Birthday Cakes 2015

I made a resolution in 2015 that I will try to make as many birthday cakes as possible for people around me! So as the year 2015 is ending soon, time to reflect! Yes I did fulfill this resolution as I baked 16 cakes in total which break my own record since I started to have interest in baking many years ago! A summary of the birthday cakes I made in the year 2015 for family, friends and colleague. Though not perfect and far from professional but really took lots of effort to do it. 

Strawberry shortcake. A special request from Aunt Peggy for her cousin!

Raspberry Chocolate Cheesecake

Raspberry Chocolate Cheesecake

A birthday cake I made in 2013 for my dearest brother! Recording this recipe for my own record. 

Double Joy... Happy Birthday & 3rd Blogiversary!

Happy 3rd Blogiversary to Wen's Delight! 9th November, is my birthday and also marks 3 years of blogging here at Wen's Delight! With 290 posts for this year, making a total of 1161 posts over the past 3 years. Though the numbers of posts have reduced as compared to the previous years but I'm still putting lots of effort here so do remember to drop by occasionally to visit me. I'm grateful for all the supports given to this humble blog of mine in the past 3 years! Thank you so much!

All Chocolate @ Awfully Chocolate!

Thanks family, friends and colleagues for all the birthday treats!

Stay tune for my updates on my recent Bali and Hanoi trips.

Cheers to 2011 @ Aunty Yochana

30th Dec 2010

An agar agar dessert ordered from Aunty Yochana for the New Year Celebration buffet at workplace.

Sunflower - S$40 / Butterfly & Dragonfly - S$3.50 each

Agar agar seem to be a healthier choice as compared to cakes. Most of us like Aunty Yochana's agar agar as it not overly sweet and the design was quite cool too. Don't you think so?



Yochana's Cake Delight

My Tiramisu Jingle

Tiramisu is my all time favourite! I like to bake it and enjoy eating it too. Decided to contribute a Tiramisu cake for my workplace potluck instead of a logcake. Decorated the cake for the season and glad that they enjoyed it. This will be my 2nd entry for the Aspiring Bakers #2 - Christmas (Dec 2010) hosted by Jane of Passionate about baking.

The recipe is nothing new, is my usual Tiramisu recipe. Anyway I will share it again in this entry.

A: Chocolate Sponge Cake
(Recipe adapted from Richard Goh baking class)
Ingredients:
4 Eggs + 1 egg yolk
90g Sugar
90g Plain Flour
10g Cocoa Powder (Valhorna)
1/8tsp Bicardonate of soda
100g Butter, melted
1 tbsp dark rum

Methods:
Preheat oven to 160 degrees C.
Grease & line a deep 8 inches round baking tin with paper.
1. Sieve flour, chocolate powder & baking soda together. Set aside.
2. Whisk eggs, rum and sugar until stiff.
3. Fold in shifted flour by hand, using an upward circulating motion. Then add in warm melted butter & mix well until batter is shiny.
4. Pour into baking tin & bake for 35 mins.
5. Slice into 2-3 slices. (I sliced into 3 but used only 2 for my tiramisu jingle, balance can be freezed)




B: Tiramisu Cream
Ingredient (A):
250g Fresh diary cream (35% fat)
40g Sugar
150g Mascarphone cheese

Ingredient (B):
100g Mascarphone cheese
3 Egg yolks

Ingredient (C):
100g Coffee liquor Kahlua/Bailey
10g Gelatin (soak with 3 thbsp hot water to dissolve)

Method:
1. Whisk (A) except the mascarphone cheese till stiff, fold in mascarphone cheese. Set aside in the fridge for later use.
2. In another mixing bowl whisk (B) over a pool of boiling water till the mixture is warm. (This is to pasturise the egg yolk)
3. Add (C) into Step 2 and mix well.




