Phad-Thai inspired fried beehoon

Getting a bit tired of eating the regular white version fried beehoon, I decided to make this for the kids. It is a phad thai inspired noodle as I omit some of the ingredients :D To make it extra spicy, you can add cut chili padi after it is almost done before you turn off the fire like I did after I took out the kids' portion.

What you need

500g bee hoon
200g fresh prawns, shelled and deveined
200g chicken breast, cut into strips
1 medium size onion, sliced thinly
5-7 clove garlic, chopped
5 tbsp fish sauce
5 tbsp tamarind juice
4 tbsp palm sugar
100-200g bean sprouts/veges of your choice
a few stalks birdseye chili, cut into small pieces

What you do

1. Mix fish sauce, tamarind juice and palm sugar till sugar dissolves, set a side
2. Heat oil and stir fry fresh prawns and chicken till they are half cooked, remove and set aside
3. Fry onions till translucent and add chopped garlic till fragrant
4. Add noodles and toss it with the ingredients in the wok
5. Add a few tbsp of water to soften the noodles
6. Add cooked prawns and pour fish sauce mixture and stir well and ensure that the noodles are well-coated
7. Add bean sprouts/veges, chillies and stir till well blend heat it through for a few minutes. If noodles too dry, add more water
8. Serve hot with cilantro and scallions

Chilled Cheesecake with oreos (update with recipe link)

Made this simple chilled cheesecake for my brother-in-law who turned 19 last month. He is into wushu and so to make it extra special, I did a silhoutte using chocolate for decoration. I had a bit of excess of the both the filling and base, so I made them into cuppies just nice for the kids :-D

I used the recipe from the nobake chocolate+banana cheesecake (CLICK HERE) I replace the biscuit with oreos instead, minus the chocolate on the base and banana.

Calzone wannabe :-)

I made pizzas for dinner the other day and had some of the toppings ingredients left but not the dough. Fortunately, I had some instant pratas stashed in the freezer and used it to make these. Easy and delicious I must say *LOL*

What you need:

A few prata skins, enough to use up the pizza topping ingredients
chicken ham or whatever cold meats that you like
shredded cheese
pizza sauce
egg wash (optional)

What you do:

1. Remove the plastic from the prata skin (make sure the prata is not too soft as it will be difficult to handle)
2. Spread pizza sauce to half of the prata skin
3. Add chicken ham, shredded cheese
4. Fold over the other half of the prata and press the ends either using the fork or just crimp it a bit with your fingers and egg wash the skin
5. Arrange on lined baking tray and bake in a preheated oven 180C for about 20-30 mins or till the prata skin turns golden brown - you may need to bake a little longer in a slightly lower temperature if you want to have crispy skin.
6. Serve it piping hot

Red Velvet Cupcake

I don't usually eat cakes that are heavily coloured, hence it took me a very long time before I decided to make these delicious cupcakes. Thanks to Chuck Hughes, after watching one episode of 'Chuck`s Day Off', I could not get this out of my mind. So I finally caved in and made these. They are very easy to make and delicious especially the mascarpone frosting. Do give it a try!

You can get the original recipe from here: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Dessert/recipe.html?dishid=11309

Cupcakes
Ingredients
2 eggs (60g each)
1 1/2 C sugar
1 1/2 C canola oil
1 C yogurt, plain
1 tsp Wilton no-taste red gel (original is 2T red food coloring)
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 1/2C cake flour (original recipe uses plain flour)
1T cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

Method
1) Preheat oven to 180 °C
2) In a food mixer/processor, mix the eggs with the sugar, oil, yoghurt, food coloring, vinegar and vanilla. Add flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt. Blend until just incorporated.
3) Place cupcake papers into a muffin pan, divide the batter in the cupcake papers, pour only halfway so batter doesn’t overflow, and bake, rotating half way through, for 25 to 30 minutes. Remove and let cool.


Icing
Ingredients
1 tub mascarpone (500g,original recipe uses 2C mascarpone)
1C icing sugar, sifted
1/2C cream
Zest of 1 lemon

Method
1) In a bowl, beat the mascarpone, icing sugar, cream and lemon zests together until the mixture is smooth.
2) Spoon a dollop of mascarpone cream on the cupcakes.

