Christmas Round the Corner????

Before you know it, it’s almost the end of the year. Christmas is coming in about 3 months time, and so, it’s about time to make some fruitcake to cure. Made 6 to gift, and 2 to keep for Christmas parties held at home. 8 in total. The fridge is packed.

If you are like me, and you are looking to either have some fruitcake during Christmas, or to gift these to friends and family, then now is the time to make them. 🙂

Recipe is taken from Anna Chan of Sugar Inc.

Ingredients:

Group A:

200g Dried Fruits

400g Grand Marnier/Gold Barcardi

Group B:

75g Good Quality Butter

60g Fine Sugar

1tsp Mixed Spice

1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Group C:

1/4 tsp Bicarbonate Soda

2tsp Orange Zest/Lemon Zest

50g Good Quality Butter

13g Whipping Cream

Group D:

100g Eggs

150g Cake Flour

1.5tsp Double Acting Baking Powder

Method:

1. Soak dried fruit and rum overnight. Do not soak longer than 12 hours, or fruit may be too alcoholic and bitter
2. Cook 255g of Group A ingredients (all the fruits and part alcohol) with Group B ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook until butter is half melted. Turn off the heat and continue stirring until the butter has completely melted and mixture is even. Cover the mixture with a lid to prevent too much alcohol from evaporating.
3. Stir in Group C ingredients, one at a time, into the above mixture. Keep mixture under wraps constantly.
4. Sieve cake flour, and double acting baking powder together. When the mixture is cool, stir in the eggs, followed by the flour mixture.
5. Divide the batter into 2 4/5 inch greased cake pans. Each pan should contain around 370g of batter.
6. Bake at preheated oven, 170C for 25 mins.
7. Test the cake with a wooden skewer for doneness. Brush the cake with the remaining rum liquid from Group A whilst the cake is still hot.
8. Cover the cake with aluminium foil. Brush the cake weekly with rum for a month, and bi-weekly for the next 2 months, and monthly thereafter. Cake keeps 6 months in the fridge. Keeps for 1 year in the freezer.
9. Please heat up the cake at 160C for 5 mins when you want to eat it.

Happy baking. 🙂

Happy Friendship Day – Rum Truffles

Thank you all for your kind support and kind words through this CNY season. ❤ It was most definitely a good experience. So many hits, so many misses. Delivery was a huge frenzy, and I couldn’t have done it without a true dear friend, Kelvin Tien, who went without sleep for 26 hours straight, just to help me with delivery straight after work. Touched? Pretty much. 🙂 Thanks ah Mr Tien.

Ok, back to topic – rum truffles, lolx.

I was supposed to meet Ivan and Fionna a day after valentine’s day for a catch up session. Its been quite some time since I last saw them, and to think I live so near where they work. I should be ashamed of myself. tsk! Lolx. And because its been quite some time since I last saw them, I wanted to make something special for them. Was searching through recipes to find something I could make. Something chic; something small. I came across chocolate truffles. Mmmmm..nice! Smooth and delectable. The thing about truffles is the versatility in what you are able to add into the chocolates.

I remember them being my very dear ‘jiu gui’ friends, so I thought, hey, why not rum truffles then? I’m sure they’d love having rum in their chocolates as much as I love having rum in my chocolate. Lolx. So I set out with a goal to make my very own swiss truffles.

(Packed)

The first thing up before having to make them truffles is to have the boxes ready to house them. It was a last minute decision to make these sweets, and so I didn’t have time to go out in search for pretty little boxes to house my truffles, I went out to popular to get myself some creative artwork supplies. (didn’t manage to use the white glue in the end, cause I was afraid I may put a little too much glue on the paper. You know what happens after that don’t you. Nope, we wouldn’t want that to happen to me. Lolx).

Took me a good 2 hours to measure, cut and paste just 2 boxes. By the time I was done, it was 1 a.m. Took a short break before I started out measuring the ingredients to make the truffles. I thought truffles were easy to make, and I’d be done in no time. I totally forgot to factor in the time it took to chill the chocolate mix. pffffttt. By the time I was done, it was 5am. Had to wake up at 8am to get some other stuff done. Oh Noooooooo! Okay, back to where I was, measuring the stuff out.

Measured, melted and mixed. Left it in the fridge to chill and went on to make the toppings.

Couldn’t find chopped pistachios in our local baking supply stores, so ended up having to chop them up myself. A good thing I didn’t have to shell them myself, or I’d go crazy. Haha.

Chopped my nuts and had them toasted to get that added crunchy crunch.

Toppings done,

Mini cupcake lines lined up,

Chocolate well chilled. Lets start balling them. Roll, roll, roll.

from left: rum truffles with pistachio nut toppings, rum truffles with almond nut toppings, rum truffles with macadamia nut centre and cocoa powder coating.

Done with plenty of love. Packed with plenty of heart. Delivered with plenty of kisses. 🙂 I hope they love it as much as I enjoyed making them. 🙂

Happy “ren ri” to all.

xoxo,

Marian

Merry Christmas

Sitting here in front of my laptop, television on, tuned to channel 5. Michael Buble is on. Time? 12 midnight exactly. Merry Christmas everyone! The kitchen is up for 1 last chocolate log cake and 1 last turkey to roast, for 1 last customer tomorrow. And after that, no more Gingerbread Man and log cakes till 2013’s christmas. 🙂

I’m really glad you guys enjoyed the gingerbread you got from me, glad you guys loved the cakes, whether it be the pure chocolate log cakes or the rummy chocolate log cakes (home made chocolate rum ganache + rum raisins in a moist sponge roll).

The last order for gingerbread man for 2012. Design was done according to what customer requested.

One of the two rummy chocolate log cakes done up. I’m gonna turn into an alcoholic. Kept digging into leftover rum chocolates, haha. So anyway, I’m gonna rest a little before going into full force for the upcoming CNY. See you guys soon. Merry Christmas all, and have a jolly good new year! 🙂