Christmas Fruitcake

Fruitcake is a cake made with chopped candied fruit and/or dried fruit, nuts, and spices that soaked in spirits. Since Christmas is around the corner, it will be the time where you can spot all kinds of fruitcake in the bakery showcase. No matter which type you prefer, what ingredients you want it to be, I am sure there is always a kind to your liking.

From what I had read from books before, it shares that actually fruitcakes were consumed on the twelfth night which is the last day of Christmas traditionally. But despite of what it is, today, you can buy or even make a decent fruitcake at anytime of the year. So today what I wanted to share with you is this golden fruitcake which is full with antioxidants in yellow orange dried fruit like Mango, Apricot and Peach.

Ingredients:
125g Butter, soften
250g Dried Mixed Fruit
1 Orange Rind, roughly chopped
40ml Fresh Orange Juice
40ml RUM
1 Tablespoon Caster Sugar
2 Eggs
1 Cup(125g) Plain Flour

For Decor:
Some extra Dried Mixed Fruit/Candied Fruit

For Glace:
1 1/2 Tablespoon Apricot Jam with 1 Teaspoon Hot Water

Method:
1. In a bowl, combined dried mixed fruit and orange rind together, pour in the rum and orange juice.
2. Leave it to soak overnight in the fridge.
3. Grease a tube cake pan or 2 disposal small rectangle paper case.
4. Beat butter together with caster sugar till light and creamy, add in egg one at a time and beat well after each addition.
5. Fold in dried fruit alternately with flour and pour batter into cake pan and bake in a preheat oven of 150 degree for about 25 - 30 minutes or until cooked.
6. When the cake cooled down, brush with apricot jam and decorate with extra mixed fruit on top.

Note:
1) You can buy the pre-packed dried mixed fruit from any supermarket under dried fruit session.
2) I use the cold storage brand "Breakfast Mix" that consists of California Raisins and Cranberries. Other than these, I also add in chopped mango, apricot and peach.

For this fruitcake, it is infuse with a very light and fragrance citric and fruity taste due to the use of fresh orange juice, orange rind and Rum. You can see from the cross-section of the cake that it is fully packed with assorted mixed fruits. So what can be more meaning to make something like this and pack it up as this coming Christmas Gift and share it with your love ones.

Christmas Chocolate Cupcakes

Christmas is about family, friends, fun and great food. But it is often the food and gift that form the stress part of this approaching holiday season. So why not whip-up something simple and yet special from your very own kitchen, gift-wrapped it into a heart-warming and gorgeous Christmas gift for your friends and relatives..........

Usually around mid of November onwards, you will be to find all kind of Christmas Goodies on sale at most pastry shop and shopping mall. Eg. Christmas Logcake, Gingerbread man/house, Minced Pie and etc...... Since now is the festive baking season, Rey and I have come up with these quick and easy Christmas Chocolate Cupcakes. After which we gave them a make-over, packed them in gift-bags and ready to distribute out.

The Main ingredients for this Chocolate Cupcakes are Dark Chocolate, Egg, Sugar and Butter. You may also wish to get your kids to be involved in the stirring, mixing as well as the decoration of Christmas Ornaments on the end products. Since afterall, Christmas is a family festive season where everyone is encourage to be involved in the preparation. These cupcakes are so rich and simple to make that you won't hesitate to make another batch in anytime of the week.

Ingredients: (makes 6)
150g 70% Dark Chocolate, chop into small cubes
150g Unsalted Butter, cut into small cubes
3 Medium Size Egg
60g Caster Sugar
100g Self Raising Flour
1 Teaspoon Dutch-process Cocoa Powder
1 Teaspoon Snow Powder/Icing Sugar, for dusting
Extra 1 Teaspoon Dutch-Process Cocoa Powder, for dusting

Method:
1. Set a medium glass bowl over a pan of gently simmering water, melt the chocolate and butter together(refer to the picture above, 2nd row, 1st picture), stir well till everything is completely melted then set a side to cool a little.
2. Sieves the self-raising flour and 1 teaspoon of cocoa powder together and set aside.
3. Beat the eggs and sugar in a large bowl until pale and thick, fold in the flour mixture into the egg mixture till combined.
4. Next slowly add in the melted chocolate mixture and stir till well blended.
5. Preheat the oven to 160 degree, scoop the mixture into the prepared cup cases and bake for 20 minutes (depend on the size of cupcake case, baking time will range from 15 – 20 minutes which you can test by inserting a toothpick to test if it is cooked through)
6. The cupcakes will be soft and gooey in texture and appearance.
7. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 minutes, dusted with extra cocoa powder and icing sugar to create the snow effect.
8. Lastly decorate it with some store bought Christmas Ornaments for that extra festive outlook.

