Hazelnut cake with Dark Chocolate glaze.

Hello world! Its been a while since I last baked, 2 months I reckon! And why have I not been baking? Its because I am lazy, plain and simple :/ Moving forward now. I have decided to bake Hazelnut cake with chocolate glaze. Its My first time baking a cake with glaze! 

So I finally get to use my christmas present from Ah huat! Its so slim and light weight! This is the best invention for baking if you are a noob at baking still! Before having this digital weighing scale I was using the old school weighing scale, well that sounds pretty alright right? BUT the one I was using was to weight paper! Rather pathetic, but not that I have this, life is a lot easier! 

I think Hazelnut cake is seldom baked around here, at least at home unless you have one of those food processors that could ground your hazelnuts. Since I did not have that, I could not bake it even though I have been wanting to try it out. So last year when I was in Germany,  I bought the ready grounded hazelnut. While searching for a nice Hazelnut Cake recipe, I chance upon a hazelnut recipe from allrecipes . After reading through some of the reviews I concluded that 

1) This is a really good recipe 

2) Its really easy to bake 

3) It seem Germans like hazelnut chocolate cakes. 

Ingredient (serves 11) 

70g Hazelnut

80g Butter

205g White Sugar

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

170g Flour

1 1/4 Tsp Baking Powder

Pinch of salt 

80ml Heavy Whipping cream

115g Dark Chocolate ( at least 70% cocoa) 

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease the bottom of one springform pan.

2) Pulse the nuts in a food processor until ground.

3) Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat, cool

4) In a large bowl beat eggs, sugar and 1 Tsp vanilla extract until thick and lemon colour (about 2-3mins)  Add flour, baking powder, salt and ground nuts, mix well. Continue to beat mixture while slowly adding the cooled melted butter until blended (mixture will be thick). Spread batter into prepared pan. 

5) Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 35-40 mins or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan for 15 min then remove sides of pan. Remove pan bottom and invert onto a serving plate. Cover with a cloth towel and cool for another 30 mins before glazing (I did not cover with a cloth though and it worked pretty alright.) 

6) To make Glaze: In a medium saucepan bring whipping cream just to a boil, remove from heat and stir in the dark chocolate until melted and smooth. Stir in 1/2 Tsp vanilla extract. Spread glaze over top of cooled cake, allowing it to run down the sides. 

If you are wondering what the donut looking thing is on top of the cake. Its sorta like rice loops coated in chocolate. 

The cake tasted pretty good I must say! :) Combination of Hazelnut and dark chocolate goes pretty well! 

Here it is! Bought it from Germany. And its very tasty too! 

Chocolate cheese cake brownie.

Ah huat's mum gave me a cook book when they were in town last week. Now that I have some time on hand to bum around, I decided to open the book and check it out. I sure do miss baking and really wanted to bake something savory for a change this time. Wanted to bake something with puff pastry. But again, wanting to do something and actually getting my butt out to get the ingredients is another thing. So I decided to bake something thats on my to bake list, since...donkey years. And since I have the ingredients anyways, I decided to give it a go!

So today I baked Chocolate cheese cake brownie. The first time I came across this recipe was actually from Tastespotting. Unfortunately the recipe was in spanish or something. So I was too lazy to check out for translation and stuff and kinda forgot about it, until I was gonna have a potluck with my hall mates one fine day. ( Which did not work out, because I had to stay for a meeting till 9.30pm of all days!) That would be the perfect dessert to bake! That did not happen of course. Hence today was a perfect day to try it out.

I kinda combined two recipes into one. The first one is from an awesome One Bowl Brownie and the second is from a Chunky Cheesecake Brownie recipe. Okay does not make sense that I used two recipe when the latter is the recipe of the Brownie I am gonna bake. My only reason is that I wanted to bake with the best brownie recipe I could find. Hence the added step, only to realise that I had some missing ingredients, because sister Tan stole some of my chocolate! Hence I used cocoa powder as a substitute for the missing chocolate, which I believe is also a healthier alternative.

28g of chocolate in baking could be substituted with 3tbsp unsweeten cocoa powder and 1 tsbp of butter
or
28g of premelted baking chocolate could be substituted with 3 tbsp of unsweeten cocoa powder and 1 tbsp of vegetable oil.
I modified the recipe such that it makes 12 cupcakes.

Ingredients
Cheesecake portion
112g Cream cheese
1/4 C White Sugar
1 Egg

Brownie portion
50g Chocolate ( I used 70% dark chocolate)
3 Tbs Unsweeten Cocoa ( To substitute the remaining shortage of Chocolate)
 ( The recipe asked for 75g chocolate)
110g Butter
1/2 C White Sugar
2 Eggs
2/3 C Flour
1 Tsp Vanilla

1) Preheat oven to 175 degree C.

2) Combine cream cheese with 1/4 cup sugar and 1 egg in a mixing bowl; beat until smooth.

3) In a double boil, melt butter and chocolate, together with the cocoa powder.

