Murder Mystery Carrot Cake

This week, an event that was a collaboration between two societies at the university (cooking and games) occurred. This was a Murder Mystery Dinner! I was asked if I wanted to bake and thus contribute to the dessert spread, and as I was being flooded in schoolwork, I (of course) decided to jump on it!

I wanted to "catch up" on the lack of frosting and layering from the last cake I made for Cooking Society, so I went all out. I made a double batch of carrot cake in a 24 cm springform pan. The next day, I cut it into 2 layers, and made a frosting out of cream cheese, Greek yogurt (to increase the volume), and icing sugar. I spread this between the two layers, and on top of the cake, and piped some dollops with my new silicone piping bag and some piping tips that I never got to use before. Unfortunately, the frosting had warmed considerably at that point, and was not so firm.

To keep up with the theme, I piped "Murder Mystery" with the crossed fork and knife logo of the cooking society, and added a smattering of powdered cinnamon on top.

The baking paper is still visible, as I delivered it in the springform pan covered with a sheet of aluminum foil to keep dust and the like at bay. I decorated the cake during my lunch break, then went to class, while the cake rested in the fridge. I then came back to pick it up, and decided not to risk biking with a cake in my hand.

Banana Bread Prize

Last week, my university's Cooking Society had a "golden egg" hunt event, where students could win prizes for finding one of three eggs on campus. The chair of the society, and a friend of mine, asked me if I would like to contribute to the prices, either by providing a cake, or giving a baking workshop. As I cannot teach to save my life (last time I tried, it was horrible), I opted for providing a cake.

My original plan was to make a carrot cake. Grating carrots, however, was not going to be feasible with the amount of time I had to bake this cake. Then I thought I would make a 2-layered banana bread, with cream cheese frosting in between, and maybe some caramel sauce drizzled on top. Me procrastinating on schoolwork did not allow for such fancifying of the cake, so I ended up with more or less plain banana bread.

For a better visual, I put some banana slices on top of the cake before baking. The underside was dipped in flour to keep them from sinking, then the whole top was glazed in watered-down orange and ginger jam that my cousin had bought and left in the kitchen.

I wrapped the loaf cake (1.5 times the recipe, so that it would be a little taller) in aluminum foil for transport, and added a piece of paper with the list of ingredients and possible allergens. I guess I kind of adopted the blue sakura (cherry blossom) paper punch-out as my symbol for gifts... I've been using it more and more.

Recipe for banana bread here!

Tang Yuan

Last week, we had an Asian-themed hallway dinner. I decided (like always) to make dessert. But which one?

After some Internet lurking, I settled on Tang Yuan, also known as rice dumpling soup. It's a common winter dessert, most often known to be eaten during Chinese New Year.

This is a sweet, unfilled version that was made with a ginger soup. I went with roughly 1/3 pink dumplings, and 2/3 white.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients (makes ~4 servings)

• 1 cup glutinous rice flour
• 1/2 cup water 
• food coloring (optional)
• ginger, as desired
• brown sugar

  Procedure

1. In a mixing bowl, mix the flour and water until a smooth dough is formed. If it crumbles, add some water. If it's sticky, add some flour.
2. Divide the dough into the number of colors desired. Knead food coloring a drop at a time until the desired color is reached. 
3. Cover the dough with a damp towel. Roll into balls of desired size.
4. Cut ginger into slices, then pound it with the flat of the knife blade.
5. In a pot, put water and ginger slices. Cook until a ginger tea is made.
6. Add sugar until desired sweetness is reached.
7. Bring another small pot of water to boil. 
8. Dump in rice flour balls. They are cooked when they float.
9. Put the balls into the sweetened ginger soup, and boil some more.
10. Leave soaking for a few hours for the sweetness to enter the balls.
11. Enjoy warm.

Carrot Cake

Phew, finally caught up on the backlog! Here is what I baked yesterday: Carrot cake!

The main reason for this was because I had carrots laying around. The other reasons include, but are not limited to: I needed to de-stress, I have never made this before, and "why not?"

