Simple Toast Bread

We were having dinner at Macau Express last weekend and the kids ordered Pork Floss bread and some other snacks. I'll very much prefer that they eat proper food but since we're out and they hardly snack, I gave the green light. DD1 and DS2 devoured their dinner as fast as lightning. I've never seen them eat their dinner so fast! Hahaha!

I made a simple bread loaf using my basic bread recipe. However, I overturned the pan while cooling and the bread collapsed, that explains the height of this bread :( It was much taller, at least 0.5X taller.

I remember I grew up eating toast bread with condensed milk, and since I've got some left-overs from my Honeycomb Cake, I just spread some to let the kids try. I'm glad my children enjoy the bread as much as I did when I was a child :)

Banana Chiffon Cake

I'm falling in love with Chiffon cake making. It's something so quick and easy, when you know how to whisk the egg whites correctly. I used to fear making this cake but now, I can do this within minutes. Auntie A used to tell me it's very simple but I didn't believe her. I had my phobia then. But once I get it right, there's no looking back :)

I have this Banana Chiffon cake on my To-Do list for the longest time but I procrastinate as DH doesn't like bananas in cakes. I have some over-riped bananas and with the children coughing, I can't make banana lollis, so I decided to bake a Chiffon cake. I decided to use Rei's recipe over another recipe which has a hydration ratio of 48%. I made this decision because I once tried a recipe with 50% hydration and the cake fell out while cooling.

Can you see the 4 marks on the cake? I used my Chwee Kueh mould to hold the inverted cake cake, thus causing the marks :P


I believe I baked the cake to almost perfect as when I try to unmould it, it slided out of the pan easily and I did not cause much damage to the skin :)


I did not mash the banana too finely and you can still see chucks of it in the cake. Think if I were to bake this again, I may probably use the blender. I find that my chiffon cake doesn't have a strong banana fragrant probably because my bananas are not overly riped enough? I may add more bananas if I were to bake this again.


Packed some for Auntie A to try.

This is for my family.

Banana Chiffon Cake
Ingredients
(A)
4 egg yolks
40g castor sugar
1/4 tsp salt
50g corn oil
130g mashed bananas

(B)
120g Cake flour
1/2 tbsp Baking powder
1/8 tsp Baking soda

*Sift 2x

(C)
5 egg whites
40g castor sugar
1/2 tsp Cream of Tartar

Method

1. In a bowl, using hand whisk, whisk yolks and sugar till sugar dissolves.
2. Add oil and salt, whisk and add mashed bananas. Stir well.
3. Fold in sifted flour and mix well.
4. In another bowl, using an electric mixer, beat till the whites are frothy. Add in Cream of Tartar and beat till soft peaks.
5. Add in sugar gradually and beat till stiff peaks.
6. Fold in 1/3 of the whites into the yolk mixture using a rubber spatula till incorporated.
7. Pour the mixture to the remaining egg whites and fold in gently till incorporated.
8. Pour the batter into a 21cm chiffon tube pan. Bang the pan on the table to get rid of bubbles.
9. Oil a piece of aluminium foil and cover the pan loosely. Bake at 170 deg.C for 10mins.
10. Turn down the temperature to 160 deg.C and bake for 10mins. Lift up the foil to check the surface of cake, bake for another 10mins.
11. Insert a skewer to check if cake is done. Remove the foil and reduce the temperature to 150 deg.C and bake for a further 5 to 10mins to brown the surface.
12. Remove from the oven and invert the pan. Remove the cake from pan when it's completely cooled. The surface will feel abit wet but it will be dry after exposing to the air.
    

Earl Grey Chiffon Cake

This is another chiffon cake attempt. I was surfing the net and saw HHB's Earl Grey Chiffon Cake. Since my family loves drinking this tea, I think they'll enjoy having it in a cake too.

I'm not an expert in baking, and I'm definitely a novice in chiffon making. But I attempted to modify the recipe slightly. Original recipe uses dried tea leaves in the cake but I infuse the tea bags into the water to get the fragrant instead as I wasn't sure how the cake will turn out with tea leaves in it. Will it cause the cake to become bitter? I better take this risk as I don't like failure.

While whisking the egg whites, I got distracted and over-whisked the eggs without realising. It happened too fast, just that split second and the whites were overwhipped, slightly. The top of the whisked egg whites still has it's shine. I decided to go ahead to bake the cake and luckily, the cake turned out quite alright (ie edible). The texture is still soft but slightly compact.

The family likes it so I'm definitely going to bake this again.

Earl Grey Chiffon Cake
Ingredients(makes one 18cm cake)
(A)
1 tablespoon Earl Grey tea powder (about 3 satchels)
100g cake flour
1 & 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 egg yolks
40g caster sugar
50ml vegetable oil
75ml water

