Two Tone Fried Puff Pastry (莲花酥)

Ingredients:

【Skin A】
-  All purpose flour - 2 cup
-  Butter / Lard - 1/2 cup
- Water - 1/2 cup
- Sugar - 1 TBSP
- Wilton food color gel, Red
【Skin B】
- Cake flour - 1.5 cup
- Corn oil - 1/3 cup
【Filling】:
- Red bean pastry filling
【Coating】:
- Egg yolk wash - 1 egg yolk + 1 TBSP water, mix well
- Sesame seeds

Steps:

1. Melt butter in microwave
2. Add all ingredients for Skin A to warm butter. Knead to smooth dough, and let it sit for 20 minutes.
3. Knead ingredients for skin B into a dough, and let it sit for 15 minutes.
4. Split dough A in two, and use food color to dye one dough red.
4. Portion the dough A and dough B into small balls, about 10-11g for skin A, and 6-7 g for skin B.

5. Wrap each dough B into dough A, and round it to a ball. Use a rolling pin and roll the dough into oval shape, then roll into a bundle. Repeat in the other direction.

9. Use rolling pin to make round wrapper. Overlap one white skin A with one red skin A, and then wrap the filling (about 30g) in side.  Use knife to cut through the skin.

10. Fill a pot with oil that can immerse the whole pastry. Fry the pastry over medium heat until the skin puffs up. 

Minecraft Block Cake

The cake was made by 4 layers of  Chocolate Chiffon Cake, each layer was 8"x8", filled and crumb coated with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting, and then covered and decorated with Marshmallow Fondant.

Ingredients for cake
Egg - 20 Large
Cake flour - 240g
Cocoa powder - 120g
Oil - 120g
Milk - 200g
Sugar - 240g for egg white
Sugar - 80g for egg yolk
Lemon juice - 4 tsp
Baked at 350°F for 25 minutes.

4 batches of Chocolate Buttercream Frosting were needed, and each batch used
Crisco solid vegetable shortening - 1/2 cup
Butter, softened - 1/2 cup (1 stick)
Cocoa powder - 3/4 cup
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp
Sifted confectioners' sugar - 4 cups  (approximately 1 lb.)
Milk - 3-4 TBSP

I made two batches of Marshmallow Fondant. Each with
1 package (16 ounces) white mini marshmallows (use a good quality brand)
2-5 tablespoons water
2 pounds (about 8 cups) sifted confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
The fondant was made two days ahead. I then tinted one batch light brown to cover the whole cake, and
tinted some fondant different shade of green, brown, and blue.

I also made a batch of vanilla buttercream and colored it green to make the grass border. The ingredients were:
Crisco solid vegetable shortening - 1/2 cup
Butter softened - 1/2 cup
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp
Sifted confectioners' sugar - 4 cups (approximately 1 lb.)
Milk - 2 TBSP

Black Sesame Puff Pastry with Salt and Pepper (椒盐牛舌饼)

The DaoXiangCun's black sesame puff pastry (北京稻香村的牛舌饼) is one of my favorites. This homemade pastry is an attempt to mimic the taste. The filling is from MaoMaoMom's receipt. The puff pastry dough is my usual receipt,originally from my friend Liu Qiang.

Ingredients:

【Skin A】
-  All purpose flour - 2 cup
-  Butter / Lard - 1/2 cup
- Water - 1/2 cup
- Sugar - 1 TBSP
【Skin B】
- Cake flour - 1.5 cup
- Corn oil - 1/3 cup
【Filling】
- Cooked glutinous rice flour  - 1/4 cup
- Roasted black sesame - 1/3 cup
- Roasted pecan - 1/2 cup
- Salt - 3/4 tsp
- Sugar - 1 TBSP
- Sichuan pepper (Zanthoxylum 花椒) - 1/2 tsp
- Honey - 2 TBSP
- Egg white - 1
【Coating】:
- Egg yolk wash - 1 egg yolk + 1 TBSP water, mix well
- Sesame seeds

Steps:

1. If you have not done so, roast the glutinous rice flour in a dry fry pan over low heat. Let it cool. Roast the black sesame and let it cool. Follow the recipe to prepare the roasted pecan with five spices powder.
2. Use spice grinder to grind the roasted black sesame, pecan. Or you can use a rolling pin to ground the pecan and black sesame in a Ziploc bag.

