Busy Bee Cafe

When it comes to food, I am easily influenced. My friend Jue put up a photo of kuih bakar (burn cake… literal translation) and I went all excited and started to think ‘I HAVE TO MAKE THIS’!

So I did. Big muffin tin for me and little cupcake tin for Little Bee.

And I am lucky that I have Little Bee by my side who is always willing to give a helping hand.

Ingredients:

250ml water
6 pandan (screwpine) leaves
160g caster sugar
250g plain flour
250ml santan (coconut milk)
3 eggs
Oil

1. Heat the oven at 180C or gas mark 4.
2. Put the water and pandan leaves in a blender and whiz. Pour it into a bowl through a fine sieve to get the pandan water. You can also use 1/2 tsp pandan paste if you have it and add about 50ml water.
3. Add sugar, flour, coconut milk and eggs into the bowl and whisk. You can also just whizz them in a blender but my Little Bee insisted on whisking
4. Oil the cake pan, muffin pan or cupcake pan (whatever you choose to use) and put it in the oven until the oil is nice and hot. Take the pan out and pour the mixture in. Sprinkle some sesame seeds and put it in the middle of the oven for about 40 minutes. Let it cool and it’s ready to eat

Little Bee had a playdate yesterday and we decided to make a cake… well, I thought her playdate mommy would appreciate cake and coffee so it was more for us mommmies than the kids… but Little Bee doesn’t mind as she loves being my good little helper.

I did make this cake before but it was a rush and I didn’t let it cool down properly that it was crumbly when I sliced it up. But it was still lovely… at least I thought so and that’s why I decided to make it again.

The recipe is adapted from the BBC Good Food page here. I don’t have an electric mixer and mix by hand and I didn’t make the icing as I do think that I personally do not need extra calories

Ingredients:

25g poppy seed
185ml warm milk
185g unsalted butter, soften
220g caster sugar
3 eggs
300g self raising flour
1 lemon’s rind, grated

1. Put the poppy seed and milk in a bowl and set aside.
2. Mix the soft butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and continue mixing. Add the flour and poppy seed and milk mix, alternating between the two (I did it three times as in a third of the flour and then a third of the milk and poppy seed, mix and then again until all are mixed together). Add the lemon rind and mix further.
3. Pre heat the oven at 180c or gas mark 4 (I did it now so I won’t waste any gas )
4. Lined the bottom of a 10cm x 20cm loaf pan with baking paper and lightly butter the side. Pour the mixture in and bake on the middle of the oven for 40 minutes. After 40 minutes, cover the cake with tin foil to avoid browning, and bake for another 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let it cool in the tin on a wire rack for about half an hour. Tip it out and let it cool further on the wire rack or just slice it up as it’s nice to have cake when it is nice and warm

I baked it much longer as 40 minutes, which was the recommended time on the original recipe, was not enough in my oven. Your oven might be more high tech than mine so 40 minutes might be enough.

As requested by Little Bee for her third party, I made it ghost themed for her to have with her friends in nursery…

So I made her ghost cake.

Some gingerdead men.

And party bags.

She won’t remember all these effort of course but for a few moments, she was happy.

Happy third birthday Little Bee… now, mama is going to rest until your fourth birthday is on the horizon.

Another day, another cake. Again I got the recipe from Joy of Baking here.

So last night I baked these. I decided to try out the two new tins I bought as I need to see how the cake will stack up. And it was fine. But I do think I might need to make two small ones on top to make the ghost taller.

Anyway, this morning I gave Little Bee a piece and she said ‘I don’t like it’.

Brilliant.

Not to panic. I’m going to make the icing later tonight and see what she says about the cake with the icing on!

If she still hates it… I guess I could work with the chocolate banana cake.

This is the first of my Ghost Cake experiment. I need to find a recipe that I think would be ideal for this idea I have in my head.

Unfortunately, yummy as this cake is, it needs big shallow cake tin and this is just not good for what I have in mind.

