recipes & notes
carrot cake and cream cheese frosting
I freeze the cake uniced and it defrosts perfectly, it can be eaten frozen if it's not rock hard- maybe that's weird to eat frozen cake but I enjoy the texture. For the cream cheese frosting I substitute icing sugar with brown sugar. I suggest to add sugar slowly to come to a sweetness you prefer.
tea cake
I infused the milk for this recipe with tea bags. I store leftover cake in the freezer and use cut up pieces to make a coffee-jelly trifle!
pan fried steamed bao
I make a large batch and flash freeze them on a tray for half an hour and then move them into a container, flash freezing them ensures they don't stick later and are easily seperated when needed. I find frying them and defrostig them a little difficult, I don't think I have the found best method yet but I prefer to steam them before frying them.
shortbread cookies
I mixed everything by hand and they turned out great, I did rest them for 15-30 minutes in the freezer after cutting out the shapes and I found that the cookies didn't visibly spread. I didn't try to pipe the mixture though I always struggle with my piping set but I assume it wouldn't be too difficult as long as you didn't chill the batter before piping and chilled it afterwards.
pesche dolci
I had immense difficulty making these and I don't think my heat was correct because the biscuits became incredibly cracked when baked. I will give another pass at these but ensure I make the batter slightly wetter and attempt to create steam with a water bath to really minimise cracking. I also didn't enjoy the filling and will opt for thinner biscuits with peach compote filling next time.
rice cakes (video), tteokbokki, rose tteokbokki
I made the rice cakes a few times and the method I find best is to mix with a silicone spatula a few times before kneeding the dough because it's incredibly sticky. The first rice cakes I made were incedibly dense and probably needed more water. It's hard to get the ratio right and then it's even harder to roll the cakes out and have them look actually nice due to how incredibly easy it is to ruin their shape. As long as you don't mind appearences, rice cakes that are softer pre-cooking are chewier and melt in the mouth much nicer than a dense rice cake.