Free and Easy Bake-Along #19 : Lemon Poppy Seed-Sour Cream Cake

Who could have thought that this cake was so tempting and delicious? I was browsing Lena's blog yesterday when I saw her with her Lemon Poppy Seed Soured Cream Cake. I was sure if this cake will turns out delicious. With the intention of baking a Lemon Drizzle Cake, I was being "persuaded" to bake this Lemon Black Sesame Seed Cake instead by Peng's Kitchen, whom had made hers, and sweared it is GOOD!!!

As Lena had used poppy seeds for her bake, I use black sesame seeds as I do not have poppy seeds. This recipe came just in time as I had the intention of baking a lemon drizzle cake, plus my 7 lemons in my fridge... :-p I had also replaced soured cream with low-fat yoghurt.

Also Joyce had also invited me to join in their Bake-Along session, so here I am with my bake:-D

I had seen the other ladies using bundt tin for this bake. I do have one but my bundt tin is rather big and I do not fancy using it as my bakes always turn out to be burnt and it sticks... :-p
I use a 20cm square tin instead, turns out quite alright, except for the centre part when I remove the parchment paper... The cooling part..... I was so anxious to try the cake but I had to cool the cake, plus the drizzle of the lemon syrup, plus the photo-takings before I could set my mouth on the cake... Ahahaha!!!

And it was REALLY good!!! The soft & moist texture of the cake, with the lemon tangy smell and taste that will lingers in your mouth... Superb!!! Most of all, this recipe is super duper easy to prepare:)) Try it!!! Recipe ( from Rose's Heavenly Cakes )
Ingredients:
(with slight modifications)
1 large egg + 1/2 half egg yolk
100g yoghurt
2 tsp vanilla essence
125g cake flour
75g castor sugar
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 lemon zest, finely grated
25g black sesame seeds
100g unsalted butter, softened

Methods:
1.Preheat the oven at 180C, 20mins before baking and set the oven rack in the lower third of the oven.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk the whole eggs, yolk, 1/4 cup of the yoghurt, vanilla, just until lightly combined.
3.In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, lemon zest and poppy seeds on low speed for 30 seconds. Add the butter and the remaining sour cream. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase the speed to medium and beat for another 1 1/2 minutes.
4. Starting on low speed, gradually add the egg mixture in 2 parts, beating on medium speed for 30 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients and strengthen the structure Using a spatula, scrape the batterinto the prepared tin and smooth the surface.
5.Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until cake tester inserted in comes out clean.The cake should start to shrink from the pan after removal from the oven.

While the cake is baking, make the lemon syrup.
50g sugar
50g lemon juice
In a small saucepan or microwave, heat the sugar and lemon juice, stirring often, until the sugar is dissolved. Do not allow it to boil, cover it tightly to prevent evaporation.
As soon as the cake comes out from oven, place the pan on a wire rack, poke the cake all over with a thin skewer and brush it with one third of the syrup.
Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 mins, invert them on to a plate and brush the top and sides of the cake with the remaining syrup. Cool completely and wrap airtight.

Bake Along Hosts:
Joyce from Kitchen Flavours
Lena from Frozen Wings
Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids

Oreo Soured Cream Cake

How about having a slice of Oreo Soured Cream Cake in the morning with a cup of freshly brewed coffee???

Oreo Soured Cream Cake

Having bought a soured cream for some baking recipes, which I didn't recall well for the recipe that requires soured cream. So I thought maybe I can try baking a Oreo Soured Cream Cake.
This recipe is extracted from the previous Oreo Butter Cake I tried. Instead of yoghurt, I replaced that with soured cream... ;-p
I had used a 20cm cake tin, which was definitely too small for the cake. I would think at least a 22cm or 24cm will do fine.
As for the soured cream, my tub weighs only 200ml which might not be enough, so I added about 3-4 tbsps of milk. But still the cake seems to be abit dry... Perhaps you could add in maybe about 20-30ml of milk to get the soft texture:)

Ingredients:
220g flour, sifted
1 tsp baking powder, sifted
1 tsp baking soda, sifted
80g unsalted butter
130g sugar
200ml soured cram
3-4 tbsp milk
2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt
80g oreo, mashed (cream removed)

Method:
1. Whisk butter, sugar and salt till creamy and pale.
2. Beat the egg one at a time, mix well till combined.
3. Add in 1/3 of the flour mixture, mix well. Add in half of the soured cream, mix well.
4. Add in 1/2 of the remaining flour, mix well. Add in the remaining soured cream and continue to mix.
5. Finally, add in the remaining flour and mix till combined. Add in the milk and blend well.
6. Fold in the mashed oreo.
7. Baked in a preheated oven of 180degC for about 35-40 minutes or until a skewer comes out cleaned.

The Ultimate Soft Lavender Chiffon Cake

Anyone of you like lavender taste???

Unfortunately, I do not, and you must be wondering why did I bake this Lavender Chiffon Cake?

