Pandan Huat Kueh

I am glad these Pandan Huat Kueh really huat beautifully, making my Sunday morning a lucky one :).  

This recipe comes with butter which is not quite common for normal huat kueh. Overall taste is ok but I still prefer my Ji Dan Gao that were more eggy.  

*Note: I do not have blender to make the pandan juice, so I replaced with Pandan Paste.

Recipe adapted from Kenneth Goh (with slight modificiation)

Ingredients

200g water
140g sugar
A few drop of Pandan Paste

50g butter (melted)
1 egg

250g self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder

Red colouring

Directions

1. In a pot, heat water and sugar until sugar dissolved. Off the heat, add in pandan paste and set aside.
2. Melt the butter in microwave. When cool, add in the egg and stir lightly until well combined. Set aside.
3. Prepare steamer.
3. In a mixing bowl, shift self raising flour and baking powder. Make a well in the centre and add pandan syrup, followed by egg butter mixture. Whisk until well mixed.
4. Fill cupcake cups with 3/4 batter. Steam in the steamer at high heat for 15-20 mins.  

Chocolate Chips & Walnuts Butter Cake

I have been craving for walnut butter cake for a few days and finally I decided to bake this cake last night. Knowing that my kids will not like with walnuts only, I also added chocolate chips. In fact, I did this butter cake before with Lurpak but I did not really like the taste. This time, I baked with SCS butter and it was fantastic with the strong butter aroma and the exact buttery taste I wanted! 

My friend told me the cake will taste even better the next day and indeed, it really tasted excellent when I ate it for breakfast. Moreover, it was not oily as compared to my other Butter Cake Recipe. Guess it is due to the egg separation and folding egg white method. The cake also turned out with a nice flat & no cracked top. Very satisfied with this recipe.

Ingredients

250g butter
85g Caster sugar
1 tsp Vanilla paste
A pinch of salt
4 egg yolks
1 tbsp Milk
200g plain flour
1 tsp Baking powder

4 egg whites
85g Caster sugar

Walnuts
Chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven at 170 Deg C. Line a 8" Square tin
2. Cream butter, sugar, salt and vanilla until light and fluffy.
3. Add in egg yolk one at a time and beat till creamy. Add in milk and mix well.
4. Sift in flour and baking powder and mix well. Set aside.
5. Whisk egg white and sugar till soft peak in another bowl.
6. Fold 1/4 of egg white mixture into butter mixture (3). Mix well and fold in the rest.
7. Sprinkle chopped walnuts and cchocolate chips over the batter and mix.
8. Pour batter into lined baking pan and bake for 40-45 mins or until cooked.

Celine's 10th Birthday

I have baked a birthday cake for my youngest daughter with the flower marshmallows covering the sides. I am happy with this design and glad that my girl loves it. I have also baked some Orange Cranberry cupcakes and placed on my Hello Kitty stand and beautified the party spread.

Celine & her friends

Homemade Chocolate Chips Cookies and personalized rainbow loom for all guests :)

Pandan Chiffon Cake

Finally, I picked up the courage to bake Pandan Chiffon Cake which has always been a difficult level of baking for me. I still remembered the time when I first baked this cake in my Secondary School Home Economics and my teacher told us that this cake required careful mixing in order not to deflate the cake, resulting in Kaya layer. Even since I have never wanted to try baking such cakes until recently when my neighbour gave me a few packets of coconut milk and my ex-colleague gave me a chiffon pan. However, the cake did not turn out well as expected and it shrinked drastically but texture was perfectly fine (you can see in the picture). I had no choice but to transform my Pandan Chiffon Cake to Pandan Cubes Cake. I am not going to satisfy with this result and will try it again with some advice from Chiffon Expert. Stay tuned for my successful Chiffon bake.

