Happy Winter Solstice - Black Sesame Tang Yuan (芝麻湯圓)

Today is Donzhi (冬至) Festival or Winter Solstice.

Scientifically From Wikipedia it means : The winter solstice occurs exactly when the Earth's axial tilt is farthest away from the sun at its maximum of 23° 26'. Though the winter solstice lasts only a moment in time, the term is also a turning point to midwinter or the first day of winter to refer to the day on which it occurs. More evident to those in high latitudes, this occurs on the shortest day and longest night, when the sun's daily maximum position in the sky is the lowest.

For Chinese, this is the day we grow older and get wiser. And as a reunion dish, in most housewhole, we would either make our own tangyuan(湯圓) or glutinous rice balls; or buy the ready made ones.

I have mine made at home, so the girls can take the opportunity to participate in making the little balls as well.

I mixed some ground black saseme, small amount of black sesame seeds (to give it some crunch), sugar and some vegetable oil to make the filling.

I just mix it according to my taste. It'll become a very crumbly paste.

Then I roll about 1 tsp of the filling into balls, put them into the freezer for about an hour to harden and make them easier to wrap with the dough later.



♥Recipe and Method to Make Tang Yuan or Glutinous Rice Balls dough♥
(Make 20 small balls and 35 big balls with fillings)

1) Add 2 cups of glutinous rice ball with 1 cup of water and 2 tbs of sugar

2) Mix until the it becomes a soft dough.

3) Pinch half of the dough and drop it in boiling water to cook. The dough will rise when it's cooked. When the dough is still hot, mix it with the rest of the dough and knead until a smooth dough is formed.

To make the balls, take enough dough and roll into a ball, press it down with your palm, put a ball of sesame paste into the centre, gather the sides and pinch away access dough. Roll it to a ball.

You can either immediately drop the tang yuan into a pot of boiling water to cook soon after you made them, or place them on a floured plate and cook them in a batch later.

To make the soup, boil a pot of water with brown sugar and a smashed piece of ginger, we added screw pine or pandan leave just to get the extra flavour.

Happy Winter Sostice to everyone!
冬至快乐!

Butterfly Butterfly Happy Birthday

Lee Yen celebrated her daughter's 1st birthday last month, and she ordered cupcakes, and biscuits as party favours from me, all with butterfly theme.

I was under some pressure when I knew she was getting a party supplier to help her with the theme. Luckily she was very easy to work with, and she told me not to stress out as it's just a small party.

In the end, her party supplier could not help at the very last minute, and she did everything on her own. You should see what she did for the party, and maybe she can be a party supplier herself.

For me, the difficult bit was the decorated butterfly biscuits. 20 of them, all different designs but with the same colour schemes.

These biscuits were pretty big, about 8cmx10cm.



I made some smaller minimally decorated flower biscuits, these would taste more like butter biscuits, and crunchier compared to the fully decorated ones.



Each party favour comes with 1 big decorated butterfly biscuit.

Accompanied with a couple of small minimally decorated flower biscuits.

So if you want to eat some and keep some, you can do so.

And these are the cupcakes for her Butterfly theme party.

I don't think anybody really likes the taste of fondant, but fondant does make very beautiful and durable decorations. So in this case, we combined tasty butter cream frosting, with a fondant topper. We got best of both worlds!

It was a pleasure to be part of this beautiful birthday party.

Gifts to Teachers In School - Christmas Tree Biscuit

Yesterday marked the last day of school for my children, it's also the last day of kindergarten for my eldest, as she'll be entering Primary 1 when school reopens.

Both girls spent 2 years in their current school, and because their school has very low student teacher ratio, they have been very close with a few of their class mates as well as teachers.

Two days before the last day of school, my eldest wrote some cards and gave to a few closest friends, writing down my phone number, and telling them she loves them, and they'll be BFFs (Best Friend For Ever).

I'm not sure about her, but I was feeling rather sad to see her say good byes to her BFFs; none of her classmates are going to be in the same school as her in Primary 1. To me, it's like an I-May-Not-See-You-Again kind of good byes. I'll definitely try to organise some play dates, so that they'll get to see each other and enjoy each other's company again.

As for the teachers, they have taught her to be responsible, confident, and out spoken. I just hope the primary school we're sending her will not reverse all these efforts.

As a token of appreciate, I baked some biscuits for all the teachers in school, since every one of them have either taught my eldest or my youngest.

I made them Little Christmas tree biscuits which have been decorated just a little.

They are good to be eaten, and they keep rather well too. I packed them in twos, and got the girls to distribute them yesterday.

My eldest will definitely cherish her time in the school, and I hope she and some of her friends, will be true BFFs.

Part of the pleasure of visiting Organic Cafes or Restaurants in Malaysia is the various 'Go Green' magazines, as well as vegetarian recipe books available in the restaurant for customers to go through.

We were trying this new organic restaurant in Boulevard 10 called Chef Low Organic Kitchen, and there on the shelf, I found some Taiwanese vegetarian recipe books.

My daughters kept themselves occupied playing with the couple of tables in the restaurant converted from old sewing machines. So I have time to go through the recipe books while sipping delicious fruit tea (you have to try it if you ever visited Chef Low).

I was happy to have found a simple recipe for hash brown with just 3 main ingredients and simple instructions. Potato is something we all love at home and besides having it in stew, curry, and ABC soup (carrots, onions, potato chicken soup) we rarely cook anything else with potatos.

