How to: Chocolate coated strawberries

Yum yum.... :)_

Recently, the supermarket is filled with yummy Korea Strawberries. They are delicious by itself, and with a layer of rich dark chocolate, they are even more irresistable.

These sweet little things are really easy to make.

Ingredients needed are just baking chocolate, butter and strawberries. And you need a foam board and picks as prop.

1)Melt chocolate with some butter using double boiler, or over low heat. Stir till both melted and there's some shine in your chocolate.

2)Wash and dry(important) your strawberries with paper towel.

3)Poke the strawberries with picks and dip them into the melt chocolate.

4)Onced the strawberry is coated with chocolate, take it out and stick it upside down on a foam board as shown in the photo.


5)You can let the chocolate harden in room temperature, or put the chocolate coated strawberries inside the fridge for a few mins to speed up the process.


And that's it! It's an easy and great dessert for Valentine Day ( I know this post is way too late for Valentine ).


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After reading my posts, I have friends who thought that I always bake for occassions, like birthday and etc. but surprisingly, it is not so. I'm either not in the mood or simply don't have the time :P I just bake whenever I want to, and I think that is more fun.

Well... last year end, I did try to bake log cake for Christmas. But after a year break, I forgot the amount of batter needed for that specific pan size. It was too thin when spreaded out and I baked too long, it ended up to be semi-cookie, semi-cake like stuff, although it still smell and taste good :P

2 Cakes in a Day

A friend was over my place to learn baking a few days ago, we actually baked 2 cakes in a day. It was fun, and we spent about 7 hours baking them. Half the time was chit-chatting and some time was spent on shopping at DAISO as we need to get some stuffs there. I was onced again proved to be a bad Shifu, I actually forgot to test whether the cake was cooked and I took it out of the oven and inverted it, luckily there was a remedy. The last time she was here to bake cookies with me, the cookies were not as crisp as it should be. See the heart shape? Decorated by her, the cake was for her boyfriend's birthday :P
And this one was solely for our tummy and it was almost gone by now. There's kitkat sandwiched in the cake, tasted quite good.
Cake and birthday go hand-in-hand, so is blowing candle and singing birthday song. So we had a birthday celebration for..... err..... Remy. It's no one's birthday, but Hanhan wanted to have birthday celebration because there's a cake, and so that day became Remy's birthday!
So the next time when I blogged about baking cake, most probably we will be celebrating Doggy's birthday. Hehehe...

Healthy no-bake treats

Chocolate coco pop biscuits.

This is really easy to make. Just melt your chocolate, stir in your coco pop or other cereals then scoop them into mold or tray covered with wax paper. Put them into the fridge and wait for them to harden, then EAT, EAT, EAT........
I know mine don't look appetitizing, but they taste really good. I tried to use a bear shape cookie cutter as mold but as you can see..... they don't come out well. Next time I should just scoop it into balls or just spread it flat.

Did Hanhan help Mummy? Not really...... because she was too busy with eating.

Baking

Yesterday we baked sponge cake, as usual Hanhan is Mummy's helper.

Did you realised that it's semi-circle? Hehee...... I think we had too much fun baking and taking photos, as such we missed the "timing", so the cake didn't raise up well, OR is it because of the size of the pan and temperature? I'm not too sure too. Anyway, to compensate the flatness, I cut it into half and stacked it up :P

It's been about a month or two since we last baked a cake, we used to bake every one or 2 weeks. And Hanhan missed baking with Mummy, after this session she asked for more baking. Another serial of photos to show that taking photo of her is really difficult.

1st photo, asked her to show victory sign, and that's how she showed it.

Last photo, she finally smile heartily. The result of "If you don't smile, Mummy will tickle you!"

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Last few days of my shop SALE, don't miss it!

Cute it

You might or might not have notice this on my side panel.

I have just set up another etsy shop to share with you some of my cute finds for bakery, at least it is so for the time being, maybe next time I will be selling cakes online.... hehehe :P or it might develop into something else, who knows?

Please take a look if you love baking like me.

Chocolate Mousse Cake?!