The process to make the batter reminded me a lot of banana bread, except that I had grate the carrots instead of simply mashing my bananas. The ingredients used are similar, although I haven't really gone to see if the proportions are the same. Probably not, since bananas have a higher water content than do carrots.

I adapted a recipe from Spice Up The Curry, although I changed some things according to personal preferences, such as cutting down the sugar and changing some sugar types. I made 2 small, pretty tall cakes instead of a larger, flatter one, though to be honest, I did not think it would rise that much even with the amount of leavening agents involved.

The cake was frosted with an improvised cream cheese frosting, namely cream cheese, powdered sugar, and lime. The amounts? I kind of ad-libbed. I put some cream cheese in. Then I squeezed a small section of a lime in, tasted it... "Not sour enough." After a couple more times, it had enough of the citrus zing to it to match my imagined taste, but then I only had a small piece of lime left. "Oh well" preceded my squeezing of the rest of it in. Then I added a little bit more cream cheese because it had gotten pretty watery by then. Powdered/icing sugar was added to round off the sourness, then the whole bowl took an overnight nap in the fridge just because we were too full to eat last night, and I was not going to frost it ahead of time.

For extra texture, I put some crushed walnuts over the top, and gave it all a bit of color with a dusting of cinnamon. This cake was nice and moist, which was very pleasant to eat.

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CARROT CAKE RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 2 pinches salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 cup + 2 tbs neutral oil
• 1/4 cup golden sugar
• 1/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 cup soymilk
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup grated carrots

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 180°C.
2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Whisk well.
3. In a mixing bowl, whisk sugars and oil. Add in soymilk and water and whisk well.
4. Add in the flour mix in 2 times, mixing well each time.
5. Fold in the carrots.
6. Pour into a prepared pan, and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Reunion Cheesecake

August 8, 2015

A week after my return from China and Hong Kong, I had a reunion with other alumni from my High School. Because we are spread all over the place, we had a mini European reunion for those of us based in Europe (and who could make it on that date).

We had a great barbecue, with skewers, corn, potatoes, salad, and more. Someone the week before had told me they missed the cheesecake our dorm mother used to make. Since I was hosting the event this time, and also since my recipe came from our dorm mom's recipe, I thought I would make cheesecake for our reunion dessert.

I made a shortcrust pastry for the crust, and the filling is lime flavored. Due to not having enough Greek yogurt, I thought I would try baking it a little less time, to keep the cake from being too dried. Apparently, it was a good choice, since my cousin who has eaten many of my cheesecakes said this was one of the best.

I topped it with a berry sauce made from blended frozen berries that I had let thaw, then reduced with some sugar to cut through the acidity. When I brought it out to the table (under the sunny sky), some others decided we should write DVA (the initials of our alumni association) on it. It wasn't very visible just carved out with a skewer, so I used some leftover almond powder I had to go over the letters.

Apple Tart

August 1, 2015

Because I wanted to teach someone how to make the shortcrust pastry, I decided to make a quick apple tart. Since I had made this numerous times already, it was quite easy.

This was a dessert after the pizzas we had for lunch. To be honest, I was in quite a rush when tasting it, so I couldn't have said if it was as good as all previous times or not.

Homemade Pizza

August 1, 2015

This was my last day in China. My cousin's and my flights were scheduled for late in the evening, so I had time to try a couple more recipes. I had been getting a bit discouraged by the heat's effects on some of my recipes (I will not even blog about the completely failed puff pastry I attempted), but I thought I might as well give it a bit more of a try.

So I decided to try making this pizza recipe that a family friend had sent me a while ago. It's not one where the dough can be spread very thinly, but it was good! The only thing is that I would finish the cooking in a pan to crisp the bottom of the crust some more. This was topped with tomato sauce, olives, mushrooms, tomatoes, and grated mozzarella cheese.

