Not My Grandma's Gingerbread Cookies

Our favourite line up.

Yesterday I made some gingerbread cookies. And this morning Saty and I worked on decorating the cookies. It's our first trial batch made for Saty's colleagues and they tasted good even if the taste of ginger was not so strong.

First few trials..

Not My Grandma's Gingerbread Cookie

4 cups cookie flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons powdered ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

2 teaspoon mixed spice

1 cup shortening

1 cup granulated sugar

1 1/4 cups molasses

2 eggs, beaten

1. Preheat oven to 375 F. Thoroughly mix flour, soda, salt and spices.

2. Melt shortening in a saucepan. cool it slightly before adding the sugar, molasses and eggs into it. Mix them well.

3. Add 4 cups of dry ingredients and knead it to make a firm dough. Add more flour if necessary.

4. Like all other regular cookies, roll the cookie dough to 1/4 inch thick and cut the shapes out using cookie cutter.

5. Bake 10-15 minutes.

Various dots..

We decorated the cookies with royal icing. Here, we used two types; soft peak consistency for lining out the design and runny type royal icing for filling up/coloring the design.

Broken heart, checked heart.

Royal Icing

3 tablespoons meringue powder

4 cups confectioners' sugar

6 tablespoons water

1. Beat all ingredients at low speed for 7-10 minutes until icing forms peaks. This made the soft peak consistency.

2. To make them runny, in order to fill up the border, add 2 tablespoons more water to the already soft icing.

Tux and evening gown..

Overall, we are both happy with these cookies. Later we'll pack them up in individual plastics and tie them up with ribbons.

Lemon Cream Cupcake Gone Wrong

Last week, we made some cupcakes. We planned to had them filled with lemon cream cheese and made some fillings for that purpose. I used a different method of filling; I first filled quarter of the papercups with the cake batter, scooped the filling and put it in the middle, then filled the rest with cake batter up to 3/4 cup full. They were then baked.

Saty wanted the cakes to be covered with fondant icing, so we made some liquid fondant and also some royal icing for piping details on the fondant topped cakes later.

The Mistaken Line Up

And the result? Hahah..The cakes tasted alright and the lemon cream filling is delicious, only that I've placed them too little on each cake. The poured fondant looks great but tasted funny, most probably because of the almond extract I put in. The design wasn't so bad though.

The Mistaken

I won't publish the recipe this time, not until I've got them right and perfect.

The best among the worst..

Chai Spice Layer Cake

Today was layer cake day. Mak has been pestering me on making this particular layer cake for months and finally, I agreed to do it for her. And here's my Chai Spice Layer Cake. I modified a recipe from the native Sarawak layer cake recipe and add a suitable amount of Chai Spice into the batter and made sure that the flavour was more intense than the usual store bought layer cakes.

The proud Chai Spice Layer Cakes.

Chai Spice Layer Cake

A
25 egg yolks
4 egg whites
200 g caster sugar
180 g Hong Kong flour
1 tablespoon ovalette

B
400 g butter
4 tablespoons condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

C
4 teaspoons Chai spice


1. Beat all ingredients in A without the flour until white and fluffy.
2. Fold in the flour thoroughly.
3. Also beat ingredients in B until light then mix both A and B in a large bowl.
4. Mix the batter well.
5. Add in the Chai spice and stir it in and ensure the spive is distributed evenly throughout the batter.
6. Heat oven on grill mode at 180 C.
7. Layer the batter one thin layer at a time as per my previous method of baking a layer cake.

From the outside, it seems like the layers were not well defined..

Once you're done with the cake, remember to leave it to cool in the cake pan. Then turn it over on a wire rack, trim the sides and it's ready to be eaten. Simply delicious. And it can be kept in the fridge for 1 week without losing its moisture.

But once I cut it, the layers were more obvious and were really, really fine and thin. Thanks to Mak who insist that I make it as thin as possible.

Mocha Cupcakes With Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

Cupcakes all lined up.

Today my sister and I had a little breakthrough. Our icing is finally not too sweet. These cupcakes was made with a friend in mind, Sara. She and I often do rounds of coffee together while bitching about life. Thus these mocha cupcakes was made.

And this one,was by Saty. She's good at it.