White Velvet Cupcakes

This is a very delicious cake and a good way to use up your egg whites. This recipe is from Rose's Heavenly Cake book and just to add, I simply love the recipes from this book. Do get a copy for yourself :) For the ganache, I use the recipe of Planet Cake which I had some left from a mud cake that I baked earlier.

Ingredients: 90gm egg white
160gm milk
1.5tsp vanilla
200gm cake flour/all purpose flour
185gm superfine sugar (original is 200gm)
2 1/4 plus 1/8 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
113gm unsalted butter

Method:
1. In a small bowl, whisk the egg whites, 3 T of the milk and the vanilla just until lightly combined
2. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt on low speed for 30seconds
3. Add the butter and the remaining milk and mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened
4. Raise the speed to medium and beat for 1.5 minutes
5. Starting on medium low speed, gradually add the egg mixture in two parts, beating on medium speed for 30 seconds after each addition to incorporate the ingredients
6. Scoop batter into cupcake liners and bake for 20 to 25minutes or until cake tester inserted in the centre comes out clean at 175C.

Dark Ganache
Ingredients:
200gm dark chocolate, chopped
100ml cream

Method:
1. Heat cream till you see bubbles at the side of the pot and turn off the fire
2. Add chopped chocolate and using a spatula, stir till the chocolate is melted
3. Let it set overnight before using

Happy trying !

Cakes galore

We had a long weekend early this month due to Chinese New Year. I have been a bit busy for the first 2 weeks of February doing some baking and here are the pictures of what I did.

White Velvet cupcake with dark chocolate ganache

Delicious Red Velvet cake I did for CNY gathering

Mini cupcake cakepops with left over mud cake and ganache

Chocolate Banana cake ala Secret Recipe for my other half's birthday

Last but not least, my biggest fondant cake project. I did this for my nephew & niece's birthday. It was load of fun though.
the back view

I am not posting any recipes in this entry, let me know if you are interested :)

Stir-fry Ground Chicken with Thai (Holy) Basil

I love Thai food, well who doesn't ? *lol* I like to order this dish whenever I have my meals at a Thai eatery or restaurant simply because it is a great one dish meal. It is usually eaten with steamed rice and a sunny side up egg, simple yet satisfying. I have always been wanting to make this at home. Coincidentally, I bought a pack of thai basil from a supermarket and it has been sitting for a few days in the fridge. I didn't want to waste it and so happened that I was thinking of this dish. I finally found a rather authentic recipe and truly satisfied with the flavour.

I like mine spicy, so I added some chopped chili padi to my portion. If you don't like too spicy, you can omit the chilli. I added the chilli towads the end instead of frying with the garlic as I need to take some portion out for the girls who don't take anything spicy. However, you can add it when frying the garlic.

The recipe:

Ingredients

500g ground chicken
9 cloves garlic, finely chopped
4T dark soy sauce
2T oyster sauce
5T fish sauce
1 1/2C fresh Thai basil
2 chilli padi, chopped (optional)

salt & pepper to taste

oil for stir frying

Method:
1. Heat a wok until the oil is hot, then stir in the garlic
2. Add ground chicken and stir till meat is thoroughly cooked
3. Add soya sauce, oyster sauce keep stirring till the sauce blends into the chicken
4. Then add fish sauce, salt & pepper to taste. Stir and mix well
5. Add basil leaves and continue stirring, you should smell the basil by now

6. Throw in the chilli and stir for a 1 minute and serve it with steamed rice

Fragrant Fried Pancakes

It was one of those days where I wanted to try making something a little bit different. I had quite a stash of scallions and sesame seeds and happened to find a recipe that uses both. It is pretty easy to make and lovely to eat it on its own or dip it with some thick gravy like curry, stew or even chilli dip.

This recipe is taken off the book Dim Sum Kitchen by Tan, Melody. I just estimate the amount for the spring onions, sesame seed and salt.

Ingredients

250g All purpose/Plain flour

100g boiling water

10g warm water

4g instant yeast (dissolve into 2T warm water)

5g spring onion

2.5g sesame seed

5g salt

vegetable oil for pan frying

Method

1.Dice spring onion and put it aside

2. Pour flour into basin/bowl and add 100g boiling water and stir till flour is like bread crumbs

3. Dissolve yeast in abit of warm water about 2T

4. Once yeast started to bubble add to the flour and add another 10g warm water, spring onion, salt and stir

5. Cover with cloth for an hour and then knead again

6. Roll into into pancakes about 0.5cm thickness and sprinkle sesame seeds on both sides

7. Heat pan and add oil, pan fry on medium heat

8. Flip when one side turns golden brown and fry till it turns the same colour.

9. Remove, cut into small pieces and serve.

Japanese Curry from scratch ...

