Mini Cream Puff

I love cream puff. I love its puffiness and the creamy filling. Not so sweet :)
So, I decided to make my own cream puff which calls for 4 main ingredients: water, flour, eggs and butter. This is my third try. First and second tries were total disasters ... all puffs were burnt like charcoal. Well, I learnt an important lesson here, never trust the oven's temperature setting. It may not be accurate! It's important that you have a thermometer to tell you the exact temperature and it's not very expensive to buy one. This is a thermometer used for baking (not the one that you hang on the wall).

It's amazing to watch the dough puffs up like a 'ping-pong' ball. Make sure you don't open the oven door at this crucial time, otherwise your cream puffs will become flat.  For the filling, I always go for pastry/custard cream instead of whipped cream as it tastes much better.

  

Lemon Drizzle Cake

While looking through my kitchen cabinets the other day, I found packs of plain flour and SRF which I think I've bought some times ago.   I started looking for a simple recipe so that I could use up those flours. I don't like to keep them as they may turn rancid easily especially SRF.  So, I found this lemon cake recipe from "Breads & Baking" by Gina Steer, which calls for SRF. Great! Wonderful!

But when I checked on the date, damn! the SRF has already been expired half a year ago. Thinking of using it and hoping that the rising agent in the flour could still be used. Then I did a test to see if it's still active. It's a very simple test really !  Just pour some warm water in a small bowl, add a teaspoon of the SRF into the warm water. If it bubbles, means it's still active. Unfortunately, mine has no bubble.  So, I decided to make my own SRF.  Here's how you do it: for each cup of plain flour, add 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.  So, I'm on my way to bake the cake!

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
125g butter
175g SRF
175g castor sugar
2 large eggs
2 lemons
50g castor sugar

Method:
1. Preheat oven at 180 C.  Line a 7" square tin with parchment paper.
2. Cream the butter and 175g sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Beat the eggs, and gradually add a little to the creamed mixture, followed by adding 1 tablespoon of the flour. Mix well.
4. Finely grate the rind from 1 lemon and add in the mixture. Squeeze the juice from the lemon and add in the mixture. Mix well.
5. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake for 25-30 mins.
6. Grate the rind from the other lemon and mix with 25g of the sugar and set aside.
7. Squeeze the juice from the last lemon into sauce pan. Add the remaining 25g of sugar and simmer over low heat until sugar dissolved.
8. While the cake is still hot, prick little holes all over it using a skewer. Sprinkle the lemon rinds sugar mix and drizzle over the syrup.