Kuih Kosui

I have not eaten kuih kosui for a long time and i found an easy recipe. Thanks to rasamalaysia.com
I do not have pandan juice so i made with brown sugar instead of regular sugar so the kuih will have color and modified the recipe a little bit.

Ingredients:
Syrup
37 oz water
10 oz brown sugar

Batter
6 oz rice flour
2 oz tapioca flour

Method:

1. To make the syrup, melt the sugar in water over low fire until sugar dissolves .  Set aside to cool.
2. In another bowl, add rice flour and tapioca flour.  Slowly pour in the syrup mixture while stirring it consistently till well blended. 
3. Cook flour mixture on low fire till slightly thickened.  Remove from fire and pour into cups.Steam on high fire for 15 minutes.  Take the kuih out immediately.
4. Leave to cool for at least 6 hours before removing the kuih from the cup.
5. Serve with fresh grated coconut.

Happy Moon Cake Festival :- )

I am making moon cake this year as it is kind of expansive to buy outside. I have made several types of moon cakes。 Look at the pictures。。。yummy。。。 and it tasted not much different from store bought moon cake。For recipe， please leave me a message ：-） i would be happy to direct you。 Thanks to maomaoma kitchen as well for sharing this quick and easy recipe。



冰皮月饼




苏式月饼




广式月饼




回油后的广式月饼



Panettone Bread ( A sweet Italian bread)

Panettone bread is a type of bread come from Italy and it is normally served during Christmas and New Year.

This was the first time i made the bread, it smelled really good!

Ingredients:

Bread flour 350g

Milk powder 7g

Sugar 100g

salt 4g

Yeast 5g

Plain yogurt 20g

7 eggs

Unsalted butter 60g

Grape raising 220g

Rum 3 tablespoons

white grape raising 50g

Mixed dry fruit 110 g

 

Methods:

The day before you make the bread, soak the raising and mixed dry fruit with rum. Cover overnight so that the fruit can absord the liquid and taste mositure.

 

Put the baking paper into 4 bakings cups.

 

Put all the ingredients except butter into a mixing bowl. Use a stand mixer/ hand mixer to mix all the ingredients together. Wen all well  combine, put in the butter. Mix well. After that, put in the raisings and dry fruit gradually into the dough. Mix well, cover and let rise until double the size.

 

Flour the working surface. Transfer the dough to the working surface and divide into 4 portions. Roll each portion round. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes.

 

After 10 minutes, roll the dough round again. Put each one into the baking cup. Cover with parafilm and let rise again. After that,m brush with an egg. Use a knife to cut a cross shape on top of the dough, about 1cm depth. Put a melt butter at the center of the cross.

 

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Bake for about 40 minutes or until golden brown. Sprinkle some powdered sugar on top of each bread for decoration.

 

Recipe adopted from www.christinerecipes.com

Glutinous Rice Dumpling (粽子)

It is Dragon Boat Festival again!!! And i am making "zhong zi" too... i like to eat meat dumpling as it tastes real good..... i have pork, mushroom, green bean and egg in my dumpling. Yummy....don't you agree!??!

Peanunt Butter Cookie

This cookie is usually made during chinese new year. But i made it yesterday just to fullfill my stomach. Instead of crushing the peanut on my own, i used peanut butter. It tasted just as great!

Ingredients:

1 bottle peanut butter

3 cups all purpose flour

3/4 cup powder sugar (adjust depends on the sweetness that you wish)

Oil

1 egg

Methods:

Combine peanut butter, all purpose flour and sugar, mix well. Then slowly add in oil until you can form a smooth dough.

Then take a small portion of the dough and form a ball. Put onto a baking pan that lined with aluminium foil. Repeat until all dough has finished. Use your thumb to press the center of each ball so that it forms some shape or you can create any shape that you wish. Brush with an egg.

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Bake until golden brown.

