Author: amanda

(2/10 of my personal blog challenge)

Practise makes perfect! Finally – the almost ( I believe there’s room for improvement) perfect Japanese cheesecake!

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake Recipe
(from Everybody loves a sweet ending)
Ingredients:
140g/5 oz. fine granulated sugar
6 egg whites
6 egg yolks
1/4 tsp. cream of tartar
50g/2 oz. butter
250g/9 oz. cream cheese
100 ml/3 fluid oz. fresh milk
1 tbsp. lemon juice (can omit if you want a sweeter cake)
60g/2 oz. cake flour /superfine flour
20g/1 oz. cornflour (cornstarch)
1/4 tsp. salt

Instructions:
(Preheat oven to 160deg)

1. Melt cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler.

2.Cool the mixture. Mix in lemon juice, egg yolks and then fold in the salt, flour and cornflour.

3. Whisk egg whites with cream of tartar until foamy. Add in the sugar and whisk until soft peaks form.

4. Fold egg white mixture 1/3 at a time, to the cheese mixture until the batter is even.

5. Pour into a 8-inch round cake pan (Lightly grease and line the bottom and sides of the pan with greaseproof baking paper or parchment paper).

4. Bake cheesecake in a water bath* for 1 hours 10 minutes or until set and golden brown. (I left mine to cool for half an hour in the oven with the doors ajar as advised from other bloggers cos I was afraid that it would collapse suddenly if there was too big a change in temp)

*To bake cheesecake in a water bath means putting the cake pan (the one with the batter), into a bigger pan which contains hot water up to the middle of your cake pan. my 2 6-inch cake pan fits nicely in my baking pan 🙂

My notes:
– For step 2, it is important to cool the mixture to room temperature. I waited about 1 hr for the mixture to cool. I mix the flour and wolk mixture by hand – no need to use mixer
-For step 3, mix egg whites to soft peaks = creamy, thick mixture. Peaks droop when you make a peak with a whisk. This is the only step I needed to use my mixer
– This time round, I actually separate the egg whites and yolks using a egg seperator. It is better this way as egg yolk will not accidentally break, contaminating the whites
– I used 2 6-inch pans and baked for 1h 10 mins. I feel that baking in smaller pans makes the cake raise better
– My cake pans are not springform types. If you are using a springform pan, do wrap the botton of the pan with aluminium foil so water doesn’t seep into your cake.

This had always been a cake on my to-do list!

Since I managed to get free eggs from Safeway, I decided to try out the recipe 🙂 Nothing excites me more than trying out a new recipe! Baking/Cooking is such a joy!

Anyway, this is my first time baking a marble cake so I was quite certain that it won’t turn out well.. hah.. I actually wasted like 4 eggs because the egg yolks broke and polluted the egg whites when I was separating them. From my experience, egg whites are very sensitive.. you need to be very careful and make sure that there’s no egg yolks – else it might not reach the desired stiff peaks. Anyhow… I still polluted my egg whites :/ sigh… my egg whites did reach stiff peaks BUT it’s a little watery ( I beat them with my KA mixer for 20mins) I was quite sure my cake won’t be good… however… i think I was kinda wrong?! haha.. it turned out quite well!

Pardon the holes! haha… i was testing if the cake is cooked or nt. I’m not using an oven with fan.. so I was afraid that the cake won’t be baked properly! phew… at the end of 45 mins.. the skewer was still unclean! i pressed on… baked for another 10mins…still not clean… try for another 10 mins… finally… DONE! That’s y there’s so many holes! I just wanna make sure! ( Total time taken: 65 mins) I might use 2 6″ pans for baking this cake in future

First peek~~~

wah… got swirling design ok!! 😀 Happy!! I thought that the most cake-citing part was the type of swirling design you will get.. haha

Lovely!!! Sliced all out and they all looked pretty!

well… I ate 2 pcs immediately… how do u think it tasted?? hahaha… now i feel that the time i spent running in the gym is wasted 🙁

A piece for you!

Old-Fashioned Marble Cake Recipe
(from Thelittleteochew via Life is Great)

– 8 large eggs, separated
– 9 ozs (255g) castor sugar
– 12 ozs (340g) unsalted butter, softened
– 9 ozs (255g) all purpose flour
– 1 1/2 tsps baking powder
– 1 1/2 tsps pure vanilla extract
– 2 tbsps good quality cocoa powder
– 1/4 tsp salt

1. Preheat oven at 160°C (convection fan on) with a wire rack in the middle. Line an 8-inch round cake tin with parchment, butter and flour. Sift flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Set aside.

2. Cream butter in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment till light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar till light. Gradually add this into the butter and beat on medium speed till just incorporated. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites till stiff peaks form. With a spatula, fold in the meringue into the egg yolk mixture in 3-4 batches*. Add in the dry ingredients gradually until just incorporated.
* The first time I added the egg whites, it was impossible to fold. What I did was just mix it up with the thick yolk batter and “loosen up” the batter. The subsequent batches were much easier. I folded the whites in 3 batches.

3. Scoop out 1/4* of the batter in a separate bowl. Sieve cocoa powder over it and fold to mix well. Pour batters into tin, alternating between the two mixtures. Start with the yellow batter and end with the cocoa mixture. Rap pan on counter several times to eliminate air bubbles. With a long skewer, swirl (sparingly) around the batter to create the marble effect. Bake for 40-55 minutes or until a tester inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
* This is somewhat arbitrary. A little more won’t hurt, especially if you want a bit more chocolate in your cake! 🙂

4. Cool on wire rack completely before serving. Cake keeps at room temperature up to 3 days and can be frozen up to 3 months.

Try it! 🙂