Chocolate Syrup Swirl Cake

Yup, I’m still testing recipes from Hershey’s Incredibly Easy Recipes cook book xD They got tonnes of delicious recipes inside, I just can’t help myself haha

Last week, we went back to Kampung to celebrate uncles and aunties  who just came back from their pilgrimage. My mum was bugging me to bake something and there’s this recipe that kept bugging me so I was like “Why not?” xD

Ingredients
1 cup (250mL) butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla extracts (I use powdered vanilla)
3 eggs
2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda; divided
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk or sour milk
1 cup Hershey’s Syrup
Almond’s bits or Coconut flakes (optional)

Firstly, heat the oven to 350F. Grease and flour 12-cup fluted tube pan or 10 inch tube pan.
Sieve together flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda and salt. You can skip this if you want but I really recommended that you sieved because you could never knew what foreign material there is in your flour (I learned this the hard way orz).  Plus, by sieving the flour, the flour would get aerated and become a bit lighter n_n

Then, beat butter, sugar and vanilla in large bowl until fluffy. Add eggs and beat well. Stir together the flour that you have sieved together with the baking soda and salt; add alternately with butter mixture, beating until well blended.

Do not worry if you don’t have buttermilk in stock. You can just add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar to your 1 cup of milk to make sour milk. You can use sour milk instead of buttermilk in this recipe. To tell you the truth, I didn’t have enough buttermilk myself when baking this because I overused them for the muffin so I add some milk to make 1 cup ;P

The batter should look like this after mixing:



After that, measure 2 cup batter in small bowl; stir in chocolate syrup and remaining 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. I know, Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup can be so expensive but I think using melted chocolate is good too >o</



If you want some crunchiness when biting into the cake, you can add coconut flakes or almond bits to the remaining vanilla batter. It is optional so if you don’t want them in your cake or don't have them in stock, just leave it. 

Then, pour the vanilla batter into the pan. DO NOT pour the chocolate batter first because the chocolate batter is thinner than the vanilla batter.



Pour chocolate batter over vanilla batter in pan; DO NOT mix.



I am a very messy person, so you can see those cake mix coating the side of the pan. Very messy isn’t? You can just wipe them before putting the pan into the oven.



*wipe wipe* Then bake them for 60 – 70 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center come out clean. Mine baked only for 60 minutes xD Cool for 15 minutes before removing them from pan to wire rack. Cool completely.



This is how mine look like coming out from oven. They are overflowing LOL. But you can never panic because usually when the cake cooled down, the kinda shrink a bit xP My oven is just a conventional microwave-oven so yeah xP



It look even uglier after being cool LOL. At this time you can just tuck the overflowing inside back onto the pan. Then overturn the pan to get the cake out from the pan xD I’m using a springform pan so it is much easier.



This is how it looks like after you turn them haha xD The ugly one is at the bottom one so no one will notice ;P So, never get panicked or disheartened easily by your cake >_< They can turns out wonderful, sometime.
 


I didn’t get the swirl effect that I want but nevermind. You can never get consistent swirl when baking this kind of cake, that what makes it so fun to bake haha xD

Here, HAVE A SLICE >O</

I’m addicted to these babes ahhhhh~

Muffins Muffins! My little blueberry Muffins T_T It was so crunchy when eaten hot, I was really addicted to it but the little blueberry are so damn expensive T_T

These is how they looks like before getting into the oven. This time, I increased the sugar to about 95-98g. I also added a bit of orange zest because I really loves the mix up between berries and citrus. The smells of the goods while being baked is really awesome T_T



You knew your muffins are baked when they are firm and golden on top. If only I were somewhere with free or cheap blueberry, I’m so gonna bake these everyday <3 <3



Those two in front is the King and Queen of the muffins. See how they are bigger than the others? Of course, the one with the higher crown is the King and next to it is the Queen. These two leads an army of muffins which consist of 10 muffins. Four of the muffins are Knight and another four is footmen. Where is the other two you say? Unfortunately, they died trying to finish their quest which is feeding the dragon. Don’t fret, the dragon said they are delicious

Blueberry Muffins

Ah Blueberry Blueberry~ <3 I think, muffins are the simplest thing to bake others than pancake. It doesn’t take much time too. So, I bought this beautiful blueberry just because I want to try baking a blueberry muffin using a REAL blueberry and see whether it taste differently from the pre-mix one =P

beautiful isn’t?

This is my modified version of the original recipe taken from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess:

Ingredients

75g butter

200 g plain flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp baking powder

75g castor sugar

pinch of salt

200 mL buttermilk (or 100g yoghurt and 100 ml semi-skimmed milk)

1 large eggs

100g blueberries

Firstly, you have to melt the butter and set it aside to cool. Preheat the oven to 200 C.

Then, combine all the dry ingredient in one bowl and the liquid in another. You can put all the liquids in a jug or a measuring jug. It’ll be easier to pour those liquid from a jug than the bowl LOL XD Oh, beat together the liquid together (buttermilk, egg and melted butter).

Pour down the liquids into the dry ingredient and mix it gently by using a wooden spoon or spatula gently to combine. Don’t worry about the lumps, you don’t want the mixture to be overworked.

I think I overworked mine haha xD It was lumpy but then this is before I put my blueberry in. After I mix it some more, it become a bit smooth u_u My batter has been overworked u__u;;;

So, after you mix the batter, you can fold in the blueberry, keeping the mixing to a minimum. Spoon the batter into muffin cups and bake for 20 minutes, by which time the muffins should be risen and golden and firm on top.

Warm muffins on a rainy evening definitely hit the spot. It was so delicious. It was not sweet though. If you have sweet tooth, I suggest that you increase the sugar in the recipe.

The original recipe called for 200g blueberry but I only use 100g. Blueberry is really expensive here u_u These are a very expensive muffins LOL xD But 100g is really enough xD I’ll try to substitute the blueberry with jam or dried blueberry next  time. Let’s see if it worked.

Having that said, though it is expensive, these muffins are indeed a healthy dessert compared to the jam-filled one or the premix one. Enjoy!