Recipe from SimplyRecipes

I halved the recipes and make it into 6 -inch round cake and about eight muffin size small-cakes, below the portion used.

200g Munchy’s brand malt-milk cookies
Pinch of salt
70g melted butter

500g cream cheese
135g sugar, can be further reduced, maybe 100g will do
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
80g sour cream
100g whipped cream

For topping:
130g sour cream
10g icing sugar, can be further reduced, maybe 7g

When i first tried the cheesecake made in muffin size, it taste quite perfect. Whereas on the next day, i ate from the 6-inch cake round for a birthday party, it feels quite cloying, maybe this cake has to be quite cool to be good? For the picture above, the sour cream topping looks to be “melting” from the surrounding heat as we had move the cake around a bit while bringing it to a birthday party.

Since making this cake, i have made cheesecake using another recipe which uses lemon juice instead of sour cream, i find the lemon cheesecake taste quite good, so don’t think i will be making this sour cream version again as sour cream is quite expensive here.

A tried and true recipes made numerous time, previously documented in year 2008 blogpost

done

perhaps too much batter, or need to get a bigger cake pan

for this try, i added about 4 small “segments” of durian pulp into the cheese-milk-butter mixture before mixing up everything else, looks fabulous

looks cottony

need to flip it out from cake pan to be cooled, else there will be much water condensation on cake bottom if left to cooled inside cake pan

peeled away the baking paper for better cooling

recipe i used from Ai Wei’s My Story

2nd time making it

overbaked 🙁 top part of cake is too near the oven top heat element

insides are fine, just outside slightly burnt

Recipe improvised from My Inner Foodie

175g egg white
175g sugar
2 tablespoon cornflour
2tsp white vinegar
Preheat 160celcius
Spread to 10cm diameter meringue and bake in 120 celcius for 90 mins or more

Tips:

1) Make the pavlova HIGH, but don’t pile too high, follow the diameter mentioned in recipe. MUST beat egg white till STIFF peak, else the meringue will flatten and widen during the baking/cooling process

2) A lot of recipe specifying to leave meringue to cool in oven to prevent pavlova shrinking due to cold air, i try to place a gap on the oven using a fork or something, then wait till the thermometer in oven showing oven temp to much lower temp

3) Once the meringue is cooled, must store somewhere “safe” and not on counter top, as ants will definitely come. This coming from experience. Experience the horror of looking at perfectly baked crispy meringue all covered with ants. Oh no!

4) Meringue will weep (watery-looking sugar crystal sweating/weeping down the side during baking process) caused by sugar not fully incorporated, remember the beaten meringue felt slight grainy with unincorporated sugar when I touched the whisk before shaping the beaten meringue into disk to be baked

5) Try putting the pavlova in the middle of oven. For meringue, i normally put the baking pan into lower end of the oven fearing the top of pavlova will brown too much, ending up, the bottom of pavlova become very much crispy (see the bottom most picture of this post), while top not yet became crispy. Just put in middle rack, and if the top become too brown, just top with some baking paper.

looks not bad

Above is 2nd try using below recipe: I used 4 egg whites and only 130g sugar, it turned out all marshmallowy and does not have crispy exterior 🙁 Looks good, tall, but it is actually sticky soft outside, and not nice! The outer is supposed to be crispy

For the above third try, i finally tested a good egg white to sugar ratio (ie same weight for egg white and sugar):  175g sugar, 175 egg white, bake 2 hours 120 celcius. The previous try of lowering the sugar use too much wasn’t working to well, anyway, this is easy to remember: same amount of egg white and sugar

The use of 4 egg whites stated in most recipe can be very vague, some eggs can be larger than others…

4th try: successful with crispy exterior and mashmallowy center, although it looks very crackly outside

looks pretty top with strawberry and blueberries

yummy

bottom too crispy as i baked in lower rack

Recipe adapted from Food52’s Not too boring, Not Too Rich chocolate cake

Cake

1.5 cup(177g) AP flour (can replace half cup with wheat flour)
1.5 cup(130g)cocoaPowder
0.5 (100g)cup sugar
100g brown sugar (original recipe is 1 cup which is 200g)
Half tsp baking powder
Half tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 cup sour cream
Half cup milk
4 eggs
Half cup melted butter
1 tsp vanilla
80g  chocolate button (reduce from 1 cup (170g) bittersweetchoc chip)

Frosting (the frosting have been reduced proportionately from original recipe as i bought 2 bag of sour cream, each 200g, and already used 250g(1 cup) for the cake)
200g choc chip
150g sour cream

177 celcius
9*9 inch baking pan
Add wet ingredient into dry ingredient
Fold in choc chip
Bake for 50 minute

I am not sure whether the melted chocolate is not cool enough, or the sour cream is not room-temperature enough, but i sure have left the sour cream on counter top from 6pm and only came to making the frosting on 9pm, and the frosting sure doesn’t look shiny like those in Food52, is it called seizing of the sour cream due to difference of temperature between the melted choc and sour cream?

The chocolate-sour cream frosting is slight sourish, some might not used to it, but the tang kinda balance out the sweetness and making it not too sweet

melting dark chocolate button using bain-marie method

looks grainy and not smooth/shiny looking like those in Food52 website

done

my take on drizzling caramel chocolate on top of the cake

Previous post on making this yogurt cake

For below recipe, not sure it is the fact i am not using cake flour, using less oil, less sugar, or the fact the cake is left in the fridge, it felt less moist this time.

Recipe: (bake at 180 Celcius for 50-60 minutes)
120g oil (reduced from first try of 140g, should stick to 140g next time)
140g sugar (reduced from first try of 190g, i think the sugar content is just right, can increase to 150g if not sweet enough)
370g yogurt
350g flour (cake flour if possible)

Caramel Chocolate: (Adapted from Food52’s Whipped Chocolate Caramel Ganache)

50g sugar (reduce from 100g)
50g salted butter cut into tablepoon-size pieces
40g heavy cream (originally used 50g, but it flow-overed in the oven, leaving around 40g or slightly less)
30g dark chocolate (I used bittersweet)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Easy French Buttercream (recipe from Food52) Made this buttercream to top the cake some time later, not bad for me although some colleague find it very oily

2 whole large egg
Large pinch salt
63g water
133g sugar
340g unsalted butter

Whisk first 3. Then sugar
Water barely simmering, bain merie up till top of egg mixture till 175-180f (not having thermapen, i just touch the mixture making sure it is quite hot)
Strain the mixture into another mixing bowl, rapping the strainer
Beat with paddle 3-5 mins till cool and like fluffy, foam like soft whipped cream
Beat butter into foam tablespoon at a time