Creamy Vanilla Ice Cream

Yes, I admit I suck at food photography because I was a full time student with limited monetary and space resource. Yes I needed an excuse for my laziness and lack of creativeness.Period!

Thick ice cream after churning,ready to be chilled in the freezer for another 3hours or until firm.

Ever since my boyfriend tasted Ben's Vanilla Milkshake in KLCC, he has been craving for it. And I promised him to make vanilla ice cream to make the same milk shake. He never got to eat the ice cream because by the time it was ready, he had left Ipoh.

Anyway, he coming back this weekend, so I promised to make him vanilla milkshake and also a chocolate one!!

Barely adapted from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop

250ml full fat milk

150g caster sugar

250ml heavy cream/ whipping cream (36% fat content)

300ml double cream, you can always use heavy cream as well

pinch of salt

1 vanilla beans,split in half lengthwise

6 large egg yolks

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 tablespoon unflavoured alcohol, vodka

Warm milk,sugar,heavy cream and salt in a medium saucepan. Scrap the seeds from the vanilla bean into the warm milk as well. Cover,remove from the heat and let it steep at room temperature for 30 minutes.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Slowly pour the warm mixture into the yolks,whisking constantly, then scrape the warmed egg yolks back into the saucepan. 

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula,scrap the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the back of your spatula. 

Prepare a water bath and pour double cream in a bowl and set a mesh strainer on top.Pour the custard mixture through the strainer and stir into the cream. Put the vanilla bean in the custard, add the vanilla extract and stir until cool over the ice bath.

Once cooled, add alcohol and stir until combined. Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator for about 8hours to overnight.When ready to churn, remove the vanilla bean, rinse it (and put it into your sugar jar to make vanilla sugar!! :) ) ,and then freeze in your ice cream maker according manufacturer's instructions.

Pour it into a container and freeze for another 3 hours or so.

Raspberries and cream swiss roll

I was meant to make a raspberry soufflé but I was busy with my job interview preparations so I thought I might as well make a swiss roll out of it because I love swiss rolls especially chiffon rolls. Since my boyfriend bought two packets of fresh raspberry,I kept the balance in the freezer for future use and I already have a recipe in mind!=) Making soufflé would require me to blend the fresh raspberries into a puree and I felt it would be a waste since the fresh raspberries looked beautiful so eating it whole would be wonderful! I was meant to make a chiffon roll again but I followed a different recipe,silly me although this swiss roll is pretty tasty, I prefer the previous one I made, the durian chiffon roll. It is a simple swiss roll with fresh cream and raspberries.




Swiss roll recipe adapted from Aunty Yoschana
4 large eggs, separated
100g caster sugar
90g cake flour,sifted
60g corn oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1.  Preheat oven at 180C. Grease & line with baking paper a 30cm x 30cm swiss roll pan. (shallow square pan)
2. Beat egg yolks and 50g caster sugar until ribbon stage. 
3. Add vanilla extract,mix until well combine.
4. Sift flour over mixture and fold until well incorporated.
5. Fold in oil until combined. (the batter will be very thick and mousse like)
6. In another bowl, Whisk egg whites until soft peaks.Gradually add remaining sugar in 2 additions and whisk until stiff peaks.
7. Fold 1/3 of meringue in cake batter until well combined. Continue with the remaining meringue in two batches until well incorporated.
8. Pour batter into prepared tin. Level the batter with spatula evenly. Rap baking pan on a hard surface to remove large air pockets.Bake for 18-20 minutes.
9. Remove from oven. Rap pan again right after removing it from oven to allow steam to escape if not your swiss roll with be soggy.
10. Place a baking paper,slightly dusted with icing sugar on a cooling rack and turn cake upside down,remove baking paper from cake and allow to cool completely.

Whipped cream filling
200g cold whipping cream
50g icing sugar

Place beaters and bowl in the fridge for 2 hours or freezer for 30minutes - 1 hour. Just before assembling your swiss roll. Remove bowl and beaters from fridge/freezer and pour cream & icing sugar in the bowl. Place the bowl over another bowl filled with cold water and ice cubes. Beat until stiff peaks.