Chocolate/Vanilla Layer Cake

I made this cake using the recipe of roll cake which you can find here:

http://naonaohouse.blogspot.com/2010/11/roll-cake.html#!/2010/11/roll-cake.html

 

To make this cake , you need to double the ingredients. When you have done prepared the batter, divide them into two portions. One for chocolate flavor, the other half for vanilla flavor.

Melt the chocolate chips or just use cocoa powder, then mix well with the batter.

Drop in 2-3 drops of vanilla into another batter.

Grease two 9 inches round baking pan. Then transfer each batter into the baking pan. Bake as directed.

When it is done, let the cakes cool down. Meanwhile, slice some kiwi or strawberry. Set aside.

Beat the heavy whipping cream (i mix it with some milk so it did not taste too milky but light and fluffy) till firm.

Mix the pre-slice fruits.

Trasnfer one part of the cake to a flat surface (or the container that you wish to store the cake). Then spread some whipping cream. After that, transfer the other part and put on top of the bottom layer.

Spread the remaining whipping cream onto the cake, and sprinkle some cocoa powder on top of it to make it more colorful.

It tastes best after you cool it at the refrigerator. Personally i think it tasted the same as the store bought cake.

Enjoy !!!!!!!

Kaya Bread

Finally i made the kaya bun. I have been craving for it, but thinking of making the kaya jam takes a long time, it holds me back. So i modified the method and made the jam with the microwave. It is alot faster, just the appearance is not as smooth.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cup all purpose flour

10 oz yeast

1 egg

2 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoon oil

1 cup milk (adjust depend on the flour)

4 tablespoons butter (soften at room temperature)

Kaya Jam:

4 eggs

200g brown sugar (adjustable depends on your taste)

200 mL thick coconut milk

3 pandan leaves

Method:

For making the jam

First beat in 4 eggs into a big clean bowl. Then stir in sugar. Combine well. After that, pour in coconut milk and mix well. Put in pandan leaves and cook in microwave for 2 minutes. Take it out and stir vigorously. Then put into the microwave again and cook for 2 minutes. Take it out and stir. If it is still not thicken, microwave for another 1-2 minute. Let it cool down and it is ready for bread's filling.

For the bread

Combine all the ingredients and mix it with standmixer. Make sure the dough is smooth and not too hard. Add in more milk if it is too hard, or you can start with 3/4 cup of milk then adjust as you mix it. Let mix for about 10- 15 minutes. Then cover the dough with a plastic wrap/ damp cloth. Let rise until double the size.

When the dough has double the size, transfer it to a flour surface and divide the dogh into 13 portions (depends on the size that you like). Knead each dough and form a ball, then press the ball flat and put a tablespoon of kaya jam in the center. Seal the edges and make it round. Line it in the baking pan. Repeat till the dough has finished.

Let stand for 15 minutes, and brush it with an egg. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Bake for 20-30 minutes or until golden brown. The texture is so soft....yummy...

Herbal Tea Egg/ Bu Bo Cha Cha/ Loh Bak/ Vegetarian duck/ Radish Cake

Herbal Tea Egg



Cantonese style radish cake





Loh Bak and vegetarian duck



Bu Bo Cha Cha



老婆饼/Lou Po Peng

My homemade "Lou Po Peng". Looks nice ?? It tastes flaky. But i did not press it flat enough, so my "Lou Po Peng" looks a bit "fat".

Ingredients:

Water dough

1 cup all purpose flour

1 eggs

15g sugar

Water 45g (adjust according to the flour consistency)

Oil 10g (i found that if use shortening, the effect is better, more flaky)

Oil dough

2/3 cup all purpose flour

Oil (enough to form a ball), some like to use lard.

Fillings:

2/3 cup glutinous rice flour

70g sugar (adjust according to your taste)

110mL water

white sesame seed (cook first)

35g oil

Brushing:

1 egg

White sesame seed

Instructions:

Cook the fillings first. In a small pan, boil the water and sugar till melt. Turn off the stove. Then add in the glutinous rice flour and stir immediately until it can stick together ( like a ball). After that, add in the sesame seed. Stir until well combine. Let it cool down in the refrigerator. (It should form a ball when cool down and not as sticky) Divide into 16 portions.

