Rum Balls

Rum Balls is not actually what you think (whatever it is). In Indonesia, rum balls is something we make using leftover stuff. Traditionally, it is made out of crushed biscuit, chocolate condensed milk, and rum flavoring. Then, it's shaped into rounds and rolled onto chocolate sprinkles.

Other than crushed biscuit, rum balls can also be made from leftover cake, which is what I'm using here.
Chocolate condensed milk is not common in the US, but I can find it in a small local Indonesian grocery store (although somewhat pricey). A friend asked me if I would make this for him, so I thought "why not?" since the last time I made it was at least ten years ago.

You see, in Indonesia, almost every kid would make it at least once. This is something that you would make with your kids (if you have any). When I was a little, I really think it was fun crushing, playing food with your hands, rolling in chocolate sprinkles, I mean who wouldn't? There's no recipe for this and you can use pretty much anything you like in this cute stuff. Sky is the limit.

I made this cute little balls using leftover cake I made two weeks before and left it in the freezer. Since I didn't want to bother buying the chocolate condensed milk, I use regular condensed milk. And instead of using chocolate sprinkles, I also rolled it on shredded cheese.

Berry Cream Cakes

Here are the cake my nephew and I made with the leftover cream and joconde cake. He's my little sous chef :). After making the guava cake, I asked him if he wants to create a cake on his own (with my help of course). While I made mine with all raspberries inside, he used raspberries and blueberries for the filling. I used regular dairy cream, while he chose to use the non-dairy type. I just realized that the color of the non-dairy cream is a lot whiter than the regular dairy cream. Oh, one more thing, we both used raspberry simple syrup to moisten the cake flavored with Razzmatazz (raspberry flavored liqueur).

Pssstt...I think his looks better than mine. Ah, I should have glazed my raspberry, but I was too tired to even think about that. Oddly, I wasn't to tired to glaze his rasp., but didn't even bother with mine. I still have two big bowls of chantily cream but I threw it all away. It hurts when I saw them went down to the drain, but sacrifice had to be made.

There's no need a recipe for this. You can use any kind of sponge cake that you like, use any of your favorite berries, and sweetened whipped cream made from heavyc ream and a little sugar plus any flavoring. This is a very simple cake, yet very refreshing. It reminds me that summer is just around the corner.

Guava and White Chocolate Mousse Cake (Shangri-La)

I made this cake for a friend who's birthday is on Feb 29th. Poor her :(. So, she only get to celebrate her real birthday once every four years. I was asked if I can make the birthday cake for her small birthday party and of course I said yes. Who would want to waste any occasion/chance/excuse to make a cake???

What came to my mind instantly at that time was a Blueberry Mousse Cake wrapped with violet striped joconde and gorgeous violet color of the blueberry and creamy white chocolate mousse in the middle, plus blueberru gelee in the middle of the cake as a surprise. But, I guess that's an aweful lot of work to do although this ides of cake has been on top of my "to-experiment" list. So, I changed my direction to another "to-experiment" list, which is guava and white chocolate mousse cake. I had guava mousse cake in a bakery called "The Extraordinary" in San Diego and another one here in Bay Area. I guess the flavor is unusual and that's what make the cake memorable. Besides, I love the color :).

I've been wanting to create the same idea of the cake, but instead of using a butter cake (which is what the two bakeries use), I'm using a light sponge cake instead because I think something as light as mousse should be paired with a light cake too. I've always thought that butter cake is heavy and dense. I tried to find guava concentrate everywhere but had no luck. So, I made my own. Using regular guava nectar, I removed the water by boiling it down until it becomes thick and concentrated. It took a while to get the consistency right. I don't even have the base recipe for white chocolate and guava mousse, so I experimented. That's why it is on "to-experiment" list :).

The white chocolate mousse turned out great although white chocolate is always too sweet for me. Next time, I would reduce the amount of white chocolate or increase the amount of cream. The guava mousse, I'm a little dissapointed. I think I didn't make anough concentrate for the amount of cream that I'm using. So, I added guava extract (which taste anything but guava to me) and it made the mousse taste somewhat artificial to me. It's not strong enough. I wish I had time to re-do the mousse, making the concentrate, etc., but it's just not worth the effort. The mousse tasted great, it's just that I can barely taste the guava. Some say it taste like candy (is it a good thing?). Anyways, that why it's called "experiment" right? I can't wait for the next time I have to remake this. I promise I would taste a lot better or should I say perfect (at least to me)?

