3D Scania R440 Trailer

Wow wow wow…. this was the biggest challenge so far. A 3D Scania R440 trailer for 100pax!!
I was only given 2 weeks to prepare and some photos of the trailer as references to create this cake.

The birthday man drives this model of trailer and would like to recreate it as a cake for his 50th birthday! As he was a friend of mine, I took up the challenge to do it for him. 

My sis helped me to search through the internet to find the specification and measurement of the trailer. It was not easy and there wasn’t many references on the internet which I can take reference for.

With my sister’s help, this was the result:

This cake easily weighs more than 10kg and they were 100% edible cake.

It measured 8.5″ x 22″ x 10″ tall! 

It was definitely a great challenge and achievement for me and my sister.

The guests were impressed that it was homemade.

3D bottle cake

This is an outdated post. I had request for a Barcadi 151 liquor design cake last month. It was for my niece’s boyfriend.

She gave me an option to choose between a lying down 3D bottle or an upright design. 

I took up the challenge to do an upright version.

Though it was not as challenging as doing an anti gravity cake, a structure still needs to be build support the cake and to ensure the “bottle” won’t collapse.

This will be the first time I am doing a structural cake since I last attended a workshop on it.

In preparation of the structure, these were the tools and materials I needed:

Suddenly I felt like I was the Handy Manny if you know the cartoon character. :p

Long story short, here’s the transformation from structure to the actual cake:

And it survived to the hotel without collapsing or falling apart!

Illustration Toast

I came across Little Miss Bento website and chanced upon a very unique illustration toast.

It’s another way of toasting bread with characters drew on it and it was beautiful!

With the recipe provided in her website, I tried it myself:

The totoro was copied handsfree from a picture, hence it wasn’t quite like the character.

It’s fun and the batter was nice too. It will be a favourite for all children. My kids enjoyed doing it too with simpler design:

Pan Au Chocolate Crossiant

Making cŕossiant in room temperature and in home environment was no joke. 

The key to successful crossiant is to roll out the dough with butter laminated as fast as possible, without breaking or melting the butter in it.

In Singapore, given our warm and humid environment, it is almost impossible. But I pulled it through in about 12 hours, visiting the freezer frequently.

After attending the crossiant basic class, learning all the truth and facts of making crossiant, I had decided to try it at home, without air condition. And I managed to make quite a decent layering:

Can you see the flaky layers?

Not very perfect I would say, but at least I am seeing the layers (not even though :p) and I am happy with the result. 

Will I make it again? 

Yes! That’s definitely! Though the hours were long, but being able to see the layers and end products and seeing my kids fighting over them, I will sure do it again. The process was definitely much easier than before I attended the class with butter oozing out at all 4 sides.

Shall practise more on rolling it out perfectly. 

STAY TUNE!

Baby Shower Dessert Table

This will be the 3rd dessert table that I had done. Am still learning and improving the decoration and such… thanks for all the opportunities given, hope I have not disappoint any of them.

The dessert comprises of 5 items:

1. Green tea & Passionfruit bunny macarons 

2. Mini bite size butter cake

3 . Merringue kisses

4. Strawberry pocky sticks

5. Ultimate chocolate butter cake

 

Milk Kefir Loaf

After a few attempts of baking soft buns with water kefir, I haven’t had any success for a soft and airy loaf. All of them turned out dense. 

After seeking advices and discussion and some facts, my thoughts were, I am using water kefir starter which feeds on sugar but for soft buns, we use heavy cream, milk, butter and milk powder in the recipe which may be too heavy for the water kefir to start working. However, milk kefir is of the opposite, they feed on the fats content in milk. The higher the percentage of fats, the happier is the milk kefir and produces a good milk kefir drinks / yoghurt per se.

So, I came up with a simple recipe to test my logics:

Milk Kefir Loaf

Milk kefir starter:
125g Milk Kefir
125g Bread Flour

Mix the milk kefir and bread flour together as above. Leave it at rm temperature for 18-20 hours but not more than 24 hrs.

It should looks airy like above when it’s ready to use.

Dough Ingredients:
350g Japanese Bread flour
250g Milk Kefir Starter (abt 21hrs as above)
70g sugar + honey
200g Milk Kefir
36g Water Kefir (ok, I played cheat here, I ran out of milk kefir.)
70g milk
7g salt
40g butter

Mix all the ingredients together at low speed except for the butter and salt.

Add in salt and butter when the dough is formed. Continue mixing at low speed until window panel is formed.

Rest about 30 mins and do a stretch and fold.

Cover with cling wrap and put in fridge for over night bulk fermention.

Next day……

Bring out from fridge (you should the dough puff a little) 

Please ignore the writing on the picture. It’s no longer valid for this picture. This dough was at 8.35am on 29th July.

and rest on tabletop for abt 1hr for the dough temperature to reach 20deg C.

This dough was 1 hr later.

Do a stretch and fold. Rest 30 mins.

