Sunday, February 28, 2010

Making Homemade Kaya and Caramel Sugar







Hi Everyone,
I'm cooking again, you'll be worried about my weight going up again right? hehe.. What to do, I like to try out new things. The ingredients are simple for making kaya but is the time spent standing by the stove that is tedious. Nevermind this will be well worth it, if the kaya turns out good haha.

Homemade Kaya

The Ingredients,

5 eggs

325g of sugar ( or about half of the caramel recipe below with 100g of sugar)

about 150ml to 200ml of thick coconut milk

a few pieces of pandan leave cut to 3cm long

If you want the kaya to be brownish in colour then you have to make the caramel sugar first

To make for about 500ml of caramel
Put 150ml of water in a heavy pan and add 500g of sugar. Stir gently over a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved. When the syrup comes to a boil, do not stir anymore and wait till it turns reddish-amber. Dip the pan in cold water and let the caramel cool a little before pouring in about 350ml cold water. Return the pan to the heat and stir the water and caramel together until the caramel is smoothly dissolved and has the correct consistency. Once diluted, the caramel will not harden even when quite cold. You can prepare this in advance to let it cool completely.

Let's start.. Using a mixing bowl, beat eggs with the sugar or caramel sugar until is smooth. Half fill a pot with water and heat until it simmers, then reduce to just a bare simmer. Place the mixing bowl onto this pot. Stir the egg mixture with the pandan leave till sugar dissolves. Adding the coconut milk slowly, a bit at a time. Continue stirring until it is completely well mixed, then add little bit of the milk again and repeat this process until the coconut all mixed into the egg mixture. This will take quite a while. Haha. I spent about 1 1/2 hours stirring and adding the coconut milk. After a while you will see the kaya thicken and it has the correct consistency. Your Kaya should look shiny and smooth. Hope to hear from you, if you have tried this out!!!

Friday, February 5, 2010

Cornflake Cookies



Cornflake cookie is getting more and more popular during Chinese New Year. I started to make this cookies only 3 years ago, and now this is my favourites cookie of all time.

Recipe of Cornflake cookie

Ingredients

336g of butter
180g of caster sugar
3/4 tsp of salt
3 egg yolks
11/2 tsp of vanilla extract
450g of top flour
3/4 tsp of baking powder
3/8 tsp of baking soda
150g of cornflakes crushed them untill it becomes half amount.
3 tbsp coconut flake


Method

Sift top flour, baking powder and baking soda together. Beat butter, sugar and salt till light and creamy. Add in the egg yolk one at a time till well combine. Add in vanilla extract and mix well before folding in the flour mixture, cornflake and coconut flake. Mix well till you get a soft dough.

Roll out into a 1/2cm thick dough, and cut out pattern using a cutters.

You can also shape dough into small balls.

Bake in oven at 165C for about 15 mins or till golden brown.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Kueh Bangkit (edited @ 2013)




 The latest video of making kueh bangkit @2013 CNY.
 My latest post on kueh bangkit is here





Making Kueh Bangkit is troublesome... you know why? That is because you need to fry the tapioca flour till light and fluffy, and it makes that whole house very powdery..need to do lot of cleaning up.

My daughter likes kueh bangkit very much!!! Haha...so I make this cookie specially for her.

Here is the Kueh Bangkit Recipes

Try to get very fresh tapioca flour. Please check the manufacturing date.
Get 1 whole grated coconut without the brown colour layer. 1 coconut can extract out about 150-200ml coconut milk.

Ingredients,

350g tapioca flour
5 pieces of pandan leaves
1 tsp of salt
2 large egg yolks
120g fine granulated sugar (2 tbsp to put into the coconut milk)
150ml of thick coconut milk
1 tbsp of butter (optional)Put in if you like the cookie to be buttery

Method

Wash the pandan leaves. Wipe them dry and cut into 3cm pieces

Use low heat fry the tapioca flour in the wok together with the pandan leaves till it is very light and fluffy. It takes about 15mins

Use low heat boil coconut milk, some pandan leaves with 2 tbsp of sugar( taken from the amount 120g fine granulated sugar)and salt. Leave to cool before use.

Beat egg yolks and the balance sugar till pale and creamy. Add the butter if you like the buttery smell.

Alternately add flour and coconut milk to the egg mixture slowly. The last addition of the flour should be done bit by bit to get a good firm dough. The dough should not be too wet or dry.

If it is too wet. The cookie will expand till the pattern disappear. If it is too dry the will be very hard.

Roll dough to 1/2 cm thick cut out cookie with the cookie cutter.Lay on the tray with baking paper. Baking at 160C for about 15 mins.

The old video of making kueh bangkit.