Source: Brownies by Linda Collister through Rachmah Setyawati

I couldn’t help but drool when I saw this cheesecake from this pretty pregnant lady ^_* I thought, I have to make it, have to, no excuse! That’s the thing of being foodie blogger, everyday you see food posts from your foodie blogger friends and you drool in front of your screen uncontrollably. I bet this happens to all of us foodie blogger.

Back to the cheesecake, I read somewhere but I forgot where, that if you baked cheesecake with au-bain marie technique it will lighten the texture. I did so with my cheesecake, it tasted perfect but as I never tasted cheesecake baked without au-bain marie technique before so I didn’t know the differences between those two.

I didn’t know whether it was my own fault or what but I ended up needing twice ingredients for the cheesecake base. First I did just like the recipe said, but it covered only half of my baking tin. Was it because I was using a 20cm round baking pan and not the square one as the recipe suggested? I also made orange lemon instead of cherry. I didn’t have cherry at the time and I love orange lemon a lot so I thought why not? But the rest I followed the recipe and Dita’s suggestions. It tasted so good, creamy yet fresh with a tang from the orange lemon, definitely a keeper.

Ingredients:

Directions:
– Heat oven to 325°F (160C).
– Mix crumbs, sugar and butter; press onto bottom of 13×9-inch pan. Bake 10 min.
– Meanwhile beat cream cheese, 1 cup sugar, flour, lemon zest, lemon juice and vanilla with mixer until well blended. Add sour cream; mix well. Add eggs, 1 at a time, mixing on low speed after each just until blended. Pour over crust.
– Bake 40 min. or until center is almost set. (Mine was 1 hour) Cool completely. Top with orange glaze. Refrigerate 4 hours.
– Serve with mandarine orange on the side.

Orange glaze:
– 150 ml orange juice
– 2 sheets gelatine

– Melt gelatine according to the package.
– Mix well with orange juice.
– Pour over baked cheese cake and refrigerate.

Source: Philadelphia through Dita

In Holland, when it’s your birthday then you have to do “trakteren” (traktir in Indonesian 😉 or treat in English) your colleagues at work. Usually the birthday boy/girl would bring cakes as a form of “trakteren”. But because last Friday was masbul birthday but that day he wasn’t at work since it was “harpitnas” (Thursday April 30th was Queen’s Day), so tomorrow he is going to bring cakes.

I decided to make my own cakes and to proof that I am crazy I decided to make 4 kinds of cakes :p , no not alone, I’m not that crazy. I baked with my friend Iin the whole Sunday afternoon. It’s so much fun to bake with company as you can share jokes, update about our life and of course gossip :p Thank you In for helping me with all the cakes 😉

The 4 kinds of cakes were; Kue Soes Isi Vla, Carrot Pineapple Cake, Mini Fruit Pie and Brownies. I have made the kue soes isi vla and carrot pineapple cake before so you could follow the link to find out the recipes. As for the mini fruit pie, I cheated on the most important part which was the pastry :p I bought ready made pasrty shell then filled it with Napoleon Vla, topped it with fruit and glazed it with clear jelly.

But what I’m going to share with you is this amazing brownies…..it was just so heavenly good. The top was nicely dry and cracked like rice field in the dry summer months. The inside was nicely fudgy, chocolatey and gooey just like a proper brownies should be. I got the recipe in one of my recipe book collection. Bake by Rachel Allen, a famous chef from UK.

Makes 16 pieces

Ingredients:
– 175 gr dark cooking chocolate (use best quality you can afford as this will determined the taste of your brownies)
– 175 gr butter
– 25 gr good quality cocoa powder
– 3 eggs
– 225 gr caster or soft brown sugar (I used 175 gr)
– 1 tsp vanilla extract
– 100 gr plain flour
– 75 gr hazelnut, toasted skinned and roughly chopped
– Icing sugar and cocoa powder for dusting (optional)

Directions:
– Preheat oven to 180Celcius. Line the base and sides of a cake tin (20x20cm) with baking paper.
– Melt the chocolate, butter and cocoa powder together in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. Do not lete the base of the bowl touch the water. Remove from the heat. (I did this part in the microwave 😉 )
– In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract for 2 minutes. Continuing to whisk, add the chocolate mixture until well combined. Sift in the flour through with the hazelnuts with a spatula or metal spoon.
– Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and bake in the oven for 19-25 minutes. Allow to cool in the tin, then cut into squares.
– Dust with icing sugar and cocoa powder (optional)

Source: Bake by Rachel Allen

I made this cake for masbul’s B’day today. But I was feeling rather experimental (or lazy) so I didn’t make my own sponge cake as usual, but I was using ready made sponge cake mix. I was sceptical with that product at first but the result turned out to be nice, soft and moist sponge cake, bouncy and not too sweet.

