the rest, I was very happy to give to the Angels.

Happy Birthday Singapore!

I was invited to join the home school group for their National Day celebration on Mon. J and I thought it would be most appropriate to have a birthday cake for our  beloved country and what better way than to have it in the form of our national flag!

Due to the children's special diet, it has to be dairy, egg and gluten free again. This definitely called for my chocolate pudding cake, which is dark brown in colour. As I do not want to have icing made of shortening and margarine, I decided to cover the whole chocolate cake in another layer of white soya pudding. The result? A hefty 7 layers, 8inch square cake which weighed 2.4kg !

The crescent and stars were painstakingly cut out from thick cardboard and 'dicast' out from the red coloured pudding. Once the layer set, it is then filled in with white pudding.

The different layers can be seen here, with a much thicker outer layer, due to two different size of cake rings used and I didn't want to create wastage by trimming it off.

I wasn't confident of the end result initially but was well pleased with the end result. I also had a wonderful time with the children and parents - singing our national anthem, reciting the national pledge in both English and Mandarin, a parade around the estate and a party with good food. As the group gathered around the cake to sing Happy Birthday to Singapore, I couldn't help but felt proud... to be a Singaporean.

Cake for the Angels II

A week before Angel's birthday, I received a texted message from J, asking if she could order two cakes for her daughter’s celebration. The first was to be collected 2 days later and the other, two days before Angel’s birthday. I had already been looking forward to bake her cake, so adding one more shouldn’t be a problem I thought. However, as I re- read her message, I realised there was a new challenge this time round. In addition to the usual dairy and egg free, the second cake was to be gluten free as well! Was I up to the challenge, she asked?

Well, with the earlier experience from Angel junior's cake, the first one would not be difficult. The second cake, however, I have no confidence as I've not done it before. However, I replied J that I would give it a try.

I had been planning a strawberry cake as Angel love strawberry. However, as it was to be collected much earlier than I had expected, I haven’t had time to get decent quality ones. After a quick check with J, I decided to use frozen mixed berries for the pudding instead. I had expected the pudding to be a dark pinkish colour, however, it turned out to be a funny purple! Based on my previous experience working with frozen mixed berries, the result was totally unexpected. Then I recalled, the bag of berries was of another brand, thus, the ratio of dark and red berries wouldn’t have been the same.

Purple cake, with the pureed dark berries still visible in the pudding. I have never been good with my hand writing nor drawing and it is always a very daunting task whenever I have to do both when decorating a cake. When on paper, you can always start with a fresh piece of paper  to redo if you don't like it. But on a cake, you can only do it once.
Here, the ladybugs were drawn using red berries puree, dark chocolate buttons and pearls - not the best but not the worst... I hope.

I found my one and only reference recipe for a gluten free sponge cake which looks promising, but it uses eggs, which I decided to replace with my usual egg replacer. It also requires xanthan gum, which is pretty costly to buy but J saved me by passing me hers. She also gave me some left over gluten free flour mix to experiment, on top of the 3 different types of wheat free flour which I had stand by to mix my own.

The batter mix turns out really dry and I hesitated whether to add more liquid than stated in the recipe. My experience tells me it would be way to dry to go into the oven, but at the same time, the ingredients were not my usual and I just couldn’t be sure. In the end, I decided to go for a in between, adding more liquid but not to the usual fluidity of my other batter. After I put the cake mix to bake in the oven, I was practically glued to the oven door as I couldn’t wait to see the end result. Past half time, the surface of the cake looked really dry and no sign of rise. My excitement somewhat deflated and I couldn’t help but began to say a silent prayer. There wasn't any more ready mix gluten free flour left and mixing my own would likely be a more difficult task as it would require more steps to experiment, despite the availability of recipe.

As it turned out, the cake did rise, albeit just a tiny bit, towards the last 10 minutes! I waited impatiently for the cake to cool down so that I could slice a cross section to check the texture. Half hour later, I had my answer... the sponge was surprisingly pretty moist and soft, totally unexpected of the dry appearance and the low rise level! I couldn't help but feel elated. It meant I could do more gluten free cake moving on! For the icing, it was another pudding base, but this time round, a chocolate one, converted from my signature chocolate mousse cake recipe.




Double chocolate pudding cake, dairy free, egg free and gluten free! The illustration on this cake is definitely much better than the other.

 

Angel, celebrating her 7th birthday with another friend from the home-school group. We were very blessed with good weather and wonderful time with a 2D1N camp out by the beach.



