Strawberry Shortcake - The Konichiwa Way

Mini Strawberry Shortcake

I have always wanted to try whipped cream frosting, but it was so daunting... The weather in Singapore just made it so much easier for the whipped cream to melt due to the heat. Plus it is harder to ensure I do not over whip the cream else I can start producing my own butter. But I so love the whipped cream, not too sweet and with a tinge of dairy flavour.. Plus the texture is so much lighter than your average buttercream..

So with my anniversary with Sunshine round the corner, I asked him if we could bake a cake together to celebrate our anniversary.







Strawberry Shortcake recipe (adapted from Cooking with Dog)
For the cake base (2x 9" cake pans)
180g of cake flour
300g of egg
200g of sugar
30g butter, melted
2 Tablespoon of milk

For the Soaking Syrup
1 Tablespoon of Rum
2 Tablespoon of Sugar
3 Tablespoon of Hot Water

For the Whipped Cream Frosting
600ml of whipping cream
4 1/2 Tablespoon of sugar

10 - 14 strawberries
Icing Sugar


Directions:
To bake the cake:
Preheat oven to 160C. Line 2 9" cake pans with parchment paper and oil them. Set aside.
Get ready a big bowl of hot water. Set aside.
Beat egg with sugar until combined (~30s). Place the mixing bowl into the hot water and continue beating the egg at high speed. (I used a hand mixer and it is difficult to heat up the bowl using stand mixer. Once the egg mixture is warm when placing a finger into the mixture to test, remove the mixing bowl from the hot water bat. Continue to mix until the mixture turns very pale and at least doubled to trippled in volume.
Sift the cake flour into the mixture. Gently fold the batter, using a spatula, till combined. Add in the melted butter and milk. Continue to fold the mixture till the batter becomes glossy.
Pour the mixture evenly to the 2 cake pan. (I used a weighing scale just to be accurate)
Bake the cake for 16-20 min or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let it rest for 5 min and turn the cake pan upside down to the cooling rack. Let the cakes cool completely.

To make the soaking syrup:
Add all the ingredients together and stir till the sugar completely dissolved. Set aside.

To make the whipped cream
Get ready a large bowl of ice water, less than half filled. In another medium size metal bowl, combine the whipping cream and the sugar. Place the medium size bowl into the ice water. Using a balloon whisk, whisk the whipping cream until the cream reached slightly before it reaches hard peaks.  Put the cream into the fridge until ready to assemble.

To Assemble:
Cut the strawberries into thin slices, Set aside.
Take the cake out of the pan, set the cake on the cake stand. Apply a layer of soaking syrup on the cake, glaze a layer of whipping cream before placing the sliced strawberries in a single layer. Apply another generous coating of whipped cream, make sure it covers the strawberries.

Coat the soaking syrup on both side of the second cake. I did it by coating one side, place it on top of the whipped cream and coat the top side with soaking syrup.
To complete the look, cover the whole cake with the whipped cream and decorate the cake with nice looking whole strawberries and some icing sugar to give it a dreamy look.

9inch cake.... 

See how fluffy the cake is. 

Sunshine and I was so oily from all the cooking and baking. So only have 2 teddies to replace us.. hahaha..
The Sake was nice and complemented the cake quite well. 

Extra Dark Chocolate Cake with Salted Extra Dark Chocolate Frosting

Was messaging friend D during the long Easter weekend of what I had been baking and she told me that her birthday was coming.. In a couple of days actually.. So i told her, let me bake you a cake then.. That got me thinking what cake should I bake.. It has been so long since I baked a full cake.. Think the last round it was in January 2013 when I first started the blog.. hahaha. it was that long.. New work and everything just took me away from my beloved baking.. It was really awesome to continue baking.. I felt so happy to bake. Felt so nice during the long weekend.. Baked so many stuff (recipe coming soon)

Long story short.. I decided to bake chocolate cake.. Went to Phoon Huat and saw this "Extra Dark Cocoa Powder" and I was like.. Wow... How dark is extra dark.. bought a pack back and oh my.. it was like the charcoal powder.. No kidding..

