The Irreverent Cook

Stupid Blogger, the sequal

2009-07-31T16:40:00.002+08:00

Bloody Blogger is on the fritz again, and hence I can't post. Grrr. Sequals [mostly] suck, so what's new

June Daring Baker's Challenge

2009-07-03T13:26:00.000+08:00

**Through no thanks to Blogger, and because of a brilliant fellow blogger, I managed to post this. GET OFF YOUR ASS, BLOGGER, AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS.

Its the holidays, and my incredibly bored sister made all the pictures into montages, so you guys decide if its good or bad news.

I have no love for squiggy food, and the frangipane layer was as squiggy as squiggy comes, so I really can't say I enjoyed this challenge, though it does look rather pretty.

The June Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Jasmine of Confessions of a Cardamom Addict and Annemarie of Ambrosia and Nectar. They chose a Traditional (UK) Bakewell Tart... er... pudding that was inspired by a rich baking history dating back to the 1800's in England.

Stupid blogger

2009-07-02T14:42:00.003+08:00

Something is majorly screwed up with blogger, so that tons of people have been unable to upload images, yours truly included. And since blogger MUST be busy with something more important, such as saving the world from monsters or defeating evil, so much so that no one bothered to respond to the flood of complains, there will be no post until blogger gets off its ass. I am truly sorry, because I have a reservoir of pictures and posts dying to get out =(

Peach Squares

2009-06-21T16:05:00.002+08:00

These are awesome. I tried it with blueberries, as per the original recipe, and they worked fantastic. It was so good, 2 weeks later I made them with canned peaches, and they were equally good. Just ignore the steps for preparing the blueberries and substitute with peaches.

Recipe here =)

Checkin' in

2009-06-07T09:28:00.001+08:00

I'm back from Borneo in one piece, and I have been baking, just not bloggin about it, so, sorry about that =P I'm enjoying, very much, my standard 'slacking' phase of my holidays, where I spend 70% of my days in bed, sleeping/reading/listening to music. Will update when I get over this phase!

May Daring Baker's Challenge

2009-05-27T21:24:00.004+08:00

It would seems that, when it comes to strudels, Singaporeans have been living in an alternate universe. All my life, thanks to Ritz Apple Strudel, I've believed that strudels looked like this:
So imagine my surprise when May rolled around, the challenge was revealed, and everyone in the Daring Baker community [and beyond] told me that strudels actually looked like this:

Bear with me for a little while more, and imagine my disappointment when my own strudel turned out like this:

I find myself to be utterly hopeless at all manner of dough stretching/kneading/tossing, as proven by the bread, pizza, and lastly strudel challenge. I suspect this failure can be attributed to using baking paper instead of cloth, but I didn't have a big enough piece of cloth.

However, I [and my family] was extremely pleased with the filling. I filled the pastry with flambe-ed peach halves in rum and butter, and let me tell you, it was AWESOME, and so quick to whip up. Flambe-ing the peaches were a ton of fun too!

The May Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Linda of make life sweeter! and Courtney of Coco Cooks. They chose Apple Strudel from the recipe book Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague by Rick Rodgers.

FLAMBE PEACH HALVES IN RUM AND BUTTER

Ingredients:

1 can peach halves, well drained.

3 tbsp butter

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup rum

**There's some debate on whether you can flambe on a non-stick pan, so just to be on the safe side, avoid doing that. I don't have a non-stick pan so I just used the most shallow pot I have. Worked great.

Melt butter and add sugar to it. Cooked til dissolved and very bubbly.
Add peaches to butter mixture and cooked til peaches take on a brown sheen and smells awesome.
Remove from heat [****VERY IMPORTANT! DON'T ADD THE ALCOHOL OVER OPEN FIRE****] and add the rum. Stir well.
Place back on fire and ignite either with a long matchstick or one of those stove lighter things.
Sit back and enjoy the pyrotechnic. The fire will burn down once all the alcohol is burned off.

Vanilla Poached Pear Crumble

2009-05-10T18:39:00.003+08:00

I am leaving with my sister for a 2 week backpacking trip in Borneo this coming Tuesday, and I decided it would be in bad form to leave my readers with my last post. I don't want to be [even more] responsible for spewing forth more anger and violence into an already crazy world. So I decided to leave you with this. Vanilla-y, crumbly, sweet, gooey pear crumble.

I forgot to put sugar into the crust, so I compensated by making a thick syrup out of the cooking juices of the pear and drizzling it over the crumble. Worked very nicely, and I'm keeping the left-overs for making vanilla lattes. However, this didn't turn out exactly as I expected, because despite adding a whole vanilla bean to poach with the pear [scrapped with pods thrown in], the vanilla scent was MINIMAL. I have no idea what went wrong, and if you do, please enlighten me.

Vanilla Poached Pear Crumble

Filling:

3 large pears or whatever approximate you deem fit, peeled, sliced and cored

1 vanilla pod

3 tbs sugar

Crust and Crumble:

One recipe of short-crust pastry, made to the crumbly stage. Rubbed in, water added but not kneaded. [refer here]

Handful of walnuts/almonds/pecans/whatever

2 tbs sugar

1 tbs cinnamon

Syrup:

Cooking juices

1/2 cup sugar

Poach pear, sugar, split vanilla beans and pod in just enough water to cover. Until tender.
Drain pears and leave open to dry out as much as possible.
Take 3/4 of short-crust pastry 'crumbs' and press into a pan/pie dish/whatever. Poke full of holes and bake at 180 degree celcius for 15 minutes or until cooked. You'll smell it when its cooked.
Mix remaining 'crumbs' with other ingredients.
Arrange pear slices over crust, spread crumble evenly over and bake until browned at 180 degree celcius.
To make syrup, simply reduce juice with sugar until desired consistency. I find reducing to be best done in a flat pan like a non-stick pan. Water evaporates so much faster!
Dig in! =)

Scroll down if you came here for cheesecake and baked goods.

2009-05-01T16:07:00.004+08:00

How nice. That time of the semester again when I feel like murdering everyone in sight, especially those on my 'list'. That professor who never did return my grade. That other professor who set an exam paper completely differently from what she told us would come out. The noisy morons who think the library is their own personal cafe. Random assortment of other morons and idiots. Wait a minute, there's no list afterall, all who annoys me qualifies. Can't WAIT for next semester.

April Daring Baker's Challenge

2009-04-28T14:29:00.006+08:00

Today's your lucky day, dear readers, because I have 3 more papers snapping at my ass, and not enough time, so you get to see many delicious photos without having to sieve through [much of] my ramblings and rants.

I kept it simple, as my body demanded no nonsense delivery of fats and chocolate to my fried brain cells.

There's a walnut-digestive base, which is simply out-of-this-world, REALLY.

A vanilla cheesecake layer, which is really great, even if I didn't use to be a cheesecake fan.

And finally, the piece de resistance, a layer of caramel dark chocolate ganache. Can I say YUM?!

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Thank you, Jenny! This is truly an outstanding recipe and challenge, which bowled over even a non-cheesecake lover!

Also, folks, I've got no time to type out the recipe, so please get it at Jenny's site. Trust me, if you want a cheesecake recipe, this is IT.

Waffles!

2009-04-22T10:59:00.006+08:00

I love waffles, and my earliest memories of waffles were those from A&W. Till today, my mom still insists that no other taste better than A&W's, but since the chain no longer operates in Singapore, there's nothing to compare to.

I dislike eating waffles outside, because they almost never taste good. They are either soggy, or taste of baking powder, or too sweet, or just not good, not crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside.

My own attempts to make waffles have also frequently ended in disaster, but those days are over, because I found a great waffle recipe!

A few tips about waffle-making:

Pay close attention to the amount of steam coming out of your waffle maker to determine when to remove the waffle. Right at the beginning of the cooking time, loads of steam will be emited. When the steam slows down to a gentle stream, that's when to remove the waffle. It also depends on how brown you like your waffles to be
Mix with a whisk. Actually, this applies to all things. Whisks mix really well!
Don't fill the waffle maker to the edges. Drop the batter in the middle, close immediately and tip the waffle maker to spread the batter around instead.
If you want to try other recipes, always use one where the egg whites are beaten and folded in separately. It's just not the same without =)

My mom made a banana chutney to go with these waffles, but I think they are sooo good, its great to eat just with honey/syrup and butter/margarine!

Also, leftovers make such a great snack [toasted, with some chocolate chips thrown on, a drizzle of honey...], so don't worry if you can't finish one batch!

Recipe from Mr. Breakfast =D

BEST WAFFLE EVER

1 and 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 beaten egg yolks
1 and 3/4 cups milk
1/2 cup vegtable oil

3 egg white, beaten stiffly

Mix all the dry ingredients, set aside
Combine all the wet ingredients, except for the egg whites. Add vanilla extract if you want, I think it makes the waffle so much better =)
Combine dry and wet ingredients. Beat away, no need to be gentle
GENTLY fold in the egg whites.
Cook in the waffle maker. Done!

Girls Night Out

2009-04-21T20:38:00.005+08:00

Exams are fast approaching, and I am currently holed up at home busy with revision. But, yesterday I took the night off for a well-deserved night out with the girls! You guys rock, by the way, but I'm sure you know that! Oh, and you guys are all barking mad too, and I mean that in the best possible way =)

First, we began the night with some fantastic mexican food at the fabulous Cuba Libre at Clark Quay. 1-for-1 mojitos, whole night on mondays! Look how pretty Singapore River looks at night =)

Then, because the band doesn't play at Cuba Libre on mondays, we headed for Timbre Art House for some chillin', some live music, some beer and some crazy good pizza

And then, after the final set from the band, craziness and too much good food set into the lovely, crazy heads of my girlfriends. We decided that what we needed right then, was some good old KTV!

And so off we headed to KTV!

Dear friends, I eagerly await our Cashmere Mafia days, and those after it! Gotta love crazy nights out on the town with girlfriends =)

Vietnam and Cambodia 2007, part 2

2009-04-16T22:15:00.005+08:00

Yes, I know its been ages, and I also know that I'm a lazy ass. Now that we have the self-flagellation out of the way, this post will be about Hue in Vietnam!

Once I tell you what Hue is known for, you'll immediately know why I love that place. Hue is the 'historical' city of Vietnam, because it was the capital of Imperial Vietnam way back in the days. The Imperial palace and tombs are still there, and those are the main tourist attractions which we visited.

The interesting thing is you can find incredibly old gates all around Hue, remnents of an imperial past, and they are still standing strong and in use, as you can see below

First, we went to the Palace. Its nice and 'historical', even if it has been completely 'tourist-fied'. Back in the days, when China's tributary system reigned supreme, Vietnam was China's most valued vassel state in Southeast Asia, and the palace reflects the importance Vietnam placed on Chinese influence as well. See the Chinese-style architecture?

The girls and I having a little fun in the palace =) Can you see us as cheeky princesses running around the palace? Ok, maybe not princesses =P

Isn't it fascinating to see traffic and everyday life just running along their business right beside a centuries old palace? Not simply a building, but a piece of history that is hardly remembered today. Who knew that Vietnam had an imperial past, had Emperors and dynasties?

Next, even more interestingly, because of the [slightly] morbid nature of the attractions, we visited the imperial tombs of past emperors. As these tombs are located right on the fringe of the city, its much simpler and cheaper to join a day trip instead of trying to DIY.

While I was really interested in the tombs, I found, to my surprise, that these are not really tombs.

Yes, the Emperor commissioned it for himself, and designated it a 'tomb', but they function more like Summer palaces than tombs. They are huge, with lavish water features and pavilions and gardens. The royal family, when bored with city life, will come here for a little R&R, kind of like the ton do with their country manors.

And, the tour guide tells us, the Emperor isn't even buried there! This is for fear of grave robbers and such. So, in Imperial Vietnam, 'tomb' is actually lingo for 'holiday chalet'. And each Emperor had one. If I remembered correctly, there's 10+ of these around Hue, all beautiful, all lavish, all empty.

And after a hard day of sight-seeing, nothing more welcomed than a steaming bowl of soupy noodles, cooked lovingly with a special recipe, filled to the brim with ingredients.

March Daring Baker's Challenge

2009-03-27T00:20:00.000+08:00

The March 2009 challenge is hosted by Mary of Beans and Caviar, Melinda of Melbourne Larder and Enza of Io Da Grande. They have chosen Lasagne of Emilia-Romagna from The Splendid Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper as the challenge.

This recipe did not work out for me. Everything felt wrong. There seemed to be wayyy too much spinach, so much so that the pasta felt a little stringy from all the fibre. The recipe asked for way too little eggs, I had to add twice the stipulated amount to get the dough to look like dough. But I must have added too much, because the dough became really wet. So I added more flour to try and correct the dough, and that didn't work at all.

And then, despite kneading the dough for close to an hour, it still stuck like a fiend, to EVERYTHING. Rolling it thin was no problem, the problem was getting it off the surface in one piece. And so in the end, I cut the dough into little balls, drowned it in flour, and rolled it out little by little, making patchwork lasagne layers.

Also, following the instructions for a thin layer each of bechamel and regu [I used canned pasta sauce. Busy month =(], the lasagne came out extremely dry. I felt like I was eating a solid block of carbohydrates.

But, during a very busy month, it was still fun to potter around the kitchen for a day, as it always had been and hopefully always will be =)

Suntec City, 'Just Acia'

2009-03-19T23:48:00.003+08:00

Where, you might ask, does one find such gorgeous teriyaki salmon at a very reasonable price? My very smart buddy, Lindy, took a card, for which I'm sure many people will be thankful for because now they know exactly how to track down these fabulous slices of savory sweet salmon

Just Acia

Just Noodles Suntec Pte Ltd
3 Temasek Boulevard #B1-57
Suntec City Fountain Terrace (Tower 3)
Singapore 238826
Website: www.justacia.com

These are truly the best-tasting, most value-for-money teriyaki salmon I've ever tasted. There's THREE fairly thick slices. THREE. For the price of around S$12, with free flow soft drinks and ice cream! Not only is there a lot of the fish, all of it taste fantastic. It's fresh, its tasty, its cooked just right so its soft and flaky, not hard and chunky. Seriously, need I go on? If u are in Suntec, HEAD THERE!

Thanks buddy, for bringing me there! =D

The 2009 birthday post

2009-03-09T21:21:00.003+08:00

Behold, the best birthday cake, EVER.

Its like I have 8 birthday cakes! From the 6 O'clock cake, clock-wise, I present: Tiramisu cake, Coffee cake, Chocolate Banana cake, Raspberry Chocolate cake, Walnut Cheesecake, Brownie Cheesecake, Chocolate Gateaux, and Black Forest cake. All cakes are from Hans, and I highly recommend the raspberry choc and the choc gateaux. To die for =D

A closer look at the Chocolate Banana...

And the Brownie Cheesecake.

And, as if the perfect birthday cake wasn't enough, my parents got me the perfect birthday present. May I present, my spanking new Tefal Activys!!

Its big [ger], its brand new, it comes with that rotating thing for baking chicken, and I love it.

Now, let's give a hooyah! for my late oven. Though it was small, it was wonderful, and must be credited with everything I made on this blog. Dear friend, thank you for serving me so well for the past 7 years. If ovens get reincarnated too, may you be my oven again in your next life.

And, a big THANK YOU must go out to my dear parents and my sister, and also to all my friends, for putting up with the crabbiest girl in the world and sum up the enthusiasm to celebrate the day I was born =D

Special birthday broadcast: Amelia's quote[s] of the day

Use your brain
Move your ass

Almond Sticky Chocolate Buns

2009-03-01T20:46:00.008+08:00

Q: What is the worst thing that can happen to a baker with sticky buns on her mind?

A: Realizing that her yeast is dead [way before expiry date] after all the ingredients have been prepared.

And that was exactly what happened to me today, but unfortunately, that wasn't the end of it.

I don't know if its my oven finally throwing in the towel after 7 years of loyal service, or if I did something wrong, but the middle part of my sticky buns got completely burnt. The wonderful, perfectly golden brown sides taunting me with what-my-sticky-buns-could've-been.

Still, making these buns were a perfect way, for me, to end the midterm breaks, and to help me face school tomorrow. I particularly liked how the buns were lightly perfumed with the scent of the spices without overwhelming the taste buds. And, chocolate ALWAYS helps.

STICKY BUNS: ALMONDS CHOCOLATE STYLE.

Buns:

310g plain flour

1 large egg

160g butter, softened

125ml milk [Warmed. Just til comfortable to the touch. Any warmer and you'll kill the yeast]

1 sachet instant yeast

1 tbsp sugar

1 tbsp each of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg. Adjust as desired.

1 tbsp softened butter

5 tbsp sugar

1 cup chocolate chips

Topping:

1 cup brown sugar

25g butter

3 tbsp honey/golden syrup

1 cup almonds, roughly chopped [substitute with any nuts u like]

Combine sugar, 1 tbsp of flour, yeast and milk. Set in a warm place for around 10 mins until it is frothy. Very important to see froth, otherwise your yeast is dead and you need to make a trip to the supermarket.
Combine flour and spices, set aside. Important to note: amount of flour given in any bread recipe is always an approximation. Stop adding flour when dough looks dry, and add more if it looks too wet.
Beat together yeast mixture, egg and butter.
Beat in the flour.
Once flour is combined, either start kneading with hands or use the dough hook of the mixer. I don't like kneading, so dough hook for me. Knead until everything comes together into a bowl and pulls cleanly away from the sides of the bowl.
Cover and let rise for an hour while preparing the topping.
Combine brown sugar, butter and honey in a pot, and cook until everything comes together. Pour into a baking pan lined with foil.
Sprinkle nuts evenly over the caramel mixture and set aside.
Once dough is rised, punch down and knead until smooth.
Turn out and roll out into a rectangle shape, roughly 1/3 of an inch thick. Anything will do, no need to stress out over this.
Lightly spread butter over the dough, then sprinkle with sugar, then the chocolate chips.
Roll it up, length wise.
Cut into individual rolls, of desired size, and pack closely, seams inwards, onto the baking pan with the topping. Let rise for around 1/2 hour.
Bake in a hot 210 degree celsius pre-heated oven for around 30 minutes, or until browned.
Once removed from the oven, turn the buns out immediately, or the caramel will harden and you'll never get it out.
Ta-da, sticky buns, ready to be feasted upon =)

February Daring Baker's Challenge

2009-02-28T00:35:00.004+08:00

First time baking flourless chocolate cake, and I paired it with a Ginger-Honey ice cream [adapted from The Kitchen Sink's recipe], made by hand =)

Frankly speaking, while the cake wasn't bad, I still prefer flour (?) cakes. The usual chocolate cakes have a more robust feel and taste to it that a flourless cake lacks. Also, they achieve greater heights and is fluffy-er, which I love.

While most daring bakers seem to think that the cake is rich and dense, I found the cake to be more delicate than a usual chocolate cake. Very very dark, yes, thanks to my 70% dark chocolate, but also delicate and light on the palatte, so much so that the ginger ice cream over-whelmed the taste of the cake.

I also over-whipped the eggwhites, which resulted in a too-dry cake. However, it kinda moistened up the next day, which is surprising, in a good way.

I don't think this cake needs anything more than a heap spoonful of good old fashion fruit preserve =) Thanks to Dharm and Wendy for a wonderful challenge!

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Chocolate Valentino [or: Easy peasy flourless chocolate cake]

Preparation Time: 20 minutes

INGREDIENTS:

16 ounces (1 pound) (454 grams) of semisweet chocolate, roughly chopped

½ cup (1 stick) plus 2 tablespoons (146 grams total) of unsalted butter

5 large eggs separated

1. Put chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water) and melt, stirring often.

2. While your chocolate butter mixture is cooling. Butter your pan and line with a parchment circle then butter the parchment.

3. Separate the egg yolks from the egg whites and put into two medium/large bowls.

4. Whip the egg whites in a medium/large grease free bowl until stiff peaks are formed (do not over-whip or the cake will be dry).

5. With the same beater beat the egg yolks together.

6. Add the egg yolks to the cooled chocolate.

7. Fold in 1/3 of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture and follow with remaining 2/3rds. Fold until no white remains without deflating the batter. {link of folding demonstration}

8. Pour batter into prepared pan, the batter should fill the pan 3/4 of the way full, and bake at 375F/190C

9. Bake for 25 minutes until an instant read thermometer reads 140F/60C. Note – If you do not have an instant read thermometer, the top of the cake will look similar to a brownie and a cake tester will appear wet.