To assemble:

50ml kirsch (cherry liqueur) or fruit juice/liqueur/liquor you like

3 hands full raspberries

Brush cold cake with kirsch. Then spread whipped cream on cake evenly,arrange raspberries in three straight rows. Gently roll the cake into a swiss roll and chill for a minimum of an hour. Before serving, slice the ends off and dusting icing sugar on top. Serve chilled.

swiss roll layered with whipped cream

Raspberries arranged in three rows

Roll the cake carefully, wrap it in cling wrap and refrigerate for 2-3 hours. 

Remove from fridge, slice the ends off,dust with icing sugar on top and serve!!

Blueberry Cream Cheese cupcakes

My boyfriend is over for the weekend since it's a long weekend this weekend, but unfortunately I have an interview tomorrow. So he's heading back to K.L with us. Every time he comes to Ipoh for the weekend, it's a baking spree for me! Because I know I have an extra mouth to feed!! 

Did I tell you he is a huge fan of blueberries?! And therefore, this weekend I was meant to make it an all berry weekend with blueberries and raspberries in my desserts (more berry recipes coming up! =)). Because I love raspberries and he on the other hand, loves blueberries. Although the prices of berries in Malaysia is exorbitant, a luxury in baking and desserts don't kill you! =P 

I had a different recipe in mind to make but my boyfriend preferred cupcakes to a blueberry pudding cake so I make these instead! No regrets but!! This is one amazing cupcake recipe with cream cheese frosting! If you love blueberry cheesecakes, you will definitely love this one! =)

Almost picture perfect to me!

I followed the recipe for the cupcakes from Pastry Affair (thank you Kristin Rosenau for the wonderful cupcakes recipe!)

I got  about 25 -2 1/2 oz cupcakes. The cupcakes didn't rise that high for me.

For the cream cheese frosting I made my own cream cheese frosting because I found the sugar content of the frosting given with the cupcakes a little too sweet to my liking.So here's my recipe:

230g cream cheese, slightly softened

100g icing sugar, sifted

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

60g unsalted butter, room temperature

1. Beat cream cheese for 3-5minutes until fluffy and smooth.
2. Add icing sugar and vanilla extract and continue to beat for 4-5 minutes.
3. Gradually add butter and beat until smooth.
4. Fill the cream cheese frosting in a piping bag and frost cupcakes.

Sniff sniff!!sucha greedy dog! 

Spoils the fat dog by feeding her a whole cupcake! sigh..

Vanilla butter (with little surprises in the middle!) cupcakes with vanilla buttercream

Dad complaints I don't eat enough fruits. But honestly I love my fruits in my desserts. Give me anything sweet with fruits any day I would eat it instead of something with chocolate. Call me weird but I'm just being me!lol.

Anyway, I always get myself a packed of raspberries from KLCC each time I am in KL. Why KLCC? Because priceless of raspberry in Isetan Foodhall is cheaper compared to other supermarkets and the berries look fresh. I walked into Ben's Grocer in Solaris the other and to my dismay, I found a packet of raspberries covered in mold! Ewww. The raspberries are either moldy or too pricey in most supermarkets. 

Wanted to make something different with my expensive purchase but with time constraint (because I have an interview tomorrow,fingers crossed I get the job & raspberry can only keep for a maximum of 3 days), I made a little cupcakes with my raspberries and also blueberries. Next time, I will have a recipe (and enough mouths to feed) in mind before buying my raspberries.hehe.

Little surprises in a cupcake that looks like a plain butter cupcake with vanilla buttercream!

Cupcakes: (makes 25 medium size cupcakes)

250g unsalted butter

230g caster sugar + 2 tablespoons

5 'kampung' eggs/small eggs (4 large eggs), separated

250g cake flour

2 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 tablespoon fresh milk

25 raspberries and blueberries, each

1. Preheat oven to 180 C.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Add yolks one at a time. Mix well after each addition. Add vanilla extract and continue to mix.
4. Turn mixer to low speed and add flour & baking powder into the mixture,mixing until just combined.
5. In another bowl, whisk egg whites until stiff peaks, gradually add one tablespoon of sugar at a time until you get a nice semi marshmallowy mixture. 
6. Fold in milk into the cake batter,then add fold egg whites in three additions.
7. Fill cupcake liners to 1/2 full and insert a raspberry and blueberry in the middle of the cupcake.
8. Bake for 20-25 minutes.
9. Remove and cool completely.

