Baked Banana Pie

I have been thinking about the famous baked banana pie from the eastern part of singapore when my dad bought a bunch of local bananas for the girls.  As much as the kids love to eat bananas, it was way to much for them to consume within a few days.  So I went about searching for THE baked banana recipe that looks similar to the famous pie.  I remember vividly the flavour of banana and coconut and this particular recipe kind of hit the jackpot.  It is not difficult to make and it is delicious.   Will I make this again?  Yes I will :)

Easy Roasted/Char Siew Chicken

This is an easy dish which you can make using either regular wok or happycall pan if you have.  For this, I used my happycall pan because it cuts short the cooking time. 

I got the recipe from a booklet given to me when I bought a hard anodised wok from Tangs a few years ago.  I totally forgotten all about it until I found it recently while cleaning up my room.  This is a very simple dish, you can have this with plain rice, chicken rice or even wanton or chicken noodles, chinese style.  You can also use it to make pau fillings.  I used chicken for my version but you can use other white meat to your liking.

Easy Chicken Briyani

Starting early this month, I always prepare a menu list for the week for my family.  Simply because I currently don't have a helper and have to prepare the meals early in the morning before I go to work.  My 2 older kids go home straight from school and I have to make sure that they have food for lunch :)   Weekday mornings are crazy for me so I usually whip something easy and one of them is this.  Initially the idea was to throw everything in into the rice cooker but plan changed when I found that I have a bottle of Roganjosh curry paste in the cabinet. 

What I did was to cook the rice (no not plain rice) in the rice cooker.  While the rice is cooking, I do the chicken roganjosh.  Once the rice is 90% cooked, I pour the chicken roganjosh on top of the cooked rice and let it cook further.  This is what I got.  It is missing chopped coriander and toasted cashews .. my bad because I totally forgotten all about it.

Harry Potter cupcakes

A friend ordered a HarryPotter cupcakes for her son who is a big fan of the series.  12 pieces of chocolate fudge cupcakes with chocolate ganache.  It was my first theme cupcakes and actually had great time making them.  Let see what I can do with the balance coloured fondant :)

Spaghetti with Chicken and Mushroom White Sauce

You won't believe that this recipe is from my daughter's child care centre.  Recently, the centre held a food demo of the kids' favourite dish,  actually the program was held to encourage family bonding activity.  My youngest pestered me to cook this for the weekend and so I relented.

You should know that this was a serving for her :)

I won't really call this quick and easy.  Quick and easy would mean to use canned soup *LOL* but of course, from scratch is still the best.  For this dish, it involves 2 steps.  You need to prepare the white sauce first then followed by the chicken and mushroom sauce.  I promise it is not difficult but you can prepare the white sauce a day ahead to make it easier for you.

Slice Fish Noodles

I love anything soupy especially when it comes to noodles.  Whenever I have a chance I will get myself a bowl of sliced fish noodle soup.   This time round, instead of buying I decided to do a homemade version.  To get a good tasting broth, you need to simmer the soup on the stove for about 1hr or so.  Due to time constraint, I decided to use my pressure cooker instead.   There is not much ingredients used for the soup base.  I used about 2 medium size toman fish bones.  You can use other types of fish bone that you like.  As for noodles, it is optional.  You can have it with rice too.

Buttery and flaky croissants

This is definitely not quick and easy.  It's not that difficult but definitely not quick :-P  I will post the recipe in my other blog.

This is my second attempt at making these lovelies.  It was quite a daunting experience with the humidity and heat here, I had to work real fast in order to keep the butter from melting.  Nevertheless, they came out beautiful, buttery and flaky.  My family loves them, the thing is it took me hours to prepare this but took less than an hour to finish 'gobbling' them *LOL*  but it was great fun making them.  I used 100% butter and love the flavour unlike the ones I get from the supermarket which are just too waxy.  Actually I find them disgusting :-P.  I am however tempted to try with the butter meant for laminating dough.  I have seen it sold at the baking supply shop and it comes in a slab of 1kg.  I wonder if it gives the same flavour as using butter... hmm

A tray of them before the 1.5hrs rise

Cake projects to close 2011

The 2 cakes that I made end of last year.  The first was my youngest daughter's birthday cake and the second was for my aunt.  Jump to my other blog to read at http://mybakingadventure.blogspot.com/ :)

Noodles week

The last 2 weeks have been a noodle week for us. I was thinking of nothing but having noodles over the weekend so we had ban mian, sliced fish noodle and xinjiang inspired la mian :)

Xinjiang inspired la mian which looks far from the version that I had during my trip there many years ago. The colour of the sauce is way too dark. I used tomato puree instead of fresh tomatoes :-P But it came out pretty alright though. I used beef instead of mutton because none in my family including myself eats mutton. I will definitely try it again to get the right colour :)