Double Chocolate Muffin

I don't think this one needs too much introduction or description. If this isn't enough chocolate for the chocolate addicts out there, let me add that at the heart of the muffin is a blob of soft chocolate cream.

Coffee Cake

Mum starts with a chocolate cake base then layers each deck with chocolate cream, coffee cream and sprinkled walnuts. Best served chilled with a cuppa hot espresso.

Chocolate Walnut Cake

This is a quite a simple and light cake. As usual, there is the dough. This is mixed in with a big bowl of chopped walnuts and chocolate chip.

As you can see from the top right corner of the photo below, there were quite a few cakes cooling on the kitchen table.

London Cookies

I can't figure out why these cookies are called London cookies because I have never seen them in London. The best way to describe these cookies is that they are like a cookie-version of Ferrero Rocher chocolates.

Mum starts by making a biscuit dough and weighing them out small portions. She presses a piece of hazelnut into the middle of the each biscuit portion, balls the dough and puts them into a tiny paper cups. The biscuit balls are then baked and cooled. Next, she pours melted chocolate over the biscuit and sprinkles almond bits on top.

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.

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.

Marble Cheese Muffin

This is one of my favourite muffins and it is mum's invention. It is actually a chocolate cheese variety but what is great about it is that it is layered and has a surprise middle. She starts out by putting a layer of chocolate mix at the bottom of the cups and a large dollop of soft chocolate. Then, she tops up with cheese cake filling and a squeeze of melted chocolate. She finishes with a little swirl to create the 'marbling' pattern.

You can almost see the steam coming out from the top where the cheese and chocolate split. Let your taste buds be attacked by a mix of flavours and textures - the savoury cheese, sweet chocolate, crumbly cake and warm melted chocolate.

Banana Chocolate Chip Walnut Muffin

This muffin loaded with goodies is one of mum's creations. She blends a special muffin batter using banana mash, chopped nuts and chocolate chips. 

After scooping the batter into little paper cups, she does another round of garnishing. More goodies are added on top to make the final product look, smell and taste goooood.