Soya beancurd pudding

Whilst everyone has been making this dessert, I was quite laid-back. I did tried the real thing 老伴豆花 when the craze was at its hottest, but no I didn't stay in line for at-least-half-an-hour, my office colleagues have their way of collating bulk orders for almost anything! You would have guessed that it didn't wowed me then, and I still stand firm with the traditional beancurd pudding.

 

Anyway, I saw many bloggers posting this dessert and also because the recent Diner en Blanc, which sparked so much controversy, there was even a Make and Eat Tau Huay Day. Looking at so many tau huays made my heart go wobbly for some tau huay too! I've succumbed to temptations and here you go, my first attempt and I'm lucky it's a success! Judging from many bloggers' comments, I too followed Anncoo's recipe which is really easy. The most difficult part is getting the ingredients, especially instant jelly powder which is not available at the supermarket. I'm copying the recipe here for my future reference.

 

Ingredients/ Method
(Recipe adapted from Anncoo Journal)

3 satchets UNISOY Instant Organic Soya Milk Powder (no sugar added)
40g sugar
40g Coffee-Mate powder
20g instant jelly
100ml water (at room temperature)
900ml water

1) Mix all ingredients with 100ml water and set aside.
2) Boil 900ml water and remove from stove thereafter.
3) Mix the soya milk mixture into the boiled 900ml water and stir with a whisk.
4) Pour into mould and let it set. (Do not stir)
5) Chill in fridge before serve.

*Passed the mixture through the sieve 2 times before pouring into the mould to make the texture smoother.

Nutella banana squares

The last thing I did in 2010 and first thing in 2011 is this nutella banana squares.... nothing elaborate and in fact a recipe which I tried before. Except that previously i baked in a muffin cup and it had a streusel topping, I decided to make mine in squares and slather lots of nutella and put on a cheery-red raspberry :)) Baking the banana cake was a breeze but I did have a tough time cutting up them in squares of 4cmx4cm as the nutella kept sticking on the knife. In the end, it was so messy that the last 2 pieces of squares was almost beyond recognition ;0

*P.S. The main reason for baking this was because of the very riped mini bananas sitting in my kitchen, and screaming to be eaten or else to be fed to the bin!

Happy holiday!

Colours

I hope this post can add colours to my blog, to my life and yours as well!

What went into the colour-happy pot: red apple, granny smith, banana, sweet tangerine, nata de coco, blueberry, and of course plain yougurt to make a simple fruit salad on Boxing Day.

Special birthday cake

Somehow my uncle Simon's birthday slipped my mind, opps!! and therefore there was no cake :-p To make up for it, I prepared a very special birthday cake on his actual day. Since it is on a weekday, I need to find a very simple recipe which do not require baking. Initially was thinking of preparing this cocoa puff cream cake, but like most things, when you want to buy it, the store always run out of stock! This time I couldn't get any cocoa puff biscuits at bishan fairprice. I have to quickly think of other alternatives, or no cake at all.

At last, this is what I had prepared for my dear uncle simon, hopefully he likes it ;-) The colourful agar-agar looks like gemstones, ruby, sapphire, onyx, emerald, aquamarine, to me, plus another 6 big lovely hearts. However, when the cake was put in the fridge overnight, the shapes and colours were not as obvious, and the clear agar-agar became whitish in colour.

**Edited on 13/09/2010 11.03pm

My colleague, who is a 'master' in making agar-agar, suggested that the whitish colour could be due to the clear agar-agar being too hot when poured over the colourful "gems". Next time, will try cooling the clear-coloured agar-agar first before pouring.

Rum balls

The last time i baked some chocolate cupcakes, it shrinked till so small that i can't decorate with it. I've kept them in the freezer thinking to turn them into rum balls and these are what i'd done when my little baby is taking his afternoon nap.

Ingredients/ Method:

300g sponge cake

60g raisins

80g butter

20g sugar powder

1 tsp rum (to increase to have a stronger rum flavour)

150g Semi-sweet chocolate

sprinkles

1. Break the sponge cake into crumbs using hand.

2. Put butter and sugar powder into mixing bowl. Beat on low speed until well mixed, and turn to high speed and beat until mixture turns pale yellow and fluffy.

