Easy Nutella Brownies

Met 2 of my classmates from the university days on Monday for a catch-up. These days we probably meet about once or twice a year as everyone is busy with work and family. Both friends have young children so one of their activities together is baking. One of the reasons for our catch-up is so that I can bring one of my friends to buy the ingredients for making snow skin mooncakes together with her boys. The other friend commented that her little girl loves going to ToTT (a kitchen supply store in Singapore) and baking cookies there. I told her she could do simple things like cookies and cupcakes at home with her girl so that it less expensive and they do not need to drive out. Afterall, she has a domestic helper who can help with the clean-up.

On Monday afternoon, when I got home, I sent the recipe for this easy 3 ingredient brownies to them. I thought I would share this recipe with you too. These brownies look so pretty in their cupcake liners.

Nutella Brownies in a cup

1 cup Nutella (about 280g)
2 Eggs
10 tbsp plain Flour
some nuts for decoration (optional)

1. Pre-heat oven at 170 deg C
2. Whisk the eggs lightly with a fork.
3. Add in the Nutella and mix well.
4. Sieve the plain flour and fold into the egg and Nutella mixture.
5. Scoop them into cupcake liners or muffin moulds.
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes till cooked (depends on size of cups)

I have added some almond flakes for decoration. You can add hazelnuts or walnuts if you like. The brownies can also be baked in a try and then sliced for serving. The baking time will take about 30-40 minutes.

I served my brownies with some vanilla ice-cream when I had some guests over. Pardon the poor lighting, I took the picture in the evening just prior to eating my brownie.

This recipe is so easy to make yet very yummy! The most difficult part is trying to measure the sticky Nutella in a cup and transferring into the mixing bowl. I solved this by adding the Nutella directly into the mixing bowl and weighing it.

Mooncakes (2): Snow Skin Mooncakes

It's mooncakes time again. I took a break from making mooncakes for a few years but had a sudden inspiration to make my own mooncakes again this year. I wanted to make blueberry cream cheese mooncake but that is still under experiment so will post it after I get the recipe right.

In my last post, I mentioned about checking out the baking supplies stores in the East and buying the mooncake supplies from Kwong Cheong Thye. Finally I had the time to try the snow skin premix from Kwong Cheong Thye last Friday. Love the texture of the skin and the skin managed to stay soft even after 4 days in an air-tight container in the fridge. Tried to pack them in Phoon Huat's mooncake box but the skin cracked the next day! So do remember to keep these mooncakes in an air-tight container.

It was my friend, B's birthday last Saturday and we celebrated her birthday by cooking and baking the Friday afternoon away. Take a look at the many items we did....Lemon Meringue Cupcakes, Osmanthus Konnyaku Mooncakes, Snow Skin Mooncakes, Meringue cookies and I cooked a nice steak dinner to celebrate B's birthday.

Back to the snow skin mooncake, my mum chose the Longan Red Bean paste and it was yummy! To match the filling, I added a little red colouring to the snow skin.

Snow Skin Mooncakes (makes about 10 pieces mini mooncakes)

100g Kwong Cheong Thye snow skin flour (see below photo for the packaging)

40g Glucomalt (see below photo for the packaging)

15g Crisco

100ml water

food colouring

Ready made filling of your choice

1) Put the water, Glucomalt, Crisco and food colour in a pot and bring it to a boil.

2) Put the snow skin flour in a bowl and pour in the water mixture and mix with a spoon till well mixed

3) Leave the snow skin pastry to cool down

4) Use the filling to fill the mould to check on the total weight of the mould. Use a 2:1 filling to pastry ratio to make each mooncake ie if the total weight of the mould is 60g, use 40g filling and 20g of pastry.

5) Wrap the filling with the pastry and press it gently on the mould. Hit the sides of the mould to un-mould the mooncakes.

6) Store the mooncakes in an air-tight container in the fridge.

B and I have also made some Sanrio mooncakes with my new cookie cutters. Aren't they cute?

Hope you will have as much fun making the mooncakes as B and I. Only a few weeks to Mid-Autumn Festival. Have you made your mooncakes yet?

Mooncakes (1): Cheese Mooncake

I was thinking these past 2 days which recipe to post next........ I have been baking for more than 10 years and therefore have too many recipes which I want to share.