♥Recipe for Hash Brown♥
Adapted from 阿芳的素小吃 by 蔡季芳
Make 10 Hash Browns

You'll need :

3 russet potatos
2 tbs potato starch (太白粉)
1/2 cup of cake flour
Vegetable oil
salt & pepper to taste
1 tbs black sesame seeds (optional)
1 tbs white sesame seeds (optional)


Method :

1) Peel and cut potato into strips

2) Mix potato strips with potato starch, salt and pepper in a bowl.

3) Coat a heat proof plate with oil and lay the potato strips on the plate, steam for 10minutes or until potatos are soft.

4) Remove from steamer, and leave it to cool.

5) Once cool, shape the potato (this was the trickiest part as the mixture was very sticky) into desired shape (or use an Onigiri cutter to form the shape you desire). I shaped mine into round, using hand.

6) Heat oil in a frying pan. Mix cake flour with seseme seeds, and coat the hash brown with the cake flour mixture. Fry until golden brown.

If you like you can actually coat it with cinnamon sugar to turn it to sweetish hash brown, recommended by the author.

We had this for lunch on Saturday, so I left it savoury without the sugar. To accompany the hash browns, I stir fried some mushrooms to go with them at the side.

Method

This is what I did with the mushroom.

♥Recipe for Stir Fried Shitake Mushroom♥

1 punnet of shitake mushroom, cut into thick strips
1 medium size onion cut to thin strips
1 garlic clove cut roughly (do not chopped finely as it'll get burnt when caramelising the onion)
1 bunch of coriander chopped (since we have lots of coriander at home)
1/2 cup of white wine
1 tbs of cream
2 tbs of grapeseed oil (or any vegetable oil)
salt and pepper to taste

1) Heat the oil in a frying pan and add in onion and garlic, fry the onion until caramalised.

2) Add in the mushroom and sautee until mushroom is well coated with the fragrant oil.

3) Pour in white wine, and continue the sautee, until mushroom is cooked, add in coriander.

4) Turn off the fire, and stir in the cream.

Yums!

Hazelnut Cocoa Balls

I have a pack of ground hazelnut which is close to expiry, so I thought I'll find something to make with it.

I scanned through the many Chinese recipe books that I'd bought recently (from the hubs recent trip to China, as well from the Bookfest @ Malaysia 2010) checking the ingredient lists until I spotted 'ground hazelnut'.

This recipe comes from the famous Taiwanese baking expert Teacher Meng (孟老师), who has published many books. Not sure if you agree with this, I find the end results of the recipes written/created by a Japanese or Taiwanese more to my taste as they are normally lighter and less sweet.

♥Recipe for Hazelnut Cocoa (榛果可可球)♥
Adapted from 孟老师的下午茶 by 孟兆庆
Make 30 balls.

You'll need :
90g unsalted butter
40g icing sugar (if you like something sweeter, you can make it 50g)
110g low protein flour or cake flour
2tbs unsweetened cocoa powder
50g ground hazelnut

Method :
1) Using a spatula, mix butter and sugar until well combined, stir in sifted flour and cocoa powder.

2) Add in ground hazelnut. Mix the mixture with hand, until a firm dough is formed.

3) Place the dough ball in a bowl, cover, and refrigerate for 30mins.

4) Preheat oven to 170C.

5) Cut dough into ~8g pieces, and roll these pieces into balls. Arrange these balls on a baking tray laid with parchment paper

6) Bake them for 20mins, turn off the oven, and leave the tray in the oven for another 10mins.

7) Remove the biscuit from tray and cool them on a wire rack. Once cool, coat the with icing sugar (I put a few tea spoon of icing sugar in a cointainer with lid, put a couple of biscuits into the container and cover the lid, gently shake the cointainer until the biscuits are coated with icing sugar, repeat until all biscuits are coated with icing sugar)

The biscuits are indeed rather light, with a slight crunch, and a tinge of bitterness.

Minnie Minnie Minnie

Shereen ordered 60 Minnie cookies from me for her daughter, Janice's, 1st birthday party.

I turned down her order initially, because I didn't think I could draw Minnie's features on 60 cookies, repeatedly. She gave me the solution; she found me the design from the web, and asked if I could do something similar.



There's no features drawing involved; that's not too difficult. The difficulty lies only with trying to get the 'Minnie' colour right.

My youngest daughter kept reminding me when I was mixing the black icing, "Ma, that's not black, that's grey.".... A lot of black is used to get that black you see on the cookie. So next time you order anything 'black', on fondant, on butter icing, on cookies, do take note.



All individually packed, to allow Shereen to give away the cookies as door gifts.

Many emails, then MSN chats, and exchanging of baking experience later, I also gained a friend from this order.

Hop on to her site to see her first attempt on the fondant decorated cake she made for Janice. This woman has guts! And I think she did way better than me on my first fondant attempt.

Stewed Chicken with Bitter Gourd in Black Bean Sauce (豆鼓苦瓜燜鸡)

Bitter Gourd is one of the things that I learnt to appreciate only after I got married to my husband. It's funny how something you didn't like totally, can transform to something you actually enjoy having after several years. I guess that's how taste buds are developed.

I like my bitter gourd stuffed with fish paste (yong tao fu 釀豆腐), fried with salted egg yolk (which is very common nowadays in restaurant), and of course with stewed chicken which is the most common way of cooking bitter gourd at home.

