Nguing nguing nguing

Chocolate rollie (pre-baking)

This is my new experiment. I placed a flat layer of chocolate dough on top of the soy milk dough I made last night and rolled them together into a log which I then cut into little wheels. I could almost shape them into little rose buds but I'll leave that to next time.

Creme caramel for two

Making creme caramel I believe is fueled by an unforgetable experience and may take a little dash of curiousity and a whole of courage. How could it not? I mean, who has the time (let alone patience) to sit there and ponder when the sugar solution looks like it's about the right color, and wait... did we know that caramel is essentially burnt sugar (to a degree)? I for one certainly didn't know this until my obsession with food pushed me to the culinary section of book stores and internet corners. So... if you had read my previous entry, you'd know that I had the intention of making smoked salmon roll, sharing one ingredient with creme caramel. No ready made creme caramel could emit that genuine caramel flavour of a home made and certainly no store bought could beat the satisfaction of making it yourself.

Red bean

Wholemeal bread with red bean paste filling

This recipe can be found in Midnight Bakery Easter Bun in 10 Easy to Follow Steps

Midnight Bakery Easter bun in 10 easy to follow steps!

Dough ingredients:
500 g plain flour
1 Tsp instant yeast
3 Tbsp green tea (either powder or leaves, or a mixture of both)
4 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
100 g good quality butter, cubed and thawed in room temperature
400 ml H2O or milk
extra plain flour
1 packet of red bean paste (you can get this in Chinese or Asian grocer, orrr you can make your own if you're really really bored or really really enthusiastic)

Method

1. Mix all dried ingredients together, that's the flour, yeast, tea, sugar and salt. Chuck in the cubed butter too.
2. Pour in liquid (milk or water) and mix all the ingredients together. At this stage, the dough is all sticky, but cast that doubt aside and keep kneading and rub in the butter into the rest of the dough. You could add extra flour if you like to reduce the stickiness but please don't overdo it. This process takes between 10-20 minutes.
   
3. Now the dough should hold itself and when you poke it with your finger, the indent springs back. Leave it to rest for about 3-4 hours.
4. Has it doubled in size? Good, now punch it down and knead gently very briefly (brief is like 1-2 minutes). Roll it out to a log and divide the dough to fist size. From this you'd get about 15 little fist-sized doughs if your hand is as big as mine.
5. Flatten the dough into disk. The practical way of doing this is just pressing down the dough with your palm until it's the size of your hand with your fingers spread out. On the centre of the disk, put a tablespoon of the red bean paste and then close it up by pinching the edge of the disk together. Turn it upside down so that the smooth side is up, round up the ball and put in on your baking tray or a cake mould if you prefer.
   
6. Rest them for 3-6 hours. I rested mine overnight.
   
7. Before you bake the buns, preheat your oven to 160 degree Celcius for 10 minutes and glaze your buns with milk. Be gentle at this stage.
   
8. Bake the dough for about 25 minutes. This is the part where you put up a wooden stool and watch it brown with a cup of coffee or tea. It's especially fantastic in winter or autumn! If you live in the Southern hemisphere, now is the time to do it.
9. You may want to decorate it with the traditional cross made of icing sugar and milk or chocolate like I did, but if I may suggest, the bread is great on it's own. The icing sugar crosses only adds extra sugar that you really don't need taste-wise.
10. Bon appétit!
    

Crisp Crosp

Midnight Bakery Easter bun

Come Easter season, I find hot cross buns everywhere and with all honesty, I'm not a big fan of spiced buns. It was great a few years ago when chocolate chip hot cross buns came into fashion and this year, a bakery chain started selling mocha flavoured buns. I twiddled my thumbs while brainstorming for a novel taste this Easter until last week when I found red bean paste in a Chinese grocer and thought "Aha, red bean pasted filled buns!"

