White Chocolate & Passion Fruit Cake

Tick the box if you have the following at home:

- A packet of passion fruits that you bought thinking that you will use them but you never did

- A chunk of white chocolate that you think you will like to bake with someday but never do

- A picnic to go to to support the local LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgender) @ The Pink Dot

Yup. That totally sums but my Saturday. So what I did? I baked a White chocolates and Passion fruit butter cake. Actually this was suppose to be a muffin recipe but really... would you wanna be peeling muffin liners off a muffin when you can just carve into a cake with nothing more to throw later at a picnic?

Anyway this is definitely a keeper. One of those very straight forward wet ingredient into dry ingredient kind of thing. I've tweaked the recipe a little to suit my own taste and I sincerely suggest that chopping the white chocolates a little bit more finer, if you do not want to induce instant diabetic attack... that's is if there's such a thing. Not a big fan of white chocolates... nooooo :(

White Chocolate & Passion Fruit Loaf Cake

2 cups Plain Flour
1 tsp Baking Powder
1/2 tsp Baking Soda
100g White Chocolate, finely chopped
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 tsp Salt

125g Butter, Melted
1/3 cup Milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup Passion fruit pulp
1 tsp Vanilla extract

Start with preheating oven to 170 degree Celsius, and line a loaf tin with foil. In a mixing bowl sift the flour, Baking powder and soda. Add in the chocolate, sugar and salt, stir combine and make a well in the centre and set aside. In another bowl, mix together the rest of the wet ingredients till well combined. Pour the wet batter into the dry ingredients and mix together, try to do it quick and not over mixing (magic whisk is the best tool here). Pour batter into the prepared loaf tin and bake for 40-50 minutes.

Passion fruit Glace

1 cup of icing sugar, sifted
1/4 cup of Passion fruit pulp
1-2 tsp water

While cake is baking, do the glace by mixing all the ingredients together. You may not need the water at all if the glace is spreadable already. Once cake is out of the oven, pour the glace over the cake and leave to cool completely.

Pavlova

Pavlova. I mean just by saying the word makes me feel like I'm wearing lacy dresses sitting in an English rose garden with some ballerina music playing in the background and gazing upon the mellow hills beyond.

It's basically a meringue topped with cream and fruits, named after the famous ballerina, Anna Pavlova. I must say I have yet eaten anyone else personal definition of a classic pavlova, but I'm definitely turned off by those jumblebee fruit salad with juices crumbling the meringue below, making everything a sweet squoggish mess passing themselves off as pavlova. That my dear friend, is a sin too dear to be forgiven. 

Have I told you I suck in meringue and genuinely fear baking anything that is remotely meringue related? It was until this New year's day that I've overcame my fear and pitched on a wild ride with all the baked sweeten egg whites in the baking world. If something as explicitly detailed as a Macaron can be churn out from my rather amateur hands, what more a meringue which is basically just whipping up the egg whites and sugar? I mean there is no pipping required no macaronage involved... right?

The beating and everything is easy, shaping the meringue disc on the tray is easy (may I say fun too) but the baking was not. I vaguely remember in one of Nigella Bite's episode, she said to put the meringue into a hot oven and then quickly turn it out to a lower temperature. So as to the 'shock' the meringue or something (her facial expression was priceless) then leave the pavlova to bake and eventually cool down together with the oven. I totally did that. I let the meringue bake, leave the tray in the oven when the timer goes off... and I went out.

 

Halfway having lunch with my friends, Mom called in extreme horror telling me that 'whatever you are baking sank terribly in the middle.' I tried to keep cool... No big deal right? anyway there will be cream to cover everything and it is suppose to be soft and marshmallow like in the centre so I'm okay. But when I returned and gazed upon my slightly browned meringue I can't help but to blame myself... Katherine you shouldn't have went out!!!

But well it's not end of the world yet. I still whipped up some cream and chop up some strawberries and assemble everything together. The sinking kindda give me a well to contain the cream and actually, everything is not too bad. Pavlova can be a rather forgiving dessert don't you think? At least anything that can be covered with cream and still look beautiful as long as there's strawberries. And dare I boast, these are rosewater perfumed Strawberries.

