Apple Walnut Mosaic Coffee Cake

Making it in time for the THB bake before we had a month's holiday... hehehe, Sounded like we are having school holidays:-p

This month, Mich, Piece of Cake had selected this bake and I must say it is another wonderful recipe as well. Mich had done up a very nicely walnut stresuel cupcake style, and they looked very appealing.. Do hope over to her blog for the recipe:)

I had baked mine in a 8" bundt pan, halving the ingredients, and modifying some of the ingredients like replacing the wholemeal flour to wheat flour, cranberries to raisns, brown sugar to golden caster sugar, reducing quite abit of the sugar level.

The batter was abit stiff as mentioned in the book, but to my surprise, this cake was so soft & moist. I like this cake very much, indeed. As I had reduced quite a fair bit of the sugar, the apples & raisins compliment the sweetness in the overall cake. Definitely another recipe for keeper

Do click here to see what the other THB members had baked for their version of this Apple Walnut Mosaic Coffee Cake

Banana, Macadamia Nut, And Coconut CupCakes

I was browsing my blog this morning and I had saw the THB was on.. I had missed a couple of the THB bakes and I didn't want to miss this again...I had gotten ready the conversion for this bake and I had quickly prepared all the ingredients.

 For those of you whom are unaware of this THB (The Home Bakers), it is a baking club set up by Joyce of Kitchen Flavours. For Bakers whom owned a "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas, and we will all be baking the same cake in each theme, sharing our experience & tips. 

If you will liked to join us along in this THB bakes, please CLICK HERE for more information.

This time round, Kit has chosen this bake, and it was really delicious...

Fresh from oven today, I had made them into cupcakes instead of cake as cupcakes are easily managed(eaten), and for my small little oven, it would be definitely better as my cupcakes will be easily "cooked" rather than cake form...:-p

 Followed all stated in the recipe, I had blended all the wet ingredients using my blender. Mixing everything in with the flour, and oh, I have used dessicated coconut instead of the flakes. Just before pouring the batter into the cupcake cases, I realised I had forgotten to add in my oil with the wet ingredients...!!! Oh my... Thank goodness, the cucpakes were still edible... hehehehe, silly me...:))

As you can see, I was still able to get a very moist nice texture of the cupcakes. The best part of the cupcakes, were of course the macadamia nuts topped with the cinnamon sugar... So crunchy & yummy:))

Would you like to have one too?

Please visit Kit from I-Lost-In-Austen for the full recipe.

To view the others members bake on this cake, do drop by The Home Bakers (THB).

Blueberry Walnut Cupcakes (Strawberry Coffee Cake)

Hehehehe, I am back again... My boss is back in Korea for the next 2 weeks, so my timing is more flexible now till Sep...:-D I think I had missed quite abit in the Bake-Along since then... And I hope I am not too late in baking this Strawberry Coffee Cake in The Home Bakers.

This time I had chosen to use blueberries instead, reason being, the strawberris ain't in season plus they are more expensive than the usual days. And almost I have 3 strawberries monsters at home, so keeping my 2 punnets of strawberries for them seem to be a wiser choice for this time. It's kinda weird too, blueberries seem to be expensive too, cos usually it will be like 2 punnets for about $4.00..? When you want the berries, you can't find them... Murphy's Law... hahahaha....

Besides replacing the strawberries, I had used walnuts instead of chopped almonds. I had used the full portion of the recipe as stated, made about 9 regular size cupcakes & a 7"x3" rectangular pan.

These cakes are indeed yummy, it's fluffy & soft. With the juicy blueberries and the toasted walnuts sprinkled with brown sugar, it really compliments very well.

Kids & Hubby didn't get to touch the cakes at all as that day I had overly stocked with alot of bread and cakes I bought from the stores. So anyhow, I had brought the girls to watch a movie, "Brave". It was a very touching story, we all loved it very much. It is a great movie to watch together with your family:)

Do click here to view the whole recipe from Alice from I Love.I Cook.I Bake.

Mocha-Cappuccino Marbled Cake

I finally found a way to load up my pictures using my office PC... plus blogging in the office is a huge challenge for me as the blogger did not seem to function "well" in some areas... Not too sure if it was the security settings from office or...??? Kekekeke... Anyway, here I am with my cake & posting...:))

Time really passed very quickly, I had actually "prepared" myself for this cake since last week and I thought I do still have some time left before the "due" date... I baked this cake last night, not remembering that today is the date to submit our post until I saw Lena's, Joyce, Anuja's, Mich's & Emily's postings...

THB - The Home Bakers , a bakers group created by Joyce. And we will be baking all the recipes from a chosen book on every 3 weeks. For this time, they had chosen "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas.

Each member from the group will be selecting one recipe from the book and only the host for the selected recipe will be allowed to post the recipe, while the rest will try to bake it and link on the host's page. Giving tips and advices on the bake, will allow everyone to learn something new.

For those of you whom like to join us in this fun bake, please do contact Joyce from THB.

This time, Lena, from Frozen Wings was the chosen one, and she had selected this Mocha-Cappuccino Marbled Cake. It was indeed a great choice as this cake was absolutely soft and moist. Not too a fussy cake to handle, everything was quickly whipped up and off it went to the oven for about 1 hour.

