It’s Almost Christmas! 🎊🎊

Three more days and counting! Time really does fly before you know it! 😆 And at last I am so happy that my holiday has begun!

I took this Sunday to fulfil a promise I made with a friend. Last week, I was supposed to bring her a mojito cake for a viewing party of the Strictly final, but I was down with a cold and was pretty much bed-bound for the weekend. 🤒 But never too late to make up for lost time, right? 😁 So today I brought her a mojito snow angel cake to make up for it haha! 😇 The cake was composed a lime sponge soaked with a mojito syrup and covered with a lime and mint icing with some shots of rum! 🍸 (Try not to get drunk lol) It was then finished with a white fondant and some tempered chocolate work plus a few small touches for decorations. ❤️

Are you naughty or nice this Christmas? 😉

Last Christmas 🦌❄️🎄

Christmas baking truly marks for me the beginning of the seasonal festival. There are so many things I love about Christmas, from the beautiful lights in the streets of London to a crazy time in the Winter Wonderland whilst listening to the best Christmas tunes. It’s truly the best time of the year! ❤️💚❤️💚 What are your favourite things about Christmas? 😊

Last year, I decided to make a Yule Log after seeing it done in the Great Christmas Bake Off the year before, and I was so happy with how it turned out in the end! 😁👏👏 Swiss roll was the first ever bake I learnt to make so it does bring back a sense of nostalgia to be making that back at my family home. ❤️

(P.S. A couple of days after that, I also made a Christmas croquembouche! 😆)

Now, what should I make this Christmas? 🤔😗

Wordless Wednesday : Christmas Special

Wordless Wednesday: Christmas Special

All I Want For Christmas Is Kulfi!

So I heard it was Thanksgiving this week. 😊 (Just to clarify, being British, I am normally totally unaware of it! 😂) But I just want to use this opportunity to say thank you for those of you who keep on following me on my blog and allowing me to share many of my memories and love of baking and food here! ❤️ I started this blog as a ‘getaway’ from my daily life as I was at a point where I wasn’t sure where to go in life, feeling unhappy and stressed out at my job. I never knew if I will even get a single reader, but seeing the regular comments and likes here really do make me smile.☺️ In the past month or so, I am feeling much more relaxed and happy with what I am doing at work and outside of work, and I do feel I owe it partly to the community here to make me feel more confident about myself.

For those of you who read my last posts, you may remember that I went on a city getaway trip to Canterbury last weekend. That mango Kulfi I had in Ambrette there was just so delicious, I couldn’t resist the urge of trying to make it at home after finding a recipe online. 😋

The flavours of this Kulfi are mango and pistachio. (Here is the link to the recipe I used: https://www.196flavors.com/india-mango-kulfi/) The recipe is in cups, so I did have to look up conversions and it was still very easy to follow. I couldn’t be bothered buying saffron or cardamom so I ended up throwing in about a teaspoon of the mixed spice I had in it. 😂 It was still really delicious though! (And a perfect dessert after coming back from the cinema watching Frozen 2. ⛄️❄️) I got a large batch still left in my freezer to finish, so any volunteers are welcomed! 🤣

Hope you all have a good weekend ahead of you! 😉

Filo YOLO

As a baker, I always like to challenge myself with new styles of baking and learn new techniques. One day I decided to pick up Filo pastry. It is a pastry known (quite notoriously 😬) for its difficulty and effort… and indeed it kills my arms every time making it with the endless amount of rolling. 😵😵 (It’s one of those thing that you might as well just buy in the shop isn’t it? 😂😂) I heard you can making the rolling process easier with a pasta machine, but it is a tad too expensive for me to get my hands on…💸💸 (Plus I have no intentions of making fresh pasta any time soon lol.) However, whether homemade or shop-bought, this thin, crisp pastry is definitely one for many delicious recipes. 😋❤️

I adapted my Filo pastry recipe from Paul Hollywood’s Spanakopita recipe on BBC food (See link here👉 https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/spanakopita_26903) Why don’t you also give it a try? 😉 Let me know what ideas you may have with Filo pastry in the comments!

A Late Halloween…

A very big LATE Happy Halloween to everyone here! 👻🎃🕷😂😛😁 (I was absolutely swamped by work this past week, but you are now probably getting very sick of hearing this by now lol!) I hope that you had a chance to celebrate this fun festival. From all those scary costumes to sickly parties, there are many things I enjoy about Halloween, but one of my favourite things, of course, is doing some ‘scary’ baking for it. I didn’t manage to find time to do that this year though, but I thought I will share my Halloween bakes from last year. 😉

These Halloween 🎃👻 coconut biscuits are vegan and made using dairy-free margarine. I adapted a recipe from the allrecipes UK website for the biscuits. (This is the link👉 http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/33572/vegan-coconut-biscuits.aspx) The icing is made from icing sugar mixed with coconut milk and food colouring. It’s a very straightforward recipe that I was able to whip up before a Halloween night out, and it was fun to able to enjoy these snacks (with some booze of course haha!) before hitting the ‘haunted’ city. 🌃

Though baking wasn’t on the card this year, I still got to celebrate the festival last night attending a ‘Twisted Circus’ event in Clapham. Didn’t manage to drink much this time, as the price tags were super high! 😅 But it was still a good night out! 😉

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

This Might Sound Cheesy… 🧀 🧀

Last day of my holiday today, and I am testing my new mixer (which I bought after breaking my electric whisk… 😖😖) Sometimes, you really do just feel an urge to bake something you’ve been craving, and today, cheesecake was my choice.