Here is a recipe which I'd adapted and tweaked from several sources, and I'd tried cooking it many times.

♥Recipe for Stewed Chicken with Bitter Gourd in Black Bean Sauce (豆鼓苦瓜燜鸡)♥ Serves 4 person

You'll need

2 whole chicken tighs (or 400g of chicken), cut into pieces.
1/2 of a large bitter gourd (~300g)
1 big onion, cut into 8 wedges 1 piece of ginger (about 1 inch), slice thinly
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbs of black bean, rinse and lightly pounded
2 tbs of light soy sauce
2 tbs of vegetable oil
2 tbs of chinese wine
1 1/2 tbs of sugar
1~2 cups of water
1/2 tsp of salt
Method

1) Season the chicken in 1 tbs of light soy sauce in a bowl and leave it for half an hour. Take chicken out and pour away whatever liquid was left on the bowl.

2) Halve the bitter gourd lengthwise, then remove the seeds with a spoon, and cut into ~3cm slices. Sprinkle salt into bitter gourd and leave for 5 minutes, then rinse with water (this will get rid of the bitter taste).

2) Heat oil in wok and fry chicken (drop them piece by piece into the oil) until lightly browned, and then remove chicken from oil.

3) Put in garlic, onion, ginger and fry till fragrance. Put in black bean, fry for 30seconds, and then pour in chicken and bitter gourd. Stir fry for 2 minute. Pour in the Chinese wine and fry for another 2minutes.

4) Add in water and bring to boil. Pour in the rest of the soy sauce and sugar, and once it's boiling, turn down the heat, and cover it, let it simmer for another 10minutes, stirring occasionally.

5) Taste the sauce to see if you need to add in more sugar or salt, season according to your taste.

6) Serve warm with rice.

The hubs absolutely loves it. The black bean gives the chicken and bitter gourd a very nice fragrance and flavour. My eldest would not touch this dish because she's not much a chicken fan (she only takes processed chicken like nuggets, sausages; or deep fried chicken); but my youngest, would nibble on pieces of the chicken and not once complained about the bitter taste.

Happy Halloween

From wikipedia: Halloween (or Hallowe'en) is an annual holiday observed on October 31, primarily in the United States, Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day, but is today largely a secular celebration.

Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, carving jack-o'-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, committing pranks, telling ghost stories or other frightening tales, and watching horror films.

We don't really celebrate Halloween but thanks to all the advertisements from restaurants who has Halloween specials; and cartoons, my daughters do associate Halloween ghosts, skulls and Jack-O-Lanterns or anything scary.

I had an order from Sue for 30 pieces of Halloween theme biscuits. And although it was hard work doing the deco and I spent hours working on these, I rather enjoyed it. I made a couple extra too, so the girls can bring to school to share with their friends.

Tell me if you like them.



Happy trick-or-treating if you are celebrating Halloween!

Hazelnut Twirls (榛果小饼干)

Most of the time, before baking, I'll look at what I have in the pantry, and then will search through my recipe books to find a recipe that uses the ingredients that I have. This is actually a very ineficient way of doing things, flipping through the many books that I have and looking at the ingredient list page by page, but it saves me trips to the supermarket or the baking supply shop.

So here is another day when I found I still had some ground hazelnut, instead of making another batch of Hazelnut Cocoa Balls, I thought I'll try a new recipe.



I was happy to find this Hazelnut Twirls recipe using the ingredients I have. Making the biscuit was easy, but it needed muscle to pipe those twirls. I felt as though I'd had a work out after making them.

I have coated some of these biscuits with chocolate and some without.

♥Recipe for Hazelnut Twirls♥
Adapted from 手创饼干112道 by 廖敏云
Make about 30 pieces of biscuits


You'll need

130g unsalted butter
50g icing sugar
1 tsp lemon peel, cut into small strips
1g salt
25g egg
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
160g cake flour
60g ground hazelnut


Method

1) Preheat oven to 150C. Cream butter and icing sugar

2) Beat in lemon peel, salt, egg and vanilla essence

3) Then stir in cake flour and ground hazelnut, and mix well.

4) Fill a pipping bag with the thick batter, using a star tip, pipe the batter onto a lined baking tray

5) Bake biscuit for 18minutes. Cool them on wire rack and once cooled, keep them in air tight container.

6) If you want to coat the biscuit with chocolate, you can melt some milk chocolate in a bain marrie, and dip one end of the cooled biscuit in the chocolate sauce. Place the chocolate coated biscuit on a wire rack to allow the chocolate to harden. Store in air tight container.

These Hazelnut Twirls are light and tasty, the lemon peel gave the biscuits a slight tanginess which enhanced the flavour.



I actually prefer those without chocolate coating, as the chocolate actually masked the origial taste of the biscuit.

Telosma Cordata Flower Soup (夜香花汤)

I live in a housing area which is rather far from a lot of things, especially commercial buildings/centres. It was a far cry from where my family house was, conveniently located near Mid Valley Mega Mall, where I lived for 20years of my life. It took me a while (and some cursing and swearing) to get used to our current place.

Imagine, our house was ready in 2004, and the neighbours moved in either 2004 and 2005. And in 2006, there were lots of babies born in our housing area (even my youngest was born that year). What does this tell you? The place is so far from most things so people prefer to stay home and *cough cough* after work, so lots of babies made were made!!

