Chocolate Mousse

My friend asked me if I could make chocolate mousse. I know that I've made them when I prepared the Sarawak Layered Cake Charlotte years ago. This mousse recipe I contain gelatin powder.

Remember this?

So, while I browsed through some recipe books and some on the internet, I found a lot of  recipes that used meringue, and no gelatin powder. I decided to make a little experiment by combining in a little bit of this and that.

Chocolate Mousse

150 g Chocolate - dark chocolate, bittersweet - cut into small pieces
200ml whipping cream
50g castor sugar
2 egg yolks
2 egg white

1. Melt chocolate in double boiler. Leave it cool to room temperature. Use the high quality chocolate for a tastier result.
2. Whipped cream with 10g of sugar until peak.
3. Beat egg yolk in another bowl with another 10g of sugar until foamed.
4. Whisked egg white in another bowl with the remaining sugar.
5. Using a spatula, fold in egg yolk into the chocolate. Then, fold in whipped cream followed by egg white.
6. Spoon the chocolate mixture into ramekins.
7. Keep refrigerated overnight.
8. Serve mousse with whipped cream. You may decorate with chocolate powder, chocolate rice or serve it plain.

Chocolate Cake

I made this chocolate cake for someone's birthday last weekend. I opt to coat them with whipped cream to give them a light taste.Then I sprinkled some chocolate chip between the layers, and frosted them with more whipped cream.

Somehow, I managed to make my cake looks cheap than it appear to be. And I really, really, really need to improve my writing skills. (And I forget to dry the maraschino cherries before putting them on cake!! What am I thinking??) I think I like them without any coating and decoration. It looks nicer that way. 

To whoever that received the cake, pardon me for my bad handwriting and cake decoration technique.

Chocolate Cake

250g butter
350g castor sugar
75g cocoa powder
175g cake flour
1tsp baking powder
100ml buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla
3# eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 175 degree Celsius.

2. Sift cocoa powder, cake flour and baking powder in a bowl. Set aside.

3. Beat butter and sugar in another bowl until it's fluffy. Then, add in eggs one by one. Beat in vanilla.

4. Alternately beat in flour mixture and buttermilk into the butter. Mix just until combined.

5. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

6. Let it cool and serve. You can have it plain, frosted with whipped cream, chocolate ganache or chocolate butter cream—anyway you like.

They look nice as cupcakes too! :)

Graduation Caps Pops

I bough some chocolates, sour ribbons and mini m&m for experimenting the other day. Could you guess what I'm making?

Oh yes! It's the graduation caps pops! I bought a peanut butter cup candy mold,and melted my own chocolate for the caps. Or you could use mini reese's peanut buttercup. They look pretty! I gave them to a few friends as they were graduating. Congratulation girls!

I made some white and chocolate caps too. Which one did you like best? Want to learn how to make this? Head to bakerella for tutorial.

Chocolate Fudge Cupcake

I wanted to test out a recipe of chocolate fudge I got from my practical training. I remember the cake to be really good, not so sweet and seriously chocolaty. But when I read the recipe, I could sense that there were something wrong with it. The recipe used 900gm butter, and 200gm sugar. There's too little sugar!

I increased the sugar to 300gm and mix the cake anyway. It turns out to be really, really bland. Thank god, I could use the frosting to cover the bland taste of the cake.

When my brother brought the cake to his office (we had another cupcakes giveaway!), someone from his office decided to order some of the chocolate cake. I thought it would be an opportunity to correct the recipe.

I called my friend to find out the exact amount of sugar used. It turns out to be 2000gm instead of 200gm. So, that's why my cakes turns out to be really bland!

Chocolate Fudge 

900gm butter

2000gm sugar

16# eggs

450gm cocoa powder

1600gm flour

80gm baking soda

2 liter milk/water

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.

2. Beat butter and sugar till creamy in a bowl.

3. Then, add in eggs one by one.

4. In another bowl, sieve the flour, cocoa powder and baking soda together.

5. Add in flour mixture to butter, and mix well.

6. Pour in milk/water into the mixture.

7. Bake the cake for 25minutes.

Pastillage: Pink Chocolate Box

Jah ordered this pink pastillage box. She originally wanted this box to be filled with 12 cupcakes. But decided it was too expensive (the box would be really, really big!). So, she decided to fill the box with chocolate instead. This box measurement are 17cm x 15cm x 4cm. The lids and base are 20cm x 18cm. I measured them using a chocolate box.

The last time I made a turquoise box, my friend Qila said it would be better if it were in pink. So, this time, Jah ordered a pink box! She wanted me to write 'congratz' on top of the box. After all, this box would be presented to congratulate someone.

Anyway, I got some extra pastillage dough left! So, I decided to play around and make this small box. The base and lid were made using a cookie cutter!

My brother thought my roses looks cartoon-ish. They were ribbon roses which I learned from youtube, and I was too lazy to make the petals. I was quite happy with how they turned out too. What do you think? Am I getting better in this?

