Category: Homemade cakes

Our teenage chef is on a madeleine baking frenzy! She made two batches on the same day some time last week and it was a BIG HIT with everyone, especially Cass.

Cass even brought the madeleines to school for recess. She’s one stubborn fella who just wouldn’t want to bring any food to school despite me forcing, coaxing and even bribing her. I’m worried that she will not be able to endure an almost 24-hour fast with only water. But this super stubborn girl said that she’s not hungry in school as there’s no PE and she’s just seated at her desk from 7-ish a.m. till 3 p.m. in an air-conditioned class room. She says her butt and back hurt, and her muscles go stiff from sitting almost the entire day. Thus, when she gets home, she works out quite a bit. She’s a fitness junkie.

As I am typing this post now, chef S had a spur of the moment whim to bake madeleines again because Maria will be here today to help us clean up. I think she’s whipping up banana madeleines and some other new flavors. She loves creating new flavors.

Last week she made madeleines with different toppings – pistachio, hazelnut, blueberry and original. The batter is mixed with almond meal.

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My baking queen’s last bake for the year 2018 on 31 December 2018 was a hyper-delicious pomegranate cake, cafe style, complete with decor.

It’s pretty unbelievable that a 13-year old baked this!

When Sherilyn was much younger, I had suspicion that she had ADHD as she was always hyper-active (and kept getting herself into accidents till I bought an accident insurance for her when she was 1 year old), didn’t need much sleep (even up to this date!) and could not focus in her studies. We were always in loggerheads simply because she was bull-headed and so am I! She loves to answer me back whenever I say that she’s stubborn by snapping this remark at me “whose genes do you think I have?”

When Sherilyn was 10 years old, my suspicion was quelled. She baked a gluten-free strawberry cake for her granny’s 70th birthday, all on her own. And then she googled many other recipes and baked tons of other stuff. My all-time favorite is her meat pie.  That was when I saw how focused she could be when she was doing something that she loves.

Ok, back to this hyper-yummy pomegranate cake!

Sherilyn spent over 5 hours on the cake. She had wanted to bake the cake on 30 December, i.e. on the actual day of her dad’s birthday to surprise him but we were out the whole day and I had to stop her from baking.  Thus she baked it as a belated birthday cake for her dad the next day.

This cake is truly very pomegranate-ish.  Every bite of the cake has fresh, juicy rubies of pomegranate in it.  Even the cake batter and butter icing have pomegranate juice in them.

The pastel pink butter icing is composed of white chocolate, pomegranate jam (which she made a week earlier), butter and sugar.

Pomegranate jam made using freshly juiced pomegranate rubies, lemon juice and a little sugar:

The chocolate cake is coated with a layer of dual pastel colored butter icing, which she used blue pea flower for the blue and pomegranate juice for the pink.

She baked three cakes using organic cocoa powder, sliced the cakes into half and stacked them up to a taller height. The cakes are sandwiched with dark chocolate butter cream.

Mixing the blue pea flower colored water into the butter cream:

The chocolate wings for the decor are made from frozen melted dark chocolate:

This cake tastes 100% like one bought from a fancy schmancy cafe.  Even after 3 days when we ate it today, it still tastes good.

Even her hyper-critical foodie dad said the cake tastes “OK la”.  When this comment comes from him on anything that we bake or cook, this means it’s GOOD.  When he pushes the food aside and said “lousy or no good”, it means it is still good but not up to his hyper-high standard la. 🙄 🙄

Even Alycia who is always hyper-critical of everything that Sherilyn cooks or bakes commented that the cake tastes like some cafe-bought cake but said that the decor needs some improvement if she has intention of selling her cakes 🤑

I give my baking queen a 9/10 rating for this cake 😍.

She’s really on her way to selling her cakes and bakes very soon! 🤑

No. of times viewed = 75

The Baking Queen in the house aka Drama Queen aka Sherilyn has embarked on some baking projects to kill time during the school holidays. This is the best activity for her to distract her from all the electronic gadgets in the house.

Here’s what she baked over the past 2 weeks:

Homemade pizza with the dough that she made from scratch:

Pizza toppings ~ mashed avocado, cherry tomatoes, overnight sauteed broccoli with fresh mushrooms, overnight ‘unwanted’ chicken breast from dinner and mozarella cheese. She ‘recycled’ leftover dinner into a yummo pizza!

Pancake using the Japanese pancake mix that her doting koo ma from Hong Kong gave. Sherilyn mixed the pancake mix with dried blue pea flowers tea from her granny’s garden. She was so delighted to have finally made a blue colored pancake using natural blue coloring 💙

Organic sweet corn fritters with kafir lime leaves (everyone’s favorite!):

A loaf of banana bread with pecans. I love this. This has a tad room for improvement though in that more bananas should be added and lesser flour used.  She made this with only 2 leftover bananas in the kitchen and whipped it up in under an hour. But it tastes like an expensive banana bread sold at some fancy cafes. This is off-the-charts delicious when it’s lightly toasted in the oven the next day. You’ll get crispy exterior and spongy interior.  Stays good in the fridge for over a week.

Nope, these are not coconut candies, though they smell like it. These are a work-in-progress project. They are bath bombs made using baking soda, extra virgin coconut oil, lemon juice and essential oils. Sherilyn’s still experimenting these and they are not saleable / usable just yet.

Lemon meringue tarts, which is another item that you’ll find in a fancy cafe costing over RM15 each.

The other day we were at Antipodean for breakfast after Cass’ appointment at the hospital. The hubs asked if I’d like to takeaway any of the cakes and tarts  at the cafe and I told him that his Baking Queen could bake all those items ranging from chocolate brownie to oversized chocolate chip cookies, lemon tarts, banana bread and carrot cake. So thanks and no thanks.  Our Baking Queen bakes the best cakes, tarts and cookies 😁

Evading the paparazzi again 🙄

The lemon meringue tarts are such a hassle to make. There’re 101 steps and our baking queen spent the entire afternoon in the kitchen to whip them up.

She baked a large round tart and several smaller ones to give away to her dance teacher and to her beloved kakak Maria.

Chocolate molten cake baked in the microwave oven for Alycia’s 15th birthday on 5 December 2018.

And these cookies were baked yesterday. A batch of butter peppermint cookies…

… and a batch of chocolate (using organic cocoa powder) peppermint cookies.  She used my Peppermint Essential Oil from Young Living.  She used 4-5 drops of Peppermint Essential Oil for each batch of cookies.

Sherilyn’s next project will most likely be gingerbread cookies for Christmas! And probably another meat pie which everyone loves.

No. of times viewed = 35

Today Drama Queen embarked on her first post-UPSR baking. It’s chocolate brownies using Kris Jenner’s (Kim Kardashian’s mother) recipe.  She Googled for the recipe, watched it briefly on You Tube and then darted to the kitchen to start work. This time, mess was minimal. After baking, she washed all the gadgets and even mopped the floor. Trophy daughter, hey? 💗

The recipe wasn’t followed to a tee.  Drama Queen tweaked it to our preference.  Sugar was reduced by half and mashed bananas were added too. And the outcome was superb. The chocolate brownie was awesome and the moment it was  taken out of the oven, we scarfed down a big chunk of the cake even before it was fully cooled down.

Drama Queen likes her brownies with a scoop of Sunnyside Farms Cookies N Cream ice-cream.

Everything about this chocolate brownies was perfect, from the texture to the level of sweetness, the color (not overly brown/black) to the taste.

Perfection!  This girl’s got talent. I rate this brownies 9/10.

New project – our best-in-the world umami meat pie.

No. of times viewed = 19