I think the most time consuming is making the chocolate decorations. It looks easy not not much, but believe me, chocolate is pain to work with. It needs to be in the right temperature, you have to work fast before it starts to harden up, not to mention the pain of washing all of the equipments. Pheewww.... Chocolate has always been my enemy, but I keep using it for my cakes. It just looks wonderful if it's done in the right way. Practice makes perfect, it may not be right now, but we shall see :)

Raspberry White Chocolate and Blueberry White Chocolate Cake

There were no special occasion when I decided to make these two cakes. It was simply that I have a lot of berries that I froze last year for my winter supply, but it's almost summer again, and I still have two big containers full of wonderful berries. And since my friends have been asking me to re-make the cake that I ask them to try a couple of months ago (not posted in the blog), I think this is just enough reasn (or excuse?) to make a cake (or two).

The interesting thing about this cake is the layer. Unlike the usual cake that has different layer of filling between each layer, the fillings for this cake are piped separately in alternating colors (as you can see in the picture). The cake consists of two layers of very soft and light cotton cake (similar to chiffon type cake in texture), raspberry/blueberry jelly (homemade), and also white chocolate cream cheese cream and also the clear glaze ont op of the cake. Usually, I made this cake in square shape. That way, it's easier to pipe and you can see the alternating filling on all sides. This time, I'm using a round shape cake because I had four layers of the sponge cake sitting in my freezer.

If you see the raspberry one (the top one), the red gel-like color is different from the color of the filling. You know why? I was planning to use the leftover jelly for the decoration, but I completely forgot. I threw all of the rest away and started to realize after all of them went to drain (sigh...). So, I took a little of the neutral glaze that I used and add a little of raspberry extract and hence the color. The color looks a little artificial to me, but some people even said that they like the color of it. It's just a matter of taste.

The decoration is similar between the two cakes. Well, what can I do. I've always sucked in cake decorating skill. But, it's somthing that I want to keep learning.

I can't tell you which one tastes better, is it the raspberry or the blueberry. Based on the reviews that I got, they're equally great, really. Even my little nephew and niece couldn't decide which one they like the best :)

I think I have to come up with some sort of fancier names for the cakes that I'm making so that it won't be too long. Now, I have to think another cake that would use up the rest of the berries before summer is coming.

Here's the cake I made the first time. This is the last piece that I had and I managed to take a picture of it. I didn't bother decorating it or anything since it was only the first experiment. But I was just glad to see the beautiful filling and the most important thing is, my friends rated this cake to be the best so far among many many cakes they have tried. yippee...

Lapis Surabaya (a.k.a. Spiku)

I made this cake about a week ago. I've never made this kind of cake before but it is on my "to-make/to-try" list for quite some time now and I've been trying to make a single one of the item on that list. But strangely, the list is not getting shorter. In fact, it's getting longer and longer by day :P

So, as usual I did research first before making this cake. What is the traditional method to make this cake, what is the standard minimum egg yolk for this cake (you won't believe it if I tell you), what are the tricks and tips, etc.

I settled on one recipe out of a couple of them. This recipe requires 15 egg yolks for each layer!!!!! and usually, it consists of three layers of very moist and dense sponge type cake with the chocolate layer cake in the middle, sandwiched between two golden sponge cake.

I made the yellow layer first and since I didn't know how the batter would turn out, it failed!!!!!!!. There's a thin layer of dense and rubbery layer on the bottom of the cake. I had a feeling that this cake would failed anyway before I put it in the oven because the batter was so thick (since it's only using the egg yolks) and the butter was beaten, not melted. It was so hard incorporating the two together because both are super duper thick. Besides, it's winter and so the butter is not soft enough to be folded to the yolk mixture. So, I made another one, the chocolate one this time. I was getting a little smarter by using my KA mixer to do all the butter folding in low speed. The result was satisfying.

I started to gain confidence so the day after, I bought a couple dozens of eggs and made another golden layer. I don't want to make two layers for the golden sponge cake so I cut each cake into three parts and so I had two cakes with two yellow layer and two chocolate layer (see pictures). I sandwiched them together using blueberry jam because that's what I have on hand. Traditionally, it's using strawberry jam.

In conclusion, I'm satisfied with the result although I think it's just a tad too sweet for my taste. The texture was very soft. Next time, I would use the better quality butter. I used regular American butter. In Indonesia, the best Lapis Surabaya is made using Dutch butter called Wisjman (I might be wrong with the spelling). But since this is my first time and the Dutch butter cost three times more expensive than regular butter, so I decided to make do with just regular butter.

I wanted to type the recipe, but I'm too lazy. Maybe next time if I have time. For now, enjoy the pictures :) (I should start learning --> taking class of how to make a great picture)

Oh, one more thing. There's a story behind the name of this cake. "Surabaya" is the name of a city in Indonesia. But the term "Lapis Surabaya" is only known by people outside Surabaya, while Surabayanese (pardon my language) doesn't even know that name. It is popular by the name of "Spiku". So, most of the people in Surabaya won't even know what Lapis Surabaya cake is. Oh well, fun fact to know and tell.

