Sunday, February 24, 2008

Yogurt Chocolate Cake

24 February 2008

It has been 3 weeks since I last baked. I think it is better to stay away from these sweet stuffs as we have already been eating so much CNY goodies.


I bake a Yogurt Chocolate Cake from 爱上低糖甜品. The original recipe uses a loaf pan. But since I do not have one, I baked it in a 6 inch cake tin. However, I seemed to have overlooked the fact the I had halved the recipe and should not bake it for 30 minutes. The cake was slightly overbaked and it turned out to be quite dense instead of soft and fluffy like other yogurt cakes. I wonder if I got it correct.


Instead of using chopped chocolate, I added chocolate rice in and that resulted in a very ugly looking cake. I guess chocolate rice is not suitable for baking. :P

Ok, this gives me the first experience of baking a yogurt cake. I'm going to try more yogurt cakes in future. :)

Yogurt Chocolate Cake
(Original recipe from 爱上低糖甜品)

Ingredients (bake in a loaf pan)
80g butter
100g margarine (I use butter instead of margarine)
70g sugar
4 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
100g yogurt
1 tsp baking powder
280g superfine flour (I use cake flour)
150g bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped

Method
1. Beat butter, margarine, salt and sugar together until fluffy.
2. Add 1 egg at a time. Mix well in between additions.
3. Fold in sifted flour and baking powder.
4. Pour in yogurt and mix well. Add finely chopped chocolate.
5. Spoon the batter into cake tin. Bake at 180C for 30-35 minutes.

Sunday, February 03, 2008

CNY Cookies 3

3 February 2008

These are the third batch of cookies I'm baking for CNY. I actually intend to bake Mickey & Minnie cookies and almond crisps this week. But after reading the last issue of U-weekly, I decided to bake 2 of the cookie recipes published in that issue - almond cookies and peanut cookies.

Almond cookies:

Peanut cookies:

The peanut cookies are extremely difficult to make. It uses a lot of peanut powder, which I think resulted in a very crumbly dough. It was very hard to roll the dough and cut the cookies. In the end, I tried to improve by pressing the dough into the cookie cutter.

Here are the two recipes from U-weekly magazine:

Almond Cookies

Ingredients (I make 26 pieces with half the recipe)
110g butter
50g castor sugar
1/4 tbsp almond essence
30g egg
120g plain flour
50g cornflour
1/4 tsp baking soda
60g almond powder

Method
1. Place butter, castor sugar and almond essence together, mix evenly till creamy.
2. Add egg and mix evenly.
3. Add flour, corn flour and baking soda and mix evenly.
4. Add almond powder and mix evenly.
5. Place dough on tracing paper, roll cookie dough to 10mm thickness.
6. Cut up cookie dough with cookie cutter and place almond bits on top of the cookie to decorate.
7. Preheat oven to 175C and bake for 18 minutes.

Peanut Cookies

Ingredients (I make 55 pieces)
70g butter
50g fine sugar
30g egg
70g plain flour
150g peanut powder

Method
1. Place butter and fine sugar together, mix evenly till creamy.
2. Add egg and mix evenly.
3. Add flour and peanut powder to the mix and stir evenly.
4. Place dough on tracing paper, roll cookie dough to 10mm thickness.
5. Cut up cookie dough with cookie cutter and place a peanut on top of the cookie to decorate.
6. Preheat oven to 160C and bake for 18 minutes.