All That Baking!

I have been baking nothing but cakes for the past few days...after my attempt on chiffon cake, I tried another French-style yogurt cake.


This is my third yogurt cake so far, and I followed this Grapefruit Yogurt Cake from Foodbeam. This recipe is quite similar to the Lemon Yogurt Cake I made two weeks ago.


It's supposed to be a very straight forward and easy cake...children in France learn how to make this cake when they are 4! And yet, once again, this yogurt cake didn't turn out that well. Although this time round I used an oven thermometer to make sure that my oven temperature was correct, the texture of the cake was quite dense, almost the same texture as the lemon yogurt cake ***sigh***

Anyway, I'm gonna try it another time as I am keen to get it right. It's such a simple cake that can be whipped up in no time, and it's great to bring along for dinner parties.


I made this Chocolate Torte for a friend who has lately been clocking 14 hrs each working day. I was glad that the cake came out from the oven with a slightly sunken top and a crackly, crusty surface. This meant that the cake was baked to near perfection!

I dusted it with some icing sugar and brought it over to my friend's office in the late morning. She shared it with her colleagues and I was told the cake was moist and chocolaty. Three quarter of it was gone by noon time and she didn't manage to get a second piece before it was all snapped up.


This is the third cake which I made yesterday. It's a Green Tea (Matcha) Pound Cake. Upon a prompt by a fellow blog visitor, Yvonne, I bought a new bottle of matcha powder which is suitable for baking. The product is made in Japan and I have been waiting to try it. I have also gotten a can of azuki red bean paste from Daiso which has been sitting in the cupboard for quite some time. I followed this pound cake recipe from a Japanese cookbook which uses both green tea powder and azuki beans.

I didn't follow the exact steps called for in the recipe. For example, it's stated that after creaming the butter and sugar, one egg yolk should be added in gradually, beat till fully mixed, before adding the egg white, and repeat the same procedure for the other egg. I took the easy way, simply lightly beaten the two eggs before adding in slowly into the batter. It is also recommended that the cake should be taken out from the oven after 5 mins of baking to make a slit in the centre. What I did was, after spreading the batter evenly, I made a slit in the middle of the batter with my spatula before popping it into the oven. Somehow, the cake still managed to crack in the centre and a nice slit was formed during baking.



I guess the amount of green tea powder used is not really sufficient as the colour of the cake was not green enough, in fact, it was quite an unpleasing brownish green!! It could also due to the green tea powder as Yvonne had also pointed out that it will not yield a bright green finishing. The taste of the cake was all right, nothing very fantastic, just like a usual butter cake. The red bean paste was not overly sweet, and I could almost taste a hint of the green tea powder.

Ingredients:

120g cake flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon green tea powder
100g sugar
100g butter, bring to room temperature
2 eggs, lightly beaten
200g red bean paste

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 170 degC. Grease and line a 7 x 17 x 6.5cm loaf pan. Sieve together flour, baking powder and green tea powder, set aside.
2. With an electric mixer, cream butter and sugar until the mixture turns pale and fluffy.
3. Add in the eggs gradually, mix well after each addition.
4. Sieve over the flour mixture in 3 separate additions. Each time, gently fold with a spatula until flour mixture is fully incorporated into the batter.
5. Spread 1/3 of the batter evenly into loaf pan, spread a layer of red bean paste on the batter. Cover with 1/3 of the batter and spread another layer of red bean paste. Spread the remaining 1/3 of the batter. Smooth the batter evenly and make a slit in the centre (length-wise) with the tip of the spatula.
6. Bake for 35 ~ 40 mins or until the cake turns golden brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
   
   Recipe Source: Delicious!! Baked Cakes, Ikuko Omori