Double Soft Bread

Whenever I see the bread recipe which has whipping cream in the ingredient lists, I always keen on trying to bake :)

This time I chose this recipe coz I never baked bread which not using sugar ... it uses honey to give the sweetness. It sounded interesting for me coz I just got one bottle of organic honey. Firstly I saw this bread through one blogger "Mybakingcottage" she described the bread till I did not hesitate to try also there was another reason to support me once I saw the original recipe on "Warm Sweet Home's Blog" I was so excited about all her breads ... they look totally yummy :P At the end I thought it's better to follow the original recipe but when I started measurement the ingredients I realized that I did not have enough bread flour so I had to add cake flour to make the right amount also I reduced the amount of salt and increased whipping cream ... the rest I followed the original recipe.

For the final result, I got such a great cotton soft bread. It's great to eat plain or toasted also go well with any kinds of spread.
Here is my version:

Double Soft Bread

Bread flour 290 g.
Cake flour 30 g.
Dry yeast 6 g.
Salt 4 g.
Egg 32 g.
Water 160 g.
Whipping cream 35 g.
Honey 22 g.
Butter 16 g.

1. Mix all dry ingredients in the mixing bowl with electric mixer (dough hook) on low speed for 1 min.
2. Mix all wet ingredients (honey, whipping cream and water) and stir till combine in a small bowl then pour into the dry ingredients when the electric mixer still on at low speed. Once it starts to form a dough then increase to medium speed and continue kneading for 5 mins and add in soft butter to the dough
3. Knead the dough till smooth and elastic (approximately 15-20 mins) and turn the dough out to the lightly floured surface to from round shape put into greased bowl then wrap with cling film to proof for 45 mins - an hour or until double in size
4. Punch down to release the air and divide the dough into 3 equal portions then form the round shape. Wrap with cling film to let the dough to rest for 5 mins
5. Roll out each dough to rectangular shape then roll it up like swiss roll and put the doughs in greased loaf pan then wrap with cling film. Proof the dough till become double in size
5. Brush the top with egg wash (1 beaten egg+1 tbsp water mix together) and topped with white sesame. Bake in preheat oven at 200C for 10 mins the reduce the temperature to 175C for another 20 mins

Special thanks: Warm Sweet Home's Blog and My Baking Cottage's Blog for sharing such a great recipe and gave some inspiration to me

A little bit more healthier bread .... Milky Wholemeal Bread

I'm not sure that you guys will have the same feeling like me sometimes when you always consume too much sweet things or food which is not so healthy eg. fast food, fried food, etc. your mind will tell yourself to eat more healthier food. My husband is a big fan of fast food chains especially Mcdonalds. He can even eat these unhealthy burger and fries everyday but of course I will not let him do that to spoil his health. Though I am not such a person who really concern to eat all healthy food all the time but I always cook more vegetables in the meal and whatever I can substitute healthy ingredient when cooking or baking I will definitely do.

For baking bread, I always try to substitute some organic wholemeal flour instead of bread flour or plain flour. I know that it might not good enough to call that my bread is healthy bread coz it's just a little amount I substitute in but I feel better not to eat white plain bread likes commercial one. Basically when I make bread nowadays I always substitute some organic wholemeal flour in my favorite bread recipes such as HML, Cotton Soft Bread, etc. But this time I chose the original recipe which have wholemeal flour coz I wanted to compare how much difference from the previous versions I made my breads. In my opinion, there are not much difference in texture coz this recipe the bread also soft but more chewy than the recipe which has cake flour mixing into the ingredient. So if you prefer soft and light texture bread you can use HML recipe with substitution of wholemeal flour 30 g instead of bread flour in my previous HML recipe but if you like chewy and soft texture this recipe will not disappointed you.

Special thanks: Kitchen Corner's Blog and her Milky Square Loaf Recipe for giving me the inspiration

Milky Wholemeal Bread

Bread flour 270 g. (I used organic type)
Wholemeal flour 30 g.
Sugar 6 g.
Dry yeast 5 g.
Salt 4 g.
Whole milk (cold) 240 g.
Unsalted butter 12 g.