Green tea bun with bean paste filling & chocolate

Back at home, it is more common to find red bean pasted filled steamed buns though the color of the paste is usually black, perhaps due to the sugar, bearing in mind that close to everything was home made and kitchen-savvy costumers (which is almost all of mothers in that time) don't approve of dyes.

My mom used to buy steamed buns from a home baker who has recently retired. She started selling every evening from about 6 on a busy street opposite Kaisar supermarket in Pontianak. About sundown, the sky in the city is black with swallows and they're especially concentrated in that area. The birds go back to their nests in people's balconies or rest on the electric cables and being there at the time is like trying your luck. Mom would usually go and buy some steamed buns while the rest of us wait in the car. One time I remember watching people in boredom until I heard my little sister squeaked in delight "Ada yang kena!" (Translation: It got someone) Yes, we were evil little brats. I wonder what kind of aunts and mothers we would become.

Easter Bunny

Green-tea bunny bread with chocolate drizzle and glazed cherry

You know Easter is around the corner when your neighbourhood bakeries start selling hot cross buns and display chocolate Easter bunnies in the windows. Here in the southern hemisphere autumn is starting to set upon us too. The air starts to get a bit chilly and it's a welcome change from the humid warmth of summer.

Green tea bunny twists

Easter means a four day weekend and appetite in the form of my big sister is coming. It's true that food rates very highly in our family itinerary no matter where we go. I've been playing with a few ideas of menus in my head for her visit, but one thing is for sure... the theme is Easter.

Today I have made green tea bread, borrowing the idea from my green tea cookies. The base recipe for the bread itself is sort of similar to challah and brioche. It smells softly of milk even though it's not part of the recipe. I tried to work the dough into bunny shapes, adding glazed cheeries to replace dyed egg in traditional challah. I can't wait to feed her first thing when she arrives tomorrow!Green tea bunny dough

You might need a bit of imagination to see the bunny in this green tea twist, but I hope not as much imagination as it takes to find the rabbit on the moon.

Double chocolate pecan biscotti

I have been humbled to have been asked by a foodie magazine in my homeland to contribute in their publications but alas, with my oven as my witness, I cannot at this time. Experiments call and I see in a distance stretched out beyond the excitement of significant differences, funny GTT and ITT curves and RNA extraction... a time when my science and my love of food will meet and marry.

For now, reperforming a nostalgic recipe will do. I made double chocolate pecan biscotti last night for two reasons. First, I hope that it will gain me some forgiveness for a mishap with someone close and secondly, I haven't made biscotti for soooo long. It's one of those recipes that I'm a bit intimidated by. A number of times I made this, it always came out tasting very chemical-ee which I believe comes from the baking soda. So this time, armed with a bag of self raising flour that has twice the fibre of normal flour (and it's not wholemeal), I proceeded.

I tested two at breakf... I mean, brunch, with coffee and I think it's okay. I love the chocolate surprises that comes in every bite (I had chopped the chocolate to very fine pieces) and the texture of baked pecans. The crunch and aroma of baked pecan is something else that surpasses peanut, hazelnut and walnut. Overall, I personally thing that this is a pass.

Sunday Bake-Fest

I made some chocolate pull-aparts in my favorite cake tin. The chocolate bread is bread dough mixed in with roughly a gazillion shreds of finely chopped dark chocolate. I fermented the dough overnight and after shaping, I left the dough to proof for about 6 hours. It's Sunday after all when time is a luxury that one needs no justification to savour.
The rest of the dough was converted into crusty plain bread rolls and salami batons. I think I finally got it. This morning I made just one bread bun from the lot of dough. I left it in the oven for a bit longer than I usually would and without my usual egg wash. A thick layer of crust formed and it was delicious. There was no need to add pats of butter for the smell evaporating from the roll was enough.