My first experience having Japanese curry was about 20years ago during my first visit to Japan. I wasn't very intrigue by it as it was more sweet and tasted totally different from the curry that I am used to. However, I got pretty much accustomed to it by adding some chilli sauce to go with it *lol* My children do eat curry but their spicy threshold is still pretty low. So to get them used to eating a dish with plenty of spices, I made this for them to see which one they prefer. Apparently this one wins hands down and it has become one of the regular dish I cook specially for them.

This dish is not difficult to make, I got it from the Japanese cooking show, Dosanko Cooking which features easy authentic Japanese dishes. The spice level depends on the curry powder and the chilli sauce that you used.

Ingredients
300-400g chicken, cute into cubes
2 clove garlic,minced
2T butter
2T plain flour
2T curry powder, add abit of water to make it to a paste
2T chilli sauce
2T ketchup
1T soya sauce (i used light soya)
1t salt
1 medium yellow onion, quartered
potatoes and carrots, cute into bite size chunks
water

Method
1. Melt butter and add garlic, fry till fragrant
2. Add flour and stir to fry till colour changes then add water and kept stirring
3. Add chicken chunks and stir till the chicken turns white
4. Add curry paste and other sauces, stir them till the chicken are well coated, add water bit by bit to get the consistency that you like
5. Add onions, potatoes and carrots, let it simmer till tender
6. Add salt to taste

Chilled No-Bake Chocolate Marshmallow Dessert

I have a very bad habit of stocking stuffs which I 'think' I will need but end up being chucked for months. This is a result of it and after sifting through recipes in my collection, I decided to make this simple no-bake dessert for my mother-in-law's birthday. The wording on it was made of chocolate using a chocolate mold. The words are in malay meaning 'Happy Birthday'. BTW, this recipe is taken from a local free paper. I find the chocolate flavour is not strong enough for me even though I have increased the amount. You may want to add more bitter/semi-sweet chocolate to 100g if you prefer a stronger chocolate flavour as the marshmallow is a little on the sweet side.

Ingredients

Biscuit Base
200g chocolate marie biscuits (originally using cream crackers)
80g melted butter

Chocolate cream
40g milk
100g marshmallow
1 tbsp gelatine (mix with 20g water)
90g melted bitter chocolate (Original 80g regular chocolate)
120g whipped cream (you can use coolwhip for convenience)

Chocolate layer
130g milk
50g fine sugar
20g unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tbsp gelatine (mix with 15g water)

Method

1. Crush biscuits into crumbs, add melted butter and mix evenly
2. Place mixture evenly on the baking tray, press the biscuit crumb mixture to form a compact base and store in fridge for 20mins
3. For chocolate cream, melt marshmallow with milk in a water bath, mix evenly
4. Stir in gelatine and melted chocolate
5.Leave mixture to cool, add whipped cream and mix evenly
6. Pour chocolate cream mixture onto biscuit crumb base, chill in refrigerator until set
7. For chocolate layer, add fine sugar to milk, boil until all the sugar dissolves
8. Stir in cocoa powder, leave it to cool to approx. 60 degrees Celcius then add gelatine into milk mixture
9. Pour the chocolate layer onto the chocolate cream layer, chill in refrigerator until set.

Decorate it accordingly and best serve it chilled.

Happy Trying !

Savoury Porridge with egg

I made a few months back as the weather was pretty chilly. I could not resist myself from having a hot bowl of porridge with runny egg especially the yolk *lol* This is a real comfort food and really great to eat it hot. Those little brown slices of you tiao was store bought. I toast it a while before adding to the porridge. I love the slight crunchiness of the you tiao when mixed with the hot porridge and egg.

The porridge I used the same recipe as the savoury porridge available in the blog. The only difference was the type of rice used and I used coconut milk instead of fresh milk.

To serve, make sure the porridge is real hot. Break an egg into a bowl, scoop some porridge over the egg and let it cook for a couple of minutes or till you like the consistency of the egg. Sprinkle chopped spring onions, youtiao and a few dashes of shallots oil and serve it hot.

Real easy but delicious !!

