09 May 2008

Simple Pleasures in Life: Weekend Baking


I love weekends. I love my Saturdays, especially if I have absolutely nothing on. Then I can proceed to fill it up anyway I like! Tomorrow is one such day, and I'm looking forward to doing some baking in the morning.

Baking is something I'm very new to. The first time I did anything like baking was at a friend's place where she attempted to teach Intuition and I how to bake her famous brownie... and somehow, I managed to underbake it by quite a lot. The first time I did a baking project by myself was an attempt at an orange cake... the recipe called for "melted butter" so I went ahead and... melted the butter to liquid form. That's melted butter, right? Right? How come the cake never rose, ever? How come the cake, no matter how long I bake it, is still so soggy inside? Fail.

Last weekend, I tasted success by NOT melting the butter (it's just softened), and the cake rose beautifully, tasted wonderfully orangey and is yummilicious. Yum. I want another one.

This weekend, since it's the Mother's day weekend, I'll probably bake two for the lovely ladies in my family--my grandma, my aunt and my mum. They've fed me well and have pampered me in different ways through the years, so it's payback time ; ) I hope there's enough to go around!

The picture above is a delicious chocolate cake that my aunt specializes in. On my birthday last year, my mother was asking if I'd like to buy a cake from Awfully Chocolate or Lana Cakes. I was like "... can I ask Aunt to bake me her chocolate cake? And... can she bake a big one? Not for me to share with the rest, but for me alone? A REALLY BIG ONE? Please?" So shameless, right? And it was good. Not too sweet, great chocolate taste, beautifully crumbly and oh so sinful. That's why I couldn't fit into my pre-Christmas shopping post Christmas. I'm still paying for my sinful ways 5 months later.

Aunty's Chocolate Cake
Ingredients:
1 cup Van Houten chocolate powder
1 cup milk
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup self raising flour, sifted
4 eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla essence

- Cream the butter and sugar
- Melt the chocolate in a bowl on top of a pot of hot water. Stir in the milk slowly after the chocolate melted
- Seperate the eggs into yolks n whites
- Add the yolks one by one into the creamed butter and sugar, beating all the time
- Add the chocolate into the butter sugar yolks mix, followed by the vanilla essence
- After adding the chocolate, add the flour into the mix bit by bit til it's well mixed up
- Whisk the whites til it's stiff
- Fold in the whites into the delicious chocolate batter
- Pour mix into a baking tin that's buttered and lined with baking paper
- Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 1 hour, until a stick inserted in will come out clean
- Gorge on it

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Ohh..i love and miss baking after seeing your pictures! The choc cake looks very delicious! When can the cell get to try??? "D