MY CAKE DECORATING CHALLENGE ..PART TWO

It has been more than a week since I have made an entry. That's because I have been spending most of the time kneading colours into fondant which as always seems to take forever. And each time I have gotten the colour kneaded in evenly I found that it needed just a touch more. I then start the kneading all over again with the additional pin drop of colour punctured into the ball of fondant. And by the time that was done and the colour had evened out again I then realise that I much prefer the previous shade. It has been completely maddening. For those of you who have worked with fondant you know how painful that is.

And if you have had to keep the ball of fondant overnight (tightly wrapped) because you haven't the time to finish it all off you know that you will end up with a ball of fondant that is rock hard and with which you could effortlessly maim that ear piercing surat khabar lama man (old newspaper collecting man) who revvs by your house about 5 times a day and shrieks like a banshee in the stupor inducing hum of the afternoon for a few deafening minutes each time.

I have also made countless successive trips to the baking supply store, The Cake Connection, at One Jaya which is the only store that sells a small range of Wilton colours and a good variety of sugar paste flowers that makes me stop and wonder why I bother making my own.

But make my own I must. As a matter of fact, I have requested my daughter to get me some more food colours and mail them to me from the US. I have also requested her to get me some maple leaf and other strange looking leaves gum paste cutters in the smallest size so thatI could attempt(note: I said attempt) to make a Martha Stewart wedding cake like this..........



Isn't it lovely, pretty and whimsical!!!!! I soooo love it and so does my sis in law.

Although I will only be making a single (1 level) cake (not 3 tiered) and that the design looks easy enough I just discovered yesterday that I would not be able to make it because my daughter has not been able to get hold of the leaf cutters. Getting them online is an option but it is not one that I am willing to make at the moment. But isn't the cake just adorable? sigh...

I have made some fondant roses though and although my first ones after a long hiatus were exceedingly short of spectacular all in all they weren't too bad. I still can't get the colours right...I am going through a 'I-don't-know-what-colour-I-really-want-exactly-but-I'll-know-when-I-see-it' phase and is something that I simply have to shake off if I still want slender/weak/wimpy wrists. Hulk Hogan I am not and have no intention to be. I see a long and winding road ahead and the pin of light at the end of the tunnel is no where in sight.



Do you like the colours?


I have no idea what the cake might look like because I still have a month to have a long drawn discussion with myself (my sis in law has been so kind and has left the decision making to me although, like me, she does love the Martha Stewart cake above). I know that I will use roses and some other tiny flowers in a combination of three colours............. perhaps like so.....


What do you think?

MY CAKE DECORATNG CHALLENGE

Another dear nephew is getting married next month and I had agreed (out of a flash of foolhardiness) to make his wedding/hantaran/'wedding gift' cake. And I'm bracing myself just so I don't crack into a million pieces and drop to the floor in smithereens from panic attacks. Having said that I do, however, hope to pull it off and emerge with a gaspingly, breathtakingly and cardiac arrestingly beautiful cake that will finally put my name up in lights for the rest of my life.....even if those are lights that glimmer pathetically at a mere 10 watts within the confines of home and family.

So......... colour smeared fingers, sugar crusted hair, perplexed-to-be husband and slappy happy ants here I come.

Which means, dear freinds, for the next few posts, I'll be updating you of my struggle, of my revisits to my long abandoned cake decorating tools and in all likelihood of my irregular heartbeats, of my blood, of my sweat and of my tears.

Just last night I cajoled and patted my dusty, whining tool box from under the shelf, fingered the tools inside, widened my eyes in horror at all those confounding utensils, dug feverishly around for my cake decorating books, stacked them up by my laptop and cudgled my brains so that I went into a cake decorating mode. So I think I might be ready.

And this morning I'm going to the bakery supply store to get 2 tons of icing powder, some Wilton food colours, some round styrofoams to use as cake dummies for practicing, some liquid glucose, some shortening and some gelatine. I'm off .........Will be back soon..

Hi ! I'm back. Got them food colours, two styrofoam dummies, searched the disorganized store for the other ingredients, knitted my eyebrows at the clueless attendants but finally managed to get the rest of the things inspite of them. My fingers are itching, my temperature's rising, my pupils are dilating and I can't wait to sweep everything out of my way so I get down to serious business.

These are my cake decorating bibles that I cling on to for dear life..


If you would like to play/work along with me here's the recipe for the gelatin icing for the sugar paste flowers. It's from "The Icing On The Cake" book. This is what I have always used to make roses, primroses, leaves, figurines, clown noses, tulips, alley cats, violets, impatients, forget-me-nots and some disasters.