After living here for almost 6 years, I started enjoying the peace and quiet, and the greens surrounding the place, not to mention we have really super neighbours! Besides these, one of the other things that I like about this place is the wet market 8Km away from our place. Located at a kampung (Malay : village), it sells things cheaper than the normal town markets, and also you get some really kampung stuff that town markets may not have.

I befriend stall owners, and ask them for cooking tips on local produce. This is where I learnt to fry sweet basil omelette or fry bean curd pieces with onions and soya sauce to create tasty but cheap dishes.

And this is also where I learnt about Telosma Cordata (夜香花). An edible flower which releases its fragrance in the night (which explains its Chinese name, 'night fragrance flower'). Most elderly Chinese folks know about this flower, which is rich in carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins A and C, and is very good for the eyes.

According to google and also the stall owner selling this, you can fry an omelette with the flowers or drop it in pork soup and here is what I made with them, ikan bilis (Malay : dried anchovies) soup.

♥Recipe for Telosma Cordata Flower Soup (夜香花汤)♥
(The ingredient is an estimate, you can adjust it according to your own taste and preference)
Make 6 bowls of soup


You'll need 250g of Telosma Cordata Flowers
1/2 to 1 cup of ikan bilis
2 cloves of garlic
2 shallots
2 tbs of vegetable oil
2 litre of water
salt and pepper to taste

Method :

1) Wash the flower by gently rinsing under running water. Rinse the ikan bilis to get rid of any dirt or salt coating the fish.

2) Skin and slice the garlic and shallots into slivers.

3) Heat oil in a wok or a stock pot, and fry garlic, shallots and ikan bilis until fragrant. Pour in water and allow to boil, then turn down the heat to medium, cover the wok or pot and let the stock boil for 15~30minutes.

4) When stock is ready, add in salt and pepper to taste. Add in the telosma cordata flower, and let it boil for another 2minutes or until the flowers are cooked. If you want to add an egg to make it an egg drop soup, this is the time to beat in an egg.

5) If the you are not serving immediately, spoon out the flowers so that the flowers do not get overcooked. Serve soup with flower.

You'll be surprised. The soup has been sweatened by the flowers as though flavouring or MSG has been added, and the flowers, a little crunchy, is also very tasty.

Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake

A couple of weeks back, my SIL gave me a challenge. She ordered a cake I'd never made before for her to bring to the office. I saw it as a challenge, because if I'd not made it before, I don't know how it tastes, and if it'll be nice enough to be served?

I gave her a few recipes to choose from and she chose the Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake with Lemon Syrup. Just hearing the name, I'm puckering my lips. Seems like it's going to be a very sour cake.

After stating all the T&Cs, like I cannot guarentee its tastes, although I'll follow the recipe closely, don't blame me if it's not nice etc, then only I started working.

After making the cake, I packed it up in a box for her to be brought to the office the following day, I was anxiously waiting for her verdict's and her colleagues'.

She SMSed me soon. Saying her colleagues like them, and so did she. They almost ate everything up, but she left a few pieces for me and my MIL to try.

I didn't get to try the cake until late in the evening. My SIL dropped a few pieces off on her way home. It's a very light cake, with a nice crunch (from the poppy seeds), and the lemon gave it a pleasant tartness.

*phew* That's a relief.

♥Recipe for Lemon Poppy Seed Sour Cream Cake with Lemon Syrup♥
Adapted from Rose' Heavenly Cake by Rose Levy Beranbaum
Make a 20cm cake

You'll need

For the cake
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 large egg yolk, at room temperature
200g sour cream
1 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
250g cake flour
250g super fine/castor sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
10g lemon zest, finely grated
50g poppy seeds
200g unsalted butter

For the Lemon Syrup
You'll need
112g sugar
6tbs lemon juice, freshly squeezed (2 large lemon)

Method :

1) Preheat oven to 175C (160C if using a dark pan). Line a cake pan (Rose suggested to use a metal fluted tube pan but I used a 20cm cake pan) or coat it with baking spray and flour.

2) In a medium bowl, whist the whole eggs, yolk, one third of the sour cream, and the vanilla, just until lightly combined.

3) In the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the flat beater, mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, lemon zest, and poppy seeds on low speed for 30 seconds. Add the butter and remaining sour cream. Mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Raise the speed to medium and beat for 1 1/2 minutes. The mixture will lighten in colour and texture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

4) Starting on low speed, gradually add the egg mixture in two parts, beating on medium speed for 30 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients and strengthen the structure. Using a silicone spatula or spoon, scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface evenly with a small metal spatula.

5) Bake for 45~55mins, or until a wire cake tester inserted into the cake comes out clean. Shortly before the cake is finished baking, make the lemon syrup.

6) In a small saucepan over medium heat, heat the sugar and lemon juice, stirring often, until the sugar is dissolved. Do not allow to boil. Cover it tightly to prevent evaporation.

7) As soon as the cake comes out of the oven, place the pan on a wire rack, poke the cake all over with a thin skewer, and brush it with about one third of the syrup.

8 ) Let the cake cool in the pan for 10 minutes. Invert onto a serving plate.

9) Brush the top and the sides of the cake with the remaining syrup.

If you do not wish to apply any lemon syrup to the cake, you can skip 6, 7 & 9.