3. In a mixing bowl, add all ingredients for filling and knead the mixture into small balls (about 7g each) and set aside.

4. Melt the butter with microwave
5. Add all ingredients for Skin A to warm butter. Knead to smooth dough, and let it sit for 20 minutes.
6. Mix ingredients for skin B into a dough, and let it sit for 15 minutes.
7. Portion the dough A and dough B into small balls, about 10-11g for skin A, and 6-7 g for skin B.

8. Wrap each dough B into dough A, and round it to a ball. Use a rolling pin and roll the dough into oval shape, then roll into a bundle. Repeat in the other direction.

9. Use rolling pin to roll out an oval shape wrapper, and then wrap the filling inside. Press or roll it into oblong shape.

10.  (Optional) Brush the pastry with egg yolk wash.

11. Bake in preheated 350°F oven for 20 minutes.

Roasted Pecan

I tried this from MaoMao Mom's receipt.

Ingredients:

Pecan Halves - 1 lb
Salt - 3/4 tsp
Five spices powder - 2/3 tsp

Steps:

1. Put pecan in a stainless steel mixing bowl, pour in boiling water. Let the pecan soak for 15 seconds and then drain the water.
2. sprinkle salt and five spices powder on pecans and mix well.
3. Preheat over to 330°F.
4. On a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, spread the pecans.

5. Bake for 20 minutes. Stir the pecans, and bake for another 4 minutes. Turn off the oven and take the tray out after 2 minutes.
6. Let the pecans cool for 1-2 hours, then store in sealed container.

Steamed Rice Cake with Brown Sugar - Nian Gao (红糖年糕)

Steamed rice cake is popular during Chinese new year. It is considered good luck to eat "nian gao" during Chinese new year, because "nian gao" is a homonym for "higher year."

Ingredients:

Glutinous rice flour - 1 bag (1 lb)
Brown sugar - 360 g (1 and 3/4 cup)
Water - 1 and 1/2 cup

Steps:

1. Boil water and brown sugar in a pot until the sugar is fully dissolved. Let the sugar solution cool.
2. Add sugar water in rice flour, and mix well. If the batter is too sticky, add some water.

3. Pour the batter in a greased 8" cake pan and  steam for 2 hours.

4. After cake is cool, refrigerate overnight.

 

You can slice the cake, and pan fry it over medium heat  until the slices are crusted on both sides. Serve them warm.

Christmas Gift Box Cake

I made this cake for a 200+ people Christmas party. We only finished the bottom two tiers.

For equipment, I bought Wilton square cake pan set that includes 16", 12", and 8" square cake pans. I originally planned to use the 16" as base layer, then realized it would be too big and heavy to handle. In additional, the biggest heavy duty cake base I could found is 16" square. So I used the 12" as the base layer, even that, the final cake probably weight more than 30 pounds. It was difficult to carry by one man. Now I understand why wedding cakes are moved around  on a cart. It is definitely necessary.

Prepare Fondant and Fondant Bow

Here is Marshmallow Fondant recipe. In order to make deep red, I first made white fondant and then knead in a whole 1 oz bottle of Wilton Gel Color, the fondant became crumby and flaky. I tried to save it by adding water, light corn syrup, and all attempts failed. At the end, I gave up and did a new batch. This time, I mixed the Wilton gel color in the melt marshmallow bowl before mix in powdered sugar. This worked great. To decorated the cake, I needed total 4 batches of fondant, 2 red, 1 green and 1 red.

The fondant bow has to be made up to 1 week ahead so that the bowl can dry thoroughly. Here is the Wilton instruction on how to make fondant bow. I underestimated how fragile the bowls were and ended up with a lot of broken bowl loops. The lesson here is to be very gentle and make a lot of extras! See my make shift bowl loop hanger.

Bake Cakes

The base box was made by 3 layers of Chocolate Chiffon Cake, each layer was 12"x12"x2", filled and crumb coated with Chocolate Buttercream Frosting.