SO So Black :) I like 

Ingredients (makes a good 8-12 slices, depending on how big or small you want to slice the cake. but 12 is still too big for me.. haha) Adapted from Joy Of Baking's Simple Chocolate Cake

For the Cake

• 425g of Sugar
• 245g of Plain Flour
• 75g of Extra Dark Cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 1/2 Cup of Flavourless Oil (I use Canola Oil)
• 1 Cup Milk
• 2 Large Eggs
• 1 1/2 Pure Vanilla Extract
• 1 Cup Warm Strong Espresso 

For the Frosting

• 226g of unsalted butter
• 3 to 3 1/4 Cups  of icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 50g of Extra Dark Cocoa powder
• 3/4 teaspoon of salt
• 2 to 3 tablespoon of Milk

Method:

For the Cake: 

1. Preheat Oven to 180C. Set aside 2 9" by  1.5" round pan with parchment paper and oiled. 
2. Add all the dry ingredients (first 6 items) together in a large mixing bowl. Mix well.
3. Combine all the wet ingredients together. Whisk well 
4. Add the Wet Ingredients to the dry ingredients until combined. 
5. Bake the cake batter for 27 - 30min or until a toothpick comes out clean when poked into the middle of the cake. Remove from oven and let it cool in the pan for 10 - 15min and the top side down on a wire rack 

Note: Instead of using butter for most recipe, it is good to use oil. Oil will not dried up like butter will and even when refrigerated will not hardened.. Which gives you a moist and soft cake to eat.. *Yum Yum*

For the Frosting: 

1. Sift the icing sugar and cocoa powder separately
2. In a stand alone mixer, using the paddler attachment, stir the butter till it is pale and creamy looking. Add in the vanilla extract and salt. Continue to mix until combine.
3. Add in the sifted cocoa powder. Mix well.
4. Slowly add the icing sugar 1/4 cup at a time. Halfway through adding in the sugar, pour in 1 Tablespoon of milk. This will help to mix the icing sugar better with a bit of liquid. Keep alternating the addition of the icing sugar and milk till you get the right consistency and the sweetness level. 

Note: Another reason I alternate adding icing sugar and milk is because I worried if the frosting is too sweet. (Not much of a sweet tooth for me.) 

To assemble the cake.. 

I made it more rugged looking.. Not bad eh. 

• You might want to cut flat the cake (sometimes the cake baked with a little bulge). What I did earlier, which is to put the top side diwn is to try to flatten the bulge as much as possible. 
• Putting the flatter side of the cake at the bottom of your cake stand, spread a layer of the frosting on top of the cake. The amount really depended on how thick you want your frosting to be. 
• Next, place the next layer with the less flatter cake touching the frosting. (This way, I created a flat top that you see in all cakes at the cake shop. You might see some gaps between the 2 layers of cake, no worries, you can fill them up with more frosting. *Yum Yum*)
• Crumb coat the whole cake. Crumb coat means applying a thin layer of your frosting and then refrigerate the whole cake for a good 10 min. This will help in providing a crumb free surface to work with while you frost the cake. Once you frost the cake to the level of perfection, you can leave it as it is (which is what I did for the cake) or add decoratives items to beautify the cake :)

Friend D was very surprised that I made her a cake. She was just kidding. But wells, I told her I was doing.. And am happy to be baking for her.. Made me wanna bake more cake for more people and for any occasion..

With candle and "Happy Birthday" decorative item.

Peeps! Give me more reasons to bake.. I really love to see people enjoying my cake :)

Applesauce cake ~ A great way to kick start the new year

Happy New Year!!!!

Been thinking that I should bake something on new year day so that I can get my momentum back in baking. Has been a slack year for year 2012. A bit ashamed for not taking my baking more seriously. After all, I really like to bake and baking makes me happy.. 