4) Stir until chocolate is melted. Stir in sugar. Mix in eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour.

5) Pour half of the batter into the muffin tin. Spread the cream cheese mixture over the chocolate layer.

Top with remaining Chocolate mixture

 

Using a knife/ toothpick, swirl the top chocolate layer into the cream cheese to make a marble pattern.

6) Bake in preheated oven at 175 degree C for 25-30 minutes, or until top is crinkled and edges pull away from sides of the pan. Cool throughly. Store in the refrigerator or freeze.

Cheesecake does not like brownie.

( Please pardon the terrible lightening!)

Flourless Chocolate Cake I

Having a lot of free time right now, I have been watching a lot of TV. Recently there is a program on the travel and living channel, called Willy wonker's chocolate factory. Need I explain what the main ingredient is? Thats my first love as well. Very much inspired by the rich chocolate goodies he makes, I feel there is a need to get in touch with my first love again. 

Since He is flying in today, its the prefect occasion to bake chocolate cake! And No. Its not any chocolate cake, its flourless chocolate cake. The sort of rich and intense chocolate cake that could potentially cause nosebleed. 

Its 60% cacao

A friend recommended a flourless chocolate cake recipe, which I did not use this time. ( That recipe i'll try next time!) This time I tried a recipe I found from allrecipes. Which had tons of good reviews and looked rather easy to make. 

The smell of chocolate is irresistible, I could not stop dipping my finger into the warm chocolate mixture! 

Tasted like pudding just out of the oven and when chilled overnight, taste like chocolate truffle. This is the sort of cake that the diet zone in the brain should be switched off and its important to get a healthy fork in your mouth to be able to taste the richness of the chocolate. 

Finally, goes pretty well with a cup of coffee or tea. :) 

 

Chocolate coated potato chips

Been wanting to try this for a while now and it so happens that Rachel could buy it for me in Japan, which I assume should be much cheaper than getting it in Singapore.

So its chocolate coated potato chips. It did sound interesting to me and personally I thought having sweet and savory stuff in my mouth at the same time might be too confusing for my taste buds. But since its a combination of food I really like. Chocolate and Potato chips, ( I did not realise how much I like potatoes till I was in Germany, where fries could be found anywhere and everywhere.) I decided to give it a try. 

It sure was not disappointing. the taste of chocolate on one side and salt on the other combined with the crispiness of potato chips. Exciting! Once you start its a little difficult to stop eating.

However there would come a point when law of diminishing marginal return happens. An excess of something is seldom good. The chips are pretty thick and the chocolate coating is pretty thick too. So after a while it gets a little too heavy. But oh well one should alway savor good stuff and not gobble everything all at once.

Come to think of it. Its actually possible to make this on your own. Thick chips + right amount of chocolate coating. Not the difficult I think. * Mental note to self: make chocolate coated potato chips.

Upside, backside

Classic Chocolate chip cookies

First time baking cookies on my own! Turned out pretty nice and soft a little too sweet for me though. I'll add slightly lesser sugar the next time for sure! 

Its white chocolate in cubes!

Before and after.

Chucks of dark chocolate chip and cubed white chocolate chips melts in your mouth. The cookies were soft and chewy.

   

Stack 'em up!

They are gonna be gifts for friends :)

• 
  
• Adapted from allrecipe 
• Serves 20
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 2/4 cup brown sugar 
• 1 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 white chocolate 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In large bowl, beat butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the butter mixture until well blended. Mix in the chocolate chips and white chocolate chip. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or just until set. Cool slightly on the cookie sheets before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

Ferrero Rocher Cupcake with chocolate Ganache.

Today we celebrated Marcus's belated birthday and I decided to share some of my baking love with my 'german' friends. It was nice to sit around and bitch about things in general.

I had in mind what I wanted to bake. But wanted to make it a little more fancy. Since there is a box of Ferrero Rocher lying around, I decided to use a simple vanilla cupcake. Which I got from the Martha steward's Billy's Vanilla cupcake recipe. Before putting the cupcakes into the oven, I place a Ferrero Rocher into each cupcake mixture. Much to my surprise the Chocolate did not melt in the heat and the form remained even after the heat!

I also found a really neat recipe for chocolate ganache and tried it out too.

Looks like a donut top down.

Piped the Chocolate Ganache round the chocolate.

Here is the Chocolate Ganache recipe.

Really easy to make!

Chocolate fudge cookie dough

While doing research on something to bake, I found out that cookie dough could be eaten without being baked. And according to wiki its good comfort food, especially for women! Since I was going to meet corrine, yesterday, I decided to make this for her. I made some changes to the recipe because I really dont like chocolate chips. I think they are over priced just because of their shape. So I used M&Ms and Hersheys kisses as a substitute.

Hersheys kisses look like the figures for a board game. The lines are there because I had to plan where to place the hersheys kisses such that three colours are in one cube.

All sliced and ready to go.

Adapted from here.