As for the salami batons, I topped the dough with tomato paste (instead of tomato sauce) after egg wash. I've been feeding my colleagues with previously made vegetarian sausage bread and one of them commented that the tomato sauce was too sweet. Having replaced vegetarian sausage which consisted of Asian flavouring and spices with Mediteranian style cured sausage, I thought this bread would capture the essence of pizza if I used tomato paste together with the rest of my usual ingredients: oregano, mayonaisse (not so pizza-like but I simply cannot live without this ingredient) and parmesan cheese.
I broke my pastry brush...

Cookies & recipe

I decided to make cookies tonight. I started with my usual recipe mix for peanut butter, pecan and chocolate chip cookies but added a twist of red, green, yellow glazed cherries. Wait, that's not all. At my last batch of dough, I added the green tea that I got from Japan earlier this year. This is a mix of green tea leaves and green tea powder. I understand that much from the picture on the packaging. Please feel correct me if I'm wrong.
It's an experiment, a gamble if you like.The result is a different aroma in the air. There's definitely an infusion of green tea and how well does the marriage of peanut butter, pecan nuts, dark chocolate and green tea go? Let me put it this way, I thought that the peanut butter would overwhelm the green tea, but instead both distinct tastes blend into each other. I think I'll get some green tea powder the next time I do grocery shopping to experiment further.

Midnight Bakery Cookie
(Peanut butter, pecan & chocolate chip)

Ingredients

• 100g unsalted butter at room temperature
• 50g peanut butter
• 280g brown sugar
• 2 eggs (whole eggs)
• 100g flour
• 100g pecan (more if you like, I've used 200g of nuts before and they were great)
• 100g chocolate chips (or just chop blocked chocolate. Likewise... use the whole 250g block if you like)
  

Direction

1. Cream the butter, peanut butter and sugar until light and fluffy. If your butter is too hard to mix... well, serves you right not to follow my direction properly. You can melt the butter slightly by microwaving it for 10 seconds. I recommend doing this step by hand (no machine) not because I'm cruel (ok, so I am a little), but because it's a great arm exercise.
2. Add the egg, one by one, mixing well at each addition.
3. (Optional) You could add in a tablespoon of vanilla essence or I recommend Franjelico liqueur, but keep this out if you're baking for friends whose religion forbids the consumption of alcohol.. not that the alcohol would stick around during baking but it's the principle that matters.
4. Sift the flour into the butter mixture and mix it.
5. Add pecan and chocolate chips and just make sure they're distributed evenly.
6. Use 2 spoons to roll cookie dough into balls and position them apart on the tray. Use teaspoons if you like your cookies small or tablespoons if you want giant size cookies, but make sure the opening of your cookie jar is big enough to fit the giant ones before you start getting excited about making super-sized cookies.
7. Bake in a preheated oven at 180 degree Celsius.
8. Watch as they bake in the oven. The cookie dough balls should melt a little to resemble disks but you should start worrying if the whole thing just melt. This had happened to me twice using a craptastic oven that didn't reach the intended temperature. I didn't really time my baking, so just watch it until you think it looks like those that you get at your favourite cafe.
   

I'd love to hear feedback from anyone who tried this recipe. Happy baking and good luck! (^.^)

Not just a pretty face

The institute's student club is having our Christmas party today. A whole range of activities had been organized and one of them is baking contest. I made this cake last night after browsing many wonderful blogs and recipe sites. The design is nothing new, but I did make some changes to the basic recipes mainly due to catastrophes like having the chocolate curdle. I'd like to acknowledge some blogs that I drew inspiration and ideas from: Happy Home Baking and Scent of Green Bananas.

So what exactly is this stuff then? The base of it is thick short crust pastry with crushed peanuts baked into it, topped with peanut butter chocolate mousse and strawberries and fenced with sponge finger biscuits that had been brushed very lightly with the syrup from canned mangostene.
This is my favourite entry, a butter cake shaped like a mouse and so well decorated. The icing was so impressive, it just melted in your mouth. This entry won most creative cake.

