Taiwanese Castella with Bee K’onscious

This cake is lightly sweetened with Bee K’onscious raw honey…it is very delicate, soft and it melts in your mouth. Great as it is or served with a dollop of fresh whipped cream.

Before I continue…I need to disclose the following…I received a sample of Organic Raw Bee K’onscious honey for review purpose and I was not financially compensated for this post, all the opinions are completely mine own based on my experience.

I saw and heard of raw honey but never had the chance to try, so when the company contacted me, I thought that it was a good opportunity to give a try…so here I am writing this post…and I am glad I did…as a matter of fact, I already baked this cake twice and ready for the third time…

– What is raw honey?

Raw honey is processed differently as compared to the regular honey. Apparently ray honey contains more minerals, vitamins and bioactive plants compounds. Moreover, raw honey contains bee pollen with are not found in regular honey due to processing.

– How the Taiwanese Castella cake tastes with Organic Brazilian Raw Honey?

Well, the raw honey is not as sweet as the regular ones, giving the cake a light and delicate flavor of honey, not overwhelming…indeed a great addition to the already refined cake. I hope you are not “tired” of Taiwanese Castella …

– Are you ready to check the recipe?

Ingredients:

6 large eggs (total weight of approximately 300g) separated, (make sure the bowl with egg white does not contain any trace of grease) 70 g vegetable oil (I used sunflower) 60 g organic raw honey 60 ml milk 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 100 g cake 1 pinch salt 10 g white vinegar 60 g white sugar (depending on your taste)

Method:

Preheat oven at 300oF

In a small pan, add the vegetable oil and place in a low heat until small bubbles appear on the side of the pan.

Pour the warm/hot oil into a heat resistant bowl and add the sifted cake flour, mix well to form a thick paste. Add the raw honey and then the milk.

Add the egg yolks 3 at the time, mixing well into the batter each time.

Add the vanilla extract, the batter will be somehow. Mix until well combined, at this point the mixture will resemble a thin batter.

In a large bowl of a hand-held mixer or stand mixer whisk the egg white with the vinegar until large bubbles form.

Add the sugar slowly into thirds. Whisk until soft peaks form (very important that the egg whites are SOFT PEAKS). Do not over beat, the should be shiny and form soft peaks.

Add about ⅓ of the meringue to the peanut butter/egg yolk mixture and mix gently until all the egg white is incorporated to the batter.

Pour the peanut butter/egg yolk mix to the remaining meringue and fold gently until all the egg white is combined to the batter. Do not over mix.

Pour the batter into 2 loaf pans (20 cm x 7 cm or 7 ¾ x 2 ¾ inch) lined with parchment paper. Tap gently the pan to remove excess of air bubbles.

Place the pan into a tray and fill with approximately 2 cm or ¾ inch of hot water and place into the oven. Bake for approximately 45 minutes, then decrease the temperature to 285oF and bake for another 10 minutes or until a wooden stick inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean.

Remove the pans from the oven and the cake from the pans. Let is sit on a wire rack.

Gently remove the parchment paper and let it cool completely on the wire rack.

Serve at room temperature or cold.

Keep the cake in the refrigerator for up to 7 days, although it will be all gone by then.

– Would like to see more light cakes recipe? Check these out…

Thank you for visiting Color Your Recipes…have a colorful week! Honey Caviar

This is a fun recipe using molecular gastronomy method to make little bead of honey. The main ingredients beside honey is agar-agar, which is from seaweed.

Playing with “molecular gastronomy” again…this time I used agar-agar, which is a vegetarian version of gelatin.

Apparently this can be done using gelatin if you have difficulty finding agar-agar. I have the feeling that if gelatin is used the texture might be more chewy…something that I will try to make in the future since I love chewy texture.

I must admit that I was reluctant to use agar-agar, because the image of bacteria growing in petri dishes always come to my mind when talking about agar-agar; all this due to years and years of working in microbiology lab…I literally had to block these images from my mind when I started to make this honey caviars.

This recipe is much easier than the Spherical Yogurt; most of the ingredients are commonly found in the kitchen, with the exception of the agar-agar which can be substituted with gelatin.

These little honey caviar or pearls can be used with anything that you want to serve with honey, like cheese, yogurt, cake and the list goes on and on. Besides, they look very “cute”.

Before I go on to the recipe, I just received over the weekend the new issue of Desserts Magazine, and the current issue is available free to non-members, so if you would like to browse the magazine please check the link here…

One more thing before I share the recipe, this method is called “Gelification” and is based on a recipe featured in Cookistry.

Ingredients:

1g of agar-agar 3 tablespoons of water 6 tablespoons of honey ¾ to 1 cup of canola oil or any other unflavorful cooking oil Water and ice

Method:

Place the vegetable oil in the refrigerator.

Mix the agar-agar with the water and place in low heat. Slowly add the honey, stirring constantly until the agar-agar is totally dissolved. It might take a while and needs boiling. You will know when there are no more particles in the liquid.

Let the agar-agar/honey mixture cool until start to thicken a little. If you leave it too long a big gel will form.

In the meantime, remove the oil from the refrigerator and place in an ice bath, so the oil is kept icy cold.

Using a dropper drawn the agar-agar/honey mixture and drip in the cold oil. As soon as the droplets of honey fall into the oil you will see little pearls forming and slowly falling to the bottom of the oil bowl. Let the caviars sit for a while in the oil so they turn firm. Gently with a slotted spoon or small strainer scoop the caviars out of the oil and rinse in cold water to remove the oil. Drain well and the honey caviars are ready for you to add to anything you wish.

I served the honey caviars with plain yogurt…so good! If you enjoy this “molecular recipe”, you might want to check on the Spherical Yogurt.

Did you know that gelatin is made from collagen from animal bones and skin while agar-agar is made from seaweed? Agar-agar is very popular in Asian cuisine and are sold as powder or translucent strands.

Thank you for stopping by Simple Recipes [dot]me…have a colorful day!