Tag Archives: Recipes: Dessert

Food overload

Posted on by

This week has been a fairly decent week with food. Abused the oven a little and decided that I had to learn how to cook a decent alfredo sauce.

supposed clones of the FA choc choc chip cookies

supposed clones of the FA choc choc chip cookies

Started off the week by deciding on a recipe posted on this blog, about cookies tasting like Famous Amos cookies. You know..there are loads of these recipes floating around the internet and it was hard to sieve out what sounded credible and what wasn’t. The quantity she posted sounded reasonable (there were recipes stating that you could get over 200 cookies). I wasn’t about to spend my Sunday morning making amendments to make lesser cookies. =P So I gave it a shot.

I tested two cookies first before I went ahead to bake the rest. I found that they were quite sweet, which wasn’t surprising considering the amount of sugar that went in. I had added about 1/2 cup of dessicated coconut as recommended by some other sites, to make it taste more like the ones from Famous Amos. I also added about 1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder to give it the chocolate colour. The cocoa powder seemed to take the edge off the sweetness, which made the cookie a little more-ish without it being too sweet. Putting it in the fridge to harden it a little seemed to help give it a little bit more of a shape than a flat gooey one.

Guess this would make a decent Xmas gift to hand out this year! Bonus, Ollie gets the offcuts haha.

Key Lime Pie

Key Lime Pie

It was Daddy Ting’s birthday on Tuesday, and I wanted to sort of bake him something that meant something to us. I remembered that we have raved about the key lime pie at Morton’s both in Singapore and in Houston. So I thought I would bake him that, though finding key limes here in Singapore would be interesting.

I found some large limes at NTUC and decided that they were a better choice that the tiny ones that we would use for sambal stingray. I mean, how many of those tiny ones would I have to squeeze to get decent juice for the pie?? I also had no idea how big key limes were and basically hoped for the best with the 6 limes that I had in that packet. Haha. I scoured around the internet for a recipe that seemed easy and would not send my blood sugar way up high. I quickly decided on this recipe from the BBC GoodFood website. Look, I have no qualms about using any recipes from the BBC GoodFood website or any of their printed magazines. I have used several of their recipes and have been happy with the results. No questions asked! Heh.

It turned out not that way I would have envisioned it, like the one from Morton’s, a more yellowy coloured filling but it was tart enough, with a hint of the condensed milk. Very light filling. The pie crust was a bit of a fail. I used digestive biscuits which I did not have enough off and ended up using Ollie’s Cheerios to supplement the shortfall. Haha. Hey, it kinda worked okay. I was looking around the house for something that I could replace with and Cheerios was the closest. I’m sure Ollie didn’t mind.

yikes

Posted on by

okay, didn’t realise that I have sorta neglected this blog for 2 months. I mean, with Twitter and Facebook..abit hard to get into the hang of posting an entry, with a photo.

but here’s my latest product from the oven – raspberry marble cheesecake

Raspberry Marble Cheesecake

got the recipe courtesy of my cousin, Elaine, who posted me a cookbook for my birthday last year, Martha Stewart’s Cupcakes. It was an entire book on cupcakes! Made the ‘mistake’ of taking the book to work and then had my boss flip through it, only to start marking the pages of cupcakes that I should be bringing to work. LOL.

Cooking is such a therapeutic exercise for me. Doesn’t do justice for my waistline but at least it allows me to forget about everything else and focus on the task at hand. Just bake, cook, puree, dice, chop, grind etc. Just yesterday, I spent the whole day preparing the ingredients to make rempah (paste). Just prepare and freeze it for further use. I’m getting the hang. =)

Have been venturing into more interesting cuisines. I’m a Nonya, yet I sorta know nuts about cooking the dishes that my grandma cooks. Lately, I’ve been testing a couple of dishes (i.e., sambal udang, ayam masak merah). Good lord..I’m never just say that they are delicious and end it at there. The amount of preparation that goes into it! I had to soak the dried chillies, then deseed it. I had to soak the shallots, and peel them (bucketloads of shallots!!!).  And then I had to fry the belacan (shrimp paste), and it stunk up my whole kitchen. My small food processor was put to the limit.

