Tuesday, November 19, 2013

2 year old birthday cake(Cheddar Cheese Cake)


Time flies. Yesterday was Phin Zhe's two years old birthday. This year I decided to bake him a real cake. Last year I did a trick by just assembling a fruit cake(post here).

Since he is only two years old, I want the cake to be as healthy as possible. The cake can not use any unhealthy ingredients, so fondant or icing cake with artificial coloring or essense is definitely a big NO. I haven't introduced him chocolate yet, so I have to stay away from many tempting chocolate cake recipes for now. With so many restrictions, I started to google. Then one day I decided that I should bake him something with cheese since he loves cheese so much. But I don't want to use cream cheese. So, I continue to google...until I came upon Cheddar Cheese Cake recipe from Nasi Lemak Lover.

Last Saturday night after dinner, I started to make the cake. Knowing that the cake will take an hour to bake, so I wanted to speed things up. While I go ahead to beat the egg white, I assigned the egg yolks mixture job to Phin Zhe and his daddy. Phin Zhe was so excited and he did pretty well in combining the ingredients. Then I brought over the egg white mixture, folded in, mix well, pour into the baking pan and it is ready to be baked. I was so happy, partly because I got everything done in such a short time, but mainly it was because Phin Zhe has involved in the cake baking. He helped in his own birthday cake. Wasn’t it something cool and special? ;)

Ok, now on the cake texture and taste. We sang birthday song to Phin Zhe the next morning before we left for Bukit Merah’s Eco Park.  You could see that we did decorate the cake  a bit by placing a puppet on a bed of nuts and seeds, and we managed to surprise Phin Zhe. Well, it might be still too plain for a birthday cake. But it was definitely delectable, with a soft and moist texture.

I followed the recipe from Nasi Lemak Lover, with some minor tweaks to the ingredients. The biggest adjustment I have made was to reduce the sugar to half. The rest was just to make use of whatever is available in my kitchen.

Ingredients: (make 8x8 square pan)
120g Lye Cross Farm Organic Cheddar
100g Pure Harvest organic oat milk
100g Organic Times unsalted butter
7 organic egg yolks(cold from fridge)
7 organic egg whites(cold from fridge)
50g organic brown sugar
100g organic unbleached cake/low protein flour(sifted twice)

Method
1. Melt butter and cheddar cheese in a bowl over a pot of simmering water. Stir occasionally with a spatula.

2. Add in milk, and stir until mix well. Set aside and let it cool down a bit.

3. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with a manual whisk.  Add one spoon of the cheese mixture into the egg yolks and mix well. Continue until all the cheese mixture has been added.

4. Add 1/3 of the cake flour into the egg yolk mixture and mix well. Continue until all the cake flour has been added .

5. Preheat the oven to 150C with a water bath. I placed one tray of water at the lowest rack.

6. Grease and line the baking pan with unbleached parchment paper.

7. In another bowl, beat egg white till foamy. Gradually add in sugar and beat till stiff peaks. When it is done, the mixture won't fall even you turn the bowl upside down.

8. Gently fold in 1/3 of the egg white mixture into the cheese mixture and mix well with a spatula. Continue until all egg white mixture has been added.

9. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth out the surface.

10. Bake the cake in the oven for 60 minutes at second rack. The cake is done if a cake tester come out clean.

11. Let cake sit inside the oven for 5mins with oven door ajar.

12. Remove cake from cake pan and let it cool on wire rack.

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