Eggless Tiramisu Cake

October is a busy month for me as we have 7 family members celebrating their birthdays. Yes, all the same horoscope, Libra. Here's one cake I had made and is for my hubby, an eggless tiramisu cake using recipe from Laura Vitale. This cake is non-bake and easy, just needing more time for the cake to set in the fridge. You will need at least 5 hours so I would prefer to prepare this cake a day earlier.

You could watch her YouTube video at https://youtu.be/w5fXGQIgHmo

Note: The recipe calls for 2.5cups of very strong coffee, I was using the baking measuring cup and I found that I didn't need that much. Maybe half of it would be more than sufficient. 

Here's another tiramisu cake I made using the same recipe but with more designs on it:

http://yukiecody.blogspot.sg/2012/11/golf-theme-tiramisu-cake-for-avid-golfer.html

Oreo Mango Non-Bake Cheesecake

It's Summer! Hot! Super hot! And it's also the time where mangoes are plentiful. Did you realize in recent years there are many jumbo mangoes around? This size is perfect when you want to decorate your cakes by slicing out more flesh out of it.

Here's a non-bake cheesecake using mango, modified from Christine's Recipe.

Ingredients
120g Oreo cookies
70g butter, melted
250g cream cheese, room temperature
55g caster sugar
150ml thickened cream/ whipping cream
2 tsp gelatine powder
30ml hot water
1 big ripe mango, peeled

Lemon juice or essential oil (I only use Young Living essential oil that is safe for ingestion)
Apricot jam (Orange marmalade works too) & hot water to glaze

Method

1. Remove the cream sandwiched between the oreo cookies and process the cookies in a food processor/blender until finely crushed. Add melted butter to combine and transfer the crushed cookies mix to the base of a spring form pan. Use a spatula to press them firm and chill in freezer for 15 mins or until firm. 
2. Stir the gelatine powder in hot water until the gelatine dissolves. (Remark: If you find it's difficult to dissolve the gelatine completely, place the bowl of gelatine mixture in a large bowl of hot water. It helps the gelatine to dissolve easily and quickly.)
3. Use an electric mixer to beat the cream cheese and sugar until smooth and creamy. Add lemon juice/ essential oil. Mix in the cream using slow speed until combined. Pour the gelatine mixture in and mix well. Pour the cream cheese mixture over the biscuit base. Tap the pan firmly on the table to level it or release some trapped bubbles. Refrigerate until firm or overnight.
4. Remove the cheesecake from the fridge 15 minutes before serving. 
5. Cut the mango into cubes, set aside. For the balance of the mango flesh, pour into blender with some lemon juice/ essential oil and blend them well.
6. Spread the mango puree onto the cheesecake and arrange the mango cubes on top.
7. To glaze, microwave (20secs) 1 tsp of apricot jam and hot water, wait till it is slightly cooled and brush onto the fruits using a pantry brush.

Note
For essential oil I only use Young Living brand, here's the website:
https://www.youngliving.com/en_SG

Lemon (Citrus limon) has a strong, clean, purifying citrus scent that is revitalizing and uplifting. It consists of 68 percent d-limonene, a powerful antioxidant. It is delightfully refreshing in water and may be beneficial for the skin. Lemon essential oil is cold-pressed from the rinds of lemons. Jean Valnet MD estimated that it takes 3,000 lemons to produce one kilo of oil. In his book, The Practice of Aromatherapy, Valnet wrote that lemon is a tonic for supporting the nervous and sympathetic nervous system. Lemon has an approximate ORAC of 6,619 (TE/L). TE/L is expressed as micromole Trolox equivalent per liter.

With a birthday tag, it's ready to be delivered as a birthday cake :)

Year End Parties (with Pasta Salad & Air-fried Roast Chicken recipes)

Hosting a party can be pretty stressful especially when you need to cook for many people. Planning is important and if things can be done in advance it does help a lot so that you being the host is able to mingle with your guests. Honestly speaking I am very lousy when it comes to cooking for a big crowd as normal days I only cook for my hubby and I. Hence I still have a lot to learn on the art of hosting parties. For example a cake or cream puffs could be done a day in advance. Freshly baked bread is an ideal starter especially if you have a bread machine. Start the machine 3 hours prior to the meal time and when the timer beeps you that the bread is ready, that's the ring for the meal commencement. Serve with some butter, cheese or balsamic vinegar over some wine. Doesn't that sound great? If you have more time, soup will definitely be a crowd-pleaser when served with bread.

