Another cafe that I had wanted to go is The Kettle Black. There are numerous positive reviews and high rating of this place. Located in South Melbourne, it is easily accessible by trams from CBD or even walk past the beautiful parks. But on this occasion, we went there by tram. It was chilly and windy that morning and as always the case in Melbourne, this cafe was busy when we got there. Waited for about 15 minutes and we were shown to our table.
Outdoor seating…
More outdoor seating on the right…
These were our brunch orders:
Flat white for hubby
Soy chai latte for me, served with honey
Seasonal local mushroom – cooked and raw
Hot cake with ricotta, blueberries, maple, double cream, seed and nuts
Coffee was good according to hubby – maybe not wow, but good. I love my chai latte, it is warm and not overly sweet, definitely can taste the spices. Perfect drink for cold windy day!
The mushroom dish was spectacular, hubby said it was the most satisfying no meat dish he has had. All the mushroom there, whether cooked or raw, powdered, sliced, or whole; everything was beautiful and tasty. The goat curd was yummy without being too overpowering – perfectly balanced dish.
The beautifully presented hot cake, too pretty to cut into. It also tasted delicious!! The hot cake was light and fluffy, the maple syrup and double cream makes gives it just enough sweet and richness. The tartness of berries help to balance the sweetness. And those seeds and nuts gives multiple texture to the dish. This dish is probably best for sharing as it is huge, I am not kidding!
The service was great, very attentive and friendly; food came out quick. On top of that, it has a lovely environment. It was a happy visit to Kettle Black and no wonder all the praises it gets; would love to come back again in the future!
We were invited to a niece’s birthday party about two weeks ago and one of the birthday cakes was this cotton soft pandan cake. The cake was really cotton soft with beautiful light green colour and pandan fragrant, but the icing was interesting. It is not overly sweet, rich but not butter heavy rich (if you know what I mean) and most importantly it has that familiar flavour which I couldn’t name. The combination of both is just really impressive, really I am not exaggerating here. Hubby has become a fan of this cake in the instant and I promised to look for the recipe.
So days passed after the birthday party, life went on as usual and of course I nearly forgot about that cake. And one day I saw someone posted a picture of the very similar cake with caption “best combination of flavour ever: pandan and palm sugar”! Aha that’s it, the mysterious familiar flavour that I couldn’t name on the butter cream. And hence the google search for the recipe began, although I could only find a very few of recipes around.
Because a lot of things here are new techniques to me, I really followed the recipe to a dot, except for very few adjustments as stated below. The cooked dough really gives that cotton soft texture, also not as porous as the usual chiffon cake. I think that is why this cake can hold its shape better than the chiffon cake. And here is the recipe exactly as per her blog:
Two 6″ Inch Round Cakes Recipe
Ingredients:
80 grams corn oil (I used rice bran oil)
130 grams cake flour or all purposed flour
½ tsp double action baking powder (I used same amount of regular baking powder)
½ tsp salt
6 egg yolks
1 whole egg
50 grams fresh milk
50 grams pandan juice (screw-pine leaves juice), very thick and concentrated juice.
Note: Since I don’t have two 6 inches pans, I used one rectangular 20 x 20 x 8 cm cake pan. The batter will fill up 3/4 full before baking and fit in 90% after baked. I also cheated on the pandan juice, I used few drops of pandan paste instead and increase the fresh milk amount to 100 grams to make up for omitting pandan juice.
Method:
Preheat oven to 170C.
Shift flour, salt and baking powder. Set aside.
Combine fresh milk and pandan paste. Set aside.
Heat corn oil in sauce pan over low heat then add in the shifted flour mixture and mix well. Remove from heat and transfer to a mixing bowl. Then add in milk and pandan mixture, mix with spatula until all incorporated. Gradually add in the egg yolk and whole egg mixture, stirring with a spatula or hand whisk until smooth. Set aside.
Using an electric mixer, whisk egg white until frothy before adding cream of tartar and continue to beat until foamy. Gradually add in sugar and whisk until firm peaks formed (firm peaks is between soft peaks and stiff peaks).
Mix 1/3 of meringue with yolk batter with a spatula. Add another 1/3 portion and fold gently. Then pour in balance of meringue. Fold gently using a spatula until well incorporated.
Pour the batter into the 2 prepared round tin and tap tin lightly to remove air bubbles.
Baked in water bath at 170C for 30 to 35 minutes. Then another 40 minutes at 150C.
Remove from the oven and drop the pan at a height of 10 cm onto a table top. This will prevent cake from sinking.
