Donlim breadmaker chiffon cake 面包机戚风蛋糕

All this while, I have the impression that we can't bake chiffon cake or cotton sponge cake using a breadmaker due to the defaulted temperature preset by the breadmaker. But a client whom had bought a unit of breadmaker from me tried baking chiffon cake with it, using an extra cake pan inserted into the normal breadpan, and the cake turned out to be beautiful, soft and fluffy! I am very glad to have clients like these. Other than the chiffon cake, she has also been very adventurous in trying out and sharing new bread, cakes, jams recipes with me. 

To persue my quest of baking chiffon cake with my breadmaker, I spoke to my breadmaker supplier and checked if it is possible, and yes, he reverted that it is indeed possible. In fact, he even has the cake pan that fits in perfectly in the breadpan. I waited for the breadpan to arrive and have finally got to try it. 

It was a fluffy bake! If only you can have a whiff of the nice pandan aroma! 

Recipe for Breadmaker Pandan Chiffon Cake 
·         2 egg yolk 蛋黄·         1tbsp brown sugar 黄糖·         1.5tbsp grapeseed oil 葡萄籽油·         50g pandan juice (blended 8-10 pandan leaves with about 300ml water) 斑兰汁·         50g cake flour (superfine flour) 蛋糕粉/底筋面粉 
·         2 egg white 蛋白·         1.5tbsp brown sugar 黄糖·         1/8 tsp salt 盐

Sieve flour and set aside. Using an egg separator, separate egg white and yolk.
Using a handheld electric mixer, whish the egg white with salt until frothy, add in brown sugar, continue to beat at low to medium speed (about 2min) until it reaches stiff peak. Set aside. At the same time, turn on breadmaker, select mode no. 13 (bake), adjust time to 00:59, press START.
Combine pandan juice, oil and sugar with egg yolk. Beat until thoroughly combined. Add in sieved flour. Combine until thoroughly mixed.
Add in 1/3 of egg white meringue into egg yolk mix. Mix with a plastic spatula. Then add the batter into the remaining 2/3 egg white meringue. Mix until creamy. Line the bottom of cake pan with a carefully cut out round baking pan. Slowly pour in batter into cake mould. Lightly tap cake pan to remove trapped air.
Place cake pan into preheated breadpan. When time of baking reaches 59min, adjust TIME so that breadmaker continues to bake, making total bake time 1hr15min.
Remove cake pan, turn upside down to cool on cooling rack.

将面粉过筛。 鸡蛋用分蛋器把蛋白分开。蛋白及盐用电动搅拌机底速打至起泡，加入黄糖，渐渐加速至高速搅打大约2分钟，至到蛋白变硬。此时，将面包机插电，选择菜单13（烘烤），时间调到00:59分钟，按启动。将斑兰汁、油、黄糖一起加入蛋黄液中，用电动打蛋器搅拌均匀，加入过筛后的面粉，搅拌均匀。
将1/3 的蛋白加入搅拌好的蛋黄糊中， 用塑胶刮刀捞起底部的面糊倒回剩下的蛋白中翻拌至细腻浓稠 。蛋糕摸底部垫油纸，将蛋糕糊倒入，轻轻敲打把大泡震出来。将蛋糕桶放进面包桶内，开始烘烤，当烘烤完成59分钟，再继续调时间，以至总共烘烤时间为一小时15分钟。烤完，将蛋糕桶 翻转放在烤架冷却后用塑胶刮刀脱膜。

Donlim breadmaker is currently available for sale at Just Health at retail price RM380 (price includes the breadmaker, one breadpan and one cake pan), inclusive of one year warranty. For more information, please kindly refer here, alternatively you may contact me at 012 324 1816 for info. 

Coffee chiffon cake (scalded dough/ cooked flour method)

Here's the lil' fella and my mom enjoying their chiffon cakes for breakfast. 

Yea, it's chiffon cake again. I love to bake and eat chiffon cakes. It's so light and feels much 'healthier'. It is still delicious even though I cut the sugar by quite a lot. And best of all, it's the only kind of cake that everyone in the family loves (even my MIL who doesn't eat cakes loves eating my chiffon cake) and it gets eaten up in a few hours, so I have no problem of leftover or food wastage. 