For the rest of the decorations, I just used what I had in hand. Cherry with stem was not available so I just make do with cherry without stem. Then I used ready made chocolate curls which I had difficulty in sticking them onto the cake. Tried to sprinkle it by just throwing it on the side surface, but more chocolate curls on the floor than on the cake. Tried to stick it to my hand then transfer it onto the cake, but then some of the whip cream would stick on my hand. Anyone has better idea on how to do it easily? On the other hand what nice was the cherry filling, I didn’t have to thicken it myself because here they’ve got cherry pie filling in the can 🙂

Gefeliciteerd met jou verjaardag schatie 🙂

For 12 persons

Ingredients:

Sponge cake
– 1 ready made chocolate sponge cake mix (I used PrimaMix or used your own favorite chocolate sponge cake recipe)
– Prepare sponge cake according to the package

Simple syrup
– 100ml cherry water or water
– 50gr sugar (usually it’s 1:1 scale of water and sugar but I don’t really like it too sweet)
– 50ml rhum (optional)

– Boil cherry water or water with sugar.
– Let it cool down then add rhum

Whip cream
– 750 ml fresh cream
– 4 tbs sugar

– Put the whisk and bowl for whipping the cream in the freezer for 30 minutes or more.
– Whisk the cream for 2 minutes then add sugar, continue whisking until hard peak.

Other ingredients
– 300 gr chocolate curls
– 12 Maraschino cherry
– 1 can cherry pie filling

Finishing:
– Divide cake into 3 parts and sprinkle with simple syrup.
– Spread thick layer of whipping cream on the lowest part of the cake, add 1/2 can of the cherry pie filling, top with the second part of the cake.
– Repeat process one more time.
– Spread remaining whipped cream on the surface of the cake, reserved a little bit of whipped cream enough for the swirls on top.
– Decorate with chocolate curls and Maraschino cherry.
– Chill until served.

Got no exact source for this as I’ve been making this over the years and adjust ingredients here and there according to my taste and what’s available but as you all know this cake came from Germany 😉

I couldn’t control myself anymore after seeing Mb. Ienas post of her kue soes. My mouth started to drool uncontrollably which lead me to a final decision that I had to make this!
But I decided to use recipe from my recipe book to practice it otherwise I got nice books and I just let them to dust in the corner of my bookcase 😛 And the result was really good.
Later when I compared to Mb. Ienas recipe, they were not so difference in terms of quantities of the ingredients etc. But I did follow her footstep in adding more corn flour as the custard filling was way too runny.

Makes easily 30 pcs

Kue Soes

Ingredients:
– 100 gr butter
– 250 ml water
– 150 gr flour
– 1/2 tsp salt
– 4 eggs (I used 3 large eggs)

Directions:
– Preheat oven 200-210C, line cookie sheet with baking paper.
– Boiled the water with butter and salt until all butter has dissolved, low the fire. Add flour, mix well with wooden spoon.
– Wait for couple minutes until the batter is luke warm, add egg one by one while mixing it until smooth with either wooden spoon or electric mixer.
– Use piping bag and pastry tip (a Wilton 1M will do beautifully) to pipe the batter or use 2 spoons to shape. Give +/- 3 cm distance in between.
– Bake for 20 minutes or until its golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

Napoleon Vla
(This is 1/2 recipe from the original recipe)

Ingredients:
– 400 ml milk
– 100 gr sugar (I used 60 gr)
– 2 egg yolk
– 25 gr corn flour (I used 50 gr)
– 1 tbs butter
– 50 ml whip cream
– 3 tbs rhum/brandy

Directions:
– Dissolved corn flour with a little bit of milk, set aside. Mix egg yolk with little bit of milk, set aside.
– Boiled the rest of the milk with sugar in low fire. While keep stirring add corn flour mixture, egg yolk mixture. Mix until smooth, add whip cream, let it boiled once more. Add butter and mix throughly until the custard is shiny.
– Remove from the fire and continue stirring until hot steam has dissapeared. Add rhum/brandy.

Source: Book Cake and Pastry by YasaBoga

Again fondant cake…

I made this for one of my friend’s mother birthday, Tante Marietta.

It’s amazing what you could find over the internet. It always has answer to all your questions. I googled how to make fondant sofa on youtube and voila I came across a really useful tutorial about the subject. Though I realize my fondant sofa was not even close to the one on the tutorial :s But at least I learned a thing or two again. Hopefully next time better.

My inspiration: Wilton Celebrate with Fondant Book, Fondant Sofa 1, Fondant Sofa 2.