Recipe taken from The Life & Loves of Grumpy’s Honeybunch

First off, i think the recipe has too much liquid, i only notice if midway into baking when i already added 210g milk into the liquid mixture, and it looks like too much liquid. There and then, i realized than normally recipe would state 1/2 or 1 1/2 etc of liquid instead of 1.2 cup of milk, perhaps it is typo mistake, perhaps it should be 1/2 cup milk which is only 125gm

dry and liquid ingredients to be mixed

Have a confession to make, i bought serbuk kas kas which looks like poppy seed, upon checking i think it is not poppy seed which are usually black in colour, but this kas kas powder is white  and black mixture.

failed.

The bottom sticks, could be due to below

1) i used individual tart shell put on top of baking sheet which block heat from bottom of oven. Muffin tin are available for a reason! This doubly bottom layer of mine caused the muffin not be cooked even already in oven for more than 30 minutes

2) I reduced the oil due to already soo much liquid from milk

Very high expectation for a recipe called “Best Pumpkin Cake Ever” from Confessions of a City Eater.

Since Libby’s canned pumpkin is expensive here, bought a 1.2 kg pumpkin which after peeled and deseeded become only 650g

Sieve the steamed pumpkin for finer texture, it is so difficult, i think i took half an hour or more for this

5 small eggs instead of 4 eggs specified

Done, after around an hour of baking time as the inside of the cake is very moist and wet even after it reach the 30 minutes specified baking time.

It looks very dense, but taste is nice. Nonetheless this is definitely not the best pumpkin cake and it is terrible extremely oily!

Recipe from Cooking Pleasure, above is flour +butter + cheese + milk

mixed

egg white

After beating the egg white till slightly frothy, add sugar tablespoonful at a time

The egg white looks ok when i finished beating it till soft peak, but it turns slightly watery and slide around in the mixing bowl when i started mixing into the egg-cheese-flour mixture. At the end, the finished batter is very watery and leave no “bump” on top, cake is practically level on top by itself

See, some of the water batter seeps from bottom of pan. Above is finished baked cake (in about 35 minutes) flipped over vinegar bottle

Surprisingly, the texture is very nice, and the cake is moist!

With barely noticable cream cheese, just feels like a nice moist chiffon cake, recomended. Normally chiffon which i made are not memorable, but this is kinda memorable

Pastry (recipe from Savour Fare)
6 oz. (170g) flour
½ tsp. salt
4 oz. (113g) butter, frozen, cut into cubes.
2 oz. (57g or more) ice water
OR
340g flour
1 tsp. salt
226g butter, frozen, cut into cubes.
114g or more ice water

Filling: (recipe from Serious Eats)
15 ounces (425g) pumpkin puree
11 ounces (312g) evaporated milk
125 grams light brown sugar
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
pinch of salt
2 eggs, 2 egg yolks

A bar of Anchor unsalted butter, 340g of flour and 1 teaspoon of salt is just right to making 2 batch of pie pastry, one to be stored in freezer for future use.

One tip from other website is to grate frozen butter into flour, and this i find have to be done in an air con room just cause the heat and humidity from Malaysia will melt the butter and make them stick together.

butter mixed into flour, now to mix some ice water to complete the dough. Use spatula to fold water to prevent melting of the butter “flakes” in flour. Form into a disc, wrap in plastic wrap and chill until firm. (about 20 minutes to 2 hours)

After resting the dough in fridge, put the dough between 2 greaseproof paper and flour the dough so that it doesn’t stick to the paper, i used a white vinegar bottle as a makeshift rolling pin, works well for me. Peel off the parchment/greaseproof paper and flip it over constantly, adding more flour to prevent stickiness. Do this in an aircon room to prevent melting butter.

Quarter fold the dough and move it to a pie plate. I used a springform pan with detachable bottom

lay the dough, make sure not to stretch it to prevent shrinkage in the oven which will break the dough. Chill the pastry before baking (at least 15 minutes)

Prick all over with a fork (bottom and sides of pastry) Line with parchment paper, and fill with pie weights(rice/beans). Brush with egg white halfway through baking to harden bottom of dough. The pastry have shrank much after baking. And fortunately the pastry doesn’t stick to the pan even though i didn’t butter the pan due to high fat content of the pastry which cause butter to drip down from bottom of the springform pan onto base of oven.

Bake at 215C for 16 minutes (the crust should be pale gold, and dry to the touch) I don’t know why, mine turns out very oily

at the same time, steam one pumpkin, here is about 400g of pumpkin

after blitzing all the fillings, should have sieve the pumpkin fillings into the pastry instead of pouring it in straight away, due to blitzing which cause the mixture to be filled with air pockets. Sieving it could potentially remove the air bubbles and foam. Pour the filling into the cooled shell

Some website advise to pull out the pie from oven at the first sign of puffing, and mine puff up 25 minutes into baking. Feeling unsure, i left it in about 10 minutes more.

bake at 350 (180C) for more than 25 minutes placing pie above cookie sheet.

After cooled, the puffed pie will sink back in

Very wobbly and soft and the pastry is a bit soggy at the bottom, far from perfect. The filling flavour is there but the texture is not smooth and very soft, could sieving the pumpkin filling have helped save the filling?

Basically a carrot cake recipe substituting carrot with beetroot, recipe from lemonpi.

Only change i made is reduce the sugar from 200g to 150g, which in the end the cake is slightly not sweet enough

Ingredients, the tedious part is grating of beetroot which texture is a bit hard and hard to grate

beetroot cake ready to go into oven

doesn’t look red at all eh?

Done

the cake is slight too wet, just ok for me.