Category Archives: Bakes

Bakes, Cakes, Egg, Western

Marble Cream Cheese Cake Recipe

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Updated 3 Oct, 2010
Originally posted March 6, 2007

I show you how to make this delicious, moist yet light chocolate cake from scratch. I love this cake because it is not too sweet, it has a nice cream cheese tang, and it satisfies my chocolate tooth. Perfect combination!

Marble Cream Cheese Cake

Marble Cream Cheese Cake

This recipe was passed to me by Lucy from Yochana’s Cake Delight. Do visit her site if you have time. I am full of admiration for this lady who bakes EVERY SINGLE DAY and not just one thing but multiple things. Oh, to have that energy…

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Asian, Bakes, Chinese

Pandan Spiral Moon Cake Recipe

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(Update: If you’re looking for the Traditional Baked Mooncake Recipe, click here.)

Just in time for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, a special moon cake recipe that will make your head spin.

baked spiral pastries plated

I have a friend here in Kuching who loves to garden. And since she lives next to an empty plot of land, she has put it to good use by cultivating it. When she mentioned that she grew purple sweet potatoes, I was hopeful that they were Okinawan sweet potatoes. I had to ask her if I could come by her house to help her harvest some.

Turns out she got really busy the weekend that we were going but she did dig up some to give to me. The ones she gave me were purple mixed with white and they were dry in texture. In some ways they reminded me of taro (yams) but a little sweeter. And later I found out that they were known as taro sweet potatoes. Well…that explains it…

Despite their dryness (or maybe because of it), I had the idea that I would boil them, mash them and then add some butter, milk and sugar and make them into a paste and use them as a filling for this pastry. After all, during the Mooncake festival, we find Shanghai mooncakes  filled with taro which are very similar in size and shape to these pastries.

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Bakes, Chocolate, Hawaiian

Chocolate Haupia Pie Recipe

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You deserve a ∏ (Pi) today. So how about a Chocolate Haupia Pie?

chocolate haupia pie slice

Today is March 14: 3.14. If you remember your Geometry, 3.14 is a very significant number. ∏, or “Pi” is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. Science and Math geeks like to celebrate the number on March 14. And since it sounds like the word “pie”, Science and Math geeks who bake will make pies on that day as well!

Last year, we threw a big, Hawaiian-themed party at our house. Our Ultimate Hawaiian Backyard Lu’au featured many popular Hawaiian dishes as well as desserts. Our friend Melissa, who is a great baker, prepared this Chocolate Haupia pie for us. (“Haupia”, by the way, is a Hawaiian-style, coconut milk-based pudding.) It was the best!

Thankfully, Melissa and her husband Pat had photographed the pie-making process in their kitchen, and had emailed us their pics. We hadn’t posted the recipe before, so I figured Pi Day would be the perfect time to do it.

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Bakes, Western, Yeast

Nutella Rocks; No-Knead SUCKS

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WARNING: Our entry for this year’s World Nutella Day should not be attempted.

world nutella day 2010

I LOVE Nutella. (Perhaps you can relate?)

Recently, I found some Nutella on sale at a grocery store here. The price was surprisingly reasonable. The catch? It was going to expire within a month. Ahhh! But so what? The way I eat Nutella, it doesn’t take me all that long to go through a jar of it. So I bought two jars!

I came home and decided that one jar was going into some baked goods. I remember Jaden from Steamy Kitchen doing a "no knead" challah with Nutella and Hazelnuts last year and so I went in search of some recipes. I was planning to do Jaden’s challah but got distracted by another post on Sticky Gooey Creamy Chewy, who did a Nutella-pistachio "no knead" brioche. The picture of the Nutella oozing out of this really soft, yummy-looking bread and topped with pistachios just got me drooling big time. I just had to make it.

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