Longan Tofu

This recipe was given by my Mum. I made this today, thanks to the humid weather now. I feel sticky almost everyday and of course very very hot! So I decided to make something which can cool and freshen myself. This is actually a very simple dessert but I had tried failing a few times too...lol...why failed? The boiling part is really important ok? Must remember and take note.

A cup of cooling dessert for the hot and unbearable weather is the best!!

Here's the recipe:-

Ingredients:-
1 Packet of Agar Agar powder
8 Bowls of water
1 Bowl of Evaporated milk
1 Bowl of Sugar
2 Cans of Longan
1 Can of Honey Sea Coconut

Directions:-
1. Mix all ingredients together in a pot, give it a good stir.

Brand of Agar Agar powder and evaporated milk I used.

Type of bowl I used for measuring the ingredients.

2. Bring the pot of mixed ingredients to the fire and boil. Stir the mixture for awhile and leave it to let the heat warm the mixure up. After mixture is being heated up, stir for a little while again and leave in the heat again to boil.

3. You should be able to see many small white bubbles floating on top of the mixture. See picture.

This is still not ready yet...

4. Continue to let the mixture boil until see big bubbles appeared. See video.

                                     

Now your mixture is ready!!

5. Remove from heat let the mixture cool down for awhile before pouring into an airtight container. Let mixture cool down completely .

6. Put into fridge and let mixture to harden. After mixture is harden, cut into pieces and add in cans longan and honey sea coconut.

Enjoy your dessert!! It's best to serve cold!

Chocolate Mud Cake

This is one of my favourite Chocolate flavoured cake. And of cos is my Dad's favourite too. He's a very BIG fan of any delicious chocolate cakes. When Mum tasted this mud cake, she said this was very nice, moist cake and of cos not too sweet. This cake is easy to make and I like the bitter sweet taste, moist of this tasty mud cake. I like to top the mud cake with some hot chocolate glazing and have it with a cup of hot tea :)

This recipe is from Alex Goh, one of the baker whom I always bought his recipe books.

Yummy!! (^_^)

Recipe to this delicious cake:-

Ingredients:-

A) 1/2 Tbsp Instant coffee powder

     150g Boiling water

     250g Sugar

B) 250g Butter

     250g Dark Chocolate

C) 250g Plain Flour

     40g Cocoa Powder

     1 Tsp Baking soda

D) 3 Eggs

Directions:-

1. Grease and line a 9 inches round mould with baking paper.

2. Combine (A). Stir until the sugar dissolves. Add in (B). Stir over low heat until dark chocolate and butter are melted.

3. Add the above mixture into sieved (C). Mix until well blended. Add in (D) and mix until well incorporated, but do not over beat.

4. Pour the batter into the prepared mould. Bake at 140 degree for 1 hour, or test it with a skewer. Leave in the mould until it is cooled completely.

5. Remove the cake from mould.

Top with ice cream is really yummy too!



Pineapple Tarts

This is the best pineapple tarts recipe which I had came across so far. This recipe was given to me by my auntie. Texture of these delicious pineapple tarts skin melt in your mouth, which I personally like melt in the mouth type of pineapple tarts rather than those harder texture type. For the fillings, I used the ready made type which can be easily bought from most supermarket. I make my pineapple tarts in balls (see picture) as it is a faster way.

Here's the steps to delicious pineapple tarts...

Ingrdients:-
1 packet ready made pineapple fillings
2 pieces of salted butter (250g each)
800g of plain flour
4 egg yolks
1 spoon of sugar (I used the metal spoon which we use for eating rice)
1/2 spoon of baking powder (I used the small spoon for drinking tea/ coffee)
1/2 spoon of salt (I used the small spoon for drinking tea/ coffee)

Egg yolks (Optional: for glazing)


Directions:-
1. Roll the ready made pineapple fillings into small balls of equal size.

2. Combine all Ingrdients in the mixing bowl and using the table mixer to mix all ingredients until well coporated. You should get a soft dough.

