Little Pixie Turns 3!!!

Last year this time, we were too worn out from the Hong Kong holiday to prepare anything. The year before, we weren't aware of her allergies or mine.

But this time, I managed to find a REALLY cool recipe for decadent, egg-free dairy-free chocolate cake.

So this is her very first home-baked birthday cake from Mommy!

Over the course of 1 week, I made like 5 of the same cakes in a row:

Cake 1 - Tin Hang Zai's Colleagues (aka guinea pigs for most of my baking experiments) "they all say very nice!"
Cake 2 - For my family's Christmas get-together-cum-Little Pixie's birthday cake "yummy!"
Cake 3 - For Becks, my "apprentice" "I like it. I'd give it 9 out of 10"
Cake 4 - For the Goose & Gremlins "too much frosting!"
Cake 5 - For Lasik's Friend Liz "tastes like Awfully Chocolate!"

I haven't wanted to see, smell, taste or eat anything chocolate since.

My First Snowskin Mooncake

Life-post-allergy-discovery - I now have to learn how to make all my favourite foods in order to ensure I don't accidentally ingest anything that might make me sick.

This is one of the few recipes around that doesn't use milk / egg - and tastes just as good. (The commercial baked ones all use milk & eggs - and the snowskin ones - some do and some don't).

This recipe is adapted from Cheryl - the famous gal with those famous bakes. Her pictures look much better and she has even got some nice background as to the origins of mooncakes - so check out her post if you are keen.

Snowskin Mooncakes

Ingredients

115g Hong Kong Flour (steam for 15 minutes, leave to cool)

115g fried glutinous rice flour

210g icing sugar

1 tablespoon shortening

5 tablespoons cold water* I had to use 7 tablespoons plus a few more drops to make the dough wet enough.

1 teaspoon banana essence - I completely omitted this since I'm allergic to bananas anyway. I decided against using the store-bought pandan flavour cuz it smelt so..fake. I have since read somewhere that you could replace all the water in this recipe with pandan water.

2 tablespoons Hong Kong Flour (mix with 2 tablespoons hot water to form hot dough)

Fillings

1.5 kg lotus paste * I used up approx 1kg of it - since I only bought a 1kg pack from Phoon Huat.

100g melon seeds (baked) - as this was my first time, I decided to omit this - but have since realised that adding this would improve the texture significantly.

salted egg yolks (steamed) - can't be bothered with this - since I'm allergic!

Method

• Sieve fried glutinous flour and Hong Kong flour, add in icing sugar.
• Make a well in the centre, add shortening, water and hot dough, and knead until smooth.
• Roll the dough and wrap lotus paste, press into moon cake mould.
• Scale - if you are using the small size (which I used), scale at 29-30g for the filling, and 18-20g for the dough - just changed the ratio along the way in order to maximise the use of all the remaining ingredients - since Cheryl's original recipe doesn't give you any exact weight to go by.
• Knock mooncake out from mould, chill and serve.

Notes
Cheryl scales hers at 1/3 total weight for dough and 2/3 total weight for filling, and Zu's recipe scales at something like 30g filling to 20g dough)

Artisan Bread Baking Class

I had been blessed with an opportunity to co-facilitate with Paul at a 3-day workshop with an offshore bank.

That paid for this bakery class. I had always wanted to attend some sort of formalised workshop where they teach you properly how to bake bread, instead of reading & fumbling my way through stacks and stacks of bread books at the library. I have been struggling with many bread books for over a year now, and until I attended this workshop, did not know how exactly the "dough window" was supposed to look like.

We focused on ciabatta and baguettes in this workshop - but this is all I need for now! It's a allergenic-person's dream come true - lean dough (no need for dairy stuff like butter or cream or eggs or even bread improvers - which also contain dairy & egg derivatives).

The flavour is ... sensational!! Tin Hang Zai and Little Pixie loved it - and I ended up eating this every day for a week. I'm still making this every week. And, I also learnt that what passes for ciabatta in Delifrance is not the "real thing". Duh.

Nothing beats learning from the professionals. The name of the company is CerealTech, a bio-technology & food ingredients company. Check them out if you are keen.

65C Tang Zhong Wonder Bread!

I chanced upon Do What I Like's blog by accident, and was amazed that there was indeed such a bread! With this, my family members can stop complaining about the bricks I keep serving them for breakfast!

This is the half-wholemeal version, and of course, ever since I was diagnosed with multiple allergies - I have made the necessary modifications.

Recipe
150g bread flour
100g wholemeal flour
110g water/milk or (30g egg + 80g liquid) ( I used all water)
3.5g salt
26g sugar
5g yeast (I used something like 1/2 teaspoon, you can use less if you have the time to spare)
60g tangzhong
26g butter (I used Spectrum's trans-fat free shortening)

Note about yeast:
I personally believe after reading all the classical bread books that too much yeast in the bread is good for neither us or the bread, so unless I'm using the bread machine, I usually use much less yeast than is called for in the recipe. I just compensate for this with a longer proof time. And more often than not, I've discovered that even after proofing for just a couple of hours using half the amount of yeast, the dough doubles quite nicely. It's probably due to our warm weather! (American & European "room temperature" is 21 deg C!!!)

Instructions
Knead like crazy. I kneaded it with my Philips handheld mixer for like 30 min till the mixer looked like it was going to go kaput. Even then, the dough was still sticky-feeling and the "dough window" refused to appear.

DO NOT add more flour.

I hand-kneaded for an extra 20 min and even then, the "dough window" didn't really appear satisfactory. I left it in a bowl and cling-wrapped it anyway.

Tin Hang Zai then asked me to go out, so I had to shove the entire thing into the fridge and when we came back 4 hrs later, to my amazement it had grown more than double. Since we were going out again (or was it bedtime, I can't remember), I punched it down (it felt so hard that it didn't seem to want to deflate at all), and put it back into the fridge.

The next morning, I was dismayed to find that the punched down dough had stayed...punched down!! It looked like a crumpled heap. I left it on the counter and as usual, forgot about it whilst I went about my household chores.

A couple of hours later, it had doubled nicely! Bake at 180 deg C for 25-35 min. I left it for 40 min and it was a tad dry. So I figure 30-35 min should do just fine.