Gelatin Icing/Modelling Icing/Sugar Paste
500 gm icing sugar
1/2 oz or 12. 5 gm gelatin powder
4 Tbsp (60 ml) water
2 tsp (10 ml) liquid glucose
cornflour

Put water in a heatproof bowl. Sprinkle gelatin into the water and let it soak for 2 mimutes. Place the bowl over a pan with 1/2 inch of water and set on the stove. Heat gently until gelatin dissolves. Remove from heat and stir in the liquid glucose. Allow to cool for 2 minutes. Turn the mixture into the bowl containing icing sugar and mix in. If the mixture seems wet add alittle more icing sugar. Add sufficient cornflour to allow the icing to be worked like bread dough. The finished icing should no tbe sticky. Wrap in cling film and place in an airtight container until ready to use.

This is the fondant/sugar paste that I have made with the recipe above and which I have coloured pink just for a trial run. I will be buying more colours tomorrow to experiment and until I decide on the perfect combination.


And these are the tools that I will be using......



And this is my plan...........well, 2 plans. Plan 1 is to decorate cake A and plan 2 is to decorate cake B... if cake A is ugly.

PITA BREAD WITH NICE DEEP POCKETS

The most interesting thing about pita bread are their pockets. The way they puff and the way they don't brown too much. They remain mostly pale as they're cooked for only 5 minutes in an extremely hot oven. I had set the oven at the hottest setting and baked the breads on the lowest rack. It was as simple as that and in all honesty that is probably the secret to getting these babies to puff. It's all in the heat. And the fact that the dough was soft and moist provided enough moisture for steam to form that helped lift and puff the bread giving us the pleasure of finger deep pockets that we could fill with anything that strikes our fancy.

They were so quick, easy and enthralling to make that I should have made them when I first thought about it. And believe me that was a very very long time ago.



These breads were so easy that I made them twice today. I bumped into this recipe at Allrecipes.com and it was a complete success in puffiness, deep deep pockets and in look. A very good recipe indeed.


The recipe.......



3 cups all purpose flour ore whole wheat or half and half
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast
1 tbsp oil
1 1/2 tsp sugar
1 1/8 cups water
extra flour for dusting

Sift flour and salt into a bowl. Mix yeast, sugar and water in a small bowl and add to the flour followed by the oil. Mix with a fork. If you have a bread machine you're supposed to put everything in and let the machine do the work. Please refer here if you're using a bread machine.

Mix well and then knead for about 5 minutes.Add more flour a little at a time if the dough is sticky. When the dough is smooth put it in a greased bowl and let it proof for 30 minutes to an hour. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth or cling film.

When the dough has risen to double its size take it out from the bowl and divide into 8 parts.


Take one part and make it into a ball and then roll out into a circle with a rolling pin about 6 or 7 inches in diameter. There is no need to let them rise a second time. It is baked immediately.

Bake in a preheated hot hot hot hot hot hot oven directly on the oven's wire rack or on a separate wire rack or on a preheated baking pan (place the wire rack or baking pan in the oven for 15 minutes with the oven temperature at the highest setting). Bake for 5 minutes. Those babies will puff. Just before putting them in the oven you can also sprinkle the rolled out dough with some water for good measure. The drops of water changes to steam and helps the pita to puff up.

When puffed and lightly browned on the top take them out using a spatula and place them on a wire rack and cover with a damp cloth to let them soften. Do the same for the rest of the dough. And check those pockets out!

If they don't puff they will still taste good though. But if your oven is REALLY HOT they will have to puff.

According to the recipe they can be kept in the fridge in a plastic bag for a few days or in the freezer for 1 to 2 months.

STEAMED LAYER CAKE - KUIH LAPIS PANDAN

Two important words in making Asian cakes are evaporation and condensation. It makes all the difference between jadi and tak jadi (To become or not to become.......To be or not to be) :)

Making a steamed kuih lapis successfully has always eluded me. I have never been successful at it. Either because the layers took forever to solidify in the steamer or they came out in a one colour block or the top looked like it had been spat on or all of the above.

Whenever I asked friends for a recipe or why the recipe didn't work I never could get a satisfactory answer. And it was often that I went home, hanging my head low, with my tail between my legs and swearing (genteely) under my breath. So that was how I lived for 800 years.

Then one day the heavens spoke to me.They roared "Evaporation'!! and 'Condensation'!! I wrote the words hurriedly down in my book of life. And ever since that divine intervention I have lived the following 600 years streaming tears of joy.

But it is only in 2009 that I have been brave enough to (decide) to attempt the steamed kuih lapis again, with the guidance that I have been accorded.

