Friday, January 30, 2015

Darling's Birthday Cake 27 Dec 2014 - Butter Chocolate Cheese Cake

It should be with a inverted comma because it was not a full attempt. Ideally I should complete it with frosting/ decoration but I did not because I thought the cake will fail due to ingredient B.

I was clearing my leave during the period. So I asked my buddy, Evelyn for an easy and yet yummy recipe. So she gave me this recipe, even with the frosting. So off I go to buy the ingredients.

BUTTER CHOCOLATE CHEESE CAKE (Recipe from Kitchen Capers)
Ingredient A:
250 gm butter
160 gm caster sugar (i changed this to 150 gm brown sugar)
4 large eggs / 5 small eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
200 gm self-raising flour (sifted) / substitute 3 tbsp SRF with cocoa powder for choc flavour
  (choc flavour: 3 tbsp is about 75 gm, so 125 gm SRF + 3 tbsp cocoa powder)
5 Tbsp evaporated milk / whipping cream (i used evaporated milk)

Ingredient B:
250 gm Cream Cheese (add 1 tbsp flour)
60 gm Caster sugar (again, i changed this to 50 gm brown sugar)
1 Egg

Method:
 1. Preheat the oven to 160 deg C
2. Beat ingredient B till fluffy and leave aside (this is where i went wrong, somehow fluffy cannot be attained)
3. From ingredient A, beat the butter with the sugar until white and fluffy (high speed, 5 - 7 mins). Add in eggs one at a time and mix well. Then add in vanilla essence and evaporated milk and mix well.
4. Lastly fold in sifted flour into the butter mixture and mix well. Using a 8" square tin (i just used my existing round pan, dunno what size though), pour in half portion into a greased and lined cake tray (i greased my pan with butter). Then pour in cheese mixture. Lastly pour in the remaining portion of butter mixture (there is a total of 3 layers). Bake for about 45 mins or until cake is done.

Since my ingredient B was not fluffy, more liquid hence heavier. Once I poured in, it sank. And when the top layer of butter mixture went in, it sank into the middle layer. Not so sure if it's related, the cake also took longer to bake. At about 45 min, can see the mixture is wobbly, a sure sign that it's not thoroughly baked. So I baked it up to almost 60 min. Also shifted the cake from the middle tray to the bottom tray to ensure the bottom is baked.

What I think I should do: Next time I will try to beat the mixture in high speed for about 5 - 7 mins too.

Mixture A

Failed Mixture B, still very liquid

As per my friend, should be like this, definitely more 'solid'

The overbaked/ black top

Otherwise the rest looks good, cheese layer looks thick though

 
However once cut, not that thick afterall


Another view

Perhaps next time once I succeed, I will work on the frosting.

Recipe my friend gave asf:  

CHEESECREAM FROSTING
Ingredients:
250 gm cheese cream
2 tsp vanilla extract
80 gm butter
70 gm icing sugar (qty already cut)

Method: Whisk butter with icing and once it's blended, add vanilla extract and cheese cream.

* Cheese cream to be left in the fridge until it's ready to go into the mixer. Cut them into small small cubes for easy whisking

Saturday, January 24, 2015

My First Entry

I have this bad habit of starting different blogs but never the perseverance to keep it going. Nonetheless this is started to record my baking/ cooking journey. Mainly baking since I think my passion is more towards that area. Before the boy comes, I used to bake more often. Not perfect but guess it's edible. However I stopped for quite long period, during my attempts for conceiving, pregnancy and when the boy is still young. Now he requires less attention and have started full day childcare, I do have abit of free time on hand. So I shall try to record my attempts and some recipe. Partly so that I could refer it easily should I want to repeat my attempt. So here goes....