Now, prepare the doughs.

For wate dough, add all the ingredients and blend together until form a smooth ball. Divide it into 16 portions.

For oil dough, mix the ingredients together and form a ball. Make sure it is not too soft. Then divide into 16 portions.

Take one piece of water dough, roll flat on clean surface. Then, put one piece of oil dough on top of it. Wrap the oil dough and form a small ball. After that, flatten the ball. Take one end of the dough, roll it up to the other end. Repeat once. The dough might look like rectangular shape when roll it out.

After all the doughs have a mixture of water and oil dough, roll each dough into round shape. Put one portion of the filling on top of the dough. Seal the edge. Flatten/ press it to lay flat on the baking pan. Repeat for the rest of the doughs/ fillings.

Use a knife to cut 2 lines at the middle of the biscuit. Then brush with egg. Aftre that, sprinkle with white sesame seed. Let stand for 15 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 400 F. Bake the biscuits for 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Note:

This recipe is for finger snack size biscuit. If you would like to make a bigger biscuit, reduce the portions or double the ingredients.

You can substitute the filling with red bean paste, winter melon paste or black sesame paste too!!

Original details are adopted from the link as below. To get the details in folding the water dough and oil dough together, please refer to this link as well.

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_558029ed0100pqpq.html



黑芝麻馒头/ Black sesame paste steam bun

These bun tasted great except i put less sugar when mix with the black sesame powder. Thus, it triggers a little bitter. Overall, taste real good and easy to make! I usually make it and serve as a breakfast during weekday as i do not have time to prepare a nice breakfast in the early of the morning everyday.

The way of doing this is the same as you make other steam bun, just you do not put the fillings inside the bun.

First, after the flour has risen double in size, you roll it out flat on a clean surface.

Then, you spread your black sesame powder which has a mixture of oil and sugar on the dough.

Roll the dough from one end to the other end. Then cut into few pieces.

Let it rise for another 10 minutes, and steam.

If you prefer other shape, you can shape the small pieces into your desire shape.

Hokkien Mee

This was the first time i made hokkie mee. I think it tasted good....

The broth was boiled with shrimp shells (the shells had been fried prior to boiling). I also boiled it with pork bones to increase the tastyness of the broth.

Homemade chilli paste : Blended dry chillies, stir fry with oil until aromatic and the color turned dark.

Garnishing with hard boiled egg, bean sprout, pork and shrimp. Sometimes with kangkung too (kong xing cai). For spicer taste, serve with chilli paste.

Anyone who interested in detail instructions, please let me know :-)



Easy version Tiramisu

Since i have some heavy whipping cream left over, i thought of making an easy version of tiramisu after insipire by a restaurant.

But my tiramisu does not turn out as good as i want it to be. The cream is just too heavy ( i meant the taste), i cannot take it as i am not a milk person. I think i am going to try light cream next time. Maybe it will be more similar to which i ate at the restaurant.

 I used cocoa poweder instead of coffee. It is not looked facny though, just sprinkle some cocoa power on top of it after i spread the cream. :-8

Spring Roll

Vegetarian Spring roll

The fillings are jicama, egg, bean sprout and carrot.

There was one day when the temperature over 70F in March. So we decided to fry spring roll that day, as we can deep fried it on our deck, and reduced the strong smell in the house afterwards.

Yam cake

My husband's birthday cake, bought from Chinatown!!

Curry Puff

I miss malaysia curry puff. After finding some recipe from the web, i decided to make my very own curry puff.