Handmade Chocolate

A few months ago, I bought myself  some new chocolate mold. I've only get the chance to try them out when a friend of my brother ordered some from me. I've made some dark chocolate with chocolate ganache and hazelnuts. My favorite would be the leaf mold as the chocolate shine compared to the others :)

I tempered the chocolate using seed method, one of the method which I think is quite easy as compared to the other. It's a technique you could actually practice at home! And no marble slab or tempering machine needed too. It's a method where you melt 75% of chocolate as weighed, and add in the remaining of 25% chocolate to cool the chocolate. You could read how to do this method Cooking for Engineers.

Experimenting: Decorated Sugar Cookies

Last Tuesday was my kid sister's final day in primary school. Next year she'll be going to secondary school. So, I was thinking of making something for her to give to her friends as souvenir. And I thought that I could make some decorated sugar cookies!

I decided to go with chocolate sugar cookies as I am a big fan of chocolate. Of course, I let mysister to pick the color for the icing. She decided with blue and a bit of purple. Frankly, this is the first time I'm making this decorated sugar cookies. I've never learn how to decorate them. This could be my first experiment on making them. I was thinking of preparing a cookies with the kids name on it. So, I was a bit excited and nervous.Of course, my sister was excited too when I told her my idea,and requested her classmate names.

I used the flower cookie cutter as it is the only cutter which is big enough to write on :) And it was the first time for me to write in small letters (I usually pipe in capital letters). There were 31 pieces of cookies, including my kid sister's teacher. I hope they were all happy to receive these cookies :D

Chocolate Truffles

My younger brother came back home last weekend. He told me to make something for him to bring back to his college. Well, it was 4 hours and less until he had to go back to college. I haven't got the time to plan anything. Then, I remembered that I still have some chocolates and cream left from my Oat Truffle. So, I made him some Chocolate Truffle instead. I had some melted chocolate left, so I made him some Almond T'ings too :)

Chocolate Truffle

125g Dark Chocolate

100ml Cream

2 tbsp Corn Syrup

10g Butter

250g Melted Compound Chocolate - for dipping

200g Cocoa Powder - sifted

1. Chop dark chocolate into a small pieces.

2. Combine cream with corn syrup in a sauce pot. Bring them to boil, and stir constantly.

3. Pour the cream to the dark chocolate, and stir them well. Then, stir in the butter.

4. Set aside ganache in the refrigerator for an hour, or until ganache is firm to work with.

5. Rest ganache at room temperature for 5 minutes.

6. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Using a teaspoon, scoop out balls of ganache and place on the sheet pan.

7. Roll the ganache into a round ball.

8. Dip the ball into the melted compound chocolate.

9. Roll them with cocoa powder. Leave the ball on the cocoa powder until set before remove.

Chocolate Oat Truffles

I brought myself a chocolate bar mold the other day. I was thinking of practicing my chocolate tampering technique, but the chocolate end up looking bad. It wasn't as smooth. So, I melted those chocolate again, thinking that I should turn them into something else. When I look around the kitchen for ingredients, I found a packet of Quaker Oats', and decide to make something based on Chocolate and Oats. I peeked into the fridge, and found enough ingredients to make some Chocolate Oat Truffles. 

Chocolate Oat Truffle

120g Dark Chocolate - melted

80ml Cream

1 tsp Light Corn Syrup

1 tbsp Butter, soft

1 cup Oats

25 ml Milk - warm

1 tsp Vanilla

1/2 cup Almond - toasted and chopped (optional)

1/2 cup Cornflakes (optional)

Garnish:

250g  Compounded Chocolate - melted

2 tbsp Cocoa Powder - sifted.

1. Soak oats, almond and cornflakes with milk and vanilla. Set aside.

2. Combine the melted chocolate with cream and light corn syrup. Then, stir in the butter.

3. Stir in soaked oats with chocolate mixture. Mix until well combined.

4. Spread the chocolate-oat mixture on a parchment paper, and refrigerate them for an hour.

5. Cut the chocolate oat into square and roll in hands to form a ball.

6. Dip the chocolate ball into melted compounded chocolate, and immediately roll them in the cocoa powder until the truffle is fully covered. Let the chocolate set before moving them from the cocoa powder.

Notes: The cornflakes, when soaked with milk and oats will give the truffle a chewy texture.

Almond and Dates T'ings

T'ings are one of the simplest things in chocolate making. There's no measurement, and the ingredients are really simple. All you need are milk, dark or white chocolate, tempered or compounded and some nuts and dried fruits for toppings. You could even use your leftover chocolate from finishing other chocolate to make T'ings.

I made this using the leftover chocolate from dipping some cake truffle. I used chopped almonds and dates for toppings as they're the only nuts and dried fruits I could find in the kitchen. Of course, you could try making them with other toppings too. Just spoon your melted chocolate in bite-size pools, and add on the desired toppings.