Gwen Bakes: A Chocolate Cake, Carrot Cake & Lemon Pound Cake

Recently I've been dabbling a bit more in baking.

The results?

Pure deliciousness! 

(And a slight weight gain of a kilo during that week. Must be from all that sugar and batter I ate whilst baking.)

My cousin has been coming over to bake ever since my party, and I've learnt quite a bit from her thus far and it's fueling my dreams of working as a pastry chef/opening my own bakery in future.

So I've tried baking a chocolate cake, topped with a thin layer of Nutella, homemade whipped cream and macerated strawberries – this was done on my own.

Nutella makes everything taste so good.

When I looked up the recipe through my Yummly app, my eyes glossed over the measurements and I muttered out an oh no. This is because in all the times I've baked, I would generally fail when I followed recipes that used the American measurements.

For some reason, baking in "cups" and the likes never works out for me.

When I watched as my cake baked in the oven, it didn't come as a surprise to me when I noticed that something was wrong – my cake wasn't rising as much as I thought it should.

(Well it maaaay be because I beat my cake mixture with a whisk. I'm pretty strong, and I seem to have this tendency to over beat things rather quickly.)

It was a simple one-layer cake, and I received pretty good reviews on it even though it didn't rise properly. Then again, the recipe (got it off thepioneerwoman here) was for a 2-layered cake, and from the pictures I've seen on her blog, her cake didn't seem to rise too much as well.

So.. who knows?


My cousin, Nadya, works as a pastry chef and as I mentioned earlier, she's been coming down to bake pretty often with me.

With her, we tried baking 2 cakes:

Carrot cake with cream cheese and lemon zest frosting

This cake turned out to be a success, and it had my whole kitchen smelling like it.

Fluffy, moist.. and eating it with the cream cheese is just.. heaven on Earth.

The downside to this cake was that the recipe required large amounts of egg and sugar, and it was, however, too oily as we also added large amounts of extra virgin olive oil. Mom and I intend to bake this together again, but we'll tweak the recipe to make it slightly healthier and lighter :)

Lemon pound cake with orange zest & juice frosting

This cake was amazing.

I didn't help for this one at all (except to make the frosting).

A pound cake – as it's name suggests – is a rather heavy cake, both literally and figuratively.

When we cut a slice of it to try, we found that we got full and were at the "I think I've had enough" stage pretty quick. It was soooo dense! The frosting was just delicious though, and I'm not saying that just because I was the one who made it.

The boyfriend seemed to disagree when I let him try a bit of it. "What is this???? Ugh it tastes.. weird."

I'm guessing he doesn't like oranges very much..

Oh well.

I can't believe I baked so many cakes in just a week.

The problem with baking a lot in a short span of time when you have a small family? Trying to finish all the cakes! My mom swore she gained a bit of weight and was bloated over the next few days. My brother, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy that we had more desserts lying around in the fridge.

He especially enjoyed my chocolate cake and ate almost a quarter of it the first time round! It warmed my heart and really made me happy (okay I'll admit that one reason is because he's gaining the weight from the cake – not me!) because I love it when people enjoy the things I bake.

I always make sure that I'm in a good mood when baking as I believe that when people eat your baked/cooked goods, they'll be able to "feel" the mood that you stepped into the kitchen with, and it affects the taste of your baked/cooked goods.

It's a silly thought, but that's what keeps me in a good mood while baking in the kitchen. :)

Gwen Bakes: (Failed) Macarons

So I wrote a blog post about how I had this bucket list to clear.

It has been a while since I last sat down and wrote a proper blog post with proper photos from my baby Cammie (my beloved Sony DSLR which I am contemplating selling so that I can upgrade – more on that another time), and I decided that why not start my old blogging habit again by documenting my baking adventures?

(Don't expect high quality photos though, I'm still just getting into the mood of using Cammie again + photo editing.)

I've always had a strong interest in baking, and I seldom admit this but one of my dreams is also to open a bakery or a cafe that people would love sitting in all day.