10. Cool cake on a rack for 10 minutes then unmold.

Deep fried Nian Gao

2009-02-27T11:19:00.004+08:00

Nian gao [年糕] is kind of a caramel sticky cakey thing that really has few equivalent in Western culture. It is intensely sweet, very sticky and comes wrapped in lotus leaves. The Chinese buy it at Chinese New Year, because it's name has auspicious connotations [something like the coming year will be a successful one], but we usually don't eat it, and just let it get mouldy [which has auspicious connotations as well, believe it or not] before throwing it out.

And if we do eat it, there's only one way to do so: sandwiched between slices of yam and sweet potato, battered and deep fried. As my mom is strongly against deep-frying at home, we only get to eat it when my aunts are nice enough to bring some over for us. When the yams and potatos are sliced thin enough, when the nian gao is still warm enough to be melted, gooey and delicious, this is a treat to die for.

This year, however, I managed to convince my mom to let me try and deep fry some of our own. It's my first-ever attempt at deep frying anything, and I have to say its really fun! Especially when there's someone to do the clean up after =P

I used the batter recipe from Cheap Eat, with some modification. My nian gao was 400g, I added 200g for my yam and sweet potato, so I made 6 batches of batter. I halved the number of eggs, because I thought 6 eggs in a batter is ridiculous, and still ended up with an excess of batter. Not too much, around 1 batch, I would say.

The verdict? The fried nian gaos deflated and went soft as soon as it cooled, all hints of crispiness gone with the heat. In all fairness, every other nian gao I've ever had behaved in the same way, unless they are pen-fried again before serving, so I guess the recipe is OK =)

And then, there were these fellas:

With the leftover batter, I dipped and deep fried some chocolate mint squares! I was just curious about what the result would be like =P They were nice, melty gooey chocolate in a batter casing. But, again, disappointingly, they didn't stay crisp =)

Kueh Bahulu Tiramisu

2009-02-02T22:53:00.004+08:00

This happened all because I was munching on a kueh bahulu while searching for a tiramisu recipe. I was looking for something to make to bring to a girlfriends sleep-over, and thought that tiramisu would be a great idea, since the theme was booze, and anything boozy was welcomed

One of the recipe I was going through emphasized how important it was to use only Italian sponge fingers. As always, when someone says 'impossible', I think 'really???'

And then my brain wondered over first to the kueh I'm munching, and then to that giant container of the kueh we have leftover from the Chinese New Year festivities, and the proverbial light bulb went off in my head.

I don't know if anyone has ever noticed, but kueh bahulu is really similar to Italian sponge fingers. They both have a crisp, almost hard outter shell with a softer, but still dry inner sponge. The only difference laid in the shape, which did made it a little tricky.

The result: I thought it tasted really good. In fact, I would say that it suited my taste even better than the sponge fingers, because the kueh is a little more substantial than the fingers, and holds its shape and texture a lot better than the fingers, so you can taste the cake-like texture even days after the tiramisu was made. I've always found restaurant tiramisu to be too soft, with the sponge layer almost disappearing into the cream. I will definitely use this in all future tiramisu.

However, if you are a fan of that exact melt-in-your-mouth texture, like my sister, this then might not be as palatable. My sister found the kueh a little denser than the fingers. But, when all's said and done, if you can use up left-over kueh, [or save a lot of money; these kuehs costs like S$1 for 12] and get a bucketful of fantastic tiramisu, I think its worth a shot

Amelia's very light, very very boozy kueh bahulu tiramisu

INGREDIENTS:

25 - 30 kueh bahulu

3 egg whites [if you are uncomfortable with raw eggs substitute with mascapone or cream. This is cheaper and less fattening, since mascapone costs a bomb and cream is fattening]

1 cup of sugar/2 1/2 cup of icing sugar

400 ml whipping cream

250ml mascapone cheese, room temperature

3/4 cup booze [whatever kind you have. Brandy/Cognac/rum, whatever]

1/2 cup coffee liqueur [replace half with expresso if you don't want it ultra boozy. I was making it for girls night in, so of course we wanted it extra boozy]

Quarter the kueh if you don't mind chunks, or cut into slices if you want nice layers. Lay down the first layer and brush with the coffee liqueur
Whip cream til stiff peak. [google for tips if its your first time. Seriously, unless u want butter] Set aside in fridge.
Beat egg whites until soft peak, beat in sugar little by little to make a stiff meringue.
Beat the rum/whatever a third at a time into the meringue. It'll deflate a little, but its fine. If it starts looking very watery, hold the rest of the booze.
Stir the cheese into the egg white mixture until smooth. Stir any left-over booze into the mixture now.
Mix a bit of the whipped cream into the mixture to lighten it first, before folding the rest of the cream into the mixture gently. Don't kill yourself trying to keep everything inflated. Lightness here is a bonus not a necessity.
Spoon over the kueh to make the first layer, and repeat with as many layers as you want.
Tastes best left overnight in the fridge. Just before serving, dust top with cocoa powder or shaved/grated chocolate

January Daring Baker's Challenge

2009-01-29T19:51:00.004+08:00

Due to extenuating circumstances [read: 300 pineapple tarts for Chinese New Year], I am completely and absolutely baked-out. So, its a blessing that this monthy's challenge is easily the simplest challenge yet in my 11 month stint as a Daring Baker. Even so, I almost didn't make it, despite simplifying the challenge down an almost embarrassing amount.

So, this month's challenge is to make Tuiles. Since I've made the traditional sweet ones before, I decided to go for a savory one, which is actually a molded parmesan crisp.

I know I'm suppose to give the recipe I used, but frankly speaking there is no recipe. Parmesan crisp is basically a small amount of grated parmesan spread to desired size on a baking sheet, baked til crisp. To make the bowl shapes, I lifted the baked crisps into muffin tins and pressed down, then allow them to cool.

As for the filling, the challenge is to fill it with something fruity. I was going to make a fruit salad, but pineapple tarts intervined, and I filled it with dragon fruit instead, because I thought it was a really special fruit and would be nice to write a little about.

A dragon fruit is actually the fruit of a cactus plant, and as far as I know, tropical and comes mostly from Thailand. Its called a dragon fruit because of its scale-like leaves. It comes in two variety, the white kind like the one I have, and a deep fuschia one, almost exactly like the colour of tge skin, except a couple shade darker. The fruit itself is extremely succulent and juicy, and had a mild taste and frangance.

Getting to the fruit is a little tricky. Dragon fruits should be treated like mangoes, except they don't have the pesky seed in the middle. The skin have to be peeled off the meat, just like how mango skin is peeled off the fruit.

Last and most important thing about this challenge: DO NOT use pre-grated parmesan to make crisps. Perhaps because they are grated too finely, so that they are more like parmesan powder than grated parmesan, the pre-packaged ones are so dry they can't melt, and thus can't cohere, and finally can't crisp but burn instead. Thank goodness I had some left-over grated parmesan in my fridge.

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

Vietnam and Cambodia 2007, part 1

2009-01-22T22:49:00.007+08:00

Vietnam, Cambodia, and this trip, holds some really special significance and memories for me. It was my first backpacking trip, the one that opened my eyes to the wonderful world out there waiting to be discovered. Also, on this trip, I discovered just how beautiful Southeast Asia really is. I had a really hard time choosing the photographs, because Vietnam and Cambodia is just overflowing with beauty, and it saddens me that I can't represent them all here, but I'll do my best. Last, but most certainly not least, I had the most fabulous travel mates, Shieh Yuan and Krystal, who truly truly made the trip.

The scene above is a typical rice field in Vietnam, and its peaceful sights like these that I love the most.

We started off the trip in Hanoi, a busy, vibrant city that practically throbs with life. The infamous Vietnamese traffic that gave me quite a turn on my first night, but I soon got used to it.

Dinner on our first night in Vietnam, Hanoi, a fine introduction to the fantastic street food culture of Hanoi. It was a kind of extremely thin pancake made from a rice batter wrapped around a meat and vegetable filling, served with a mountain of fried shallots, a hunk of fish cake and a huge handful of mint.

Next morning's breakfast, the world famous Vietnamese Pho, rice noodles in beef broth with beef slices, bought from a tiny eatery in the market

And then its off on our first destination, Halong Bay! I hightly highly recommend it to anyone heading to Hanoi

A one day package, which costs around 20 USD will get you on a junk like this for around 6 hours. Overnight packages are available too

This is Christie, a girl who was on the package tour to Halong Bay as well. She's from Hong Kong, and really nice =)

So, after around an hour of leisurely driving around the bay, enjoying scenery such as these,

the operators drove us to a sort of floating village, with a floating 'market' of fresh seafood they keep right there. We had to option of buying some to add to our lunch.

Then it was time for lunch, and boy, it was a glorious affair. Besides the pure enjoyment of eating on a boat, with the wind blowing through your hair, the food was top rate, cooked by the staff right there on the boat. It was so good, we only remembered to take a picture after we polished off everything.

After lunch, we drove around some more to a cave like structure, that little hole behind the 3 of us. For an additional few dollars, we had the option of getting into a smaller boat and exploring the inside. It was totally worth the money, a veritable secluded secret hide-out, like nothing we've ever seen before. Besides, this can only be done during the dry season, as the opening becomes submerged during high tides, so its definitely not to be missed!

All in all, it was a GREAT first day =)

And the next day, we visited the fantastic Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum! The communists have a really curious inclination to embalm their dead leaders' bodies and then putting them on display for the eternal adoration of their followers.

This had been done with Lenin, Mao Zedong, and Ho Chi Minh, in Vietnam. As a history student, this is a must see, and I have to say it was awesome. A little creepy, but awesome nontheless. No pictures were allowed, security was strict, procedures confusing and many, but still worth the while. Just be sure to get there early, its only opened for a very short time per day.

Vietnamese coffee, scrumptious beyond your wildest imagination if you've never had it before. Its civet cat coffee, which goes for pots of cash in Europe, but comes at a ridiculous bargain in Vietnam. Words of advice: buy as much as you can carry if you are in Vietnam! Go to the market, pick out the best grade beans, get them to grind [or not] and seal for you, that way you get even better value.

At night, we took a walk around the city, and came across this, a street-side stall selling a rainbow of traditional desserts.

The desserts are scooped out and served over ice and sugar syrup, with a dash of coconut cream over the top. Delish. I know guidebooks usually advice people to stay away from street food and ice, especially, but seriously, get a typhoid shot, bring lots of charcoal pills, and eat to your hearts content. THIS is the way to see Vietnam, not through some squeaky clean restaurant that could've been from any other city in the world.

Pineapple tarts

2009-01-17T19:19:00.007+08:00

I LOVE Chinese New Year, and Pineapple tarts are practically synonymous with CNY for me. In fact, that seems to be the case for a lot of people, which is why Chinese all over Southeast Asia are probably even now, as I am typing, busy creating trays of this deliciously fragrant and addictive cookie

Pineapple tarts are a curious creation, quintessentially Southeast Asian. It is a Nyonya invention, claiming both Chinese, Malay and Southeast Asian heritage, yet meaning different things to different people.

The Chinese embrace this cookie not just because its absolutely irresistable, but because we believe Pineapples to be a symbol of wealth and fortune, and thus auspicious to have in the household during the CNY.

To be honest, while I can't stop eating these cookies, I absolutely dread making them. Its a gigantic operation, it takes hours and days, its finicky and troublesome, and brain-numbingly repetitive.

But, the result is ALWAYS spectacular. Its just impossible to buy pineapple tarts even close to the home-made taste without paying an arm and a leg for it. And then, at the price you are paying, you might as well make it yourself.

So, even though I know we all have to restraint ourselves around the tarts, or there wouldn't be any left for CNY, always take one for yourself =)

Pineapple tart pastry

Ingredients:

500g plain flour

300g unsalted butter, very cold and cut into small-ish chunks

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

3 egg yolks, lightly beaten

couple tbspn ice cold water

Combine flour, salt and baking powder, mix well
Rub butter into flour mixture
Using a butter knife, mix in the egg yolks with a cutting motion
Add the ice water 1 tbspn by 1 tbspn, cutting with the butter knife and checking its consistency after each addition. This is probably the most tricky part to making the pastry. Add too little and your pastry will fall apart, too much and it will be mushy. To test readiness, pinch a small amount together. If it founds a soft dough, its ready.
Gather the dough together into a disc, refrigerate for 20 minutes before use. When making the tarts, use the dough portion by portion, keeping the rest in the fridge. The dough becomes hard to handle once it is warm.

Pineapple Jam

* PLEASE don't use the ready made ones. I am not being snobbish here, I have nothing against pre-made stuff if it makes life easier, EXCEPT when they taste like crap. If you are going to use pre-made, just buy the tarts and save yourself some trouble.

Ingredients:

5 smallish pineapples
1 stick of cinnamon

2 star anise
1 cup of sugar [You can add up to 2 cups. My parents prefer the cookies to be less sweet, so I only added 1]

There are many ways to prepare the pineapple, depending on what kind of consistency you like your jam, and how much time you are willing to spend. My mom likes the jam with long strand of fibers, so she grates the pineapple. I think that's way too troublesome, and I don't particularly like fibers, so I either chop [more time consuming but gives more bite] or blend the pineapples. So, whichever way you chose, first step is to massacre the pineapples.
Drain the pineapples if you want the juice or if you want to reduce the cooking time. I like to leave the juice, because they add flavor
Pour pineapple into large pot, add the rest of the ingredients, switch on some music and stir for around 2 hours, until the mixture caramelize, dry up and looks like jam. Remove the spices.
Let cool and its ready for use. You can make this way in advance and freeze it. It should keep interminably.

Assembly

With the basic pastry and jam, you can assemble this in any number of ways. My family likes the open face tarts, so that's what we have here.
Using special pineapple tart molds, cut out the tarts.
Roll a small amount of the jam into a ball and place into the indentation
Cut out a tiny decorative piece of dough to place on top of the jam. I don't really know why we do this, just that my mom taught me to do it this way and now tarts without that little dot on top doesn't look like pineapple tarts.
GENEROUSLY go over with egg wash. Just remember: wherever you want the tart to appear golden, egg wash it.
Bake at 180 degree celcius until golden
This recipe makes around 100 tarts, which sounds like a lot, but they will actually disappear with alarming speed under the combined assault of relatives.

The Reason

2009-01-14T17:18:00.003+08:00

I think I now know why the higer powers directed me towards baking. It is because nothing, and I mean NOTHING, is more therapeutic and calming for me than a giant slice of sugary, buttery, crumbly, fluffy and hopefully, if there's a god, chocolaty piece of cake.

Popcorn

2009-01-13T19:38:00.003+08:00

This sums up a great chunk of my December holidays. My holiday consisted almost primarily of too much popcorn [mostly savory, I always burn my caramel], too much movies, too much TV, too much trashy novels, and wayyy too much slacking around. All because I found THE way to make perfect popcorn.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup popcorn kernels

2 tablespoon oil

salt/butter/caramel/whatever you want on your popcorn

*serves 2

Heat oil for around 5 minutes, then throw in one kernel.

When kernel pops, remove pan from heat and pour in the rest of the kernels. Shake well to coat kernels with oil. Count to 30.

Place back onto the stove, and shake pan when kernels start to pop. To ensure crunchy popcorns, open lid a little to let steam out as the kernels pop.

Season as desired, slot in a movie and enjoy!

P.S. I found this on someone's blog, but I can't remember whose, I'm really sorry I can't credit you!

Chocolate Cake

2009-01-11T12:56:00.003+08:00

My latest baking mission: to find a recipe for a fluffy chocolate cake, as well as a frosting that taste good and pipe well.

It doesn't sound that hard, a good chocolate cake and frosting recipe. Most bakers will probably have a favorite stashed away, and I know this because I've been asking around.

Unfortunately, none of them seemed to work. After a whole series of failed chocolate cakes [read: dense and flat and unappetizing], the mere mention of chocolate cake makes me queasy

But, I am determined to get this done. So today, I set out to bake a chocolate cake incorporated with the entire arsenal of rising agents I have at my command. Meaning, inside this cake, I used baking soda, baking powder, as well as separately beaten egg whites, all in an attempt to create THE fluffy chocolate cake

The result? Not bad, considering. It still wasn't as tall as I had hoped, but I'm beginning to suspect that this legendary tall and fluffy cake I'm chasing after doesn't exist, and I should just be content with this fluffy-but-not-so-tall cake.

As for the frosting, what I have here is a coffee Swiss meringue buttercream. While delicious, it is nowhere near stiff enough to hold delicate pipings like flowers and leaves. Seems to me only shortening can achieve the consistency that I want, but due to my [irrational?] disgust for shortening, I'm forever stuck with unattractive crude looking cakes. So if anyone has a good recipe for a frosting stiff enough to pipe without using shortening, give it to me and you'll have my eternal gratitude

December Daring Baker's Challenge

2008-12-28T21:43:00.004+08:00

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

Thank you Hilda and Marion, it sure was a hell of an experience making this cake!

The most important thing I learned about this dessert is that it was NOT made for the tropical climate. REALLY. 5 minutes after I removed it from the freezer after freezing overnight, it looked like this:

So, let me run through the layers here. From the top, dark chocolate icing, raspberry mousse, vanilla creme brulee, Feuillete insert with cornflakes, dark chocolate ganache, and finally almond dacquoise. Decorated with some coloured buttercream icing flowers and leaves.

I have to say, some of the layers are absolutely drop dead gorgeous, like the mousse, the dacquoise, and the ganache. But, altogether, I just don't think they go very well. It is a real killjoy to slide through the icing and the mousse only to hit the rock hard creme brulee and feuillete, and then to have to hack through them, destroying the bottom layers in the process.

I definitely would not make the cake in its entirety again, but for a super decadent treat, I can imagine myself making the mousse, then ribboning the ganache through it to make raspberry dark chocolate ganache ice cream. YUMMMMMMMY.

Christmas cookies

2008-12-08T21:11:00.006+08:00

My first time making christmas cookies, and it was a total blast! I tried my hands at two kinds this time, good old traditional cut out sugar cookies, and something a little more chic, stain glass cookies

The cookie base for both cookies were the same, a fairly standard sugar cookie recipe from foodnetwork. This gives a very soft dough, so it must be well chilled before anything can be done with it.

Since it was my first time at cut-out cookies, I had no idea it was so hard! At least for the first 20 minutes :P It takes some practice, and tips are always useful, but on the 21st minute, I started to realise it wasn't that hard afterall!

I have a couple of tips of my own, so here goes.

It is REALLY important to dip your cookie cutters in flour after every cut. It stops the cut-out from sticking to your cutter.
When rolling out your cookie dough, flour the rolling pin instead of the dough. As in, hold your rolling pin over the plate/whatever holding your 'flouring' flour, sprinkle generously over the rolling pin and rub the flour all around the rolling pin. Do this as often as it is necessary, some times after every roll. This way, less flour gets into your dough in the course of rolling, since less flour sticks to your pin.
For the finicky excess parts of the dough u need to pick out from your actual cut-out, use a toothpick or cake-pick. Works like a charm!
I know everyone emphasizes this, but I figure one more time can't hurt. Absolutely important that dough is chilled EVERY step of the process before it goes into the oven. Above mentioned finicky parts comes out easier when the dough is chilled too.

Because the sugar cookie plus the icing would've been sweet enough to send me to a nasty corner of the moon, I used my own icing recipe, which substitutes lime juice for water. Icing is really simple, and hardly requires a recipe. Take a couple tablespoon of liquid, water, juice, whatever, and mix in icing/powder sugar until desired consistency, either stiff enough to stand, or just spreadable, to your preference. Just remember that even a couple tablespoonful of liquid takes a whole lot of icing sugar to soak up. 2 tablespoon of liquid can give you up to 500g of icing sugar, so only make however much you need. I made way too much, and stored the rest in the fridge. Not sure if they'll still be usable, will update on that :P

Now, for the stain glass cookies. Aren't they ADORABLE??? I've read about these cookies for a long time, but never imagined that I could actually pull them off, despite assurances from writers that they are dead easy. Sugar and I have always been uneasy friends. But, they are simply too cute to resist, and so I tried them. And guess what? THEY REALLY ARE EASY. Recipe's here, same as the sugar cookie one, but again, you hardly need one.