Blueberry Cotton Cake

Long weekend is almost over in a couple of hours. I had so many baking plan to make before the weekend had even started, but it just flew by so quickly. In fact, today, I don't have any plan at all. You would think this is the perfect time to do some baking right?

Not wanting this long weekend to end without any baking at all, I started to think what can I make that's simple, quick, and straight forward. So, I finally decided to make this Blueberry Cotton Cake. I saw this cake when I was blog surfing. From the name of the cake, it's sounded very good. Besides, I'm all about light textured cake, so it qould be perfect to try out this recipe.

As usual, I made some adjustment to the recipe. The end result, I can barely taste the blueberry
flavor, even though I increased the amount of the blueberry preserves to about five times to what the recipe calls for. It would be great if I have some blueberry essence or paste to add into the cake batter.

There's a pattern I notice from my baking experience. If I bake something just for the sake of baking (i.e. I have some spare time so I have to use it for baking since spare time is not easy at all to get for me), the cake wouldn't turn out the way I wanted it to be. It's still completely edible of course, it's just not "perfect" and it always bothers me. But in the other hand, even though I had about 1-2 hours of free time each day, and I would have to do the cake components separately, as long as the cake was planned, it would turn out great. I don't know what the difference is. I'm doing the exact same thing. I guess baking has a lot to do with our emotion (:P). Even if we have all the time in the world but we don't feel like baking, it would affect the cake itself. Call me crazy or anything, but at least it's true for me :)

Here's the recipe:

Blueberry Cotton Cake

50 ml milk
75 g unsalted butter
50 g cake flour
110 g egg yolks
1 tsp vanilla extract
50 g blueberry preserves or jam
a couple drops of violet food coloring
170 g egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
175 g sugar

• Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line two regular loaf pans/one 9-in springform pan or equivalent with parchment paper. I use three mini loaf pans and muffin pan.
  
• Combine the milk and butter in a heat-proof bowl and heat on top of double-boiler to melt the butter.
• While the milk solution is still hot, add the flour all at once and whisk.
  
• Add the egg yolks, vanilla, blueberry preserve, and the food coloring. Stir until well-blended. Set aside.
  
• Whisk the egg white until frothy, then add the cream of tartar.
• Add the sugar a little at a time and keep whisking until it forms soft peak.
• Fold the egg whites into the yolk mixture in addition.
• pour the batter into the parchment-lined baking pan and bake in waterbath for about 40 minutes (may vary depending on the size of the pan and the oven).
  

Valentine's Cake

So, it was Valentine's day morning. While I was sipping my coffee and web surfing, I got this idea of making a valentine's day cake. I don't have any major plan for that day, so I thought, hey what not make a cake!

I didn't have any idea what kind of cake I would make. I really would like to make a heart-shaped cake, but I don't have a heart pan nor heart cake ring. So, I decided to make use of my mini stand-up bear pan that I bought a couple months ago just so that it has valentine's theme.

I didn't even know what filling I would put into the cake. All I know is that the base cake should be chocolate, so I made chocolate sponge cake for the base. Since it wasn't planned, I had limited options for filling. I can only use whatever I had in the fridge and in the pantry. I knew that I wanted to use fondant to cover the whole cake because I had about two pounds of leftover white fondant that I need to use. Since I'm using fondant, the fillings should be something that can stand in room temperature. All I could think of is buttercream, but I don't want it to be just a regular buttercream, so I made blueberry buttercream using the leftover blueberry preserves. I always love deep purple color in a cake. The second choice for the filling is bittersweet dark chocolate ganache. As I mentioned before in the previous posts, I'm not a fan of chocolate at all. But this is valentine's day and I guess I could make an exception. I didn't have any cream to make the ganache, so I used milk instead.

So there you go, two layers of chocolate sponge cake, simple syrup flavored with raspberry liqueur, blueberry buttercream, and bittersweet chocolate ganache, covered in white fondant. The bear is chocolate cake covered in chocolate buttercream. It takes a really long time for me to cover the whole bear (there were some minor problems :) ). I also made little fondant flowers using five-petal flower fondant cutter and daisy cutter. I was thinking to stick a rose (or any kind of flowers) with a long stem in the bear's hand so that it would look like he's holding it, but the gardener cut all the roses in the front yard a week ago :(

The result? I think it looks more like a girl's baby shower cake rather than a valentine's cake :). It got me thinking of buying a heart cake ring just for this special occasion :P.

So, what did I do with the cake? I brought it to my friend's house (remember the guys who would eat anything including failed cakes?) and save the bear for my nephew and niece.

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day everyone!