Even though this is called Coffee Chiffon Cake and made using the 3-in-1 instant coffee sachet, but it is not that intense in terms of its coffee flavor. Instead, the aroma of dark muscovado sugar 黑砂糖 is more pronounced. 

This is a recipe that I've been using a lot lately, just used the same recipe to bake Orange and Mango Chiffon few days ago. I like it cos it doesn't use a lot of egg (my hubby had been wondering why the eggs get used up so fast... :p) and it fits my 18cm chiffon tube pan just right. 

Here's the recipe, adapted from Happy Home Baker. 

Ingredients:(I used an 18cm chiffon pan)

4 egg yolks (medium)
2tbsp dark muscovado sugar
3tbsp rice bran oil
90g coffee made up with 3-in-1 coffee sachet
80g cake flour (I actually used 65g all purpose flour and 15g corn flour)

4 egg whites (medium)
3tbsp dark muscovado sugar


Instructions:

1. Sieve cake flour and set aside. 
2. Combine rice bran oil with coffee. Heat up to simmering in a pan. Remove from heat. Add in sifted flour. Add into egg yolk mix. Whisk to combine. Leave in fridge to chill. 
3. In a clean, dry mixing bowl, beat egg whites with a handheld electric mixer on low speed until mixture becomes frothy and foamy.  Add half of the sugar amount and turn to high speed and beat the mixture. Continue to add in the remaining sugar and beat until the egg whites reaches the soft peak stage.The soft peak stage is reached when the peaks of the whites curl over and droop slightly. The egg whites should appear smooth and glossy, and if you overturn the bowl, the egg white meringue doesn't drop.
4. Add the beaten egg whites into the egg yolk batter in 3 separate additions, each time folding gently with a spatula until just blended.
5. Pour batter into a 18cm tube pan (do not grease the pan). Tap the pan lightly on a table top to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter.
6. Bake in pre-heated oven at 140 degC for 40 mins (every oven differs, my oven has been a very friendly one, after about 20min in the oven, I had to tent an alum foil loosely oven the chiffon to avoid the top from getting too brown), bake until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean, when lightly pressed the cake will spring back. Invert the pan immediately and let cool completely before unmould (I usually wait for at least an hour before I unmould the cake from the pan).  

Here's a youtube video link on how I unmould the chiffon cake from its pan. This is the part I love the most about baking chiffon cake, aside than eating it. 

This post is linked to the event Little Thumbs Up (August 2014 Event: Flour) - organised by Zoe (Bake for Happy Kids) and Mui Mui (My Little Favourite DIY) and hosted by Diana from Domestic Goddess Wannabe.

Marble cake

Last night, I was blog-hopping for breakfast ideas with ipad on our bed. The lil' fella wasn't asleep and was still fooling around when I did that. He saw this pic of Wen's delight's butter cake on the ipad screen and shouted out 'mom mom!!' (which meant food).. so I asked him, do you want to have this for breakfast tomorrow?? He just continued saying 'mom mom'.. I guess that's his way of saying yes. So I decided on this recipe. According to Wen, this is one of her all time favorite, shouldn't go much wrong with this, plus this involves the yolk and white separation technique, it should yield a soft cake.

 

 

Recipe adapted from Cooking Crave via Wen's Delight.

 

Ingredients (I halved the original recipe, thus the very short looking marble cake :p)

 

120g butter, chopped

2tbsp brown sugar

pinch of salt

2 egg yolks

100g cake flour

1/2 tsp Baking powder

2 egg whites

1tbsp brown sugar

 

Optional for marble effect:

1/2 tbsp. cocoa powder

1.5 tbsp. hot water

 

*I have also reduced the amount of sugar from the original recipe

 

 

 

Instructions

 