Lavender Chiffon Cake

I thought maybe, why not give it a try in baking a Lavender Chiffon Cake... Since I have a jar of Lavender sugar lying around in my shelf for quite sometime... When I was making the batter, i couldn't really smell the lavender, so I added another 25g of lavender sugar in the batter... Maybe that was a wrong decision, the cake smelt too much of LAVENDER....
The texture of this chiffon was extremely soft and fluffly. The cake fell when I was waiting for Mimi to fell asleep before I remove the cake out from the cake mould. The picture below was what happened. The chiffon cake fell out from the tin and you can see the cake marks on my kitchen top... hahahaha!!!!

I will try to post up the recipe soon. Meanwhile, should you need the recipe urgently, kindly drop me a note:)

Yummy Scrummy Carrot Cake

Anyone of you like carrot cake? I am referring to English style ones...

Yup, chinese carrot cake will be the next recipe I intend to try this weekend if I have the time:))

These carrot cakes are a HIT!!! They are simply yummy indeed...!! When I remove out the cake from the oven, I did not have a good feeling about it...

Carrot Cake

Hehehehe.... I was wrong.... After I put on the icing, I tried a tiny slice... Gosh, it was really good... But it wasn't a favourite for hubby and the girls. Only my helper and myself liked it very much, and that my helper had asked me to make more:-p. I passed some to my girlfriend, whom she, had never tried English Carrot Cake before. She said it tasted very delicious and told me if I had more, she wouldn't mind having a second helping.:))

This is my 1st attempt. And the cake was really soft and moist as shown in the 1st picture. Well, don't be too disappointed, like me, when you take the cake out of the oven... It looks abit dry and unappealing, but the inner.... simply fantastic:))
Most of all, this carrot cake is awfully easy to do... Try it and you will know what I meant... LOL:))

This is the second batch of carrot cake I made. using a bigger tin but end up it was abit dry cos I had baked slightly longer for fear it wasn't baked properly. :-p I brought these cakes for my colleagues to try and everyone loved it very much as well, except for the slightly "dry" part... And I was glad, as the cake was almost gone in the morning:))

Ingredients:

175g light muscovado sugar (I used Golden Caster Sugar)
175ml sunflower oil (I used Canola Oil)
3 large eggs, lightly beaten
140g grated carrots
100g raisins (I used 100g walnuts)
grated zest of 1 large orange

175g self-raising flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp grated nutmeg (freshly grated will give you the best flavour) (I omitted this)

FOR THE FROSTING
175g icing sugar
1½-2 tbsp orange juice

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Oil and line the base and sides of an 18cm square cake tin with baking parchment.
2. Tip the sugar into a large mixing bowl, pour in the oil and add the eggs. Lightly mix with a wooden spoon. Stir in the grated carrots, raisins and orange rind.
Mix the flour, bicarbonate of soda and spices, then sift into the bowl. Lightly mix all the ingredients - when everything is evenly amalgamated stop mixing. The mixture will be fairly soft and almost runny.
3. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 40- 45 minutes, until it feels firm and springy when you press it in the centre. Cool in the tin for 5 minutes, then turn it out, peel off the paper and cool on a wire rack.
4. Beat together the frosting ingredients in a small bowl until smooth - you want the icing about as runny as single cream. Set the cake on a serving plate and boldly drizzle the icing back and forth in diagonal lines over the top, letting it drip down the sides.

Have fun:))

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

Lena, as requested... I have posted up the Chocolate Buttermilk Cake:))

Chocolate Buttermilk Cake

I have this new book, "Tea with Bea". I must say the cakes, cupcakes, tarts looked so tempting. But then, I realised that there was a huge amount of sugar used though...:-D All the cakes look very pretty. And of course, the recipes will include those creaming methods, buttercream, icing, lemon curd, etc... Very interesting...

But I am somehow rather unwillingly to attemp these recipes as they uses too much sugar...

Maybe a Chocolate Buttermilk Cake wouldn't do any harm I guess???
Using the exact amount of ingredients(almost) as stated in the recipe, my cake came out abit hard though... I was too sure of what went wrong though. Well, I see from the book that the cake was rather soft, unlike compared to me, hard.... :-p....
I must have gone wrong somewhere.... Perhaps I will need to try out again some other days...
Maybe you will like to try it out? Let me know how it turns out for you...:-D
Here is the recipe adapted from "Tea with Bea"


Ingredients:
225g dark/semi-sweet chocolates
65g cocoa powder
175g unsalted butter
4 eggs
300g caster sugar
175g plain flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
235ml buttermilk


Method:
1. Put the chocolate & cocoa powder in a large bowl.
2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Pour into the bowl of chocolate & cocoa powder and stir until melted & smooth.
3. In another bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar. Pour in the chocolate mixture and mix until combined.
4. Put in the flour, baking soda & salt into a bowl, sifted twice.
5. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the chocolate mixture and mix well until incorporated. Add 1/2 the buttermilk and mix until just combined. Repeat with 1/3 of the flour mixture, then the rest of the buttermilk. Finally, add in the last third of the flour mixture and mix until well combined.
6. Pour the mixtur into a 25cm cake tin, bake in a preheated oven of 170C for about 35-45 mins.
7. Remove from oven and let cool in the pan for 10 mins. Slide a table Knife all around the edges to loosen the cake, then remove the cake. Cool for 1 hour. Cut into half and fill with frosting of your choice.

