Prune and Walnut Butter Cake

It has been awhile since I post a recipe for cakes. I baked this cake a few months ago to take it with me to a gathering. The brown sugar and chopped prunes gave this cake a very nice caramel fragrant.

It goes really well with a cup of coffee or tea.

Taiwanese Pineapple Cake/Cookies

I always like this cake. I am not sure why they called it cake as it tasted more like cookies. I bought it a few times from the Asian supermarket and also once at Hong Kong airport but they were not good. The pastry was so dried and the filling doesn’t taste like pineapple at all. I found out that they added winter melon to the filling….mmmmm no wonder it is not good. Anyway, I always wanted to try making these and finally did it a few months ago after buying more moulds from eBay. My friend Alan gave me some too. It cost me quite a bit of money and in order to justify spending so much I should make it more often :)

I used only pineapple for the filling instead of adding winter melon to it. I coarsely grated the pineapple so that I can still feel the bite of the filling. I tasted one once it cools down but the pastry was more on the crunchy and dry side so I let it sit for a day and the pastry turns out soft, rich and very buttery. It was really good. I think it tasted much better than the one I bought. As CNY is just around the corner, maybe you can making this instead of the usual pineapple tarts.

Lemon Blueberry Butter Cake

Someone at home is complaining that I hardly bake anything for him anymore. Poor guy I actually do bake but mostly for sale. I hardly bake anything for our own consumptions. My take on this is I don’t bake I don’t eat as this way I can control myself. Anyway, I gave in and bake this blueberry cake when Zue came for visit few weeks ago. We also can have it for tea and breakfast. Blueberry is in season now so I bought quite a bit of it for freezing and used some in our juice and baking.

Persimmon and Banana Muffins

I am a big fan of persimmon and the last season my backyard persimmon tree gave me quite a few fruits compare to the previous year. Carlos is not a fan of it and I’ve been eating it a lot and giving some away too. The persimmon is the Fuyu kind which is round and crisp and I like eating it as it is but there were a few sitting on the kitchen counter and they were getting soft and over-ripe. I decided to dice them up and used it in the muffins and since I have a couple of blacken bananas I decided to add them into the mix as well. By the way, persimmons are wonderfully good for you. They are full of fiber, vitamins A, C, antioxidants and iron. So next time if you see these nice orange fruits at the farmers market or supermarket do pick up a few.

Lime Cake

Carlos has been away for business every week, so I have some time on my hand and so I decided to do some cleaning and organizing our computer room. I have so many cookery books from Tesco lying around the shelves and table. It took me nearly 3 hours to arrange them accordingly so it will be easier for me if I need to look at certain recipe. So happen, I found a hand written notebook in a pile and while flipping through it, I found a cake recipe using lime. I have a lot of limes in my fridge given by Nini's and decided to try it out. It turns out really good, soft and moist and with fine crumbs. This cake goes really well with a cup of tea or coffee.

Fruity Butter Cake

I booked marked this recipe from Ann’s blog a long time ago and finally try them out during summer when there were plenty of berries in my fridge. I baked them into cupcakes and gave them to two of my ex-colleagues. They like it a lot and told me that their family ate them all in no time. I am glad that they like it and thanks Ann for sharing the recipe.

Simple Apple Cake

Autumn is here and apples are on sale everywhere. It gets as low as $0.59 a pound and as usual I will load them up. I am not a huge fan of eating them as it is so I usually add it into my juice or bake with it. I will make tarts , add it into banana bread and make cake out of it. This is just a simple butter cake with the addition of apples in it. Great for afternoon tea or have it with or morning coffee.

Fresh Fig Yogurt Cake

This season my fig tree didn’t produce too many fruits and the squirrels got some of it too but it is still enough for me to eat it fresh and reserved some to make this cake. This moist cake is studded with fresh figs. The flavor and texture is similar to a pound cake: buttery, vanilla scented, and just a little dense. The plain yogurt adds a subtle tang to it and it is great to have it with a cup of strong coffee.

Espresso Almond Butter Cake

I am one person who bakes on impulse. I don’t plan my baking and I just go with the mood of that particular day. This cake is the results of it. While checking on my fridge I saw some leftover sour cream and ground almond. I thought of making some macaroon but decided against it because of the warm weather as it is not good to dry out the macaroons. So I end up baking this cake. I don’t want the regular almond butter cake so I added some espresso powder to it and voila!! An Espresso Almond cake.

This cake is really moist, nutty and with great coffee flavor. It goes really well coffee or a tall glass of cold milk. I added a bit more sugar to this cake because of the bitterness of the espresso powder but you can adjust it to your liking.

Peanut Butter Banana Cake

My husband love peanut butter and he can just eat it straight out of the jar. I called him peanut butter monster. Since he like it so much I thought I should make him a cake using peanut butter. There are so many recipes for peanut butter cake out there but I end up using the recipe of Amie’s Little Kitchen . For me the cake tasted alright but my husband complaints that it is not sweet enough and need more peanut butter. I will keep that in mind if I bake this cake again.

 

Walnut Streusel Coffee Cake

This is one of my favorite cakes to bake at home. The cake is tender and moist, with a middle layer of dark cinnamon filling and the best part of it all is the crunchy bits of the streusel topping. Now who doesn’t like that? The friend that I share this cake with just loves it to bits.