Brownies - Orders (2014)

I had a challenge to bake special heart-shaped brownies for my colleague. To make thing worse, I overbaked the brownies and made it more difficult to cut the brownies with the heart cutter. Covering the brownies with ganache was another challenge with the crumbly sides. I was not quite satisfied with the overall result but my colleague had no complain about it and even said it was very nice. Thanks to her for the encouragement and will continue to improve on my bakes.

Happy Father's Day

It was Father's Day and I baked this Chocolate Cake for my hubby. Glad that everyone liked the cake.

Taro Fragrance Rice

I have always wanted to cook this Taro fragrance rice as my Mother-In-Law loves Taro. So this Sunday, I decided to give it a try. This was not a difficult dish and the taste can be adjusted to your own preference. 

Ingredients

3 cups of white rice - washed
250g of yam- cut into cubes
1 carrot - cut into cubes
1 pack Chicken breast meat 
100g dried shrimps - soaked
100g dried mushroom-soaked & cut into thin strips
Few stalks of spring onions
Chopped garlic
Fried shallots
Olive oil
2 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tbsp dark soya sauce
2 tbsp light soya sauce
Dash of pepper

Directions

1. In a hot wok, put olive oil and add in chopped garlic. Saute until fragrant and add in dried mushroom, dried shrimps & stir for a while. Add in chicken breast meat, stir fry till well mix. Add in Taro and uncooked rice.Stir fry until well mix
2. Add in all the condiments (oyster sauce, light soya sauce, dark soya sauce, pepper). Adjust the color and taste to your preference.
3. Transfer the rice to rice cooker. Add in water to cover just level with rice and stir well (Note the water of rice have to be slightly less than usual as it had already absorb part of the liquid from the stir fried earlier, otherwise rice will be soggy).
4. Serve the rice hot in a bowl, garnish with chopped spring onion and fried shallots 

Pandan Sponge Cups

Recently, I am so in love with pandan and so I done some research on pandan related recipes. This recipe attracted me with it's spongy texture and perfect with the pandan greenish colour. In addition, no oil and butter required and yet able to yield such a nice outlook and taste. Frankly speaking, I do not have much confident with folding egg whites method but I have succeeded for this recipe, a great motivation for me to move on to the next level of baking ie Chiffon Cake.

Source of recipe from Table for 2 
My recipe with slight modification 
(Yield 15 cups)

Ingredients

3 eggs
3 egg yolks
150g sugar
1 tsp pandan paste

3 egg whites
1 pinch of cream of tartar
1 tbsp sugar
75g cake flour (sifted)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 190 deg C.
2. Beat eggs, egg yolks and sugar until creamy, pale and light. Add in pandan paste.
3. Fold in cake flour into egg yolk mixture and  poured into another bigger bowl.
4. Beat egg whites until foamy, then add in cream of tartar. Beat until soft peaks, then add in 1 tbsp of sugar and beat until stiff and glossy.
5. Fold in beaten egg whites in 3 addition into egg yolk mixture. Mix well gently and do not over mix.
6. Spoon batter into muffin cups until 1 cm to the rim. Bake for 20mins and check with a skewer.   

Kueh Pulut

I have tried this recipe many years ago (from a cookbook) and this is a perfect dessert to use up all my coconut milk. Quite an easy recipe but I have a few points that I would like to highlight. 

1) I steamed the glutinous rice in my rice cooker this round as different from previous where I put directly onto the square tray to steam (without pandan leaves). 

2) As I do not have blender to make pandan juice, I used pandan paste and it was perfectly nice for me.  

3) I used mixer for the top layer (felt faster that way and can mixed well).

4) There will be a layer of foam after mixing but not to worry as after steaming and cooling down, they will not be visible.

5) After cooled, I placed the cake in fridge before cutting as I preferred to eat it a little cold and also felt might help with neat cutting.

6) You can add more pandan paste or juice if you prefer darker green colour.

