Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Custard egg tarts, dusted with icing sugar on top.
Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl M. Cordeiro Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

A quick browse through my most recent posts will show that my latest baking projects have all revolved around puff pastry creations. And I still have a few more items of puff pastry that I’d like to try before putting aside this light but decadently butter filled pâte feuilletée to genuinely say that I’m sick of it.
Continue reading “Custard Egg Tarts with Puff Pastry” →

Curry puff made with puff pastry, Singapore style.
Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl M. Cordeiro Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

It was the large, triangular, multi-layered flaky pastried curry puff that I had in mind when putting this together. The kind that was stacked warm and neat on a newspaper lined cardboard box that was carried for door to door sales, usually by an Indian man or his son, when I lived in the high-rised government built blocks in Bedok North, Singapore.

I was about five or six years old when the large curry puffs, too large for me to finish on my own actually, became one of my favourite things to eat, beating the smaller, more reasonably kid-sized, fried rounded and pinched tipped version of curry puffs.
Continue reading “Variations of Curry Puff with puff pastry” →

Crème caramel, with extra caramel on top.

Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson and Cheryl M. Cordeiro Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

I don’t remember when it was that I first tasted crème caramel, all I knew was that I loved it, and at the time thought I would also never be able to enjoy this dessert if I were not at a posh restaurant in Singapore ordering it off the menu.

The first time I made this dessert, I thought that there was no way at all that it would turn out right. The Swedish weather was cold, the caramel came out too sticky and too thick, it froze almost immediately upon touching the soufflé dish and I couldn’t wash the dish clean of the solidified caramel even with boiling water! Since the caramel was stuck to the dish, I went ahead with the custard on top of it and thought not to expect too much, writing it off as a failed project.
Continue reading “Crème caramel, made with the most basic of ingredients” →

Easter lilies and coloured Easter eggs.

Photo © Cheryl M. Cordeiro Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

One of the exciting events to look forward to in school when I was young during Easter week was the Easter Egg Hunt. The teachers would hide colourfully painted hard boiled eggs in one of our school gardens – the smaller gardens of the school – and the girls simply had to roam the gardens in search for them. Each girl who found an egg had a present to look forward to.
Continue reading “Coloured eggs for the Easter basket” →

Steamed chocolate cake.

Photo © Jan-Erik Nilsson for Cheryl Marie Cordeiro 2010

This is one of the easiest cakes to make, the preparation time being just about 7 minutes and the cooking time, which is steaming, is ca. 35 minutes. It’s delicious just after it has cooled, served with a little whipped cream (or plain vanilla ice-cream). In Singapore, this cake is most often served with a lush chocolate ganache over the top, or if you have the cake layered, the chocolate ganache can come between the layers too.

Steamed cakes most likely came out of Chinese kitchens as it is the Chinese who have most variations of steamed foods from buns to dumplings, vegetables to fish and meat.

There are variations of the steamed chocolate cake recipe around the internet, though the variations are in slight proportions. Since I’m a chocolate anything fan, this chocolate cake is one that I make often when I’m not in the mood to use the oven for baking or when I want a slight change in chocolate cake texture.
Continue reading “Steamed chocolate cake using whipped cream” →