To think, all that preparation, just gone so quickly for each dish prepared. Hours of work gone in an hour. Phew. Now I know why my grandma keeps heaps of containers of processed spices in the freezer.

which reminds me..I gotta get down to frying those ikan bilis (anchovies) to make those sambal ikan bilis. 

even the hubby was put to the test when ‘milking’ the grated coconut. trying to get 250ml of fresh coconut milk from 100ml of water added to freshly grated coconut. yikes. but nothing beats fresh coconut milk. =)

weekend marketing for meats and veggies have taken an interesting turn. *laugh* the vendors are more familiar with me and have been dishing out advice on how to cook the meats and herbs. Veggie vendor will tell you how to fully utilize a stalk of lemongrass (green tip for tea, bottom white part for curries), and how to enable the flavours to come out. Pork vendor would tell me which cut of the meat is best for stirfry, and how to cook a decent pork spare rib with salted black beans. Chicken vendor would tell me which type of chicken should be used for soups, and how I should boil the herbs firs before putting the whole chicken in. Seafood vendor would tell me how I should go for the cheaper prawns cos they weren’t any different from the more expensive ones.

Just yesterday, I had the pork vendor arguing with the aquarium guy next door on how to cook pork spare ribs with salted black beans, whilst I just stood there awkwardly. haha. which also reminds me, crap..I forgot to take a picture of tonight’s dinner. MEH.

Gonna be attempting to try more dishes. Maybe Indian next? =)

Recipe for Raspberry Marble Cheesecake

BASE
1.5 cups graham crackers
3 tbsp unsalted butter
3 tbsp sugar

Preheat oven to 160⁰. Mix all together, put about 1 tbsp of the base in cupcake liners, and press down firmly. Bake them for 5 minutes, then take out to cool.

FILLING
2 lbs cream cheese (about 4 packs of Kraft Philly’s, I think 3 packs is sufficient)
1.5 cup sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 large eggs

Using an electric mixer on low, beat the cream cheese till light and fluffy. Add the sugar gradually and make sure it’s combined. Add pinch of salt, and vanilla extract. Mix. Add one egg at a time, making sure that it’s mixed well before adding the other.

RASPBERRY PUREE
6 oz fresh raspberry (i used frozen which worked fine)
1 tbsp sugar

Puree the raspberry till fine, and put it through a fine sieve to remove the seeds. Stir in the sugar and mix.

Spoon the filling into the cases, and drop some of the puree ontop of  the filling. Using a skewer, stir through to make the marbling effect. Place tray into a water bath with hot water, and bake for 30 mins. Cool the cheesake and put in the fridge to chill further till firm.

Category: Daily, Food | Tags:

scrubby wubby

Posted on by

Ingredients

  • 1 Seville orange
  • a little melted butter , for greasing
  • 100g plain chocolate , broken into pieces
  • 3 eggs
  • 280g caster sugar
  • 240ml sunflower oil
  • 25g cocoa powder
  • 250g plain flour
  • 1½ tsp baking powder
  • orange candied peel , to decorate

FOR THE CHOCOLATE GANACHE

  • 200g plain chocolate , broken into pieces
  • 225ml double cream 
  1. Pierce the orange with a skewer (right through). Cook in boiling water for 30 minutes until soft. Whizz the whole orange in a food processor until smooth; let cool.
  2. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4/fan 160C.Grease and line the base of a 23cm/9in round cake tin. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water or in the microwave for 2 minutes on High, stirring after 1 minute. Let cool.  
  3. In a large bowl, lightly beat the eggs, sugar and oil. Gradually beat in the puréed orange, discarding any pips, then stir in the cooled melted chocolate. Sift in the cocoa, flour and baking powder. Mix well and pour into the tin. Bake in the centre of the oven for 55 minutes, or until the cake springs back when lightly pressed in the middle. (Check after 45 minutes and cover with foil if it is browning too much.) Allow to cool for 10 minutes in the tin, then turn out on to a wire rack to cool completely.  
  4. Make the chocolate ganache: put the chocolate into a heatproof bowl. Bring the cream to the boil and pour over the chocolate. Leave for 2 minutes, then stir until smooth. Set aside until firm enough to spread over the cake – up to 1½ hours.  
  5. Transfer the cake to a serving plate. Using a palette knife, swirl the ganache over the top. Decorate with strips of candied orange peel. 