Serves 24

• 1/3 cup margarine, melted
• 2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 1 pinch salt
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 pack of M&M min
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 (16 ounce) package confectioners' sugar
• 1 cup semisweet mini chocolate chips, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Line a 9x9 inch baking dish with aluminum foil, and set aside.
2. To make the cookie dough pieces, mix the melted margarine, brown sugar, and salt in a bowl. Stir in the flour to make a dough, and knead in 1 pack of M&Ms minis. Form the dough into a disk about 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch thick, place it on a sheet of plastic wrap, and then shape the disk into a square with your hands.
3. Place the square piece of dough in the freezer for about 10 minutes, until cold and stiff, and then slice it into 1/2 inch square pieces. Refrigerate the dough pieces while you make the cream cheese fudge.
4. Mix together the cream cheese and confectioners' sugar in a bowl until smooth, and stir in the melted chocolate chips and vanilla extract.
5. Lightly fold in the cookie dough pieces, and spread the candy out into the prepared dish. Refrigerate at least 1 hour, or until firm, and remove the candy from the foil-lined dish. Cut into squares, and serve.

The one.

This is seriously good stuff. The first time I saw this was on TV, on the lifestyle channel, travel and living. It was about chocolate ranking and this was number one on the list. Immediately after the show I searched for a shop in singapore and the only place that sold this is in Takashima. I saw it once but did not buy it then for some reason. Recently I saw this in the airport in Milan and knew I had to get it. There is something about spending money overseas, as in I am more willing to spend money when I am overseas, then when I am back home. So I decided to splurge on it. Man it was investment. My utility was definitely maximized!

Amedei's own description of the Toscano Black, 70% chocolate bar:

Strong brown colour. Good melting and well distributed aromatic impact. Strong taste and definite aftertaste. leaves the palate feeling clean and scented.

Banana Chocolate Muffin

Since there aren't any parents at home, at least till sunday, I have the whole kitchen to myself and will make full use of it.  ( Plus there is a dishwasher here wish means I do not need to do the cleaning after baking.) The chemistry of baking is another story altogether. Because there were some bananas thats about to rot and some left over chocolate from a few days ago, you put the two together and what do we have here, Banana Chocolate Muffin.

bWhats even more fun about baking is when you are able to find substitute for certain ingredients and the final product taste just as good. (At least from ah huat's feedback, and I hope he is not being bias.) I found out that baking powder works just as well as baking soda, and could be used as a substitute for one another. ( 1tsp of baking soda = 2tsp of baking powder) And that there are many substitutes for yogurts. ( Milk and lemon/ vinegar or Buttermilk could be substituted for yogurts, which is suppose to make make the muffin/ cake moist on the inside.) And I prefer to chop up chocolate bars rather than use chocolate chips because different types of chocolates used gives a different taste and i find it more visually pleasing. 

I am still a noob at baking and will try to bake other stuff and I often get my recipe from allrecipe because they have reviews that are pretty useful and get my inspiration from looking at Tastspotting, (Warning: website could cause hunger)

For today's bake I got the original recipe from Here.

 

• • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3/4 cup sugar
  • 3 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup vegetable oil
  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt ( I used 1 tbsp of lemon juice and mixed it with milk till its a full cup, then used half the portion)
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1 cup mashed ripe bananas
  • 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In another bowl, combine the egg, oil, yogurt and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in bananas and chocolate chips. Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake at 180 degrees for 22-25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pans to wire racks.

 

Dark and White chocolate muffin

Today is suppose to be my commencement and I was not there. I should stop looking at fb pictures of commencement.
Baking has a therapeutic effect.

Made some changes to the Recipe
Its a recipe for chocolate chip but i decided to add white chocolate as well and took the advise of some of the reviewers as well!

Nutella Chocolate Brownies

 

I present to you Nutella Chocolate brownies
Sugar is good for the brain! Chocolate is good for the mood :) 

Before

After      

Got the basic recipe from here but made some changes to the amount of chocolate and nutella added. 

 

Chocolate fondant for Two

Saw a Chocolate Fondant recipe last sunday and decided to bake it today. 
Simply Heavenly





Warm Chocolate oozing out. OMG!

100g couverture dark choco (preferably with 70% cocoa solids)

90g butter

1 whole egg

2.5 egg yolk 

50g sugar

25g flour 

 

1. Pre-heat oven to 250 deg C

2. Grease 2 large muffin tins or cup with butter then dust flour

3. melt choco and butter in bowl set over a pot of hot water on low heat

4. beat whole egg, egg yolks and sugar together with a whisk 

5. sift flour into bowl of egg mixture and fold it in till well incorporated 

6. fold melted butter and choco mixture gently till well incorporated 

7. pour choco mixture into muffin tin and bake at 250 deg C for 8-10min. The top should form a crust and begin to come away from the sides of the mould 

8. Slide a small paring knife along the inside of the mould to loosen the fondant. 

Tip if from the mould onto a plate and serve warm!