Another item that you could prepare earlier is the pasta salad. It has carbohydrate being the staple food and vegetables to balance the diet. If your party is for dinner, you could prepare this as early in the morning and leave it in the fridge. Recipe of Pasta Salad is found in this page.

For meat item I will go with a roasted whole chicken and this can be done in 30mins in a air fryer and an hour in the oven.

PASTA SALAD

Ingredients

1/2 box of pasta (any shapes, I used bow tie)
2 hard boiled eggs (boiled, remove shells and sliced)
2-3 potatoes (boiled till soft and cut into big cubes)
1 box of cherry tomatoes (halved)
1 Japanese cucumber (1/2cm sliced)
100g streaky bacon (cut into small pieces, rinse with water, squeeze dry and fry/air fry till crispy)
10 grey prawns (remove shells & veins, boiled till cooked)
1 box of raisin to sprinkle

Salad sauce
1/2 bottle of mayonnaise
About 5 tbsp of fresh milk (depends on how runny you want the sauce to be, amount can be adjusted)
Pepper
Few drops of fresh lemon juice

Methods
1) In a pot of boiling water with few drops of olive oil and salt, cook pasta till Al dente. Drain the water and leave aside to cool.
2) Separately prepare all other ingredients.
3) When all ingredients are cooled, prepare the salad sauce and toss everything together lightly in order not to mash the potatoes.
4) Keep in fridge until ready to serve.

These ready-cooked baby back ribs are so good, they are tender and flavorful. I got them from Foodie Marketplace and all you need is to defrost them and bake at 160 degree for 20mins. If you don't tell your guests these are store-purchased, they couldn't tell. All they will see is you bringing the tray out from the oven and serve right to their table ;) Shhhhhhhh.....

 AIR-FRIED ROAST CHICKEN

The air-fried roasted whole chicken is easy and quick. About 30mins at 180 degree C and another 5mins at 200mins C is all it takes to impress my guests. Timing varies according to the size of the chicken. The advantage of air fryer is having the flexibility to pull out the basket and check as often as you like.

Ingredient
1 spring or small chicken (that can fit into Air fryer)

Seasoning
1 tsp Oyster sauce
1/4 tsp Dark soya sauce
1/2 tsp Chinese cooking wine
1/2 tsp Sesame oil
Pinch of pepper

Note: I am using kitchen measuring spoons, they are bigger compared to cutlery spoons.

End year is all about parties and food, from Christmas's eve all the way to New Year day. One whole week to celebrate with food. Here are some photos of what I had cooked up with:

Golf theme tiramisu cake for an avid golfer

Baking a cake for a professional baker is not easy, she is already so good and whatever I am going to bake will not be as good as her of course. The only option I have is to personalise the cake so that she can feel my sincerity and I believe she will, for every idea I had, she was in my thoughts. I started to conceptualize the design 2 weeks piror to her birthday. Did some research on internet on the types of golf bags and clubs, saving some of the photos into my phone as reference and started shopping for the ingredients. I have decided to make a tiramisu cake and complement with fondant deco. Yes I know fondant and wet cakes are No-No combination but it should be fine as long as we eat the cake quickly...hahaha. Oh yes I am quite stubborn when it comes to this area, I will insist on my way. Last Christmas I did a fresh cream cake with angry birds using fondant, had a few sleepless nights trying to think of how to maintain the dryness of the deco while keeping the cake cold. In the end I added the deco only before serving and viola! That solves the issue. But I wouldn't encourage you to do the same way as I did. It is definately safest to make a true fondant cake without the wet toppings (fresh cream/ tiramisu).

Peach Charlotte Ice-cream Cake

Weather is so hot lately and here's an ice-cream cake I made for my friend's birthday, just perfect for the killing weather. Is pretty easy, I modified the recipe for mango float to acheive this.

Ingredients

1 can nestle cream

1/2 cup condensed milk
225ml whip cream
1 can peach slices
1 pack of cream crackers
Ladyfingers
1/2-1 tbsp unsweetened coco powder
Grated cheese (optional, I used mixed mozarella & chedder cheese)
Spring form baking pan

Some ingredients that I used

Method
1) Whisk the whip cream till thick and smooth. From 225ml mark, I whisked till it reached almost to 600ml mark.

2) Mix nestle cream and condensed milk well. In fact I used slightly less than 1/2 cup condensed milk as the fruit that I am using is already sweet. You could adjust according to your desire for sweetness. If the mixture at this point is not smooth, use a seive before pouring into the whip cream. Use a spatula and to mix well.

3) Divide the mixture into 3 portions. 2 portions plain mixture and 1 portion add in the coco powder and mix well. You can add more if want a darker chocolate color.