I baked 3 cakes and each cake used
Egg - 10 Large
Cake flour - 120g
Cocoa powder - 60g
Oil - 60g
Milk - 100g
Sugar - 120g for egg white
Sugar - 40g for egg yolk
Lemon juice - 2 tsp
Baked at 350°F for 25 minutes.

I needed 6 batches of chocolate buttercream frosting, and each batch used
Crisco solid vegetable shortening - 1/2 cup
Butter, softened - 1/2 cup (1 stick)
Cocoa powder - 3/4 cup
Vanilla extract - 1 tsp
Sifted confectioners' sugar - 4 cups  (approximately 1 lb.)
Milk - 3-4 TBSP

I would like the second tier to be 10" square, but I did not have a 10" square pan, so I baked 3 white Chiffon Cake, each was 12"x12"x2", and then trimmed them smaller. I did not trimmed them enough, the second tier was a little bigger than ideal to be fully supported by the base tier. The second tier is filled and crumb coated with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting.

The top tier was an 8" cube. In order to save time, I used the 16" square pan to bake a 16"x16"x2" cake and then divided it to four 8"x8"x2" cakes. The top layer was also filled and crumb coated with Vanilla Buttercream Frosting.

Ingredients for each layer in second tier:
Egg - 10 Large
Cake flour - 170g
Oil - 80g
Milk - 80g
Sugar - 120g for egg white
Sugar - 60g for egg yolk

Ingredients for top tier
Egg - 20 Large
Cake flour - 340g
Oil - 160g
Milk - 160g
Sugar - 240g for egg white
Sugar - 120g for egg yolk

I needed 8 batches of vanilla buttercream frosting, and each batch used
Crisco solid vegetable shortening - 1/2 cup
Butter softened - 1/2 cup

Vanilla extract - 1 tsp
Sifted confectioners' sugar - 4 cups (approximately 1 lb.)
Milk - 2 TBSP

Assemble and Decorate

1. Cakes with crumb coating should be refrigerated for 2 hours+ or overnight. Each cake should have a cake board underneath that is trim to the size of the cakes.
2. Cover each tier of cake with fondant individually. 

3. For the base and second tier, use 4 -6  Wilton bamboo dowel rods cut to length so it is just below the surface of the cake.

4. After stack the second tier on base tier, add dowel rods to go thru both tiers so that they do not shift. Then stack the top tier, and add dowel rods thru the cakes from the very top.
5. At last, add fondant bow on top, and other decorations.
6. The cake is very heavy. I am glad I used a heavy duty 16" square cake base. 

Berry Bonanza Cake

This is inspired by the Wilton's berry bonanza cake. I used by proven Chiffon cake recipe to make a 12"x12"x2" cake, and then the adapted a mixed berry filling recipe to make the filling.

Ingredients:

Cake (12" square)
Cake flour - 204 g
Egg - 12
Sugar for egg white - 144 g
Sugar for egg yolk - 72 g
Oil - 96 g
Milk - 96 g

Berry Filling
Frozen  mixed berry - 4 cups (about 1 lb)
Fresh raspberries - 12 oz
Sugar - 3/4 cup
Water - 1/2 cup (do not need if use frozen raspberries)
Corn Starch - 4-6 TBS

Whipped Cream Frosting
Heavy whipping cream - 6 cups
Powdered sugar - 1 and 1/2 cup
Gelatin - 1 pack
Gel color - green

Decorating
Fresh raspberries - some

Steps:

1. In a large pot and simmer the berries on med high for 30-40 minutes.

2. Add sugar, a little at a time, and let boil stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes.
3. Turn the heat down to medium low. Mix 2 TBS of the cornstarch with 1/3 cup cold water and then add to the boiling berry mixture, repeat until your mixture reach the desired consistency.
4. Let the mixture cool for 30 minutes then pour it into a gallon Ziploc bag and refrigerate at least 24 hours.
5. Bake a 12" square cake. Wait for cake to cool down and then split the cake into two layers.

6. Make whipped cream frosting, and build a barrier around the bottom layer cake. Then fill with raspberry gel.

7. Place the second layer of the cake on top, and decorate the cake with whipped cream frosting.