Divide dough into half, shape into batard and rest 15mins.

Meanwhile, prepare the loaf tins with greased sides

Shape into batard again and place in tins:

This was just put in the tin at 10.30am.

Let it proof at room temperature. This will take very long…… mine was ready only at about 5.30pm. It took about 7 hrs to be like this:

You may now close the lid and send it to the oven.

Send it to a pre-heated oven of 180deg C for about 35mins.

VIOLA~~

Soft and airy bread. Crumbs were good.

It tasted abit sour due to the milk kefir used but I think the sourness is acceptable and that my children has no complains at all.

CROSSIANT!!

I’m sure many home bakers out there have phobia with making crossiants at home with butter and I’m not talking about using pastry margarine, dry butter with 84% fats content!

It’s just like my macarons, failed many times trying to produce my dream crumbs crossiants. How much hard worked was put in in the rolling and folding of the dough have been in vain?

Today, I had decided to over come this. Hence, I spent my whole Saturday attending the Basic Crossiant Class at Bakerz@work Academy taught by Chef Kel.

The concept and method were clearly explained in the class. It makes me understands better of my failure. Though my crossiants were still not perfect in class, but I’m sure by knowing where I’ve gone wrong and understanding the new concept, with practise, I am able to achieve a good layering of a crossiant.

Here’s my “achievements” in the class:

This was done by Chef Kel with the sheeter machine. Look at the perfect layering…

This was 1 of the crossaints I had made. Not perfect, but compared with my previous attempt, this is much much more acceptable.

If you would like to know more about the class, you may find Bakerzatwork academy in the Facebook and either send them your enquiry or find the class schedule in the page.

Watercolour effect cake

Finally found an opportunity to create a watercolour effect cake.

It’s for my girl’s birthday! 

Hope the effect is close to how a watercolour cake should be.

Pick-Me-Up

Been awhile since someone has request to “pick-me-up”, another name for Tiramisu.

Tiramisu has always been my signature since the day I started my baking business. It was this Tiramisu which started me on my baking journey and business. 

It has always been very popular among my friends who had tried. No raw eggs in the ingredient list but the liqour is very strong!

How about getting one or two cups? Mininum order is 10 cups though. 🙂

Taiwanese Sponge Cake (台湾古早味蛋糕)

This cake is famous in Taiwan, but not so much in Singapore, until, it was brought into the Singapore market.

The 1st store was opened in Tampines and it was reported that people are queueing for hours in order to get a piece of this cake.

Personally I had not tried this cake from the store, but it was described to be a soft, bouncy and cottony cake. This has set me to start searching for the recipe.

I had chanced upon quite a few recipes but all did not yield the result I had expected from the description, except for this one:

https://icook.tw/recipes/138617

The method and ingredient are as follows in english:

For 8″ square tin   

90g  cake flour

75g  oil (I use corn oil)

60g  milk

6  egg yolks

1 tsp  cream of tartar

1 tsp  salt

6  egg whites

73g  sugar

Preparation     

1. Prepare 4 cardboards the width of the tin. The height can be higher than the side in the tin. This is to support the cake during baking.

2. Line the square tin with baking paper including the sides. Best is to cover all sides with just 1 sheet of baking paper.

3. Place the cardboard behind the baking paper for the 4 sides.

4. Wrap the outside of the tin with aluminium foil. This is to prevemt water from seeping through during baking. It will be good if you can wrap 2-3 layers of it. I had once forgot to wrap the foil and the cake ended up wet at the bottom.

5. Prepare another bigger tin for water bath.

6. Preheat oven to 200degC and reduce it to 150 degC.

Method:

1. Warm the oil in a heatproof bowl. You can do it directly over the stove or microwave for about 30 second on high. Heat till you see streaks of line in the oil.

2. Remove oil from heat and immediately sift in the cake flour. Mix with a whisk till no lumps left.

3. Stir in the egg yolks and milk and continue to mix until the batter is smooth and shiny. Set aside.

4. Place the egg whites, cream of tartar and salt in a mixing bowl. Whisk at high speed until foamy.

5. Switch to medium speed amd add in the sugar in 2 to 3 batches. Continue whisking until it reaches soft peak.

6. Fold 1/3 of the whipped egg whites into the prepared batter. Then pour the batter into the remaining egg whites and fold in lightly.

7. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin. Use slicing strokes to cut through the batter to remove any big air bubbles and smooth the top with a scrapper.

8. Drop the tin on the table for about 3 times to remove any bubbles. (We do not want big bubbles for this cake.) Place it into another bigger tin (I use 10″ tin)

9. Pour water into the outer tin. About 3 cm high and bake for 50-60mins. It’s done when the skewer come out clean when tested.

Removal:

10. Quickly remove the cardboard from the tin and the cake out of the tin.

11. Remove all the baking paper immediately.

12. Let cool for 3 mins and slice the cake to prevent it from collapsing.

13. Serve and enjoy.

Look at the bounciness of the cake: