Friday 29 February 2008

MASTER BAKER CHALLENGE - Cinnamon

This is for the first time for me to participate in a cooking challenge. I've been thinking of doing it for quite a long time, but I just didn't have enough confidence. Now I think I'm ready.

This is a challenge from MASTER BAKER CHALLENGE and for this month, the ingredient that the participants have to use is CINNAMON.
Straight away I thought of my favourite cake - called Ontbijtkoek. This cake is quite popular in Indonesia where I'm from, but originally it's a Dutch breakfast cake.
What I love about this cake is the cinnamon flavour combined with palm sugar. You can substitute the palm sugar with brown sugar, but in my opinion it won't taste the same.
The almond on top gives a nice crunchy texture. It's sticky and dense and my favourite way to eat it is with lots of butter.

Usually this cake is baked in a loaf pan but prefer to bake them as cupcakes because it bakes quicker and looks pretty. I've tried to make them with Trytamil (gluten free) flour before and they turned out quite well. The texture a little bit different than the ordinary flour but they still taste very good.

Here's the recipe:












Ontbijtkoek (Brown Spice Cake)

Ingredients:

100g plain flour
½ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp ground cinnamon
1½ - 2 tsp spekkoek spice *
40g butter/margarine
5 egg yolks
3 egg whites
½ tsp vanilla extract
100g palm sugar, finely grated
50g almond flakes

Method:

  1. Pre heat the oven to 180 degrees C
  2. Sift together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon and spekkoek spice, set aside.
  3. Beat egg yolks, egg whites and vanilla extract on medium speed until foamy. Add the palm sugar gradually while still beating until thick.
  4. Using a spatula fold in the flour mixture a few spoons at a time, mix well.
  5. Add the melted butter and keep folding until it's all mixed very well. The batter will be runny.
  6. Pour the batter into the pan and scatter some almond flakes on top of each cake.
  7. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until the tooth pick test comes out clean.
  8. Cool them in the pan for 5 minutes and then move them to cooling racks.
  9. Serve them with butter or frost them with vanilla butter cream.
(This recipe makes about 9 standard cupcakes or you can stretch to 12 if you want to)

* Note:
If you can not buy ready mixed spekkoek spice, you can make it yourself by mixing well
2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tbsp ground cloves
1 tbsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tbsp ground cardamom

Use it as needed and keep the rest in an airtight jar.

3 comments:

Nikki57 said...

Ohh I was hoping for some kind of spice cake! They look delicious

Anty Harton said...

You're welcomed to try it. It's really good and the cinnamon give that christmas-y smell that I like :-)

Unknown said...

hey anty, congrats for entering the challenge, the cakes look lovely!