4) Shorten the ladyfingers by halve and line a 8 inch springform tin. 

5) Cover the base with cream crackers. Lesson learnt is to break the crackers with a knife to fill up the odd edges. I tried using my hands to break the crackers and I ended up with undesired sizes. However if you are using a square tin, such problem will be minimised.

6) Cut the peaches into small pieces and line a layer on top of the cream crackers.  

7) Spread a layer of plain mixture on it.

8) Repeat step 5-6.

9) Spread the coco layer on top.

10) Repeat step 5.

11) Spread the plain mixture on top.

12) Sprinkle some grated cheese if you like.

13) Design your cake top with the balance peaches you have.

14) Cover the springform with foil and now is ready to freeze overnight transforming into ice-cream.

15) Before serve, leave it in room temperature for around 30mins otherwise it will be too icy hard to cut. Remove the ring from the spring form pan and if you like can tie a ribbon around the ladyfingers.

Baby Shower Gift Again

This time is for baby girl so the theme is Pink & White, simply love these adorable cutters! Delicated to the number 6th kiddo in the family, Baby Angel!



To complete the look, I have managed to get some material for the gift packaging.

Very satisfied with the overall look of it.

To get started these are what we need, the so-called ingredient list in pictoral form:

1) Prepare a working area/mat/board to roll the fondant, dust the area and rolling pin with icing sugar.

2) Take out a piece of fondant, color it with coloring gel and dust with icing sugar to reduce wetness/stickiness.

3) Add coloring only a little at a time, use a toothpick to pick up color from the container. Knead the fondant until the color is well spread.

4) Roll the colored fondant flat & thin before placing cookie cutter (meant for fondant use) to cut out the shapes.

5) Place your ready shapes on a tray/container lined with baking paper dusted with icing sugar.

6) Air dry them so that they are not too soft, I normally use them the next day.

7) Prepare the "glue" using icing sugar and water until u achieve a gluey texture but easy to spread.

8) Glue the fondant shapes onto the cookies and you are ready to pack them.

 Enjoy!

Another set of fondant done for baby boy is at
http://yukiecody.blogspot.com/2012/05/congratulations-to-arrival-of-baby-glen.html

Congratulations to the arrival of Baby Glen

I went through a lot for this project and so far the most painstaking one. I planned this probably a month ahead and started with purchasing cookie cutters from ebay. Well, one month the cutters should arrive by then but it didn't. It was lost :(

Sometimes things don't always turn out to be how you planned. A week before the baby shower, I sourced for another seller and and managed to get the cutters I want. heng ah!

With a butter cookie recipe, suitable cookie cutters, ready-made fondant, coloring gel, gift accessories I embarked on the project one day before the event. During the process of making the cookie dough, I realised my wooden rolling pin have molds. Arrggghhh just not my day, discarded the rolling pin and here's come my powerful and muscular arms. I manually rolled the dough and this dough was tough. Gosh it took me forever to roll the dough and cut their into desired shapes. My arms especially right hand started to shout for help but I couldn't stop. Finally I finished trays of cookies and they turned out very cute, don't you agree?

What did I say about things don't always turn out as what you planned? I put in the wrong amount of butter and the cookies were hard as rocks! No joke, I dropped one on the floor and it didn't break. Wow, it was shock-proof! How I wish these are my handphones, super robustic. Sigh, project failed. I was very upset looking at 70 cute and strong cookies, and at the same time my right arm was hurting me. I pasted ache-relief plasters on my arm and rested.

Did I mention that when you are down on your luck, everything just doesn't go your way? What could be worst than a painful arm right? Let me tell you, both arms! Soon the left arm also start to hurt and so painful that I couldn't move for the entire evening. I had no choice but to pop painkiller and go for an early night rest.

The next day.... I woke up feeling much better, although arms were still aching but at least I could move. The day before was really a nightmare, thought I might need to visit a doctor if the pain persisted. I walked into the kitchen and saw that 70 cookies again. Sigh, still hard as rocks! Stubborn rocks! Suddenly, a bulb appeared! A bright idea came from joking hubby "Just buy ready-made cookies loh...hehehe". YES! I have a box of cookies and I still have some time. Without delay I rolled out the fondant, colored them and cut into the patterns that I wanted. Needed some time to air dry them before sticking them to the cookies and wrap it up as gift. Weren't my arms still hurt, yes they were but I was glad that my project didn't fail entirely. At least I still manage to come up with a substitution and I love how the gift turned out to be.

My painstaking project ;)

The end!