Roasted Duck Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

I have been trying to eat healthy lately with lots of salad and I am enjoying it, seriously *lol*. This time round, I made something simple with roasted duck which I bought from the supermarket. My family is not into duck meat and since it is not cheap either, I decided to try roast duck breast which I found at carrefour suntec city. Extremely easy in which I just need to reheat it and sliced it into whatever form I like. The meat is very tender but a little bit salty to me, otherwise it is just nice.

As for the dressing, I decided on honey mustard. The recipe which I got from allrecipes.com is also pretty easy to make and it is delicious. I just changed the regular mayo with garlic mayo which I have in the fridge. So here is the recipe:

Ingredients

1 bag salad mix (your choice)

3T pumpkin/sunflower seed

a couple of cherry tomatoes, halved

roasted duck, sliced/cube

Honey Mustard Dressing

Ingredients

4T garlic mayonnaise or regular mayonnaise

1T dijon mustard

1T honey

1/2T lemon juice

salt & pepper to taste if you like

Method

1. Mix up all the dressing ingredients till well blended

2. Pour the dressing to the salad and toss it

3. Serve with garlic bread

Digital Measuring Spoon revisited

I know that some readers were asking me where I purchased my digital spoon. I got mine from Amazon but now you can get it here locally in Singapore. You can purchase it at Kitchencapers priced at $35. However I have been told that this item runs out fast, so you may want to call up and book a set for yourself.

Hope this helps :)

Cocoa+Milo Cake and Nutella rolls

This year's eid has been a rather lazy one for me. I didn't bake much but just made what I think my kids and visitors would like :-) I made these in the first week of Eid for my guests. If you notice, most of my bakes are vanilla or chocolate flavoured. My kids are not into colorful bakes, maybe they got intimated by the colours *lol* Anyways, I will update the recipe later :)

Oven-baked Naans

These are really great naans, chewy and soft even when they are not hot. I made this after reading so many great reviews about it. The suggested method is to cook it over the stove but instead, I used the baking/pizza stone and have it baked in the oven. If you don't have you can use a baking tray. Please check that your oven has a top grille otherwise you might risk overbaking it and will end up with hard naans.

I have also included the link to the youtube videos for your reference. If you notice, this recipe doesn't use yogurt so it is not as tangy as the ones with yogurt.

Naan

Source: Cooking for All Seasons

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tsp instant yeast
1 1/2 cup warm milk
1 tsp sugar

Butter for brushing on hot naans (optional)

Method:

1. Dissolve the yeast and sugar in the milk, let rest approximately 10 minutes till it turns frothy
2. In a large bowl, mix well the flour with the yeast/milk mixture then mix in the salt

3. Knead until soft and elastic

4. Cover with a damp towel and leave in a dark place to rise until doubled, about two hours
5. Remove the dough from the bowl, punch it out gently then divide into ten even balls
6. Roll out into triangles, dusting lightly with flour as needed

7. Preheat oven to the highest temperature your oven can take, mine is about 220C with the pizza stone in the oven for 30mins

8. Place the tray and the pizza stone close to the top grill of your oven without burning the naan during baking

9. Once it is ready, place the naans on the pizza stone and let it puff, take it out once the top puffs up and has brown spots
10. Brush it with butter once it is out of the oven and keep them warm

Here are the links for your reference:

Over the stove method: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBFOpcIkPZQ&feature=related

Oven with baking stone method which I used: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkiN7fQbHiA&feature=player_embedded

Vanilla Cupcakes for Children's Day party

My youngest daughter's school had a Children's Day celebration last Friday and the school was asking for some food contribution for the party. Since my kids love cake, I decided to make vanilla+chocolate chip cupcakes with buttercream frosting. A simple one without any swirls or anything fancy. Actually it was my decision to forgo the swirls as it will be too messy for the kids :) To make it cute, I topped it with strawberry chocolate shavings and tiny chocolate balls that comes in white, milk and dark chocolate :)

The vanilla cupcakes, I used my favourite recipe by Magnolia Bakery. I got it off the internet many years back and I can't remember the site *lol* Anyways, here it is, I added chocolate chips to it.