Unmould as soon as you can. To remove the cake from the pan, run a thin-bladed knife around the inside of the pan and invert the cake on non stick baking paper. Peel off baking paper from the base and re-invert onto a rack to cool.
GULA MELAKA SWISS MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM
Ingredients:
Gula Melaka Caramel:
50 grams gula melaka/palm sugar, crushed or chopped
2 pandan leaves, tied a knot
1/8 cup (25 ml) of water
Swiss Meringue Buttercream:
3 large egg whites
80 grams caster sugar
150 grams butter, room temperature, cut into small cubes
¼ tsp vanilla extract
¼ tsp salt
Method:
To prepare Gula Melaka Caramel:
Combine gula melaka, pandan leave and water in a saucepan and bring to boil over medium heat. Keep on stiring until all the sugar has melted and reduce slightly. Remove from heat, strain & discard the pandan leaves. Keep aside to cool. The syrup will thicken as it cools.
To prepare Swiss Meringue Buttercream:
Combine egg white and sugar in a heat-proof bowl over a pot of simmering water. Make sure the base of the bowl is not touching the water. Whisk with hand whisk until the sugar is dissolved. Rub between your fingers to check if there is any unmelted sugar.
Transfer the egg white mixture to a bowl of mixer. With Whisk attachment, beat over high speed until stiff peaks and the mixture has cooled to room temperature.
Turn down the speed and add in the butter cube gradually then turn to high speed. Beat until the mixture comes together. You may change to Paddle attachment. But, I did not.
Add in salt and vanilla extract until well incorporated.
Turn down the speed and in gula melaka one teaspoon at a time. Scrap the bowl with spatula and beat until all well combined. I used all the gula melaka caramel.
To Assemble the cake:
I halved my cake then spread a generous layer of swiss meringue buttercream then top with the other half of the cake and cover all surface and sides of the cake with the remaining buttercream. Since I am making mine in 1 pan, I have some left over buttercream that I store in a closed container in the fridge.
Some Tips:
It is ok to rest the egg whites for SMBC in the fridge to cut down the cooling down time. This needs to be at room temperature when adding in butter.
Add the butter slowly while keep beating. You’ll see the mixture become curdled after adding in all butter. Just have some faith and keep beating then it will eventually come together. (I was so scared I had spoiled the whole batch when I saw that curdled but as I continued beating the mixture, it came together again)
After I halved my cake, I wrapped each of them tightly with cling wrap and placed them in the freezer for about 30 minutes before I spread the SMBC. By doing so, the cake seems to hold its shape better while spreading the butter cream and hence less crumbly – it just makes the job easier especially during hot summer days 🙂
Ingredients for the pandan cotton cakeGula melaka swiss meringue butter creamPardon my “pale” pandan cake – before right out of oven and final product
Since I bought a jar of jam for bolu gulung weeks ago and still got half jar left on the fridge, I decided to give this cheese tart recipe a go. Rather than jut let the jam to go to waste, we should make use of it, right? I don’t usually have my bread/toast with jam and hubby prefers Nutella himself, so if I ever bough jam it would mainly for my baking experiments only.
A while ago I noticed recipe for these little cheese tarts with pretty patterns and of course, I put this on my to-try list. I think using blueberry jam will make the colour more pop out and prettier purplish. But since I have only black cherry jam, we shall use that instead.
For the tart pastry I use this eggless recipe simply because hubby prefers this texture than the one with egg. I think it is crispier and less crumbly compared to ones with eggs.
And here are the ingredients for the cream cheese filling (source here):
300 grams cream cheese at room temperature
80 grams icing sugar
1 teaspoon lemon paste (I used 1.5 teaspoon of lemon juice)
15 grams vanilla essence (I used 1 teaspoon vanilla extract)
50 grams whipping cream
25 grams sifted corn flour
2 large eggs
your favorite jam for topping
Whisk cream cheese and icing sugar until fluffy and creamy.
Add in lemon paste, vanilla essence and egg one at a time while mixing until everything is combined.
Add in the whipping cream, mix well.
Fill the cream cheese filling to half-baked tarts. Then scoop your favourite jam on the top and make the swirling motion using a toothpick for marble effect.
Baked on 180C for 15 – 20 minutes or until the filling is set.
Let it chill before serving, the cheese custard texture will also harden up after refrigerated.
Still learning and experimenting on how to make a pretty marble pattern or heart pattern (still!)
Tips from me:
I think just like baked cheesecakes, better to leave the tarts cool to room temperature inside the oven after finish baking. Just let the oven door open very slightly and let the tarts sit inside until cool to avoid crack on the surfaces of cheese tarts.
