Red Wine Yeast Marbled Chiffon Cake (红鞠大理石戚风蛋糕)

Sometimes I feel pressured. Pressured to post something really good. Not only good, but has to be somewhat unique as well. Not sure if you feel the same...but I do. If I bake something nowadays, I will ask myself, is this good enough to be posted? It may sound silly isn't it? But I do feel that the readers nowadays have pretty "high expectations" considering that there are so many great bloggers out there. These "new age" bloggers have fantastic photographic skills plus ever trying new recipes that will wow the readers so often. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against them. In fact I love reading their posts! I just feel that my blog definitely needs a lot of work to get to that level, lol! Anyway, "人比人气死人", why make our life harder then it is right? ;))

Anyway, enough babbling, back to today's recipe. It's Red Wine Yeast Marbled Chiffon Cake (红鞠大理石戚风蛋糕).

After my previous attempt on using red wine yeast, I knew I had to try it again on a cake recipe. Since I did see some of the fellow bloggers using it for chiffon, I knew it will be an obvious choice. :)

Recipe was from 孟老师的100道小蛋糕 , a book that I owned but rarely use. *sigh* Anyway, I did slight modifications to it to fit into my 20cm tube pan. ;)

Ingredients (makes a 20cm tube pan)

4 egg yolks

45g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

50ml vegetable oil

100ml fresh milk

120g cake flour

1 tsp baking powder

4 egg whites

80g caster sugar

10g cornflour (original calls for 1/3 tsp cream of tartar)

2 tbsp of red wine yeast (already in liquid form)

Method:

• In a large mixing bowl, beat the egg yolks with caster sugar till thick and creamy, about double in volume. Then add in the vanilla extract and mix well.
• Add in the vegetable oil, followed by the fresh milk into the egg yolk mixture and stir well. Then sift in the cake flour and baking powder. Mix till no visible lumps.
• In another large mixing bowl, beat the egg white until foamy, add in sugar gradually and beat till still soft peaks, add in the corn flour and continue to beat till stiff.
• Preheat the oven to 170C.
• Gently hold in 1/3 of the white into yolk mixture. Then repeat with 2 more portions till all is folded.
• Take 1/3 of the batter and mix in the red wine yeast into it till well combined.
• Pour the plain batter into the tube pan first. Then place spoonfuls of the red wine yeast batter into the tube pan. Then use a toothpick, swirl the batter to create a marble effect.
• 
• Place the cake into the oven to bake for 28-30 minutes till the tester comes out clean.
• Remove from oven and invert to cool completely before removing from the pan.

I had originally baked this for my brother since he was in Singapore for a visit. However the cake ended up eaten mostly by my dad! My dad loved it, claiming it was really soft and spongy and not too sweet, definitely his kind of cake, lol! :D The only down side for me was there was no evident taste or scent of the red wine yeast again. I felt the cake taste more like an ordinary vanilla chiffon cake. :P So I guess I have to either up the red wine yeast more or make the whole cake in pink (mix all the batter with it) next time. :P

Looks like the air pockets are still quite big in the cake. :P Anyway, taste is more important then looks right? *self comforting* Hahaha...

Red wine yeast pau, done. Red wine yeast chiffon cake , done. I guess that leaves us with red wine yeast...bread! Stay tune all. ;))

Thanks all for staying on with me. ;) Have a great evening all!

Creamy Avocado Ice Cream

Let's talk about ice cream today. :)) Who doesn't love ice cream? Sweet and creamy cold desert made from all sorts of wonderful flavors, which comforts and lifts you up on any bad day. I have been wanting to post up an ice cream recipe for a long long time now, but somehow it just always get postponed. Well not today! Today's Avocado ice cream was actually inspired by my recent visit to one of my favorite ice cream parlor, "The Daily Scoop". I got to taste their avocado ice cream that weekend and fell in love with it immediately! It was so creamy and not too sweet with a mild avocado taste. I kept telling my husband that I have to replicate this delicious ice cream at home...although I caught him rolling his eyes. :P Wasting no time, I bought some avocados the next day and got to work. And tah-dah! My very own avocado ice cream...

I got this nice avocado ice cream recipe from FoodNetwork, courtesy of Alton Brown. Although initially I was complementing whether to try out Eelin's Avocado ice pops recipe. But decided to go with Alton Brown's version since I've tasted the sinfully good version from "The Daily Scoop", plus I'm such a sucker for creamy stuff. Lol!

Ingredients for avocado ice cream (makes about 3 cups) 
12 ounces avocado meat, approximately 3 small to medium
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup heavy cream

• Peel and pit the avocados.
• Add the avocados, lemon juice, milk, and sugar to a blender and puree.
• Transfer the mixture to a medium mixing bowl, add the heavy cream and whisk to combine.
• Place the mixture into the refrigerator and chill until it reaches 40 degrees F or below, approximately 4 to 6 hours.
• Process the mixture in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's directions.
• Alternatively, if you don't own an ice cream maker, beat the mixture at high speed using your handheld mixer till it thickens. Then place in the freezer for an hour. Just as the mixture is going to freezes up, beat the mixture again, then chill again. Repeat this step about 2-3 times to reach a thick creamy consistency...something like soft-surf ice cream.
• Pour the mixture into a container and freeze overnight or up to 4 hours.

Note that if you don't own an ice cream maker, doing the repetitive beating of the almost frozen cream mixture will help break up those ice crystals as much as possible so your final results will be as smooth and creamy as possible. Sounds like a hassle I know, why not just pay for it and get a tub. But once you get to taste your own home made creation, you will beg to defer. ;))

If you have tasted avocado ice cream before and love it as much as I do...I highly recommend you try this out. There's no raw eggs involved and yet it has this really creamy texture due to the avocado used, really yummy.

And guess what, I have a batch of pulut hitam (black glutinous rice) ice cream mixture chilling in the fridge right now. *excited* Hopefully it will turn out good. Will post it up once I have the time. ;))

Thanks all for dropping by! Have a great day. Cheers!