C: Tiramisu Jingle
9" Cake Ring/loose bottom round cake tin
2 slices Chocolate Sponge cake
Tiramisu cream
35 pcs Ladyfingers (store bought)
Cocoa Powder for dusting
Valhorna Chocolate crunch (optional)
X'mas ornaments for decoration

Coffee Syrup for brushing:
1. 90g Hot water
2. 35g Sugar / Demarara sugar
3. 10g Nescafe Gold instant coffee
4. 10g Kahlua/Bailey
- Mix 1 to 3 till sugar melted & when cool, add in 4, set aside.

To assemble:
1. Lay the sponge cake in a loose bottom tin, brush the cake generously with the coffee syrup and pour in half of the cream mixture, sprinkle some chocolate crunch (optional) and dust with cocoa powder.
2. Place the 2nd layer over and brush with syrup again. Pour in the balance cream and dust with cocoa powder.
3. Chill the cake for at least 2-3 hours till set.
4. Unmould the cake, dust with more cocoa powder if prefer. Decorate the side with sponge finger and top with Christmas ornaments.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Birthday to Wen's Delight & Wen!

9th Nov is a double joy day! It marks Wen's Delight 2nd year blog anniversary and it's also my birthday!

I have enjoyed 2 full years of blogging with 871 posts and still very much in it. Blogging seem to have become part of my life and will be for the years to come. I like to thanks all the followers and readers of my blog for visiting regularly and at times leaving lovely comments to encourage me. Thanks for all the support!


A lovely chocolate fudge cake from Marche!


Happy Birthday to me!

Thanks for all the birthday treats & gifts from family, friends and colleagues!

Perla's Pastry Boutique

16 Jul 2010

Finally get to try the famous Chantilly Cake from Perla's. I didn't go all the way to their bakery at Jalan Bingka. I got it from their counter at Takashimaya Food Hall. It's a good deal at 30% discount for the 5" cake at only $13.20 (UP: $18.80).

Chantilly Cake

Lovely decorated with white chocolates shavings, chocolate drops and a rose.


The chantilly cream was very fresh and light. The vanilla sponge texture was fine and was moistured with rum syrup. In fact was too damp for my liking.



Perla's Pastry Boutique
Takashimaya
B2 Food hall
Singapore
Tel: 6462 2760

Happy Birthday to Aunt Peggy!

14th Mar 2010

My cousin bought a durian cake from Savoury Fare for her mum. This was the dessert after lunch at Seafood International.

Durian Cake - S$54.00

Fresh peeled durian(D24) is cooked with fresh coconut milk, and then sandwiched between vanilla sponge cake.

Verdict: Probably was overnight so it's not very fresh and a bit dry. I think Emicakes or Angie's The Choice make a better one.

Savoury Fare

164 East Coast Road

Singapore 428870

Tel: 6441 1333 / 6241 1332

Fax: 6241 1332

Happy Birthday to Cho & Agnes!

10th Mar 2010

A birthday cake I baked for my colleagues. Both birthdays were just 4 days apart, C on the 10th and A on the 14th so we had a joint celebration for them on the 10th.

As I have a bottle of Bailey Irish Cream that I'm so eager to finish up so I decided to make a cake that infused with Bailey. Trying to make one similiar to the one at Pine Garden. Using my favourite sponge cake recipe, subsitute the milk with bailey and vanilla extract with mocha paste. Yes! It turn out real well. For the cream, like making Tiramisu, added Bailey instead of Kahlua. When assembling the cake, brush the sponge layer with Bailey and sprinkle Valhorna Chocolate crunch in it. Finally dust the cake with Valhorna Chocolate powder and decorated it as desired. Have a box of Rocha from CNY, so make full use of it. Though looked like a Tiramisu but doesn't really taste like it. It's really a Bailey cake and all of my colleagues like it very much. It's always pay off when someone complimented that they liked my cakes.

Happy Birthday to Connie & Celia!

It's 2 of my colleagues birthday. Both are today so I made them a simple Strawberry Shortcake yesterday! Hope they liked it.

Valerie's Strawberry Shortcake

Happy Birthday Boss!

Last Wednesday, celebrated my boss, Jennifer's birthday. Instead of getting an expected birthday cake. We ordered a butter cake and agar agar from Aunty Yochana to give her a little surprise.