1. Mix all dry ingredients in the mixing bowl with electric mixer (dough hook) on low speed for 1 min.
2. Pour in cold milk when the electric mixer still on at low speed. Once it starts to form a dough then increase to medium speed and continue kneading for 5 mins and add in soft butter to the dough
3. Knead the dough till smooth and elastic (approximately 15-20 mins) and turn the dough out to the lightly floured surface to from round shape put into greased bowl then wrap with cling film to proof for 45 mins - an hour or until double in size
4. Punch down to release the air and roll out into rectangular shape then roll it up like swiss roll and put the dough in greased loaf pan then wrap with cling film. Proof the dough till become double in size
5. Brush the top with egg wash (1 beaten egg+1 tbsp water mix together) and bake in preheat oven at 190C for 20-25 mins

White Chocolate Cheese Cake

It had been quite long time since I made chocolate cheese cake (it's first time baking cheese cake for me). After I baked my first cheese cake I told myself that the next one must be White Chocolate Cheese Cake .... coz I love white chocolate :) so I bought cream cheese for the purpose of baking 2nd cheese cake and it was kept in the fridge till I almost forgot. Lucky me I found the cream cheese and decided to bake before it's going to expire in next 2 weeks.

I chose the recipe from Thai baking forum which many people baked and said it's very delicious and even can fight with one famous cake shop in Thailand. Though I did not follow 1 ingredient in the recipe coz I did not have yogurt on hand but with the substitution I used I also got such a perfect white chocolate cheese cake in taste. Thank you to Khun Tri and Khun Wan who created and modified the recipe. I did change some details and here is my version:

White Chocolate Cheese Cake

BASE
Oreo cookies 1 pack (put the cookies in the food processor to make crumbs)
Salted butter (melted) 60 g
*mix these 2 ingredients and press the wet crumbs in 7" springform pan lined with parchment paper (for easily removing the cheese cake from the base) then put in the preheat oven at 160C about 10 mins and set aside

CHEESE CAKE
White chocolate 200 g
Whipping cream 50 g
Cream cheese 250 g
Egg yolks 2
Lemon juice 1 tbsp + whipping cream to make enough 3/4 cup (stir and leave for 10 mins)
Vanilla 1 1/2 tsp
Sugar 1 tbsp
Egg whites 2
Cream of tartar 1/4 tsp

1. Put whipping cream in microwave for 1 minute and add in white chocolate stir till chocolate melted. Leave till the chocolate cool to room temperature
2. Beat cream cheese with electric mixer with paddle attachment at medium speed till soft and creamy then change to low speed and add in yolks one at a time and follow by vanilla whipping cream & lemon juice mixture and melted white chocolate. Mix till just combine then stop the mixer
3. In another mixing bowl, beat egg whites with cream of tartar and sugar till soft peak and divide into 3 portions and fold each portion to cream cheese mixture until finish up the egg whites
4. Pour into springform pan with curst base and bake (water bath) in preheat oven at 160C for 1 hour

Remarks:

-For water bath baking, I just put the baking tray and filled up with water at the lowest rack during preheat the oven and I put the springform over the baking tray at the upper rack.
-You have to let the cheese cake cool down in the oven after it's done at least 2-3 hours by leaving the oven door open a little
and put the cheese cake into the fridge for 4 hours before cutting

Banana Cake

I'm still have some bake stuffs which I haven't posted here and this also 1 in the lists. This Bananas Cake recipe has the ingredient which is called Pisang bananas. Seriously in my country we don't have this type of banana what I know there are 3 kinds of banana that I know in my life. I searched information about this banana on internet and known that there are so many types of banana in the world. This Pisang banana you can easily find in Malaysia and this is the reason you also easily find in Singapore. My mother in law likes to eat bananas and she always buy Pisang bananas home and this is why I had a chance to make this recipe.

The recipe was from The Little Teochew's blog (Thank you for sharing a good recipe) and with my adjustment in some parts... here is the recipe:

Banana Cake

Cake flour 125 g.
Baking powder 1/2 tsp.
Baking soda 1/2 tsp.
Salt 1/4 tsp.
Caster sugar 90 g.
Egg (large) 1
Canola oil 90 g.
Evaporated milk 30 g.
Pisang bananas (mashed) 3
(you can substitute with 1 big size banana)
Vanilla extract 1/2 tsp.

1. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt and set aside
2. Beat egg and sugar with whisk till light and fluffy
3. Add evaporated milk, oil, vanilla and mashed bananas into the egg mixture stir till combine
4. Gently fold in sifted flour to the wet ingredients (Do not over-mix)
5. Pour into 7" round baking tin lined with parchment paper (Don't have to grease the tin) and bake at 175C for 35 mins or till it's cooked

For my opinion, I like banana cake which have oil in the ingredient coz it give a soft and light texture for the cake specially If you eat in the next day you will be pleased even more....

Piping Rose (Cake Decoration)

Just want to share my experiences with piping rose for cake decoration. As the first photo, I've just done it this afternoon. I put a bit of pink rose coloring to get pastel pink color which is my favorite color. The color really looks sweet and made the cupcakes even more lovely. Do you thing is it good to be wedding cupcakes?