Don't worry about getting your candy crushed extra finely, unless you want to do intricate-finicky stain glass miracles with them. The sugar will melt and fill out all the crevices nicely, so just roughly crushed will do. If you want some ideas beyond the really plain ones I have here, just google stain glass cookies, and you'll get tons of images of BEAUTIFUL cookies, truly works of art.

So, despite never considering myself as a particularly creative person, I had a hell of a time decorating these cookies =)

November Daring Baker's Challenge

2008-11-29T19:58:00.005+08:00

First things first:

This month's recipe courtesy of : http://blogs.kqed.org/bayareabites/2006/12/24/caramel-cake-the-recipe/

Author : Shuna Fish LydonHosts

Co-hosts : http://eggbeater.typepad.com/,http://culinarycuriosity.blogspot.com/, http://blondieandbrownie.blogspot.com/,http://forayintofood.blogspot.com/ and http://glutenagogo.blogspot.com/

I don't know how to say this nicely so I'll just come out and say it. I hate this cake. Separately, the components are ok. In the words of Joey Tribiani, caramel syrup? Goooood. Brown butter frosting? Gooood. Salt? Very good. Chocolate ganache filling? Excellent. All together in a cake? Not so good.

One good thing about this challenge is the awesome caramel syrup recipe! Not only does it taste great and is super easy to make, when the water is added to the syrup it makes a sound like an explosion, loud enough to make any blood-thirsty girl happy.

On the bright side, many other daring bakers seemed to like it a lot, so maybe its just me =)

I just want to say...

2008-11-26T11:48:00.000+08:00

SUCK IT, BITCH

Light at the end of the tunnel

2008-11-22T12:08:00.002+08:00

Tunnel: exams

Light: Christmas!

I don't usually celebrate Christmas, not even sure if I like it. Its crowded everywhere and most people don't even celebrate it for religious reasons anymore. Not that I'm a devote Christian, I actually describe myself as agnostic/pagan most of time, another reason why I don't celebrate Christmas.

But this year, some how I just feel like celebrating Christmas. I like some parts of Christmas, like the music, the movies, the food. While nothing's confirmed yet, I think I'll do a Christmas bake-off series this year! Straight after exams, I'm going to buy myself a Christmas cookbook and cook up a storm! Something to look forward to =)

Biscotti

2008-11-09T22:04:00.003+08:00

I am so excited about this biscotti recipe! Its FANTASTIC. Its fast, its traditional, it tastes great, AND its looks great. This is like the dream biscotti recipe, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Check out the raving reviews from hundreds of other bakers! http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Biscotti/Detail.aspx

So, as you can tell, I got the recipe from http://www.allrecipes.com/, from the user Jandee who says she got it from a co-worker. The recipe is for an original biscotti, with only a little anise essence for flavor, which means you can modify it in any manner you desire, my absolutely favorite kind of recipe.

Instructions and tips and whatever are on the website, so check it out there. For this batch, I added 2 tablespoon of expresso and roughly a cup of walnuts. Unfortunately the coffee didn't come out strong enough, but it did impart a lovely brown colour. Words of advice: the dough is incredibly sticky, but it's perfectly alright, if a little impossible to shape with hands. Just pile it onto your baking tray and smooth out into desired shape and you'r in business =) Enjoy!

October Daring Baker's Challenge

2008-10-29T23:16:00.011+08:00

I'm not going to bother telling you guys about my busy month, I've finally realised that every month is a busy month. But I do have to apologise for the shoddy post and photos this month, because both my sister and I are exhausted from school work, and finishing the challenge was all I could manage.

As for the challenge proper, despite the wonderful feedbacks from other daring bakers, this is neither the easiest nor best tasting pizza dough I've tried. It takes 2 days to cold rise, is incredibly sticky and for some reason, browns reluctantly. The tossing method, however, is interesting. Not only did I never imaged that I would attempt such a thing [and it is arguable that what I did can hardly be called tossing], it did result in amazingly thin crust, thinner than I have ever gotten anything to be. Unfortunately, due to my horrendous tossing skills, some parts got too thin, and fared rather badly under my juicy seafood topping.

I did 3 flavors, seafood, hawaiian, and banana. Seafood because I've never had a good seafood pizza outside, Hawaiian because my mom asked for it, and banana because I wanted to try a sweet pizza.

I thought the seafood turned out divine, brine-ny, succulent and literally over-flowing with topping, far better than anything I've ever had outside. I used prawns, mussels, button mushrooms and cheese with a sauce of tomato and garlic.

The hawaiian was good too, especially because I didn't go as crazy with the topping, the crust had a chance to bake properly without being drowned in juice. I topped it with black pepper ham, pinapple chunks, mushrooms and cheese, with a plain tomato sauce.

As for the banana, my sister thought they were the best, and they were rather delicious, despite the horrendously burnt cinnamon. This one I brushed with butter, sprinkle with cinnamon then top with sliced bananas. Any idea how I can incorporate the cinnamon without burning them?

Stephen Moyer

2008-10-27T23:33:00.003+08:00

I don't wax lyrical about anybody very often, but when I do, I mean it. I just really really want to say that Stephen Moyer is such an under-rated actor. He is SO SO SO SO good at acting, he sends chills down my spine with one look. Yes, he's hot too, but I am serious when I say I adore, more than anything, his acting skills. I don't know why, before True Blood, he has only been cast in two-bit B-grade shows. I think Starter Wife is great, but Moyer's character in it is just plain stupid, and doesn't showcase any of that great acting skills of his, portraying him as nothing more than a piece of meat. Seriously. So if you have some time to spare, and you like vampire/supernatural fiction, check out True Blood, its the best I've seen in a looooong time.

P.S. Its just a little R-rated...

What I learned today

2008-10-25T17:54:00.001+08:00

Gin doesn't work in Mojito.

Things that make me happy in the morning

2008-10-21T09:17:00.004+08:00

Ok, I don't think I need to go into details on how to make these, its pretty basic, but I do have a tip that'll have breakfast on the table in 10 minutes. Ready for it? Here it is: cook everything in ONE pan! Fry the defrosted ham first [pour hot water over to defrost in 10 seconds], then the eggs, and finally, mopping up all the juices, 'toast' the bread in the pan as well. Its not that much faster than a toaster, actually, but it gives a better crust, and smells so much better.

I think breakfast is the meal I like to cook best. It always feels like the most cheerful meal of the day to me. I mean, you've just woken up, your stomach is growling, and NOTHING is better than a nice warm plate heaped with all your favorite breakfast stuff and a glass of juice. Muffins, eggs, harshbrowns, sausages, bread, jam, butter, scones, etc etc, everyone has at least one thing they will like. =)

Taiwan May 2008 Part 4

2008-10-04T14:37:00.009+08:00

Last part of Taiwan! After Hualian, we returned to Taipei, which I had already introduced a little in the first part. We saw all the touristy stuff, did all the touristy things, but managed to fit in a few other things slightly off the beated path.

Scenery along the railway between Hualian and Taipei. Beautiful coastlines

Audrey enjoying a bowl of beef noodles from a stall we found in the local wet market. We had no idea when we went in, but a couple of chatty customers [who were surprised we could speak Chinese and wanted to find out more] told us that the stall was supposed to be really famous. Note the giant bowl of salted vegetables beside Audrey!

The famous, or infamous, Toilet Restaurant. As I suspected, food is definitely not a top priority in a theme restaurant.

Can you believe these things are dustbins?

JK harassing a pigeon in the Zhong Zheng Guang Chang/Zi You Guang Chang

A drink Audrey was absolutely obsessed over in Taiwan. And I mean OBSESSED. She drank like around 4 bottles a day, and then went around buying out every bottle she could find and brought back to Singapore around 15 bottles. Its essentially a plum flavoured drinkable-jelly drink.

Danshui, which we went with Claire and Sandy, 2 other Taiwanese we met through couchsurfing. Thank you for showing us such a great time! Danshui is basically the Taiwanese version of the Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco, and I love that place!

We went there on a Sunday, and the place is packed, which I think is the best way to see the place, people milling around, band playing, atmosphere festive.

The street food selection is mind boggling, rivalling any night market. I'll show only a fraction of what we saw and maybe half of what we ate =P. This is grilled fresh squid, juicy and smoky, very very nice.

Passionfruit snow cups. There were like a zillion flavours available.

Chips on a stick.

And the next day, our last day in Taiwan, guess what we did? We met up with all our friends in Taiwan [minus Kimble], and we went to KTV!

All who know me knows how crazy I am for KTV, so it was a perfect end to the trip!

Back to the hotel for some last minute packing

While Pippin sat watched and laughed

All our Taiwanese friends sent us to the airport! Soooooo nice of them =)

Rice box we got from the train station on the way to the airport. BEST rice box EVER. It was soooo good, I devoured it in minutes. Doesn't look like much, but its divine, and deserves a whole photo and a glowing mention.

And thus we ended our trip, the last thing we saw of Taiwan not of some dingy airport, but of friends who made the trip what it was. So go to Taiwan, and make friends! Cause the people in Taiwan are truly the best thing Taiwan has to offer =D

Taiwan May 2008 Part 3

2008-09-30T00:13:00.010+08:00

I have officially reached the end of my patience with posting day by day, so from now on I'm just going to do the highlights.

Pippin, my lovely teddy who follows me everywhere. He had a nice time in Taiwan too =)

This is taken atop the 狮头山, or Lion's Head Mountain in Miaoli, which Kimble brought us to climb. The mountain is full of temples build in a variety of style and period.

Somewhere in Miaoli. It was a lake with a little stone island in the middle, and the locals fish there.

Moving on! I have to say, Taiwan has a fantastic train system, even if it is a little hard to get to certain areas, and is probably impossible to navigate if you can't read or speak Chinese.

And our next destination: the scenic 日月坛, Sun Moon Lake. That place is amazing, very beautiful, very relaxing, great weather. Best way to go around is to rent an electric bike. There are also many small, family-run hostels there, generally of excellent standards and good value, especially during off-peak seasons.

Next stop: Alishan, one of the most famous destinations in Taiwan. I'm sorry to say that it was quite a disappointment, at least for us. We had the most appalling luck. This is a picture of the view from the top of the mountain at around 5am, right around when we were supposed to be able to catch a spectacular sunrise. But due to the heavy fog, and the impatient train who wouldn't wait, we left without catching a glimpse of the sun.

The famous Alishan ricebox, which tasted like crap.

Redeeming features of Alishan: truly spectacular trees, so tall they seem to reach into the skies.

Moving on: to 绿岛, Green Island! Hands down, my absolute favorite destination in the entire trip. Relax, we didn't take these little boats to the Island =) The ride was bumpy, and yes, I threw up. Eating breakfast before the ride was a very bad decision. Standing on the deck, instead of sitting inside, seemed to make the ride more tolerable.

I loved EVERYTHING about Green Island [except for the proprietor of our hostel, who was a little evil. Don't stay at Jack's!]. The gorgeous seasides, the sleepy, peaceful little town, the close-knit small town community and the friendly population. I'll be seeing you again, Green Island.

Something unusual: seaweed iced dessert! Tasted very normal, actually, except for the addition of stringy seasweed, which has no taste. But still very cool. Did I mention how much I adore this place?

A short distance from Green Island is Hualian, a coastal city. First night there, we visited a night market by the seaside, at the 南滨公园 [Nan Bin Gong Yuan].

Part of our dinner

Watermelons were in season while we were there, and gigantic watermelons could be seen everywhere. Fresh, juicy chilled watermelon will be offered in every household you visit.

Another famous destination: Taroko National Park. Again, not quite what it's made out to be. And, please don't go up there without an exit strategy. The guidebook may say that you can flag down a bus off the park, but I can tell you from personal experience that is not viable. We had to hitch-hike out of the dame place.

Freaky kid who picked us up in front of the night market and followed us around, trying to sponge food and games off of us.

Game machine with cigarettes as the top prize!

If you are in Taiwan or going to Taiwan, and you are reading this, please help me eat an extra helping of breakfast and Soybean milk =(

September Daring Baker's Challenge

2008-09-27T12:29:00.001+08:00

FINALLY, a savory challenge!! Thank you, Natalie from Gluten A Go Go, and co-host Shel, of Musings From the Fishbowl, for this great challenge! I've never made crackers before, and it was an interesting challenge =)

This being an incredibly busy month, and I mean crazy CRAZY busy, even more then usual, [MAD MAD school stuff, trip to Cambodia, etc], I didn't do anything fancy with this challenge.

For the crackers, I went with salt and paprika. I liked the crackers well enough, though, as some other daring bakers have noted, they are more hard than crispy. Still, I adore the way they puff up in the middle sometimes, reminding me of a particular kind of tapioca chips I used to snack on as a kid =)

For the dip...well, I have to say I winged it, and had no real idea what I was doing. What I really wanted to do was make a seafood dip, but since it was a vegan challenge, I went with an eggplant dip. And all I really had was an eggplant.

So making process went as such:

1. Roast eggplant, remove flesh and dump into blender.

2. Add juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tb olive oil and blend.

3. Taste, freak out, and add a multitude of weird stuff like more oil, a bit of honey, some paprika, more salt, and walnuts [I know, wth was I thinking?]

But, all in all, thankfully, no food went to waste, and the dip came out edible, though not great. I'm just glad I finished the challenge =)

To see more fantastic lavash crackers and amazing dip ideas, visit the daring bakers blogroll!

Taiwan May 2008, Part 2

2008-09-26T23:15:00.001+08:00

Day 2/Taipei

After a good night's sleep at Michael's place, we started the day with a traditional, good old fashion breakfast, Taiwanese style, at a good old traditional breakfast place.

First great dicovery on the trip: Taiwan boasts the best, and I mean the BEST, soybean milk in the WORLD. From this day onwards, one of my life's tragedies would be not being able to drink this wonderful drink everyday.

See that rolled up thing in the background? Another wonderful Chinese invention, a breakfast rice roll with a crispy oily lovely piece of fried bread, and various other tasty morsels like egg, ham and meat floss rolled up inside. YUM.

And then, under Michael and Po Po's capable guidance, we began our tour of the amazing Taipei.

First trip on the Taipei equivalent of the subway/MRT:

Then the bus,

And we are at the great National Palace Museum of Taiwan.

Where the view is incredible,

And where we had fun making asses of ourselves taking bizarre photos

I didn't take any photos of the exhibits, but the size of the musuem is incredible, and I would love to have days to explore it. The 2 hours I had really didn't do it justice.

Lunch:

Pig's tongue, which is delicious. A strange but lovely texture, firm yet silky at the same time.

Then some famous temple. No idea which, I think its the Long San Shi [Dragon Mountain Temple?], they all look the same, and I'm no stranger to temples anyways.

And then, since it costs a ridiculous amount of money to see the tallest building in the world right now, the Taipei 101 building, Michael found us an alternative:

To view Taipei 101 from atop the mountain/hill, Xiang Shan, or Elephant Mountain.

Up there, not only did we get a magnificent view of the building,

We got a magnificent view of the city as well!

Next, time for dinner! And of course, we headed for another night market. Hint: its THE famous one this time!

Yup, its the famous Shilin Night Market. We ate the famous stuff, and they were nice, but not as fantastic as everyone makes them out to be. Still, a dinner at a night market beats hand down, for me, a dinner at some stupid touristy restaurant, so it was good. There must be a zillion pictures out there of food from Shilin, so I won't waste my time. And this concludes our second day =)

Taiwan May 2008, part 1

2008-09-15T09:50:00.014+08:00

Besides cooking, my other love is travelling. I wouldn't say I'm an avid traveller, but I do love a good trip, a brief sojourn into the foreign, exotic and thrilling =) As such, I try to take a backpacking trip [seeing as I'm a penny-less undergraduate] once a year, and this year, I chose to visit Taiwan!

The suspects:

[Left to right] Jun Kai, myself and Audrey. Thank you guys, you made the trip!

It was a 2 week trips, and the stories are endless, but my time is finite, so I'll have to cut it brief. Still, I don't really know how I'm going to arrange the post, but for now I think I'll do a chronology/location style.

Day 1 / Taipei

Since JetStar only flies to Taipei, we began and ended our trip there. And we had someone to pick us up from the airport!

[from left] Alger and Kimble. JK had met Kimble on http://www.couchsurfing.com/ [great website!], and then arranged for him to show us around Taipei. As we would come to discover, the best part of Taiwan is its people! Taiwanese are sooooooo hospitable it can be shocking sometimes. But seriously, they are the most hospitable people I've ever met =) Thank you too!

We arrived in Taipei in the evening, and we immediately swooped into our trip, thanks to Kimble! They brough us to our first Taiwanese night market!

And there, we had the greatest first meal ever =D

From left, Wasabi taiwanese sausage in a rice sausage [大肠包小肠], fruits in hardened candy [冰糖水果], more taiwanese sausages grilling, snake soup [! my first time. Tastes like chicken], all sorts of breads and pastries, oyster omelette Taiwanese style, mua chi [a kind of glutinous rice sweet pastry] and in the last photo, candied sweet potato and cockles.

After that, we headed to Michael's [Kimble's ex-student, who agreed to put us up. Suuuuper nice of him!] place, where we will spend the next two night.

And that concludes the first day/evening in Taiwan, which was fantastic, a great start to what would turn out to be a great trip =)

Carrot cake with cream cheese icing

2008-09-13T18:39:00.003+08:00

I've only eaten carrot cake once or twice, and I can't say I liked it much. With these ones, I found them to be uncommonly moist, and am not sure if that's the way they are supposed to be. Either ways...I still don't like them. On a side note, every icing I've ever made was grainy from the icing sugar. Is that how its supposed to be? Advice would be very very welcomed =)

P.S. I made puff pastry from scratch the other day!! Unfortunately, I can't post about it because my sister deleted the photos accidentally =(((( It wasn't perfect, but it did have some layers, so I'm happy =)

P.P.S. I HATE waiting.

August Daring Baker's Challenge

2008-08-31T01:00:00.002+08:00

I can't freaking believe its my 6th challenge!! Its scary sometimes when I think about how time flies =)

This month's challenge, hosted by Tony Tahhan and MeetaK, is of Chocolate Eclairs by Pierre Hermé. I have to say I was rather dissapointed when this month's challenge was announced, first because I'm not all that crazy about eclairs [before you shoot me, I like them just fine, I just don't love them], second because I've made eclairs a number of times already.

I was also quite displeased with the recipe, particularly with the given chocolate glaze recipe. It is tedious and complicated and expensive and completely unnecessary. As mentioned in last month's challenge post, I really abhor wastage, and that's what that recipe represented to me. The pastry recipe itself was fairly common, except for the strange instruction to open the oven door early in the baking, which caused my eclairs to deflate a little. Fortunately they recovered.

Despite all my grips, the challenge turned out fairly well. The pastry cream recipe is interesting, much faster than other recipes I've tried. I also played around with the flavor, with pleasant results, as you shall see =)

So, first there was the pastry. Baking them was a breeze, even with the bizarre instruction to open the oven door 7 minutes into the baking. I made puffs out of half the recipe and eclairs out of the other half.

For some reason, the puffs seemed to bake up much nicer. I think these eclairs and puffs look much cuter without the glaze. What do you think?

For the pastry cream, as mentioned, it came together quickly and tasted pretty good. Only complain is that they were a tad too runny. I split them into two batch, flavoring one with passion fruit [pulp of 1/2 a fruit, juice of 1 1/2 fruit] and the other with Kahlua. Both tasted fantastic, but I particularly liked the passion fruit pastry cream. I filled the eclairs with the passion fruit and the puffs with the kahlua.

Somehow, once folded into the pastry cream, the passion fruit loses its almost unbarable acidity, mellowing considerably. The pastry cream takes on the incredible frangrance of the passion fruit, only without the sharpness, so that it only hint of passion fruit and summer, yet lingers pleasingly on the palate. Loooooved it to bits.

I liked the Kahlua cream too, but not as much as the passion fruit =D

Next, for the chocolate glaze. As mentioned, I didn't like the given glaze, so I went for another one I found online.

2 oz. dark chocolate

3 tbspn butter

1 cup icing sugar

couple tbsp water

Melt chocolate and butter, stirring to mix. Remove from heat and stir in icing sugar until desired consistency is reached, diluting with water if too thick.

