Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

Another Sunday evening, poring over recipes in How To Be A Domestic Goddess for next morning's breakfast...we haven't had cake for breakfast for some time now so it came down to either the Banana Bread or the Sour Cream Chocolate Cake with Sour Cream Icing. Obviously the chocolate cake won hands down. (This is the second time the Banana Bread didn't make it to the kitchen! I wonder why??? ;-p). It wasn't a difficult recipe but Nigella used an unconventional method which worried me for a bit. All the dry ingredients were put into the mixer first, followed by the soft butter on it. THEN cream. Funny isn't it? Nonetheless, I started the mixer on slow to bind everything together before increasing the speed for creaming. No mess. The liquid ingredients were hand-whisked in my large Pyrex jug before they were poured into the mixing bowl to combine. The recipe didn't state how long or till what stage the mixture should look like, so I did a gu-esstimate. As usual, I didn't have enough sour cream to make the icing... well, that's the official line to my icing-loving daughter. The batter was good for an 8" round pan and this morning, we had yummy chocolate cake with milk for breakfast. As with any Sour Cream Chocolate Cake, the texture is always softer and moist albeit a tad crumbly.

Jam Doughnut Muffins

Another 6am morning with nothing on the table for breakfast...and muffins are the easiest and quickest to do within 30minutes. These Jam Doughnut Muffins are even better because there's no need to melt butter at all. Just vegetable oil. I made them into mini muffins and was too stingy on the strawberry jam filling. Should have put in 1 teaspoon worth instead of half. Despite that, the muffin was no less attractive on its own. It was soft, tender with a touch of sweetness...like doughnuts. I didn't melt butter for the muffin tops or rolled it in fine sugar either...too much work for 12 mini muffins. Just dusted icing sugar on them and they were all gone by 9.30am!

Chocolate Cheesecake

It seems like ages ago since I last baked something isn't it? True, true... while the children were on their 2-week mid-term break, I took a little break, too. The MOTH scored major points with me when he suggested that I take a holiday sans kids!!! I was like - serious? Short of asking him what wrong did he do (naaah..love him to bits), truth was, I wasn't going ask too many questions or pretend that I'll miss the kids (oh, all right...maybe a tiny bit) because I may just lose the opportunity altogether! Wicked.... Long story short, the MOTH applied for a couple of days off from work to babysit HIS children and I booked my ticket for a long weekend Down Under. So before I left (call it my guilty conscience or what not), I baked this don't-forget-to-miss-me Chocolate Cheesecake. It was very, very good. I attempted to marble the cheesecake instead of folding it in evenly but my heavy-handedness in dolloping the melted chocolate messed it up. So I had some wodges of chocolate amidst the smooth cheese. Clearly, nobody noticed the botched job because the three enjoyed it so much that the whole cake was finished before the weekend ended. Or reckon they had it as 3 meals a day??