Sunday, June 21. 2009
Been away in 2 weeks, feels very deprive of baking. Just then, my neighbour invited me to join her daughter's birthday party.
As i just came back and with the fly virus around. I decided not to attend but sent a little homemade gift
Brownies – Moist and Chewy (from KC by sophie)
125g butter
200g dark chocolate courverture
3 eggs
1 ¾ cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 ½ cup plain flour (sifted)
1/3 cup cocoa powder (sifted)
2 cups chopped walnuts ( I used macadamia and marshmallows )
Method
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius. Brush a shallow 8x11 inch tin with melted butter. Line the base with baking paper, extending over the two long sides.
2. Double-boil butter and dark chocolate until melt. Add caster sugar, mix well. Remove bowl of mixture from pan of simmering water.
3. Add eggs, one at a time. Mixing thoroughly with every addition. Add vanilla essence. Mix well.
4. Add sifted flour and cocoa powder. Mix well. Add nuts. Mix well.
5. Pour mixture into the prepared tin and bake for 30 minutes.
6. Allow to cool in the tin before cutting into pieces.
Saturday, April 18. 2009
Here's 2 more flavours of ice cream:
From left is Durian Ice cream, mango passion fruit ice cream and Pistachio nut ice cream
I was really surprised to see pistachio ice cream in such a colour initially compared with what i saw outside. Its the really colour of pistachio actually
Btw I learnt that coldness will mute colour, flavour and sweetness .... the best you can give for your ice cream is to use strong flavoured ingredients
Friday, April 3. 2009
The weather was terribly hot!! Bought 2 young coconut from the market, thinking of making Buccos salad but had missing ingredients so decided to make cocnut konnyaku jelly instead
Ingredient
coconut water - 750ml
konnyaku jelly - 7 grams
sugar - 40g
coconut flesh (scrap from coconut and cut into small pieces)
1 tsp lemon juice
Method
1. Mix the jelly powder with sugar and put it into pot with coconut water
2. Keep stirring till almost boiling
3. Add lemon juice
4. Pour the mixture into jelly mould/cup with flesh of coconut in it
5. Chill the mixure when its set
Friday, March 20. 2009
Ice cream making has been part of my baking repertoire.
Its really simple and much easier than baking, yes even the washing is much lesser.
Now i finally understand what is the difference between ice cream, sorbet, gelato ......
These are the flavours that I had tried making:
vanilla, green tea with red bean, sesame gelato, pistachio, hazelnut crunch, cookie and cream .....
Here's a picture of hazelnut crunch
Specially got this glass to go with ice cream (from Daiso!! Cheap and good)
Friday, March 13. 2009
Making ice cream is every easy something that you can use whatever ingredient that you have to make the flavour.
Here's what i came up with in minutes .... taste great!!
Pardon the containers as it meant to throw after sharing with my friends
Friday, March 6. 2009
Ice cream has always been my favourite dessert!!
Saw a lovely ice cream machine when i was buying my baking supplies and decided to get one since it came with a free workshop.
All this machine is one of those that are small and the most economical in the market
Here's what i made after attending the workshop at Dessert Art
Btw the mango was hand carried from Phillipines by my helper's relative
Phillipines mango really lives up to its name!! Strong flavour, sweet and small seed
Great mango!!
Saturday, February 21. 2009
With all these learnt, I present Chocolate and Green Tea macarons.
The chocolate filling was made with chcolate ganache of the steam chcolate cake but it was too water ... so i added nutella.
This result in a chocolaty with nutty taste yummy and no wastage too
The green tea macaron filling was made with buttercream by Aunty Yochana left from making cupcake.
I added 1tbsp green tea powder to the buttercream ... and with a can of Japanese red bean paste
The centre is red bean paste surrounded by green tea buttercream
Its a mixture of refreshing yet with tinge of bitterness green tea with sweetness of red bean ... its makes a great combination!!
Friday, February 20. 2009
I have not tried macaron since my failure a while back ...... now i am back !!
This time round my macaron have feet in fact big feet!! So happy!!
There are may things to learn about macarons, the two batches with success and failure taught me so much.
1. How do you go about pouring the syrup into the mixing bowl.
The last time when i pour the hot sugar syrup into the bowl, i poured it at the side of the bowl. This resulted in many sugar crystalized on the side resulting in insufficient sugar to the meringue. This time i poured the syrup between the whisk and the bowl !! All the syrup got in ....
2. the amount of time use to beat the meringue
If too little time ... the meringue will not be stiff and the end result is a very watery mixture
3. Overmixing meringue can result in a watery texture, making piping extremely difficult
4. The mixture cannot be left for too long, all mixture needs to be pipped and dry on baking tray. Otherwise it will get too watery
5. The best baking liner to use will be Silpat. Other brands, it tend to make the macaron loop sided as it tend to bend
6. Oven temperature is also important in making macarons
I only have 1 oven and it can only bake one tray at a time .... so that can also result in some macaron cracking for putting out for too long.
Another failure was macaron sticking together, especially when we pipe too close
Thursday, February 5. 2009
I still have many things leftover in the fridge including my homemade strawberry jam and cream cheese.