Hope the above helps you to make your Kueh Pulut! Enjoy :)

Ingredients

For the Rice Layer:
270g glutinous rice
240ml coconut milk (add 140ml water to 100ml thick coconut)
Few pandan leaves
Pinch of salt
Blue coloring (optional)

For the Top Layer:
2eggs
90g sugar
25g cornflour
1 tbsp plain flour
315ml thick coconut
1 tsp of pandan paste (you can use 1 tbsp pandan juice to your preference)

Directions

For Rice Layer: 
1. Soak rice in water for about 6 hrs or overnight.
2. Drain the water completely, mix in coconut milk and salt. Add in pandan leave and steam for 15 mins.
3. Grease a square tray or glassware (20 X 20). Pour the rice into the tray and compress the rice. Sprinkle a few drop of blue coloring (if preferred). 
4. Prepare steamer and steam rice for 10 mins.
For Top Layer:
5. Mix eggs and sugar for 5 mins. Then add cornflour, plain flour, coconut milk and pandan paste.
6. Strain the mixture to remove lumps.
7. Pour the mixture over the rice layer and steam for about 45 mins. Leave the cake to cool completely before cutting into pieces to serve. 

Seafood & Salmon Croissants Lunch

Today, as my maid had her day off, so I decided to make these Seafood & Salmon Croissants for lunch. Glad that the kids enjoyed this simple lunch as much as I do. 

Chocolate Banana

Having my nephew staying over with my kids, I whipped up this Chocolate Banana for their dessert. Just from the smile on the faces, I knew that they love this dessert very much.

American Carrot Cake - Orders (2014)

A special order for Birthday!

Ban Jian Kueh (面煎糕) aka Peanut Pancakes (1)

This is my hubby's favorite snack and I wanted to surprise him after a long day's work, so when I spotted the recipe from My Mind Patch, I decided to give this recipe a shot. Reading through the recipe seemed quite easy, just that it needed quite some time for proofing (100mins in total). I did the QQ Glutinous Pancake and replaced with my own creation of peanut filing. I felt challenging with swirling the batter all over the pan and not able to spread round the wall of the pan. For the 3rd pc of pancake, my batter was just enough on the centre of the pan and I felt it was much easier to fold half. Overall, it was a great experience for my 1st try. 

This snack is best to be consumed warm.

(Refer to My Mind Patch Recipe for pictorial directions)

Modified Recipe (only yield 3 pcs thin pancakes)

Ingredients

100g warm water (half hot water & half room temperature water)
30g sugar
1/2 tsp instant dry yeast

80g milk (room temperature)
1 egg (room temperature)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence 

Pinch of salt 
120g plain flour
10g glutinous rice flour

1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp water

50g ground peanut
20g fine sugar (adjust accordingly to your preference)
Butter (just enough to mix peanut & sugar)

Directions

1. Pour warm water into a container and add sugar (stir). Sprinkle yeast over the warm water and let the mixture stand for about 5 mins to activate the yeast. 
2. Add milk, egg and vanilla essence to the yeast mixture. Mix well.
3. Add in plain flour, glutinous flour and salt in 3 additions to the mixture in (2). Mix well into a smooth batter and cover with food wrap. Let the batter proof for about 90 mins till quantity double.
4. Mix the baking soda with 1 tsp of water, and add it to the batter in (3) after proofing. Mix well. Let the mixture stand for about 5 mins while you warm up the pan.
5. Heat up the Happycall double pan (or other non stick pan) in medium low heat and apply a coat of oil to it.
6. When the pan is hot, pour in the batter. Swirl the pan a few rounds to give an even spread round the pan.
7. Close and lock the pan to cook the pancake for about 12-15 mins. Lower the heat to lowest after 5 mins.
Shift the pan every 2-3 mins to ensure even heating. (The pancake is cooked when the edge pull away from the wall of the pan).
8. When the pancake is cooked, spread peanut mixture over half the pancake surface.
9. Fold the pancake into half with the help of wooden ladle.
10. Cut the pancake and serve warm.