This recipe gives a glaze with a very nice consistency for the eclairs. It can be spooned nicely on top of the eclairs and it'll hold its shape well. Only problem is that its grainy from the icing sugar, and the chocolate taste is not very strong.

As for assembly, I really don't like the idea of cutting the eclairs in half. I think its messy and the runny pastry cream won't be able to hold its form. So I piped the cream into the pastries by making a small hole at its side. I think it worked pretty well =)

Another problem with this recipe: it made waaaay too much pastry cream. Good thing I really liked the passion fruit pastry cream, because I made it into this:

Canned pear pie with passion fruit pastry cream! I tell you, this pie was off the charts. I think I liked this way more than the eclairs itself, and its dead easy to make. Blind bake a short-crust pastry. Brush pastry with fruit jam. Pile in the pastry cream. Pile in the sliced pears. Seal the fruits with more jam. Ta Da, a fantastic pie!

HAPPY 43rd BIRTHDAY, SINGAPORE!

2008-08-09T14:29:00.005+08:00

Yay, we are 43 years old! I love national day, I really do. Yes, I know the government make use of this day to brain wash impressionable kids by filling their brains with cheesy patriotic songs and by placing so many flags all over Singapore that from an aerial view Singapore must now look like a bunched up red and white ball of rags. I also know the whole concept of national day is merely an invented tradition. Still, whether the children's faces are glowing with nationalistic pride or ecstasy at a day off school, the whole country feels I alive on this day, and I love it.

Seems like Yahoo loves it too!

So, the irreverent cook decided to commemorate this wonderful day by baking the only red and white thing she knows, and that is the calzone!

A calzone is basically a folded pizza, which means there will be the obligatory tomato paste and mozzarella. Red and white, get it? I know its lame, but its the best I could come up with =P

Anyways, about the calzone, I really love it! I think I'm never going out for pizza again, I can make it myself! Jaime Oliver would be very proud.

INGREDIENTS

Pizza dough:

1 1/4 cups warm water

1 package [11g] dry/instant yeast

1 tspn sugar

2 tbspn olive oil

2 tspn salt

about 4 cups plain flour

In a large bowl, combine 1/4 cup warm water, yeast and sugar, stirring to dissolve. Leave to foam. Stir in remaining cup of water, salt, oil and 1 1/2 to 2 cups of the flour, until smooth. Using the mixer or your hands, knead in the rest of the flour. Not all the flour have to be used up, just until the dough is smooth and elastic and won't take any more flour. Shape dough into a ball, place in a greased bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Divide into 8 balls and roll out into circles. Fill one half of the circle with your filling of choice. [I used tomato paste, shredded chicken, stir-fried mushrooms, and sliced mozzarella cheese]

To make pleated design, start off with the top right hand corner, turning it down and pressing it into the dough. Repeat action until the whole calzone is sealed. Bake in a 220 degree celcius preheated oven until puffed and browned, around 20 minutes.

Lovely Lemons

2008-08-06T14:38:00.004+08:00

In Singapore, we scarcely need to be reminded of summer, since its virtually perpetually summer-ish here. Despite that, I still love how lemons always manage to intensify the feel of summer, especially when they are baked into something delicious!

A while back, I wrote a post about Fresh Lemon Bars, and now, I've found another wonderful way to use lemons, and that is to make them into a versatile Lemon filling! This filling is truly amazing. On the first taste, it is almost too tart to bare, but by the second, third bite, the fresh, clean scent of lemon begins to fill your senses, the tangy sweetness of the filling making another mouthful irresistable. It can be used to fill a variety of things, and from one batch of this lemon filling, I made Lemon Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and Lemon Meringue Pies =D

For the cake, I merely sandwiched the lemon filling between two layers of yellow cake, slap on some cream cheese frosting over the top, and voila, I had a delicious, light and surprisingly sophisticated cake on hand! It took almost no time at all to whip up. Unfortunately, only one slice was left by the time my sister was free to take photos of it, and so I can only present you with this one and only photo =) It is entirely possible to bake a round cake instead, cut 3 layers out of it, then frost the entire cake, instead of the just the top. You'll have a lovely lemon cheese layer cake on hand in the blink of an eye.

INGREDIENTS

Yellow Cake:

1 cups plain flour

1 tspn baking powder

1/2 tspn salt

50g butter, softened

120g sugar

2 small eggs

1 tspn vanilla extract

1/2 cup milk

* yield 1 30 X 20 cm tray of cake

Combine flour, baking powder and salt, set aside. Cream sugar and butter until fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, before beating in the vanilla. Reducing the speed of the mixer, beat in the flour mixture alternatively with the milk, until just combined, scraping frequently. Bake in a preheated 180 degree celcius oven for around 20 minutes, or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

You can either make one layer and split that, either with a knife or a piece of dental floss, or bake two layers.

Lemon filling:

3 large lemons

1 tbspn cornstarch

90g butter

140g sugar

4 large egg yolks, lightly beaten, set aside in a heatproof bowl.

*yields 1 cup. Only 1/2 cup needed for the cake

Zest and juice lemons. Combine the zest, juice and cornstarch in a saucepan until combined. Add butter and sugar, heat until boiling, then boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly.

Beat a small amount of the lemon mixture into the egg yolks, then pouring quickly back into saucepan, stirring rapidly. Reduce heat to low, cooking until thick, but do not boil.

Once at desired consistency, press a piece of cling film or plastic over the surface of the filling and allow to come to room temperature. Once cool, it is ready to use.

Cream Cheese Frosting:

1 cups powdered sugar

3 oz cream cheese

45g butter, softened

1 tspn vanilla extract

*yields 1 cup.

Beat everything up in a bowl, scrapping frequently, at midium speed. After 1 minute, continue beating at increased speed until smooth and fluffy.

Don't think I need to go into details on how to assemble right? =D

Once you have the lemon filling on hand, the Lemon Meringue Pie is drop dead easy. This is my first time making LMP, and I have to say, I love the result! Can't believe I've never eaten LMP until now...I also wanted to experiment with tiny LMP, because transporting the whole LMP would have been a nightmare, with that towering cloud of meringue just waiting to slide off the pie at the first opportunity. I'm happy to report that tiny LMP was a success! Gonna be seeing some of those at parties...

1/2 a recipe of short crust pastry [around 250g]

Meringue:

2 large egg whites

1/2 cup sugar

If you've never made meringue before...do a search on google, there are tons of dos and don'ts about meringue on the net, so I'll save myself the trouble of listing them out here. I played around with the pastry this time, making around 6 mini LMP, and around 10 tiny LMP =P

For the mini LMP, simply roll out the pastry, cut circles out of it, and press into a muffin tin, pricking the pastry well before blind baking. To make the base for the tinies, cut rectangles out of the pastry, prick it, then bake it until cooked.

Spoon in the filling, top with the meringue. Make sure the meringue touches the crust, then send into a preheated 200 degree celsius oven, baking for around 10 minutes, or until the meringue is brown. And don't freak out, it won't be crumbly at all, but is meant to be marshmallow-y ;)

Baked samosas

2008-08-04T16:46:00.007+08:00

Attentive readers would remember that in my mother's day post, I mentioned that I had tons of phyllo pastry left over from my baklava. What I decided was to make some baked samosas out of them.

Samosas are wonderful finger-sized snacks, with morsels of spicy, savory vegetable or meat fillings wrapped into a triangle of pastry, then usually deep-fried. I don't know how to decribe this delicious traditional Indian snack, except to say that they will condemn the most fastidious diet plans to hell.

Well, my version is slightly less sinful, but no less addictive. I'll pop samosas over pringles or chips any day of the year. Instead of homemade pastry, I used phyllo pastry, and of course, I baked it, instead of deep frying it.

INGREDIENTS

Filling:

Indian spices [I find that unless you are an expert of spices, any mix of spices will give the exciting spicy kick we associate with Indian food, so no need to be too fussy about what spices you use, just whatever Indian spice you have around, common ones like cumin, marsala, chili, tumeric, etc. I particularly LOVE Indian mustard seeds, not for any particular taste, but for the fantastic popping sensation it gives when bitten into]

Mixture of vegetables [whatever you have on hand. Near anything would work, I used carrots, couple handfuls of mixed veg, and a couple of potatoes]

Onions, diced.

Seasoning

Pastry:

10 sheets of phyllo pastry. Adjust the amount of filling according to how much pastry you have, or want to make.

50g Melted butter OR vegetable oil

First the filling, which is dead easy to make. Dump all the vegetables into a pot, cover with lots of water, and allow to boil away till soft. Drain and mash up all the vegetables to desired consistency, either chunky or smooth.

In a frying pan, heat up a couple tablespoons full of oil. Fry up the spices [I used marsala, mustard seeds, cumin and chili powder] and the onions, watching and smelling carefully not to burn them. Once fragrant, pour in the vegetable mash and stir fry, until everything smells nice and the filling looks dry. Season accordingly, remove from heat and set aside.

On a piece of baking paper, lay out one sheet of phyllo pastry. Brush all over with the butter or oil, then lay another sheet of phyllo pastry over it, to get a 'sandwich'. Brush over the top sheet of pastry with oil/butter again. Cut, lengthwise, into either 8 or 4 strips, depending on the size you want your samosas to be.

Spoon just enough of the filling into the left hand diagonal of the bottom of the strip of pastry. Turn up the bottom corner of the right hand diagonal, covering the filling. Then, pick up the left bottom corner, folding it upwards. Continue to get the triangular shape, until the strip of pastry is used up. Follow with the rest of the pastry and filling.

Place wrapped pastry on a baking sheet. They can be close together and touching, no problem at all. Brush with oil one final time before baking in a preheated 180 degree celcius oven until brown and crispy. Leftovers can be kept in the fridge for one day, then reheated in the oven, and will still be crispy =D

July Daring Baker's Challenge

2008-07-30T01:00:00.002+08:00

Its been another craaaaaaaazy month, and this month, the darlings at the Daring Bakers came up with just the perfect recipe to fight away the stress and the blues. Chris of Mele Cotte is our hostess this month, and she chose the Filbert [fancy word for Hazelnut] Gateau with Praline Buttercream. I have to say, this was a truly truly truly smashing cake, luxurious and rich, a light, flavorful gateau permeated with little bits of hazelnut and the sweetness of rum, coated in a thick layer of ganche.

So, first there was the praline buttercream, or in my case, the praline whipped cream. This turned out to be the single biggest disaster of this challenge, partly because I stupidly only checked the web for tips after I screwed up my whipped cream, and partly because its my first time whipping cream. Long story short, buttercream is NOT like whipped cream, and what applies to buttercream doesn't apply to whipped cream, such as whipping it some more when it cuddles, wahaha.

Anyhoo, my whipped cream died 5 seconds after I added the praline, and I whipped it some more, thinking it'll get better. It didn't. I whipped it so much it probably turned into praline butter. Not interested in repeating the whole process, I chucked it into the fridge until it was more or less firm, then slapped it onto the cake anyway.

Now for the cake, which is probably the singular most successful part of this recipe. Expecting a repeat performance of the non-rising cake of the May L'opera cake, since the recipe seemed pretty similar, I used a smaller but taller cake tin, in the hopes of forcing 3 layers out of the cake, by hook or by crook. Turned out, my plan backfired, because surprise surprise, the cake rose mile high, and overflowed out of my tin.

Still, I'm thrilled that it rose so much, and I got 3 layers out of it with no problems at all. A tip that I got off the Daring Bakers forum, to 'cut' the layers with a piece of dental floss, instead of trying to hack it with a knife, gave me beautiful layers. I was so proud of my sky high cake and its neat, even, un-crumbly layers that I couldn't stop staring at it =P

The cake, doused with the rum syrup, filled with the mutant whipped cream, and glazed with strawberry jam:

The rest of the challenge went without a hitch, and by the end of the day, I had a beautiful, gorgeous gateau in my fridge.

Having said all that, I also have to say that I won't be making this cake again unless it was for an uber uber uber special event. My greatest problem with this recipe is that it is simply too luxurious, bordering on decadence, and not in the good sense. I believe I can achieve a similar cake with half the ingredients used in this cake, such as reducing the nuts and increasing the flour, using plain buttercream/whipped cream instead of praline, so on and so forth.

In today's climate of world starvation and inflation of food prices, I really cannot justify, to myself, the spending of so much resources on a cake. Also, don't you think that its more of a challenge to create something delicious from limited resources? To me, when that much ingredients are thrown into a cake, it can't help but taste good, which is not much of a testament to my skills as a baker and a cook =)

Cinnamon Buns

2008-07-16T19:20:00.007+08:00

Ever since the June Daring Baker's challenge [Danish Braid], I've been itching to try baking another bread, specifically, cinnamon buns. In all the years that I've been baking, I've always made a conscious effort to avoid bread, probably because of all the baked goods that I've tried during my early baking days, bread gave me the most trouble.

But, I'm happy to say, I'm now ready to venture into the amazing world of bread! I'm even beginning to like the smell of yeast, which I absolutely detested just a few years back.

I really must apologise again for my sluggish blog these past weeks. I've been unusually busy, and I'm only able to bake today because I came down with the flu and had a day off. Talk about silver linings!

So, the cinnamon bun recipe I used today is adapted from a Chelsea Bun recipe [I don't know what that is, or how its different from the cinnamon bun...worked well enough!] How many buns you get out of it depends on how big you cut your buns and how thickly you roll your buns, but I got around 10 buns out of it.

Great thing about this recipe: I made the whole thing with the bread hook attachment from my handheld mixer! Barely had to touch the dough. I know some people like to knead, but I'm not one of them.

INGREDIENTS

Dough:

7g Instant Yeast

1 tspn sugar

2 1/2 cups OR 310g plain flour

1/2 cup OR 125ml warmed milk

125g melted butter

1 tblspn sugar

1 egg

Filling:

60g butter, room temperature

45g soft brown sugar

3 heap tblspn ground cinnamon

1/4 cup raisins

Glaze:

1 tblspn milk

2 tblspn sugar

1. Mix yeast, tspn of sugar, 1 tblspn of flour and milk in a bowl, and leave aside in a warm place until frothy. [If it doesn't froth, the yeast is dead, and you need a new packet.]

2. In a large bowl, mix flour and tblspn of sugar well. With a spoon make a well in the middle. Pour in the yeast mixture, egg and butter. Incorporate everything with the mixer, using the hook attachment, until it comes together in a ball and doen't stick anymore.

3. Cover with cling film and allow to rise for 1 hour.

4. Punch out the dough to get rid of the air, and with the electric mixer, mix until smooth again.

5. In a bowl, prepare the filling by mixing together the butter, sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.

6. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough into a rectangle. Spread the filling over the whole area, leaving a 2 cm space at the length of dough further from you.

7. Sprinkle over with the raisins, then roll the dough from the lengthside closest to you.

8. Cut up the roll as you wish, and place the buns either on a tray or within a cake pan. Make sure the seams are INWARDS so that they don't spill open during baking. Let rest for 1/2 hour, covered with cling film.

9. Bake in a preheated 210 degree celcius oven until browned.

10. Just before the buns are done, combine the sugar and the milk for the glaze in a small saucepan, then brush over the buns immediately after they are removed from the oven.

11. Let cool a little, and they are ready to be eaten =D

2008-07-11T21:00:00.002+08:00

I have to apologise for the rather lengthy lull in my blog these past weeks. While I'm certainly busy, the main reason is that my sister's been even more busy--which means she can't help me take photographs.

After all the gorgeous photos she took for me, I simply cannot bare to post the horrible photos I attempt to take of the things I bake. I guess there's another thing to put on the To-Do-List...to join the million other things on that inexhaustible list.

But I sense a break in my sister's schedule soon, and I hope to come up with a post soon, so hang in there!

P.S. I have not been idle, my friends, I made my first un-cracked baked Cheese cake the other day! Nevermind that it was a Milo monstrousity for a Milo obsessed friend. It was UN-CRACKED!!

June Daring Bakers Challenge

2008-06-29T01:00:00.001+08:00

Regarding this month's challenge, can I just say, WOW! Seriously, great job, Kelly of Sass & Veracity, and Ben of What’s Cookin’? . The recipe you guys picked is simply out of this world. YOUR recipe restored my faith in my own bread making skills! I would never have believed that I am capable of producing something like this, if not for this challenge!

Despite baking for almost 7 years now, I have only attempted bread a couple of times, and as for complicated pastry like the Danish, forget it!! Those two top my list of things NOT to bake, and frankly speaking, I panicked a little when I saw the challenge, and very nearly freaked out when I was pulling my dough together, because the dough seemed to like my fingers A LOT more than the working table. Jamie Oliver, you liar.

Anyhoo, somehow or another, I did mange to pull the dough together, and I am VERY proud of myself, so much so that, first chance I get, I'm going to move on to something I have always wanted to bake but never dared-- cinnamon buns!!!

Ok, back to the challenge. I decided to fill it with home-made red bean paste, because,

1. I LOVE anything red bean

2. I love red bean paste with bread

3. Did I mention that I love red bean?

I think all you intelligent readers get the idea. So, then, how to make red bean paste? Turns out, its idiot proof!!

INGREDIENTS

1 cup dried red beans [azuki or chinese]

1/2 cup sugar

Couple tablespoon of oil

Soak red beans in water, overnight. Once ready, drain well, pour into a pot, cover with enough water to reach four fingers above the beans, and boil until soft.

Once soft, drain and blend the beans to desired texture in a blender or food processor [add a little of the water the beans cooked in if the blender jams; just a little!]. If you want a silky smooth paste, press through a sieve to remove the skin. If you are happy with just smooth, and don't give two hoots about skin [like me], leave it =D

In a frying pan, heat up the oil until hot but not smoking. Pour in the bean paste and sugar, and stir it until everything is absorbed into the bean, and the paste looks relatively dry. Remove from heat and allow to cool. It will thicken and firm up beautifully once it cools. And voila, you have delicious, pillowy-mashmallowy red bean paste!

As usual, I won't go into the details of the recipe, but I will point out the highlights and the fun parts!!

The rising of the dough-- look at that!! Good work, my yeasty miracle workers!

And the braiding. Who knew it only took a matter of minutes to get the amazing braided look?? Is it just me, or does the unbraided dough resemble Davy Jones just a little?

I forgot to take pictures because I was in a bit of a rush [I woke up at 5.30 am to finish baking these babies!!], but I made a bunch of little ones, filling them with chocolate, cinnamon, and leftover red bean paste.

All in all, while being the most challenging DB challenge to date, it was also the most fun! While I would be even more thrilled if my braid had layered a bit more [check out some of the truly outstanding creations of the other daring bakers here!], I am very very pleased with my results =) My favorite flavor would have to be the chocolate one. Next time I make this recipe, I'll dedicate an entire half batch to chocolate!

This is the sum total of my yield; what a lot of bread!!

Also, since the challenge coincides quite nicely with Father's Day, and since my dad has a sweet tooth the size of texas, this challenge is dedicated to you, daddy!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2008-06-26T21:00:00.003+08:00

I made these cookies with the intention of sending off a dear friend, who is leaving Singapore in a few days to further her studies, which means I'll probably next see her god-knows-when. Good luck Audrey!! I'll be there to chill with you over a beer as soon as I can!

Careful readers of my humble blog will have noted that I've mentioned a couple of times before that I hate making cookies, chiefly because I hate having to spoon out a zillion drops of dough, and then wait [im]patiently while my tiny oven hobble along one tray at a time. What I wouldn't do for one of those giant ovens that can handle a whole batch at one go...

But I digress. Basically, dear readers, I am pleased to report that I have found a chocolate chip cookie recipe, that in my opinion, is near perfect. It gives a cookie that is crunchy on the outside yet slightly chewy on the inside, with a perfectly adorable crinkle top. It takes no time at all to whip up, because you don't need to cream the butter and sugar [yippeeeee], and last, but significantly, it spreads beautifully. This may sound trivial, but trust me when I say it is not. Not many batter can claim that it spreads as evenly and as splendidly as this one does, neither too thin, nor remaining in a stubborn lump as it cooks.

I took the recipe almost in its entirety from dear old Fearnley-Whittingstall. Only addition I made to the batter is to add some salted and roasted peanuts. You can replace it with any nuts you want, or omit it if you dislike nuts, but I find the salted nuts a quick and tasty addition to the classic chocolate chip cookie. Think salted caramel chocolate treats.

