The amoiness and Nish's birthday CAKES

Nishaan's Bridge cake..
Amoiness Pon and Zi hugging Cake
All the holes all over the cake are the half a million candles I had to stick.. Mom really like birthday candles..

Shepards pie

With the great flavor of Lamb, Comes one of the most delicious all in one dishes ever, shepherds pie, gently braised lamb slivers or mince, with carrots, onion celery and cauliflower, smooth mashed potato topping.

If anyone can say they've lost their appetite after smelling a shepherds pie baking in the oven. I dare you to step forward.

Chocolate Brownies and Moleculor Chocolate Mousse

So my brother in Law loves chocolate and got all excited at the mention of chocolate brownies, so I grabbed to opportunity to do a little more research and improve my brownies EVEN MORE!!

problem was the older chocolate brownies seems ever so slightly on the dense side, whipped more air in to the batter, and added chunks of cut up chocolate. increased the amount of cocoa.

Took the topping to the next level, recently saw a video on youtube, about a guy talking about a french chemist making chocolate mousse out of chocolate and water, so I decided to give it a try, but I used milk to help mellow out the richness of the chocolate a little.

CHOCOLATE + MILK MOUSSE RECIPE
Melt 250g chocolate with 100ml milk, and then whip over an ice bath until whipped cream soft peak consistency, definitely recommend using a hand held mixer of some kind, cause it take quite a while.

Creates a pretty thick dense easily piped or set in a mold mousse.

Much easier to help then previous chocolate topping, creates a smoother sauce when the brownie is reheated in a microwave before eating.

brownies taste great both chilled and a WARM!!! SHEER AWESOMENESS

CUPCAKES!! FOR FUN!!

So i just got back from Langkawi, after what I think was a pretty smooth interview with the Four Seasons, They are all such nice people..
Anyways I got back. and woke up bright and early.. at 12pm, and had a surge of energy.. so I made cupcakes.. and made them pretty too..

White castle at home....

So here is how it all started, a couple of days ago I was going to through some old movies and I watch Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. And after watching it I was just imagining it. small juicy burgers. goodness... and here in Malaysia, THERE IS NO WHITE CASTLE. so I did the next best thing and made my own.
start of mixing and kneading, 600g Flour, 15g Yeast, 5g Salt, 350ml milk, 100ml water, 75g butter and 1 egg.
Combine all the dry ingredient, combine and heat all the wet ingredients until their just warm to touch, mix the wet and dry, and knead knead knead knead.. leave it to rest for 1 hour.
Here is the fun part, punch the air out of the dough, and then cut it up into little balls, 40-50g each, should get about 32..
Roll them into neat balls, and leave them to rest 30 minutes in a oiled tray ready for baking.
Heat the oven to 180 Celsius, glaze with oil and bake the rolls for 14 to 16 minutes. or if you watching TV about 5 to 6 meters away from the oven, your nose will let you know when their done.
Get out 1 kilogram of minced beef, no lean beef crap, one with loads of fat running through it is perfect, season with mustard, paprika, honey, oyster sauce, salt and pepper.

Divide up the meat into 55g to 60g balls, you'll get about 13 or 14.

There is dried rosemary, but its totally optional cause some dun like it.
Sear the mini burgers on both sides and finish in the oven at 180 Celsius for 5 minutes, take them out and put on some cheese and stick back in the oven to melt the cheese about a minute should do the trick.

Cut the buns in half, cover with sliced lettuce, drop the cooked burger on it, put the top back on.. and ENJOY IT!!!
Beef Slyders/ Mini Beef Burgers.
by Daniyal Goh
Inspiration from Harold and Kumar go to white castle.

MACAROOMS!!

Being the bum that I am. I was trawling around on the internet and found some picture of cakes with mushrooms on them. Usually seen on Bouche de noel, basically a cake something like a swiss roll decorated to look like a log, the mushrooms add a new dimension to it.

So mushrooms are just so expensive, and so delicious, thus I decided to make some, meringue piped and shaped into the shape of mushroom caps and stems, later fused together with a little more meringue or chocolate.

Now is totally not macaroon, meringue and pavlova season here in Malaysia, the rain and high humidity, ruin any baked meringue, seconds after coming out of the Oven. Over the course of photographing and putting together my Macarooms the meringue quickly turned in a marshmellowy kind of texture.

chocolate brownies...

Chocolate brownies are meant to be a chocolaty treat, but always when you buy one in the store its fake and almost never chocolaty enough,So I took it to the next level and made my own.. 35% chocolate, with an added layer of chocolate on top. the most decadent chocolate brownie ever,

Knowing that you can TIME can never be between a chocolate lover and chocolate, I designed my brownies to eaten warm, room temperature and chilled,
And finally.. I really do need to ask" Whats better than a chocolate brownie?"

16 chocolate BROWNIES!!!!!!!!! ARGH!!!!

EGG SALAD

It has been a while since my last post, so made something quick and easy and took a picture of it. there ain't no fancy skills and techniques in this one just simple old full boiled egg and cucumber salad.

Boiling eggs( the secret)
a PIN... just a pin.. take a pin and punch a whole in the bottom of the egg, this will help prevent the shell cracking,, and having a big messy pot of egg soup.

salt the water, Personally I don't see how this works at all, but it seems to work, so do it anyways

once your done boiling around 12 minutes on excited simmer, pour out the hot water and shake the pan vigouresly crack up the shells, pour in some cool water and leave it to sit a couple of minutes then peel the shells of, they'll come out like weeeeee....

