Birthday Cake for Myself

I had always make it a point to bake a birthday cake for each and every family member every year but never once for myself. Today, or rather yesterday, since it is now passed midnight, I decided to make an exception.

It was an extravagant tofu cheesecake, with the use of fresh berries and Chambord raspberry liqueur. Both of these two ingredients are my personal favourite, including the tofu cheesecake. What made it extra special or personalised was the liqueur. Almost 3 years back, while I was searching for different types of fruit liqueur to experiment on cakes, I found out raspberry was available and upon chancing a  picture of Chambord, I was immediately captivated by it's bottle design. Since then, I started my quest to find it at different wine and duty free shops. Whenever friends or family had a chance to travel, I would request them to help me check it out but to no avail. I finally found it at Phuket airport last year and you can never imagine how happy I was when I bought it. However, I found it too precious to open the bottle all this while, until now.

Special birthday cake for me to share with my family

My precious Chambord Raspberry Liqueur

I simply serve the cake as a after dinner dessert, no birthday song and lighting of candle as I had planned. It was not my birthday date and since I am used to bringing cake for dessert, I doubt my family suspected my intention. I was happy though, watching them enjoying the cake silently and myself, I had two servings with my elder brother. The fact that he initially rejected my offering after knowing it was a tofu cheesecake but had two servings after trying a mouthful would attest to how good the cake was!

Muffins for LCSG Lelong Day

I have been trying to pick up cycling since moving to Punggol town but have not cycled enough to be a confident cyclist. Needless to say, I am confined to cycle on the park connectors and the furthest I went is from my place to my office, or rather ex-office now since Friday, in Hougange Avenue 3. A good friend of mine encouraged me to join the Love Cycling Singapore Group http://www.lovecyclingsg.com/ and for the last couple of months, I have been following their online postings but not any of their outings. I do not feel competent enough to join their long distance rides, which averages around 25-35km each time.

Last week, I saw their posting about their Lelong Day cum Fund Raising event taking place on 24 June. After much hesitation and encouragement from the group, I decided to join them for the event at West Coast Park. I have never brought my foldable bike around as it is kind of heavy for me and I never seem to figure out how to roll it around folded. This time, I am not only required to bring it onto the MRT and travel some distance, but also need to change train at different interchange. Wow, I must be crazy to get myself into this, especially when I still haven't figured out, till this point to fold down the handle stem, which equates to not passing the requirement size to bring the bike onto the train. Nonetheless, I went ahead to bake some muffins for the group as promised.



Have always used Banana and Chocolate combination for my chocolate cakes, but this is my first time for muffins. Fluffy and moist, love it myself!




First time using these cupcake cases, which don't look that big when I bought them, but I have to fill them up to 110g each for a nice fitting and end up having only 24 big muffins... minus one for my tasting and photo shoot, so 23 left for the group :(

 The muffins turned out great and wonderfully moist and fluffy. I am also glad that I added the crumble topping to give extra texture. My usual sugar reduction level for the recipe is however a tad over done, as the bunch of banana I bought is not the usual over-riped type for baking use. It was however the best I could find among the 6 fruit stalls at the market. Nonetheless, I love the end result and hope the LCSG people would find them nice too.

Blessed 21st Birthday!

One day, my colleague J came to me and asked me whether I could help her with her birthday cake for her upcoming celebration. As I talked to her, I realised it would not just be a normal birthday, but her 21st! She is interested in my cupcakes, after seeing the posts on my blog.

Her birthday theme is rustic country and I had a hard time coming up with her cake's theme. I finally decided it has to have something to do with fruits and flowers and initially suggested a white and green theme with apples and daisy flowers. However, as we discussed further, we narrowed down to a orange and brown colour theme instead. Why? ... I couldn't quite remember actually, but I suggested the cakes would be orange with chocolate, and also chocolate with orange. Oranges because I kept having images of bountiful harvest from the orchards in country farms since the party theme was revealed to me. As for chocolate, well, simply because it goes wonderfully together with oranges and the pairing can never go wrong. Also, the duo wll fullfill the colour theme we want as well.

As J like the display of cupcakes on my cake stand, I decided to make exception to loan it to her. For those of you who has read my blog on how the cake stand came about, you would know how special it is to me. All the more so now as the 3 tier design is hard to come by these days. As it would be a special celebration, I decided to make a 6 inch small cake for the top layer of the cake stand, instead of a display of 3 layers of cupcakes. However, I also left it to J to decide on the actual display as it can be versatile.

For the light cloured jelly layer to stand out, I had added a thin layer of orange white chocolate mousse as a last layering for the mousse making it a total of 8 layers for the small cake. 

For the cupcakes, I also made two variations, one with orange butter cream and the other, orange infused chocolate butter cream. I really love the end result and hope they add special moments to the birthday girl's special birthday celebration.

Orange buttercream icing with dark choclate orange infused sponge cake.

  

I wanted to give the orange slices a shiny layer and hence dipped them in sugar coating syrup. Unfortunately, our humid weather here just doesn’t make it ideal for this and the coating just kept melting. In the end, I had to peel them off. 

Pretty Cupcakes

I have long resisted using icing that is loaded with lots of sugar and colouring. However, two recent requests for those ever popular pretty cupcakes from friends have made me give in. The reason? My usual wholesome no nonsense chocolate and fruit glazes just won't fit the bill for the occasions!

The first was to a friend's request. She wanted some cupcakes to give away to her colleagues on Valentine's Day. I did some planning and decided that I really would want a pink colour theme for this. Also, the cupcakes really won't look nice without the swirl of icing topping. But instead of using the usual butter and icing sugar, I decided to go for Italian butter icing, which would give a smoother and lighter mouth feel. Besides doing my own special tags, I was also fortunate to find heart-shaped strawberry marshmallows for decorating.

All pink coloured Valentine's Day Cupcakes

The latter was for my neighbour's two daughters, who were celebrating their 1st and 5th birthday together. I duplicated the valentine cupcake, minus the tag and did another light orange design, with jelly beans representing eggs sitting atop the cakes. These were then carefully displayed on my tiered cake stand, which I couldn't resist using it for the occasion.

The cupcakes sitting pretty on my tiered cake stand

Pink colour theme which is both the birthday girls' favourite

Trio of jelly beans representing eggs sitting on top the cakes

Tofu Cheeecake

Two to three years ago, tofu cheesecake became popular and is touted as a healthier version for cheesecake lover. For myself, I love it simply because I love soya. The love degree increases further when I adjusted my version to include lemon and pairing it with mixed berries compote. Hence, the actual name for my cake should be, "Lemon Tofu Cheesecake with Mixed Berries Compote"!

I have also made a much lighter version by adding layers of vanilla sponge in between. This is to cater to people who don't like heavy cheesecake or for first timer who are new to cheesecake. This version is so light and refreshing that I can't resist eating 2-3 big slices at one go myself!

I like the versatility of this cake in that it is easy to vary the design presentation, on top of adjusting the inside content to suit individuals needs. This include optional cookie base, vanilla sponge, lemon juice and zest. Having said this, if there's an order to have all the options, it is also a cake which requires much work due to the different components.

This cheesecake is a simple presentation, without the usual digestive cookie base.

This cheesecake is with birthday wordings and digestive cookie base.

This cheesecake is what I would call a classic presentation, with big piping of cream encircling the mixed berries compote. 

A cut view of the cake showing all the differen layers. It is a lot more time consuming to prepare but the result is awesome!