On a sidenote, can I just say how under-rated dear Fearnley-Whittingstall is? Every one of his recipes that I've tried has worked beeeeautifully, and he is such an endearing chap. His River Cottage series is top-notch as well, beating Jaime's hands down. So if there are any British ladies out there reading this, give the chap a chance =D [at this point, I am under the impression that Fearnley-Whittingstall is mysteriously single. If I have made a mistake, please forgive me, lady Fearnley-Whittingstall =P]

Cranberry white chocolate muffin

2008-06-09T22:31:00.007+08:00

A few years back, I decided that I wanted to be able to make perfect muffins, so I set out to find the perfect recipe. Now, if you have the same interest in very very good muffins [ok, perfect is such an obnoxious word], I am going to save you from the numerous recipes and trials and errors I went through to find this recipe, because I am going to give it to you right here, in this post.

The recipe I'll cite is a basic muffin recipe, which is fantastic, because you can flavor it with whatever the hell you want. I have yet to experiment with savory muffins, but I'm pretty sure it'll work with this recipe as well.

The way to incorporate flavors is very simple--if your flavoring is wet, add it to the wet ingredients first, and if it is dry, add it to the dry ingredients. This is very important, and is one of the secret to good muffins; keep the dry and wet ingredients completely separated until ready to combine, and then combine them altogether, in one go. This minimises mixing, which will ensure a tender muffin.

Another crucial element to this muffin recipe: only, and I mean ONLY, use self-rising flour. I know there will be times when you run out of self-rising flour, and this little voice inside you says that cookbooks insist plain flour + baking powder = self-rising flour, but I am begging you, do not succumb! I cannot say for other recipes, but this one needs self-rising flour. I have tried it with plain, and it is a sheer waste of food.

INGREDIENTS

375g self-rising flour

90g melted butter/subtle vegetable oil [I find oil to be wayyy more convenient]

220g castor sugar

310ml milk

1 egg

Flavorings:

*in this case...

100g white chocolate chips

50g cranberries

Place flour, sugar, chips and cranberries in large mixing bowl, mix well [in other words, all the dry ingredients together]. In another bowl, combine milk, egg and oil [all the wet ingredients]. Using a spoon, create a well in the middle of the flour mixture, large enough to hold the liquid mixture. Pour liquids into the well, and with a fork [I find this mixes the best, but use what you want], quickly incorporate the ingredients. The idea is NOT to achieve a smooth batter. It is simply to moisten all the dry ingredients and to ensure that all the liquids are taken into the flour. It is OK for the batter to be lumpy. I cannot emphasis this enough. I have to say, it can be hard to still the mixing hand, but try very hard =)

Dry and wet, separated.

Once all the ingredients have been incorporated, fill your muffin pan/cups just 3/4 of the way with the batter [it rises a lot] and bake at 180 degree celcius until a skewer inserted into the muffin comes out clean. If you see any bits of flour on the surface of the muffin, simply cover it up with a little batter. Don't worry, it will cook, its just that bits of flour on muffin surfaces are ugly =)

P.S. Yields 12 medium muffins.

Mother's Day

2008-06-04T21:55:00.006+08:00

Just a quick post about the meal I cooked up for mummy dearest a while back on Mother's day. Haven't had time to post it until now.

Starter: WARM CHICKEN SALAD

Sad to say, this didn't turn out so well, and it was mainly my fault. Long story short, I added lime juice where I should not have, and refused to add sugar where I should have, resulting in an ultra sour sauce. Still, the idea is pretty cool, and I should like to give it another try.

Ingredients:

Chicken fillets [breasts, thighs, whatever]

Salad greens, whatever you want

Orange juice [juice of 1 - 2 orange should be sufficient]

Oil [a few tablespoon]

Herbs [I used rosemary]

Heat up the oil, and panfry the chicken fillets with herbs until cooked through. Set aside.

Pour the orange juice into the pan [the one used to fry the chicken], and cook until reduced and syrupy. Taste and season.

Toss the sauce with the greens, then place fillet [either sliced or whole] on top of the greens and serve.

Main course: Creamy mushroom baked pasta

Recipe adapted from Nigella's recipe. I don't know how that woman lives with herself after eating so much butter, but I just can't do it. For the bechamel, I followed the recipe exactly, and I have to say it turned out fantastic. For the mushrooms, I simply stir fried them up in a little olive oil and left it at that. Mom was totally crazy over this dish, but I find it much too rich. So if rich, creamy cheesy baked pasta sounds like your thing, go ahead and make this, because it really is pretty good =)

Dessert: Baklava

A fantastic middle-eastern/Turkish/Greek dessert, chosen because my mom loves nuts, and this dessert is full of it. The phyllo pastry can get a little tricky to work with, and I only used a few sheets, which still leaves me with much of the box of pastry, but mom loved the dessert, so it's ok.

Ingredients [yields 6 squares]:

250g of finely chopped nuts [walnuts/almonds/pistachos, mixed or individually]

2 tablespoon cinnamon powder

75g castor sugar

Phyllo pastry; roughly 9 sheets

100g melted butter

100g honey, warmed.

* recipe by no means authentic; authentic baklava calls for the whole dessert to be soaked in sugar syrup, which I find more than a little frightening.

Pre-heat oven to a hot 200 degree celcius.

Combine the nuts, cinnamon and sugar, mixing well.

Brush the baking pan liberally with the melted butter and place the first sheet of pastry in it. Simply tuck in the excess. Brush with butter again, and repeat with 2 more pieces of pastry.

Pour in half the nut mixture and spread evenly across the pan. Press down firmly.

Place another sheet of pastry over the nuts and brush with butter. Repeat with 2 more sheets of pastry.

Pour in the rest of the nut mixture and press in firmly. Top off with the rest of the pastry, brushing each sheet with plenty of butter. Slice up the unbaked pastry the way you like it [traditionally in diamonds]. The wet pastry can be tricky, just smooth it out if it gets wrinkled.

Bake in the over until pastry is golden and puffed.

Immediately after the baklava is removed from the oven, pour over with the warmed honey. Let cool for a while before serving.

May Daring Baker's Challenge

2008-05-28T01:01:00.001+08:00

I am really really sorry that I couldn't enjoy this challenge as much as I'm sure I would if I only had the time. This has been a hell of a month. First, a very very long exam period, and next, a scant 5 days after my last paper, a backpacking trip to Taiwan. While very exciting, I am by nature a person who likes her appointments spaced out, and not all crammed together. So suffice it to say, this is not the best month for a delicate, time-consuming, elaborate, elegant cake, irregardless of how much I would have liked to take the time to really savour the baking process. Nontheless, I must thank our lovely hostesses, Ivonne, Lis, Fran and Shea, for introducing me to this fabulous cake that I didn't even knew existed!

Another thing to be sorry for: I have no time to really write a post worthy of this epic cake, which I made all in one day, and trust me when I say it took me all day. And so, I'll just have to post the pictures in a chronological fashion, and hope it makes sense!

My secret and not-so-common ingredient: Durian! So I guess I made a Durian Opera Cake...

My fantastic buttercream; finally got it to whipped cream consistency, avenging my failure at it the first time =P I had to beat the cream for so long I thought my little handheld mixer was going to explode.

Unfortunately, durian doesn't slice so well...

So basically, I skipped the glaze and piled on the durian pulp, and after that its alternating durian pulp and buttercream. I love this picture =)

Operation Orange Cranberry White Chocolate Cookie, M&S style

2008-05-08T12:52:00.003+08:00

Attempt: 1

Nickname: Operation Procrastination

Comment: More like a biscotti than a cookie, but tastes quite nice. For some reason the white chocolate chips bubbled out of the cookie and formed those bumps on the cookie

Baked potato chips a la amelia

2008-05-06T20:17:00.004+08:00

Just recently, I met Pei Lin, a fellow Singaporean Daring Baker! It was really really amazing, finding another daring baker on our tiny island! As I was browsing through her lively blog, I came across her recipe for The Perfect Potato Chip. That of cause made me very very hungry, and today I decided to come up with my own chips. These give a reaaally nice crunchy outside, and the inside, if not fluffy, is soft enough to satisfy =D

INGREDIENTS

Potatoes [I can't tell which is which; just use whatever kind you want]

salt

Seasoning [you can basically use any dry seasoning--herbs, pre-mixed spices, or leave it plain, with only salt. Whatever you like =P I used cajun spice mix because I just happen to have a bottle sitting in my cupboard]

Oil

Pei Lin's recipe calls for deep frying, and as I already mentioned in my prawn post, I live in a strictly no deep frying household, and so mine will be baked chips!

First, peel and cut up the potatoes into desired shape. Generally they should be cut into a shape with the maximum exposed surface so as to maximise the 'crunchy' surface. But again, do them anyway you like them. I like mine in wedges. Or in whatever shape they end up when I randomly slash them with my knife =P

Once cut, thrown the potatoes into cold and very well salted water and boil away [use a pot with a lid]. From the few websites I consulted, they all say to cook only till the outside is soft, but to leave the inside still firm. I tried that today, and the inside stayed a little too firm for my liking, even after a long time baking. So, if you like your potatoes melty inside, as I do, I would suggest cooking them well, if not until completely cooked through, because it does soften up a little in the oven

Once cooked to desired softness, drain the potatoes very well. Drizzle over with just enough oil to coat first. You can always add more if its not enough. Then throw into the cooking pot whatever seasoning you are using and the salt as well. Cover with the lid and shake the pot with all your might. Very good for de-stressing. This is to cover the potatoes in the oil and seasoning, and also to bruise the potatoes a little at the same time, so that the outside crisp up easier.

After everything is nice and coated, tumble wedges [or cubes/strips/chunks] onto a baking pan, and bake at the highest temperature your oven has. After roughly 15 minutes, turn the potato wedges so that the other side has a chance to brown. If you have the time, you can turn it onto all four sides, if not one turn should be enough. Once the potatoes are brown enough for your liking, its done! Taste and season to your liking, then tuck in =D

P.S. These have to be eaten hot, or they lose their crunch =)

2008-05-03T20:48:00.010+08:00

A quick glance will show that this is almost primarily, if not totally, a food blog.

But today, for these three:

And, especially for him:

I'm going to make an exception, and blog about an event that not only rocked my world, but for which I have waited for almost 8 years. Stereophonics LIVE in Singapore, Pull The Pin! Tour. [28th April, 2008...one of the greatest day of my life =D]

There's really nothing much I can say about it. Rant on about how freaking awesome I think Stereophonics is? As if there's any doubt. Talk about how PERFECT the concert was? Well, that sums it up, it was out of this world. And yes, Kelly, you do have a lot of loyal fans who can sing your songs right here in Singapore, who will stand by you and buy your cds even when they don't particularly like the direction you've been taking lately. And I will hold you to your promise to come back to Singapore.

Truth be told, I'm still shocked that they were here, and I was right there in front of Kelly Jones, who has got to be one of the sexiest AND most talented man alive today, with a to-die-for voice.

Ok then, that sums up all I have to say, I'll just leave you with a couple of videos I took, and some photos. Feast your eyes, fans and non-fans, coz Stereophonics ROCKS.

Sexy new drummer, Javier Weyler, who looks like a younger and slimmer Hugh Grant :

Javier, sans shirt =P If only Kelly had done the same....heh heh:

My sis and I took the following videos, much much more from the same concert and others available on youtube =)

Mr Writer:

Maybe Tomorrow [Kelly Jones solo!]:

Finally, THANK YOU Stereophonics! You guys did a great job, I hope you had a great time, and COME BACK AGAIN!!!

April Daring Baker's Challenge

2008-04-27T08:33:00.005+08:00

This month's challenge is Cheesecake Pops, and the hosts are Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms and Deborah of Taste and Tell. My verdict on this month's challenge: Very fun to make, got to try out a few cool and new things, but I can't say I like the end product.

Firstly, I'm not a fan of cheesecakes [I can almost hear the gasp of horror of all readers]. They are wayy too rich for my taste, and I just don't like them. This recipe produced an extra creamy cheesecake, which of course means that I extra dislike them. But cream cheese is one of the most luscious ingredients to work with, and its a delight to bake with. Just the look of it feels sensuous =)

Secondly, its a frozen dessert, which means I can't bring it anywhere more than 5 mins away, which means that I'm stuck with a whole batch of cheesecake. Which I dislike. You can see the problem, even if my Mom and sis do like cheesecake better than I.

Now, on to the cool stuff. I have always had a kind of phobia for shortening, probably because they look like wax, but people tell me its actually food. Not to mention all that stuff about transfats, which is just scary. However, for this challenge, I did some research on shortening, and found that they now have transfats-free shortening! So I plucked up my courage and bought a whole packet of shortening, even if its not completely necessary and I only needed a tablespoon [I halved the recipe]. And it turned out to be fine. No weird oily taste, as some bakers worried about, though it did felt a little heavier than pure chocolate when I licked up the leftover dipping.

Then, my favorite part, the actual dipping! Because the cheesecake balls were frozen, the chocolate hardened over the pops immediately, which was amazing to see and oh so fun to play with. However, when I tried dipping with some room temperature oreos with the leftover chocolate, I found that the shortening really didn't help that much with the setting =(

I couldn't find lollipop sticks, so I bought lollipops and knocked off the sweets with a hammer. Very fun, did a lot of good for my stress level.

My cheesecake, fresh out of the oven. Good thing I used a disposable baking dish, would have been a nightmare to wash all the cheese off.

When I tried to make balls out of the frozen cheesecake with a melon scooper, the cheesecake clumped together and refused to scoop nicely; so I resorted to forming the balls with two spoons, which turned out to be rather fun as well.

The balls, nicely formed, with their lollipop sticks. Is it just me, or did anyone else noticed that the cheesecake doesn't freeze very well? It never got very firm, and stayed kinda soft, even when I left it overnight in the freezer.

The final product, sans wrapper. Looks darling, doesn't it?

Click here to check out how other daring bakers made their cheesecake pops!

Take solace

2008-04-23T22:38:00.001+08:00

One of my regular reads is Tea's poetic blog, tea & cookies. Its usually about Tea's life and her kitchen adventures. I like it because Tea somehow have this peaceful quality to her, as if even if she doesn't have all of life's answer, she's happy to contemplate them quietly. Besides which, she's an amazing writer, cook and photographer.

But today, her latest post, No words, gave me pause, and also prompted a response in me.
While not denying the seriousness of such issues, I truely feel that one should never allow oneself to wallow in them. I am not saying that Tea is wallowing, or negating how spot on she is about the issue.

But sadness paralyses. I think food blogging brings out all that is good and worthy in this world, and good things should not be stopped just because tragic and horrifying things are happening elsewhere.

So take solace, Tea. Food blogging brings appreciation to food. It brings the understanding that its quality, not quantity that counts. Most of all, it brings respect to food. Each and everyone of the food bloggers' esteem for food grows with every single post, and hopefully it grows in their readers as well. We are a positive force for this terrible problem, and we should all fight on.

Pasta Casserole with Red Wine Meat Sauce

2008-04-22T22:01:00.004+08:00

While I believe that a 750ml bottle of red wine is a thing of beauty, finishing the bottle is another matter altogether, particularly with a small family like mine. So, today, since I have half a bottle of red wine in my fridge, I decided to make a meat sauce out of it.

Meat sauce is really a thing of wonder. I don't know why its called a sauce, it more like a stew to me. There is not much need to strict proportions, and though time consuming, much of the time is spent on simmering the sauce, with minimal attention needed, except for the occasional stir. I had a bit of problem with the bottom burning, and my mom said its because I didn't use the heavy bottom pot...not really sure if that's the case, if you know anything about this, please leave a comment, I'll really appreciate a heads up!

The wine I used is really quite bad, which is why there was half a bottle left =P I would say its borderline drinkable. A quick search online about cooking with wine, and you'll find that they all say to cook only with wine you will drink. Well, today's sauce received mixed responses; my mom and I found it to be quite delicious, while my dad and sis thought that, while tasty, the sauce had a slight bitter taste, probably imparted by the wine. Personally, I say that if you have a not-so-good bottle of wine on your hands, use it. The sauce tasted soooooo much better with the wine, even a lousy wine, then without. Its hard to describe the taste, just meatier, and a lot more aromatic. But, if you don't mind paying a little more for better quality, I'm sure the sauce will be even more amazing =)

INGREDIENTS

Celery

Carrots

Yellow Onions

* these 3 vegs are known as the aromatic 3, and is the usual base for most soups, sauces and stews. I like it not just for the taste, which is great, but also because I like lots of vegs in my sauce. So the amount is really up to your liking.

Minced meat, amount up to preference [pork, mutton, beef, chicken, whatever you want]

Lots of garlic [unless you hate them]

Some tomato paste/canned tomatos [doesn't really matter which or how much, as long as you have some; use the most convenient amount for you, like the can size your grocery shop stocks]

Red wine [use whatever you have, from 1/2 cup to half bottle. Just make sure that altogether, the liquid covers the ingredients by around an inch]

Salt

Sugar

Oregano, or whatever herb you want

Some oil

First, in a heavy bottom pot, fry up your roughly chopped garlic in cold oil, followed by the minced meat and the herb[s]. Once mostly cooked, set aside, and in the same pan, with a little more oil, stir fry the cubed vegetables until roughly softened. Pour meat mixture back into pot, and add in the tomatos and wine. Make sure that the liquid only comes up to around an inch above the other ingredients, topping up with water or stock if not enough. And then, just let it simmer away, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn't burn at the bottom. If it does burn, switch off the fire, stop stirring, and skim off the top, un-burnt portions into another pot to continue cooking, discarding the charred ingredients at the bottom. Simmer for as long as you have time for, up to 3 hours if you want, or just until the vegetables are soften, and you are good to go!

As for the casserole, its just one way of eating the sauce. I basically piled cooked spaghetti tossed in the meat sauce into a baking dish, cover with grated cheese, and baked til the cheese is brown.

Breaded Garlicky Prawns

2008-04-11T21:46:00.005+08:00

2008 sucks so far. This semester feels like the hardest semester yet, and I constantly feel like I'm going to buckle under the pressure at any moment. What's a girl to do?

This girl wants to eat some prawns. A long time ago, I remember reading a recipe of breaded giant garlic prawns, but I just can't recall the exact recipe, and my internet search turned up disappointing and sad looking prawns. So I came up with my own recipe.

INGREDIENTS

20 medium prawns

2 packets of butter crackers [or breadcrumbs, but I think this is better]

Pinch of salt

1/2 bulb of garlic, peeled [adjust according to how garlicky you want your prawns to be]

1 egg, beaten

Some oil

Prepare baking tray by lining with foil or baking paper, then drizzle with oil

Peel your prawns, then butterfly and remove veins [slice it along the back until almost cut through, but not yet, and remove the black line]

Grate the garlic as fine as possible, and mix well with salt and the finely crushed crackers.

Spreading the prawns along its sliced opening to create the 'butterfly' shape, dip well in egg, then coat well in cracker mixture. Place cut side down on prepared baking tray.

Follow with the rest of the prawns.

Bake in a preheated 130 degree celcium oven for around 10 minutes, or until golden brown, serve immediately, with favorite cocktail

With these prawns, a tall glass of screwdriver and 3 hours of LOTR, I can recover from anything. Something about the elegant and poetic world of Tolkien feels like balm on my banged up soul

Random question: How does one knows when one is an Arwen, and when one is an Eowyn?

P.S. To obtain maximum crunch, you can deep fry these prawns as well, but in my no-deep-frying home, baking works just fine

Sorry, Diana

2008-04-09T09:53:00.005+08:00

My previous post about my favorite Cakey Brownies has been galling me ever since I posted it. Firstly, the pictures were horrible, as I didn't have much time to take them. Secondly, the brownies themselves were horrible, as detailed in the post.

And, so, today, I decided that I will bake myself a perfect batch of brownies. However, as I looked over Diana's recipe, I begin to feel lazy, what with all the creaming and the waiting [for the butter to soften]. It didn't help that I had a ton of school work waiting for me. And so, I reached for my trusty Good Housekeeping cookbook, in the hopes of finding something less time consuming. And for the first time in the past month, I found what I was looking for.

