Marbled Butter Cake

I was feeling really lazy this weekends and seriously considered not baking anything at all. However, on my way home with Dh and the kids after a morning swimming session, I asked them what they want for b'fast tmr. I was thinking of taking a shortcut by letting the breadmaker work. I had planned to bake a peanut butter bread loaf. Surprisingly, Dh and the kids said they wan to have a cake for b'fast! So I threw some suggestions, like oreo cake, sponge cake, and even banana cake, but they wanted a simple butter cake instead. DH then asked for a chocolate flavoured one.

So it was a really good opportunity for me to try out the silicon mold I bought at FHA08. And I wanted a plain vanilla flavoured butter cake, so to compromise, I did a marbled cake instead.

Looks a little like pizza or mooncake huh?

The cake did not rise high. 'coz the cake mold is 10 inches...and I used a 5-egg recipe. I probably needed a 6 or 7 egg recipe to make it fill up the mold nicely. But then this is good enough to satisfy everyone's craving for a cake for now!

Food&Hotel Asia 2008

I jumped at the chance to go for this tradefair when presented a complimentary ticket. As it is a tradefair, you need to be in a F&B industry to get invited or informed of this event. Besides, even if you want to purchase a ticket to enter, it'll cost $80/pax and still have to whip out yr company business card!


While I do not hv a F&B business card or a valid ownership of a F&B registered business, I filled in as online baking. :) No regrets at all for travelling from one end of the island to the other end (from office to expo grounds) with Elyn and K. Only pity is that there's not enough time for me to explore the 7 halls. We zoomed in the baking section (hall 6) and the rest were just a walk-thru'.However along the way to Hall 6, there's many things which distracted caught our attention... not to mention the many food samples everywhere.


At the baking section, there were many baking equipment on display. Of course it's not for homebakers but commercial uses. The companies were looking for distributors and franchises and also creating product and brand awareness. Very often when we tried enquiring abt certain products, they would refer us to the distributors in sg.While others dream of walk-in wardrobes, I want a walk-in oven! *giggles*OK... maybe that's not gonna happen... what abt a cool looking oven like this! Love the brass rings design at the thermometer... so vintage!Many stylo looking cakes too! This is actually a chiler/fridge that's rotating.... and look at all the yummies in it!

More cakes and stuff....One of the companies that sells silicon molds. CHOCOLATES!!! LOLIce-cream!!!

We went on the last day of the fair, and it happened to end earlier than the usual hours for the 1st 3 days. Some companies were then trying to sell off their molds and equipments at a lower price, so that less cost would be incurred if they were to ship their sutff back home. We made use of this opportunity to buy some silicon molds! I ended up with 3 small silicon molds and a 10-in cake mold. I would consider it a very good buy since it's abt $5 off the usual retail price if I were to purchase the same mold at the local baking supply shops.

Happy with the purchases we made and the many sinful food we sampled, we ended off the day reminding each other to try the molds out this weekends! LOL....

The Great Redemption

When Elyn told me to try baking the hokkaido milk loaf using the breadmaker, I ended up using my arm-power 'coz I needed to de-stress. When the week past and I decided to try another recipe, I shortlisted the yogurt bread. Looking at the recipe here, I decided to up the amt and baked 1.5 times of the recipe. I used meiji mixed berries yogurt as I saw in Happyhomebaker's blog that her attempt of the yogurt bread yielded a pink loaf! It's really cool. :)

I just placed all the ingredients into the breadmaker and let it do it's thing. I did not subject the dough to 2 rounds of kneading, as alot of the other bloggers did. I wanted to see how good/bad the bread will turn out if left on it's own.

Well, the resulting bread was surprisingly good! It was soft and aromatic. The texture is springy and airy. However, I did not get a pink loaf. The yogurt was a bright purple when I added it into the breadmaker, the bread turned out a dull and light brown when done. Judging from the rate the kids are munching on the bread, color is definately not an issue here! I'm happy to say that the breadmaker had redeemed itself... but i hope it can churn out equally good breads using other recipes... i can't be just using this recipe all the time rite? LOL

DH commented I added wine to the bread... hmm... i wonder why he tasted wine in the bread? Others commented that the bread tasted sour... i guess it's the yogurt. I thot it's a nice change from the usual sweet bread we eat.

Here's the recipe:

What you need

• 150gm yogurt (I used meiji mixed berries)
• 1 egg
• 90gm milk
• 22gm sugar
• 5gm salt
• 5gm yeast
• 375gm bread flour
• 45gm butter (soft, at room temp)

What to do

• Mix tog yogurt, milk, egg and sugar into a cup using a fork. Pour into breadmaker.
• Add in yeast and butter.
• Place the bread flour on top.
• Finally, add in the salt.
• Set the breadmaker to the sweet dough function. In 2hrs 55mins, the loaf will be ready.

Peace Award

I've been awarded this Peace Award by Elyn. Thanks dear! We all try to make this world a better place, kay? (LOL)

Tag : Life is Full of Gratitude

Thanks Ching for tagging me on this. Really made me sit down and reflect on my life...