Ingredients:
4 cup all purpose flour ( i was greedy, i made a lot out of it, approximately 40 curry puffs-depends on the size of the curry that you made too)
Margerine - 15 tablespoon
Water (adjust based on your flour)

Fillings:
3 big potatoes
2/3 cup sweet onion
1 cup green pea
curry powder (depends on your taste)
salt (depends on your taste)
1 cup water

Methods:
Combine the flour and margerine together in a big mixing bowl. Blend/ mix the margerine and flour together till it become pea size. Add water (one tablespoon follow by one tablespoon) slowly till you can form a smooth dough. Cover and let rest for 1/2 hour.

Meanwhile, peel the potatoes and onion. Cut them in dices. In a heated pan, put some vegetable oil. Stir in sweet onion and stir fry till it smells good.The add in potato and green pea. Mix well. Next, stir in curry powder and sprinkle some salt. Mix well. Pour in a cup of water and let it simmers till the potato soft. Let it cold down.

When the dough is done, roll it out (long piece) and cut into several portions. Roll each portions into round shape. After that, flatten each ball into round shape. It would be better to make each skin as thin as possible. Put a tablespoon of filling in the center of the skin. Carefully fold into half and press the edges firmly. Fold the edge into pretty shape. Repeat for the rest of the skin. Deep fry and serve warm

It is great for snack or breakfast. The skin is so crispy. It is good for vegetarian too!!!

Kuih Koci without Banana leaves

I am craving for kuih-muih recently. My brain always has the pictures of kuih angku, kuih koci, rempah udang, seri muka, kuih layer, kuih mangkuang, and so on.

I searches the recipe and methods of making kuih-muih. With the ingredients readily available, i decided to make kuih koci. But i am a little lazy. I do not want to wrap the kuih with banana leave which it suppose to be. I just steam them and transfer to the paper muffin cups. The traditional and original way of kuih koci should be wrapped with banana leaves and shaped like a cone. It would make the kuih taste better too with the aroma of banana leaves.

My simple way of kuih koci is like below:

Ingredients:
1 bag of glutinous rice flour
1/2 cup of pandan extract
2 tablespoon of sugar
1 cup of coconut milk
a pinch of salt

Fillings:
300g of grated coconut
3-4 tablespoon of brown sugar (adjust according to desire sweetness)
50ml of coconut milk
2 tablespoons corn starch (melt in water)

To make the fillings:
In a pan, melt the brown sugar and add in the coconut milk. Then put in the grated coconut. Stir until well combine and the grated coconut turn brown color. Add the corn starch and stir well. Let it cool.


To make the dough:
In another sauce pan, combine sugar, salt, coconut milk and pandan extract. Bring to boil. Let it cold down. Put the glutinous rice flour in a big mixing bowl. Pour the solution into the glutinous rice flour slowly and keand until it become a smooth dough. If it is too wet, add some glutinous rice flour, or coconut milk if it is too dry. Let it sit for 1/2 hour.

After that, roll the dough out and divided into several portions. Shape each portion like a ball. Flatten the ball put one tablespoon of the filling in the center of the skin. Fold the edges and form a ball. Put it aside. Repeat for the rest them.

Grease the steam pan. Put the kuih on it and steam for 20 minutes. When it is done, transfer the kuih to the paper muffin cup.

If you cannnot finish the kuih in one serving, keep it refrigerated. You can microware it for 30 seconds the next time you want to eat it.

Asam Laksa

Asam laksa is always my favourite noodle dish. Unfortunately, i hardly can eat the same taste asam laksa here compare with my hometown. My mom's asam laksa tastes real good too.

I tried to make asam laksa here without all the ingredients. Oh well, what can you expect, right?!

Make approximately 4-5 servings

Ingredients:
"Lai fen" noodle
2-3 medium size fish (any fish but with bone)
10-15 dried chillies
3-4 peels of garlic
2-3 small onions
2 stalks of lemon grass
1 ping pong ball size of dry tamarine (reconstituite with water)
Laksa leave
salt to taste

Garnishing:
Pineapple
cucumber
Boiled egg (optional)
Sweet onion
Mint (optional)

Methods:

In a big pot, boil the fish. When the fishs is well cooked, take them out and remove the bone. Crush the fish meat and set aside. Save the water that used to boil the fish for later use. You can add one can of the sardine to the fish as well.