1. Preheat oven at 170C. Line a loaf tin.
2. Cream butter, sugar, salt until light and fluffy.
3. Add in egg yolks, one at a time, and beat until fluffy.
4. Sift in flour and baking powder and mix well. Set aside.
5. Beat egg white and sugar till soft peak in another bowl.
6. Fold 1/3 of egg white meringue into yolk batter. Mix well and fold in the rest.
7. In a small bowl, combine cocoa powder and hot water until there is no cocoa powder lumps. Mix into 1-2tbsp egg yolk batter in another bowl.
8. Pour yellow batter into lined tin, followed by cocoa batter.  
9. Bake for 25-30min or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Steamed malay cake 黑糖马来糕

When I was over in PJ few days ago, we ate a lot of good food. We went for our routine breakfast dim sum at 锦选。The dim sum were okay, but the dish that caught my attention the most was their malay cake, or ma lai kou 马来糕 which was light yellow in color. Before trying it out, I was curious as to why it was in that yellow shade, I thought it should be darker brown in color? The few times we had them in Hong Kong, they are always in darker shade. Anyways, I came back and did some surfing about it. All this while, my understanding is that it's not a dish that originates from Malaysia, it's called so because its color resembles the Malaysian skin color? Hahahaaa.. sound a little racism (or skin colorism) thinking about it, but no fret, this is just my personal thought. My hubby didn't actually agree with my thoughts. I tried it and it definitely tastes much better than my expectation. It was very very cottony soft and not too sweet. I told myself I'm gonna go home and try making something similar.

 

The ones I tried at 锦选 definitely didn't have muscovado sugar 黑糖 in it. Dark muscovado sugar would impart a very distinct taste and color to the cake. But I used it in mine. I tasted a little custard flavor in the ones I tried there. Initially, I wanted to add in custard powder, but when I was at the shop and browsing through the aisle, picked up a packet of custard powder, looked at the ingredient list, it says, 'corn flour, permitted flavoring and fragrance'... I was like, What!?  Finally, I decided I wasn't gonna use it. I'll try other means of making my ma lai kou tastes good, instead of loading it with permitted flavoring and fragrance.

 

 

 

Here's my recipe, adapted from Sally's kitchen

This recipe makes 8 malay cupcakes

 

*If you're using this exact recipe of mine, do not need to cut down the amount of sugar, cos the sugar and cheese counter-balance each other, they are not that sweet. Unless you want to omit the cheese, then you may cut it down.  

 

A

75g dark muscovado sugar/ molasses powder

2 eggs

 

B

60g rice bran oil

65g fresh milk

 

C

140g superfine flour, sifted

1.5tsp baking powder *original recipe called for baking powder and baking soda, I omitted the baking soda

3tbsp grated Cheddar

 

Instructions 

1. In a mixing bowl, beat eggs with sugar until sugar is dissolved. Combine ingredients B with the beaten egg mixture.
2. Add into ingredients C and combine evenly. Let the batter rest for 20min at room temperature (to allow time for baking powder to activate).
3. Divide the batter among the cupcake liner. In a wok with boiling water, steam for 12min.

 



 

Banana and walnut cake (bread maker)

This is another wonderful cake made by my very capable breadmaker.

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs , medium, at room temperature  
• 80g molasses or brown sugar
• 3 ripe banana, medium size, mashed or chopped 
• 150g superfine flour (I used 120g all purpose flour + 30g cornflour)
• 1.5tsp baking powder
• 80g vegetable oil (I used organic grapeseed oil) 
• 2tbsp walnut, toasted

中文翻译

• 3中型鸡蛋， 室温   
• 80g 黄糖
• 3 熟透的香蕉，切幼
• 120g 普通面粉 + 30g 生粉
• 1.5tsp 发粉 （泡打粉） 
• 80g 有机葡萄籽油
• 2tbsp 核桃， 轻轻烘烤过的

Method:

1. Remove the breadpan from the bread machine and fit the kneading blade.
2. Crack in eggs, chopped or mashed banana and sugar.
3. Insert and lock the breadpan into the bread machine.
4. Select mode no. 6 (knead 和面), press START 启动. After 1min, press START/STOP to pause and add in vegetable oil. Press START to let it mix for another 2min. Press STOP and add in the rest of the dry ingredients.       
5. When all ingredients have combined together, about 3-5min, press START/STOP to stop.
6. Select mode no. 11 (BAKE 烘烤), adjust TIME时间 to 01:00 (1hour).
7. Press START（启动）to bake。

