Back in Baking

Sorry people, this blog is soon transforming into a food blog >.< My life isn't all about baking, but I can't resist posting up photos of my little babies!(babies = 结晶品)

I like glutinous rice, especially rice dumplings and 郑老师's glutinous rice (*gulp*). I like products of glutinous rice flour as well, e.g. 糍粑,汤圆,penang muachi, japanese mochi & daifuku, snow skin mooncake's skin.....etc (*gulp gulp*). Therefore, cake of the week for this week - Mochi Cake!

The recipe calls for blueberry. Blueberry is in season now and we have plenty of blueberry selling in supermarket. The only problem is that it's so super mega expensive....I decided to substitute it with frozen raspberry. And since we have plenty of lemon at home, I added some lemon zest and lemon juice in it. To further intensify the flavour, I added a teaspoon of vanilla essence in it....A blend of flavour eh.... @@

Before into oven:
The chocolate ones were added with cocoa powder (just feel like being a bit creative suddenly =p)

They didn't rise much in the oven, and started to collapse and shrink once removed from oven. After a while, only I realised that they were made from glutinous rice flour, which is gluten-free! A short summary for those who dunno what is gluten: Gluten is a protein component in wheat flour that is composed of glutenin and gliadin. These 2 proteins gives elasticity and strength to the dough, and can hold and trap gas produced during fermentation. Gluten thus contributes to the textural characteristic of wheat flour products e.g. breads and cakes. Without gluten, the product will be unable to expand or collapse easily....And thus the shortbread (biscuit)-like texture. Sooooo.....the same outcome for my mochi cake - shorty cake that is unable to grow tall - as u can see, they are at the same height before baking.....

The flavour isn't bad (quite complex - memang a blend of raspberry, lemon and vanilla flavours), and the sweetness is just right for me (with some tartness from raspberry). The only thing that I don't like is the over-cooked surface =( As u can see, there are cracks on the surface, makes it too dry to my liking. (The cracks somehow just remind me of old people grumpy face =p)

Ah, can't wait for next week's kimi's birthday cake!

(p/s: I'm so addicted that I hope to bake everyday!)