Note:-
1) The cupcake case that is used in this recipe yield 150ml of mixture per case at 3/4 full.
2) If you prefer not to have that gooey texture cake, you can baked for another further 2 - 3 minutes for dryer texture.


After the baking, dusting of icing sugar, placing of Christmas decoration, it is time for gift wrapping. You can get some fancy wrapping bags and ribbons from Daiso or any leading Baking Accessories shop like Phoon Huat (Singapore) and Bake It Yourself.

I am sure anyone will feel great and heart-warming to receive such a wonderful homemade gift. So if you can bake any simple cookies or cupcakes, why not grab some nice wrapping bag and start making your very own Christmas goodies for your love one, colleagues or relatives. I believed they will be surprised and delighted by your special thoughts and bakes.

Pooh Pineapple Tarts

Gong Xi Gong Xi!!!!! Gong Xi Fatt Chai!!! In about a week time, on 26 January 2009 will be the 1st day of Chinese Lunar New Year. On this special day, all the family members, relatives and friends will get together and enjoy meals, goodies and spent valuable times together.

Every year around 1 or 2 weeks before Chinese New Year, we will always spent some time to make some Chinese New Year cookies for the family. And Pineapple tarts is always the "MUST DO LIST" because it is one of our family favourite cookies out of all the range. This year I made Reyon's favourite pineapple tarts into Pooh Face Shape and he was very excited about it. Too bad I don't have an Ox shape cutter to do Ox shape tarts despite it is the year of Ox for 2009.

Lastly I wish all reader a Happy and Prosper Chinese New Year!!!!!!

Christmas Goodies

Wow... this is a very back dated post which I happen to saw it today when updating the blog. I had actually made these goodies for my Church Christmas Function. The division pastor actually calls me up and arrange for some of the group member to come over my house to exchange some baking skill on cupcake making.


I am really shock when he told me to teach them meebers on how to make a simple cupcake for Christmas event. But then since I am going away for holiday during that week, I don't have much time left to go through in details with them. So that few hours section at my place was really stress........as in they had to learn the basic skill of baking and frosting cupcake.

But before, our actually baking session began. I had pre-made some sample cupcakes for them to have an idea and as well as to try. So these are my Christmas Black Cherries & Mocha Cupcakes.

Ondeh Ondeh (元宵节)

The 15th days of the Chinese Lunar New Year is also known as Yuan Xiao Jie ( 元宵节). On this day, every household gets together to enjoy reunion dinner, new year goodies as well as the most important item Tang Yuan (汤圆). But  instead of making the traditional Tang Yuan (汤圆), Rey and I actually re-create it into Ondeh Ondeh which also make use of glutinous rice flour, Gulua Malaka (椰糖) filling but these are eaten "dry" so we coat them with fresh desiccated coconut.

Chinese New Years Goodies

Chinese New Year is on coming Sunday so yesterday I managed to spend the whole morning making some two types of cookie. The one of top is the Mixed Fruits Butter Cookies which is made into leaf petal using cookie cutter. These butter cookies are very addictive and each bite is filled with bits of yummy fried fruits.

Pineapple Tarts

It's a few more weeks before Chinese New Year and you can easily find lot of New Year Cookies all around Singapore. Out of those cookies, Pineapple Tart is one of the most famous one among all. And since I have a packet of pineapple paste sitting in the fridge, I decided to do a test run on this recipe before making them in batches for friends and relatives.

This recipe is from one of the mum's in M4M website but I modify the ingredients a bit to suits our preference. The pineapple tart is more towards the "melt in mouth" version which is more buttery and melt instantly when put into your mouth.

Assorted Melting Moments

As a perennial favourite, these buttery little treats will bring back memories of separating the biscuits and licking the cream. This recipe is pretty straight forward to make and it takes about 30 minutes to prepare. And for this batch of Assorted Melting Moments, I sandwich them with different flavour such as butter, coffee and chocolate cream.

Christmas Log Cake

I always wanted to make a decent Log Cake like other home bakers do. So after reading some tips and inspiration from those expert in M4M site. I decided to try making a Mini Log Cake using the clues and recipes that I collected. Actually when you start making it step by step it not as difficult as it looks.  I think the most challenging part is the spread the whipping cream or ganache evenly over the cake and assemble them to look like tree log. .