I opted for a Japanese soufflé cheesecake, which is a very light baked cheesecake that has a fluffy texture of a soufflé. It is traditionally baked in a bain-marie. When I visited Japan many years ago, this was one of those sweet treats I would actively look for, and I once had what I thought was the best cheesecake of my lifetime lol. 😋

I chose to top mine with fruits to add some acidity and freshness to the cake, but it’s just as good to eat as a plain cake! 👍

Japanese Soufflé Cheesecake

Quantity: 1 cake

Ingredients:

200g cream cheese

3 eggs, separated

90g caster sugar

30g cornflour

50g milk

2 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp salt

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas 4.

2. Beat the cream cheese until light and creamy.

3. Add the yolks, half of the sugar, cornflour, milk, lemon juice and salt to the cream cheese. Fold gently until well combined.

4. Use an electric whisk to whisk the egg white. Add the remaining sugar a little a time as you are whisking. Whisk until white egg is stiff.

5. Fold the egg white gently into the cream cheese mixture until well combined.

6. Line your cake tin with baking parchment and secure with paper clips. Pour your cake mixture into the tin.

7. Place the cake on a tray filled with hot water and bake for about 25 minutes, or until golden and well-risen.

8. Cool and remove baking parchment before serving.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Another year, another chapter of my life begins. They said that ‘the older you get, the wiser you are.’ Though I don’t think this phrase applies entirely to me, life can only go upwards and onwards! 👍👍 It was so much fun celebrating with some of my closest friends. And for the other special people in my life that weren’t able to make it today, I am always grateful for your constant presence around me. Sometimes, I do feel like I am not thankfully enough for what I have right now and just constantly want more. But, truly simplicity is the best, and what I have right now is really enough for me.

As for the birthday cake, I was very inspired to make a Devil’s food cake after stumbling across a video by Nigella Lawson one night. (You can see the link here👉 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tcZSTF4L0bw) Gooey, moist and rich. It is definitely one for any chocolate lovers. (And even better when served with a glass of Sangria! 🍷 You must excuse me as I was still quite tipsy whilst typing this post… 😂😂)

I added some wafer paper feathers, desiccated coconut and white chocolate stars to play along the light and dark theme of the cake, but you can have it just as simple as Nigella would and it would taste just as ‘heavenly’ as she described. ❤️❤️

Here is to another year! 😊💪

My Life is a Box of Sweetness

As the weather turns chilly this week and my works continue to pile on, baking really allows me to take a step back and relax from the stress. Having said that, despite working through the weekends in the past weeks, I felt like I am starting to enjoy my job again. Perhaps is a turning point for me? (But we shall wait and see about that lol.)

Yesterday, I baked some traybakes for Free Cakes for Kids Hackney (whilst also sneaked our for a nice Indian supper in between haha). It’s a charity I’ve been working with for a couple of months now, and honestly what’s better than sharing the joy of your bakes than with someone else? 🙂 (And to be fair, it just gives me an excuse to temporarily drop my work and do something else lol.)

For the traybakes, I decided to go with some rainbow rocky roads and white chocolate & raspberry blondies topped with crushed bananas crisps. I shared my rocky road recipe in a post before (Link here👉 https://tangosbaking.home.blog/2019/06/03/monday-blues-rocky-roads/), but this time I switched it up with some tri-coloured marshmallows. For the blondies, I used the recipe from this website👉 https://www.janespatisserie.com/2016/11/10/white-chocolate-raspberry-blondies/, but added 50g less caster sugar as I felt it was sweet enough with the white chocolate.

Why don’t you also give it a try this weekend? 😉 What would you like in your box of sweets? ❤️

Roughing Out in the Night

Fancy a sweet treat to prepare yourself for a busy week? These wacky triple chocolate muffins have a melted chocolate centre and topped with a wafer feather. Sometimes it’s just fun to not follow any rules and let your imagination run wild. (Too be honest, I am still not sure about the way they look lol 😂😂)

For me, there is nothing more fun and relaxing than some late night baking on a Friday/Saturday night (when there is obviously no work the next day!) It’s only during these times I can forget about my anxieties over my insomnia and actually enjoy it. The freedom to do anything as the rest of the world is sound asleep… there is something strangely satisfying about that to me. Anyone else feel the same? Would love to hear from all the all-nighters out there! 😂🦉🦉

Triple Chocolate Muffins

Quantity: 4 muffins

Ingredients:

105g self-raising flour

1 tsp baking powder

25g unsalted butter, softened

20g cocoa powder

50g caster sugar

1 medium egg

63g milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 pieces of dark chocolate

White chocolate, chopped

Wafer paper

Method:

1. Mix the sifted flour and baking powder together in a mixing bowl.

2. Rub butter into the flour mixture until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.

3. Sieve in the cocoa powder and add in the sugar. Stir to mix.

4. In a separate bowl, mix the egg, milk and vanilla extract together. Add the wet mixture to the dry flour mixture and stir until well-combined to achieve a lumpy and slightly wet mixture.

5. Preheat oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

6. Line a muffin tin with paper cases and spoon the batter evenly between them. Fill the cases up half way, and place the piece of dark chocolate into the centre. Cover up with more cake batter and place the white chocolate on the top.

7. Bake the muffins for 20-25 minutes, or until well-risen and firm. Test if the muffins are fully baked by inserting a skewer just slightly off the centre, and it should come out completely clean. Once they are ready, place them on a wire rack to cool.

8. Cut out the wafer paper into feather shapes using scissors and insert into the muffins to finish.