Recipe:

Magnolia Bakery Vanilla Cupcakes

Recipe from More From Magnolia by Allysa Torey

1 C unsalted butter, softened (1 cup is about 227g)

2 cups granulated sugar (I used slightly less than 2 cups)

4 large eggs

1 1/2 C self rising flour

1 1/4 C all-purpose flour

1 C milk

1 tsp vanilla extract/essence

1 C chocolate chips

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 170C degrees

2. Sift flours into a bowl and set aside

3. Cream the butter until smooth on medium speed, ad the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy

4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition

5. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla

6. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not overbeat

7. Scrap down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended

8. Add chocolate chips and slowly mix it into the batter

9. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about three-quarters full

10.Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean

11.Cool cupcakes before frosting

Cornflakes Macaroons

This is one of the popular cookies during Eid and it is really easy to make. I believe this is similar to the coconut macaroons but this is baked till dry and crispy. I love making this because it uses very little ingredients and you can be creative with what you want to add to it. For this, I have added crushed cornflakes and chocolate chips. I also tried with nutella and ground hazelnut, very addictive and delicious.

To make this, you need to be a little patient as it requires to be baked at low temperature for about 1hr or slightly less depending on your oven.

Here is the recipe that I used. I baked them at 140C for about 1hr. Some baked at even lower temperature of about 100C and baked at almost 2hr. Some slightly above 140C for about 45min. All these depends on your oven, I prefer to bake it at 140C as anything more I get cracks. But seriously it's up to you :) Remember that you have to bake it till it's dry.

Ingredients:

1/2 C egg white (about 3 egg whites)
155g castor sugar (original was 225g but it is extremely sweet for me, hence I reduced the amount)

150g cornflakes, crushed
200g chocolate chips, more if you like
2 tsp vanilla essence (optional)
mini cupcake casings

Method:
1. Beat the egg white till frothy and slowly add sugar and beat till stiff peaks (glossy but not dry)
2. Stop the mixer and add the cornflakes and chocolate chips and fold gently till well blended
3. Arrange cupcake casings on tray and using a small cookie scoop, scoop into the casings
4. Bake at 140C in a preheated oven on the lowest rack for 1hr or till the meringue is hard both the top and bottom (don't be afraid to squeeze the bottom a little bit)
5. Remember to switch position of tray in between
6. Leave it to cool completely before storing in airtight containers


Happy trying !!

Lapis Legit Pisang (Banana Layer Cake)

I had a bunch of over-riped bananas but tired of eating banana cake so I decided to make this instead. Well, it was a rather impromptu decision, that is why the layers are thick, I was baking this at about 8pm and wanted to complete it before midnight :-P Since this is not exactly an easy thing to bake, I have put up the recipe here at my other blog.

Enjoy !!

Easy Sweet & Sour Chicken

This is a very hassle free dish except for the frying of the chicken pieces. For the sauce, I used 3 off-the-shelf ones which I normally keep stock at home. My kids love sweet and sour sauces so I usually make various versions with different ingredients. As for the chicken pieces, I only use flour, salt and pepper.

The sweetened plum sauce which I purchased from Sheng Siong if you are living in Singapore. Don't use too much of these because this is pretty sweet.

Maggi ketchup and chilli sauce. If you want spicier flavour, you can use other brands like sinsin extra spicy chilli sauce.

Here is the recipe, adjust the sauce according to your taste. You don't have to follow the amount in my recipe.

Ingredients:

Chicken
200-250g chicken fillet, cut into bite size
1/4 - 3/4 C plain flour
salt & pepper (amount is up to you)
oil for frying

Sauce
2T sweetened plum sauce
4T ketchup
4T chilli sauce, add more if you want it spicy or use extra spicy chilli sauce
1T-2T hot water

Garnishing
lettuce
spring onion

Method:

Chicken
1. Heat oil in pan
2. Combine flour, salt and pepper in a ziplock bag and shake to mix them
3. Add the chicken pieces and lock the ziplock bag, leaving some air and shake to coat the chicken pieces with the flour mix
4. Fry the chicken pieces till they turn golden brown

Sauce
1. Mix all the ingredients and heat it up or microwave for about 1-2 minutes

Put lettuce on a plate, place the chicken pieces on the lettuce, pour the sauce over and garnish with spring onions.

Father's day cake inspiration ...

I have yet to decide what kind of cake I will be making for Father's day. Especially now with the World Cup going on .. it's between soccer and tie maybe .. hmm Anyways, if anyone of you need some inspiration for a tie themed cake, do check this out - http://www.tiepedia.com/tie-blog/49-crafts/155-tie-cake