If I had to choose only one cake of mom’s kitchen, I would probably choose her bolu gulung aka rolled cake. Just like many other Indonesian cakes, they use a lot of egg yolks to get that soft texture. I had always enjoyed being in the kitchen when mom baked her cakes. And once she transferred the cake from its tin, I liked to nimble on the thin layer of skin left in the tin. I find it both satisfying to peel it off and tasted just as good ?
I haven’t tried on any new recipes these past months even though my to-try list keeps growing. Last weekend I tried on mom’s recipe of bolu gulung, however I only experimented with half recipe. Firstly, I don’t have the rolled cake tin and secondly the most important reason was it frightens me to try whole recipe and wasted so many eggs if it failed.
Not sure where she got this recipe from but as far as I remember, she has made this since we were kids. Here is the full recipe for 30 cm x 30 cm cake tin:
2 whole eggs
10 egg yolks (a lot, right?)
120 grams castor sugar
50 grams all-purpose flour
125 grams melted butter
vanilla extract
Your favorite jam for filling, or can be substituted with buttercream
Preheat oven at 200C, line the cake tin with baking paper and set aside.
On a mixing bowl, beat the eggs while adding sugar a little at times until it is pale and fluffy.
Then add in melted butter and vanilla extract, keep beating on low to incorporate everything. Make sure no melted butter is sitting on the bottom of the mixing bowl.
Lastly, carefully fold in the sifted all purpose flour to the egg mixture until well combined.
Pour the cake batter to cake tin and gently tap the tin to kitchen bench to release any trapped air.
Bake the cake for about 12 – 15 minutes, keep an eye on the cake while baking. The top of my cake was not brown enough after the 15 minutes baking time even though it has been fully cooked. So, I put it on broil mode for another 2 – 3 minutes until it turned light brown.
Once it is done baking, gently flip the cake to another sheet of baking paper and roll. I left mine rolled until it cooled to room temperature before unrolled it and spread with generous black cherry jam. Then the cake should be easily rolled back and tied both end of baking paper to help hold the cake shape.
It is best to cool the cake in the refrigerator for at least an hour before serving.
Some helpful tips:
To prevent the skin of the cake stick to baking paper when it is rolled, some says to sprinkle little bit of icing sugar on the baking paper.
Do not over bake the cake as it will crack and not have the flexibility to roll.
For buttercream filling, make sure the cake is cooled to room temperature. For jam, usually it will not matter if the cake is still slightly warm.
The ingredients and final cake batter
I tried to make hearts pattern, which most of them turned out to be failed heart shapes ?
Learn from my mistake, I did not broil my cake long enough that the top skin was not brown enough and it stuck on my baking paper ?
So as you can tell my cake was far from perfect in appearance but tasted almost like mom’s! It has definitely earned hubby’s approval ? But indeed as most people would agree, practice makes better, right?
There are many parks near by Melbourne CBD, isn’t it? There are several I wanted to go to, but today we decided to walk over to Southbank to The Royal Botanic Gardens. Thank goodness it was a fine day, clear blue sky and breezy – perfect weather for strolling! Let these photos tell the rest of the story 🙂 By the way, here is the link to lists of parks in CBD which I find very handy.
Alexandra GardensQueen Victoria GardensRoyal Botanic GardensRoyal Botanic Gardens
On the way back, we stopped at Dukes Coffee Roasters for a quick afternoon caffeine fix. We had a takeaway skim flat white again, but I feel the coffee tasted too bitter for my liking, it’s a strong hit on the tongue. A truly wake up punch 🙂
Dukes Coffee Roasters – front windowAfternoon coffees, anyone?
And to balance out the bitter coffee, we also stopped by Doughboys Doughnuts 😛 We seems to eat a lot on this trip and still barely enough to try all the places on my to-go-list! Probably because we came after 3 pm, there were not many doughnuts to choose from – might be all sold out for the day. These doughnuts are more of your typical doughnuts texture wise, with interesting flavor combinations and fillings. In that sense, they are different to ones at Shortstop. We both tend to prefer the Shortstop donuts better than ones here.
The counter and doughnuts displayMint Slice – we definitely prefer this one over the Matcha Pop ? Too busy eating that we forgot to take picture of the doughnut with cream filling.Matcha Pop – We ordered this thinking it will pack with matcha flavours. Unfortunately, the filling turned out to be berry flavoured custard cream with couple pieces of lightly-matcha-coated popcorns toppings