But another secret that I was not told was the fact that that *bamboo steamers are not just pretty, rustic little things. They are crucial and central and are the core of successful steaming in the Asian kitchen. I was not told that evaporation, condensation and bamboo steamers put together are a classic example of synergy.

For bamboo steamers, like punching bags, like women, like mothers are one of the parts of the whole that provide that vehicle for absorption that is crucial in the maintenance of harmony and sanity in this mad huffing, puffing, steaming, evaporating and condescending world. It absorbs all nonsense and all excessive drops from condensation and it is a receptacle for tears of anger, of frustrations and of steam. In an Asian kitchen a bamboo steamer is indispensable, that is, if you want a taste of an unrippled, unblotched, perfect and sweet dessert in a little corner of your life.

But, like all things good and sublime, its contribution to the whole is often overlooked, underrated and more often than not it goes by unnoticed. Except by the chosen ones.

Now let's discuss the recipe........this is a recipe from Amy Beh. It uses a large portion of tapioca starch or tapioca flour (they are one and the same) and a small portion of rice flour. But instead of the rice flour I had used glutinous rice flour by mistake but all in all it turned out wonderful and strangely enough it reminded me of gummy bears. This is a firm cake, slightly sticky and it cuts well. It is here that you can play around, that is, with the ratio of tapioca vs rice flour to get the texture that you like best. Half and half would be good to try.

There are softer versions that use a larger amount of rice flour as opposed to tapioca flour but which does not give that translucent effect. But which is just as delicious if not more. I will be posting the recipe soon.

Doing away with the traditional red and white of a steamed kuih lapis I used the juice of pandan leaves and made them green and white instead. Green is my favourite colour. The gentle yellow-green and the creamy white that eventually formed the thin layers of this sweet were just exquisite....... in my humble opinion.


Also, because it cut extremely well, I used a cookie cutter, stamped them out into pretty flower shapes and at the end of the project I was practically jumping for joy. I thought they were perfectly pretty, tasted very good and would make delightfully elegant after-dinner desserts or cocktail sweets or a treat for a childrens' birthday party.

This is steamed kuih lapis reinvented. I proudly and perpetually patted myself on the back.

The flavour was lovely and it is a recipe and presentation that I highly recommend if you want something old, something new, something sweet, something adorable and something really really good.

It's perfect for peeling too for those of you who have spent half your childhood irresistibly peeling off the layers of steamed kuih lapis before popping them into your mouth, like some adults I know. ;)


The recipe.........I halved Amy Beh's with some added adjudsments.....

The syrup :

350 ml thin coconut milk (from 1/2 grated coconut)
225 gm granulated sugar
2 pandan leaves, knotted
pinch of salt

Combine and sift :

225 gm tapioca flour/starch
60 gm rice flour or glutinous rice flour ( I used glutinous )
1 tbsp mung bean/green bean flour ( Or hoen kwe flour)(they all one and the same)

250 ml thin coconut milk (from 1/2 grated coconut)

Pulsed in a blender, strained and juice extracted :

4 pandan leaves, cut up coarsely
50 ml water

To make...........

Boil ingredients for the syrup until sugar dissolves. Strain and let cool.

Sift the flours, add the 250 ml of coconut milk and stir until smooth. Pour in the boiled and cooled syrup gradually and stir well to blend.

Divide the batter into 2 portions and to one of the portions add the green pandan juice and stir well to mix the colour in evenly.

Lightly grease with a light cooking oil (sunflower or canola) an 8 inch preferably non-stick shallow pan. Set up the bamboo steamer and get the water to a rolling boil and I really hope that your stove is level.

Pour in about 100 ml of white batter into the pan and steam for 6 to 7 minutes covered. Do the next layer green and so on until the batter is all used up and the green layer is the top most layer. Whent he final layer is poured in steam the kuih for 20 to 30 minutes to ensure that the whole kuih is completely cooked. team the last 5 minutes uncovered to dry the surface.

Let the kuih cool for 2 to 3 hours, brush the top with very lightly with cooking oil then cut. The knife of cookie cutter may be lightly greased for easier cutting.

This is not a tall kuih because I doubt that you will be able to find a cookie cutter tall enough to cut through if the kuih was any taller than this.

PS : If you would like to make it the traditional way and not stamp out cutesy flower patterns :( just double the recipe and use a 9 inch round pan instead.


* Bamboo steamers, unlike stainless steel steamers, absorb the drops of water from condensation extremely well thus preventing the food/cake from getting soggy. Although most stainless steel steamers have domed lids that allow droplets of water to flow and drip to the sides of the pan and not into the food it does not work as well as a bamboo steamer (and I suppose never will). The bamboo wood soaks in the moisture immediately and completely. This is evidenced in the dampness of the bamboo steamer after being used.