Having an unwilling model who dropped everything in the middle of the photo shoot (duh, like real!) to go poo poo is soooo .. frustrating!

But nothing beats an unwilling model who keeps fidgeting and shows monkey faces. Hey, I’d love to change my model, after all, i’ve another 2 to pick from but the thing is, this particular model, the mischievous one of all, refused to let me replace him! -_-

Anywaaaay, yesterday was Teacher’s Day.

This year, to show my gratitude for their patience and kindness, i baked some yogurt cakes instead of the usual cupcakes. Why?

Because the teachers are a bunch of health conscious people who would scrap my poor frosting off. *sniffs*

To make up for the less fancy fanfare (compares to the cuppies), i decided to pack the teachers 2 slices of yogurt cakes in 2 flavors using 2 different recipes!

Picture left, I have Matcha Chocolate Yogurt Cake, using Alice Medrich‘s low fat recipe and on the right picture, I have Orange Yogurt Cake with Grand Marnier, using Donna Hay‘s recipe – one that i’d tweaked ;)

Honestly, both are good.

psstt : otherwise, i wouldn’t have baked them again and again and again! *wink*

But somehow, i prefer Donna Hay’s recipe more.

Personally, i find the matcha part in Alice Medrich’s recipe tastes rather flour-y and i dislike the taste of flour, immensely. Perhaps.. it’s my matcha powder. Not strong enough? *shrugs*

However, the same cannot be said for the chocolate part – which has no flour taste at all! Once you swirl the 2 flavors together, i bet you’d just go, wow instead of wrinkling your nose and exclaim, tastes like flour! :P

As for Donna Hay’s recipe… well.. what can i say?

No complains!! I love this recipe to bitssssssssss, but make sure u are not using low fat yogurt ok?

Chocolate Matcha Marble Cake
by Alice Medrich

2 cups cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon instant espresso or coffee powder
1/3 cup dutch-process cocoa powder
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 whole egg
1 egg white
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup full-fat yogurt
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
1.5 teaspoons matcha powder

Have all ingredients at room temp. Preheat oven to 350 degrees with rack in the lower third of the oven. Spray 8-10 cup tube pan with cooking spray.

Use a whisk to combine four, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Sift together. Set aside. In a small bowl combine the espresso powder, cocoa and 1/3 cup of the sugar with 1/4 cup of water. Whisk until smooth. Set aside. In another small bowl, whisk whole egg with egg white. Set aside.

Cut the butter into pieces and place in an electric mixing bowl. Beat for 1 minute to soften. Gradually add remaining 1 cup of sugar and beat at high speed for about 3 minutes. Dribble eggs in slowly, about 1 T at a time, beating constantly for about 2 minutes. On low speed, beat in a third of the flour mixture. On medium-high speed, beat in half of the yogurt. On low speed, beat in half of the remaining flour. On high speed, beat in the rest of the yogurt and the vanilla. On low speed, beat in the remaining flour.

Measure out 1 1/2 cups of yogurt batter and mix into the cocoa mixture. Set aside. Add matcha powder to the rest of the yogurt batter in the mixing bowl.

Use a large spoon to fill the bottom of the pan with about three quarters of the green batter placed in dollops. Cover the green batter with dollops of chocolate batter. Top the chocolate batter with small dollops of green batter spaced so that the chocolate batter shows through. Use a table knife to marble the batters together with a circular or zigzag motion; be careful not to blend them too much.

Bake for 45-50 minutes for cake, (20-25 minutes for cupcakes) or until the cake starts to pull away from the sides of the pan and a toothpick inserted in comes out clean.

Cool for 10-15 minutes on a rack. Unmold the cake. Cool completely before serving or storing.

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To pack the cakes :

You will need : small paper bags, serviettes or tissues and pegs/stickers/clips.

Wrap both cakes in tissue or serviette.

Place the cake into the a small paper bag, in my case.. a brown bag :)

Fold the paper bag 2-3 times. Then place a cute looking sticker/peg/clip to secure and voila! A pretty looking gift-away for teachers!

ps : of course, it’d be much cuter if your child were to scribble some greetings and notes! ;)

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Of course, apart from teachers.. u can give them to anyone u fancy! Friends.. family… collegues.. well, basically anyone and everyone actually ,because i don’t think anyone would not love to receive this! :D

I’ve been wanting to make Mont Blanc for the longest time! – err, i do say this a lot huh?

