This Butterscotch Cream Pie is sure to please anyone who is in the mood for plenty of sweet and creamy butterscotch.
The recipe is adapted from Karen DeMasco's The Craft of Baking. I was intrigued with the concept of this book as the author teaches you how to create your own recipe from a combination of basic recipes. I like how the author made the recipes to be versatile so that it can be used in other recipes. For instance, the crust of this pie is made from the crumbs of ginger snap cookies. If you ever get bored of eating ginger snap cookies you could turn them into this wonderful pie.
If you already have a bottle of ginger snap cookies lying on your kitchen counter, this will be an easy and quick pie to make. You will only have to bake the crusts and pour the cooked filling into the pie and refrigerate it for a few hours before serving.
My favourite recipes at the moment are those by Momofuku Milk Bar. I love their confetti birthday cake, the very cake which inspired me to come up with the Oreo Red Velvet Cake. Needless to say, when I was asked to bake a cake for my mum's birthday, I chose a recipe by Momofuku Milk Bar.
Apple pie cake is a safe choice since everybody enjoys an apple pie once in a while. This cake incorporates apple pie filling and half-baked cheesecake as the filling to the layer cake. You won't miss out on the crunch of the pie crust as pie crumbs are used in the filling and to top the cake. It's really an apple pie converted to a cake. It's genius!
It really isn't that troublesome to bake a Momofuku Milk Bar layer cake. Although their cake recipes require things like sheet pan, acetate sheet and 6" cake ring, you really don't need to go all out to buy those things to make one of their cakes. Firstly, the filling is thick and sturdy enough not to flow down the side of the cake even if you were to just spread the filling without the cake ring and acetate sheet. Secondly, I personally don't like my cake to be too tall. With the cake so tall, you'll only need a small wedge for one serving, especially for Momofuku type of cake which you can't eat a lot because it's so rich and sweet. It becomes problematic when you want to cut a high cake into small wedges. It doesn't stand. Everything just falls out into one big mess. I find that up sizing the pans to 7" or 8" gives you the best size and height for the cake. I bake mine in round cake pans rather than in a sheet pan.
I would never think of Oreo and red velvet as a good combination but some people commented on how their friends and family were raving about the red velvet cake with Oreo cream cheese frosting they've made. I shouldn't shut the door in the face of new things since experimenting with different and totally unexpected combination of flavours is necessary for creative growth. It shouldn't be so bad, after all, the experts at Kraft did produce a limited edition red velvet Oreo cookie. I think it's genius because, if you notice, red velvet doesn't have much flavour. It's basically a red cake with a little cocoa powder. So Oreo will be a breath of fresh air to plain old red velvet.
I'm baking this red velvet because it's a special request from a friend. I've been baking so many red velvet and it's quite off putting to be baking yet another red velvet cake, but I also didn't want to give her a different cake when she was clearly looking forward to a slice of red velvet. This spruced up red velvet would be a nice halfway point. It's always nice to be baking something for someone, makes it more meaningful.
I didn't want this red velvet to be just another red velvet with Oreo frosting. There must be something more to make it special. I'm still in my "Momofuku Milk Bar phase" so I thought why not do a Milk Bar inspired red velvet cake?
The construction of the cake involves making cookie crumbs from Oreo, buttercream frosting for the top of the cake and half-bake a cheesecake for the filling. And, just for fun, mix chocolate sprinkles in the cake batter before baking.
Birthdays to me are reminiscent of butter cake filled with cheap vanilla buttercream frosting. Back in the days, that was the kind of cake we got from the bakery to celebrate birthdays at home. This Momofuku Milk Bar Birthday Cake is exactly what birthdays taste like to me. The first bite I took really brought back old memories of birthday celebrations when we were still kids. We used to have some friends over for home cooked noodles, red eggs and chicken nuggets, and after hours of video games, we would get bored and it was time to sing the birthday song and cut the cake. The fun filled celebration always ends with a sweet note with a slice of creamy birthday cake for everyone.
Lately I've been baking a lot of celebration worthy cakes from Y3k Delicious Cakes recipe book. The cakes in this book are really interesting and each time I keep going back to try the recipes there. I was in the mood for some yam cream cake, so yam cream cake is on this week's dessert menu.
For those of you who do not eat yam, I assure you that you will like this cake. Yam in dessert tastes ten times better than yam cooked in savoury dishes. You must try it to find out.
If you have tried making mousse with whipping cream and your mousse ends
up lumpy and watery, fret not as I have the solution in making easy and
fail-proof mousse for cakes.
The secret to making the mousse without
having to wait for the cake to set in the spring form pan is to use
whipped topping. Whipped topping is non-diary whipping cream and is
sturdier and fluffier than diary whipping cream. Though many have their
reservations on non-diary whipping cream, I still feel it's better to
use whipped topping because it's easier to handle and getting it wrong
too many times is just discouraging.
With this recipe, you can make Secret Recipe's signature cake from your own home.
This year I made a green tea tiramisu for hubby's birthday. His favourite cake is tiramisu so I thought why not spice it up a bit and make a green tea version.
This green tea tiramisu is so yummy. It's also special because it is not a cake which you can get from the bakery. Again, this is a recipe from Y3K Delicious Cake recipe book. The recipe uses Mascarpone cheese but I substituted it with regular cream cheese.