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PIZZA DOUGH RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 250 g flour
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp yeast
• 3 tbs olive oil
• 200 mL cold water
• 1/2 tsp sugar

  Procedure

1. In a large mixing bowl, mix flour, salt, and yeast.
2. Add olive oil, water, and sugar, and mix with a fork.
3. If necessary, add flour or water depending on texture.
4. Knead dough for at least 5 mins.
5. Make a ball and put in an oiled bowl. Brush the top with some more oil.
6. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.
7. Take the dough out at least 2 hours before use. Knead a few seconds
8. Make a ball again, put on an oiled and floured baking sheet, and spread by hand.
9. Top with topping of choice.
10. Bake 20 mins in an oven preheated at 220°C.
11. Crisp the bottom in a pan heated on the stove.

Spiced Cookies

July 27, 2015

While in China, I traveled a lot to Hong Kong. My cousin and I also met up with a classmate from high school. During our last week there, we decided to meet up once more before our return to Europe. I thought I'd make some cookies to give to that friend.

I had wanted to make Spéculoos, but I was missing some ingredients (namely cassonade, or dark brown sugar). I tried to substitute some yellow sugar that was grated from a block, but the result wasn't exactly the same.

Instead of just putting the dash of cinnamon I usually use, I decided to go all out. I know the original Spéculoos uses at least 4-5 spices, namely cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, clove, and anis. I never have all these on hand, but I thought I'd give a few more spices a try. In this batch, I put some nutmeg and powdered ginger on top of the usual cinnamon.

The cassonade gives off a very fragrant flavor, as well as the usual dark brown color of the cookies. As I did not have this on hand, I ended up with a different type of cookies, which was rich in nutmeg flavor. It was also my first time grating a nutmeg to use, and it was stronger than I expected.

Recipe for Spéculoos can be found here~

Lemon and Nectarine Cheesecakes

 July 20, 2015

This was an unplanned cheesecake, to be honest. I went to the supermarket with my uncle, with the idea of getting ingredients for tiramisu. The cheese/dairy section of the first place we went to had been cleaned out, however, and the 2nd one did not have any ricotta or mascarpone. I had to settle for something else.

When I found a few boxes of cream cheese, I figured I could make cheesecake. My uncle had mentioned liking denser, rich cheesecakes, which is close to the ones I have been making (although I've been trying to make them less dense, these cheesecakes will never be the fluffy or spongy types that use eggs). I then ran to the yogurt aisle in hopes of finding Greek yogurt to use instead of sour cream. No luck. I went for plain yogurt, and figured I'd deal with it as it comes.

The first thing I did when getting home was to put the yogurt to drain in a strainer, in the fridge, for the whole night. I was teaching someone how to make the cheesecake, and he was surprised at the amount of water the yogurt released. This, by the way, is how to make a Greek yogurt-like substance to use. Then I made the cheesecake as usual, flavoring it this time with lemon zest and lemon juice. I did not have any egg replacer, so I tried making my own out of a mix of starches and baking powder (recipe here). I ended up with way more batter than I'd bargained for.

Therefore, I made 2 cheesecakes, with the same filling and topping, but with different crusts. The first, in a smaller mold, had a homemade shortcrust pastry crust that went up the sides, whereas the second just had a crushed cookies and butter crust at the bottom.

I topped it with watered-down nectarine jam, to which I had added more lemon juice. While I was dealing with the jam, I took some green nectarines, and let them macerate with a sprinkling of sugar, to soften them a little. Then I arranged them on the top. The slice of lemon in the middle was a reminder to the filling's flavor.

Nectarine Jam

July 6th, 2015

Yup, I'm still catching up on backlog (which keeps building but I am really getting overwhelmed with school work here).

My uncle had bought a looooot of nectarines. There was no way we were going to eat them all, especially with the heat over there in China. They wouldn't even fit into the fridge. So I suggested we make jam out of at least part of it, so as to make it easier to preserve.

This was quite easy. The recipes I've looked at usually used half the fruit's volume of sugar, and add in a lemon's juice. That turned out really sweet, so I suggest either cutting down the sugar (but sugar helps in the preservation of your jam), or just add more lemon juice. When cutting the nectarines, keep the skin on: the natural pectin in the fruit skin will help thicken the jam without needing additional pectin.

Enjoy on bread or in desserts!