Blend the dry chillies, garlic and onion. Set aside.

In the same pot that boil the fish ( the water is still in the pot, it is going to use to make fish stock/ soup for this dish), put in lemon grass stalk, laksa leave and the blended chilli. Bring to boil, then reduce the heat. Let the soup simmer until you can smell the aroma coming out from the soup. After that, put in the reconstitute tamarind juice and salt. Stir well and put in the crushed fish meat. Let cook for another half an hour in medium heat or until the soup tastes good. If you have the "asam keping" and "bunga kantan", it would be great to add into the soup. It will make the soup taste even better and original.

Meanwhile, boil the noodle until well done. Drain the water and set aside.

You can prepare the garnishing ingredients now. Slide the pineapple, cucumber and sweet onion for later use. Wash the mint and set aside. Egg is optional. You can boil the egg and cut into few pieces if you would like to.

When everything is done, put the noodle into a bowl. Arrange the garnishing ingredients on top of the noodle. Pour the soup over the noodle. You can add some chilli padi or prawn paste (har ko) to the noodle before serving.

Now you can sit and enjoy the tasty asam laksa. I prefer more fish meat, so i always put more fish into the soup.

Homemade chinese sausage

This is my first time making sausage. Thus, i decided not to put too much spices to it in case it turns out bad. My husband and i were quite greedy. We bought 10 Ibs of pork to make the sausage. The worst thing in this process was cutting the meat into small cube size. 10 Ibs of meat, imagine that??!! I fed up with the meat cutting after that. My husband cut the majority of the meat, quite impress!

I discovered that kitchen aid mixer can attach the sausage stuffer. Woow... it was a big help. We can stuff the sausage pretty fast. Of course, it was slow initially as we did not get use to the machine. After firsst and second trial, it became faster. After that, we hang the sausage in the garage and let it air dry. We moved them to the basement when the temperature went up. It took us more than a week before we can actually eat it.

Look at the sausage that we have made. Though they did not look as nice, the casing and the meat kind of separate, but it tastes not bad.

Maybe next year i will add more spice and sugar to it, i like it cantonese way just like the market sells.

Snow on March ^_^

It is March already and it is spring!!! It is a mixed feeling to welcome the spring here. I thought spring will have a better weather, at least higher temperature and less wind. But this Spring brings a lot of rain. The worst thing is it brings snow too. Although the snow was not huge, still, snow on March!!! So awful! I do not know if it will snow again this weekend or not, the forecast said it would. Maybe not a big one... haizz...

I just planted my pot plants and flowers last weekend. I am not sure when i can put them outside of my garage. So pity, they need sun to grow!

This year, i am planting tomato, chives, green bean, green onion, mint and strawberry. Let's see which one grow faster and better. Can't wait ....

Let's hope the weather will climb up to 50 F and stay higher......i am kinda sick of the cold weather by now. I am ready for summer!!!

A warm day....

Today the temperature is going to hit 70F, kind of amazing... you got this weather on March.... i am excited as it is warm, yet depress, as i am here working.

I have been waiting for the spring for a long long time. The lily that i planted last year showed some green leaves from the ground. I guess soon it will grow big and bloom. Can't wait for it.

I am thinking to plant some flower or vegetable this weekend. But not so sure if i have enough soil or pot, we will see.

The other thing is i have been coughing for a month, and i have not yet recover. It is kind of suck as it gets worse when i am about to sleep. I have had a hard time falling asleep ... hate the feeling.

I have "hai nan ji fan" for lunch. Ermmm..yum..should be tasted better than the cafeteria food. Can't wait till i eat it..

Hope everyone enjoy today's weather !!!! :-)

*Chinese New year*

Time is flying... it is Chinese New Year again.... i have been to USA for few years, means i do not celebrate the CNY with my family for several years. Kind of missing those day and hate the present life.