being Vesak Day yesterday, of course we had a day off from work. sooo..long weekend here we come!

except that we are having a really long weekend. For some reason, I keep thinking that it’s Sunday today, and was sorta mentally prepared to go back to work tomorrow. -_-” Now I’m starting to think that the weekend is REALLY long.

anyhoos, we did work yesterday, despite it being a holiday. popped over to my mom’s to cook lunch and to try out this chocolate & orange cake recipe from the BBC Good Food magazine (UK). Sure did something very new, i.e., boiling an orange. I wasn’t sure how soft it should be, so did my best. The recipe asked for a Seville orange, but I substituted it with a Valencia orange. I found out that Seville oranges were used for marmalades too! Not that I’ve ever seen a Seville orange..nor know why in particular Seville oranges. Oh wells. So I boiled it, blizted the whole orange in the food processor, and poured all of it into the mix.

The cake came out nicely, and the smell of jaffa was awesome! When it was fresh out of the oven, it smelt like chocolate, with a hint of orange and then when you took a bite of it, there were orange pieces in it, and the citrusy taste just hits you. mmM. I didn’t have time to make the ganache. Took the advice of one of the people who commented that they used yoghurt instead of the double cream that the recipe asked for. A much healthier option!

I brought a camera along, but forgot to take a picture of the cake. DOH. Ah wells, maybe the next dessert then. haha. I baked the cake cos of a colleague who’s lost her sense of taste, has never tasted a chocolate orange anything, and can’t imagine it either. Here’s to hoping that she can smell this one out!

Ohoh, it was our virgin attempt at doing our marketing at the wet market too! haha. We were so ignorant of the prices that the vendors could probably have ripped us off. But it was cool, the prices sounded right (and sooo cheap!!). Lunch cost us about S$10 for 4 people! and we still had leftovers. I reckon we would have saved about over S$10 shopping at the wet market as compared to shopping at the supermarket. Far out!

After all the cooking and baking at my parents’, we popped over to Donald’s grandparents place, since they lived nearby. And then the hardcore work began. Cos they were elderly, and cleaning was probably difficult for them, Donald and I thought we’d go over and give the place a decent scrub down. It was hard work, but soooo satisfying at the end of it all. =P Donald was sweating buckets, and disgustingly wet at the end of it all. Thank goodness for gloves man. I squished a fair few baby cockroaches. URRRRRGGGH. I think it took us an hour, cos we started when Little Nonya on Channel 8 started, and was almost done when it ended. haha, Donald’s gramps turned the tv off when it started, and we were like noooo, leave it on. I think it was an episode that we missed too.

Came home, showered and went out for a good meal. We were so hungry, and my man needed meat, which he didn’t get in the end. =P We ended up having sushi and not eating alot of it. You know the kind of feeling you get when you are hungry, everything sounds nice, and when you actually eat it, it wasn’t as good as how you envisioned it to be? Yar, that was it. Anyways, I didn’t even have any appetite for my Horlicks McFlurry from Maccas, which I was dying to try. =( Another day perhaps.

Gave the boys their spot on worming treatments today without any dramas, which was surprising! Usually Thomas is the docile one, and Marcus is ferocious when you grab him to give him the treatment. I reckon it’s got something to do with the scratching post. They scratch it, and when they are on one of the platforms, we give them a scratch. So maybe they don’t feel so threatened. Hmm.. Marcus did have a ‘I’ve-been-betrayed’ look on his face though. haha Too bad. =P

Off to do abit of a clean up today in my room. Bleh. I’ve got too much unorganised paperwork on the table, both from Australia and Singapore. And I think I need to repack my wardrobe too. I don’t have enough wardrobe space! And it’s not cos I’ve got too much clothes okay. I need more clothes if anything. *grumbles*