Vanilla buttercream:

250g unsalted butter,diced at semi room temperature

250g icing sugar,sifted

2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Beat butter and sugar until very light and fluffy (5minutes). Then add vanilla extract and continue to mix for another 3 minutes.

To assemble, place buttercream in a piping bag with a preferred nozzle and Pipe rosettes on your cupcakes and serve immediately.

If you prefer your cupcakes less sweet or feel your cupcakes are overcooked/dry and want it more moist, try pouring a tablespoon of lemon syrup on top cupcakes as soon as you take the cupcakes out of the oven.I tried one cupcake with/without the lemon syrup and preferred the one with the lemon syrup but it's totally optional.

Recipe of lemon syrup follows.

Juice of 2 lemons,strained
5-6 tablespoons caster sugar

Mix the lemon juice and sugar,let aside.

In very humid temperature, I normally leave my butter out for 5 minutes and then cut them into cubes and beat the butter using the paddle attachment. I never leave my butter out for too long cause the buttercream with turn runny quickly.I rather beat butter cubes while it is cold because by the time you have buttercream ready,it is the perfect consistency for frosting the cupcakes.

As soon as they saw a cupcake in my hand, they jumped excitedly to grab my cupcake. My greedy babies.

Based on my experience, troubleshooting macarons

This is my personal experience. My experience may differ to yours because I may not have to same oven as yours, weather at where I am living and where you do may be different and ingredients used may not be the same.

I hardly make macarons at home because it's too sweet for everyone at home. As much as I would love to make them and practice on my macaron skills, they are pretty expensive to make and no one eats them so they sit forever in the fridge. After making macarons for the fourth time,I can say 97% of my macarons have 'feet'. In humidity, I turned on my air conditioner and place the piped macarons under the air conditioner for half hour to help the drying process. It was not wet to touch after 20 minutes. Macarons have temperamental issues.LOL. I dont have the fan force function on my old oven so the first batch of macarons came out slightly coloured (baked macaron shells should have the same colour as pre baked ones). The oven temperature was 180C if baking in fan forced oven but using a 'normal' oven, I had to increase the temperature by 10-20 C (different people say different things on the internet), I ignored that rule because I felt it would be too hot, and also I placed my macarons in the middle shelves (Big mistake!!). And also I had left the oven door slightly ajar after 5 minutes into baking time; continue baking the shells for another 10 minutes.


Although, My macarons looked good besides the fact that it was slightly browned.I wasn't satisfied.


After the first batch, I realised I should reduce the temperature to 150-160 degrees and I placed the macarons on the lowest shelf. Baked it in a closed oven for 5 minutes and then open the oven door slightly ajar,continue baking it for another 10-15 minutes.It was almost perfect but still not to my satisfaction but hey,It was definitely better looking then all the 3 times I made before! :) The bottom was slightly wet but most of them didn't stick to the silicon sheets which was a good thing! Quite an achievement but still not there yet. I would try using the French or Swiss meringue technique the next time instead of the usual Italian meringue technique found in Pierre Herme's Macarons book.


P/s: Make sure you sift the almond meal/almond powder. If you not, you will have a grainy top not shiny one!


Another issue I had was with the buttercream. Original plan was an all ribena macaron thing but when I wanted to flavour my buttercream, I realised that ribena sold now is so diluted!! I thought Malaysia had the pre mixed ribena bottles and I bought the wrong one!That was a huge bummer to me. So since I had raspberry jam in the fridge I used a tablespoon of it to give it a better flavour. 

I used my mastrad macaron sheet.

For the macaron recipe, I used the same recipe found the link below but I halved the original recipe (thank god!). And for the buttercream, I used the recipe given below!


Lemon macarons with boysenberry swiss meringue buttercream


Swiss meringue buttercream :
55g egg whites
100g caster sugar
170g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
2 tablespoon raspberry jam
3 tablespoon ribena cordial

Put the sugar and egg whites in a large heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and whisk constantly, keeping the mixture over the heat, until it feels hot to the touch, about 3 minutes. The sugar should be dissolved, and the mixture will look like marshmallow cream. Pour the mixture into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat the meringue on medium speed until it cools and forms a thick shiny meringue, about 5 minutes. Switch to the paddle attachment and add the butter, one tablespoon at a time, beating until smooth. Once all the butter is in, beat in the buttercream on medium-high speed until it is thick and very smooth, 6-10 minutes. Add raspberry jam and ribena and continue to mix until combined.