Hanhan loves to eat cake, she had been requesting for cakes these few days and we had an enjoyable weekend, going from places to places eating cakes. :) Some taste good but some really not up to standard to be served in a restuarant, Daddy said that I can bake better than them ;> that's really flattering, and it set the mood for baking.
Sponge cake base similar to the Christmas log cake, but I added slightly more chocolate to get a darker shade and more chocolatey taste.
For chocolate mousse, I followed a recipe found on the net. I do not have a cooking thermometer, and was cautious about Salmonella poisoning, therefore, I just cooked the egg yolk, and the rest of the methods were the same. In the end, I realised the "mousse" was basicially made from egg yolk, chocolate and whipping cream. :P I think next time I will just leave out the egg yolk, and make chocolate whipped cream (no worries about Salmonella poisoning).

A layer of ganache, to give the cake a nice shiny outer layer.

Yum yum, I love this cake. Daddy loves it too. It's really chocolatey.

I am not an expert in baking, but I love to try out different cakes, especially chocolate cakes ;) and I really love this sponge cake base. With ovalett/emusifier, it is really easy to make a sponge cake. Here is the recipe(with some lazy modification, correct me if you think that is seriously wrong):

Ingredients (just nice for a 229" circle pan) (what am I writing? 22"?!)

1) 3 eggs

2) 50 g sugar

3) 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

4) 1/4 Tablespoon sweeten condensed milk

5) 1/4 Tablespoon ovalett/emusifier

6) 50g sifted top flour

7) 15g sifted corn flour

8) 1/4 teaspoon baking powder

9) 25 g melted butter/cooking oil

10) chocolate/cocoa powder (for chocolate cake, and add as you like)

Methods:

1) Beat ingredients 1 to 5 till ribbon forms.

2) Add in ingredients 6 to 8 ( + 10 optional ), fold in till combine.

3) Fold in cooled melted butter/cooking oil.

4) Put into preheated oven, bake at 175 degree celsius for about 20 mins.

* temperature and time differ from oven to oven, as the temperature indicated on the oven might not be accurate

If you tried out the above recipe, let me know what version of sponge cake you have made, I would like to try too :)

So many things to do, so little time

I'm not done with Hanhan's clothing but I need to do some baking. Besides chocolate chips cookies, there are many other New Year goodies I want to try baking, like Kuai lapis which I learnt in my baking lesson and I also want to improve my not so buttery taste pineapple tarts, but I don't have not enough time, Chinese New Year is coming. And of course there is the spring cleaning that should be done. This year's Chinese New Year really caught me unprepared, I should have plan ahead. For the time being, it will just be chocolate chips cookies. After the baking, I will need to catch up with the sewing.

Hanhan in the kitchen 2

Today we baked cookies, because Hanhan suddenly requested for cookies. See my girl at work.

She is a serious worker don't you think so??!! Or looks like I'm torturing her??!! Hehehe....
A smile to show that she is happy and to show that I'm not torturing her!

Eating chocolate chips while watching the machine at work. Ya.... chocolate chips cookies again.... Told you so... I only know that recipe, but we really like it very much.

Another thing to add, I have a set of alphabet cookie cutters that I wanted to use very much, tried to use it today, but the dough is way too stick. Actually I know that won't work, but just want to try, well........ no harm trying right?! However, the cookie cutters got their way to work at the later part of the day.

No alphabet cookies..... only alphabet carrots.

I have fun cutting the carrots, but Hanhan isn't used to eating big pieces of carrot and spitted them out. She did that for several times till I told her angrily not to do it. She started to weep and said, "Hanhan good girl." And she didn't spit out the carrot after that.

Ya..... true enough, Hanhan is good girl. :)

My try on Christmas log cake

Hanhan has been asking for cake lately. It could be the after effect of telling her that I'm going for baking lesson so that I could bake cake for her :P Anyway I was quite tempted to try on the Christmas log cake after the baking lesson. And last Friday I actually got some cute little Christmas log cake decor when I went to Toa Payoh Pooh Huat (it's near to Hanhan's school) to get some ingredients for the cookies which I wanted to bake for some time. They ended up in my shopping basket because I can't resist their cuteness. At then I'm still wasn't sure whether I'm going to bake Christmas log cake.