Found this simple recipe from My Kitchen snippet. My version was not as pretty as this lady's as i was too lazy to warm up my jam ... so my jam sink
Ingredients :
1 ¼ cups graham crumbs ( Use Digetive biscuit)
¼ cup butter, melted
2 packet (8 oz each) I used low fat cream cheese, softened at room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp flour
3 tbsp of lemon juice
2 eggs
1/3 cup strawberry jam (home made strawberry) jam
Preheat oven to 325ºF.
1. Grease and line an 8” x 8” square baking with parchment paper with leaving an overhang on both side (for easy removing you slices later)
2. Mix crumbs and butter together and press firmly into bottom of the pan. Set it aside.
3. Beat cream cheese, sugar, flour and lemon juice in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until well blended. Add eggs, one at a time, beating on low speed after each addition, just until blended. Pour over crust.
4. Heat up strawberry jam slightly in the microwave. Gently drop jam by small spoonfuls over top of batter. Cut through batter several times with knife for marble effect.
5. Bake 40 min. or until centre is set. Cool. Refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight before cutting it.
Saturday, January 31. 2009
After all the feasting, I yearn for some lighter sweets snack. Here's what i made for a gathering
So far this konnyaku jelly is the best, as its not too hard and does not turn watery. Also, the raspberry syrup tastes very nice.
I got the powder from Anna Phua, with recipe provided.
Ingredients
15g Japanese Konnyaku Powder
80g sugar
170ml concentrated Raspberry syrup
730ml water
Method
1. Mix konnyaku powder with sugar and set aside
2. Mix raspberry syrup with water and boil till 90 deg C
3. Add in konnyaku powder mixture ans mix well. Switch to low heat ands tire for 5 min before turning off het
4. Pour into jelly mould and leave to set
Monday, January 12. 2009
I am trying to clear my fridge in preparation for CNY and found a container of chai po leftover from my last purchase of tiong bahru chwee kueh.
I have not been very successful with making chwee kueh the last time, ended up with a very hard kueh that my children refused to eat.
So i tried with the simplest recipe found in cuisine asia, using 200g of flour with 1000ml of water.
Saturday, January 10. 2009
My Japanese neighbour loaned me a book on Macrobiotic cooking.
The method was so simple, i used my left over coconut milk from making kueh bangkit
Ingredient
3 medium sweet potato (steamed, peeled and mashed)
1 apple (peeled and cut 1cm cubes)
150ml coconut milk
¼ tsp salt
2tbsp tahini
Cinnamon powder to taste
Method
1. Dip apple in salted water (1/2 tsp salt and 100ml water) and place in saucepan. Sprinkle with cinnamon powder and simmer with lid on
2. Combine coconut milk, salt & tahini in a bowl. Add sweet potato and aple to mix
3. Using a wet cloth to wrap, form cone shape
4. Sprinkle with cinnamon and baked on oiled baking sheet for 20-25 min at 200 deg
Monday, January 5. 2009
I had a pot luck party to attend and decided to make mini cream puff to compliment the chocolate fondue.
Since i had made double the recipe, i used the remainder to make mini chocolate eclaire using Piere hermes's chocolate pastry cream
Tips that i learnt:
1. You can flatten the pointed tip of your cream puff by pressing it with wet fingers
2. Do not over beat the egg as it will lead to a runny mixture (i failed the 1st time when i made cream puff)
3. The cooked pastry need to be slightly warm when you incorporate the egg, this will helped with the binding
Monday, September 22. 2008
This is a dessert with a very poetic name, in fact its tastes is also equally poetic.
The fragrant of mango, chewy sago mixed with small burst of sweetness from the pomelo, makes this dessert a lovely treat.
Here's what i made (enough for 4 pax)
2 honey mango
50g of sago
pomelo bits about 1/2 a pomelo
Method
1. Cook the sago in water and leave it overnight. Wash the sago in a sieve with water to remove excess starch
2. Cut 1 mango into cubes and another mango blend into puree
3. mix the sago, mango puree, mango cubes, pomelo bits together and chill for couple of hours.
Monday, August 18. 2008
I always love the dessert from this soba place in Paragon, having dessert there on a late afternoon is really nice.
I would yearn to make dessert like them .........
As i was surfing online for something made of green tea, i stumbled upon Edith's - Precious moment
which has something similar:
I have made some alterations to the recipe as I only have ??? jelly powder and i added condense milk for a richer taste.
This type of jelly powder tend to produce a softer and more jelly like texture
The ring of dark green on top of the jelly was a result of not filtering enough resulting in green tea sedimentation, the effect is quite nice
6g of ??? jelly powder
200 gm sugar
1000 ml water
180 ml evaporated milk (carnation brand)
20ml condense milk
1 tbsp green tea powder
Mixed sugar with agar agar powder until well mixed
Add water to the mixture. Bring to boil under high fire.
Add green tea powder. Stir until sugar dissolve, strain through the finest filter you can find and then put it aside to cool down.
Once it slightly cool, add in evaporated and condense milk. Then sieve it again, put them into prepared tray to cool. Once set, chill it in the fridge.
PS: Great for a hot, humid day!!
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