3. Wrap the pineapple fillings with the dough from No.2. Make sure each balls are equal in size. Place the pineapple tarts on the baking tray, egg brush the top of the pineapple tarts if you want (I don't egg brush mine).

4. I bake my pineapple tarts at 160 degree for around 15-20 mins.

5. After the tarts are ready, remove from oven and let cool before storing into containers.

Done!

Almond Cookies

This recipe was from Auntie Yochana, this is really nice! My cousin made it and told me that this recipe was good so I decided to give it a try and this was really good! My dad and hubby loved the almond cookies I made with this recipe. Do try this out.

Nicely cracked Almond Cookies

Ingredients:-
150g ground almonds
230g of plain flour
150g caster sugar (I find it too sweet and reduced to 120g instead)
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
150ml of corn oil or sunflower oil

1 egg yolk (for glazing)


Directions:-
1. Combine all the ingredients together in a mixing bowl and mix into a dough.

2. Roll into small balls of 7g each and place on the baking tray.

3. Brush the top with egg yolks.

4. Bake at 140 degree for around 13-15 mins.

5. Let the cookies cool down before storing in containers.

Done!

Sugee

Chinese New Year is just 3 weeks away...I started my cookies production yesterday with butter cookies and today I baked Sugee. This Sugee recipe is my Mom's favorite. The texture of this Sugee are 酥  while the texture of Suji I made previously are more crunchy and harder...I tripled this recipe as I'm giving some to my friends. Do try out this recipe for the coming CNY :)

The recipe is as follows:-

Ingredients:-
150g Ghee
75g Icing Sugar
1 Egg Yolk
1/4 Tsp of Salt
1/2 Tsp of Vanilla Essence (I omitted this)
200g Plain Flour
40g Grounded Almond Powder
1 Tsp Baking Powder


Directions:-
1. Using a table mixer to beat ghee and icing sugar until light yellow in colour. Add in egg yolk, vanilla essence and salt and mix until well combined.

2. Add in sifted flour, baking powder and grounded almond powder. Mix until a dough is formed.

3. Roll into small balls of 8g each and place each ball in the baking cases.

4. Bake at 140 degree for 15-20 mins.

5. Remove from oven and let cool before storing into air tight containers.

Hope you like this recipe :)

Chocolate Eclairs

I love Chocolate Eclairs, before I know how to make my own eclairs I always buy from Four Leave bakery. They sell nice eclairs and awesome cakes! Making eclairs are easy but you will need time...for making the puff, the fillings & the chocolate ganache. What I will usually do is to make my chocolate ganache before hand, the chocolate ganache can be kept in the freezer for months so when I wanna use it, I'll just take out scope the amount I want and using double boiler to melt it.

Not forgetting to mention that my brother is a BIG fan of my Chocolate Eclairs. Every time he sees me making eclairs, he's sure to WOW!! Enough of the story, here's the steps to delicious eclairs.

Ingredients:-
For the Chocolate Ganache
125g Dark Chocolate (Chopped)
150g Whipping Cream
15g Butter
1/2 Tbsp Honey

Directions:-
1. Cook whipping cream and honey until boil.

2. Add it into the dark chocolate. Stir until the chocolate is melted completely.

3. Add in butter and mix until smooth and well combined.

First before making the puff, brush the baking tray with margarine or butter. Then sprinkle some flour and make sure the baking tray are covered fully with flour. This is to make sure that the baked puff can be easily removed out from the tray. My sister taught me this method :) Previously I just piped the puff batter straight on the tray and I had a very hard time removing the puff and I always get broken bottom puff which can't hold the filling.

Ingredients:-
For the puff
60g Cake Flour (Sifted)
60g Bread Flour (Sifted)
80g Unsalted Butter
200ml Water
4g Sugar
2g Salt
4 Eggs (Beaten)

* Mix cake and bread flour together

Directions:-
1. In a pot boil water, unsalted butter, sugar and salt until small bubbles appeared.

2. Remove the pot from heat, add in the cake and bread flour. Using a rubber spatula with fast speed to stir everything into a soft dough.

