Hokkaido chiffon cupcakes 北海道牛奶蛋糕

Saw this Hokkaido Cupcakes on sale and they look interesting... I searched the internet and was so glad to find this from nasi lemak lover. I tried it immediately... Followed all the ingredients closely and wahlah... the eventual product is divine!!! It puffs up alot during the baking, and I was expecting it to sink alot during cooling... however, the shrinking was really minimal... perhaps I beat the eggs really well... since there was no levening agents or baking powder used. I changed some of the descriptors from the nasi lemak lover version though.

Hokkaido chiffon cupcakes 北海道牛奶蛋糕
(recipe source: adapted from Forbidden Garden with minor changes)
*makes 9 cupcakes

 

Chiffon cake

3 egg yolks

20g sugar
35g corn oil
60g milk
70g cake flour

3 egg whites
25g sugar


Filling
60g dairy whipping cream
10g sugar
1tsp instant custard powder


Icing sugar, for dusting


Method
1. Pre-heat oven to 170C.
2. Arrange paper liners on baking tray.
3. Whisk egg yolk and sugar with electric whisk till pale in colour.
4. Add in corn oil and milk, mix well.
5. Sift in cake flour, stir to combine.
6. Beat egg white until foamy, gradually add sugar, and continue beat till soft peak forms.
7. Take 1/3 of egg white and use a hand whisk to mix into egg yolk batter.
8. Fold in the balance egg white with a spatula/whisk till well combine.
9. Scoop batter into pre-arranged paper liners to about ¾ full.
10. Bake for 20-25 mins at middle rack.
11. Beat whipping cream with sugar till firm and stiff (over a bowl of iced water).
12. Add in custard powder, mix well.
13. Pipe custard cream into fully cooled cupcake and dust with icing sugar. Refrigerate before serving.

No Fail Sturdy Sugar Cookies

I needed a sturdy cookie recipe to make this diabolo cookie...

 

It wasn't really meant to look like this as I planned to connect the 2 pieces with a straw and then cover that part with modeling chocolate and then cover it with silver edible dust. However, after coming back from JB grocery trip in the morning, I was left with little time to accomplish the project. Finally, I couldn't even have enough time to wait for the chocolate coating to set... and instead of packing into separate bags, I can only put it into the cake box. However, from there I found this amazing sugar cookie recipe... which is super delicious and sturdy, and really can withstand stress. No chilling of the dough is required and it can be used immediately. Its not a sticky dough and I would recommend you do not over-mix the flour. Recipe adopted from here. Its a damn good recipe and I'm definitely going to use it again and again...

No-Fail Sugar Cookies

6 cups flour
3 tsp. baking powder
2 cups butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract or desired flavoring (I like almond myself)
1 tsp. salt

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well. Mix dry ingredients and add a little at a time to butter mixture. Mix until flour is completely incorporated and the dough comes together.

Chill for 1 to 2 hours (or see Hint below) - I don't find this necessary.

Roll to desired thickness and cut into desired shapes. Bake on ungreased baking sheet at 350 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes or until just beginning to turn brown around the edges. This recipe can make up to 5-dozen 3” cookies.

HINT: Rolling Out Dough Without the Mess -- Rather than wait for your cookie dough to chill, take the freshly made dough and place a glob between two sheets of parchment paper. Roll it out to the desired thickness then place the dough and paper on a cookie sheet and pop it into the refrigerator. Continue rolling out your dough between sheets of paper until you have used it all. By the time you are finished, the first batch will be completely chilled and ready to cut. Reroll leftover dough and repeat the process! An added bonus is that you are not adding any additional flour to your cookies.

The cookies are decorated with Royal Icing.

Royal Icing

3 3/4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
3 T meringue powder
6 T warm water

Beat 4 to 5 minutes.
By hand, stir in optional flavorings and desired tints.

Experimenting with Optima Flour

I finally laid my hands on a pack of this Optima flour. Its a flour with all the industrial use leveners, emulsifiers, chemicals etc in it. And it was labelled as the legendary NO FAIL Sponge cake mix. 

It contains everything... even sugar... so there's no need to even add sugar. 

What we need to do is... add eggs, water, and oil. I followed the swiss roll from AuntyYochana's blogsite... where she has famous swiss rolls made to perfection. I have never stopped exploring how to achieve the soft and fluffy texture of the Polar Sugar (Swiss) Roll...After doing loads of research long ago and never been able to confirm my hypothesis, I decided to try it out.

Opened and the flour is white and sparkly... I guess its from the sugar crystals? And I smelled it... it smells kinda weird... like baking soda and a little plasticky?? Other than that it looks OK.

Directions were to add eggs and water to the flour mixture, with yochana's recipe, a teaspoon of ovalett is required, so I put as per recipe. Then, whisk the mixture until its white and thick... and then add in the oil and vanilla essence and bake it... for the swiss roll, I'm doing it at 200 deg for about 11mins. 

That's the resultant sponge sheet. Not expecting it to be that super fragile, I tried flipping it over onto a sugared baking paper, and it crumbles into pieces. I fixed it and decided to make another one. I made 1/3 batch of buttercream and used it for 2 rolls.

My knife wasn't that good so I didn't manage to do such a clean cut...and I didn't put as much sugar cos scared too sweet... I took a bite and chewed... instantly... POLAR SUGAR ROLL appears right in my mind. That is it. Mystery solved. That is EXACTLY what the sugar rolls taste and feels like. Its nothing like what we can do at home with the natural ingredients without putting in all these chemical agents. The flour was crazy priced at $5 a pack (compared to $2.25 normal flour). As I eat and enjoy the wonderful texture, I can't help but picturing how much chemical goes into this...and other pastries in the commercial bakeries... I will definitely carry on making cakes and pastries the old fashioned way.