Dad and I have even had long, serious discussions about this due to my mom being so awesome in cooking. We thought we could work something out in future due to how Singaporeans are taking a huge liking to the cafes springing up around here.

Today I (unsuccessfully) cleared the one on the top of my list: The macaron *cue dramatic background music*

Dun dun dunnnn!

I doubt anyone remembers, but I've ever mentioned how macarons are my absolute favourite things on Earth. They make me so happy!

Albeit it was a failure (photo at the end of the post, I'm keeping y'all in suspense. DON'T SCROLL DOWN TO SPOIL YOURSELF! I'm not using reverse psychology here and oh the recipe link's below too), I figured it could be considered a success if you change the recipe title to something like....... 'Meringue Cookies' or something?

I kid you not; this motherbitch is extremely testing on your patience so be warned if you ever feel ambitious (or bored) enough to try baking something that shops in town are selling at $2.50-$5 per piece!??

With countertop cleared and my army of baking utensils at the ready!

Sifting the icing sugar + almond meal + cocoa powder + salt took up bulk of the time, which surprised me a lil' cuz I expected myself to spend more time whipping the egg whites into a meringue instead.

In the end half my almond meal was left behind due to it being too big to sift through! Madness. Almond meal isn't cheap in Singapore either, so oh well.

My mom took the first failure so well.

"Aiyah nevermind la, your first time also what. Nevermind lor."

Do not overwhip the egg whites, and always ensure that you allow your egg whites are at room temperature, which is an essential for those stiff peaks.

I have no idea how long I did this for, but I normally follow my gut feeling when it comes to whipping egg whites.

My gut feeling was SO WRONG when it came to the folding in of the dry mixture into the egg whites though.

This was where it all went terribly downhill (and I expected it due to all the research I've done before baking this badass).

I over mixed the batter, and I mistook 'slow running lava' as runny.

No idea how that happened.. it just did!

Was so frustrated that I was this close to throwing out my ruined batter. THIS CLOSE. Then I felt bad because that would be about 3 cups of icing sugar I'd be pouring down the drain – and did I mention how expensive almond meal is?

Even piping them was tough due to the batter being soooooooooo runny.

Decided that YOLO! "Just whack only! Fail already what."

(Whoopsie, photograph from my Instagram)

The counter was a total mess.. as was I.

The final product?:

ABSOLUTELY HORRENDOUS – but deliciously, sickly sweet – COOKIES MUAHAHAH

The batter made so much though – not just the ones you see in the picture!

Due to the over mixed and terribly runny batter, they wouldn't rise upwards no matter how long I made them sit out (essential for your macarons to rise UP and not OUT).

And if you were wondering, duh they didn't grow 'feet' either. Not like I expected them to, the failed batter was sign #1 that the feet weren't gonna happen, not today.

They do, however, taste really good!

Not something I would consume a lot of at one go though, the amount of sugar plus the fact that my stomach hasn't been too good to me due to my eating habits the past few months. But hey I'm back to trying my best at eating clean and working out daily!

These should be called meringue cookies instead HAHAHA. What a way to cover up my fail!

I'm gonna have another go at baking them really soon, when I'm not as tired or in a rush to get them done. These babies are pricey for a reason, and they are prolly the world's toughest cookie to bake! The mixing etc. alone took me almost 2 hours due to the sifting.

Oh well, shall stuff these in my brother's mouth for the time being. And my boyfriend's, that is, if they last till I see him but urgh these are the equivalent to diabetes in TWO BITES, which is why I'm pretty sure my brother would enjoy them.

Okay fine, diabetes in four bites.

(I had more than 10 bites for sure)

(Shit.)

You can get the recipe here @ CHOW. 

I normally tweak recipes especially if I've baked them a couple of times but since this is my first time trying this recipe I've yet to change it. The measurements aren't in metric form too so it's best to Google for a metric conversion chart – take note the different measurements for different kinds of things!