Happy Lunar New Year! Orange Chiffon Cake

Happy Lunar New Year and Happy Birthday to all! Hope everyone had a good reunion with your family and friends over the CNY holidays. Today is the 7th day of the Lunar New Year known as 人日 and we celebrate everyone's birthday! Have you tossed the raw fish salad today to celebrate?

Here's wishing everyone good health and happiness in the new year.

Sorry for missing 2 weeks of posts as I was busy baking CNY cookies. A very big thank you to friends for their overwhelming support.

Today, I am sharing the Orange Chiffon Cake recipe which is light, fluffy and citrus in flavour.

Orange Chiffon Cake (23cm Chiffon pan)

6 eggs (separated)
100ml vegetable oil
160g caster/fine sugar
200g cake flour
150ml freshly squeezed orange juice
zest of 2 oranges
2 tsp baking powder

1) Pre-heat oven at 170 deg C
2) Hand whisk the egg yolks together with 80g sugar till thick
3) Add the vegetable oil and mix well.
4) Add the orange juice and orange zest and mix well.
5) Sieve the cake flour together with baking powder and fold into the egg yolk mixture.
6) In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites with a mixer till frothy and add in 80g sugar slowly and continue beating till just before stiff peaks form.

7) Fold in the egg white mixture into the egg yolk mixture in 3 batches.
8) Pour the batter into a chiffon cake pan (no need to grease or line)
9) Tap the cake pan on the table a few times to remove the bubbles.

10) Bake in the oven for 50-55 mins till it's cooked.
11) Invert the cake pan immediately and leave the cake to cool in the upside down position.
12) Remove the cake carefully once the cake is cool.

Serve the cake with some tea and I guarantee you won't be able to stop at one slice!

A tribute to Paddington Bear! Marmalade cupcakes

My first order for 2015 is chocolate cupcakes and chocolate cake for a little girl's fifth birthday. As she had very specific ideas on how the cupcakes should look like, her mum and I had to brainstorm in order to have her name and Happy Birthday indicated on the cupcakes. I suggested having letters and numbers candles but they were pretty expensive. The ones for Happy Birthday were reasonably priced but for her name and number, it will cost about SGD30. After looking around for different ideas, I decided to print my own cupcake toppers in the birthday girl's favourite colour, pink. Pretty?

When that was done, I searched for Paddington Bear cupcake toppersonline as I just watched the heart-warming movie on very early on New Year's Day. I was introduced to Paddington Bear as a child when my uncle bought me a very thick storybook on the adventures of Paddington Bear. Along with Pooh Bear, Paddington Bear has become a personal favourite. Till this day, I still have a Paddington Bear plush at home.  As I didn't find any cupcake toppers online, I decided to make my own using Microsoft Publisher. It was not difficult though I had to adjust the images a few times in order to get the correct size. Here they are!

After printing the toppers, inspiration struck! Why not make Marmalade cupcakes to go with the cupcake toppers since that is Paddington's favourite? Coincidentally I have a church gathering the next evening and so I ended up baking at almost 10pm! The cupcakes smell so good and while waiting for them to cool before decorating, I decided to write this post. Sorry I didn't take much photos while making the cupcakes. The photos will be taken in the morning when the light is better.

Marmalade Cupcakes (makes about 15 cupcakes)

175g soften unsalted butter
1/2 cup caster sugar
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 1/2 cup self-raising flour
3 tbsp of marmalade
1 tsp salt

1. Pre-heat oven at 180 deg C
2.Beat soften butter and caster sugar till creamy and pale.
3. Add in the marmalade and mix well
4. Beat in the eggs one at a time
5. Add the vanilla essence and mix well
6. Add in the salt and self-raising flour and mix well.
7. Scoop into cupcake liners till about 80% full.
8. Bake for 20 minutes till skewers come out clean.
9. Leave till cool before frosting

Cream Cheese frosting 
250g soften cream cheese
125g soften butter
1/2 cup icing sugar
3 tbsp marmalade
1 tsp vanilla essence

1. Beat the cream cheese and butter till smooth.
2. Add the icing sugar, marmalade and vanilla essence and mix till smooth.
3. Frost the cupcakes as desired.

I had difficulty piping the cupcakes due to the chunky zest in the marmalade. I would probably used orange juice to replace the marmalade in the frosting next time.

Here they are all frosted and chilled after one night in the fridge.

With the cupcake toppers and the star!

All packed in the box and ready for the party later!

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.

Chocolate Orange Cake

I love chocolate and I love orange!

My closest friends know that I love anything citrus. I have shower gels, lotions, perfumes and room diffuser all in orange scent. I find the scent very refreshing and uplifting and wonderful as a wake me up when you shower with orange scented shower gels. When Baileys came out with the limited edition Orange Truffle Baileys, I had to stock up a few bottles at home!

As for Chocolates, hmmmm... need I say more? Just look at the name of this blog :) So when I came across several blogs mentioning Nigella's Chocolate Orange Loaf Cake, I just had to give it a try. When I first tried this recipe, I found that the orange taste was much stronger than the chocolate. That wasn't the taste I was looking for. I did some modifications and managed to achieve the Chocolate Orange taste that I love. I even baked an Owl cake for my sister's birthday with this same cake.

Chocolate Orange Cake

320g unsalted Butter
4 tbsp Honey
140g Brown sugar
200g Cake flour
86g Cocoa powder
1 tsp Baking soda
4 large Eggs
Zest of 1 large orange
120g orange juice

1) Preheat your oven at 160 deg C
2) Beat the soften butter with honey and brown sugar till smooth.
3) Sieve the cake flour, cocoa powder and baking soda together
4) Fold in one scoop of the flour into the butter mixture and followed by one egg. Continue till you have folded in all the flour and eggs.
5) Add the orange zest and orange juice into batter and mix well.
6) Pour the batter into a 7 inch sqaure pan and bake for 45-55 mins.

You can eat this on its own or you can decorate it with some chocolate ganache.