Christmas Fruit Cake

Tomorrow, we will have a Boxing Day party at my cousin's place. I plan to make a apple crumbled pie and fruit cake.

This is my first attempt baking a fruit cake. I just followed the recipe blindly. My friend, Huiz told me that as long as I can see bubbles in the cake batter, the cake will turn out just fine... That's how I access my cake. True enough, the cake turns out pretty well... :) However, I still need more time to 'understand' my microwave oven.

 

I've cut away the top part, cos it was quite tough and dry. The filling is just nice, not very soggy and not very dry... I like it.

The recipe is adapted from KC Forum: Boiled Fruit Cake by Connie. I actually halved the recipe (In italic)

Ingredients
(A)
1kg Mixed Fruits (400g Mixed fruits - but DH said too much fruits)
125g Brandy (65g Orange Juice - Can't take Alcohol)
125g Water (65g Water)
250g Butter (125g Butter)
150g Brown Sugar (Original recipe is 200g) (80g brown sugar - still can be reduced)

(B)
5 Large eggs, lightly beaten (3 large eggs)
1 TBsp Treacle (1 tsp of honey)
2 tsp grated orange rind (1 tsp grated orange rind)
1 tsp grated lemon rind

(C)
265g Plain flour (135g plain flour)
50g Self raising flour (25g self raising flour)
1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of soda

Method
1) Sift ingredients (C) together several times, set aside.
2) Combine ingredients (A) in a pan. Stir constantly over heat without boiling until sugar is dissolved.
3) Once sugar is dissolved, bring to boil, then reduce the heat to simmer covered for 10 minutes.
4) Transfer the hot mixture to a big mixing bowl and let it cool to room temperature.
5) *Greese a deep 9" round cake tin, line the base & sides with 2 layers of silicon paper. Prepare another 2 layers of silicon paper (Paper height: 7cm) to tie around the cake tin with cotton string. bringing the paper 5cm above the edge of cake tin.
6) Once the fruit mixture is cooled to room temperature, add eggs, treacle, and rinds and stir until combined.
7) Stir in sifted flour until combined. 
8) *Baked at 140C - 150C for about 2.5 hours or test it with skewer.
9) Cover the cake with aluminum foil and cool in cake tin.

I was using a disposable aluminum tray (215 x 110 x 55)mm to bake the cake. Baked with 160C for 1 hour and reduced the temp to 130C for another 10 minutes.

Apple Crumble Pie

Last Friday, met up with Betsy and Dewi at Betsy's home studio. Dewi is my polymate and she's learning crochet from Betsy.

I baked an apple crumble pie for them... It was my first time baking a pie... I didn't know it was so easy. And delicious too... I got the recipe from KC once again.

Here goes the recipe (abstracted from KC by Elaine):

The crust
125g butter
225g plain flour
1/2 beaten egg
The apple filling
4 apples, peeled, cored and sliced
2 tbsp brown sugar
sprinkles of cinnamon powder
lemon juice from a slice of lemon
some water
1/2 tbsp corn flour

The crumble
70 - 80g butter
1 cup self-raising flour
4tbsp sugar

Method
1. Make filling first by cooking the apples with the rest of the ingredients with some water. Add corn flour to thicken.
2. Make the crust by combining the butter, flour and egg to form into a dough. Press dough on to a pie pan. 
3. For the crumble, gently rub the butter and flour to form into crumbs and add sugar and mix well.
4. After crust is baked, pour in the apple filling and sprinkle top with the crumble. Bake at 200C for about 30 - 45 mins or till crust is nicely browned.

Well, to make the crust, I used fingers (taught by Rei & Gina) and added egg after the butter and flour were evenly mixed.

I didn't use pie pan, I used aluminum baking container to bake.

Bread Pudding

My brother, Jin LOVES bread pudding! Our first attempt baking our own bread pudding.

We followed the recipe from Joy of Baking

Initially I was quite worried because baking bread pudding, I need to prepare 'water bath' or 'Bain Marie'.I was using Microwave Oven to bake the bread pudding, I was not sure whether can I put water in the it.. But then, we still tried.

I bought a bigger glass casserole from Carefour, to hold my smaller casserole that filled with the batter. Instead of baking for 1 hour, we baked for 40 minutes. We were using French loaf for this recipe.

You can add Raisin/Sultana, apple or others to add flavor. We didn't cos ML doesn't like Raisin... So we had it original.

Voila!

Look at how happy Jin was... :)

Wednesday Lunch - Chicken Baked Rice

I was feeling unwell today... :( Been coughing quite badly the night before. So, I took a day off to rest at home.

Felt lazy to go down to 'da bao', decided to do my own lunch. All I have is chicken breast, some vege... So, I decided to BAKED RICE!

I found this recipe from the net... So, simple..

http://www.recipezaar.com/Creamy-Baked-Rice-70173 

I added green pepper & potatoes, besides chicken breast. YUMMY!!! I finished almost all by myself... =P

 

3 CAKES!

Last Saturday, I baked 3 cakes... Mayling came over to my place. We suppose to bake together. However, she was not feeling well. After taking 2 Panadols, she had a nap. While, I started to explore the craft of baking cake... Hehehehe

I found this recipe from http://www.joyofbaking.com/... Cheese Pound Cake. Look easy... So, I decided to try.

Yup! This is my multi-purpose dining table... Look quite complete right?

I baked 3 cakes on that day... Well, the first cake I did, I didn't know the proper way to bake cake... Cos the recipe didn't mention that I need to grease & spread parchment paper on the baking pan... I just poured the batter into it... I was using microwave oven to bake instead of oven, so I didn't know ho to control the temperature.. Well, this was the result of my 1st cake!! BURNT!... =P

Then, May Ling woke up... She suggested to refer to on-line video... How come I never think of that! So, we visited www.videojug.com. There's a video on "how to make a simple pound cake".

We followed the steps exactly and baked our 2nd cake...

Not bad rite! But it's a bit tough. Maybe it's the temperature was too high & baking timing was too long.

Since we left some batter, this time, we mix with chocolate chip & chocolate syrup and baked our 3rd cake!

So far, our 3rd cake was better than 2nd one... Not that tough, but still quite dry... :( I'm still searching for tips to bake using microwave oven...