Chocolate Bavarian Cream Cake

Like any cake you absolutely must start out with the CAKE part. Since a mousse cake is essentially a chilled cake. The only suitable cake to use would some kind of sponge cake because a butter cake when chilled is almost ROCK solid, Imagine biting trough the smoothest softest mousse into a solid chunk of cake. not quite there.

Since I'm still in the mood of challenging and hopefully beating my old pastry chef, I made the French Genoise. Back in college I could only get a medium rise of out my cake and it would only reach the top of tin and Pastry chef's one would stand an inch above mine. but now I'm getting closer. 1/2 inch to go...
the most simple and straight forward of the sponges but also the most sensitive, where the folding technique becomes the most important thing in the entire process.

Althought many chefs and some of my past teachers swear by using the biggest spatula possible I prefer using the BIGGEST balloon whisk i can get my hands on, gently twisting and turning mixes in the flour evenly with mush less agitation than a spatula.

I find spatulas make big air pockets in the batter and also doesn't break up the bubbles of flour. so you have to fold more. More folding = more agitation, more agitation = less air, less air = flat/heavy cake.
Genoise with chocolate Bavarian Cream coated with chocolate glaze.

I really couldn't decide how to decorate the cake, I was thinking cream, some icing, then it hit me. what better way to decorate a chocolate mousse cake then with MORE CHOCOLATE!!!
Ugh. still haven't mastered the fine art of getting the chocolate glaze on but here's for all you not SUPER CHOCOLATE lovers. how you should keep your extra cake in the fridge if its too big to fit in an airtight container.

stick a CLEAN plastic bag to cut parts of the cake, an Absolute MUST especially for sponge cakes as they dry out pretty quick, nothing worse than a mouthful of dry sponge. Might as well eat some saw dust..

CHOCOLATE BROWNIES

CHOCOLATE BROWNIES PROMOTION WEEK
Between the 11th and the 17th of October all chocolate brownies orders will receive a 25% DISCOUNT!

thats
RM 15 for 4 Servings
RM 50 for 16 Serving - free delivery included (T&C)

Ultimate Cheesecake Failure....

So Friday came, and I had the all the makings and the plans for my ultimate cheesecake.. brought everything out turned up the oven.. everything when smoothly...

And then ... the end result.... a totally awesome cheesecake.. but not exactly what I had in mind.. after it was chilled I tapped it and had a "star wars : empire strikes back moment" fell to the ground on knees wailing "noooooo" stilll WAY too dense.. nothing even close to a sponge... argh...

so I've thrown the cheesecake research and development on the shelf.. and gonna do a few weeks of theoretical research before I attempt "THE ULTIMATE CHEESECAKE" again..

None the less here are some shot of the not so successful cheesecake. Although almost as dense as a new york cheesecake.. it a slight illusion of being fluffier. blended pretty well with the cinnamon and nutmeg crust. A tasty treat. But not quite good enough to cause cravings for more when eaten.

still in my mind The Ultimate cheesecake.


P.S. I made CREAMPUFFS with creme chiboust too. but the camera ran of battery, and by the time I got new ones the CREAMPUFFS WERE GONE!!

MERINGUE BUTTER CREAM

Butter cream the most delicious and most gorgeous looking of all icings
Just look at the gorgeous shinny appearance of the cupcakes below
Step 1 : beat egg whites and 150% its weight in sugar until sugar is completely dissolved
step 2 : beat in table spoon size chunks of cold butter until the mixture splits.
step 2.5 : if the mixture doesn't break chill and beat some more.
Step 3 : once mixture breaks and start seperating beat on high untill perfect gloss is achieved roughly 4 minutes.

Tips
- Forget the acid in the meringue you don't really care about the volume. its gonna get beaten out when you add the butter
- best meringue to use Swiss meringue, the increase heat helps to dissolve the sugar,
- - Italian meringue could be an option but there will be a strong meringue flavour.
- use cold butter, nice cold butter helps it to break faster, softened room temperature mixes in too easily
- keep mixing until it SPLITS. it absolutely must break, only then the butter, and other flavours come through.
- colouring buttercream; take a little out and place in a metal bowl with enough colouring for the whole batch. blend and melt over a double boiler(over a direct flame if your daring or pro) then mix everything together.
- - you must seperate out a little to melt, if you melt everything the buttercream will become very too watery to pipe.
- SPLITS = when the water and oil seperate and everything starts to looks like its gone horribly wrong.

Butter cream sounds simple and in theory really is, but I absolutely hate having gritty bits of undissolved sugar between my teeth when I bite into and chew my cupcakes.

Hence the Meringue butter cream. now with a meringue butter cream, Literally everything you would know about meringues should be taken and thrown out the window, non of it applies.

Whenever you introduce fat into egg white automatically you loose volume weather you like it or not, beating loose even more volume, add both together and your pretty much end up with nothing. (beating butter into the meringue.

When it comes to a meringue butter cream, which meringue you choose doesn't really matter, the final outcome that does matter is what is it going to taste like so the only meringue that stands out is the Italian meringue.

New York Cheese Cake

So last week a I got an order for the New York Cheese cake, and this week I got a complaint from The Amoiness and Mom. The complaint said "I didn't get to taste also"

Soon After which I realised I didn't have any really good shots of the inside of the cake, the solution came in the form of MAKING ONE MORE.
Here we have a shot of THE NEW YORK CHEESE cake missing a wedge
And here 3 slices decorated with a little whipped cream and lemon rind. absolutely delicious...