I got the recipe from Joy of Baking here and as I tried it on a smaller cake tin than recommended, the cooking time took longer and by the time I gave up, the skewer still came out a bit damp.

A disaster, but not a total disaster. Little Bee had a couple of little pieces in the morning and liked it.

Next recipe…

After falling off the swing and being stung by nettle in the garden, I decided that Little Bee shall have some indoor activity today. She wanted to bake and these were what she made

I got the recipe off here. I… excuse me… Little Bee followed the recipe to the t so you could just click on the link if you’d like to try it out. Seriously easy! Oh… we used red colouring instead. Little Bee loves sprinkling the decorations… and eating them… and with sugar overload, it took a while to settle her to sleep this evening. *sigh*

Tomorrow, we’ll go back to the garden as I’ve pulled out most of the nettle… plus we have some broadbeans to repot.

I saw a picture of the cake on Almost Bourdain and was salivating. As it was coming to Christmas and time for celebration, I decided to bake, yet again

Sicilian Orange Cake

Ingredients:

250g lightly salted butter at room temperature
250g unrefined caster sugar
4 eggs
2 orange zest
250g self raising flour
85ml freshly squeezed orange juice
for the icing:
80g unrefined icing sugar
2tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice

1. Preheat oven at 170C/gas mark 3. Grease a round cake tin and line it with baking paper.
2. As it is winter at the moment, I soften the butter a bit further in the microwave, medium heat for 30 seconds. Cream the butter and sugar for about 5 minutes. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well each time. Beat in majority of the orange zest, keep about 1 tsp to the side for garnishing. Add all of the flour and mix well. Slowly mix in the orange juice.
3. Spoon in the mixture in the baking tin and bake it in the middle shelf for 50 minutes or until a skewer, inserted in the middle of the cake, comes out clean.
4. Leave the cake to completely cool down in the tin on a wire rack. As the cake is cooling, mix the icing sugar and orange juice. Take the cake out of it’s tin and remove the baking paper. Place it on a plate and pour the icing mix onto the cake, letting it drip down the side. Sprinkle the left over zest on top of the cake and it is now ready to be served!

Remember when you were young and you keep saying that ‘I’ll never be like my mom!’? And then you grow up and discover that you’re more like your mom than you think… and actually glad about it. I think I’ve almost reached that point and this just shows what a good mother my mom is that I do want to be like her. I don’t think I’ll ever manage as she will always be supermom to me.

But I digress…

What I wanted to say is, mom is not really a ‘present’ person. Sure she does give gift but I think her actual joy in giving is food based. She loves to bake and that’s what she gave people most of the time. She built up a reputation on her fruit cake that people started to order her cakes… but unlike other people profiting 100% on their baking as they include labour, mom usually charge much less… mostly to cover the cost of baking her cake.

I’ve started to do that; baking cakes as gifts for people. They seem to enjoy my baking… who knows… maybe one day I’ll start getting orders… and maybe just charge a little bit more than my mom… or actually be like my mom and just charge the cost!

This Christmas, I (and Little Bee on occasions) baked lemon cakes for Little Bee’s nursery, Al’s cafe and also Lina and Little Maya. I felt it’s much better than wrecking my brains on what to buy and it adds some personal touch… I hope they enjoyed the cake.

It is a very easy recipe by Tana Ramsay that on the BBC Good Food website. I love the citrus smell that filled the kitchen as I baked it.

Lemon Cake

Ingredients:

225g unsalted butter, softened (30 seconds medium heat in the microwave)
225g unrefined caster sugar
4 eggs
finely grated zest of 1 lemon
225g self-raising flour
juice of 1 lemon
60g unrefined icing sugar

1. Heat oven at 180C or gas mark 4. Grease a loaf tin with butter and line the bottom of the tin with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter and caster sugar until pale and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time and slowly mixing through. Sift in the flour and add the lemon zest. Mix until well combined. Spoon in the mixture into the loaf tin and level the top.
3. Bake for about 1 hour or until the skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
4. While cake is cooling in the tin, mix the lemon juice and icing sugar for the drizzle. Pour the drizzle and leave it to completely cool in the tin. Once it’s cooled completely, remove from tin and it’s ready to be served. Any left overs will keep in an air tight container for 3-4 days. Apparently you could freeze it for up to a month… Somehow I don’t think it will last that long

I spent the evening baking. I spent the morning decorating. And Little Bee and her Busy Bee friends at the Nursery had a wonderful little party.