Ingredients:

250 gram butter
270 gram flour
230 gram sugar
5 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
½ cup milk

Vanilla Cupcakes

I am back from my super long vacations. First I would like to apologize for not replying to all your comments. I will get to it soon. It was great spending time with my family, friends, ex-classmates which I have not met for over 30 years and also some blogging friends. It was nice meeting up with all of you.

I am having so many backlogs in my posting. I baked these cupcakes over in 2012 for Carlos office Halloween party. Thank God I recorded all my recipes so that I don’t forget. His department Halloween theme was Bumble Bee so I decorated cupcakes to fit the theme. The cupcakes were light, fluffy and really moist. Carlos said these cupcakes were gone within minutes.  I used my previous recipe but I am posting it here again. As for the frosting you can decorate it with any type of frosting you like.

Lemon Ricotta Cake

I don’t buy ricotta cheese often as I just use it for making lasagna. I still have half a tub leftover from the last lasagna I made and I need to finish it before I go on my vacation. I am trying to clear up any perishable in the fridge as I know Carlos won’t be doing any cooking when I am away. I wanted to make ricotta cheese cake but I don’t have enough of it so I decided to just put it into this cake. Since I still have a lot of lemons on the tree I decided to pick a few and used it in this cake. This cake had a dark exterior; almost like a crust but the inside was moist, tender, tangy and great buttery crumb. It can be served as it is or pair it with fruits or with some whipped cream.

Super Moist Steamed Chocolate Cake

My friend Nor posted a picture of this chocolate cake on FB and it look so moist and chocolaty and I just have to get her to share the recipe with us. I made this cake right away and it was so good. I shared this cake with a few friends and the just raved about it. Some even wanted to place order on it from me and might just take up on that. By the way this cake is steam and not bakes so you don’t need an oven to make a proper cake. Please don't mind the ugly frosting as I suck at doing it :(  By the way Valentine's Day is just around the corner. Why not make one for your love ones.

Panettone (Italian Christmas Bread)

This bread is a must in our household during Christmas season. I will usually buy them but I did attempt making them once a few years ago. I followed the recipe from a book but it turns out as hard as a rock and never try baking them again until this year. This time I used the recipe from the internet. I found there are so many of them out there but most of them requires a lot of work and days of proofing. Those who knew me will know I will not attempt recipes like that as I don’t have the patience for it. So I end up using the recipe from Laura in the Kitchen which is a very straight forward method just like making regular bread but it does require longer proofing time than regular bread.

This recipe makes beautiful, soft, supple dough that is much like a brioche. This bread is a true show-stopper. It’s stunning, and the flavor lives up to its looks. The bread is soft and sweet, and just loaded with flavor thanks to the vanilla extract,dried fruits, orange and lemon zest.

Citrus Chiffon Cake

I will never get tired of baking or eating chiffon cake. There’s something extremely satisfying about baking this cake especially when you watch it rise to a beautiful height. This cake is light, fluffy, moist and with delicate citrus flavor. I will normally eat it plain but you can always frost it with icing.

Ingredients:

(A)
1 3/4 cups Flour
1/4 tsp of salt
1 tsp baking powder

Snow Skin Mooncake with Mung Bean Filling

Mid autumn celebration is just around the corner and I’ve seen so many bloggers posting mooncakes. I too get excited and eager to try my hand in making Snow skin mooncake or also known as crystal mooncake. Since I still have a packet of cooked glutinous rice flour in my pantry I decided to make some last week. I just love the moulds that Ann helps me to purchase from Singapore. Don’t you think they are very pretty?

This is my first time making it so it didn’t turn out too well. The texture of the skin is not as smooth as I wanted it to be. I blame it on the glutinous rice flour that I purchase here as I find the texture a bit too coarse. Nevertheless, it tasted ok. Since I am not a fan of snow skin mooncake, I tried a piece and took the rest to my workplace. Everyone seems to like it a lot.

 

Loquat Butter Cake

I heard of loquat fruit but never seen or eaten one until I live in California. I’ve seen some of this fruit trees around our neighborhood here and I was so tempted to knock at their doors to ask if I can buy some from them. But I was too shy to do that ha ha… Lucky for me my work colleague gave me some from her backyard tree.

They were small and cute, tangy and slightly sweet at the same time. Unlike other fruits, they are quite small and finicky to peel or pit. It took me a while to cut and pitted them. I used half of it to make jam and the other half to make cake. I tried to Google for some recipes but can’t find much out there so I just make butter cake out of it.

Blueberry Muffins with Almond Streusel Topping

I am rushing for time nowadays so I like to prepare something easy for breakfast. It is usually a slice of bread with banana, some oats or cereal and when I am being hard working I will make some muffins like this. One of the Asian stores here is having sale on blueberries at $0.79 a packet and I bought a few of it. I freeze most of it up and used some for these muffins. I love the taste of these muffins especially the added crunchy topping. The muffin part is delicious on its own with a moist and light cake like crumb filled with blueberries. And they aren't overly sweet, which is a big plus for us.

Orange Butter Cake

I miss baking! Since started working I can hardly find time to do any baking. On my off day I have to run errands, grocery shopping, laundry, ironing and housework. It was difficult the first two weeks but now I am getting the hang of it and managed my time well and Carlos helps a lot too. I am thankful for that. I bake this plain old orange butter cake at the spur of the moment last week right after I came home from work. It is nothing fancy with just few ingredients that I can find in my pantry and fridge. The most important about butter cake is make sure you use good butter for it. This cake is rich and moist and great with my morning cup of coffee before heading out to work.