I have finally decided on posting my favourite Cheese mooncake recipe as mooncakes have been on my mind since last week. A university classmate has just reminded me yesterday that the Mooncake festival is on 8 September this year so there's less than 3 weeks to go. If you haven't decided on whether to make your own mooncakes, better start thinking now :) The filling for this mooncake is ready made so you can get your favourite filling from any of the baking supplies shop. I visited Kwong Cheong Thye last Friday and was amazed by the varieties of ready made mooncake fillings available. My mum took almost 15 minutes before she decided on the Red Dated Longan Red Bean paste. Below is my haul from Kwong Cheong Thye. I am planning to make some snowskin mooncakes later this week.

Back to the Cheese mooncake...I took out the recipe from my recipe file and just realised that it's 10 years old. I took the class from Phoon Huat in 2004! Back then, there weren't so many different variaties of mooncake and it was quite a novelty. A number of my family and friends thought it would be rather cheesey and were reluctant to try. However the cheese powder added to the pastry only adds to the fragrance of this mooncake.

Cheese Mooncake

25g Parmesan Cheese powder
150g Plain Flour
1 Egg yolk
25g caster Sugar
8g full cream Milk Powder
1tbsp Water
125g salted Butter
1 egg yolk mixed with 2 tsp cooking oil/1 tsp maple syrup for egg wash
Additional cheese powder for sprinkle
Ready made filling of your choice

1. Pre-heat oven at 200 deg C.
2. Beat butter with caster sugar at high speed till fluffy.
3. Lower the speed of the beater and add in egg yolk, Parmesan cheese powder and beat well.
4. Sieve the plain flour and milk powder together. Add to the mixture and add in 1 tbsp of water.
5. Wrap the dough in cling wrap and rest the dough for 15 minutes.
6. Divide the dough into 20g balls and the filling into 40g balls.
7. Roll the dough into a thin wrap and wrap around the filling balls.
8. Put on a lined tray and brush each mooncake with the egg wash and sprinkle some cheese powder on top.
9. Bake at 200 deg C for 20 minutes till golden brown.

10. Cool and pack into boxes. You can pack them into pretty mini cupcake cases and put them into clear plastic boxes as gifts for family and friends.

Hope you would like this mooncake as much as I do. They are perfect with a cup of chinese tea. I love the pastry and used them for my CNY pineapple tarts too :)

Magic Custard Cake (2) - Chocolate Orange Magic Custard Cake

Continuing on my exploration of the magic custard cake recipes.... I came across this recipe the next day after baking my first magic custard cake which uses Chocolate and Cointreau! As mentioned in my earlier post, I absolutely love the combination of both Chocolate and Orange. This recipes uses orange liqueur to boot! I couldn't wait to try this recipe... and made my friend, K try the recipe while she was over at my place that afternoon.

I used a 7" square pan this time as I like a taller cake. Look at how magnificent the cake rose as compared to the Lemon one in my previous post. The different layers and textures are also more obvious in this cake.

The recipe is from www.thenoshingbride.com with some modification.

Chocolate Orange Magic Custard Cake
113g unsalted Butter
600ml Milk 
1 cup plain Flour
0.5 cup Cocoa powder
4 large Eggs
1 tbsp caster Sugar
1.5 cups icing sugar
4 tbsp Cointreau (replace with orange juice and orange zest for non-alcoholic version)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1. Preheat the oven to 160 deg C and line a 7 inch square pan
2. Heat the milk to lukewarm and set aside.
3. Melt the butter and set aside
4. Separate the eggs into 2 mixing bowls. Hand whisk the egg yolks together with the icing sugar till thick and pale yellow.
5. Add the melted butter into the egg yolk and icing sugar mixture and mix well. Ensure the melted butter is not too hot to cook the yolks.
6. Sieve the plain flour and add to the egg yolk mixture.
7. Add the lukewarm milk and the Cointreau to the egg yolk mixture and mix well.
8. Beat the egg whites with the caster sugar till stiff.
9. Fold in the stiff egg white into the egg yolk mixture. The batter will be difficult to fold and lumpy. Try to fold in and minimise any egg white lumps.

10. Pour batter into the cake tray and bake for 45-60 mins. The cake will still have a slight jiggle when done.
11. Leave to cool before un-moulding the cake. Best to chill before cutting and serving the cake.

I have used another of my new stencils to decorate the cake with snow powder (cocoa powder will not be obvious against the colour of the cake).

I love this cake very much and you can really taste the Cointreau in the cake. Brought some to church the next morning and my friends were commenting it's too early for alcohol :P

K and I love the cake so much that we made a non-alcoholic version with orange juice a few days later. The cake was sold out within 3 hours in K's cafe.