3. Add the rum and butter cream into cake crumbs and mix well to form a dough.

4. Weigh about 20g dough and roll into balls. Put in the fridge for about an hour.

5. Melt chocolate in microwave, about 2-3 mins on mid-heat.

6. Dip the balls into the chocolate and drip any excess. To decorate, roll on chocolate sprinkles, or hundreds & thousands or mini hearts.

A Sweet Beginning

When my mum was around, she will always prepare a sweet dessert on the first day of lunar new year, and we must have it first thing in the morning. She said it signifies sweet beginning and thus everything will be very smooth-sailing for that year. This is one of the traditions that i will follow through.

Ingredients/ Method:

1 cup dried longan
1 cup dried red dates
1/2 cup winter melon
mandarin orange peel
water chestnut (left-over from ngoh hiang)
rock sugar
12500ml water

1. Cut the mandarin orange peel into very small pieces. Do not add too much as it will cause the dessert to be bitter.
2. Put everything into slow cooker and boil overnight.

A very happy lunar new year to all, and here's my treat of sweet dessert to you! May the year be as sweet and smooth-sailing as ever ;-)

Hazelnut Cream Chocolate Cake & Blueberry Cheese Square

In the recent family parties, i've been tasked to prepare cake as they all know that i love to bake. This give me every opportunity to try out recipes, and let my family members be my guinea pigs. Sometimes, i really feel 'sorry' for them, cos most of my bakes are of average & edible standands only. Hopefully in this year 2009, i can dish out better bakes for my 'ardent supporters'....hahahah.

On the first weekend of 2009, we had another family party; this time to celebrate my aunt stephanie's and my aunt wendy's mother-in-law's birthday. For our family, we don't have very elaborate parties, just simple family gathering over a meal and sitting around in the house. However, it's not an easy feat, cos this usual gathering means preparing for at least 30 people or more. I'm thankful that i've a family of great parents, siblings, aunties and uncles, grand-dad, cousins, etc.

For this celebration, I've did a cake using the same recipe as my xmas logcake, and dessert being blueberry cheese square which i previously prepared as an 8-inch cake. Since i did not put up the recipe for my xmas logcake earlier, i shall do it in this post. It was actually one of those recipes that got many thumbs-up for those who have tried it - Steamed Chocolate Cake. Verdict: Easy, delicious, and keeper.

Ingredients/ Method:

Steamed Chocolate Cake

185g butter

250g fine sugar

200ml evaporated milk

2 eggs, lightly beaten

125g all-purpose flour (plain flour)

70g cocoa powder

1/2tsp baking powder

1/2tsp baking soda

1/2tsp vanilla essence

1. Combine sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla essences and butter in a saucepan.

2. Stir over low heat until sugar dissoclved and butter melted. Remove from heat.

3. Add the beaten eggs into the slightly cooled mixture and stir till well mixed.

4. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda.

5. Add egg mixture over the flour and stir till well mixed.

6. Heat up the steamer.

7. Pour mixture into lined 8' cake tin and put into steamer. Put a piece of aluminium foil loosely over the cake tin.

8. Steamed for 45mins to 1 hour over medium heat.

9. Cool cake in pan before turning out for further decoration.

Hazelnut Cream

1 cup whipping cream

4 tbsp nutella

1. Mix nutella into whipped cream.

2. Decorate cake as desired.

Christmas parties... never too many

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2008

After we returned from our HK trip on last Friday nite, time seems to be running too fast. There's no time for xmas shopping for family and friends, no time for preparing food for xmas parties, no time for tiding up the house for the festive season. However, i managed to do a couple of things within three days.

For the office xmas party, we planned to have a potluck, and i chose to make cream puff. It was quite a daring choice cos the last 2 times i did cream puff, i didn't have much luck! Although the outcome was not fantastic, i was lucky that it didn't flop!

The chocolate cookies and lemon custard cookies i planned to pack as little gifts for my family and friends turn out to be disaster! All end up in the trash after 2 (late) nites of last minute baking! My contingency plan was to replace it with chocolates bought from supermarket. I think i won't be able to get them ready on xmas eve without the help of T. He's kind of sweet isn't it?

We had two family parties, one on the eve and the other one just yesterday. I actually wanted to bake something for the xmas eve party, but there's simply isn't any time for me to do anything. For the Sat party, i managed to do a dessert and log cake ( that looks like a 'block' cake instead). Nevertheless, the 'block' cake got rave feedbacks. As for the cream, i've got the idea from HappyHomeBaker, and true enough it tasted very nice and it's a quickie.