For the second photo, it was the first time I learnt piping rose with my friend and we used cream cheese frosting. Both time I used piping tip NO. 2D to make the rose or another tip NO. 1M also can do but I haven't tried using 1M. If you are interested in piping rose like what I did, you can search the VDO on youtube and learn by yourself. I believe you will enjoy doing cake decoration together with your baking.

Coffee Sponge Cake with Chocolate Buttercream

It's been quite long time which I had practiced piping rose for cake decoration with my friend. I wanted to practice more but I did not have a chance to do much about cake decoration. I tried one time to piping rose with cream cheese frosting which I made for my green tea cupcakes but my frosting was too runny to see the rose. Since I started baking last year, there's one basic thing which I should do but I never and that is making buttercream. Last week I decided to make buttercream which is this recipe very popular in Thai baking forum and the person who is very kind to share is Khun Mam Tiara. Thank your for sharing such a great buttercream recipe :)

I beat the cream only half recipe coz I thought it will be enough for me who I don't use buttercream so much. This time I baked coffee sponge cake and I wanted to make coffee buttercream but the end I only divided some and put chocolate paste to mix and decorated as shown in the photos. Due to my family doesn't like too much cream on cake I just piping directly to the cake without cream base. This buttercream is perfect in taste and texture for piping. It might a bit difficult in process of making than normal western recipes and there are some tricks which you have to be careful when beating. But if you can do it, you will not be disappointed and you won't be searching another recipe for buttercream again.

Melt in Your Mouth.... Coconut Shortbread

I was incredibly happy about this shortbread as I do the experiment myself for this recipe. The main recipe is based on the chinese biscuit recipe which I got from one of my friend long time back. First time, I tried this biscuit though with the filling but, I felt like I was eating shortbread. I had been keeping these idea in mine till I decided to do some experiment by using only biscuit dough. I modified the original recipe and added some coconut flakes to give more flavorful to my shortbread.

For my opinion and comments from my family, the shortbread is very good! It's buttery and have a bit of coconut flakes texture in one bite which is compliment the flavor of itself. Everyone in my family could not stop eating them since the first bite. I'm so glad that they like my shortbread so much and for me I don't think I will buy M&S's shortbread again since I've got my own recipe to do a delightful shortbread :)

Oatmeal Buttermilk Muffins

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and it will give you more energy for the whole day activities. Yesterday I was thinking of baking something more healthier for breakfast the next day and this Oatmeal Buttermilk Muffins recipe was the one I chose to do.

The original recipe is from Allrecipes.com since this was the second time baking this muffins I decided to adjust few things and they turned out really great! All of my family love them coz they found the taste is just right for breakfast with a cup of coffee or tea. The muffins were eaten within one day and my mother in law even asked me to bake more for the next time. I guess this menu is going to be a must list for our family breakfast from now on. Here is my version:

Oatmeal Buttermilk Muffins

Cooking oat 75 g.
Buttermilk 1 cup
Egg 1
Light brown sugar 80 g.
Organic honey 1 Tbsp
Canola oil 55 g.
All purpose flour 110 g.
Salt 2 g.
Baking powder 5 g.
Baking soda 3 g.
Raisins 50 g. (soak in very warm water for 15 mins to soften the raisins)

1. Preheat the oven 200C and put paper liner in the muffin tin (I use mini muffin tin)
2. Soak cooking oat in buttermilk and leave it for 15 mins
3. Combine flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda together and stir with hand whisk. Put the raisins and toss them to let the flour coated the raisins and set aside
4. In another bowl, whisk together egg, brown sugar, honey and oil. Add the wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir then add oatmeal and mix until combine (Do not over mix)
5. Pour the batter into the muffin tin (I put almost full level) and bake for 15 mins

Orange & Berry Muffins (Dorie Greenspan's Recipe)

If you look through those food blogs, I'm sure that you will see many recipes from Dorie Greenspan in bloggers bake stuffs. I also wrote down many of her recipes in my bake lists and this is the 1st thing I tried. The recipe I got from this blog http://gastronomyblog.com/2009/03/19/orange-berry-muffins

But there was a few things I did not follow exactly according to the original recipe coz I did not have fresh orange on hand so I substituted with mixed concentrate orange juice 1/4 cup, no process of rubbing orange zest with sugar and the temperature which I set was only 190C. Though I did not have orange zest but my muffins came out great! I love the raising top of muffins :) I guess If I have fresh orange zest in the muffins, it will give more natural fragrance. I suggest you to store some fresh oranges before you want to bake this muffin recipe and you will realize how nice is the combination of orange and blueberry in your muffins since your first bite!