Simple Fruit Cake

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups golden raisins and sultanas mix
  
• 2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cups white sugar
• 4 eggs

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven at 15oC. Wash and dry raisins and sultanas mix.
   
2. Grease and line cake tin with grease paper.
3. Sift all purpose flour and baking powder together. Add in the sugar and the salt.
   
4. Beat in the eggs with the flour mixture, one egg at a time. Mix well.
   
5. Beat in the butter until creamy and fluffy.
6. Add in the dried fruits and mix well with a spoon.
   
7. Turn batter into prepared cake tin, filling 2/3 full and spread batter evenly. Tap the cake tin on the work surface to pop any air bubbles.
8. Bake 70-80mins. To test whether the cake is done, poke a skewer or a toothpick near the centre of the cake after baking for 1 hour. If it comes out clean, the cake is done.
   
9. Remove from oven. Allow to stand for about 5-1omins before turning the cake out on a wire rack to cool.

Simple right? The one I baked taste a bit dry but it tastes much better after a day or two. You can add any dried fruits you like and probably with some lemon's rind.

Chocolate Mugcake (5 minutes recipe )

I received this recipe through email the other day.. Thanks to AlunisSkyWalker for the email :)

A extremely simple recipe.. those working in the office or lab, bring all the ingredients and try making this using the microwave oven ( hahahahaha). For those who have microwave oven at home... do try this... you will have a Chocolate Cupcake in 5 minutes. No need to go out and buy choc cake when you are craving for one in the middle of the night :)

Ingredients:

· 4 Tablespoons cake flour
· 4 Tablespoons sugar
· 2 Tablespoons cocoa
· 1 Egg
· 3 Tablespoons milk
· 3 Tablespoons oil
· Mug and spoon

Methods:
1. Flour
2. Sugar
3. cocoa
4. Mix
5. Add in 1 egg
6. Mix
7. Add in Milk and Oil
8. Mix well
9. Microwave for 3min (high power)
10. Wait until it stops rising and set in the mug
11. Tip content out of mug into saucer and enjoy!

Now.. go enjoy your Chocolate Mugcake with your favourite hot drink ;-). Pretty simple recipe right. As variation, you should be able to make more and microwave in a paper cup maybe and get many-many chocolate cupcakes ;)

Moist Choc Cake

Hi all...

Have not been able to update my blog... I have not tried any new recipe either. First, my streamyx went A.W.O.L. then during weekend, my computer decided that it needed re-installing of the operating system.. :).

I baked Moist Chocholate Cake ( recipe posted previously) and used different icing to cover. The amount of chocolate rice was not enough.. well.. my helper (DD) ate more of it than the amount sprinkled on the cake hehehehehe. Did the icing and choc rice at night.. so I just did it in a rush... my dear helper refused to go to sleep without finishing the icing..hahahaha. It is very easy.... for even for an amatuer baker like me :).

Try it during weekends probably for tea time treat :).

The Chocolate Icing Recipe

Ingredients

50g butter, softened

1 cup icing sugar, sieved

2 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp boiling water

Method

1. Cream both butter and icing sugar until creamy and smooth

2. Add cocoa powder and boiling water, beat again until smooth and creamy.

Banana Cake

Yesterday I made some Banana Pancake.. today I baked Banana Cake... because I have some more bananas and I have been wanting to try baking Banana Cake for quite a while but never got the chance.

Here is a recipe that I tried...

The cake is very nice, soft and strong banana flavour. I made this banana cake in a rush... so end product did not look so nice... hehehe
but still taste very nice.


Ingredients
8 bananas (pureed)
1 1/2 cup flour
1 cup caster sugar
3 eggs
1/2 cup oil
2 tsp bicarbonate soda
2 tsp baking powder
1tsp banana essence

Method

1. Beat sugar and egg together
2. Mix in oil, banana essence and pureed bananas.
3. Add in flour, bicarbonate soda and baking powder ( sieved together) and mix well
4. Bake at 180C for 1 hour

Tip
Mashed / pureed the banana well to get a nice texture cake. For the cake I showed in the picture above, the bananas were not mashed well, so the cake texture was quite rough. In my next trial, I am thinking of modifying the recipe a little bit.. I'll post the result if it turned out to be ok :).

If you don't have an oven, you can also steam the cake mixture for 45min. The cake would be softer and very moist compared to baked cake.

Simple Moist Chocolate Cake

Here is a very simple moist chocolate cake - simple and easy. You can even bake it in the microwave. I have tried using both microwave and baking oven, both resulted the same moist chocolate cake

Ingredients

A
170g flour

2 tsp bicarbonate soda

57g cocoa powder

a pinch of salt

B

230ml corn oil

230ml water

2 tsp Nescafe (if like, omit if does not)

2 tsp vanilla essence

2 eggs

230ml condensed milk

Method

1. Put in ingredient B into ingredient A and mix well.

2. Bake at 180C for 50min or until cake has baked well ( test with toothpick method) or bake in a microwave oven for about 6min

For simple topping

1 can of condensed milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

1/2 cup corn oil

1/3 cup cocoa powder

a pinch of salt

1.Mix all the topping ingredients and heat it up on the stove until mixture becomes thick. Stir continuously while heating up

2. Put in the salt and vanilla essence

3. Pour on top of cake and spread all over the cake surface.

Note:

I have also tried making cupcakes using this recipe (as shown in the picture above). Simply pour them into cupcakes baking tin, and bake as usual ( only shorter time). My eldest daughter really loves the cupcakes.