I'm grateful for my parents, especially my dear mom who helped me with my kids... and also giving my precious advice that takes me thru' everyday... I'm grateful for life at the moment... tho' there's always complaints, abt the ppl ard me, abt the environment... but being just able to go thru' the day, experiencing happiness, sadness, anger or even bitchiness! :P I'm grateful for that... I'm grateful to having my friends around me... I'm not someone who can warm up easily or make friends easily, which explains why I don't have many close friends, maybe just a couple of them.. but to me, I find that that's enuf. And tho' we do not contact each other everyday or even meetup often, but still a msg, a sms or an email to enuf to keep each other updated. Life is such that everyone is so bz with their everyday lives, esp those who have kids and work(meaning me), and that usually means feeling so tired by the end of the day. it' really takes alot of effort keep in contact.

~Start Copy~
In order to be able to achieve and maintain happiness we need to, actively, be able to do two things: Complain and then let go (Dump the baggage, the roadblocks to happiness.) Express Gratitude (The open expression of gratitude promotes happiness.) After all everyone has something to be grateful for and/or something to complain about. If you would like to share, please follow the appropriate link and do so: “Are You Grateful?”, “Complain Complain Complain.”

Add your name to the current List of Contributors: 1-Attitude, the Ultimate Power 2-Max 3-DianaCA’s Metamorphoses 4-Mental Poo 5-My Thoughts 6-Baba Doodlius 7-Wake Up America 8-Life is a Roller Coaster 9-Life is beautiful 10-Pinay Mommy Online 11-Nelle-LucidCreativity 12- Juliana of PinayWahm 13- Juliana’s Lair 14 - Hailey of Hailey’s Beats and Bits 15 – Choc Mint Girl 16- Zooropazoo- 17 Rainbows 18 Little Corner of Mine - 19 Baking Fiends Unite (Add your link here).
~End Copy~

I'm passing this tag to: Elyn

Steamed Mango Cupcakes

I was out shopping along orchard rd last saturday when i stopped by Sun Moulin (bakery) to pick up some mochi bread for the kids. Of course I started "poking ard" and saw some mango cakes on sale too. Being a fan of mango, onto the tray the cake went! :P

When i tok a bite into the cake, i was totally blown away. It's so pillowy soft! Besides having a slight tinge of mango frangrance in the cake, it was topped wif some strips of dried mangoes.

Fast forward to today afternoon, when i suddenly got a craving for the mango cake! I decided to try making some myself. I remembered the cake having very light and fine crumbs, which resembled cake batter with emulisifier added. Also, the top and bottom of the cake was not browned, which meant that it could be a steamed cake, instead of baked. I immediately looked into my file of recipes as there was a 7-up steamed cake recipe that i had tried b4. I thought it'll be good to modify that recipe and hopefully be able to achieve the same texture.

Here's the cake when it's done. Appearance-wise, the Sun Moulin's version does not have any cracked top. In fact, it was very smooth. Every single one of mine, however, cracked... and resembles huatt kuehs! The texture was quite similar tho'... but it's still not as pillowy-soft. As for the mango frangrance, it's also not strong enuf. I think maybe I shd try juicing mangoes myself or even use mango puree instead. However, I'm happy with this attempt and it's enuf to satisfy my cravings for now....

And now... on to the recipe:

What you need

• 3 egg yolks
• 2 egg whites
• 180gm sugar
• 300gm cake flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tbsp ovalette
• 200ml mango juice
• Some dried mangoes (cut into strips)

What to do

• Whip eggs and sugar till pale.
• Add in ovalette and continue to beat for anther 3 mins.
• Add in sifted flour and baking powder and mango juice althermately into the beaten eggs mix till well incorporated.
• Fill 1/2 of the muffin liners with batter, put in some dried mangoes. Top muffin liners with remaining batter. Then place some more strips of dried mangoes.
• Steam over rapid boiling water for 10mins.

Chocolate sugar rolls

As mentioned before, my kids love sugar rolls.... I made some minor changes to Lucy's sugar roll recipe to make it chocolate... yum yum!

A long process...

It all started off with me complaining abt my breadmaker to Elyn. She suggested that i try making the hokkaido loaf instead as it'll produce a much better result than the cheese loaf. Then Ching also made the same suggestion... so i tot i'll try it out... as the week went by, i added more things to my to-do list... by Wednesday, I've abt 5 items to make! Very ambitious for me as I planned to bake them only on the weekends. So there and then, I decided to start my baking on Thursday nite.

I got leftover whip cream from DD's barbie cake, so hokkiado milk loaf is a good choice. However, it had been a rather bad week, so I hand-kneaded the dough instead to destress. By the time the dough was ready for 2nd poofing it was rather late at nite. I did not want to stay up late just so I can bake the bread on the same nite, so I left the bread, all rolled up for the 2nd poofing in the fridge. I was hoping that it'll continue to poof, albeit abit slow (hey, it got all nite to do it!) in the cold and the next morning, i can wake up abit earlier, and then bake it and we'll have nice bread for b'fast.

Well, the next morning when i looked at the dough in the fridge, it had not poofed at all! well, maybe a tiny little bit, but it still looked the same to me as it had the nite before, so back into the fridge it stayed while we went for b'fast on the way to work...

Then last nite, I decided to take it out to "thaw". had a hard time trying to get it to poof the 2nd time and was worried that it might not as the cold might had killed the yeast! i tried putting it onto on a steamer, after I boiled some water.. the process was painfully slow... so in the end, i resorted to boiling a pan of water and leaving the pan, with hot steaming water, tog with the loaf inside the oven. Turned out that it worked much better that way. The bread finally rose... tho' not as high as I hoped it could be, but at least it's ready for baking.

Here it is after baked.... phew....finally done it and now I can have some nice bread for b'fast!