Pink japanese souffle cheese cupcakes (beet and mango)

I'm quite nervous when I decided to do this, cos I previously failed big big time when I tried to bake soufflé cheese cupcakes using the steam-bake method. I couldn't master the baking temp. and time for my oven. Keeping my fingers crossed that it turns out good. The girls are coming over to mine tomorrow for a Christmas bake, so I wanted to bake some treats for them. I was thinking of baking the beet red velvet cupcakes that I made yesterday, but seeing that we'll be baking more sweets, I should perhaps serve them something light and not that dense. And I thought of this. Super light! It melts in the mouth. And it's something I wanted to try again after the failure I hit some time back. Most importantly, I wanted to use up the pureed beet I had after making them for my red velvet cupcakes. Love the pink color. Best of all, it's all natural colorant. No artificial stuff in it. Such is the wonder of nature. So beautiful.

 

This cake has the 'melt-in-your-mouth' texture, just the way it's called, soufflé. But it is so light that one will never be enough. Hohohooo..

This is a recipe that I adapted from a fellow baker from the Facebook group Baking Wonderland.

*125g cream cheese, softened/ melted over bath of hot water
*60ml beet puree
*40ml buttermilk (or milk) (if you want the texture of this cake to be denser, replace this with cream)
*1tbsp grapeseed oil
*3 egg yolk
*1tbsp molasses sugar (fine)***
*1tbsp lemon juice
*30g superfine flour/ cornflour

*3 egg white
*3tbsp of molasses (fine)

*abt 2tbsp of chopped up mango (optional)

***The sugar content of this cake has been greatly reduced. Please top up with another 2tbsp sugar if you like your cakes sweet.

1. Combine fully melted cheese with beet puree, buttermilk and oil.
2. Beat egg yolk with sugar till it turns thick.
3. Combine egg yolk mix with cheese mix. Add in lemon juice.
4. In another mixing bowl, beat egg white with molasses till it forms a stiff peak.
5. In 3 batches, add the egg white meringue into the egg yolk batter.
6. Combine thoroughly and divide batter into 12-13 cupcake liners. Top with few cubes of fresh mango.
7. Tap the cupcake a few times to remove trapped air (not too sure it's needed here, but it's just a usual procedure I do with light cakes)
8. Bake (steam-bake) at 150deg C for 35-40min. This was baked using my toaster oven.

Hooray!! I've finally succeeded with my 'steam-baked' Japanese soufflé cheese cupcakes.

This should be my last post before Christmas. Merry Christmas!!


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

My 'au naturel' beet red velvet cupcakes with roasted chestnuts

Very vibrant red color from the freshly pureed beet.

 

 

Everyone, me included, goes gaga when we sees red velvet cakes. I've book-marked a few recipes to try baking them myself. But after some reading up about them, I realized that in order to attain that vibrant pretty red color, I have to add in about half bottle (about 1-2oz) of the red colorant. Whoa!!? Having worked with food colorant before, I know where they come from. The natural ones cost a bomb. Most of them are artificially made and there's a danger to them. Some kids get anaphylactic shock eating food that contains them. Since my cakes are gonna be shared with friends and with my lil' one, I didn't want to add in the red colorant. Then I continued searching until I come across this recipe, which contains the ingredients I wanted, natural colorant - beetroot! and I also wanted a recipe that uses oil instead of butter (to give it the light texture) but still uses buttermilk. And I'm absolutely pleased with this. It's super light and moist, and I couldn't taste the beet (I was afraid that the earthy taste of beet would be too overpowering, it wasn't!) I ended up giving almost all out to my friends, clients and left only 3 for myself, hubby and the lil' fella. Well, Christmas is about giving..

Here's the recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients (this recipe yields about 10cupcakes)

• 150g superfine flour
• 15g natural cocoa powder (don't use the Dutch processed ones)
• 1.5tsp natural baking powder (free from aluminium)
• 100g pureed beetroot (steamed and pureed)
• 1/2 tsp lemon juice (original recipe uses vinegar, but I realized the tang never comes through in my cake, can probably up this in future)
• 1/2 cup buttermilk (1/2 tbsp. lemon juice in 1/2 cup of full cream milk and let sit for 10min)
• 100g molasses sugar
• 130ml vegetable oil (I used virgin coconut oil)
• 1 egg
• scraped vanilla seeds from a pod
• about 3-4 roasted chestnuts (mine was from a package)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 165deg C (I used a toaster oven).
2. Sift dry ingredients and set aside.
3. Peel skin off beetroot and cut into cubes. Steam with about 3tbsp water. Puree in a blender.
4. Using a hand held beater, I combine the pureed beetroot with oil, lemon juice, vanilla and egg.
5. Add dry ingredients to the wet batter. Mix thoroughly.
6. Spoon batter into cupcake liners, till about 90% full (knew that this cupcake is not gonna rise much). Sprinkle with some chopped roasted chestnuts on top.
7. Bake for 18-20min or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
8. Let cool completely before icing with cream-cheese frosting.