3. Put the pot back to the heat, stirring the dough a few round, remove from the heat.

4. Add some beaten eggs into the soft dough and stir in rounds. DO NOT add the beaten eggs in all at one time. Add in bit by bit. You need not need to use up all the beaten eggs.

5. You know the puff batter is in the right condition when you see a "triangle" shape is formed when you lift up the batter using the rubber spatula. See picture.

6. Pipe the puff batter on the prepared baking tray in circle or finger shapes depending on your preference.

7. Lightly brush the surface of the puffs with the left over beaten egg, then using a fork to press the surface of the puffs lightly so that you won't see any sharp pointed batter.

8. Baked at 160 degree until puffs become brown colour or cooked.

9. Remove the puffs from oven and let cool completely.

Baked Puffs

Ingredients:-

For the Chocolate Cream Fillings

250g Milk

2 Large Egg Yolks

25g Sugar

1 1/2 Tbsp Corn Flour (Sifted)

100g Bittersweet Chocolate (Melted)

18.5g Unsalted Butter (Room temperature)

Directions:-

1. Boil the milk.

2. Using a hand whisk to whisk egg yolks, sugar and corn flour in a bowl.

3. When the milk is boil, pour the hot milk into the yolks mixture. Using the hand whisk to stir the mixture until well coporated. Strain the mixture.

4. Bring the mixture to boil. Using a wooden spatula keep stirring over the heat for about 10 seconds. Add in the melted chocolate. Stir until the mixture thicken.

5. Remove from the heat.

6. Add in the unsalted butter and stir until well combined.

7. Let the chocolate cream cool.

8. After the chocolate cream had cooled, pipe into the ready made puffs.

9. After all puffs are piped with chocolate cream filling, using our fingers to over turn the puffs to let the surface of the puff to be coated with the chocolate ganache.

10. Keep the eclairs refridgerated and you will get to taste delicious eclairs!

Fruit Tartlets

Made these cute little tarts yesterday. My brother is a BIG fan of my fruit tartlets, he asked why made so little only? I'll make these tarts bigger in size in future like the egg tarts size...I didn't make the custard cream of these tarts too sweet as the fruits on top are already sweet. See my pictures of these cuties.

Ingredients:

For the Pastry
125g of Chilled Butter
55g Icing Sugar
1/2 Egg White
1 Egg Yolk
200g of Plain Flour

Directions:
1. Using the electric mixer beat the butter and icing sugar till well mixed.

2. Add in the egg white and egg yolk to mix.

3. Add in flour bit by bit into the mixture No. 1 and 2.

4. You should get a soft dough. Wrap the dough up until a more harden condition. I let my dough chill overnight in the fridge.

5. Take some dough (depending on how big your mould is) and press into the mould. Then using a fork to "poke" some holes on the dough.

6. I baked my pastry at 140 degree until brown or fully baked.

7. Remove from oven and let the tarts cool completely. See picture.

Baked tarts

For the custard cream
400ml Milk
4 tablespoons of Sugar
4 tablespoons of Custard Powder
1 tablespoon Corn Flour
2-3 drops of Vanilla Essence
Mirro Gel (optional)

Directions:
1. Heat milk and sugar in a pot until warm and sugar dissolve.

2. Place custard powder and corn flour in a bowl. Pour half of the warm milk and stir well (I used 1 hand to pour the warm milk and another hand to use a hand whisk to stir at the same time so to avoid any lumps). Mix well.

3. Pour the mixture into the remainging milk and bring to the stove using low heat and keep stirring in a same direction non stop. The mixture will get thicken.

4. Add in the vanilla essence and stir. You should get a very smooth custard cream. See picture.

Smooth texture of the custard cream

5. Using a spoon and scope some custard cream and place into the baked tarts. See picture.

Tarts filled with custard cream

6. Cut some fresh fruits or canned fruits and place on top of the tarts. Brush some mirro gel on the top of the fruits to have a shining and nice looking tarts. If you don't have any mirro gel, it is ok to omit it.

7. Done and ready! I chill my tarts in the fridge.

* It is advisable not to keep the tarts for days, the tarts will turn soft.