Chocolate & Coffee Cupcakes

Recently Nat had a change of taste bud... Suddenly she just like coffee flavor. Amongst my 3 gals, she is the one who has an exotic taste, like enjoying durian, coffee, enjoying even red wine & beer... Hmmm, that's pretty unusual for a little girl though...

Nevertheless, she had been quite supportive of the bakes that I had tried, and she will always be the one whom is willing to try, unlike Mimi, who used to "test" my cakes, simply just tell me these days that those cakes are not her favourite.. :-p

These Chocolate & Coffee Cupcakes were quite tempting.. Being chocolate & coffee..

But I guess I didn't fare quite well on these cupcakes.

Firstly, I felt that my chocolate flavour wasn't too much

Secondly, the coffee smell was there but not too satisfying to me

Thirdy, my cupcakes came out abit hard

... ...

But the consolation was, the coffee cream was yummy!!!!

I used my own combination of the whipped cream + instant coffee mix, and topped with chopped peanuts!
hahahahahaha.....

If I hadn't mentioned those cons, these cupcakes would look extremely fantastic isn't it???

Recipe as adapted from Kevin Chai:

Ingredients:

250g butter

180g sugar

4 eggs

200g plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

150g melted chocolate

2 tbsp canola oil

30ml kahlua

Method:

1. Beat butter & sugar until fluffy. Add in eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

2. Fold in sifted flour, baking powder & soda.

3. Stir melted chocolate with canola oil, then pour into flour mixture with kahlua, mix well.

4. Spoon the mixture into the cases. Bake for 20mins in a preheated oven of 175C. Remove cupcakes & cool on a rack.

Coffee Cream:

200g butter

150g icing sugar

1 tsp instant coffee powder

100g melted chocolate

Prepare the cream by beating butter, icing sugar and coffee powder until light & smooth. Stir in melted chocolate and pipe on top of each cupcake. Decorate with chocolate.

Steamed Chocolate Cupcakes

Yes, Steam Cakes are indeed in trend this month in my home... And I am enjoying it very much. I had given alot of steamed cakes to my friend, and her hubby mentioned that I seemed to be enjoying doing so... So I told my friend, this month onwards my daughter will be starting her school vacations, plus my boss is not in SG, so taking all these time available to bake again...

I had bought this "Steamed Cakes" recipe book when I was in Penang last October, but I had never tried any of the recipes since I bought it till today.

From this book, I had selected the Steamed Chocolate Cupcakes as the ingredients were rather basic. Some of the other recipes required evaporated milk and condensed milk, which I wasn't too keen in them.

A full ingredients could actually fetch quite a number of cupcakes, depending on the size of your paper cups.

*Note: It is better to use those "paper" cupcake cases as compared to the other cupcake cases as the paper cups will "opened" up during steaming.

These steamed chocolate cupcakes were not too bad. I had modified some of the ingredients. Cutting down a huge amount of the icing sugar, using margarine instead of butter, and replacing the hot water with milk too. The cupcakes did turned out well, soft and moist, but a little not so sweet.. So perhaps I should increase a little more sugar...hehehehe...
The gals loved these cupcakes too. I was glad that they liked it. Mimi had 2 of them and she said it was yummy. My friend who tried the cupcakes said they were delicious as well.

Would you like to try one as well?

Recipe as adapted from the Steamed Cakes by Mdm Zubaidah Bte Chepa

Ingredients:

Yields about 16 medium size cups & 16 mini size cups

250g superfine flour (I use self raising flour)

1 tsp baking soda (omitted)

75g cocoa powder

350g icing sugar (I used 200g)

250g butter (I used margarine)

3 eggs

1 bowl of hot water (I used 250ml cold milk)

Method:

1. Beat butter & sugar until smooth.

2. Add in the egg one at a time, mix well at each addition.

3. Add in the flour+cocoa powder, alternating with the milk. Mix until well blended.

4. Pour batter into the paper cup cases and steam over high heat for about 10mins.

(If you are using my ingredients, you can fill the batter till full as the cupcakes will shrink a little after removing from heat)

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #25 – Steaming Hot Cakes (November 2012) hosted by Miss B of Everybody Eats Well in Flanders

Apple Bread Pudding苹果面包布丁

Hahahaha... sometimes when I think back, I might be outdated... Reason being.. I am always late.. Regardless being the Aspiring Bakers Theme I hosted for October, I didn't even posted any entry for myself, being late for Bake Along, THB, and many others.... hahaha, till sometimes I also can't remembered which recipe I had used...