Biscuit Sponge or Ladyfingers

Instead of using Savoiardi Italian Ladyfingers, which is rather expensive, for the Green Tea Tiramisu, I made the lady fingers or biscuit sponge myself.

It's actually quite easy to make, but of course, being my first attempt, I didn't know quite how to space or pipe it, they didn't turn out to be perfectly shaped. Nonetheless, tasty, and liked by my daughters even when eaten just plain.

♥Recipe for Biscuit Sponge♥
Adapted from Okashi Sweet Treats made With Love by Keiko Ishida
Make about 30~40 pieces

You'll need

2 Eggs
60g Castor Sugar
60g Pastry Flour
1tsp Vanilla Extract

Method

1) Line a baking pan with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 200C

2) Sift flour twice. Seperate egg whites and yolks. Beat yolks lightly and add half of the sugar and vanilla extract. Whisk until mixture thickens and becomes pale yellow in colour.

3) To make meringue, place eggwhites in a clean bowl and beat until foamy. Add in remaining sugar and beat until stiff peaks are formed and egg whites are glossy.

4) Add one third of megingue into egg yolk mixture and fold in lightly. Add sifted flour and fold well, then add remaining meringue and fold through just until incorporated.

5) Fit piping tip onto piping bag and fill bag with batter. Pipe out a 7cm stick shape amount, and repeat until atter is used up. Dust icing sugar on top twice, then bake for 7~10mins.

The little one calls them cake biscuit, and she's asking me to bake for her again so that she can bring them to school as snacks.

(Note : Like the photos? All my photos before were never photoshopped, this is the first time I'm trying out Lightroom, and gosh, I so love it.)

Green Tea Tiramisu

Last week I celebrated my birthday.

My hubs is the kind who cannot seem to be able to remember my birthday or aniversary dates unless I remind him or the children remind him, he has been getting the dates wrong like forever. He's also not the sort who's bothered to spend effort to do something on such occasions.

In my 17years of knowing him and 12 years being married to him, I'd organised 2 surprise birthday parties for him when he reached his milestone age, but he's not done a single party for me, not even organising a dinner get-together inviting people other than me. The most he's done was to suggest dinner with me and the children!

This year, I was angry with him for some insensitive and unappreciative remark he's passed, and so when he suggested dinner on my birthday (after the children kept prompting, "It's mummy's birthday, what are you going to do?"), I declined.

I decided to make my own cake (as I know unless I tell him I wanted a cake, he won't be bothered buying one), and just have the usual dinner at home. I'd never made Tiramisu and thought I'll try, and because my daughters will be eating the cake, I chose the version with their favourite flavour, green tea.

I made them into individual servings, to make serving easier. The girls' love eating out from the port glasses, as they feel so 'adult' doing it.

The ones in shorter cups were given away. 2 to my neighbour, and 2 to my MIL who lives near us.

♥Recipe for Green Tea Tiramisu♥
Adapted from Okashi, Sweet Treat Made With Love by Keiko Ishida
Make 10 serving glasses or one 27cm oval dish

You'll need

30 pieces of Savoiardi, Italian Ladyfingers or Biscuit Sponge (I made my own Biscuit Sponge, recipe here)

Mascarpone Cheese Filling
2 Eggyolks (about 40g)
70g Castor sugar
250g Masarpone cheese
100g Whipping cream
70g Egg whites
10g Green tea powder or macha + extra for dusting
90g Hot Water

Method

1) Combine egg yolks and 30g sugar in a bowl and beat until mixture tickens and becomes pale yellow in colour (I beat mine over a bain-marie even though I was using pesturised eggs to reduce risk of salmonella)

2) Add mascarpone cheese and mix well (I added in only when the egg yolk mixture is cool down).

3) Whip cream in a chilled bowl (I'll show a picture in another post on how I do that with my kitchenaid) until stiff peaks form. And whipped cream to the mascapone cheease mixture and fold through.

4) Make the meringue. Place egg white in a clean bowl and beat until foamy. And Remaining sugar and beat until stiff peaks form and egg whites are glossy. Fold into mascarpone cheese mixture.

(Note : I skipped step 4. As this is my first time using pesturised eggs, I'm not sure if it was the character of the egg or my bowl wasn't clean, I beat the egg white for 20minutes and nothing happened. So I gave up on the egg white. I fold in the remaining 40g of sugar into the mascarpone cheese mixture)

5) Place green tea powder in a small bowl, and mix with hote water a little at a time. Stir until completely dissolved. Quickly dip both ends of each finger of biscuit sponge in the green tea mixture (since I was using port glasses, I break the biscuits into 3 pieces, before dipping into the green tea mixture. For the bottom layer, one port glass was using about 1.5 piece of biscuit), then place in prepared oval dish or glasses.

(Note : Do not worry about the biscuit being soaked too much with green tea. I made the first few glasses with sponges soaked through with green tea, and another few glasses with biscuit brushed with green tea. I find the one soaked through has better flavour, and it helped to supplement the sweet mascarpone cream cheese filling better)

6) Spread half of mascarpone cream cheese filling in a layer over soaked biscuit sponges (if you are using glass like me, spoon in enough mascarpone cream cheese filling into each glass to just cover the soaked biscuit sponges). Dip more biscuit sponges into green tea mixture and place on top of the mascaporne cheese layer. Spoon over remaining mascarpone cheese filling.

