Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake

I made this cake for my brother's birthday (beginning of April). Originally, I wanted to make this old-fashioned chocolate cake from America's Test Kitchen, except seeing all that butter made me change my mind. Instead, I chose this recipe that used the healthier vegetable oil for making a moist chocolate cake. This cake was so good that my family requested for another one the next day. So I made another one, and used some of the leftover frosting to frost part of the cake. I made the second cake with my friend and it only took a few minutes to whip up. It's always nice to have a helper when baking. :)

Because I baked two cakes at the same time, I had to put the cakes into the oven side by side. What happened was that my cake was puffier on one side than the other one because the sides of the cakes that were in the middle of the oven did not rise as much. To solve this problem, you can rotate the pans halfway through baking, or you can just match up the puffy side and unpuffy side of the two layers and make an evenly leveled cake.

This was my first layer cake ever and I was so excited to frost it. It was so easy to make. In fact, this recipe reminded me of the easy chocolate cupcakes I made before. Also, after tasting this cake and looking at it, I was reminded of that humongous chocolate cake in Matilda, the movie. I don't know if you ever watched it, but in the movie and the book, this boy was forced to eat a whole chocolate cake by the mean principal.

I was inspired to make this cake when I saw it here.

Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Chocolate Cake
Recipe slightly adapted from Hershey's

Giant Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these cookies as a snack that me and my friends could enjoy at my school's senior movie night. All the seniors who wanted to could go to the big gym, get free tacos and enjoy the movie Up. I never watched it before, so I was very excited. The movie was soooo cute! It was just like watching it in a movie theater, except there were echos so I couldn't understand what they were saying sometimes. :/ hahaa

It was the best school night ever because I usually don't hang out with friends on a school night.

Giant Double Chocolate Chip Cookies

Rotiboys

I wanted to make these buns after having my first taste of them from Oh My Buns! My grandma's brother's wife bought a few boxes of rotiboys and distributed it to each family. The bakery specialized in making these buns and once I saw how soft these buns were I really wanted to try making them myself. Whenever I see a delicious bread, I always want to hunt down the recipe and try it out.

As I was making this bread, I found it really difficult to knead the dough. It was very sticky, so I had to add a bit more flour. I also happened to use 220 gm of egg and milk. When the dough was rising, I was a bit apprehensive of the results because compared to the pictures on Hearty Bakes, my dough was toooo wet.

I started wondering whether I should make a topping or not. Doubt crept into me as I wondered if this bread would turn out successfully or not. In the end, I decided to make the topping because how can a rotiboy be a rotiboy without a coffee topping? I halved the topping recipe and found out that it was just right for all 10 buns I had. However, after baking them, the topping was too watery for me and slid off the bread too much. I think it's because of the egg I used; I used an extra large egg. I was a bit disappointed with how the bread looked. Maybe disappointed is an understatement.

Then my mom, dad and brother tried out the bread and they all liked it. My brother even rated it a 9, saying that it would be better if the topping had more flavor. I agree, the topping should have more coffee (I omitted the coffee paste). My dad said that it should be sweeter (I second that because I have a sweet tooth). My mom really enjoyed it. All in all, although the looks of this bread, for me, was not too appealing, you will enjoy this bread.

Note: It's soft because of the honey.


Rotiboys
Recipe from Hearty Bakes,
"Sweet Buns Recipe reference: 简单又好做小烤箱面包"

Steamed Buns 饅頭 (Mantou)

I wanted to share this the day I made it, which was some time this past week. I've made it several times since then and even tried the wheat version. I'll share those tips in a separate post. The post below is what I wrote a few days ago. If I don't post this post now, I don't know when I'll get around to posting it. So here it is! I'll continue adding pictures until there is the usual step-by-step pictures. I highly recommend this recipe!

I've always wanted to try making the mantou my dad made. It was always a treat whenever he made them. When he hasn't made them for a long time, I would request for them, dropping hints. :D One day I tried learning from him. Except, my family usually cooks without measuring. So I tried the best that I could to get the recipe and below is my sad attempt of remembering his recipe...

Well before that, I decided to try out Angie's recipe in the meantime because I was craving mantou. I feel like I would be able to eat mantou for breakfast, lunch and dinner, without getting sick of it. As I mentioned many times before, I love eating carbs! :D I really would eat that much mantou if it was healthy for you, but it isn't....too much processed flour. Ok, anyway, I found her recipe a long time ago, before I even started blogging. Back then, I did not know much about breads. If you asked me to make mantou last year, I would be confounded.

The bread turned out sooo soft! And it had skin! You can tell how excited I was. lol That type of mantou is my favorite. Now, next step is to make this wheat mantou, but still keep this nice texture. The only downfall was my baking soda not being mixed well enough....leading to these brown splotches. I also learned that adding sugar and yeast creates alcohol and mixing baking soda with this alcohol may cause brown spots. In my case it was brown swirls. Maybe next time I won't add sugar to my starter to see if the brown splotches still happen.

