Carrot Cake

The past two weeks, I have been enjoying watching Donna Hay's cooking show on the cable in bkk; "fast, fresh,simple." by Donna Hay. I have been one of her fans for a while now. However, this is my first time watching her show, and I'm in love with it! Everything she does on TV looks so easy and simple, just like her style. It makes you want to get up and start cooking. After my oven was out of service for quite sometimes now, I'm craving for homemade bake goods.

And of course, for this Easter holiday, why not baking a carrot cake?

After searching for a good carrot cake recipe, I decided to use Donna Hay's Carrot Cake. She didn't disappoint me at all. I'm very much enjoying it. It's so easy to make and turned out to be so delicious and not too sweet and oily. If you are looking for a simple carrot cake that tastes great, try this! I garantee that you will fall in love with her and her recipe, just like me.

Note: the only thing that I adapted from the recipe is using walnuts instead of pecan.

Orange and Almond Cake

It has been a month since my last post. Now, I'm back at home in Bangkok, Thailand. It's nice to be back here. I feel like a foreigner in my own homeland since I haven't been living here for the past ten years.  It will take me quite sometimes to get used to the buzzing and the hot weather again! During the last two weeks since I've been back, I have been running around and doing lots of thing with my parents. I went up to Chiang Mai which is a city that locates at the northern of Thailand to visit my grandma for a week. I visited many temples in Chiang Mai. I posted some of the pictures in my 365-days project. Feel free to drop by!

When I was in Chiang Mai, my mom took me to a baking-supplies store. I bought couple ingredients and cake pans, so I can start baking again when I came back in Bangkok. To be honest, I never ever bake when I'm back at home in Thailand. It will take me sometimes to know where would be the best places to buy my baking supplies. However, what I found the most challenging is to trust someone else's oven. I tried not to judge the look of my parents' oven. LOL. Somehow, I just do not trust it. Before I left Toronto, I decided to buy an oven thermometer. So, this way I know that at least I will get a right temperature and everything should turn out okay...and it did! 

The first recipe that I make is Orange and Almond Cake. Couple days before I arrived, my mom boiled some oranges and froze them in the freezer. So, she was asking me whether I can make something out of it. So, I went on TasteSpotting and found an orange cake recipe from Peter at Souvlaki For the Soul which uses boiled oranges. I love this recipe because there is no use of flour, butter, or oil. I would say it's pretty healthy kind of cake. It's moist, dense and not too sweet. Everyone in the family loves it. So, thumbs up for the cake and for the oven too!

Deconstructed Rhubarb White Chocolate Ginger Cheeesecake

On the weekend, I made my last visit to St. Lawrence Market before I fly back home next Thursday. Spring is here and there were many spring vegetable at the market. I was planning to get some fresh spring vegetable that will last during my last week here.  Lucky me, I got there just in the right time and finally found fiddleheads. I have heard about it quite sometimes, but I haven't seen them around before. So, I bought them back and made a quick sauteed with ginger, garlic and balsamic for the dinner. My first experience  with fiddleheads was great. I like them. They do taste like asparagus. There were a lot of rhubarb at the market. Since this will be hard to find in the future, I decided to buy some back home. I was confused by the two different looks of the rhubarbs ( Forced vs. Field ). I ended up bought the normal one since that was the type that I used when I made strawberry-rhubarb pie last year with my best friends using their home grown rhubarb.

When I was at the market, I was really sure what I was going to make. Rhubarb-Strawberry Pie? Rhubarb-Strawberry Crisp? These sounds great, but I want to make something different this time. I have no oats and no flour, so a pie or a crisp is not one of the options for me. But then, I came across this no-baked white chocolate ginger cheesecake recipe from The Good Mood Food Blog. So, I thought this would go really well with my rhubarb! I played around with the plating of this deconstructed rhubarb white chocolate ginger cheesecake. You can serve them on a plate as I did the picture above or serve them in little gars or shot glasses. The white chocolate cheesecake is very rich. A small serving of this would be perfect at the end of the dinner. I love how the tartness of the rhubarb lightens up the whole dessert. Since no baking is involved, this is a perfect dessert to make during the hot summer days. I also recommended making each component ahead and assemble right before serving, so that the ginger crust would not get soggy.

Molten Chocolate Cake

hmm...I just realized that 3 of the 5 posts that I have been posting so far are chocolate-related recipes. That is why they say that chocolate is a girl best friend. In fact, chocolate contains a chemical called phenylethylamine which is the same hormone that brain triggers when you fall in love. That's why we always cheer up ourselves with chocolate and feel happy when we eat it. Did you know that?

Another interesting story is that this molten chocolate cake is only 23 years old (hmm...couple years younger than me). It was claimed to be invented in 1987 by Jean-Georges Vongerichten in New York City. I'm glad that he discovered this irresistible cake that has a deep rich chocolate flavour with a warm gooey centre. So, thank you for that Mr. Vongerichten!