7) Dust generously with green tea powder and refrigerate until required (I suggest to refrigerate for at least 3hrs to cool it thoroughly).

Without the meringue, the mascarpone cheese mixture was extra creamy. As I spooned the tiramisu into my mouth, my spirit got lifted up. I'm glad to be able to spend the day with the children with everybody in good health. Good Health surrounded by family, that's what I wish for on my birthday.

(Oh, when I pretended to be upset and complained to my girls that they didn't sing me any birthday songs, my almost 6 year old said, "Your cake is so wobbly, how can we put candles in it to sing you a song?" o.O")

Hainanese Chicken Rice

I used to make lots of business trips to Singapore, and will meet up with colleagues from other part of the world; most of them when asked what they wanted to eat in Singapore, would ultimately say, "Chicken Rice." (but of course not before they have a crab meal).

Although in Malaysia we have Hainanese Chicken rice too and we do have some really good Chicken rice stalls or shops here, but in general, I find Hainanese Chicken rice in Singapore nicer, maybe because everything there is of better quality, or they have a special way of cooking it.

And, I happen to find it. Here is a recipe I'd used and reused many times from Chubby Hubby, a Singaporean, whose blog site I used to (actually, still do) go to gawk at the beautiful photos taken, and the pretty dishes presented way back when I just started blogging.

I make this occasionally for dinner at home and try to use the best ingredients. My youngest daughter love chicken, and this is definitely healthier than having fried chicken all the time; my eldest although does not like steam chicken, likes the rice and the accompanied soup.

Just a note, if you are like me, who only goes to the market once a week, and would sure have frozen your chicken even though you bought it fresh; make sure you take it out of the frezer to thaw in the morning. The time taken to get the chicken seasoned, cooked is about 2.5hrs, so you need to start cooking early or you might end up having late dinner.

♥Hainanese chicken rice♥

Adapted from Hainanese Chicken Rice by Chubby Hubby
Serves 5

You'll need :

1 fresh whole free range or kampung chicken (about 1kg)
1 tsp salt
1 tbs light soya sauce
1 tsp Chinese rice wine
2 pieces of ginger, each about 1 inch thick, lightly bruised with the back of a knife
1 garlic clove, peeled and lightly bruised
1 stalk of spring onion
1 tsp sesame oil

For the rice
2 cups long grain jasmine rice (I use Bismati, as we don't take jasmine rice at home)
2 1/2 cups chicken stock (obtained from cooking the chicken; see recipe)
chicken fat (I use 3 tbs of vegetable oil instead)
1 tbs finely minced ginger
5 garlic cloves, peeled and finely minced
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp salt
1 pandan leaf, tied into a knot

Chilli sauce for dipping
10 fresh red chillies, seeds removed from half, chopped
10 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
1 tbs vegetable oil
1 tbs chicken stock (obtained from cooking the chicken; see recipe)
salt, to taste
sugar, to taste
calamansi juice, to taste

Method to cook the chiken :
1) Remove the fat from the cavity of the chicken and set aside for use in flavouring the rice later (if you are using). Vigorously rub the cavity and exterior with salt. Then rub the chicken cavity with 1/2 tablespoon of the soy sauce and all of the rice wine. Stuff the cavity with ginger, garlic and spring onion. Set aside for 1 hour (not in the fridge).

2) Bring a deep stockpot, filled with enough water to cover the chicken, to the boil. Lower the chicken into the pot—it should be completely immersed. Immediately turn off the heat, cover, and leave to stand for a total of 1 hour. At every 15-minute intervals, lift the chicken and drain the water from the cavity to ensure that the chicken cooks inside as well. At the 30-minute mark, reheat the water almost to boiling point, then turn the heat off.

By never having been allowed to boil, the chicken should be cooked to succulent and juicy perfection.

3) At the end of the hour, remove the chicken from the pot, and plunge into a large bowl of iced water to arrest further cooking. Once cool (about 15 to 20 minutes), drain the chicken thoroughly.

If you are like my sister's helper and mine, who's confused about how to do step 2, and move to step 3, here is what I tell them. Assuming the water in the pot gets boiled at 5pm :
5:00pm - Immerse the chicken into the boiled water, and turned off the heat
5:15pm - lift the chicken out and drain the water from the cavity, then immerse the chicken into the hot water again.
5:30pm - lift the chicken out and drain the water from the cavity. Reheat the water almost to boiling point. Immerse the chicken into the boiled water and turned off the heat.
5:45pm - lift the chicken out and drain the water from the cavity, then immerse the chicken into the water again.
6:00pm - remove the chicken out from the pot and drain the water, time to give the chicken a ice bath.

4) Rub it down with the remaining 1/2 tablespoon of soy sauce and sesame oil. Snip off the chicken wing tips, neck, and legs (we didn't because this are the bits that my helper likes). Toss these into the liquid left in the stockpot. Set the chicken aside, covered, until ready to serve.

5) To serve, just cut them into pieces.

Method to cook ther rice
(Note : it's different from how Chubby Hubby does his, because we do not have time to boil and wait until the stock is reduced to the required amount.)
1) Wash the rice like you normally would. Drain thoroughly.

2) Strain the stock. Measure out enough stock you'll need for cooking the rice.

