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.

Qing Tang Dessert

I had craving for ginkgo barley dessert today, which used to be prepared at the Chinese restaurant at which I was attached. I specially met my mum for breakfast at the mall, then bough some fresh ginkgo and a pack of soya milk. It is a tedious process to prepare the fresh ginkgo, which had to be cracked, boiled, peeled, bitter stems removed and then boiled again in sugar syrup till soft and sweet. Though time consuming, I prefer these fresh ones than those pre-cooked ones than comes in vacuum packs. Somehow, I think they contain chemical, even if not stated on the packaging. Otherwise, how can they be kept for such a long time, furthermore, without refrigeration?


While the ginkgo nuts were boiling in the sugar syrup, I went to dig out the other ingredients from my pantry. To my dismay, I couldn't find the dried bean curd sheets, which I couldn't remember finishing them before.Not contend with not having my dessert, I dug out other ingredients, to make Qing Tang instead.

The thing about cooking your own is, you get more ingredients than sugared water. Plus, you can add or replace anything you fancy. In this instant, I had to replace sweet potato with pumpkin and the big sago pearls with small ones, since I was using what I had at the time. The end result is more than satisfying, with it's assortment of ingredients. Only thing is, I  missed the chewy big sago pearls, which the small ones could never replace.

One thing to note when preparing this dessert, most ingredients have to be boiled separately as they require different cooking time. For the sago pearls, the residue water is starchy and thus has to be separated. The only two ingredients which do not require cooking are lily bulb and peng da hai  (澎大海). The latter is a seed, which is washed and soaked in water for it to release a thread like membrane. The key to getting a clear soup is to boiled the longans and red dates together, then the soup sweetened according to taste, before mixing in all other cooked ingredients.


Qing Tang, a supposedly cooling dessert, with barley, dried longans, red dates, ginkgo, sago pearls, white fungus, lily bulbs, pumpkin cubes and peng da hai.



Strawberry Vanilla Cheesecake

With monthly family birthday and festive celebrations from December to April, my signature chocolate mousse cake, despite it's variations, has been too much over used. Thus, I decided to try something new for my younger brother's and sis-in-law's turn, by combining two of their favourite: strawberry and cheesecake.



Simple deco with initials and big, red strawberries. I was very fortuante to have really sweet strawberries for this cake, which makes the pairing exceptionally nice.

 It's a light cheesecake with strawberries layered between vanilla sponge and topped with more sweet strawberries. It turn out much better than I had expected, though the vanilla sponge needs a bit improvement. This sponge being my first attempt is a tad dry and thus not spongy enough, good thing that a honey syrup managed to rectify this.

Red Bean Paste Dessert

I have never really like red bean paste dessert, probably a result of food that uses mass produced, ready-made red bean paste from which are more often than not, overly too sweet and with no bean taste in them. These are usually not pure bean paste, but a mix of red bean paste and other cheaper ingredients, usually root vegetables such as potato which gives a similar paste like texture.

While preparing sweetened red beans for the restaurant’s la chendol dessert the other day, I found myself with a large bowl of beans left at the bottom of the pot that was too soft for my purpose. I decided to keep them and make a red bean paste dessert the next day.

Upon Aunty D's suggestion, I bought lily bulb, lotus seeds and white fungus. These ingredients needed to be washed, and the latter two, soaked and boiled in sweetened sugar syrup. Once cooked till softened, I drained them out and kept the syrup aside.

The red beans are then blended to a smooth paste, adding the syrup set aside earlier. All the ingredients are then put together with more water added to achieve a thick soup consistency. This is then brought to a boil, with extra sugar added to achieve a mild sweetness.

The end result? A hot Chinese dessert which I absolutely fell in love! This red bean paste dessert is called '莲生贵子', a play on the ingredients' name. A popular dessert often served at wedding banquets due to its auspicious annotation.




The red bean paste soup, with cooked sago, lotus seeds, white fungus and lilly bulbs.



Plated Dessert at the Restaurant

Friends have been asking me what kind of desserts do I make at the restaurant where I work? After much delay, I finally have gotten these nice photos to show, courtesy of my Chef, who is also the owner of the restaurant.

I have to clarify here that not all of these dessert are my own creations. The first three desserts listed were already on our menu before I worked there. For those of which ideas originated from me, I had a lot of pointers from my Chef on plating, which is a very new skill to me, and also taste pairing. To which I would like to take this opportunity to thank him. THANKS Chef M!, for giving me a chance to work with you and to learn new things.

So here are the delicious sweet treats, beautifully presented :)

Chendol Cream - Chef's creation and one of restaurant's signatures.

  

Sago Melaka - a traditional dessert at the restaurant. What makes ours special is the thick, fragrant, caramelised gula melaka syrup which one can never have enough of, including myself!

Banana Caramel Pudding - steam banana cake served with vanilla ice cream is a all time favourite for the old and young. Am proud to help make the cake softer and more fluffy.

La Chendol - I love the traditional chendol dessert and felt the need to serve our own version in the restaurant, on top of our modern one - Chendol Cream, and it MUST come complete with the green jelly, red beans and attap seeds. Thus, I created a new ice cream, chendol, which is a concentrated version of the traditoanl shaved ice with it's syrup mix. It turned out to be another of our popular dessert and as for myself, I can just eat the ice cream on its own, over and over again, ever day if I can have it!

Frozen Durian Soup - another of my favourite, with a big dollop of pure durian puree on top of a scoop of delicious D24 durian ice cream and crunchy feuilletine in a special concocted syrup.

Jackfruit Log with Raspberries - simply love this combination of sweet, tangy jackfruit icecream with coconut sable, roasted coconut and sour raspberries!

Jackfruit Fritters with Coconut Ice Cream - love this dessert and it's presentation, which is very fine dining style. Takes a fair bit of time to prepare but stunning and delicious outcome!  

Spiced Pumpkin Ice Cream - this is an all pumpkin dessert that includes ice cream, soup and caramelised cubes within. A definite hit for pumpkin lovers including myself! 

Banana Fritters - a different take on our local goreng pisang and my very first fried dessert, which sometimes gives me heart attacks as the chilli batter falls off before the banana goes onto the plate.

Chocolate Parcels - this is another of my favourite presentation which is also the hardest to prepare. Chocolate ganache wrapped in spring roll skin, tied with vanilla pod skin and fried till crispy. With each bite, molten chocolate oozes out, paired with vanilla ice cream, it is a match made in heaven!

Cheesecake? - named by Chef because it taste like one and looks like one. This is actually a Grand Marnie panna cotta paired with raspberry jelly and crumble on top. I created this for the white and red colour layers for the Christmas holiday season.

Chocolate Tarts Trio - original, rum & raisins and curacao with candied ginger. This set was created specially for Christmas take-aways.

Bombe Alaska - a dessert that I never thought possible in our small set up but am proud that I made it! 3 layers of luscious ice cream (banana, chocolate, chestnut) covered with meringue and drizzled with warm rum. Unfortunately, we are unable to serve it flaming like the photo here, which is done here purely for photo effect.