I call this recipe the One-Bowl Brownie [the book called it Cocoa Brownies], and the name itself is good enough to make any baker swoon [this one did anyways]. One-bowl! Delightful concept, translating into less dishes to wash, and a quicker chocolate fix. I was worried that it would turn out to be treacherously fudgy, and it was indeed much less cakey than Diana's, but still arguably cakey, or at least not fudgy, so I'm happy.

And hence, I'm sorry to say, Diana, your cakey brownies recipe has been de-throned.

INGREDIENTS

100g butter

1 cup/190g sugar

2 large eggs

1 tspn vanilla extract

1/2 cup or 70g plain flour

1/2 cup or 70g cocoa powder

1/4 tspn baking powder

1/4 tspn salt

1 cup chopped walnuts, optional

1/2 cup chocolate chips, optional

Its so freaking simple I can't believe it. The batter is also one of the most luscious I have ever come across.

Melt butter [in a large metal bowl, if you have it, or it'll be a 'two-bowl' brownie], stir in sugar. Stir in eggs vigorously, one by one, until well blended. Stir in vanilla extract. Sieve in all the dry ingredients, minus the nuts and chocolate chips, and mix well. Mix in the nuts and chocolate chips if using, and its ready to be baked in a preheated 180 degree celcius oven until a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Then munch away!

2008-04-08T21:21:00.000+08:00

GROWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWL.

March Daring Baker's Challange!!

2008-03-30T14:30:00.002+08:00

Omg, I'm finally part of the Daring Bakers!!! My first challenge!!

And this month's challange is The Perfect Party Cake, hosted by Morven of Food, art and random thoughts.

Frankly speaking, this is exactly the kind of recipe I would have flipped past with a snort if I had seen it in a cookbook; and, my impression of it did not change after I had completed the cake. Its just so...plain. I know Morven allows for a change in flavor, but I feel that I should still keep to the general idea of the flavor combination, how boring to only eat what I like right?

Despite all that, I have to say I really did enjoy the challange!! Sorry Morven for all the criticism, its only because I'm a picky bugger =P From this challange, I got to make my first layer cake, [which I never do], finally try out the cooked méringue I've always wanted to try, and, even though I had to wake up at 6am to bake this, I found that baking in the early morning is kinda fun! Also, despite the recipe's warning against refrigeration, I found that it tasted better after some time in the fridge! The buttercream firmed up nicely, and the cake cut much more easily [yes, Sok Yee, you told me so =P]. All in all, I got everything I wanted out of the challange, a chance to try something new =)

And finally, to the cake itself, and I'll let the pictures do the talking. [The recipe's really long, if you want it leave a comment =D] The only changes I made to the recipe is to change the lemon flavourings to orange [I had no lemons but tons of oranges at home], used blueberry jam, and to half the recipe [not only is my family not into cake, but I'm also highly suspicious about how it'll turn out]

The cake didn't rise much at all...I attribute it to too much beating after the flour is added...

I was perplexed by my floppy and runny buttercream, because I thought I had followed every word of the recipe and beat it for what seemed like eternity. But after reviewing the video another daring baker had helpfully supplied about making Swiss Meringue Buttercream, I realised I probably didn't beat it nearly enough. I am so trying this recipe out again. The buttercream tasted a lot better than I expected it to =)

Now, isn't that a sight that reminds you of all those childhood mornings at the breakfast table?

My lopsided layer cake; I think the too-wet/slippery buttercream caused the cake layers to slide around...Also, as you can see, the buttercream was so soft it was barely clinging onto the cake. It did seem to harden up a bit after a good 8 hours of sitting around.

My horrendous pipping skills up on display...

Want to see how others baked the same cake?? Visit the Daring Bakers blogroll!!

P.S. Thank you-s to Sok Yee, Arthur, Wei ying and Cherylyn, for bravely trying out my cake, even though it looked absolutely disgusting after being bumped around in the train!! You guys are the best =)

P.P.S. On a completely random note, if you happen to be baking in a very smoky environment and wonders if the smoky taste and smell will be imparted into the cake, I'm happy to say that it will not!

Fresh Lemon bars

2008-03-26T10:16:00.001+08:00

I love going to the beach. Singapore's an island country, so we have plenty of beaches. I live 30 minutes away from Sembawang beach, and I go there as often as I can. I sit and watch the sea, listen to the waves gently lapping in, and smell the barbeques families fire up all around me, for hours. Its feels fantastic just to get away from the hustle and bustle of city life, to give my ears and my mind a break from the constant stream of mp3, television, radio and internet that so dominates modern life. But what is a good beach outing without something delicious to nibble on?

This is where these amazing FRESH LEMON BARS come in. I find that bars are the best kind of food to bring to the beach. They can be made in advance, in case you are anxious to get to the beach early to snatch that prime picnic table. They taste perfect at room temperature, which means that transporting them is no problem, and also they can take a few hours of sitting in the sun. They are also easy to eat, no need to bother with cutleries or even napkins. On this particular day, I arranged a picnic with a dear old friend at the popular East Coast Park, and I made a batch of these beautiful fresh lemon bars as my contribution to the picnic.

I don't usually take to citrus flavoured baked goods, not because I have anything against citrus [I love them, actually], but that I find that they always taste somewhat bland, the wonderful tangy citrus flavour never really coming through. This recipe, however, proved to be the exception. Without the aid of any extract, it managed to be extremely lemony, tangy and lemon-sweet all at once! So give it a go, because its wonderful =)

INGREDIENTS

210g plain flour

70g powdered sugar

150g cold butter cut into small pieces

2 large lemons

2 large eggs

190g granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Combine the flour and powdered sugar, then rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Pour mixture into a baking pan, press in firmly, and bake until light brown in a preheated 180 degree celcius oven.

For the filling, from the lemons, grate the skin [grate only once from each surface to avoid getting the bitter pith] and squeeze the juice, keep aside.

In a large bowl, beat the eggs on high speed until thick, around 3 minutes. Add in the lemon zest and juice, granulated sugar, baking powder, salt and 3 tablespoons of flour, beating until blended. Pour filling over the warm crust and bake for around 15 minutes until set. Once done, sift 1 tablespoon of powder sugar over the warm filling, then let cool completely on a wire rack. Just before serving [or leaving for the beach =P], cut into bars, and they are ready to be consumed!

*This was done a while back, only got to posting it now =) Its such a delightful recipe, can't bare to not post it!

** Recipe from Good Housekeeping: Great Baking.

CAKEY brownies

2008-03-22T14:52:00.004+08:00

As a baker, its practically an obligation to know how to make brownies, and I feel that mine are really pretty good, though I'm sure those who tried it today would complain a little =P I'm well aware of the problems with today's batch, and I'll explain them in a moment! But usually, my brownies are crumbly and moist, with tiny pockets of chocolate bits, melty if the brownie is warm, or just a nugget of dense, slightly bitter chocolate if the brownie has cooled.

One thing about my brownies though, they are absolutely, unquestioningly, CAKEY. None of that fudgy nonsense will ever emerge from my kitchen by choice, I can assure you [unless if someone really important requests it =D] As I'm sure my team mates are tiring of hearing, I abhor the whole idea of eating virtually uncooked batter, and fudgy brownies top the list of uncooked batter.

The recipe I use is adapted from the Deep dark cakey brownies recipe from Diana's Dessert, an amazing website. Basically, the only changes I made to it is the addition of cocoa powder and chocolate chips. I find that cocoa powder gives the brownies an extra velvety texture, and the chocolate chips make these dark brownies ever MORE chocolaty, if you can imagine it =)

Today is the first time I'm using silicon bakeware, given to me by my fantabulous cousins [THANXXXXX!], and its really as it is advertised, very convenient and completely non-stick. However, one little thing the pamphlet neglected to highlight, and which I had to find out after I burnt my brownies and from the internet, is that because these silicon pans heat up faster than the traditional metal/glass ones, baking time has to be reduced by 5-10 minutes. And therein lies the reason for the slightly too dry brownies, not to mention its unsightly appearance, as I had to slice off the burnt parts =P Another notable event from this baking sessions: measuring cups RULE!! Another perfect gift from my cousins [I am so lucky, I know], I have always felt them to be too much trouble, and also that they can't be that accurate. But after trying them out with the brownies, I find them to be soooo handy! No more measuring on the kitchen scale! And they are indeed accurate =) And so, from now on, I will give some measurements in cups, but together with the metric volume if I have them, and only on ingredients that you can adjust the amount of safely =)

INGREDIENTS

* by the way, Diana's has this amazing conversion calculator that I would have absolutely died without, give it a go!

113g dark chocolate, melted

113g unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup/225g granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 tsp. vanilla essence

1/4 cup or 60ml milk

50g plain flour [reduce a little to make way for the cocoa]

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 cup chopped walnuts [nuts lovers, you can safely add a whole cup; this is very conservative. Nut haters can omit it]

3 tablespoon cocoa powder

1/4 cup chocolate chips

*On another matter, I think I have a solution to the unsoftened butter! Simply cut it down to as tiny as you can, then start smushing it around with a spatula or scrapper until its soft! Isn't really that fast, but better than sitting around waiting for the dame thing to soften right?

Cream sugar and butter, then the eggs, one by one. Then add vanilla and milk, beat some more until smooth. Next, beat in the melted chocolate until it thickens a little, around 5 minutes. Dump in all the dry stuff at once [remember to sieve the cocoa! And since you have to sieve the cocoa already, might as well do all the other dry stuff right?] and mix thoroughly. No need to be extra gentle with it, but neither should you take out your frustration with your boss on it. Pour into your baking pan and smooth out the edges, bake in a preheated 180 degree celcius oven until the top is nice and hardened [you know, that nice crunchy part on top everyone likes? Pop a piece of foil over it if it starts to burn], and a skewer inserted comes out without any batter stuck to it.

Icing sugar over the top is optional, I usually don't do it, but I was covering up the butchered surface of the brownies from where I removed the burnt bits.

Quiche Lorraine

2008-03-02T15:49:00.008+08:00

This one's by request of my sister [and probably the last bake-off I'll have in a while, since school starts tmr], who has been bugging me to make quiche ever since she 'discovered' it. I'm happy to comply, since I hardly ever bake savory items, not that I don't like them, just that somehow they don't look as appealing. A quiche is basically an egg-cheese savory tart/pie concoction that comes in all flavours. I would have preferred a salmon quiche, but my sis wanted bacon, so here we are.

INGREDIENTS

Pastry

215g plain flour

100g salted butter, chilled [here you want a little taste to your crust]

Some cold water

Filling

3 bacon rashers, chopped to your liking

80g grated cheese of your liking; I used Cheddar

3 eggs

185ml cream or milk

1 large yellow onion, sliced

Ok, the pastry is basically a short crust pastry, and in the apple crumble post I have already detailed how it is done, so refer there if you need to.

Here, though, the pastry needs to be blind baked before the filling is added. This is usually done with very wet fillings, or fillings that can't be baked for too long. Both applies in this case, as the egg + milk mixture is extremely wet, and can't be baked too long as you want a bit of wobble to it.

To blind bake, roll out and fit pastry to pan. [Here I would suggest using a cake pan instead of a flatter pie plate, unless you have a deep dish pie plate, as there are quite a lot of liquid. Mine was too shallow, and though I didn't add everything, the filling still overflowed. Not very pretty.] Trim off excess, and prick the base of the pastry liberally. This is to let off steam as it bakes so that the pastry stays nice and flat, instead of bubbling up. Let bake in a preheated 180 degree celcius oven until the pastry leaves the sides of the pan.

For the filling, fry the bacon and onions together with small amount of oil until to your liking. I like my onions completely cooked, with its heat all cooked out so that its sweet and soft. Once done set aside to cool.

Beat your egg and cream/milk together, set aside, and its ready for assembly. Spread the onion-bacon mixture evenly over the base of the tart shell, sprinkling over half of the cheese evenly as well. Pour egg + cream/milk mixture over the filling, and top off with the rest of the cheese. Pop back into a preheated 180 degree celcius oven and bake roughly 30 minutes, or until the cheese on top is nice and browned. And your quiche is ready to be served =) Serve within the same day, though I feel that it tastes best warm and leftovers must be kept in the fridge. Simply reheat the leftovers in microwave/oven/toaster when you want it, and it'll still be great.

Chocolate cupcakes with Peanut butter frosting

2008-02-27T17:21:00.006+08:00

Dear readers, you guys are in for a treat! My sis-tar is in the house, which means there will be lots of mouth-watering pictures =) We have been enjoying a spat of brilliantly sunny days these past week, and it really puts me in the mood to bake, especially something fun and cheerful, and what's more cheerful then chocolate cupcakes?

Chocolate and peanut butter is one of the flavour combinations I adooore the MOST in this world. It even beats just good old plain dark chocolate. In this recipe, instead of making a proper peanut butter frosting, I'm going to 'cheat' and use only peanut butter, though I don't really see this as cheating. I would only make a proper frosting if it's going to be left somewhere warm for a period of time, as peanut butter melts; otherwise, room temperature peanut butter spreads wonderfully and taste heavenly, not to mention that its requires zero work =P

INGREDIENTS:

Chocolate Cupcakes [makes 12]

85g cocoa powder

85g plain flour

1/2 tspn baking powder

1/4 tspn salt [or just use salted butter]

170g unsalted butter, softened

225g sugar

3 large eggs

1 tspn vanilla extract

120ml sour cream [or substitute with milk and 1 tbspn white vinegar]

'Frosting'

Chunky/smooth peanut butter, room temperature

As you can see from the ingredients, there's no chocolate in this recipe, only cocoa powder. I personally actually prefer using only cocoa powder in cupcakes, though not so much in whole cakes, because a large amount of cocoa gives this incredibly intense and velvety texture, that while amazing in a cupcake, can be a little too much in a whole cake.

First, cream the butter and the sugar until creamy. Its ok if the sugar stays grainy, but mix it for a good 10 minutes. All the beating will benefit the rising of the cupcakes later. Then, beat in the eggs one by one. While the creaming of the butter helps, the beating of the eggs is CRUCIAL to the rising of the cakes, and must be done well. Beat till creamy and thick. Then beat in the vanilla as well.

Mix together all the dry ingredients and sift them through. I know Nigella never sifts, and I've been guilty of that on occasions as well, but a fluffy cupcake is no time to muck around with the sifting of the dry ingredients, as it really helps. Once sifted, fold in the flour in two batch, alternating with the sour cream/milk. I found that the butter mixture doesn't take very well to the cocoa, but just mix it as well as you can, as gently as possible, and it should be fine. Mine turned out brilliantly anyway =)

Fill your cups 3/4 full, and bake in a preheated 180 degree celcius oven until a skewer comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting with the peanut butter.

To get the spiky look, place the flat of a butter knife against the peanut butter and lift up. Dead easy =)

By the way, recipe adapted from Marthasteward.com, and Martha is an absolute genius.

Apple Crumble Pie

2008-02-24T11:55:00.005+08:00

The long awaited midterm breaks are finally here, and I have to say I have never looked forward to a break as much as I have this semester, which has been hell so far. So, naturally, first thing I did was to whip out my rolling pin and bake a pie.

I love baking and eating apple pie. Usually, I don't eat much of what I bake, but I just adore apple pies, and if I may say so, its one of my best creation. Flaky pie crust, sweet yet tart apple slices cooked in plenty of fragrant cinnamon, tender enough to be cut through with a fork, yet cooked just right so that it still holds its shape. This is definitely one of my best creation.

Today, I decided to do something a little different with the pie crust, and make a crumble crust instead. I adore crumble crusts. They are easy to make, looks gorgeous, and has a really amazing texture. My recipe for the crumble basically follows that of the short crust pastry, and is very convenient, with almost zero extra work. This is also a deep dish apple pie, because I wanted to try making an apple pie in a cake pan instead of the usual pie plate, so as to get that interesting tall and straight sides to the pie, and thus the amount of apple is on the high side. =) So, lets get down to it!

INGREDIENTS

Shortcrust pastry:

250g plain flour

150g unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small cubes [actually, here, salted butter might work better, up to your preference]

Few tablespoons of ice water

Sugar or salt, optional

Crumble crust:

Few tablespoon sugar

Handful of almonds or any nuts

Apple pie filling:

10 green/granny smith apples

Few tablespoons of sugar

Few tablespoons of water

Good amount of ground cinnamon

Raisins [optional, adds texture and flavour]

Always always start with the pastry, because it needs to sit in the fridge for a while before rolling out. So, shortcrust pastry has only a few steps to it, and can be really easy, but it does take practice. First, dump butter cubes into the flour and rub in with fingers, or cut in with a pastry cutter if you have one. Personally I hate touching butter, so my pastry cutter is my best helper, and it works like magic. [I'll provide an end note on how to rub in butter for those unfamiliar with the term.]

Once rubbed in, add in sugar or salt if you want. This is for you to decide if you want your crust to be sweet, slightly salty, or plain. If you like your filling very sweet, chances are you don't want to be putting sugar in your crust. As for salt, it helps to balance the sweetness of the apples a little, but is not necessary. I generally just use salted butter and save myself a step. Once all the dry ingredients for the crust is mixed in, remove roughly 1/3 of the crumbly mixture and keep aside. This will become the crumble crust later. Then, add the ice water to the rest of the crumbly mixture to make a soft dough. Add the water tablespoon by tablespoon, mixing everything up to make sure that it needs more water before you add more. A wet dough is hell to work with and the number one reason for a shrinking and ugly crust. When mixing, using a butter knife, use a cutting action on the dough, cutting the water and crumble together until they form clumps of dough. Once most of the mixture is in clumps and the mixture looks slightly moistened, using your fingers gather everything together and either knead on a flat and cool surface or just press everything together into a soft dough in the bowl you are using [here a big bowl really pays off]

There your pie dough is done, just shape into a disc, wrap in cling film or foil and bunk into the fridge for an hour or until firm to the touch. Trick with shortcrust is to touch it as little as possible, so as to keep the temperature of the dough as cool as possible, which gives a flaky crust.

Next, for the crust. Tip the reserved crumbly mixture into a bowl, add a few tablespoons of sugar and the chopped/crushed nuts. You can also add some rolled oat to it, or anything you fancy actually. Mix well, keep in the fridge until you need it, and that's done.

The filling, heart and soul of the pie, is crazy simple. I'm inordinately proud of the fact that I can peel apples in an unbroken peel, and I got 7 out of the 10 apples this time =) So, peel and core, then slice as neatly and as evenly as possible. This will make packing the slices in later easier. Once done, dump into a big pot, add raisins [if using], sugar and cinnamon to your preference, and just enough water to insulate the layer of apples touching the bottom of the pot, which usually comes to slightly less than 5 mm of water. This is just to keep the bottom apples from burning. The apples will release plenty of water later, and you don't want too much in there cooking with the apples, because they'll turn mushy.

How long to cook the apple is a matter of experience and preference, so its a little hard to say. I prefer my apples to still have some bite, so I only let my apples cook til just tender, as they will get cooked again in the oven. It looks and taste much better when the apples are still firm enough to hold their shape. Only way to get this is to practice practice practice! Drain the apple slices well [too much liquid will spoil your crust] and set aside to use later.

Now all we are left with is the assembly, which is my favourite part [after eating =)] Remove pastry from fridge [let stand a while if too hard] and roll to desired size, with your pan as a guide. This recipe fits anything from a 9 inch pan to a high dish cake pan. Remember not too thick [it might not get cooked through] or too thin [it might break while baking]. Lift into your pan, push into the edges of the pan, and trim off excess. Works the same either in a pie pan or a cake tin, only the latter is a little tricky and you have to use one with a removable bottom.

I always take the time to arrange the apple slices neatly. First, it gets much more apples into the pie, second, it looks much better, third, you won't get any empty spaces that the pie crust can collapse into. So now, layer your apple slices into the pie crust, as neatly as possible, filling every available space. Once done, simply cover the pie, right to the edges, with the crumble filling. Another advantage of this crust is that no egg wash is required! Then, put your beautiful creation into a preheated oven at 180 degree celsius, and bake until the pie leaves the side of the pan, a sign that the pastry is cooked. If the crumble starts to brown too much, pop a piece of foil over the top and continue baking. After 40 minutes or so, your delicious pie is ready =)

This has been an awfully long post, I'll leave you with a serving suggestion, my favourite way =D

Note on rubbing in:

Rubbing in is basically a way to incorporate fats [namely butter] into the flour by a rubbing motion. It sounds a little weird, but you just have to get your hands in there, grab some butter and flour and start rubbing. What happens is the butter gets rubbed into the flour, and the mixture starts to take on a pale golden colour, and most cookbooks will descript it as looking crumbly and sandy. It is also possible to use a pastry cutter on it, some even use scissors to cut it in, but I find a pastry cutter the most effective. This technique is most commonly used on shortcrust pastries to give it its flaky texture, and on crumble crusts of course, but sometimes also in cookies like rock buns =)

Yay!