3) Normally, we'll start boiling the rest of the stock to soup. You can make any types of chicken soup. Sometimes we'll make it into something light by adding raddish and carrot; sometimes we'll make it into lotus root soup by adding lotus root and kudzu root (fun-kot, 粉葛); or we'll make bean soup by adding in light speckled kidney beans (jan-chu dao, 珍珠豆) to boil.

4) If you are using chicken fat, place the chicken fat set aside earlier the wok. Cook on a low heat to render the fat (there should be about 3 tablespoons worth). For us, we heat up the vegetable oil.

5) Add the ginger and garlic, and fry gently until aromatic without browning. Add the drained rice and sesame oil, stirring well to coat each grain with fat.

6) Transfer the rice into your rice cooker, substitute chicken stock for the amount of water you would ordinarily add to cook the same amount of rice. Add the pandan leaf and salt. And let the rice cooker do the work.

Method to make the chilli sauce
Process or blend the chillies, garlic and ginger to a fine paste, adding the oil and chicken stock (from what was reserved earlier) to facilitate the process. Scrape into a bowl. Stir in salt, sugar and lime juice to taste.

We make the ginger sauce separately, and mix it with chilli sauce in a saucer to serve. Recipe for ginger sauce can be found here.

I realised, it's sooooo difficult to take photo of a whole chicken and a plate of chopped up chicken. They somehow turned out not looking 'appetising', but trust me, the chicken is very tender and juicy. Normal breast meat from the chicken rice shop may be tough, but the way this chicken is cooked, produced juicy and soft pieces.

Strawberry Jam

This is not something we can do frequently in Malaysia, unless you live in Cameron Highlands, since strawberries are so expensive here.

However, if you have made a trip to Cameron Highlands, and you have heaps of left over strawberries, especially those which has been bruised during the long car journey, this is what you can do (although the original recipes asked that no bruise recipes should be used, but I did it anyway by cutting away the 'bruises').

Whatever stawberries left over from making the strawberry tart (which is several punnets), I too made them into jam.

♥Recipe For Strawberry Jam♥ Adapted from BBC Food Recipe

You'll need

500g of strawberries
250g of castor sugar (I reduce the sugar to half)
Juice of half a lemon

Method

1) Hull and cut the strawberries into quaters.

2) Place the strawberries into a large bowl with the sugar. Turn carefully to mix and coat well, then cover with cling film and place into the fridge for about 3hrs (the reciepe asked that it be refrigerated over night), let them macerate.



3) Place a saucer into the freezer to chill - you'll need this when you come to test the setting point of the jam.

4) Sterilise the jam jars, I just wash them with warm soapy water, and then pour hot water over them like how I sterilise my daughters' milk bottles.

5) Remove the pot (with the strawberries) from the fridge and add in the lemon juice. Stir over a gentle heat until the sugar has completely dissolved.

6) Bring the strawberries up to the boil then boil until the jam reaches setting point. Check the setting point every ten minutes, although it may take up to half an hour to reach setting point.

7) To test the setting point, remove the pan from the heat. Take your saucer from the freezer and place a drop of jam onto the cold plate. After a few seconds push the jam with your finger.

If the jam surface wrinkles then it has reached setting point and is ready. If it slides about as a liquid, then it hasn't reached setting point and should be returned to the heat and boiled for a few more minutes before testing again.

When setting point has been reached, turn off the heat.

8 ) Let the jam cool and thicken in the pan for ten minutes. Stir the jam, then ladle it into the sterilised jars.

9) Cover with a lid while still hot, label and store in a cool, dark cupboard for up to a year (but in our tropical weather, I'd stored mine in the fridge).

The cooking of the jam made the whole house smell sweet and lovely.

This is all I got from all the strawberries. I think the strawberries themselves are sour, making the jam on the sourish side too, although the hubs likes it.

There's Something About Strawberries - Strawberry Tart

I just realised that I'm baking, cooking and making things more frequently than I update this site, this is due to the increasing activities that my eldest has to attend, which I have to drive her to; and the earlier bed time routine that I have established. My daughters sleep at 11pm or later. I used to stay up after them to do the things I like to do, but nowadays, I fall asleep together with them.

I made these two weeks ago, and I only have time to post this now. Oh well, better late than never.

In Malaysia, strawberries are considered expensive, and because of this we don't normally make a dessert using strawberries.

Two weeks ago, my neighbour went to Cameron Highlands, so I got her to buy me RM20 worth of strawberries. She delivered 3 big and 5 small punnets to my place when she returned. Imagine the strawberries sold in the supermarket cost about RM15 per punnet, this is like a super cheap sale!

However, the strawberries were extremely sour, and due to the car journey, 80% of the fruits were bruised. So I have to work with two types of strawberries, using the nice whole ones for a strawberry tart (recipe included), and made strawberry jam (recipe in next post) with the bruised and soft ones.

There's something about desserts made with strawberries. They just look so beautiful. It gives such a nice presentation, and always gets the "Oooos" and "Aaaaas" when it's served? Don't you agree?

My girls were sooo attracted by the beautiful tart, they were crowding around me when I was assembling it; before even given a chance to try the tart, my younger one told me cheekily, "Wow, this is nice. You are the best cook in the world, mama."

♥Recipe for Strawberry Tart♥
Make a 22cm tart.

For the Tart Shell
Recipe adapted from Baking by James Peterson

You'll need :

1 cup cake flour
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup (172g) cold butter, cut into 1/3 inch cubes
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tbs additional liquid, or 1 egg white if dough is too dry (I didn't have to use any)
Method :

1) With the paddle attachment, mix both flours, salt and sugar on slow speed for about 30s.