Hokkaido Chiffon Cupcakes with Custard filling

 I think I have fallen all over again!! This is one amazing, well almost prefect cake! I loved everything about this cake! Simple to make, cheap to make and the combination of the custard filling and cotton soft cake is perfect!! But.....It lacked flavouring! It had quite a strong eggy smell to it if you ate it alone. So I would probably add a teaspoon of vanilla extract to the cake.  The recipe only gave me 10 cupcakes which is quite sufficient because I have a very small extended family (with cousins' living next door), so 10 cupcakes was enough to feed all of it with no extras for the next day.  I also increased the amount of sugar in both cake and custard filling because I personally prefer my cakes 'sweet' (although most chiffon cakes are not meant to be 'sweet sweet',if you get what I mean). I felt the amount of sugar in the recipe was little.

Filled with custard filling inside.

Adapted from Nasilemaklover

Hokkaido Chiffon Cupcakes

(A)

3 large egg yolks

35g caster sugar (original amount-20g)

35g corn oil

60g fresh milk

70g cake flour

(B)

3 large egg whites

35g caster sugar (original amount-25g)

Custard Filling:

60g dairy whipping cream,chilled

30g caster sugar (original amount-10g)

2 teaspoon custard powder

Icing sugar for dusting

1. Preheat oven at 170 C.
2. Beat yolk and sugar until very pale. (This may take a while. I used my stand mixer and the quantity was quite little for the bowl so it took me about 10 minutes to get to that consistency.)
3. Add corn oil & milk,mix until combined.
4. Add cake flour and mix at the lowest speed until combined.
5. In another bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add sugar gradually and continue to beat until soft-medium peak.
6. Take 1/4 of the meringue and mix into the batter to loosen up the mixture.Add the cake batter into the remaining meringue mixture and fold until well combined with a spatula. Divide batter equally (making sure the cupcake liners are fill max 3/4 full) into cupcake liners. ( I got 10 cupcakes from the batter)
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes. 
8. Remove from oven and allow to cool.
9. Prepare filling while baking cupcakes. Place all custard filling ingredients in a bowl and whip until stiff. Place a clingwrap tightly (plastic touching the surface of the custard filling) over the custard filling and chill.
10. Once cupcakes are cool completely, pipe filling into cupcakes. ( Pierce through the cupcakes with the nozzle and pipe.)
11. Chill before serving.

                                    

Super vanilla Funfetti cupcakes with vanilla frosting

I made my own birthday cake this year because dad was vegetarian and personalised cakes can be very expensive these days. Dad insisted I had a small cake for him ( which he didn't eat at all besides feeding of cake time,he ate only the frosting!). It was more of my dad wanting to celebrate my birthday. I felt old celebrating my birthday party. I would have preferred having a quiet good dinner outside than have a party.

Anyway, the vegetarian orange cake was quite a disappointment to me, I almost gave up on the cake but I had no choice but to have it because it was pretty last minute to get a vegetarian cake somewhere. I learnt my lesson never to try a new recipe I am not sure of for a party or large crowd. I frosted the cake anyway with chocolate cream cheese frosting which was pretty tasty. It would have been great if the cake turned out well too.

I want to share the funfetti cupcake with buttercream frosting recipe and exclude the main cake all together because it was a major flop!

Here's the recipe from sweetapolita

I adapted the recipe slightly. The following is my variation:

I used:

1. FOR THE CAKE- 1/2 cup egg whites.
2. Instead of 6 tablespoons of unsalted butter & vegetable shortening each, I used all butter,salted and omitted the salt.
3. FOR THE FROSTING - I used salted butter and omitted the salt
4. Milk was not used because the weather in Malaysia was so hot, my frosting was soft already, adding milk might make the frosting softer.
5. I decorated the cupcakes with fresh blackberries and raspberries instead of coloured sprinkles. 

My 23rd Birthday cake

Fun fetti inspired cupcakes

Frosted with vanilla buttercream and fresh blackberries and raspberries