Just Once.

The end product of yesterday's baking class. Chocolate Blackforest Cake.

Pretty, but as the title of my post suggests, some things can only be made once. The Blackforest cake is one of them. Actually, all went well till it came to the creaming part.

Because the cake was a chocoloate sponge, each time the cream hit a bit of the sponge area, my white cream gets peppered with tinge of brown. The same happened to Dr Lee and Ms Troublesome, so our creaming session was peppered with, "Shit, got black black thing!", or "Aiyah the black black thing come out again!". (Actually, it's brown. I don't know why we said black.)

Then, to cover up the brown parts, I added more cream. And then because I couldn't even out the cream, my cake became a little lop-sided.

But the final outcome looks good ya? That's only because I got help from Chef Pang. :s

I think the Durian Cake's another one that falls into this category. Perhaps only Cooking Girl can do this creaming shit. :)

No Wonder We're Family

This was how many mooncakes I took home from baking class today.

Birdkeeper, Kayestercan, Cooking Girl, Ms Troublesome, Kayestercan's friend and I shared and split the cost of the mooncakes (different flavours) so that we could get a bit of each. Champagne, rum, lotus (2 kinds), green tea and durian. Dr Lee was with 3 other friends on another table. It's really quite fun when you have a huge group like that.

From start of the class, Cooking Girl and Ms Troublesome were pretty amused by Kayestercan. Cooking Girl concluded that it was no wonder that we were from the same family when Kayestercan:

- made a mess of her recipe sheet while checking off the ingredients, and then said she wanted a new sheet
- decided not to wash the bowl, and took a new one, leaving the dirty one by the sink

Hey, at least I don't leave my bowl for someone else to wash up hor. I just wondered why we pay and still have to do the washing up.

And I wanted new recipe sheets beacuse mine got dirtied from oil stains and dough pieces - not my own scribblings!

Mooncaking

The traditional ones...

The buttery crusted ones (Shanghainese)...

All made from scratch (save for the lotus paste) at tonight's baking class. This must be one class which I will be putting into practise in the coming weeks. One lesson tonight's class has highlighted to me, is the exorbitant prices that hotels and restaurants charge for this seasonal pastry. And its high-caloric contents. I mean, I knew a single mooncake contains calories that could possibly sustain me through a half marathon. But it didn't quite sink it till today, while I was kneading the pastry, and FELT how much oil and fats were in it!

I actually had fun making the mooncakes, so I'm gonna buy the ingredients and moulds and make them over the next few weekends. Perhaps I should revive the mooncake parties I used to have.

Any orders for my home made mooncakes? The shop sells moulds in all shapes and sizes. My mooncakes will probably come in Hello Kitty moulds.... :)

The Third Baking Class

We did a Tiramisu cake and Curry Chicken buns!

The buns were really really good. I think all of us finished most of it by the time we got back home.

The tiramisu was just heavenly. And because I am leaving tomorrow morning, I had to taste a piece of it TONIGHT. It was a good thing it didn't need any overnight setting, unlike the cheesecake.

Check out today's bakes...




A good gauge of whether what I whip up is good is my dad. The fussy eater actually commented that the buns and the tiramisu were good!

We're gonna give next week's class a miss cos the items are not very interesting, and we're tied up. But we'll be signing up for the following week's session, in which we'll be taught Apple Cheese Crumble and Mixed Grain Bread.

Kayestercan and Dr Lee, we're signing you up ok? Dr Lee, are you serious about enrolling your domestic help as well? Then she can wash up for us. ;p

For anyone else who's keen, do check out the schedules and register at http://www.phoonhuat.com/

Truffled Cheesecake

The highlight of the evening.

The reason why I ditched my jogging plans with Shades of Pink. ;p

After our last baking session, Cooking Girl and I convinced Ms Troublesome and Digital Curls to join us for baking classes. So this evening, the four of us went to learn baking the Cheesecake with Chocolate Truffle. It smells and looks yummy, but I can't taste it till tomorrow. Gotta let the cheese set.

Pretty, ain't it? Complete with the swirl patterns and all. I've always wondered how they get the marbled patterns and the fillings into the cake. Turns out it really ain't that difficult. :)

Traditional soft buns were the other item we baked.

Now, doesn't that look like something you get from the bakery? ;)

I doubt I'd attempt the buns at home though. Not difficult, but it's tedious work. Have to wait a few hours for the yeast to do dunno what to the dough la, then gotta rest the dough to let it dunno what la.....I hate to wait.

Tonight was fun. See you three next week for the Tiramisu ya!

Brownies and Japanese Rolls

Cooking Girl and I went for our first baking class last Friday.

It was quite fun baking the brownies and japanese sweet rolls. Mixing, moulding, shaping, rolling...

And watching people do funny stuff. Believe me, lots of weird and funny stuff happens in the kitchen when you have a big group of people trying to follow instructions and work with semi-industrial machines. The last time I witnessed such stuff was during home economics classes in Sec 1.

Check out the machines...

The cooking teacher gave instructions, and one of them went something like that, "....then you turn on the mixer to the desired level.......when it's mixing, dun put the hand in ah"

Seriously, would anyone do that with a mixer that looks like that??? We didn't think so, so Cooking Girl and I sniggered. Only to have the teacher say, "Why? Got people do you know!"

Anyways, in a span of three hours, we transformed these...



to these!

One thing I couldn't understand though, was why we had to wash up. I thought the $36 was inclusive of everything? Cooking Girl was nice enough to do most of it. I will attempt to wash up more on our next class.

But how come we have to wash up huh?