Yesterday was new year eve. I thought of having steamboat and some cold dishes. So i went to bought the pig stomach and chicken feet (ready cooked). But very disappointing... the pig stomach was so hard to chew. The chicken feet did not taste good at all! The steamboat even worse. I hardly can eat , maybe i ate it too frequent recently. I remember when i was at home, i love to have steamboat with my family during CNY eve. The feeling was so different and i can eat alot till my stomach hardly can put in any food. But now, i got no appentite at all.

The most furious thing was the soup of the steamboat had to boil with the pork ribs, but my husband said he was too busy , no time to boil them even though just took him for like 5 minutes to throw all the things inside the pot. I went home with the grocery and quickly get ready the dinner.

I called home yesterday. My mom cooked laksa and hokkien mee. I am craving for them.. it has been a long time i do not eat my mom's cooking, it tasted real good.

This morning, i am sick of my husband. he started complaint at the first day of New Year morning. The door that connect to the garage is not that good. You have to pull real hard so it wont reopen. I remember that i close the door, perhaps i did not pull as hard as i should. Then the door reopen after a while. He was like you always did that... what the hell... can't you just close it ..i have not yelled at him yet as he always left the master bedroom door opened ... and i knew that the door is abit funky as it hardly can close tight. But he is so inconsiderate at all, he thought he did everything right.

The started to say i left the grocery at floor.... i purposely did so, as some of them are his junk food... you know, he would complain and complain but never really want to put them away..

He thought he is the only one that is tiring after work... shame on him!

Colourful cookie

This cookie taste real good. It made from mix friut, chocolate chips and cronflakes.

Curry Mee

I cooked this curry mee using the ready made paste, so it really saved my time to get all the soup ingredients ready. I just need to boil the noodle, green bean, egg and taufu puff.

It tasted really good !! I love it!

Christmas Lunch

This year christmas, we had a couple came over for lunch. Instead of turkey, i baked smoked ham. The ham is quite big. I cooked several dishes as well...

Kuih Bangkit

As the holiday season approach, i wanna to make a kuih that remind me while i was at my country-Kuih bangkit. I remember that it tasted crunchy yet melt in the mouth once you eat it.

I sprinkle some mini mix color chocolate on the kuih so that it looks more for holiday. I was a bit lazy, i did not shape them into interesting shape, i just round them up and bake. Initially, i wanted to use the cooker presser to shape the dough, but it was not worked out well. So, i gave up.

The kuih was not turned out as good as i expected. It looks good, crunchy but not melt in the mouth. Conversely, it was a bit hard :-(  I will try again next time...

Vietnamese Spring roll and dumpling

I am not a big fan of vietnamese spring roll as it does not taste as good as the deep fry spring roll. But since i have all the ingredients, i decided to make the vietnamese spring roll this weekend for dinner.

Since my husband wanted to eat the dumpling so much, thus i made two dishes. Vietnamese spring roll and dumpling.. i prefer steam dumpling...but my husband like it better when boil with a pot of water, so he can drink the soup (a lot of flour inside the soup due to the flour that stick on the dumpling wrap).

My vietnamese spring roll does not contain basil leave, instead i used lettuce. The ingredients were shrimp, chinese sausage, rice vermicelli and lettuce. I also made a sauce to eat with it. The sauce tasted real good. It is similar to the satay sauce taste. I really miss it though! I felt touching when i first try the sauce, mmm... it helped me find back the long missing taste of the satay sauce. I am thinking i can make a satay and use the sauce for it.

Ham Steam bun

After the christmas lunch, we had a lot of left over ham. I thought of making the steam bun using the ham. Thus, i sliced the ham and chopped it with food processor. Then mix with vegetable, egg and some corn starch.

I did not "fa mian". I used the homestyle biscuit (ready made biscuit dough) to make the bun's skin. It was easy and quick. Now i can make steam bun whenever i feel like too, even after i get off from work :-) Sounds pretty good, eh??