Prune and Walnut Butter Cake

Insect Series Agar Agar Set

Yochana's Cake Delight

Belated & also my 1st Christmas Logcake

1st Jan 2010

The dessert for NYD gathering at BY's was a logcake, my first logcake and also a belated one. Who say logcake can only be eaten on Christmas... we happily ate it on NYD lol!

Thinking hard what to bake to bring over and decided to give Valerie's Logcake a try since I had all the stuff with me. It's a Blackforest Logcake, the inside was a flourless chocolate roll filled with kirsh soaked cherries and choc crunch. Dress it with whipped diary cream with macaphone cheese and kirsh added to it. For the decoration, I added some fresh berries and ornaments. Also, I made full use of the 2 leftover macarons (from Yochana) as decoration which I brought home from office X'mas party. Sprinkled with some choc shaving & powder and my first logcake was borned...

Blackforest Chocolate Logcake (Valerie's)

(Photo by Ivan's Canon DSLR)

(Photo by Ivan's Canon DSLR)

(Photo by Wen's Canon Powershot SX200)

It's not overly sweet and I think most of us enjoyed it. Sorry this is a workshop recipe so I can't share.

White Choc Pearl Log Cake w/Berries @ Swissbake

24th Dec 09

Trying very hard to finish all my backlogs before the year end but it's seem like mission impossible... So this will be my very last post of the Year 2009. A very yummy and appetizing logcake from Swissbake that we had at L's place after a wonderful and sumptuous dinner at District 10. Actually wanted to bake one myself but didn't have time so the host decided to get one from Swissbake.

Swiss Bake is one of the European bakery and confectionery in Singapore that provide premium quality bakes. Well known for their wholegrain bread and pastries but some of their cakes are pretty good too.

White Chocolate Pearl Logcake w/Berries - S$48.00 (1kg)

A brilliant combination of white chocolate mousse, vanilla / chocolate biscuit and wildberries, decorated in red Christmas mood. This is not the usual logcake with swissroll, the inside of the cake feature a unique 2 tone color theme. Creamy and light white chocolate mousse with a thin layer of chocoalate biscuit at the base. The sourish berries balance up the sweetness of the mousse. Very nice and refreshing.

www.swiss-bake.com.sg

Goodbye 2009!

Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberry Shortcake - recipe adapted from Daniel Tay's "Just Dessert". This cake is one of Bakerzin's signature cake. Of course the one I made still far off from that, maybe just 60% similar. The Genoise sponge which I prepared earlier was meant to make this cake. The sponge is rather different from the usual sponge recipe as it used lots of egg yolks. I think that contributes to the softness of the cake. The chantilly cream is nice, quite rich as macarphone cheese is added to enhance the taste.

Strawberry Shortcake

Super Vanilla Cheesecake

24th Nov 09

Test baked another Chef Keiko's recipe from her cookbook - Okashi. This is the first time that I bought a cookbook and really keen in trying out the recipes. There are so many interesting sweet treats in the book that I'm interested to try.

Chef Keiko Super Vanilla Cheesecake

Cheesecake lover will like this ultra rich and creamy blueberry cheesecake. It's an easy recipe to make that need less than an hour to complete. The recipe used food processor to blend the cheese but I do not have one, so I use my hand blender. It's worked well too.

Recipe adapted from Chef Keiko - Okashi

I made a double recipe for the biscuit base as I prefer a thicker base. As for the cheese mixture 1.5x recipe which is just nice for a 7 inch round tin. (Original recipe is 6 inch). The top level is pure sour cream, but mine is in cream colour which can't really differentiate from the cheese whereas from the cookbook, the picture shown a very distinctive layer of white sour cream. Is it different type of sour cream used or I have overcooked the sour cream and caused the oil to surface. Anyone out there done this cake before?

