香草海綿蛋糕 Sponge Cake

Hi, I'm really lazy to make my own video, so I copy and paste again. I should tell you this video is very good. I have learned a lot from it. The same reminder again, make sure all the ingredients are at the room temperature.



材料:低筋麵粉140公克、雞蛋4顆 、牛奶30公克、砂糖206公克 、香草粉1小匙、鹽4公克、沙拉油30公克。

先把麵粉、香草粉一起過篩。
把蛋、糖、鹽一起加入調理盆中，馬上用攪拌機打散，不馬上打會讓糖包住蛋會讓蛋打不起 來，開始時攪拌機可以用快速打散，之後體積會膨脹5倍以上，打出來後的型態很像濕性發 泡的蛋糊。
把之前過篩的麵粉倒入盆中用慢速來攪拌，攪拌到麵粉完全與蛋糊結合即可。
把牛奶、沙拉油一起混和，取一些麵糊與牛奶、沙拉油一起攪拌，再倒回調理盆中用刮板攪 拌均勻這樣就好了。
把麵糊倒入活動烤模裡大約6~7分滿送進烤箱，烤箱溫度180度時間35分鐘左右。
烤完後等蛋糕變涼後在活動烤模的蛋糕周圍上壓一下，這樣就能脫模裝盤，這樣就完成香草 海綿蛋糕。








Making a sponge cake.

The ingredients are as follows:

4 eggs
sugar (206g)
cake flour (140g)
30ml of milk
30ml of sunflower oil
A teaspoon of vanilla extract
4g salt


You will need to use an electric mixer. Put the eggs in a clean mixing bowl, start at high speed. Add in the sugar and beat until the volume of the mixture increases, then change the beating speed to medium and continue to beat until it is stabilised. Then change to low speed and fold in the flour. You can use a spatula or a hand whisk to fold in the flour. Pour part of this flour mixture into the milk, oil and vanilla mixture and mix well. The oil mixture will become lighter therefore it will be easier to mix with flour mixture later. This way the cake batter will deflate less (to retain the air bubbles within) when both combined. Try not to over mix otherwise the cake will become hard.:( Bake the cake at a preheated oven temperature of 180° C for 35 mins.

Steamed Chicken／白斩鸡

Making Steamed Chicken at home is very economical. You can buy a kampong chicken at the NTUC supermarket for just $7.00. I learnt this simple and easy method from a cooking program on the TV. There are 2 methods. One is poaching by boiling the chicken in a pot of water.

Today, I'm using the steaming method to make this dish. You may ask... how long does it take to steam it to get a tender and juicy steamed chicken? Last time I always just try my luck. Agak agak lah.:) Haha....now no more.




Here are the guide.
Chicken weight and steaming time needed
about 1.3kg to 1.5kg Steam for 15 mins to 18 mins
about 1.6kg to 1.8kg Steam for 19 mins to 21 mins

Ingredients

You can use a whole chicken or just chicken parts

Mixture A
Mix 2 tbsp of water with
2 slices of ginger
1 tsp of salt
some spring onion
1 tsp of hua tiao wine

Rub the chicken with the mixture A. Place chicken on a big plate with the mixture A. Place it into the steamer only when water is boiling and then cover it. Steaming on high heat. DO NOT OPEN THE COVER DURING STEAMING. Follow the steaming guide. Turn off the fire when the time is up. BUT DO NOT OPEN THE COVER. Let it stay in the steamer for another 10 Mins. Remove the steamed chicken immediately when 10 mins is up. Transfer to a new plate to stop the cooking process. Use a stalk of spring onion to apply sesame oil onto the whole chicken and then leave to cool. Reserve the stock.

Chop the chicken into small pieces only when it has cooled down. Mix 1 tbsp of Lee Kum Kee Superior Light Soy Sauce with some chicken stock and sesame oil. Pour it over the chopped meat and it is ready to be served.










You can also stir fry some cabbage and carrot, add some chicken stock. The vegetable will taste really good.:)

Making Almond Biscotti

I decided to make biscotti today. Biscotti has a crunchy texture, and it need to be baked twice in the oven. It goes nicely with a cup of hot coffee or tea.


Rolling the sticky dough into a logs





Slicing the biscotti after the first baked, need to bake again after cutting


The Biscotti are ready to serve with a cup hot tea or coffee








Almond Biscotti

Ingredients
2/3 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
21/2 cups all-purpose flour
Pinch of cinnamon
1 tsp baking powder
3 Tbsp butter, softened
21/2 eggs beaten with 1 Tbsp vanilla extract ( the other 1/2 egg use for glazing )
2 cups baked whole almonds (skins still on)
Egg wash ( 1/2 egg mixed with a little water )

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C.

Mix the sugar, flour, cinnamon, baking powder, soft butter, and baked almonds in a large bowl, whisk eggs and vanilla extract in a small bowl until well blended. Add egg mixture slowly to the flour mixture until it forms into a sticky dough. You can mix them either with an electric mixer or by hand.

Take the sticky dough out and divide it into 3 pieces, rolling each into a log, flattened just a bit, place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush with egg wash.

Bake in a preheated 175 degree C oven until firm, but not too hard. Mine took about 30 minutes to bake.

Remove from oven and let rest for several minutes, slice on the diagonal with a bread knife.

Place slices onto the baking sheets; place in the still warm oven with the temperature off and the oven door closed for 30-60 minutes. The longer it stays in the oven, the harder it will become. Remove from oven and cool completely before storing in an air-tight container. Stored properly, biscotti can last up to a month.

Wholemeal Bread Bun

Wholemeal Bun


Making a cross cut on the bun





Shaping the bread dough

This bread is nothing special, I decided to make it because, I have some bread flour left on the shelf for quite while.

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!!!

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.

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.