(B)
3 egg whites
40g caster sugar

Method

1. Sieve flour, baking powder and salt together, set aside.
2. Separate egg yolks/whites and bring to room temperature. (It is easier to separate eggs when they are cold.)
3. Place egg yolks in a mixing bowl, add in sugar, in 3 separate additions and with a manual whisk, whisk till the mixture becomes sticky and turn pale.
4. Drizzle in the oil, whisking at the same time till the mixture is well combined. Repeat the same with the water. Sieve over the flour mixture and whisk until flour mixture is fully incorporated into the batter. Add in the earl grey powder and mix well.
5. In a clean, dry mixing bowl, beat egg whites with an electric mixer until mixture becomes frothy and foamy. Gradually beat in the sugar and beat on high speed until stiff peaks form.
6. Add the beaten egg white into the egg yolk batter in 3 separate additions, each time folding gently with a spatula until just blended.
7. Pour batter into a 18cm (7 inch) tube pan (do not grease the pan). Bang the pan lightly on a table top to get rid of any trapped air bubbles in the batter.
8. Bake in pre-heated oven at 170 degC for 45 ~ 50mins or until the cake surface turns golden brown, and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
9. Remove from the oven and invert the pan immediately. Let cool completely before unmould. To remove the cake from the pan, run a thin-bladed knife around the inside of the pan and the center core. Release the cake and run the knife along the base of the pan to remove the cake.

Simple Fried Rice - my style

This is my style, no specific recipe, just cook whatever I can find in my fridge/freezer. I added minced pork meat, frozen corns, carrot, chinese sausage, cucumber and fried egg. I used to add fresh prawns too but due to some health reasons, DH can't take too much seafood so I refrain from cooking altogether.

One thing I like about AMC cooking is I do not need to use too much oil for cooking this dish. I still remember when I was cooking fried rice in the traditional black wok, I need to use quite a substantial amount of oil to prevent the rice from sticking. The con is, fried rice cooked this way is not as fragrant as wok fried rice. For a healthier meal, we just have to compromise on taste.

DD1 likes to have her fried rice with both chilli sauce and tomato ketchup .


This is for DS2, he prefers it plain.

Roasted Ribs

I've wanted to roast them in a slab without chopping them up but my AMC roasting pan is not big enough to accommodate them. So I had to cut them up into smaller pieces to roast. I was inspired by Nate's ribs but of course, I can't replicate his cooking. See how nicely his ribs are browned? Though mine doesn't look as good, I'm happy it turned out well and my family enjoy this dish.

This is the first time I added dried thyme to my ribs and it taste great!

Min Jiang Kueh (Peanut Pancake)

Hugbear shared this recipe in Kitchen Capers and I've been making this for our breakfast then. After stopping for a while and trying out new recipes, I totally forgot about this until I made my red bean paste. In the past, when I cook this, I only sandwich with peanut butter, cheese or kaya, never used red bean paste before. Since I have some extra paste in the freezer, I decided to make this for our breakfast today.

This is how the batter looks like after leaving to rise in the fridge overnight.



Cook till you see the top is bubbly and set (this pic below is not set yet)



Spread desired fillings. Instead of roasted peanuts with sugar, I just juse peanut butter.

Here's one with Nutella.

And my favourite red bean paste!

I usually cook 1.5X or double the recipe for my family of 2A + 2C.

Min Jiang Kueh

Ingredients
150 g Top Flour (I replace with all purpose flour)
10 g Tapioca Flour (can replace with corn flour)
250 ml Water
2 tbsp Sugar
1/4 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Alkaline Water (I omit)
1/2 tsp Yeast

Method

1. Mix all ingredients and leave to rise for 2 hours. (I leave mine in the fridge overnight)
2. Lightly oil a flat frying pan. Pour some of the flour mixture into the frying pan and swirl the pan to coat it evenly.
3. Use small fire to cook until the bottom is golden brown; Sprinkle the filling on the pancake and fold it into half.
4. Cut into small pieces to serve.

Sugar Roll Not

This is an overdue post. I baked this on Monday but forgot all about it.

This recipe has been on my To-Do list for the longest time. I do not have any confidence doing swiss rolls as I've heard of too much failure. Yes, I'm not an adventurous person as I do not like wastage.



There are so much raves about this sugar roll and after procrastinating for months, I attempted it last week. I was supposed to roll the cake while it's still warm and pliable but again, I was multi-tasking and forgot all about it! Damn! When I remembered, the cake has already cooled completely and it's impossible to roll. When I inverted the cake onto a new parchment paper, the skin of the cake got stucked to the paper. So I sandwiched the top layer with kaya and what you see here is actually the base on the cake.

This cake is soft and fluffy, I may give it another try but I definitely need an extra pair of hands at home should I attempt this again.


Looking at the cake now, it looks very much like plain white bread minus the crust, hahaha!

Sugar Roll Recipe
Ingredients
4 nos. egg white
80 gm. caster sugar (I use 60g sugar)
4 nos. egg yolk
1/4 tsp. vanilla essence
100 gm. cake flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
40 gm. corn oil

100 gm. Butter cream
invert Sugar - very fine sugar

Method

1. Whisk egg white for a while then add in caster sugar gradually. (Need to whisk till soft peak)
2. Drop in the egg yolk one by one into the beating egg white until finish and continue beating for another 3 mins.
3. Stop the machine, fold in the cake flour and baking powder.
4. Fold in cornoil and pour into a 11" x 14" tray or 10" x 14" tray and bake at 200C for about 10 mins. (I use 2 x 7" x 9.5" and bake at 180C for 10 mins instead)
5. Take out from tray and leave on the wire rack to cool.
6. Spread butter cream onto the cooled swiss roll and roll into a swiss roll.
7. Sprinkle some sugar onto a greaseproof paper and roll the swiss roll to and fro until evenly covered with the help of the greaseproof paper.
8. Slice and serve.