Definitely one of the best, tamed and elegant tea time dessert on a hot sunday afternoon.

Nigella's Pavlova

There isn't a specific recipe because I got everything from Youtube. If you were to search Google you'll probably find her Christmas version one or the Chocolate raspberries one. Anyway, for each egg white you will need 4 tbsp of sugar (I use 4 here, so 16 tbsp of sugar for me) and while the whites are beating up, gradually add in the sugar spoonful by spoonful. When it turns into a shiny glossy peak, gently fold in 1 tbsp of cornflour and 1 tbsp of vinegar (white wine or balsamic is fine). Spoon the meringue batter onto a tray and shape into a circle, not too flatly though, and put into a preheated 150 degree oven and immediately turn it down to 100 degree. I left my meringue to bake for bout 1 hour and leave it to cool with the oven completely. I suggest cranking the oven door a little coz in my case, steam wasn't able to escape from the oven and hence was trapped into the meringue and cause the sinking. 

While the meringue was baking, you can start marinating the strawberries by chopping bout 300g of strawberries into small cubes. Sprinkle over bout 1 tbsp of sugar and bout 2 tsp of rosewater (more if you like) Once meringue is ready, whip up some cream and top it over the meringue and then followed by the strawberries. I would suggest chilling the dessert before eating as it taste really, really good. 

Birthdays

Growing up I don't really have much impression of birthday cakes. I do have a mom who loves baking but the last time I remember her baking was for my dad... and that was when my age was still a single digit. I either have a shop bought cake, or no cake at all.

Moving on to present day, I've got to admit I've got great friends who bought me awesome cakes to celebrate my day of the year. I suppose it's not exactly our culture to actually bake a cake for someone... I mean, if the celebration was last minute, everyone's first reaction would probably be 'I'm not going there empty handed, I'LL BRING CAKE!'. If it is something planned, then people would be 'Well since the birthday boy/girl is such an awesome friend/family member, why not let's buy her a kickass fancy expensive cake?' Somehow, the idea of baking a cake doesn't really comes to mind.

I don't know is it because of the hassle the mess or really no faith in the kitchen but if you do look at the westerners (ie, the links on the right hand side) they make their own cake for almost all occasions. Be it birthday, celebrations or whatever they will definitely bake a cake and eat it with their family or something. I'll probably need a few more years to cultivate such wonderful practice of my own but for the time being, I'll concentrate on baking well first.

Below are 2 cakes I baked recently for 2 very lovely boys. Both incredibly bubbly and cute, and as with all the kids nowadays, has got an idol of their own.

The first was a Bob the Builder cake. I've seen little kids screaming the slogan away on the street but heck I've no idea what the hell he does other than looking like a construction worker. Anyway much discussion was done and I've decided to embark on my first try on frozen transfer method.

The idea, is to print out your stencil in the opposite way, place a layer of wax paper and trace it out with buttercream, fill in the colors and freeze the image. Once harden, you just place it onto the cake and 'print' it onto the surface. Sounds pretty straight forward huh? But hell would I know just the filling part took me a good whole 5 hours. But I suppose, it's because of my lack of planning and no freaking idea that mixing food gel is quite like mixing acrylic for paintings.

 working table at 12AM - not a good sign

 I really wanted to do the checkered shirt but my eyes threatened to pop

Mummy of the birthday boy also ask for 60 mini cupcakes for his little friends. Of course I would love to make little hammers and cones toppers but then... oh well let's just say days past without me even knowing that these little things need days to dry. So what we did? The printer!

I'm definitely not going to say this is indeed a cake well done, but definitely not gonna be the last time I do this freezing transfer method thing.

Another cake was a Lightning Mcqueen one. Note: I didn't know what a Mcqueen is and I didn't know it's a movie. Needless to say, the mom did most of the research for the cake (yes please throw rotten eggs at me)

Thanks to the toppers Mommy no.2 provided, I DIDN'T NEED TO DO ANYTHING MUCH!!! Other than the decals on the side and a bit of messy pipping (note to self: please practice your pipping skills), I pretty much left the job to the M&Ms and the cake toppers. Not proud really :(

Aaaaaaanyway, hey I just didn't know much about cartoons okay? XD