Ingredients:

CUPCAKE
226g unsalted butter, room temperature
190g unrefined granulated sugar
6 eggs
2tsp vanilla essence
Zest from 2 lemons
390g plain flour
3tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt
120ml milk

ICING
226g unsalted butter, room temperature
370g unrefined icing sugar
2tsp vanilla essence
2tbsp milk
Food colouring

1. Preheat the oven at 180C or gas mark 4.
2. In a bowl, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add one egg at a time and beat them well into the mixture. Beat in the vanilla essence and lemon zest.
3. Sift in the flour, baking powder and salt into the wet mixture, a bit at a time, alternating with the milk and mix gently.
4. This mixture will make 24 ordinary size cupcakes and about 72 mini cupcakes. Line the cupcake tray with paper liner and evenly fill each cup half full. Put them in the middle of the oven and bake for about 17 minutes for normal size cupcakes or 12 minutes for mini cupcakes; or the skewer inserted into the cupcakes comes out clean.
5. Remove from oven and place them on a wire rack to cool completely before decorating.
6. For the icing, cream the butter and vanilla essence. Gradually beat the sugar in. Add the milk and continue beating for about 3 minutes until the mixture is nice and fluffy. Tint the frosting with desired food colouring. I divided the mixture into two so I could use two different colours.
7. Pipe the frosting onto the cupcakes and add other edible decorations to your heart’s content!

Each time Hubby takes Bubba Bee to Cafe Nero, they will share a slice of carrot cake. I’m not too keen on it as the carrot cake there, as at most places, has raisins in it.

I’ve never made carrot cake before as most of the recipes has raisins in it plus grating the carrots just seem to be a lot of hard work to me. What changed my mind? Bubba Bee will be two in a few months time and I want to make something nice for her to bring to Nursery and share with her friends… and as we were invited to Ivy’s second picnic birthday party yesterday, I thought it was a good time to experiment.

So Bubba Bee and I started on our mission.

Before I list down the ingredients, you might have noticed that I’ve put this under baby/toddler safe. It is safe for your baby after six months… as I used baby led weaning with Bubba Bee and nut allergy doesn’t seem to run in both mind and Hubby’s families… at least I haven’t heard of any. It’s just a warning as this recipe does contain walnuts… but then I guess you could omit that if you want the way I omitted raisins!

Oh! By the way… you can get the recipe for carrot cake from Joy of Baking and I altered it to suit Bubba Bee and me.

Ingredients:

CARROT CUPCAKES
4 large eggs
150g unrefined granulated sugar
240ml corn oil
2 tsps vanilla extract
260g plain flour
1 1/2 tsps baking soda
1 1/2 tsps baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsps ground cinnamon
340g finely grated raw carrots
55g walnuts, lightly roasted and coarsely chopped

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
110g unsalted butter at room temperature
225g soft cheese at room temperature
150g unrefined icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
lemon zest from 1 lemon

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 180C or gas mark 4.

In a large bowl, wish the eggs, sugar,oil and vanilla extract until slightly thicken. Sift in the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and ground cinnamon into the wet mixture and mix well. Fold in the grated carrots and chopped walnuts.

Divide the mixture evenly into 24 muffin cups and place them on the middle rack in the preheated oven. Bake for 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a cupcake comes out clean.

Cool them completely on a wire rack.

In another bowl, beat the butter and soft cheese until smooth and creamy. Add the icing sugar and continue to mix until smooth. Beat in the vanilla extract and lemon zest.

Pipe or with a knife spread the cream cheese frosting on top of each cupcake. Cover and refrigerate until serving time.