Orange Chiffon Cake / Mandarin Orange Chiffon Cake

I was browsing through my blog last Friday and I saw Small Small Baker had made a Mandarin Orange Chiffon Cake. And boy was I so tempted as I had been wanting to try baking one for a very long time. So I took this chance and baked this chiffon cake over the weekend.

Orange Chiffon Cake

I must really admit, this chiffon cake was FANTASTIC. SSB had use a 17-cm tin so hers looks more higher, whereas my tin was 20-cm, thus mine looks abit swallow and lower cos of the bigger tin used.

When I took it out from the oven, it has this "oil" tingy smell, which I thought, maybe this chiffon cake wouldn't taste as great as it was... But I was absolutely WRONG!!!!
The cake was really soft, with the fragrant of the orange and the orange zest in it, makes it so delicious. Even Nic whom hestiated to try the cake initally, LOVED it so much as well.

This is definitely one good recipe to keep!

The soft texture of the chiffon, really really soft... Perhaps you might think that I had over exaggerrate this but really, please try this recipe:)

It was so yummy that I had actually made 1 orange chiffon & 2 mandarin orange chiffon cake over the weekend.
Worth the time:))

Recipe as adapted from SSB Blog:

Orange / Mandarin Orange Chiffon Cake
Ingredients (makes one 17cm chiffon tin)
3 egg yolks
20g sugar
30g vegetable oil
40ml fresh Mandarin orange juice
zest of 1 Mandarin orange
50g cake flour

3 egg whites
50g sugar
5g corn flour

Method
1. Whisk egg yolks and sugar until the sugar dissolves.
2. Gradually add in vegetable oil, followed by Mandarin orange juice and zest.
3. Sift cake flour twice and add into egg yolk mixture. Mix until just combined. Set aside.
4. In another bowl, whisk egg whites until foamy. Add in combined sugar and corn flour mixture gradually and continue whisking until stiff peak form.
5. Gently fold in the egg white into the egg yolk batter (in step 3) in 3 batches.
6. Pour the batter into an ungreased chiffon tin. Give the tin a few slight knocks on the tabletop to remove air bubbles. Bake in preheated oven at 170 deg C for 35 minutes.
7. Remove from oven and invert the tin immediately onto a cooling rack.
8. Unmould the cake only when it is completely cool.

Have fun!!!

Happy Sweet Valentine's 2012

I guess I am late again in my posting for this Valentine's Cupcakes... :-p

Well, HAPPY SWEET VALENTINE"S DAY TO EVERYONE:))

It was Sunday, and I have started back on my baking session on Friday night, with the chocolate banana cupcakes, 2 types of bread and a chocolate buttermilk cake, plus these Pink Valentine's Cupcakes... :))

How did I fare on those bakes??? That will have to wait for me to post them up once I get a chance. Meantime, I'll just post this recipe, a new cupcake recipe that I have gotten from my new recipe book. :-D

I must say these cupcakes are really soft and fluffy, FANTASTIC!!!

Pink Valentine's Cupcakes

I thought, maybe I could bake some cupcakes for hubby and my good friend. But thinking that my friend's hubby does not fancy chocolate at all... So I have to bake these cupcakes in vanilla flavours instead of chocolate, no doubt we all loved chocolate cupcakes very much, especially the kids...:))

Any using strawberry whipped cream, as my friend's hubby preferred stawberry too...:-p

Topped with chocolate stripes and little heart shapes icing decos...
Nic said these cupcakes are so pretty and she preferred the ones with the flowers.

Gave these little cupcakes to my friend and she was really surprised and happy...:))

Recipe for these yummy Yellow Cupcakes

Ingredients:

2 1/3 cups cake flour (280g)

2 1/2 tsps baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup butter, softened (250g)

1 1/4 cups sugar (250g)

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla essence

2/3 cup milk (90ml)

**The measurements in ml are in my own measurements

Method:

1. Beat butter on medium speed for abt 30s. Gradually add in the sugar, 1/4 cup at a time, beating well after each addition.

2. Add in the eggs, 1 at a time, beat well. Add in the vanilla essence.

3. On low speed, alternately add in the flour mixture(flour, baking powder, salt), 1/3 of the moxture at a time, and milk abt 1/2 at a time, beating well just until blended.

4. Bake the cupcakes in the preheated oven of 180C for abt 30mins or until the top is firm.

5. Decorate as desired.


And of course, our Valentine's Dinner at 鸡公锅.

And a little sweet surprise from hubby after our dinner:))

And a sweet little dessert to end our day... And the kids were enjoying it as well, esp Mimi...:-D

This heart shaped cake is from my good friend.

A sweet little treat from my colleagues in my office...

What a sweet Valentine.....!!!