Molasses cream-cheese frosting
(I don't have white icing sugar, I never use them. For all recipes I bake or cook with, I use molasses to replace the sugar. For icing sugar, I just replace with molasses sugar that I've blitz to fine powder)

• 70g butter, room temperature
• 120g cream cheese, room temperature
• 150g molasses sugar, sifted
• 1tsp pure vanilla extract

1. Beat butter and cream cheese until well combined.

2. Add in vanilla and sift in half of molasses icing and beat until combined. Then sift in the remaining sugar and mix until smooth and thick.



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

 

 

Pumpkin bread (4hr liquid dough)

I have been sooo busy baking breads these days, that I haven't been updating my blog or cooking anything special for the lil' fella. Argh.. bad mommy bad mommy! When I discovered the 65deg C dough method, I was like sooo ecstatic like I've discovered a new land (发现新大陆). I was surprised that I can make such soft and fluffy bread without any bread improver nor softener, and even with a small scale toaster oven. I started selling them in the shop.

Strawberry cream cheese bun aka love bun

Homemade sambal and tuna bun

Cinnamon raisin twist

All time favorite - Multigrain fruit roll

I also tried Alex Goh's sweet bread dough which also give me the same result. Now that I am more familiar with bread-making, I continue to research and try out other different methods that give me great bread.

I came across a 4hr liquid dough fermentation method, which only requires 4 hour so I decided to try it out, but made a little adaptation to it to bake pumpkin bread.

Recipe adapted from here, translated by myself:

Liquid dough:

50g bread flour
100g water
1g (1/3 tsp) instant active yeast

Place all in a bowl and cover. Leave at room temperature for at least 4 hours.

Main dough
500g bread flour
257g pumpkin puree mixed with water (I used about 150g pumpkin puree mixed with 100g water)
2tbsp oat milk powder
60g honey
1tsp salt
1tbsp yeast
50g butter

Knead with all ingredients, except butter, till you get a smooth surface. This dough is not too wet or soft type, compared to the 65deg C or Alex Goh's method's dough. Butter is added in when everything is well combined and the moisture has already been absorbed by the flour.

 



Leave to proof for about an hour, or when the dough becomes double in size.
Divide the dough into four portions or three portions or into 100g bun size portion. Roll into a ball. Let rest for 15min.
Shape the dough into the desired shape. (I'm not a pro when comes to making loaf bread, as you can see, yet to improve)
I made them with two different fillings:
1. A savory one made from fresh basil leaves (chiffonade), sundried tomato, black olives and garlic (all thinly sliced and marinated in olive oil with salt and pepper)
2. A sweet and savory one made from homemade tahini spread (my healthier version of peanut butter)

 

 

For this, I baked them at 175 deg C for about 20min in my toaster oven.
The recipe yields a loaf and two 130g baton and one 100g round bun.

I freeze them and just steam them for about 10-15min when I wanted to eat them. Check out the tuna sandwich I made using these pumpkin bread (frozen and steamed to thaw).



Baked/ Roast honey lime chicken breast

The vegetarian shop nearby has closed down :( I ain't a vegetarian, but at times, I get sick of eating outside food and I would resort to eating there, cos its food is less oily and less seasoned. Argh.. but now it's no more there. So I try and make my own lunch, which I guess is a good thing. I made this roast chicken breast today, so that I can have extra roast chicken left for salad tomorrow morning for myself, the lil' fella and also the hubby.





Marinated this piece of chicken breast with

 

• Grated garlic and ginger (I used a cheese grater)
• Oyster sauce
• Bragg's liquid amino (soy sauce)
• Toasted sesame oil, organic
• Salt and cracked black pepper
• Blackstrap molasses (great as a replacement for honey, it gives it that stickiness and also the BBQ flavor and the hint of sweetness, not too overpowering like honey)
• Lime juice

I couldn't specify the amount used, cos I was happily pouring everything in, without trying to remember how much of everything put in.

I also slice two piece of the sweet lime and covered the upper part of the breast, in order to seal in the juices, or else the meat may gets too try. I covered the chicken with aluminum foil for the first 20min of baking, and only removed the foil last 5min. This was very effective in helping to keep the meat succulent and juicy.

Note: should remove the rind/ skin of the lime, it gave the juice a little bitterness :p

I baked this (with my toaster oven) at 190deg for 25min.

Ate half the breast, and left the other half for salad the next morning. Further marinated the remaining ones with Japanese Goma dressing.

 

 

My hubby loved this salad very much, with a special mention on the chicken. Guess I'll be making more of this in the future, also means more roast chicken for lunch for me :p