2008-02-14T11:24:00.000+08:00

Strike's OVER!!!! Show me the shows!!

A new twist to an old cookie

2008-02-03T13:07:00.000+08:00

**First off, let me just say, the Australian Open Men's Single Finals was one hell of a game! Novak Rocks!! **

Chinese New Year is around the corner, and I absolutely luuuuuv this time of the year. Cheerful cheesy new year songs, fancy new year decorations everywhere, frantic shopping for new clothes, and best of all, preparations for the feast that spans from the eve of new year's day, to the 15th day of the lunar new year.

It is tradition for our extended family members to exchange gifts during new year, symbolising our well wishes and greetings. As the baker of the family, the task for the making of these gifts almost always lands in my lap. This year, I decided to come up with an ALMOND SHORTBREAD COOKIE, inspired by the traditional Chinese almond cookie.

While delicious, the traditional cookies are heavy and unbelievably troublesome to make, and so I came up with my own version.

This version of almond cookies are elegant, light, and a breeze to make as they are ice-box cookies. Did I mention that I love ice-box cookies? I really really do, mainly because I don't have to drop one-freaking-hundred lumps of cookie dough if I wanted to bake for my relatives. Also, you can make these before hand and bake it whenever you want. Only tricky part is the shaping of the cookie logs; mine tends to run a little too fat, and instead of nice coin-sized cookies, I get huge misshapened cookies. But they are still preferable over drop cookies, but that's just me. If you'll rather drop them, just skip the ice-box stage and do as you please.

Also, the basic dough is really a brown sugar shortbread dough, which is highly versatile, so feel free to bake it in any form you want, and add any nuts [or not] you like to it.

INGREDIENTS

150g softened unsalted butter

63g brown sugar

2 heap tablespoon castor sugar

100g ground blanched almonds

2 heap tablespoon dessicated coconut

60g rice/corn flour

85g plain flour

2 teaspoon almond extract

GARNISH: 50g whole almonds with skin, chopped medium fine

The preparation for this cookie is a little more troublesome than most, but once that is done I promise the rest is a snap.

First, I would toast the whole almonds, but this is optional, though it would greatly improve the taste and textual of the cookie. Simply set it in a 100 degree celcius oven before you begin anything else, so that it's done by the time all the other ingredients are prepared, roughly an hour [or more, if you have the time]

Next, tip the almond ground and coconut into a pan and dry fry over low heat. Stir constantly, as they burn fast. This cookie is all about the aroma, and toasted almond ground and coconut will give off an incredible frangrance. Fry til it starts to brown, then take off heat and stir for another 5-10 minutes, until the pan has cooled down a little. Let stand and allow mixture to cool completely.

Then, cream the butter, sugar and almond extract til creamy. When using brown sugar, always follow up with a few tablespoons of castor sugar, as brown sugar is less sweet than granulated. Mix in the flours, almond and coconut, mixing with the mixer until it all comes together into a soft dough.

Once done, either over a clean flat surface or over a piece of baking paper, shape dough into logs of desired size. If dough is too wet to be shaped, mix in more flour into the dough until of desired consistency. Once the logs are shaped, roll them in the chopped almonds, then wrap in aluminium foil and place in the freezer. Some recipes say to wrap in cling wrap, but I find that foil holds the shape of the log much better.

Let chill for an hour, or until firm. Slice to desired thickness and bake at 180 degree celcius for around 10 minutes or until light brown. This cookie is meant to be pale in colour. Enjoy!

Mind-blowing

2008-01-31T18:38:00.000+08:00

Bloody hell. Why did I not notice this earlier? These ladies [and gentlemen, I'm sure] are rocking!! This is earth shattering news. Dare I?

DARING BAKERS

With a huff and a puff

2008-01-19T21:52:00.000+08:00

Today I made SARDINE PUFFS because my mom asked me to. She's absolutely mad for sardine puffs, and asks for them all the time. A while back I was crazy over puff pastry, but since I got over my fascination, I was left with a couple packets of puff pastry, and so I put them to good use and made these beautiful puffs.

A few notes on handling puff pastries in general:

The secret to perfect golden brown puff pastries is to put as much egg wash on it as is humanly possible. This means that every millimeter exposed must be covered, and also that one wash is usually not enough. After the first wash dry, give it a second wash. A third if you have the patience.

I don't know if everyone knows this, so I'm just putting it down; cover all exposed parts EXCEPT for the bottom, otherwise you'll have a hell of a time prying it off the tray. Also, avoid the edges of the pastry. If the egg wash get onto the pastry edge, it'll glue the pastry together and you'll get a half-stuck-half-rised frankenstein of a pastry.

Most cookbooks will say that, if you are cutting shapes out of your rolled pastry, only rework the left overs once, or even not at all, as the pastry would not be able to rise evenly after that. I say, however, that unless I'm serving the President or Lee Kuan Yew himself, I am not about to waste food just because they won't rise that well. So unless I'm making vol-au-vent, I generally use up every scrap of pastry.

Puff pastries dry up rather quickly, so work fast. Especially if you are reworking it, don't leave it to roll out later; they'll dry up and be no good at all.

Absolutely no shame in frozen puff pastries, takes a saint to be able to whip these up everytime they need some. Just remember to take it out to thaw at least 3 hours before use.

Ok then, back to the puffs. These are really great, they taste fantastic, a snap to make [minus the time it takes to thaw], and they look sooo pretty, all golden and puffed.

INGREDIENTS

Canned sardine [roughly 2 large cans of sardine, roughly 300g each, to 750g pastry]

1 large yellow onion

1 1/2 packet of frozen puff pastry

*measurements are according to what I had on hand, adjust as you like

Flake sardine, as chunky or as smooth as you like, taking as little liquid with it as possible. Chop up onions into cubes and mix into the sardine. Taste and season. That's your filling done.

Roll out pastry into desired thickness, probably around 2mm, then cut desired shapes out of it. You can do either triangles, rectangles or circles, and of varying sizes as well. You can also wrap them in a variaty of ways, but I'm lazy, so I used a pastry cutter to cut circles, fill them up and press down the edges with a fork. Take note to seal the pastries with a dab of the egg wash, or chances are they'll be gaping open when they cook and the sardine expands. Brush well with beaten egg and bake in a hot 200 degree celcius oven until golden brown, and that's it!

Comfort food: Kimchi Soup

2008-01-15T20:25:00.001+08:00

The first week of school so far has been a real bummer; first, I sprain my ankle yesterday when I miss a step on the stairs. Then today, I find out that my long cherished dream of going on exchange programme is dead. All in all, it has been a crappy 2 days, and of course, my first instinct is to turn to food. The frantic craving for something oily and deep fried, I'm sure, will come later, but first I want some Kimchi soup.

I'm sure a Korean will suffer a pulmonary attack at the way I make this soup, but I'm not in Korea and it tastes great the way I make it, so there. There are four basic components to Kimchi soup and they are highly variable.

KIMCHI

Right, don't think I need to explain this. I don't know about other countries, but in Singapore kimchi can be found at most big supermarkets. It may be tucked far into a fridge somewhere, but most should carry it. How much to use depends on your heat tolerance and your other ingredients. I like lots of kimchi, and when cooking for myself, sometimes even omit fresh vegetables altogether and add only kimchi

FRESH VEGETABLES

You can use any kind, and any amount. Some suggestions would be cabbage, long beans, carrots, aubergines, etc

CARBOHYDRATES

The usual, and my favorite, would be the rice vermicelli. Its a transparent, slippery and silky noodles that soaks up all the delicious flavour of kimchi, or any other soup base it is thrown into, and thus perfect here. If unable to locate, any kind of noodles, or even rice, can be used, to make kimchi porridge. How much to use depends on whether you are eating this as a soup, with other dishes, or as a one pot meal.

PROTEINS [the animal kind]

Any kind of meat or seafood can be used in the soup. Pork, chicken, beef, lamb, prawns, squid, fish, etc. A combination would taste even better. Today I'm using prawns.

Ok, this is a real simple dish which takes like 15 mins to cook. Before doing anything, start with soaking the vercemilli in water.

First, if using prawns, wash well and peel them, reserving the shells and heads.

Add suitable amount of water to the shells and heads and bring to a boil to make stock. Remove shells and heads, either by straining or picking them out. Keep the liquid simmering.

Cut up fresh vegetables, and add to stock, along with the kimchi.

Let boil for around 10 mins, then add the drained vercemilli.

Finally, just before serving, stir in the prawns. Don't let the prawns cook too long, as they will become tough, instead of springy. And there's the Kimchi soup done.

Now, with a bowl of kimchi soup and a few hours of the Lord of the Rings, I can be on my way towards recovery. What do my problems matter when compared to the ultimate fight between good and evil? Besides, which girl wouldn't be cheered by a few hours of ogling at medieval hunks, brimming with testosterone, beating the crap out of the baddies?

My latest indulgence

2008-01-14T23:24:00.000+08:00

This is a bottle of S$30 vanilla essence that I bought because I'm sick of the generic stuff. Frankly speaking I was a little shocked at the price. Thirty bucks?! I bought it because the kindly lady assured me that it was good, and I was really grossed out by the generic stuff, and wanted to see what all the fuss about pure vanilla extract was.

Unfortunately, I have to report that so far that bottle of extract have not earned its price. The extract's flavour was much less intense than the generic stuff, bordering on bland. There was little hint of it in my cookies, even after I added an extra teaspoon of the stuff. What hint there was of it was far from extraordinary, and I actually think the generic stuff did a better job.

I'm going to pray that what was lacking was my baking skills, and not the extract, God knows my skills are abysmal. Since school has started, I have not had the chance to try the extract again, but when I do, I'll be sure to keep everyone updated.

The justification post

2008-01-07T22:45:00.000+08:00

Here we go, following good old tradition laid down from my very first diary, foisted upon me by my mother, with her "you should have a / be a [fill in the blank]". In this case, I'm referring to my mom's idea that it would be a good idea for me to have a diary, since that's what good children do, write diaries, along with joining the girl guides [if you are a girl] and writing letters and blah blah blah. I'm not going to do the whole passe thing about blaming my mother for everything that's screwed up with my life, not now anyway, since I'm drifiting from my point.

And, the point is, every time I start a diary [including this one; I know its a blog, but that's basically a virtual diary right?], there comes a point where my initial enthusiasm for writing in it starts to wane, and I actually feel guilty and write 'justification posts', in which I justifies [yes, I know, to an inanimate object made of blended up trees and possibly cancer causing ink] why I haven't been writing. And, when I finally can't even be bothered with 'justification posts', the guilt somehow lingers. It may be impossible to see, but I assure you all the ghosts of every diary I've ever abandoned is haunting me.

Which is why I'm trying to stop abandoning this diary. This may not sound very promising to anyone who's reading, but I really am trying my best.

And here comes the justification: school's starting! And when school starts I'll be lucky to get time to breathe, normally, I mean, not the panicky-essay-due-and-I'm-so-screwed kind of breathing that's par for semesters. One thing though, I do have another post coming up, as I'll be baking up a batch of cookies for Geraldine before my last day at Freeflow, so that'll be something to see.

On a random note, I found myself craving the strangest thing yesterday. It began normally enough. It was only a short hour after lunch, which means I have no business feeling hungry, but I do. I couldn't fathom what exactly it was that I craved, so I ran through the usual list: Chips? Chocolates? Ice Cream? Soft drinks? Iced Coffee? Cookies? Cake? None of them felt right, and then it hit me. I wanted a salad. I am not joking, and I have to say this has never happened before and to say I'm stunned is to put it mildly. I am by no means a health nut, and would shoot anyone who insinuates such a travesty. Yet there it was.

Cautiously, to be sure I had not misread the signals my stomach was sending towards my brain, I made myself a salad, deciding that the only way to prove or disprove my conclusion was to eat a salad and see if my cravings were appeased. Lo and behold, it was! For the first time in my life, my stomach lusted not after something fat and sinful that I shouldn't have, but a healthy, tasty salad my mother would have been very proud of.

This is revolutionary, to say the least. I have not yet absorbed the full implications of this, event, yet, and I will be sure to share any other revelation I chance upon.

Regarding softened butter

2007-12-31T21:40:00.000+08:00

Every baker would have been confronted with this very toublling situation at one time or another.

Imagine.

Perhaps you were flipping through a magazine, or, like me, just before the thunder strike, watching television. Suddenly, without any warning, a gorgeous cake appears before said baker's eyes. It is a magnificent creation, raised and tall, [usually] deeply chocolate and covered in a luscious frosting you know is just perfect along with the fluffy interior of that darkly chocolate cake. Anyone else would probably have picked up their wallets and head out to the nearest bakery in the hopes of finding something just as satisfying, but not a baker. A baker is immediately gripped by the need to create her very own cake. And then tragedy strikes; the butter every baker has sitting in their fridge needs to be softened before any cake-baking can commence.

To non-bakers this might sound ridiculous, but any baker in the world would understand the dilemma. Cold butter straight from the fridge takes at least an hour to soften, and with that gorgeous vision of a cake clouding one's judgement, an hour is wayyy too long. And so, this baker has decided to take it upon herself to find a solution to this tragic problem, despite Martha Stewards' belief that there is no solution, much to my despair. You would think that if any one had a solution it would've been Martha, wouldn't you?

Today, I was gripped with the very same condition. Any reasonably experienced baker knows there are more than one way to incorporate fats into a product, not to mention the different kinds of fats available. Today, I attempted to get around the problem by using melted butter in the chocolate cake batter. Unfortunately, I have to report that it did not work out. The cake was dense and heavy, and though perfectly edible, was hardly delightful, even smothered in chocolate glaze.

Still, know that this baker will continue in her search for the remedy against softened butter.

Feast India

2007-12-30T23:03:00.001+08:00

The WGA strike has thrown a serious wrench into my holiday plan -- namely to catch up on as much television as is humanly possible before I'm returned to tele cold turkey when school term starts. Dame you rich studios, stop being such misers and pay the dame writers what they deserve. This leaves me with plenty of time to cook, and today, my mom, her friend, Wendy and I decided to cook up an Indian feast, LENTIL DAHL AND MUTTON MURTABAK. This I'm sure sounds humble to many Indians, but is truly a monumental task for 3 Chinese ladies. It turned out much more successful than I had dared to hope, and it just reminds me again why I love Singapore so much. The diversity of culture is so rich and incredible, and I feel so lucky to be right smack in the middle of it all. So, here comes the recipe

INGREDIENTS

Dahl [serves 5]:

3 cups [whatever sized cups; keep in mind dried lentils expand when hydrated] yellow lentils

Celery

Carrot

Tomatoes

Yellow Onions/Shallots [Red Onions]

Whatever other vegetables you fancy, such as lady's fingers, aubergine/egg plant, cabbage.

Mustard Seeds [black]

Cumin seeds

Coriander seeds

Chili flakes/chili powder

Garam Masala

Tumeric powder

Murtabak [serves 5]:

330g plain flour + extra for kneading

1 tablespoon oil/ghee

2 teaspoon salt

240ml warm water

Large amount of vegetable oil

300g minced mutton

2 clove minced garlic

1 minced onion

Tumeric powder

3 eggs

Ok, most Singaporeans would be well familiar with dahl and murtabak, though I won't dare say all, and I'm guessing most outside of Asia would have little knowledge of what they are, so I might be a little lengthy with the explanation.

As can be seen in the picture, dahl is a vegetarian curry made with vegetables and grains and pulses, most commonly in Singapore, the yellow lentil. It is usually served beside roti prata, murtabak and other flat breads as a kind of dip or sauce, though it is also commonly eaten as a dish all by itself, with rice.

Murtabak is really roti prata with a meat and egg filling. In Singapore, as well as in Malaysia, Indian stalls everywhere serve these two dish. Roti prata, without the filling, can be eaten savory, with either some kind of meat curry or dahl, or eaten sweet, with granulated sugar. Murtabak, on the other hand, because of its savory meat filling, is always taken with curry or dahl.

Lets begin with the dahl. It is a dead simple curry to cook, time consuming but requiring little attention. Cook lentils in enough water to cover roughly 3 fingers above the grains. This is dependent, as usual, on what kind of a consistancy you like your curry to be in. I like mine thick, so I usually reduce the water a little, or scoop them out once the grains are tender. Cook the lentils until you can mash them easily between your fingers. Next, add salt, tumeric, and all the vegetables. How the vegetables are cut depends on how you like them. Chunks if you like to see them, cubes if you like a mushy curry, like me. Boil away.

The way the spices are incorporated is really fun, but get all the spices ready before you start, as they burn really quickly so that in the time you step away to get another spice those in the pan already would have charred and turn bitter. Heat a little oil in a pan, and once smoking, add all the seeds, namely mustard, cumin and coriander. The mustard seeds will start to pop, which is ok. Stir around for a short time, then dump in the rest of the powdered spices. Stir for just a moment, then upend all the contents into the pot with the lentils and the vegetables. They'll bubble merrily, but will simmer down after a while. Continue to simmer until it is of desired consistency, and that is your dahl done. It freezes really well, and if kept in individual servings, on days when cooking just for yourself, you have an instant meal a few minutes away.

The murtabak may seem an impossibility, but it turned out to be surprisingly easy, if a little different from how we usually make bread. Combine flour, salt and oil, mix well. Clear a well in the middle of the bowl and add half the water first. Mix in the flour with a fork, and add more accordingly. Be mindful not to add too much at once; once added they can't be removed. Stop once all the flour has more or less been incorporated; even if the dough appear to be slightly dry,it is still possible to work in the rest of the flour. If any more moisture is added it'll be too wet. Scrap everything out onto a surface and knead, covering with flour when needed. I have thus far never been able to achieve that stick-free dough Jamie Oliver make look so easy, but a slightly sticky dough here works just fine, so knead till most of the dough doesn't stick.

Divide the dough in half and roll each half into a rough log. Snatch off golf balls sized pieces of the dough and put them into a bowl. Cover the dough balls with oil. This is to make it possible to stretch the dough without the dazzling skill of the prata man. The sight of a prata man at work is really something, and after today, I have a new appreciation for their skillfullness! Let the dough stand for an hour. If you don't have enough oil or you don't want to waste so much, put them into a flat pan and fill a little with oil, then turn over the dough every once in a while.

While the dough is standing, fry up the filling, starting with the onions and garlic until tender, then the meat and finally the tumeric. Taste and season, then set aside.

Once the dough is ready, we can start to make the murtabak. I found the dough to be rather temperamental, and there are a few key things to note when making the murtabak [or prata, if you want it plain].

Only press out the dough when the pan is ready for frying. This applies to every flat bread you fry. So the pan have to be clear before you proceed to press out another ball of dough. This is because once pressed out, if left on the surface for too long, the dough starts sticking to the surface and your thin dough will be impossible to remove. On the other hand, just after you press it out, the dough is wonderfully slick, and comes off the table easily.

The dough can only be pressed once. I'm assuming its the oil that makes it especially malleable, because the first time you press out the dough it'll stretch thin and long, but if you crumpled it back together and attempt it again, the dough shrinks into itself and becomes rubbery, refusing to stretch. If this happens, return to oil bath and rework it later. Don't worry if there are holes, they'll be covered up with egg later, and they don't affect the taste at all.

Ok, so how exactly to press out the dough? Take a ball of dough and place it on a flat surface. With the heel of your hand, press down on the dough and push outwards. Do it all over the dough, until you have a paper-thin piece of dough. Pick up the pastry and place it in the pan. Drop 3-4 tablespoon of egg over one side of the pastry, top over with sufficient amount of the meat filling, and with a spatula, flip the empty pastry over the fillings. Let until the egg is set, then flip over. Cook both sides until golden brown, and we're done! The murtabak is ready to be served with a small bowl of the dahl.