Verdict: I quite like it even though I'm not a cheesecake lover and I manage to eat a slice myself. As my family don't eat this type of cheesecake so I brought all to office. Most of my colleagues liked it and gave thumb up for it except for 2 who find it too rich and creamy. One of them asked me to make one for her son's bd the following week. On my 2nd attempt, I managed to get a nicer layer by using light sour cream and followed closely to the cooking time stated in the cookbook. It's turn out better than the first one and I did some minor decor since it's a birthday cake.

Happy Birthday to Connie's Son!

Colleague's Birthday!

Let me update a current post instead of my backlogs. Today, was my colleague's WL birthday and a group of us went out for zi char lunch at Lam's. I also made a simple black forest cake for her.

Chocolate sponge (recipe from Do What I Like) sandwiched with canned dark pitted cherries and chantilly cream, decorated with chocolate shaves and berries with apricot glaze.

Another year older again!

Today is my birthday!!! How old am I? Guess! hahaha! Not very old and not very young too! Happy birthday to me and my blogs too! Time passes by real fast so I hope I can live a God blessed life from now on and stay healthy and young at all times! Thank you love one, family and friends who made an effort to remember this day and made it a memorable one for me! May God bless all of you!

I had a simple celebration at work today, my boss gave us a lunch treat at Soon Heng which I will post later and my colleagues ordered Angie The Choice Durian Cake for me. Thanks for the lovely present too.

Durian Cake

Angie The Choice

A surprise from 2 of my buddies who turned up at my place at 10pm just now, they brought a cake from Patissier Glace for me. Thank you H & H so much for being so sweet and it's really surprise me!

Mango Cheesecake
Patisserie Glace

Started this blog 1 year ago in Oct 08 so decided to set my blog anniversary to my birthday instead! A year of blogging, didn't get to know a lot of people but I know there are some regular readers who follow my blogs. Thank you for the support! Hope I can keep it interesting & informative for the years to come. A lot of effort needed to keep the blogs going regularly and recently I seem to slow down in my pace as I'm always loaded with weeks of backlogs. Sometimes, I find it tedious too especially so when I'm not very good at writing and expressing my thoughts. However, I has learnt a lot too and become more IT independent & savvy.

Happy 1st anniversay to

Wen's Delight & My Adorable Shih Tzu!

Tiramisu

6th Oct 09

Baked a Tiramisu for my colleague, Connie's daughter. Actually was an order but I only charged her the cost of the cheese and cream. Just doing her a flavor as I'm not that pro to take cake order yet... Didn't do much decoration, just some choc on the side.

I made a choc sponge using "Do what I Like" recipe - Choc Chiffon Cake. The cake was very spongy, soft & nice dark choc colour. This recipe is a keeper. As for the cream, I used my usual Tiramisu recipe but subsitute some of the Kahlua with milk as my Kahlua was running out.

Green Tea - I love you...

13th Sep 09

Yes, I'm still not done with my green tea bakes yet. I really like green tea, I like green tea ice cream, cakes, dessert, cookies, and drink or simply anything green tea. My trip to Japan, I bought quite a few green tea treats too.

After my successful trial few days ago on the green tea chiffon cake, I'm going to bake the actual birthday cake for my friend today using that recipe. The same day, I also baked another cake using Valerie's Strawberry shortcake recipe but modified it to green tea flavor. Well it's turn our real good too.

This cake taste almost similar to my green tea chiffon cake but much lighter.

This was the birthday cake specially made for my best friend, Hwee. Happy Birthday!

Chocolate Truffle Cake

Still on my friend - J's birthday on 27th Aug, after dinner at The Cliff, we went to her room for coffee & cake cutting. H bought a cake for her from Element @ Amara Hotel. Well, it's an extremely rich dark chocolate truffle cake, in fact too rich for my liking as I'm not really a die hard fan for chocolate.

Chocolate Truffle Cake @ Element, Amara Hotel

Anyway, J did enjoy the cake though this was the 3rd chocolate bd cake she had in a day...



Element
Amara Singapore
165 Tanjong Pagar Road
Singapore 088539
Tel: 6879 2607

Opening hours:

Daily: 6am to 11pm