My cake won best taste. (^_^) The party was really fun. I'm so glad to be surrounded by such fun and great people.

forgotten photo

blame it on the weather

retail therapy would have to wait for another day seeing as my motivation to shop was at a low and anyway, it's not like i deprived myself all these times. i bought a pink summer dress last night at the market at the rocks and a pair of mesmerizing earrings.

today i ended up just going to the market for a browse, picked up a bottle of vin rouge that had a lot of award stickers on it, the weekend paper that came with a "real (food) handbook" and a pineapple.

making cookies is definitely not the same without my mother's magic mix. to cream the butter and the sugar by hand/manually, first you have to get the butter soft enough by leaving it at room temperature. then before you use the whisk, you have to use a strong spoon to initiate the process of creaming until the mixture is light enough not to stick inside the wires of the whisk. tricks like this were re-discovered and re-learnt, further cementing the importance of continuous practice. of course like riding a bicycle, once you get it you'll always be able to do it, but it is a question of quality which has no equivalent in bike riding.

i can't wait until i go home to brisbane to feed my family again. :)

There's something soothing

I love it when it rains at night. It set the mood right for baking and it doesn’t matter what there is to bake be it cookies, brownies, bread or tarts. There’s something soothing about mixing flour and sugar together, kneading the dough. I’ve wanted to bake something for a few weeks now. I bought the ingredients, simple items on the list that make the staple of every pantry and it is only tonight when the time is right.

There’s something soothing about baking, an art that has been practiced and perfected and dare I say, invented by, women for centuries. I wonder. I wonder if it’s encoded in our chromosomes, like a biological clock that overrides self conviction of being something else. There’s something soothing about the scent of cookies in the air. I think that something soothing is a sense of home.
My aunt, 大姑媽 (Tua Kow), passed away suddenly one morning in July this year. She was a great woman, a kind person, how loving and giving she was. There was always a space for chance in her eyes to start over no matter how awkward a girl I was. It is through seeing conviction in others that one often finds the faith to believe and to achieve a better self. She upheld a wholesome and true sense of justice in her that neglected even herself. She was loving and warm, a great many things that I could only aspire to be. There’s a something soothing about baking, the memory of her words, “chip yi… chip yi kin khe” (knead it, keep kneading). There’s something soothing. There’s something soothing about baking and grieving.

paradis bleu

gina's 23rd

tomorrow gina (the nem) turns 23. above is the nem and her cake( blackberry cheesecake, topped/garnished with strawberries)

sang merah putih

Can't really celebrate this year. Gina is out with fever all week, I have a tonne of thing to do.

chocobomb

Lagi ngantuk pas selesai bikin kue ini. menurut rencana tadi maunya mocha mousse cake, tapi akhirnya error mulu. moussenya nga jadi karena tadi coklatnya kiki masukin ke microwave (karena males dipanesin pelan-pelan). begitu kuning telur dimasukin kok coklatnya tiba-tiba jadi keras...! nothing ever goes according to plan. telur yg udah disiapin buat mousse akhirnya buat quiche bawang. kemudian, kue ini jadi mocha cake bersandwich whipped cream dan dilapisi hazelnut ganache. yg bulat diatas itu hasil coklat yg dimicrowave tadi, dihiasin biji kopi.

l'ennui

i decided to bake, at 8.58 tonight. it's peanut butter cream sandwiched between layers of mocha sacher. i accidentally added too much ground coffee... happy birthday, chére blier.

Selamat Ulang Tahun, Mama

If I could go up to the sun and take a morceau of its light to brighten everyday of your life, I'd happily burn and roast. But I'm not an astronaut, nor do I have wings to take me there. But I have hands, eggs, butter, sugar, fruits, jelly and knowledge of biochemistry and cakery to create something delicious yet healthy. ^^ Hehehe. Happy birthday, Mama. 祝你永遠幸福,永遠快樂, 永遠看起來象25歲的美女.

crystal

Crystal 生日快樂!!!