Chinese Steamed Buns with Starter
Adapted from Angie's Recipes



Uploaded with ImageShack.us Photobucket is maintaining their website now, so I'll just use imageshack for the time being.

Spring Break, my Blog's 1st Anniversary and Randomness

Today
I'm so tired right now! Right now I'm having a week of spring break and it's been a blast. I'm having so much fun just relaxing and not worrying about school...I should be studying for my AP's though, maybe in a few days. Anyway, today I woke up, rode my bike to work, came back home, ate lunch, went shopping, baked a sponge cake, and had a dinner cooked by my grandma with my extended family. At the dinner, I played wii at my cousins' house and I had so much fun. I can't believe it's already Wednesday though. Only a few more days of break is left!!

College and these past few weeks
These past few weeks I haven't been blogging as much, but I'm going to blog more now I think. I have way too many half-written backlogs. Recently, I just got all my decisions from colleges and I know where I'm going to go now. Although it wasn't my first choice and I was a bit disappointed when I got rejected to my top choice, I'm also thankful that I was rejected from my top choice school. Because now, the school that I'm going to go to is closer to home and if I wanted to, I can visit home every weekend to see my family (maybe even do a bit of baking :D) While waiting for the decisions, I wasn't worried because I knew everything was in God's hands and that He would take care of everything for me. :D Even if I got rejected from this one school, a few years later when I look back I will see what a great decision it was for me to go to the other school.

My Blog
I am so behind in blogging. I am baking much faster than I can post. Here's a "glimpse" of what I still have to post about:

giant double chocolate chip cookies
rotiboys
pita bread
chocolate layer cake
sponge cake
peach buns
cinnamon swirl bread
and a few more...

I also apologize for not posting the recipe for my mom's taro nian gao. After posting the first few nian gao recipes, too much time passed and I forgot how she made it. :/ I'll post it up one day, hopefully, when I get the correct recipe and better pictures.

Today is my blog's first b-day! I never knew blogging could be so fun. It all started when I first discovered a blog one day when I was just searching for a recipe. Discovering one blog slowly led to discovering another blog and another one. After a while, I decided that I should make my own blog too. :) I am so glad I did that. Now because of my blog, I have been able to make many friends among the blogging community. Thank you everyone for supporting me. :) I have so much to learn from everyone. I hope I can still update this blog frequently in college.

My backyard
Since it's already spring, I want to share pictures of the flowers in my backyard.

I also have these flowers in my backyard, but my friend "K" dropped by one day and gave me these flowers. She made my day! :)







These are called wisteria and they only bloom once a year. What's sad is that after rain showers all the flowers drop to the ground. It took many, many years for this vine to grow so tall.



These are my flowers. Flowers that I planted years and years ago. They always show up annually because they develop new bulbs each year.











My aunt gave us this little purple flower and it grew into this big bunch of flowers...I don't know what it's name is though.









Last of all....





Ok, thanks for making it this far. :D Have a good day everyone.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes and Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting

I was browsing for a recipe to use up my sour cream and I remembered this chocolate cupcake recipe that I bookmarked a while ago. After I made it, I was glad that I remembered this recipe. These are the best chocolate cupcakes I have tried baking so far; my brother rated them a 9.2.

The recipe resulted in denser cupcakes, with a deeper chocolate taste. The frosting was also very good, but mine were a bit grainy. Maybe you’re supposed to use a mixer, instead of hand mixing? I also think I baked them longer than I was supposed to because although the cupcakes were really soft after I took them out of the tin, after they cooled down they developed “crusts” (only on the edges though). But after you let them sit out for a day, they become moist again.

I made this all the way back in February. Just this past Saturday I made a birthday cake for my brother. Looking back at this recipe, I'm surprised by the similarity between the cake recipe I used and this cupcake recipe. I'll be sharing that recipe tomorrow hopefully, my blog's 1st birthday! I was shocked when I found out that tomorrow is the anniversary, because I always thought I made my blog in May. How forgetful I am!

Sour Cream Chocolate Cupcakes and Chocolate Sour Cream Frosting
Recipe from Baking Bites

Chocolate Chip Chocolate Muffins

I made these on the same day I made the lemon matcha marble cake. My brother brought them to church as a snack for his Bible drill the next day.

Here's what I think... Next time, I will increase the amount of chocolate chips. Other than that, I was happy with how the muffins turned out. I wasn't able to get the pretty cracked tops that most muffins have though.

I was able to make 14 muffins. Make sure not to over bake them, otherwise they will be a bit dry. I wasn't able to get the pretty cracked tops that most muffins have though. I also decreased the sugar by one to two tablespoons, so maybe that's why?

I got the recipe from Brown Eyed Baker, who got it from Dorie Greenspan.


Chocolate Chip Chocolate Muffins