Birthday celebration for my brother

We celebrated my brother's birthday about 2 weeks ago. I originally planned to make a genoise (sponge cake filled with cream) but thought it might not turned really well. So, I decided to go for a more simple cake, and made 2 swiss rolls, thereby having two flavours instead of one. I picked on a matcha green tea flavoured cake (with strawberries) and a black forest one (with glace cherries). I wanted to try and do the roll decor cakes (having prints on the cake itself, but it didn't turned out quite right, so I piped some more whipped cream to cover the patches). The cakes were nice and fluffy. The decorations were not too bad after all. I think it was a success. 

For the dinner celebration, we had herbal chicken soup (with white fungus and mushroom), cabbage steamed balls, barbeque pork, bagels with smoked trout and parsley cream cheese. It was indeed a feast.

  

Pandan Swiss Roll

After some measurement adjustments and trials, I finally reached the 'perfect' (to my liking) recipe for a Pandan swiss roll. This is light and fluffy. This is definitely a quick replacement for a Pandan chiffon cake. It is much easier and less time consuming to make, which is very convenient for me. Besides, it needs less ingredients and less people to finish it. You can also alternate the filling as per your own taste. I personally like to go for coconut filling.

Click here for the recipe.

This is my first attempt, where I went slightly overboard with the pandan extract. I really liked the texture of the cake, and the taste was very nice and flavoursome. Mysecond attempt was to cut down the pandan extract by 1/4 tsp and it turned out pale green as it should be.

Matcha (Green Tea) Swiss Roll with red bean filling

I told myself that I will practise swiss roll baking this year, and I am. I stumble across this video and I couldn't be happier. The recipe is so simple and easy to follow. No oil is required and no need to separate the egg to make stiff egg whites . I was pleasantly surprised when I first tried the cake. It turned out fluffy, spongy and very light. It was not dense or anything, even if eaten straight from the fridge. I shall follow this recipe for all my future flavour combo.

Instead of using strawberries, I used red bean since I had some in the fridge. The roll was delicious. I have finally found a recipe which gives me light sponge.  I also like the fact that it is a small cake (9 inch square).  hence you cannot feel too indulgent.

Pandan swiss roll with coconut cream filling

One of my wish this year is to make swiss rolls. I want to try as many flavours as I can. Today, I tried my first one: pandan swiss roll. I used this recipe, but I used coconut cream as the filling instead. I also threw in some shredded coconut to make it more of a coconut pandan swiss roll. I rolled the cake lengthwise to make smaller slices and they turned out quite nice.The cake itself was nice and fluffy, but my only addition would be to add a teaspoon of baking powder to ensure that the cake rises properly and there is no tight layer. Other than that, everyone enjoyed it a lot.