But really.. Mont Blanc has been on my to-do-list for like more than a year, ever since i first ate it at Canelé. It was love at first mouth ;)

Not too long after that, i saw it at Aran‘s lovely blog. A recipe! Oh my.. what a coincident! However, getting chestnut puree wasn’t so easy at that time. Hmph! The funny thing is, i’ve never thought of making my very own chestnut puree… and even now, i still don’t (read : lazy!).

Sometime last week, a trip to Sun Lik changed it all.

They have chestnut puree all over the shop! Well, umm.. not quite all over but these lovely cans of puree were placed right at the front door… as though it was a sign, a sign for me to make Mont Blanc after all these years! I knew then, i gotta grab it no matter what… Whether i’ll bake it in the end is another story all together :P

Why, of course i would bake it!

For $25  (45oz of chestnut puree), i definitely will! I refuse to throw away my $$ like that, y’know ;)

Not only i baked 1 or 2, i actually double up the portion and made tons! There were 12 giant Mont Blanc and a 5″ x 9″ cake too! I was too greedy. In the end, i gave away more than 8 Mont Blanc to friends and family. But the cake, i kept… because i love that version better! ^_^

a very messy cross-section which did not intend for photography but can lah!

Having eaten and read many different version of Mont Blanc, i decided to make one that i think i’d fancy most. Because there were no such recipe for the version i wanted, i came up with my own.. well, almost. A little tweak here and there, slight adaption from up and down, well… this, is mine :)

Mont Blanc
chestnut cream and puree adapted from norecipe

for Genoise sponge cake
5 large eggs
140g caster sugar
150g top flour
1 tsp vanilla essence
120g butter, melted – slightly warm

note to self : good for a whole grey pan.

for chestnut puree
15 oz. can of pureed chestnut
1/2 C cream
1/2 C sugar
1 large egg yolk
1 vanilla bean

for chestnut cream
1 C heavy cream
3 Tbs powdered sugar
1/3 C chestnut puree

make the Genoise sponge cake

Combine the eggs, sugar and vanilla and whisk at the highest speed till soft peaks. Use a light scrapper and very lightly but quickly fold in the flour. Add in the butter and quickly fold in to incorporate well. Pour into the lined pan and bake till golden brown. When cake is done, invert on a cooling rack and remove lining.

make the chestnut puree
Slice the vanilla bean in half length wise and scrape the seeds into a small saucepan. Add the cream, sugar and whisk in the yolk. Heat over low heat,the pan off the heat and allow the vanilla bean to steep while the mixture cools.

When the mixture is cool, put it in a food processor along with the pureed chestnuts. Blitz until smooth and creamy. Put a spoonful of chestnut puree in the double mesh strainer over a bowl=”mont blanc” src=”http://www.maameemoomoo.com%2 and press through using a spatula. Strain the rest of the chestnut puree, cover and set aside.

make the chestnut cream
In the clean dry bowl of an electric mixer, add 1 C of heavy cream. Using the whisk attachment, beat until the cream holds soft peaks. Add the sugar and beat until the sugar is incorporated. Add 1/3 C of the strained chestnut puree and mix until the cream holds firm peaks being careful not to over mix.

to assemble

cut out the sponge to size and shape you fancy. using a round tip, pipe out a blob of cream and add the chestnut in. cover chestnut with more chestnut cream.

using the spaghetti tip, pipe the chestnut puree round and round till a dome shape is achieved.

ps : to make candied chestnut, peel, wash and cook till soft. then boil it again in syrup for at least 15 minutes.

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I dislike a base that is too thick or dry. I’ve tried Aran’s Sable Breton and i found it a little too drying for my liking hence Genoise Sponge Cake for my base. However, because i didn’t have a proper recipe, the Genoise Sponge cake i baked turned out too thin!