2) Add the butter and combine it with the flour on low to medium speed, for about 1 minute.

3) Add the liquid and mix the dough on low to medium speed for 40s to 2mins, or until it looks like gravel, depending on the temperature of the ingredient. If it is still powdery and looks like grated Parmesan Cheese after 2 mins, pinch a piece to see if it comes together. If it falls apart, add 2 more tbs of liquid; if it holds together in a clump, continue mixing.

4) (optional) If at any point the dough no longer feels cold, put the mixer bowl in the refrigerator or freezer for 15mins. Mix the dough on low to medium speed for 1 to 4 mins

5) The dough will clump together into a cohesive mass when it's ready. Refrigerate if you are not using it right away.

6) Lining the tart pan with the dough : Roll out the dough, making sure it's at least 4 inches wider in diameter than the pan you're using. Fold the dough in half and transfer it to the pan. Press the dough into the corners of the pan and press the dough against the rim of the ring and cut off the excess. If the dough cracks, patch it with another piece.

7) To bake the tart shell blind (or empty) : Preheat oven to 200C. Place a piece of parchment paper or aluminium foil over the dough. Make sure the paper is large enough that it's easy to pick up by the ends when it's time to remove the weights (I didn't do this, and I crack my 1st tart shell when I tried to remove the weights). Use dried beans or rice to keep the shell from puffing up in the oven (You can reuse this but don't try to cook and eat them). Bake for 15mins for the edge of the tart to turn pale brown (when it's time to take out the beans or rice) and another 15mins for the inside of the shell to turn golden brown and look matte instead of shiny.

For the Sweetened Whipped Cream Filling

You'll need :

1 cup of whipping/heavy cream
2 tbs of granulated sugar

Method :

Whip cream and sugar in a small bowl placed in a bigger bowl filled with ice water (to retain the temperature) until stiff peak form. It should take about 5minutes.

Assembling the Strawberry Tart

You'll need :

1 punnet of strawberries
1 baked tart shell
1 sweetened whipped cream

Method :

1) Cut the stem off the strawberries.

2) Use a spatula to spread the sweetened whipped cream over the surface of the tart.

3) Arrange the strawberries around or over the tart.

4) Refrigerate before serving

When you serve, just sit back and enjoy the "Oooos" and the "Aaaaas"; anybody who's not visually challenged would have loved the presentation of this dessert.

My girls who didn't like the sourness of the strawberries, removed the strawberries, and just have the sweetened whippped cream tart.

Steamed Sago and Coconut Kuih

In the spirit of Ramadan Month, i.e. the fasting month of Muslims all over the world, I thought I'll try to make kuih (Malay : bite-sized snack or dessert) just for fun.

(To set the record right, although I do not eat pork, and you won't see any pork recipe here, I'm not Muslim.)

We were in the book shop over the weekend, and I flipped through this recipe book on Malaysian kuih. I'd forgotten the name of the book, or the name of the kuih, but I remember the recipe. The following day, as it was marketting day (going to the wet market to get our supplies for the week), I bought the ingredients and tried to make them at home.

I'm sure the kuih has a Malay sounding name, but I'll just call mine Steamed Sago and Coconut Kuih (If you happen to know the name of the kuih, do drop me a comment here).

(I got my eldest to help me cut strips of pandan leaf)

♥Recipe for Sago and Coconut Kuih♥
Make 10 kuihs.

You'll need :

1 big banana leaf
100g grated coconut
100g sago
1 pandan leaf cut into strips (optional)
3 Tbs brown sugar*
4 Tbs mascovado sugar*
2 Tbs of coconut milk/santan (if you are using dried dessicated coconut, you may want to increase the coconut milk/santan and make sure the coconut is wet through)

(*I use brown and mascovado sugar because this is what we have at home.You can substitude brown with white sugar, and gula malaka with mascovado sugar if you like.)

Method :

1) Rinse the sago once or twice and then soak the sago for about 1.5~2hrs. Drain the water when the sago is soft.

2) Cut the banana leaf into 10 pieces of 15cm squares, remove the hard stem in the centre. Boil the leaf in a pot of water for about 8mins to soften it (to make wrapping easier).

3) Mix coconut, coconut milk, sago and sugar together.

(My eldest, who saw me mixing the coconut and the sago together, was in shock. She asked me, "Are you cooking styrofoam??!!" She thought those sago pearls were styrofoam)

4) To wrap the kuih, put a strip of pandan leaf (optional, I just did it to make the kuih more fragrant) in the centre of the banana leaf, scoop a table spoon of sago and coconut mixture and place it on top of the pandan leaf, over lap the ends of the leaf until a cylinder is formed.

Staple one end of the cylinder (the better choice is to use tooth pick to seal up the ends, I have no time for that). Fill up the banana leaf cylinder with more coconut and sago mixture until 2/3 full, then staple the other end as well.

5) Repeat the step until all coconut and sago mixture is used up.

(You can see I'm a first timer, the sizes of the kuihs are uneven. :P)

6) Steam the wrapped kuihs for 20minutes.

I don't have photographic memory, so I may have skipped an ingredient or two (from the book), but using the above recipe, the kuih turned out to be rather delicious, with the right texture.

Not too difficult to make, and it's very yummy, if you like sago that is.