Le Petit Baker

Eat. Bake. Love

Decadant Chocolate Cake

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Ingredients for cake

115g unsalted butter
115g plain flour
55g cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 eggs
225g caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Ingredients for icing

225g plain chocolate
85g unsalted butter
3 eggs, separated
250ml whipping cream
3 tablespoons caster sugar

Method

1. Preheat oven at 180 degrees celcius and prepare 2 or 3 8inch round tins with grease/oil/butter. (2 or 3 tins depending on number of layers you want.)

2. Melt butter over low heat and skim off any surface foam. Leave the melted butter aside.

3. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt 3 times and set aside.

4. Place eggs, sugar in a large heatproof bowl. Set this bowl over a pan of hot water. With an electric mixer, beat until the mixture doubles in volume and is thick enough to leave a ribbon trail when beater is lifted. Add in vanilla essence.

5. Sift over the dry ingredients in 3 batches and fold in slowly. Then fold in the butter.

6. Divide the mixture between the tins and bake until cake pulls away from the sides of the tin, about 25 minutes. Let it rest on a cooling rack.

7. For the icing, melt the chocolate on top of a double boiler. Off the heat after chocolate is melted then stir in butter and egg yolks. Return to a low heat and stir until thick. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

8. Whip the cream until firm, set aside. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff. Add the sugar and beat until glossy.

9. Fold the cream into the chocolate mixture. Make sure the chocolate mixture is NOT hot. Then carefully fold in the egg whites. Refrigerate for about 20 minutes to thicken the icing.

10. Sandwich the cake layers with icing, stacking them carefully.

What‘s On My Mind…

This cake is really troublesome to make in my opinion, but when done right, it just tastes heavenly. The icing melts so remember to refrigerate the cake. If you are storing the cake, I would suggest covering the cake completely with the icing so the cake will not dry out overnight.

Chunky Clam Chowder

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Ingredients

2 cans of razor clams or pacific clams, cut into smaller pieces
1 big white onion, minced
1 pack of celery, diced (500g)
1 pack of potatoes, diced (1kg)
1 pack of carrots, diced (500g)
1 pack of bacon, diced
170g butter
95g plain flour
200ml of cooking cream and 800ml of milk (basically 1L of half and half)
salt and pepper to taste
(Canned clams are easily found at Sheng Siong Supermarket)

Method

1. Throw the bacon bits into a really hot pan and fry for about 3 minutes, constantly stirring and mixing it.

2. Then throw in the onion, celery, potato and carrots and stir fry for about 10 minutes, until the ingredients are partially cooked.

3. Pour in only the juice of the 2 cans of clams, and add in another can of plain water into this pot of vegetables. Let it cook until the vegetables are tender, this will take about 15-20 minutes.

4. In another pot, melt the butter over a low heat, take note to stir constantly so that the butter will not burn. With a whisk, whisk in the flour until it is smooth. Next, whisk in the cream and milk. Continue to whisk over a low heat until it is very smooth. The longer you cook this mixture, the thicker your chowder will be in the end. But do be careful because if you cook this for too long, it can become a paste. So constantly stir and stop when you like the consistency.

5. Finally, add the creamy mixture to the ingredients which are cooking in the other pot. Mix them together and let it simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.

What’s on my mind…

This clam chowder is really simple to make and it easily serves more than 10. It is a complete meal on its own and is simply so rich and tasty. You can replace the clams with minced chicken or meats or even other forms of seafood for variation. If you realise, in my ingredients list, I stated 1 pack for most of the ingredients and all these are the standard small packs you can easily get from the supermarkets here, so you do not have to measure out small portions, just use the complete pack for the chowder and nothing goes to waste (except the onions, you just need 1 large one). Canned clams are really hard to find when it is not the Chinese New Year period but I discovered that Sheng Siong Supermarkets stock them all year long. The razor clams cost about $7 a can and pacific clams are about $10 a can and I honestly do not taste any difference from using either one of these. Just a reminder, the thickness of your chowder would be determined by how thick you make the cream mixture from the recipe. 🙂

Creatures

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Every single time I visit Mustafa Centre, I will ride pass this quaint looking restaurant nestled at a corner of Desker Road. The signboard on the outside is huge and I’ve never thought of trying the food because I believed it was just one of the many cafes already open all around Singapore. One thing I recalled was the Durian Cake advertisements I somehow catch a glimpse of on Facebook, I think. I know I have seen their ad but couldn’t exactly remember at the moment.

So when Cass wanted to try out the food here, I was definitely was up for it. The main dish I was looking forward to was surely the Durian Cake.

First impressions; the deco and ambience was really appealing. It was dark with just the right amount of natural light brightening up the restaurant at 2.30pm in the afternoon. The staff were attentive and very polite. We proceeded to order their set lunch.

Both of us were served a cold, lightly sweetened tea and an appetizer called Kyoto Desker. The appetizer was cold tofu served with blended century egg and some other condiments. I loved it because the century egg complemented the cold tofu well. I think adding some strips of pickled ginger would have been perfect.

For the mains, I ordered their Urban Baba Babi Pongteh while she had the Ah Gong Fried Chicken & Ah Ma Noodles.

The Babi Pongteh was simply delectable. The pork was cooked so tender and it could just melt in your mouth. They served this with a side of some toasted baguette slices but I did not really like the baguette slices because it was too crispy for me. I prefer my bread to be soft but overall, this was a dish made with love.

The Fried Chicken and Noodles was a very simple dish which was wonderfully seasoned and plated very presentably. The chicken was fried to perfection and the noodles were al dente. The cincalok mayonaise was nice, but I think it needed a little more spice and cincalok in it to give it more of a kick. Overall, this was a dish you could not go wrong with and it didn’t disappoint.

For dessert, we had their signature Durian Cake and Tiramisu Entremet. I am a huge dessert person and love most kinds of desserts. Cakes and chocolates are some of my favourites and I was really looking forward to this very widely talked about Durian Cake.

My verdict; it was a letdown. The cake was very dry, the cream covering it barely had a durian scent but the durian filling tasted fine. Maybe my expectations were set quite high for this dessert so I was really disappointed. Maybe it was just this batch, I’m not sure but just the thought of serving this to my durian-crazy-dad, I can predict that he would say it was just so-so. With that said, please do try out the dessert on your own. When it comes to food, there is no way to make one dish and expect every single person to enjoy it the same way.

Next was the Tiramisu. I’m guessing this was their rendition of a tiramisu. I did not like it as well. It just felt very gelatinous. Every layer felt like a dense form of jelly. The only part I enjoyed was the exterior chocolate layer. Again, like I said before, not everyone enjoys food the same way. I personally do not like such jelly-like desserts; for example, no-bake-cheesecakes. Such desserts are just not my cup of tea but maybe you might enjoy it so don’t simply brush it off since I did not like it.

On the whole, this was a great lunch experience for both of us. Amazing deco, comfy ambience, friendly staff, delicious food. The only letdown were the desserts. We spent about $35 per person only since it was a set lunch menu and I would definitely recommend you to bring your date here. The cost for dinner seems higher though. On a side note, they serve this huge chocolate cake which looked really enticing but we did not order it because we would not have finished it. If you do get to try it, let me know how it was.