Happy Chinese New Year!

Hello! Just want to wish everyone who are here always to give your support and lovely comments. May this season brings you lots of joyful and all the best on your continuous baking. I've got nothing to proud about my new year cookies because there are nothing special which I made them before. There are not the best but still edible and presentable. I hope mum will satisfy with all these goodies as well as the guests who are going to visit us very soon. I'll be away for some time, but will definitely drop by at all my lovely supporters to read your new updates. Happy Chinese New Year!

Coffee Soft Cheesecake

Papa's birthday falls on the 7th day of lunar new year. I'm glad to know that he is so blessed by the people around him with so much love and joy. I managed to make a simple cake for him and accompanied him for lunch at his favorite coffee house as well as a wonderful dinner with a few lovely friends who always give lots of support and love to him. Papa loves coffee, so I made this coffee flavour kind of soft cheesecake for him. I hope he enjoys the cake and most important thing is the fellowship that we had together is unforgettable one!

About the cake, I feel that the bottom part of sponge cake was too thick whereas the cheesecake had a cottony soft texture and very flavourful. I shall make a thinner slice of sponge cake for the base next time. This piece of blessing means so much to everyone!

Recipe:
Plain sponge cake for the base:
(I used 3 eggs recipe for a 9 inches cake tin, I think 2 eggs recipe would be better)
3 whole eggs
90g caster sugar

80g plain flour
30g unsalted butter (melted)

Coffee cheese batter:
380g fresh milk

250g cream cheese
2 sachets of 3 in 1 instant coffee

50g cake flour (shifted)

5 egg yolk

5egg white

70g caster sugar

How I made it:

1. Make a plain sponge for the cake base. Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line the baking parchment for the bottom of a 9 inches round cake tin. Grease the side of the cake tin then coated with some bread flour.


2. In a clean bowl, whisk the eggs and gradually add in the caster sugar. Whisk until it double the size. The texture should be fluffy and pale in color.


3. Gradually shift the shifted flour into the egg mixture and use the spatula gently fold it in.


4. Add in the melted butter little by little and fold it in gently until well combined.


5. Pour the batter into the baking tin and bake in the oven for 20 minutes.
   
6. For the cheese batter. Grease the side of a 9 inches spring form cake tin then coated with some bread flour. Place the sponge cake at the bottom. Wrap the base and surrounding of the tin with 2 layers of foil.
   
7. Double-boil milk, cream cheese and instant coffee until a smooth batter.
   
8. Add in flour, stir and cook until mixture has thicken. Remove from stove and set aside to cool. Preheat oven to 140C. (I preheated at 120C)
   
9. Whisk in egg yolk into the cream cheese batter until well combined.


10. Whisk the egg whites till frothy. Gradually add in the sugar and whisk till soft peaks form.
    Fold in 1/4 of the meringue into the cream cheese mixture until combined. Then fold in the rest of the meringue in 3 portions until well combined.
    
11. Pour batter into the prepared spring form pan. Steam-bake cheesecake in a preheated oven for 2 hours or 2 1/2 hours. Leave the cheesecake to cool in the oven for half an hour with the door ajar. Remove cake from the tin and chill in the fridge for over night. (You can also chill the whole cheesecake in the cake tin.) Cut and serve the cheesecake.

Evolution Choux Pastry

I know I should post up some cookies at this time but let me do this first before the new year cookies. My dad loves cream puffs especially durian one. We are deciding to serve some cream puffs to our guests durian the CNY, so I've made some experiment on the choux and hope he will likes it.

Recently, we like to sandwich the choux with ice cream, since my freezer storing some different ice cream, that's really a good chance to experiment about it. Here, I've got papa choux which is the coffee bun topping, polo choux that is the polo bun topping and the other two topped with shredded coconut and diced almond. That's very simple, pipe out the choux then pipe out a layer of any toppings that I've mentioned above and bake. I personally like the polo choux very much, however each one of them got their own characteristic.

I made the choux slightly bigger than the normal cream puffs which is just enough to fit in a small scoop of ice cream. This is quite a fancy choux and I hope you will like it too or make something fancy to serve your guests in this CNY. Cheers!