Black Forest Cake

I've been offline a little longer than I intended no thanks to some work commitments but to make up for lost time, I am featuring this most famous of cakes. Next to chocolate and strawberry, I think this must be one of the most well known names.

In my mum's version, she starts with a chocolate sponge cake. Cuts it into 3 slices and each inner layer is coated with cherry juice and kirsch (a clear liquor). Then, she slaps on thick slabs on whipped cream, piles on the cherries and thick chocolate shavings.

Very Bavarian and wholesome.

Kuih Talam

One of my mum's lesser known talents is in making local dessert. Once in a while, she comes up with something like this large tray of kuih talam. I am not sure who it is meant for but for the benefit of those who have no idea what this is, it is a type of sticky Malay cake. The white layer on top is savoury while the green bottom section is sweet (or is it the other way round?). It's kind of a Malaysian speciality.

Marble Cheese Cake

Just read in the Star yesterday that Gordon Ramsey may do a feature on Malaysian cuisine. Pssh! what does that foul-mouthed boor know about food? A London paper recently did a review of 'celebrity chef' restaurants and Ramsey's sat at the bottom of the rankings of a miserable, overpriced lot.

While I was grumbling about the pretensions of poor English cooks, mum was baking this little creation. It's basically chocolate cake with a large swirl of cheese and moist chocolate. I really like the crater top. The side view shows the 'marbling'.

Chocolate Cake

You can't resist this if you are remotedly a chocolate lover. It is not just any chocolate cake but more correctly a double chocolate cake. As I was growing up, mum always had a tub of leftover cream in the fridge - which was why I was kind of a fat kid.

The cake body is baked in such a way that it retains quite a bit of moisture and is not too crumbly. A thick layer of chocolate cream is sandwiched in between two cake layers and covers the entire edifice. The cream itself is something to shout about. It is freshly made from thick slabs of pure chocolate, butter and sugar.

Pandan Custard Cake

This cake has been around for almost 30 years but believe it or not, people still ask for it. As a kid I used to help my mum stir the mixture until one day, when I was about 7, I churned the mixture so fast that everything flew out of the bowl and hit the walls. That ended my baking career.

The key ingredient is freshly squeezed pandan juice - from the plants in our garden (and sometimes my grandma's). Under the thick layer of custard is pandan sponge cake. It is garnished with dried coconut sprinkles.

Raisin Cupcake

Butter cupcakes with raisins are always popular with my kid cousins. Very good when mum wants to bribe them into doing chores. The sprinkles make the cupcakes look kinda cute.