Our dismal first attempt:

Subsequent much more successful effort:

And I like to eat mine like this =)

Christmas meal...part four

2007-12-28T19:36:00.000+08:00

Finally, we get to my favourite style of cooking, baking! And I suspect this is also many people's favourite course, dessert =P On a random note, desserts is stressed spelled backwards! So, what I had planned for my Christmas dessert is GIANT PROFITEROLE IN WARM CHOCOLATE RIVER. I'm making giant individual serving profiteroles instead of the more usual tiny ones because I simply can't be bothered to make multiple tiny ones. To be honest, cookie baking, especially drop cookies, is the bane of this baker's existence. I simply don't have the patience to make thirty forty tiny even drops of cookie batter.

Back to the profiteroles, the recipe I'll be giving is suppose to serve 10 when baked in its regular form. I halfed the recipe and got 4 giant choux puff out of it. The only problem with halfing this recipe is that because of its reduced volume, its really hard to use an electric mixer on it, and I found myself confronted with the task of whisking eggs into a stubborn batter by hand. Still, I'm happy to report that its completely do-able, if a little tiring, and really good for those upper arm muscles. I don't think I need to explain the warm chocolate river; basically I intended to drown my profiteroles in warm chocolate sauce, and that was what I did.

INGREDIENTS

Choux pastry:

95ml water

50g unsalted butter

90g/3 oz plain flour, sifted if you bother, makes things just a little easier

3 eggs, lightly beaten

Custard filling:

375ml/12 fl oz milk

4 egg yolks

90g/3 oz caster sugar

30g/1 oz plain flour

1 tspoon vanilla essence

Chocolate sauce:

118ml hot water

60g cocoa powder

50g caster sugar

1 large tablespoon golden syrup/honey [makes the sauce glossy]

Handful of 70% dark chocolate couverture chocloate/any good quality chocolate

Small amount of milk

Ok, let's begin with the choux pastry. This is not an easy pastry to make, of the easy-to-collapse variety. It took me 3 previous attempt to get the dame thing to stay upright, and this time I made it, 1 out of 4 collapsed. Nevertheless, I still consider 3 out of 4 pretty satisfactory. These pastries are cunning too, luring the baker into a false sense of victory when they puff up in the oven, only to collapse once they cool.

Put the butter and water into a pot, and stir to melt. Don't worry about them separating, they are not suppose to mix. Bring it to a boil, remove from heat, dump in all the flour at once and stir like mad until it becomes a yellow batter. Return to stove and continue stirring the batter, until it shrinks into a somewhat cohesive ball. Don't worry if its not actually all together. As long as the batter is no longer sticky and the dough leaves the side of the pot you are ok.

Now comes the workout. Let the dough cool just a little so you don't get scrambled eggs when you add the eggs. The eggs have to be added slowly, 3 tablespoon at a time. Make sure you use large eggs, not the tiny ones. Eggs are instrumental in the rising, and this is one point not to screw around with. Equally important is the beating in. Don't be lazy and add it all in. So, if making a full batch, beat in 3 tablespoon of egg with an electric whisk each time. Otherwise, just beat it in with a wooden spoon. This pastry is more stubborn than usual when it comes to taking in the egg, but keep at it and it'll turn smooth in no time. Once all the eggs have been beaten in, the batter is done, and should look like this.

Pre-heat oven to a hot 210 degree celcius. The baking is a tad troublesome as well, but the satisfaction of a puffed, tall and golden puff is quite worth the while for me, though I must say by itself the pastry taste like crap. I happen to be going through custard mania now, which is why I chose to make this. Huge glop of sweet custard in the empty puff, delish. So, most recipes would say to sprinkle water on the tray and inside the oven to create steam to help with the puff's rising. I personally think it a waste of time, but I suppose it does help a little. I also find it weird to put batter onto a wet tray, which is why I don't do it.

Don't be fooled by the tiny amount of batter, they puff up an awful lot. So if you are making regular sized ones, don't put more than a level tablespoon of batter, and leave plenty of room for spreading. If like me, you are making huge ones, you'll only fit 2 puffs onto one tray.

Another important thing to note is NOT to open the oven door until the puffs are fully risen and has baked for around 10 - 15 minutes at least. Premature opening of the doors leads to a drop in temperature and pressure within the oven, which leads to flat puffs. Once the puffs are fully risen and browned, pry them off the foil and poke a hole at the bottom, then return to oven to dry out some more. One way of testing its done-ness is to tap it; it should sound hollow. Remove puffs after around 5 minutes, place on rack to air out and pray that it stays upright. Here's my final [standing!] product:

And next comes the custard. Bring milk to a boil, and while it is heating, whisk together the egg yolk, sugar and flour in a cooking pot. Once the milk boils [no need for it to boil vigorously, just as soon as bubbles start to appear], pour into egg mixture, whisking quickly. Return to stove, and KEEP STIRRING. Do not leave the custard one step, and I mean it. They burn faster than you can blink. Although, if it is burned only a little, don't despair, taste it and see if its obvious. Usually the custard can take a little burning before it becomes inedible, so if you don't mind little black specks in your custard you can still get away with it. Make sure to scrap every inch of the pot as you stir, as it is easy to miss a spot, and that untouched spot can quickly become a charred mess.

As soon as the custard thicken enough to coat your spoon or fork, take it off the heat. If left on too long custard becomes lumpy, but make sure to taste it before you stop cooking. You want to make sure all the floury taste has been cooked out of the batter, or it will taste, well, like flour, which is gross. Let the custard cool JUST A LITTLE before laying a piece of cling film right over the surface of the custard. As the custard cools the surface hardens into a layer of skin, which will make for lumpy custard if not removed, which is why you can't wait til the custard cools to put on the cling film. What the cling film does is make it easy to remove the hardened skin; it basically peels off together with the film. Chill in the fridge and your custard is ready to go.

*Recipe taken from The Essential Baking Cookbook, published by Murdoch Books*

And the pièce de résistance, the chocolate sauce. I know this must seem like an awful lot of work, with 3 component to a dish, but in actual fact each component take only a small amount of time, and this chocolate sauce in particular can be made in advance and kept in the fridge, served either cold or hot. The simplest way to do it is to dump everything into a pot, heat and stir. But I find it useful to begin with dissolving the cocoa powder into the hot water. Cocoa powder can be rather temperamental, throwing up difficult lumps even when sifted. In a smaller bowl, it is easier to catch the lumps and blend them in.

Also, 60g of cocoa powder is actually quite a lot, as they are rather intense in flavour. Mixing them up first, with all the other ingredients except the chocolate, will allow you to gauge how much more chocolate to add. Why waste good chocolate in an already sinful chocolate sauce? Conversely, if you can't get cocoa powder, just omit it and substitute with more chocolate, how much up to your budget and your taste buds. While I love dark chocolate passionately and can't understand milk chocolate lovers, I do know there are many out there. I have to confess this is a seriously deep and dark sauce, so if you are inclined towards milk chocolate, simply reduce the amount of water and substitute with milk, and use milk couverture instead of dark ones. At my insistance my sister spent a lot of time trying to capture the lusciousness of this sauce, and so I'll post a few more of them here.

*Recipe adapted from Food and Wine*

All that's left now is the assembly! Its dead easy and takes like 5 minutes. Remove the custard and discard the cling film. Take 1 puff and turn it over on the serving plate. If the hole is not big enough widen it. The smaller puffs would require a piping bag, but this huge puff comes with a huge hole, so just spoon it in.

Don't worry about the custard falling out once you invert it. Firstly the custard will squish out when you cut into it anyway, and secondly, it'll be drowned over by the chocolate sauce. Speaking of which, all's that's left now is to spoon the sauce over the puffs after heating them up briefly on the stove if you kept it in the fridge.

And finally, these beautiful puffs are ready to be served!

Christmas meal...part three

2007-12-27T22:50:00.001+08:00

And finally, we have the main course. Upon special request from my mom and sis, I made HALF AND HALF SHEPARD'S PIE. The half and half refers to the half pork and half mutton mixture I used for the meat filling. If I had my way I would have used only mutton, but my picky sis was worried the mutton would be too strong tasting. In a typical Chinese family in Singapore such as mine mutton does not often feature on the dinner table, I know not why. So, if you want to try mutton but is worried about the unfamiliar taste, mixing it with a more neutral meat is one way to get around it. Shepard's Pie is a traditional English dish, and traditionally made with mutton or lamb. Another common version is the one made with beef. This is the American version, often called a Cottage Pie. Beef's out for my family as my parents are Buddhists, hence the half and half. Serves 6.

INGREDIENTS

Pie Filling:

1 stalk celery

1 carrot

1 yellow onion

2 clove garlic

250g minced mutton

250g minced pork

2 tablespoon tomato paste

Small amount stock/water

1 heap tablespoon plain/all-purpose flour

Whatever spices you like. I used sage.

Potato Crust:

Desired amount of potatoes; Depends on the size of your baking dish; a flatter dish with larger surface area would need more, a deeper dish with smaller surface would require less. I used 8 smallish potatoes.

1 tablespoon salted margarine/butter

Small amount of milk

Salt and pepper to season.

Firstly, fry up the meat. As they cook, liquid will come out of the meat. This needs to be drained as they can be quite gross. Once drained set aside.

Next chop up the celery, carrot, onion and garlic. Start off with the onion and garlic, frying them up in the same pot used to fry the meat [you'll be thankful for this when it comes time to do the dishes]. Once the onion gets soft follow up with the rest of the veggies.

Fry til the onion starts to turn brown, then dump the meat back in, along with the herbs or spice, fry a little more, around 5 mins. Next add the flour, tomato paste, and just a little stock first. It is much easier to add more liquid than to take excess liquid away, so always start by adding just a little, then top up. What we are trying to achieve here is a thick gravy that just coats the filling, so that the pie will be nice and moist, but not so much that it turns into a soup. So stir up the mixture and add stock as needed. Taste and season as needed.

Next, the potato crust. Peel potatoes and boil til a knife/fork pierce and slid out of it easily. Drain and let stand a few minutes in the mashing bowl for the steam to evaporate. Dump in margarine and a little milk and mash, adding more milk as needed. Mash according to your preference, either smooth or lumpy. For me, since it's going into a crust, I didn't bother too much with it and left it lumpy. Taste and season.

Now for the fun part, building the pie. There's a few different version of the Shepard's Pie, firstly the way I'll be doing it, topped only with the potato crust, secondly with a layer of potato under the filling and then topped with the potato crust, and lastly to use short crust pastry for a pie shell. I'm going for the simplest, but I'll definitely give the other methods a try another day. For now, press the meat filling into the bottom of your baking dish, then top with the mash. Spread right to the edge of the dish, making sure to cover everything. This is to increase surface touching the mash, as this creates a nice crunchy crust.

Once the meat filling is covered, use a fork to score as much ridges as possible across the surface of the crust. Again, this is to encourage crisping, as more surface is exposed to the heat when the potato crust is scored.

Pop into the oven and bake til you are satisfied with the colour of the crust, roughly 30 mins. All the ingredients are cooked already, so the only purpose here is to crisp and brown the crust and warm up the pie a little. Here's my finished product =P

Christmas meal...part two

2007-12-27T20:44:00.000+08:00

On to the second course, salad, precisely, CLASSY MARINATED FETA SALAD. Why classy? Well, it doesn't really look classy, but the ingredients are just really classic salad veggies, hence classy. Also, I don't really know what else to call it. Salads are a recently discovered delight for me, fun to make and eat. I especially like making the vinaigrette. Its pretty amazing to see the clear vinegar turn milky as you dribble the oil in. As for serving size, it is pretty huge. This will probably serve 10, so get a smallish sized veg if you are cooking for a small group.

INGREDIENTS

Salad:

*concerning the veggies, I'm guessing any will do, but for this I'm using this combination*

1 cucumber

1 head of lettuce

1 packet of cherry tomatos/a couple regular tomatos

1 packet marinated feta in oil/ just any feta/just any salted cheese you like

Garnish:

As much pine nuts as you like/any nuts you like

Croutons

Vinaigrette:

Splash of vinegar

Oil from feta/olive oil

Standard procedure for the veggies, just chop up in the shape you like, slices, strips, chunks or cubes. My feta came in cubes, so I thought I'll cut the veggies in some other shape to contrast.

Drain the feta, retaining the oil, and tumble into the veggies. Next, roast up the pine nuts either in a pan or in the oven. For a small amount like this, I prefer the pan, as its faster and easier to control. For people who have not tried pine nuts, I would really recommend it, its seriously good. Don't add the nuts until just before serving, together with the croutons, or they'll get soggy.

For the vinaigrette, there are a few ways of making it. According to Cooking for Engineers, the proportions should be 2 part oil to 1 part vinegar. I took that as a guideline and eyeballed the quantities, and am happy to report that all was fine. Michael listed 3 ways of making the vinaigrette: whisking by hand or machine, blender or processor and the jar method. I would probably have gone with the jar method on any other day, but today I had the blender handy as I blended the soup, and so decided to go with the blender. Splash in the vinegar and turn on the blender. Dribble in the oil in a tiny stream with the blender on, and watch the vinaigrette emulsify and turn milky. There's no need to season the dressing here because the feta is plenty salty, but for another salad, you might want to taste and season as desired.

All that's left now is the assembly, and don't do this until right before you serve. Its a nice show to do right at the dining table. Drizzle desired amount of vinaigrette into the veg-feta mixture and toss. Sprinkle nut and crouton generously over the salad and serve, and that's our second course done!

Christmas meal... the extras

2007-12-27T17:16:00.000+08:00

By the extras I'm referring to the croutons, mainly, as there were no sauces involved in this Christmas meal. On that topic, there will be no turkey as well, in case anyone's wondering. My family, namely my father, mother, sister and myself, don't have a snowball's chance in hell of finishing a whole turkey, even one of those smallish ones. Since we also do not relish weeks of left-over turkey meals, we generally skip it. So anyways, back to the croutons. I don't know about you guys, but I LOVE croutons. The few miserable pieces most restaurants grudgingly sprinkle over your soups and salads just don't cut it for me. I need A LOT of croutons, and I took this chance to make my own. It is ridiculously simple, except that it is also tedious and time consuming, but well worth the effort. I love croutons so much I made a crouton salad for myself. I'll include the recipe later for any other crouton maniac out there, but our star, the crouton, first.

INGREDIENTS

As many slices of bread [any kind of bread] as you want, preferbly stale.

Good amount of oil, olive/vegetable/butter/whatever, as long as you can coat the bread cubes with it.

Seasonings such as powdered garlic or cajun spice mix if desired. Only requirement is that they have to be dried and powdered, so that they are light enough to stick to the bread cubes and dry enough not to wet the bread. Optional, the croutons are good enough on their own.

First, cube the bread slices. Some recipes call for the crust to be cut off, and I can only assume its so that the croutons look even. I find cutting off the crust to be a waste of food, time, effort and texture. The crust actually crisp up better than the meat, and tastes divine. So if you are bothered by the odd dark brown against the other faces of golden brown, off with the crusts. If not, leave them on.

Once cubed, tumble into frying pan and drizzle over with the oil, and the seasonings if using. How much oil to add is up to you. If you like them sinfully fragrant and oily, add more. Otherwise, add enough to coat. Stir around to coat everything. Turn on the stove and commence with the cooking. Stir frequently. These tasty cubes really need to be watched, as they can burn in a matter of seconds. Just stir them around constantly if you can, really not much point to nipping off for a break that can only last a minute.

Once done to the point of browness you desire, remove from pan into another tray or plate to cool. If left in the pan the croutons would continue to cook, and croutons that were perfect when you left them would be charred when you return for a snack.

And there's how to get nice crunchy croutons. Now for the crouton salad! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture in my haste to gobble it up. I'll be sure to return with a picture if I make it again, but meanwhile here's the recipe:

INGREDIENTS

As much croutons as you want

Small amount of vegetable, tomato is ideal

Your favourite salad dressing.

Its dead simple and a little misleading to call this a recipe. Basically chop up the tomato and whatever veggie you want to add, mix with the croutons and toss with your favourite salad dressing. Mine's a kind of Japanese sesame multi-purpose sauce. I don't have a favourite brand, all the brands I've tried so far are divine. The sauce is really amazing, you can use it in a ton of different ways, drizzled on a sandwich, tossed into a salad, as a dipping sauce for barbequed meat, as a marinate, etc. Best of all, as a cold dish drizzled over silken tofu. In a Japanese restaurant you'll get the exact same dish at 5 times its cost price, when its so simple you can make it in your sleep for a quick snack or even a simple lunch. This is the bottle in my fridge right now:

Christmas Meal...part one

2007-12-26T23:44:00.000+08:00

Though I'm not a Christian, we all know Christmas has evolved beyond its religious connotations, and so while I don't celebrate it, I do relish the chance to cook up a meal for my family. This being my first post, I'll attempt to do a little explaining before I launch into subject proper, namely, what I cooked for this Christmas. While I've toyed with the idea of setting up my very own food blog for a while, I never seem to work up enough motivation to actually do it. What made this time different was my sister's interest in documenting my food. It seemed a real waste to just let those pretty photos sit, and so, voila, here we are.

It is late now, and since I cannot vouch for my attention span, I'll post each course of the meal in an individual post, instead of lumping them together, lest I ran out of patience and this blog's short short life becomes frustrated by its very first posting. Without further ado, here comes the first course of my Christmas meal...

CONFETTI BEAN SOUP WITH HONEY BAKED HAM

One thing about my cooking, I am no stickler for accurate measurements and weights. Beyond some basic ground rules for certain cooking, the rest is up to individual preference. Also, it is tiring and irritating to have to whip out the weighing machine for every little ingredient. However, I assure you [whoever is actually reading] that the recipes are completely do-able and easy to follow, and there will be no confusing '1 cup' measurements. Don't you always wonder, 'What cup? Your cup? My cup? Which cup?'

INGREDIENTS

As much mixed beans as you want in your soup [keep in mind that they expand to roughly twice their dried size]. I used kidney beans, black eyed beans and lentils, basically what I had on hand. Roughly 3 handfuls. Soak at least 6 hours, preferbly overnight.

1 large yellow onion

1 smallish carrot

2 stalk of celary

As much honey baked ham as you like. Or bacon if you prefer, pan-fried first.

2 tablespoon tomato paste/chopped tomato

water/stock enough to cover ingredients.

1 bay leaf

Pinch of oregano

Salt and pepper

Firstly, it is really important to soak the beans for a good amount of time, as otherwise it would be impossible to get them soft enough later.

When you are ready to start your soup, drain and rinse the beans well, as the soaking liquid can be rather gross. Place the soaked beans in a large pot [this will be the soup pot], cover with water by at least 5 cm, and boil away. How long to boil depends on how soft you want your beans to be, keeping in mind that there's more simmering in store for the beans later. Boil them to death if you like your beans mushy, 10 - 15 mins if you still want to see them.

While the beans are boiling away, chop up the onion, carrot, celary and ham into cubes or whatever shape you fancy. Start the onions off in a pan with some oil first, around 10 mins, until they look tender. Add the rest of the veggies and stir away, until the onion starts to colour. Take off heat.

Once the beans are ready, drain them and dump in the veggies, the herbs and tomato paste. Put back onto stove and cover with enough liquid to come up to around 2 cm above the ingredients. Add more if you like it soupy, less if you like it creamy. Because the amount of ingredients vary, what I do is use part stock and part water. Packaged stock here comes in litre packets, so I get a packet, keep some for my Shepard's Pie [later], dump the rest into the soup, and top-up with water if it's too little. Alternatively, if you dislike the msg in instant stock and can't be bothered to cook your own, just use water. Let the soup come to a simmer, then let cook until desired tenderness. Takes around an hour until all the veg and beans are nice and soft

If you like your soup chunky, reduce the cooking time while the veg and beans still hold their shape and bite, and skip the next step. If you like your soup creamy, cook till really tender, let cool [or not, but be careful of exploding hot soup] then blend up around half of the soup, pour back in and heat up.

This soup is great for preparing ahead of time, so that one course is out of the way, and you can leave the blending to 10 mins before serving, when it is nice and cool. Taste and season, serve hot, with croutons, as all soups should be served.
* Recipe adapted from Carole Clements' Cookshelf Soups, 'Confetti Bean Soup' *