Method:

1. 将面包桶取出来。 装上搅拌刀。 
2. 将鸡蛋， 切幼的香蕉及糖加入面包桶内。 
3. 将面包桶装上。 
4. 启动菜单 6 (knead 和面),  按启动. 搅拌一分钟后， 按启动/停止将之停止。 加进葡萄籽油， 按启动让它搅拌2分钟。 按停止， 将其他的干材料全部加进去， 按启动让它搅拌均匀。     
5. 当材料已经搅拌均匀（大约3-5分钟）， 按启动/ 停止。 
6. 启动菜单 11 (BAKE 烘烤), 将时间调整为 01:00 (1个小时).
7. 启动烘烤。

Very soft and fluffy banana and plum bread

Such a great recipe! Here's a recipe for a not-so-typical dense banana cake. It's soft and fluffy and spring back when pressed down.

Recipe adapted from Wen's delight

Ingredients:
*3 eggs (at room temp)
*80-100g molasses sugar (original was 150g)
*3 ripe banana (cut into small pieces or mashed) and one ripe plums (chopped into small pieces)
*150g top Flour (or plain flour/superlite flour/cake flour)
*1/2 tsp baking powder
*1/4 tsp baking soda
*80g grapeseed oil (or virgin coconut oil)
*1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 160deg C. Grease a bread tin.
2. Sieve flour, baking powder and soda together. Set aside.
3. Whisk eggs till stiff/ ribbon stage. Whisk in eggs, banana and plums and molasses.
4. Fold in flour and mix well with spatula.
5. Add in oil and mix well.
6. Bake for 25min, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

My first Christmas cognac fruit cake

Macerated my own dried fruits mix for about 24hours.

 

 

I am a huge fan of the traditional moist and dense fruit cake, yet I haven't made any before. Recently, I ate a good one but it cost quite a bit. So I decided to make my own, and realized the reason why a good one would cost due to the amount of dried fruits and nuts and the ingredients used (especially the liquor).

 

When I mixed the batter and while baking, I wasn't sure if I was doing it right, cos the cake looks really moist. I kept checking the original recipe, wondering why the ratio of flour: fruits are about 1:7!? But nothing was wrong. This turned out to be a great recipe!!

 

Here's the recipe that I adapted from daily delicious, but I have 1/4th the recipe, should have just halved, cos my baking loaf pan is bigger than the one used in original recipe, that's why my fruit cake appear short. But it still taste good! It was recommended that I should wait for at least two days, but I couldn't, I had it about 2hrs right after it was baked :p.

 

*My macerated dried fruit mix was made from

1/2 cup blackcurrant, organic

1/2 cup green raisin, organic

1/4 cup cranberries, organic, chopped

1/4 cup apricot, organic, chopped

1/4 cup honey (may want to cut this if you prefer it less sweet)

1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

1/4 cup of cognac

 

Macerated for about 24hours in a ceramic dish at room temperature.  (Recommended to macerate for longer duration)

 

350g macerated dried fruit mix
70g raw cashew nuts and walnuts mix, organic, chopped
1.5 eggs
1/2 tbsp. honey
1tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt
70g butter
2tbsp molasses sugar, organic
1/4 tsp lemon zest
65g cake flour
9g almond powder
50ml cognac (I didn't do this, cos I didn't want my cake to be too strong)

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 165deg C (I used my toaster oven).
2. Grease loaf pan with butter.
3. Sift flour and almond powder.
4. Beat butter till soft. Add in sugar, honey and salt.
5. Add in beaten egg, lemon zest and vanilla extract.
6. Mix in 1/2 of the flour mix.
7. Mix in the rest with fruits and chopped nuts.
8. Bake for about 30min at 165deg C.

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #38: Boozy-licious (December 2013) hosted by Jasline of Foodie Baker.

 

Also submitting this post to Baby Sumo's Christmas Recipe Collection 2013 event, hosted by Baby Sumo of Eat Your Heart Out.