Melting Moments

Made this melting moment last year during CNY festive season. This recipe was from one of Betty Saw's kitchen secret book, can't recall which one...


Ingredients

175 g unsalted butter
50g icing sugar, sifted
1tsp vanilla essence

Sifted together
135g plain flour
45g cornflour
1 tsp baking powder

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180°C. Line cookie tray with non stick parchment or grease, greaseproof paper.

2) Put butter and icing sugar in the bowl of electric mixer and beat until light and creamy.

3) Add vanilla essence and mix well. Stir in sifted dry ingredients until well combined.

4) Spoon mixture, half at a time, into piping bag fitted with a 1cm-wide star nozzle. Pipe rosettes about 4 cm in diameter onto prepared tray.

5) Bake in the oven for 15 min or until golden and crisp. Transfer cookies on to a wire rack to cool.

Blueberry cup cake

This recipe is one of the easiest recipe I've done...

Ingredients:

120g unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup / 160g caster sugar
1 cup / 185g self-raising flr
½ cup / 125ml milk
2 tspn vanilla essence
2eggs

1/2 - 3/4 cup(est) blueberries
icing sugar, to dust

Method:

1) Preheat oven to moderate 180C. Line the muffin tray with paper cases. Put butter, sugar, flour, milk, vanilla essence and eggs in a bowl and beat with electric beaters on low speed for 2 mins, or until well mixed. Increase the speed and beat for 2 mins or until smooth and pale.

2)Divide mixture evenly among cases, add in a few blueberries on top of the batter and bake 20mins or until cooked and golden. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely .

3 )Dust cakes with icing sugar before serving.


*To make icing cup cakes. Can omit the blueberries, mix ½ cup/60g sifted icing sugar, 1 tspn softened unsalted butter, ½ tspn vanilla essence to 3 tspn hot water to form a smooth paste, then spread icing on cooled cakes.

*Alternatively, can other types of dried fruits eg. raisin per individual preference to the basic batter.

Lapis Cake

There were too many eggs in my fridge, was thinking of making lapis cake since last week but was put on hold. Since we didn't went to MIL's place cos Trenyce was down with flu so use the whole saturday afternoon to practise this cake.



This is my second attempt doing this cake, taking reference from Agnes Chang's book. I replace the icing sugar with fine sugar, added 4 tbsp of condense milk, added 2 tsp of mixed spice. Overall, the taste was quite nice not too sweet, but the last layer was abit spoilt.

Hot and Sour Pork Ribs

This recipe was from women weekly magazine sometime ago...

Marinade:
50g Preserved red beancurd
30g sugar
50g oyster sauce
30g wine

Ingredients:
1 kg pork ribs, cut into bite size pieces
3 cups cooking oil
100g cornflour, mixed with 100g rice flour
1tbsp chopped garlic
300ml chicken stock(use canned or stock cube)

200g tomato sauce
100g chilli sauce
50g plum sauce
50g oyster sauce
salt and sugar to taste
20g hua tiow wine (Chinese cooking wine)
20g sesame oil
20g dark soy sauce
sesame seeds to garnish

Method:

1) Marinade ribs and mix well to combine in a bowl. Set aside, covered, for 4hrs or leave overnight in the fridge.

2) Heat oil in wok over medium-high fire. When hot, quickly coat ribs in combined flour and deep fry ribs for 20mins.

3) Remove ribs with strainer and set aside. Pour excess oil into a container, leaving about 1tbsp of oil in wok.

4) Stir fry garlic for 20secs or until fragrant. Add chicken stock, then tomato, chilli, plum and oyster sauces. Season to taste with salt and sugar. Bring mixture to boil and add ribs. Stir in wine, sesame oil and dark soy sauce. Mix well and cook for another 5 mins. Serve sprinkled with sesame seed.

Apple and Spice muffin

Made this muffin for breakfast last Saturday. I mis-read the recipe and added half cup of brown sugar i.s.o. of the 1/3 cup mention in the recipe, turn out the muffin was not sweet at all.



Ingredients:

2 cups plain flour
11/2 tsp baking powder
1 ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp nutmeg
½ cup brown sugar
1 cup, peeled and cored apples (about 1 whole fuji apple)
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 cup milk
2 tbsp melted butter

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 190°C. Brush oil into bottom only of twelve muffin tins or place baking paper cups into muffin tin.

2. Sift flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and nutmeg together into a large bowl. Stir in brown sugar and apple.

3. Combined egg, milk and butter and mix well. Add egg mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir gently with a fork until all ingredients are just moistened.

4. Spoon batter evenly into each muffin tin or paper cup filling two-third full. Bake 15-20min until golden. Serve warm with butter.

Xiao Fa Gao, Otah and Or nee

Was quite lazy lately so only made a few dish during the long weekend. Made the super easy xiao fa gao during new year eve's nite hoping for a properous new year...


Did some change to the original recipe according to my taste, recipe from ...

http://fenyingrecipe.blogspot.com/

I use...150gm self raising flour, 80gm black sugar and 200ml + 3tbsp coconut milk

Tried chef yong's otah recipe, feel its abit too soft maybe due to too much coconut milk...

Bought a yam on monday thinking of cooking abacus seed but didn't have time to made it so Kenny suggest to made or nee with it, so manage to cook a simpler version on wednesday with the help of Kenny...