Suddenly have an urged to do something apple-ish, so I went to get like 14 apples from my local wet market and started making applesauce. I got my applesauce recipe from Laura Vitale. You can go to her website on applesauce to see how I made mine. 

My first attempt on coming up with a recipe so I am a bit worried in the beginning that it might turned out wrong. But all my worries were for naught when all my colleagues said the cake was deli-cious! 

Some of my colleagues asked for the recipe so here it goes:

Ingredients: 

For the cake:

1. 3 cups of all purpose flour
2. 3 teaspoon baking soda
3. 1.5 teaspoon of baking powder
4. 0.5 teaspoon of salt
5. 0.5 teaspoon of cinnamon powder 
6. 0.5 teaspoon of five spice powder (you can use nutmeg and cloves but I just happen to run out of them, so I substitute it with five spice powder and it turned out pretty well)
7. 1 large orange zest
8. 3 large eggs
9. 170g of unsalted butter at room temperature
10. 2 teaspoon of vanilla extract 
11. 2 cups of apple sauce (you can get the recipe here) 
12. 0.5 cup of milk
13. 0.25 cup of orange juice (basically the juice from the orange of your zest)
14. 0.25 cup of apple juice (you can substitute it with orange juice or milk)

For the applesauce frosting:

1. 1 Cup of applesauce
2. 1.5 Cup of sifted icing sugar
3. 0.25 Cup of butter
4. 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
5. 0.5 Cup of heavy whipping cream (I used the whipping cream with plant extract for better hold)

Directions

For the cake:

1. Pre-heat oven to 180C. Grease 2 9 inch pans with non-stick cooking oil and line them with parchment paper. Set aside. 
2. Mixed the first 6 ingredients into a medium bowl. Set aside. 
3. In a stand alone mixer (with peddler attachment) or a hand mixer, beat the butter till soft and fluffy under medium speed. Around 1-2 min. 
4. Add the sugar and continue beating for another 2-3 min till the mixture become pale and fluffier. 
5. Add the vanilla extract, beat, and add the egg one at a time. Continue mixing till they come together.
6. Changing the mixer speed to low, add in the applesauce and ensure complete mixing. 
7. Add in the flour and the liquids at intervals. Flour - milk - flour - apple & orange juice - flour. Do not over mix else you will get a bread like consistency. Once the mixing is almost done, stop mixing. Use a hand spatula to mix in any flour at the side into the batter. 
8. Evenly distribute the cake batter in the 2 pans and ensure that the cake is leveled. Put it into the oven and bake for 27-32 min (depending on your oven). It is ready when a toothpick goes in without any crumbs coming out with it. Let the cake cool completely before you frost the cake

For the frosting:

1. In your mixer, beat the butter till soft and fluffy. Add the vanilla extract and applesuace. Continue beating till well mixed.
2. Slowly add in the sifted icing sugar (1 tablespoon at a time) 
3. Changed the paddler attachment into whisk attachment and add in the whipping cream bit by bit. Whisk from slow to fast and check for consistency. If the frosting is still too watery, add more whipping cream and start from slow speed to fast and check for consistency again. Once the desired consistency has been reached - the frosting is able to form stiff peaks, stop adding the whipping cream and placed it in the refrigerator to store until you need them. 

Putting the cake together:

1. Trimmed the cakes till you have a flat top
2. Add in the frosting on top of one cake and stacked the other on top of the cake. Once completed, you can coat the coat with a layer of the frosting all over the cake. You may proceed with adding decorations according as the celebrations call for.

The Cake after a layer of frosting.. Looks a bit pale.. hahah

What the cake looks like inside.. The apple bits are all over the cake! ^.^

TA-DA!!!

The end result with the decorations - White chocolate wall with some nice fondant figurines. 

I must say that because I used applesauce, the apple taste was not that strong. My colleagues could taste the orange and the spice more. Maybe I used add some real apples as well.. Maybe at the base to increase the apple taste. This will be another time where I decide to make another apple cake. In the meantime, I will continue to back other stuff... Maybe something oriental first.. haha

Nonetheless.. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!