Since I have almost all the ingredient needed, I got the rest from NTUC and this is what I worked on in the evening.

I baked it from scrap, although I only show the assembling part. I made a few mistake along the way. But as a 1st try, I'm quite pleased with the result. I pinched a bit of the sponge roll and the texture seems quite good too :) Maybe from this year on way there will be one log cake this time every year.

Last batch of pouches for Christmas

gives you These are ordered by my baking class classmate. She only get to see the 1st 2 pictures of the pouches and she placed order from me. I even have several friends who place order from me not knowing what they are getting.

Friends, thank you for your trust in me.

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Today I baked cookies again.

Ya........, chocolate chips cookie again.

Because this is the only cookie that I know how to bake :P

Part of it went out with the pouches. Hope whoever receives it will have a sweet Christmas.

Christmas log cake

Have I told you that recently I went to CC to learn baking?!

Well, today I went to the CC to learn to bake Christmas log cake.

Nice? :)

But this is not baked by me :P

There isn't enough space and equipment for hands-on. We just watched the demonstration.

But the good part is we get to taste the cake :)

The teacher always bake very nice sponge cake.

But when I try to bake the cakes at home, the texture is never like hers :P

Happy Birthday, Hanhan!

Hanhan is already 2!
I baked her a birthday cake and some durian puffs to go along with other food that Daddy and MIL cooked. And we have our relatives over our place to celebrate with us. She had fun playing with her new toys and enjoyed having all the attentions.

By the time we wanted to cut the cake, she was a bit tired. And when we were singing the Birthday Song, ".........Happy Birthday to Hanhan!" she suddenly said, "No....no....no...." It was so hilarious, we all laughed.

Here are 2 more pictures from that day.

Cupcake for kids and the kid at heart

Yesterday I baked these.
Colour sprinklers, kitkat and yummy chocolates....... I love chocolates.

A birthday cake

A cake to go with the eclairs.
The process of making this cake wasn't really smooth, but I learnt a lot. This look isn't what I have in mind, but what I wanted to do failed...... a lot more to learn. For a 1st try, I think it is still ok..... looks ok only before I bring it to MIL's place, by the time we reached there, some of the strawberries slide out of place...... disastrous..... Luckily MIL doesn't mind, it's the heart that matters. :)

Hanhan in the kitchen

I have always want Hanhan to do baking with me, but the idea that she is still too young has been delaying it. However, after seeing so many posts on how Melissa and O of Chasing Cheerios have done baking together, has finally make me get into action.

Yesterday we did our first baking, we made simple pizza using bread, spaghetti sauce, hot dogs, crab sticks and cheeze. I did all the cutting, and Hanhan helped me to put the toppings. She wasn't sure of what to do at the beginning, but after some demonstrations, she got the idea. So pizza became our brunch.
This gave me confident into doing more baking with her. My MIL is celebrating her birthday this weekend, I wanted to bake something to bring to the celebration, seems like everyone likes eclairs, so I baked eclairs with hanhan. We sifted flour and cracked eggs together. While I am doing other preparations, she enjoyed herself crashing the egg shells. The crashing sound is so loud that there are several instants, that I turned my head to ensure that she isn't eating the egg shells.
She did make some noises when she has nothing to do, but overall she is quite happy about the whole baking thing, especially the ending part.
I used the dough to make some puffs for the 1st batch. And now she is enjoying her reward.

More baking

I'm in the mood for more baking...... I like to watch these little things puff up, the process is fascinating, and the end products are so cute.
Umm..... yummy chocolate..... I like dark chocolate, bitter and sweet, just like falling in love. Although Daddy prefer milk chocolate but he still likes my eclairs. :)

Chocolate cupcakes

This week is filled with relief, tuition and baking. These chocolate cupcakes are ordered by my friend. Bought the strawberry this morning, so that I can have fresh strawberry for the cupcakes.