Today I had an Apple Bread Pudding, topped with raisins & chocolate chips....

I have gotten this recipe from one of the cookbook I had bought from Taipei... Regretted not doing my "homework" in SG to see what books I could have gotten from there... I shall do my "homework" and buy more books when I am in Taipei next March... Hehehehe...

This apple bread pudding was surprisingly easy to prepare and bake.

I hadn't baked bread pudding before, so I wasn't too sure of how I should go about it. Plus the cookbook are in chinese, so taking my time to read and making sure I had followed and gotten the steps and ingredients correct:-p

Well, pudding turned out well and delicious. I was glad that I had added some chocolate chips in the pudding, and I should hve added more as it would really turned out very tempting with a combination of the apple & chocolate chips... I will omit the raisins next time or lessen them as they are not my favourite...:))

It was delicious indeed, and I couldn't help myself finishing one pudding after my photo-takings...

Here, have one too and enjoy....:)

Ingredients:

2 pcs of diced bread

1 apple, cored, peeled & diced

5g butter

1 tbsp sugar

30g raisins soaked in 1 tbsp of Rum

2 eggs

200ml milk (i use lo-fat milk)

40ml whipping cream

20g sugar

Method:

1. Cook the diced apple with the butter under low heat. Add in the sugar and cook for awhile.

2. Put the apples, bread, raisins into the ramekins. Set aside.

3. Prepare the egg mixture. Beat the eggs, milk & whipping cream until well combined. Add in the sugar and mix until the sugar had dissolved.

4. Pour the egg mixture into the ramekins and baked at 190C for about 35-40mins.

Swan Cream Puffs / Cream Puffs

I know I am always late... late for my postings...

Seeing my fellow baking friends whom had already baked cream puffs in September for the Bake-Along theme, Lena  and Mui, both of them had also attempted on the swan puffs. When I saw their puffs, I was envy, admiring how beautifully their swan puffs had been baked.

Recently, I had also saw some FB bakers, baking these swan puffs too... So pulled up my socks and started my challenge once again!!!!

These swan puffs recipes were adapted from Kevin Chai's. His recipe had stated 3-4eggs..., so I had used only 3eggs. I guess it would have been better to use 4eggs instead, as my batter was rather thick and it did not had the smooth, sateen feel...  Ended up the cream puff texture was abit tough, but overall was quite alright... :-D

So let me try 4 eggs in future...:-D

As I couldn't buy the instant custard cream, I had use the vanilla cream that I had used for the Hokkaido Cupcakes.

So how did I fare for these swan puffs?

Recipe as adapted from Kevin Chai's Dainty Desserts

Puff Ingredients:

200ml water

25ml fresh milk

80g butter

1/4 tsp salt

1 tbsp sugar

170g high protein flour(cake flour)

3-4 eggs

Method:

1. Combine water, milk, butter, salt and sugar. Bring to boil.

2. Add in flour, use a wooden spoon, vigorously stir over medium heat until mixture leaves side of pan. Remove from heat.

3. Beat the dough in a mixer until cool completely. Add in eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition until smooth and satiny.

4. Spoon dough into piping bag and pipe out a big rosette and swan's head & neck. Bake in a preheated oven at 180C(200C) for 25mins. Leave to cool.

Custard Ingredients:

100g instand custard powder

120ml fresh milk

200g fresh whipped cream

1/2tsp vanilla essence

Method:

Stir instant custard powder with milk, then combine with the whipped cream and vanilla essence until well-combined.

To assemble, cut the puff into half, trim the top layer to form wing shape and fill the bottom layer with custard.

Garnish with fruits, wings and head.

Dust with icing sugar.

Have fun:-D