With this cake's success and comments received, it seems destined that my signature cake would still be chocolate after all, be it the regular dairy version or the special diet ones. Even Angel herself feedback that she prefers the chocolate one too, even though she likes berries and purple is one of her favourite colour. Seems all the more appropriate now,  that I have adopted a chocolate cake graphic to represent little bake shop! 

Homemade Ice Cream

One of the things I learned at the restaurant and fell in love with is homemade ice cream. It enabled me to use all natural ingredients, adjust my preferred choice of sweetness and also create my own flavours! Making it at the restaurant and at home, however, produce very different results due to differnt machine used. At the work place, we use paco jet, a high end machine which churns out fine soft texture under 2 mins. At home, I use a small home base version, which is a blessing bestowed on me as the Angels' mum has allowed me to adopt it from them.

For the Angels, I came up with the soya range, after some research from the internet. This range tends to be more icy and sorbet like, without the milk fats from the milk and cream. However, they taste just as good and I even have comments that they are better than some regular ice cream. In terms of texture, the soya range also tends to be harder and very difficult to scoop without defrosting. For this reason, I like to make them as popsicles. They do not melt as fast, compared to the dairy range, which is richer and softer in texture.

Soya chocolate ice cream. A copy of the recipe is posted in an earlier post, "Little Hall of Fame".

Most chocolate manufacturer would without fail, manufacture milk and white chocolate which uses dairy ingredients in the same plant. Hence, extra care has to be taken when buying dark chocolate for non dairy recipes. Always, check the ingredient list and buy from a reputable brand.

Durian and soya strawberry ice cream popsicles. I love this popsicle making set which has cute teddy faces for the handles. The sticks however seems a little flimsy and I worry whether they will break any time soon, especially when we all love to bite into them when eating.  



Cake for the Angels

I finally did it! A non dairy and eggless birthday cake, which is completed with icing decorations and wordings for the Angels!

Ever since I started my course at the culinary school, I have set in my mind to make such a cake for one of my friend's daughters. One of her daughter has some food allergies and hasn't been able to enjoy the usual birthday cake. My friend has also been trying out recipes to make cakes, muffins and cookies suitable for her.

This cake was actually for the younger daughter who does not have any allergy. However, to enable her older sister and other children who have similar allergy in the homeschool group to enjoy the cake together, the cake has to be egg and dairy free.

The chocolate sponge was my usual recipe, minus the eggs and the milk replaced with soya. The result is a denser sponge, more like brownie, but delicious none the less. I didn't want to use non dairy icing to piece the cake together, as most non-dairy version uses shortening or margarine, which I felt is too unhealthy for the amount needed. Hence, I opted a soya pudding, flavoured with orange zest. An earlier version which used orange juice couldn't set, despite overnight, and I had to redo the whole cake all over on the morning itself.




The final cake, which I had to rush to redo on the morning as the first pudding filling couldn't set.



I have never really decorated a kid's cake before, other than the bear and panda cupcake. Did some search online and got the butterfly idea. For this, I had to contend with the shortening icing, with some food colouring. The flower petals are made with small orange pieces. Am very happy that the girls, the children and even the parents enjoyed it, together with the soya ice cream I made as well (view post "Homemade Ice Cream). One point for me to note for the older Angel's birthday coming up in July - make more ice cream as they disappeared so fast, with the children asking for more helpings!






The Angels, together with few of the homeschool children and parents. They sang the Happy Birthday songs in different languages and one of the children even hold the birthday gal's hand. I was almost moved to tears by the sight and atmosphere.

Little Hall of Fame

One day, I received a call from one of my favourite magazine, Food &Travel, asking for a photo of myself. It is to be published together with a recipe I had sent it to them for a recipe swap contest few months back. How excited I was! Having my very own recipe published in a food magazine!

To much waiting, that issue finally came out, without me realising it, even though I had been waiting all those while. A friend had alerted me through text messaging, saying that my photo was a full page. I had a big laugh when I finally saw it myself. Nope, it was not the photo of me that was printed in full page, much to my relief actually. It was a photo of the ice cream which the editorial team had made, based on my recipe.

I had created that ice cream recipe for my friend's two angels, one whom had multiple food allergies, dairy being the main group of food. The full story of this is printed as a short intro to the recipe. The success of this recipe is a great encouragement for me to search, modify and to create more wonderful treats for the angels, and also to all who have similar diet concerns.

The full page photo and the recipe as printed in the magazine.