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.

Buffet Dessert on Tier Cake Stand

I have always wanted a cake tier stand to add to my collection of kitchen and bake wares. However, finding one which is pleasing and yet at the same time affordable has not been easy. Thus, the search continued after a year on... till I received one recently, from a very dear friend and her partner as a belated house warming gift!

I couldn't't hide my joy of delight as I carefully unwrapped and opened the gift in front of her, at her insistent that I opened it immediately. Yes, it is beautiful, classic looking and of the colour I had wanted! It may not be of expensive high quality porcelain or bone china, nor is it branded. But because it was from two very dear friends who took time and effort in searching what my heart desire, it is all the more precious than ever.

So I told her, one day I would like to bake an assortment of pastries and present them on their gift, and we would have afternoon tea together, just like what hotels or high end cafes do! Well, one and a half month have gone since I got this precious gift and I have yet to invite them for tea. But I had a chance to present it to another group of dear friends last Saturday, when we had a gathering over at my place. I specially made three different dessert for the occasions and served them buffet style.

My precious 3 tier cake stand, a gift from two very dear friends.

Black Sesame Ice Cream, one of my favourite ice cream flavour.



Durian Mousse Cakes and Chocolate Slices. The latter is dairy, gluten and egg free - the same cake which I made for the Angels while the durian mousse is an improved version of my earlier attempt - richer and more texture as I kept the pulp instead of pureed them.



Chiffon Cakes

I love chiffon cakes for their super soft, fluffy, moist texture and light taste. Of late, I have baking them quite often for family gatherings, especially orange chiffon cake.

It took my a long time before I bought my first tube pan for my first attempt, mainly because I don't like baking cakes which requires whisking separated egg yolks and egg whites. Further more, chiffon cakes requires quite a big amount of eggs, which gives it it's eggy fragrance. I do not own a high end mixer and what I have takes me a long time to whisk up the yolks and whites separately. But after that first attempt, I never grew tired of making it, simply because it taste so good and it is often well received.

Orange Chiffon Cake, an all time favourite with my family and friends

Black Sesame Chiffon Cake, an attempt on a new flavour

The grounded black sesame gives this chiffon cake it's unique colour

It is only after my attempt that I then realised why established bakeries charge so much for their chiffon cakes. Chiffon cakes takes quite a fair bit of time, from preparation of ingredients, to whisking, mixing, baking and cooling. The key factors to successful chiffon cakes:
- fresh quality ingredients, to gives it's good taste as well as healthier choice (I squeezed and zest my own oranges, used canola oil instead of palm oil)
- properly whisked eggs, so that proper aeration can be achieved to give the cake its rise
- avoid over mixing, so that air bubbles is not deflated
- correct baking temperature, to help the cake achieve it's rise
- correct baking time, too long a time the cake will dry out while too short a time, the cake will not be fully bake through

I guess my next attempt would be either a banana or pandan, the latter if I can get around to juicing my own pandan juice as I do not own a blender for that at this moment.

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!