In fact, this is my 3rd time using my 10" bundt pan as I dislike using it. Due to the "stick" of the cake or burnt outcome, I had never fancy using it. So this time, I took my chance, greased it with butter and lightly floured, it worked like MAGIC... and I was rather pleased with the outcome for the bundt cake:-p

My 1st every nicely baked bundt cake from this bundt pan:))

Getting a nicely browned outer coat for my cake I would say... Don't you think so too??

While the cake was baking in the oven, the aroma of the coffee lingers around the house.... Absolutely not a coffee lover at all, it was a temptation... I kept checking on the cake to see if it was ready to be EATEN!!! The cake was almost done by 45mins, but I let it continued baking for another 15mins to make sure it was fully baked.

Coffee wise, I had used as indicated, reduced the amount of sugar and replacing sour cream with low-fat yoghurt.

Results of the cake was good. Hubby actually came back to the kitchen to ask for another slice... And Nat liked this Mocha-Cappuccino Cake as well. As for me, I thought it was a little bland...??? Maybe my sore throat has caused me lost my taste buds for the time being...:-p

Do try this if you are a coffee lover:)

Almond-Crusted Butter Cake

This is the 5th bake from the THB. And here we have the Almond-Crusted Butter Cake.

Emily, from the Emily's Cooking (Makan2) Foray will be the host for this bake. Do click on the link to find out the exact recipe.

I have tried and baked many butter cakes, and most of them are very oily and with lots of crumbs. But this butter cake... I just fell in love with it... Maybe I'm just a very "dry"person???? Hahahaha.... 

Even without the baking powder, the cake risen nicely and it's texture really did turned out so superb!!!

A very unimaginable result I'd get from this recipe...

Mmmmm..., We all loved it very much!!!

I had used half of the portion stated in the recipe as it yields a very huge loaf. So halving the portion, I had used a 5"x8"x4" cake pan as seen. Coating the bottom and sides of the pan with butter, followed by the almond flakes.

Here we have, the bottom of the cake, all coated with almond flakes...

And the sides of the cake. As I did love almond flakes very much, so I had also sprinkles the flakes onto of the cake. And being very generous with the almond flakes, I think it goes so well with the butter cake...;-p

A very well-baked butter cake I would say. Unlike the usual ones that I had baked before.

Cake texture was excellent, plus the fact that it was NOT oily, a slightly-dry cakey texture... I really love this cake very much and I foresee myself baking more in often:-D

I'm not sure about you, if you do like the slightly dry texture, unless the normal moist, oily butter cake that we always have..., but I would say this butter cake suits us very well:-p

Click on the badge to bring you to THB;-D

And of course, here is MiMi, can't wait to try the cake. Having a few bites, she left the cake on the floor. Both Nat & Mimi were more interested in the toasted, crispy almond flakes instead... hahahaha...

If you are a butter cake lover, do try this recipe. I am sure you will love it as much as we all do:))

Pear Pinwheel & Hazelnut Cake

I was browsing Joyce's blog, Kitchen Flavours that day, and I came across this little badge on her blog.

THB - The Home Bakers , a bakers group created by Joyce. And we will be baking all the recipes from a chosen book on every 3 weeks. For this time, they had chosen "Coffee Cakes" by Lou Seibert Pappas.
Each member from the group will be selecting one recipe from the book and only the host for the selected recipe will be allowed to post the recipe, while the rest will try to bake it and link on the host's page. Giving tips and advices on the bake, will allow everyone to learn something new. That's all:))

So here I am, joining them in this group, to try out all the recipes from this book. I ordered mine from Fishpond. So far I had baked 2 of the recipes, and I do quite like the cakes. Pretty unusual ones and yet delicious.

For this post, this is actually the 4th bake for this book, and I managed to bake in just in time before the deadline.. Hmmm, school holidays will be over by this weekend, and I think I am trying to bake as much as I can within this week. Schools start and I will have lesser time to bake as I need to supervise Nic's homework, and plus the girls need to go for the enrichment class. Good bye holidays and back to the hectic school life... :-p

Alright, back to the main point... The Pear Pinwheel Hazelnut Cake will be host be Zoe, Bake for Happy Kids. Do click on her link for the recipe.

I had used almond meal instead of hazelnut. As for the pears, I had bought them from the supermarket, and it was called "Blush" Pears?? Not too sure, but the pretty colors on the pears did caught my attention, so here they are with me, ready to be baked into this lovely cake.

Batter's all ready, with the sliced pears arranged as pinwheel. I had used a 20cm round pan, coated with butter. Well, in fact, this is my 2nd time coating my pan with butter. And then only I realised that, it was so much easier to do so, plus it is definitely cheaper than using the parchment paper. :-p

As my cinnamon powder had longer expired, I did not get any new ones. So what I have now is the ginger powder. So with a dash of the ginger powder + the confectionery sugar, I tossed them up with the pears before arranging the on the batter. Taste wise still ok... hehehehe....

I had made a half portion of the original recipe. Do refer to Zoe's blog for the exact recipe.

Overall about this cake : it was really tasty. A soft, moist, nutty texure.

It does reminds me of the Pear & Frangipane Pie I made last year, using the almost same ingredients, but the difference was that it was on a "pie" version. It tasted as good as this Pear Pinwheel & Hazelnut Cake too:))

Hope you do have fun trying out this recipe.:))