durians!!

I didn't really realise that it has been quite a while that I last blogged. I haven't stopped baking totally and i'm still alive and kicking. =p

I've baked stuff in between but somehow, with overwhelming school work and classes, I couldnt find the energy to take pics and to upload and much less blog about them. I then started to regret bring lazy. So here I am, with my latest experiments! durians!

I personally am not a fan of durian. I don't hate it. Neither do I love it. I eat anything related to durian (durian cakes, durian puff, etc) but not just durian alone. weird huh. In any case, I decided to bake some durian muffins, using a banana muffin recipe and of course, substituting the banana puree with durian puree.

Had a guest photographer today and so, the pics uploaded are all taken by him =p The tops looked a little too brown and burnt, but they tasted perfectly alright. It seemed like the durian was too thick and heavy and the batter was super duper thick. I guess i was overly generous with the durian and it tasted more like 榴莲糕 rather than a muffin =X

On the very same day, I proceeded to prepare the ingredients for a durian chiffon cake while the muffins was in the oven. Again, the yolk batter was super duper thick due to the thick, dry fibrous durian. I still carried on nonetheless. This time, I baked it in a normal cake tin, to experiment and to see how things goes. A couple of email exchanges with Rei, I was told to reduce one egg white and bake for about the same time.

This was a bad bad one..

1. The cake didnt rise much at all. Fill only like..2/3 of the cake tine height? =(

2. The cake clinged well to the sides upon overturning the pan..BUT..slipped off slowly and silently after 15 mins or so..=((

3. The durian puree was so thick and chunky that you could even see the spots they've occupied in the cake!

4. You could hardly taste the texture of chiffon, unless you bite into an area without the durian chunks.

5. the weird thing is, the texture of chiffon was largely present though it slipped off the tin..hmmm..what went wrong? the durian too heavy?? beats me!

This brings me to my conclusion about baking with durian..though still very unsure as to why..

Lesson #1:
Durian puree is much thicker, drier and crazily fibrous as comapred to banana. never, do a 1:1 substitution

Lesson #2:
Always process the durian puree in a blender/food processor to make sure it is soft and smooth

Hopefully i'd have a much better durian attempt..not too soon la..durian expensive heh..