365days2play Fun, Food & Family

I have been in a baking mood ever since I returned from Norway. I have this desperate desire to replicate the lovely croissants I had there, but you know croissants, they aren’t exactly the easiest things to make. I did try once, half-heartedly with numerous short cuts and obtained croissant-shaped stones as a result.

I am heartened to know that 2 French bakeries are opening in Singapore very soon. One is Paul Bakery and the other is Maison Kayser. Maison Kayser is to open by end of November 2011 at the new Scotts Square, while Paul Bakery is slated to open by Christmas 2011 and is located on the 3rd floor of Takashimaya, where the old Coffee Club used to be. It seems like just when I am craving so badly for these French/Danish pastries, out pops all these European bakeries. BreadTalk will have to pull something out of its sleeves if it wants to keep its market share!

Anyway, not being able to bake croissants (for now) doesn’t stop me from baking something else. I was perusing one of my favourite baking blogs and I decided to bake this Earl Grey Chiffon Cake. It turned out pretty okay considering that this is my 1st Chiffon cake. The Earl Grey taste was faint, the cake wasn’t sweet enough, but the texture was light and airy, which is what a Chiffon cake ought to be. There were splotches of white, which meant that I hadn’t incorporated the egg whites in properly. It’s always a difficult decision between wanting to be as as quick as possible so as not to over-deflate the egg whites, and yet having to thoroughly mix them so that there are no detectable clumps of egg white in the cake.

Flush with “success”, I decided to bake a 2nd cake, a Milo Chiffon cake! I got bolder and made some tweaks to the recipe even though everyone knows that for baked goods, recipes have to be followed to a T. I know that, but I just CAN’T! Anyway, I paid the price for omitting the baking powder and putting in more Milo powder than called for. The cake had a distinctive Milo taste, but was denser than the Earl Grey Chiffon cake. In fact, it kind of had the texture of kueh.

The perfectionist in me said, TRY AGAIN. So I did. I baked a Third cake. An Orange and Chocolate Chiffon cake. I dutifully included the Baking Powder again and I whipped the egg whites stiffer than the 2nd try. I even added chocolate chips into the batter although I had this feeling that they would sink to the bottom. True enough, the cake emerged with a chocolaty bottom. Because of that, it was sticky and I had a hard time scraping the cake out of the baking tin. Texture-wise, it was also light and airy, but somewhat crumbly. I have no idea why it is so and I can only think of baking it longer the next time. I liked the taste of this cake the most, and if given the time I would even make an orange syrup to go with it. Ah well, next week then.

Now what do I do with all those cakes???