Last weekend, cbb had a baking session over at Grandma’s. When mom said we were going to bake a sponge cake, I was a bit disappointed as I thought I would have the entire butter cake to myself. BUT what I didn’t know: what she meant by sponge cake is what’s trending now… the super wobbly Ah-Ma sponge cake! Whoaaaaa I need to learn to make this! Mom doesn’t know trends, but she knows a good cake.

I literally watched my mom bake this right before my eyes. The final product is pure magic. The ingredients are super simple – the only skills needed is in the folding of the egg whites. I hope you succeed in making this and let me know how it goes!

The post My Mom’s Ah-Ma Sponge Cake Recipe appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.

Passion Fruit isn’t a commonly eaten fruit in Singapore. Most households will have apples, oranges and maybe kiwi and grapes in their fridge but passion fruit? Many people probably haven’t even bought one before (passion fruit bubble tea not counted), and that includes me, before this cake!

I ordered a box of surprise fruits and vegetables selection online the other day. Apart from the usual stuff, I also got Portobello mushrooms, white mushrooms, freedom range eggs, plums, ready-to-eat Caesar salad, a whole rock melon and a bag of PASSION FRUITS.

I couldn’t recognise them at first and even threw away one which looked wrinkly, thinking that it’s gone bad. Turned out that ripe passion fruits are supposed to be purple and wrinkly. When I realised that these were passion fruits, the first thought that came to mind was to bake something with them. Maybe a pound cake? A chiffon? Muffins? What about.. a yogurt cake? A passion fruit yogurt cake sounds very yummy to me.

I actually baked this cake two times. The first was a disaster. I looked up many yogurt cake recipes and settled on one that called for 250g of flour AND no need for a mixer (sounds too good to be true – I guess I was blinded by that alone). The recipe was meant for a larger sized baking pan and I figured I could bake the excess batter into muffins. Turned out that for some reason, there was NO excess and the batter only filled to a little over 3/4 of my baking pan. I sent it into the oven anyway and here’s what happened:

Much too much flour. Too much yogurt. The cake was heavy like stone. What was I thinking? I really wanted to eat cake.. so I decided to try again. Using common baking sense, I reduced the flour to 180g and also reduced the yogurt by half. To make it moist and soft, I sifted the cake flour three times to make it super fine. I also used my trusty kitchenaid to cream the butter and sugar instead of using melted butter. I reduced the sugar by more than 1/3 too. Yep, I basically changed the whole recipe.. I have baked cakes before.. where was my common sense that day?

This time, the result was entirely different. Because the cake flour has been sieved multiple times, the texture is really fine and soft. The cake isn’t the crumbly and dry type. It was such a joy to eat. The passion fruit flavour was even better the next day!

I used the juice of three passion fruits and added back some seeds for difference in texture, but if you prefer not to have the seeds in your cake, it’s totally optional. To dress up the plain cake, I used banana slices and made an icing with powdered sugar, yogurt and passion fruit juice. You can skip all this if you’re no-frills. I promised my colleagues I will bake one for them next week. Going by how much I like this myself, I think I need a bigger pan!

The post Moist and Delicious Passion Fruit Yogurt Cake appeared first on Budgetpantry | Singapore Mummy Blog on Food, Recipe & Baby.

I don’t know about you, but me and cake? We have a special relationship. I eat cake when I turn a year older, when I get a new job, when I feel stressed, when I am happy, when I feel fat (true story), before, during and after a break-up.. she’s never been out of my life all these years, really.

She’s quite up there enjoying the same status as fried chicken, almost. There’s reallyyy a very thin line there. Sometimes she wins, and that’s a big deal.

My favourite cake is black forest cake. Chocolatey sponge with a cherry filling and fresh cream, topped with bright red cough-syrup maraschino cherries. I love those cherries so much, sometimes I picture myself going to Mustafa and buying a huge bottle home, but it never happens. What? You don’t like the cherry on your Swensen’s Sticky Chewy Chocolate sundae? GIVE ME.

Enough about ice-cream. They don’t really have a place in this post. Don’t get me started on people who mix GUMMY BEARS into their ice-cream. Why would anyone do that? I’ll never understand.

So today I made a light butter cake with blueberries and lemon zest. Blueberries and lemons. You know how these two go together like best friends who could just talk and talk for five hours straight. The last time I almost did this was when I was 11, with Hui, when we were on the quest to break the JSPS world record for being on the phone for over four hours straight. I don’t think I will ever will never break this record.

p/s- JSPS stands for Jin Shan Primary School which was in Clementi. I say “was” because my school has since been torn down. That says alot about how 歷經風雨 I am.

Back to the cake. I whipped the egg whites separately to get the light, airy, spongey texture, but at the same time, it is moist and substantial. I don’t know how else to describe it because my vocabulary sucks, and I don’t know how it happened the way it happened because I am an accidental but sometimes successful baker. So there.

If you want to go really budget, leave out the blueberries or substitute with a cheaper ingredient. I have a good mind to bake them again tomorrow! Oh, and thank you Egg Story for the pasteurised eggs.. I think it is time to make some earl grey chocolate mousse with them!

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