Mocha Cupcakes

2 2/3 cups cake flour

1 cup cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon powder

3 teaspoons instant coffee powder

1 cup hot water

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 cup milk

1 cup butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

2. Add in the eggs and continue beating until thoroughly mixed. In another bowl, mixed the dry ingredients; flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and powder, salt, and cinnamon powder.

3. Add 1/2 of the flour mix into the butter sugar mixture. Dilute the instant coffee powder with the hot water and pour into the batter. Mix well.

4. Fold in another half batch of the flour mix, and finally stir in the vanilla and milk.

5. Pour batter into lined muffin tins 2/3 full. Bake at 180 C for 30 minutes or until toothpick test is satisfactory.

Saty did this one too.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting

6 oz cream cheese

1 cup icing sugar (the recipe said 2 cups, but we reduced it so it won't be too sweet, and add some cocoa powder instead. If you like it sweet, add in a cup more icing sugar. The cocoa powder is optional and you'll probably need less of it).

6 oz bittersweet chocolate (melted over simmering hot water)

3 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

5-8 teaspoons of cocoa powder

1. Cream the cheese and icing sugar in a bowl.

2. Beat in the melted chocolate, then followed by the milk and vanilla.

3. Add in the cocoa powder, a teaspoon at a time, beating well after each addition until you reach the consistency you like for the frosting.

I wasn't so creative with the toppings. But this one was made by myself.

We iced the cooled cupcakes with the frosting, and my sister Saty went crazy with the toppings. She's creative, but often lose focus if she had to do too many. Haha..but thank god she has the interest in decorating cakes if not making them.

Cute little swirls. Always by Saty.

After we've iced all the cupcakes, we still got some frosting left, so I stored them in the fridge just to see if the frosting freezes well. Will try to use it again for the next project.

Ahh..but this one's mine. Simple, but I love it.

For Sara, I did nine of the above design and put them in a cake box, secured by sections made from corrugated paper. Take a look at them..

Classic Vanilla With Peanut Butter Filling Cupcakes

I had some extra white buttercream from the last birthday project. So I decided to make some cupcakes and use the buttercream for topping. I was in an upbeat mood yesterday and I decided to try new things on my cupcakes. I chose to fill my cupcakes with some peanut butter filling. I modified some truffle making recipes to this delicious, creamy filling.

Classic Vanilla Cupcakes

1 cup salted butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 3/4 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate soda
1 cup milk
2 teaspoon vanilla

1. Cream the butter on high speed mixer for 30 seconds.

2. Add in the sugar and beat further for 3 minutes.

3. Add in eggs, one at a time, beat for about 30 seconds after adding in each egg.

4. Fold in the flour, baking powder and soda until thoroughly mixed.

5. Pour in the milk and vanilla and stir until a smooth batter is formed.

6. Pour the batter into lined muffin tins 1/2 full. This cake rise like crazy, so be careful not to fill more than 2/3 of the cup.

7. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes on 350 F. Always test cake for doneness.

Note : This cake tasted great, but the cake pulls away from the paper cups upon cooling. Not a good thing for putting fillings in. I definitely won't use this recipe for cupcakes next time.

Peanut Butter Filling

1/2 cup creamy or chunky peanut butter

1 1/2 tablespoon butter

2 tablespoon milk

1. Cream the butter and peanut butter until thoroughly mixed.

2. Add in the milk and mix them again until it forms a creamy texture, not too stiff and not too runny. Have a taste at the finish product, if you want it sweeter, you can always add some sifted confectioners' sugar to the mixture.

Putting Them All Together

1. After the cakes are slightly cooled, I cored the middle section of the cakes with a small knife, leaving a hollow centre. Do not discard the cored section, you need it to cover back the cakes after putting in the fillings.

2. Now fill the cakes with approximately 1 teaspoon of the filling, more if the hole you made is bug and lesser if it is small.

3. Cover it back with the cored section. You will need to cut off the lower part of the cored section so you are left with just the top part of the section.

4. I tint the buttercream light brown and some 2 tablespoons of the same buttercream in leaf green. I also made some apple blossoms from yellow fondants to be used in garnishing.

5. Using a spatula, spread the icing smoothly on top of the cupcakes. I centred the apple blossoms on each cake, piped 2 buttercream leaves for each blossom and voila! My cupcake is done!

I am very happy with the taste of the cake and the peanut butter filling, but I am still not satisfied with the buttercream. It didn't taste bad, but I'm still looking for a way to improve it.