I should have poured the whole batter into 1 pan instead of dividing it between 2 pans. :(

Nevertheless, had i not made this fatal mistake of mine, i wouldn’t be able to come up with this cake version (anyhow, just to use up all the leftover cakes, chestnut puree and chestnut cream), which i prefer much better as mentioned earlier. :D

Note to self :

1. pipe more cream. be a little stingy on the puree… because strangely, the cream turned out to be everyone’s fav (myself included)!

2. do not forget to add 1-2 tbsp rum to chestnut puree. i think this will make a difference :)

3. do brush some rum syrup onto the genoise before piping anything on it, for extra ooomphh!

4. again, the genoise portion above is meant for 1 pan only. not 2!

5. ratio -  genoise (1) : puree (1.5-2) : cream (1)

Attempt 2

This time, i made sure i read the recipe twice to get everything right.

You know how particular i am when it comes to sweet stuff yeah? The butterscotch from attempt 1, i didn’t use it all. I saved half (or less) of it. To drown my pudding in the instructed portion would be tooth-aching-scary!

To my horror, i realized the saved butterscotch wasn’t quite enough and i didn’t have the ingredients to whip up another batch.

Sigh.

Needless to say, attempt 2.. while it was done right, it wasn’t perfect enough for me.

I is truly anal in certain stuff.

Lesson learnt :

1 – half portion of butterscotch ain’t enough for full recipe. 3/4 will be puuurrrrfect!

2 – pudding batter must not exceed half the cake pans. it is not cake!

3 – ramekin is the perfect mold to use for this particular pudding… not too tall, not too short.. importantly, butterscotch can swim in individual portion and that means, all individual serving will get its full flavour from butterscotch!

So yeah, attempt 3 is a must.

Meanwhile, pardon the not-so-fab-pics with no styling. The mood was spoilt by this attempt :(

*grrrr.. wordpress kept editing my words and sentences on its own!!*

Sticky Date Pudding attempt 1.

I do have my bad kitchen day too (bad photography days as well!) and i’m not shy to share. I’ve got thick skin that’s why. :P

I was given a huge tub of dates not too long ago, lugged all the way from India, together with at least 15kg of very ripe and sweet mangoes. Because the mangoes were so good, i was forbid to make and bake anything out of it. They were to eat like that.. fresh.

Uh huh.. all 15kgs of them, we devoured them fresh.

On the other hand, when i looked at the dates, i knew we would not be able to do the same. We don’t fancy eating dates very much and so the thought of sticky date pudding came to mind.

Unfortunately, my first attempt was a failed one.

I didn’t read the recipe properly!

I drained and threw away the water that was used to soak the dates *shakes head*. No wonder my pudding batter was cookie-dough like! Too dry.

Straight out of the oven, it was very scone-y.. crisp on the outside, soft in the inside. Phew! At least it wasn’t cookie-y!

Then, after 1 day in the container, it became very cake-y, soft inside out!

Apart from having the pudding in the errr, errrrr….. oh my, i actually cannot remember the specific name to the white baking dish above!! Lol. 1 short holiday and i forgot almost everything! Just the other day, i forgot what ravioli was when i was placing my order. I had no choice but to ask. Can you imagine?!?! :(

Anyway, i was saying.. apart from having the pudding in the.. err, white baking dish above, i also baked some in an 8″  square pans and also muffin pans, just to test out.

The muffin pans’ pudding didn’t work out that well, as you can see below.

Probably i was too generous with my butterscotch.. it bubbled out all over. What a waste!

Next time, i’ll stick to errr, my white baking dish and square pans ;)

The recipe yielded many many servings. I gave away quite a lot of it despite being categorized as ‘failed’ — see, told ya i have thick skin! –

I even brought slices of them to the girlfriends when we met up for lunch at Cedele before my short holiday. They were game to be my guinea pigs! :)

out with the girlies for lunch!

The servers at Cedele were kind but very slow.

They heated the pudding as instructed before serving them with the store’s vanilla bean ice cream. To my surprise, the girlfriends loved it! I was prepared to be hammered but they did none of it. In fact, they went mmmmmmm.. nice .. very good… yummms..   throughout.

I was elated of course!

Aaahh… the joy of seeing others loving the fruit of your labour, failed or otherwise..

I like!

However, this is not the result that i’m after.

Therefore, there will be attempt 2 and even 3 before i post up my recipe.

Stay tuned!