Strawberry Mousse Cake

I love Alex Goh baking class recipe books. It's easy to follow for amateur bakers and almost fail proof. I strongly recommend his cook book for amateurs. :)Yesterday made a lovely strawerry Mousse cake successfully and felt so happy when I ate the fruit of my labour this morning :) Even my kids give the thumbs up and mind u, they will usually give me good criticism haha.

A basic 7" sponge cake

Sponge cake

Ingredients

(A)

60g sugar

9g ovalette (cake emulsifier)

(B)

2 eggs (medium)

50g cake flour/top flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

(C)

1 tbsp water

(D)

30g melted butter/corn oil

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method

1) Pour (A) into mixing bowl and mix well.

2) Add (B) and whip till thick.

3) Stir in (C) with the batter.

4) Whip batter till light and fluffy.

5) Mix (D) till well blended. Pour into a 7" round mould.

6) Bake immediately at 180C for 30 mins.

7) Once baked, remove from mould immediately.

Strawberry Mousse

(A)

200g strawberry puree( around 7 big strawberries)

30g sugar

(B)

2 tbsp gelatine powder mix with 2 tbsp boiling hot water.

(C)

200g whipped cream(beaten to soft peak)

(D)

Strawberries

Method

1) When sponge cake cool, cut it into 2 horizontal layers with serrated knife.

2)Cook (A) till it boils, when sugar dissolved, switch off flame.

3)Pour (B) into (A) and stir well.

4) Cool mixture over ice water or wait till room temperature.

5) Immediately add (C) and blend well.

6) Cut strawberries into thin slices, about 2mm thick and place around side of 8" round ring mould.

7) Place 1st layer of sponge cake on the bottom of the ring. Put some 1/2 cut strawberries onto it and pour 1/2 of filling over it.

8) Top with 2nd layer of sponge cake and pour remaining 1/2 of filling over it and smooth it.

9) Refrigerate overnight or till firm.

10) Remove the cake ring, decorate as desired and arrange strawberries on top.

11) Serve.

Adapted from Alex Goh Baking Class "Creative Making of Cakes"

Meat Floss Bun/ Cheddar Cheese bun

Made some meat floss bun and cheddar cheese bun yesterday. This is the basic recipe from Alex Goh Baking Class, "The World of Bread". I used half the portion and it yield around 9 buns in total.









Basic Sweet Bun dough
Ingredients
(A)
240g Bread Flour
60g plain flour
55g sugar
5g salt
10g milk powder
2 tsp yeast

(B)
1/2 egg
150g cold water

(C)
30g butter or shortening

Topping (Meat floss bun)
Mayonaise
Meat floss

Topping (Cheddar cheese bun)
Grated Cheddar cheese
Sugar

Method

1) Mix (A) till well blended

2)Add (B) and knead to form a dough

3)Add (C), continue to knead for around 10 to 15 min to form a smooth and elastic dough.

4) Cover dough with clear film or moist towel. Let it prove for 50-60min or till double in size.

5) Divide basic sweet bun dough into 60g portions. shape into balls and rest for 10mins.

6) Dhape dough into long shape and put them on a greased baking tray to prove for 45mins.

7) Brush with egg wash and bake in the middle of the oven at 190C for 12 mins.

8) For cheddar cheese bun, after putting egg wash put grated cheddar cheese and sprinkle sugar on top before baking.

9) When cool, for meat floss bun, put mayonaise and meat floss on top.

Simple Glazed Icing Cupcakes

Ingredients
175g Self raising flour
2 tsp Baking Powder
60g caster sugar
150ml fresh milk
1 medium size egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
2 tbsp corn oil


Decorations: Chocolate hearts
Glaze Icing
250g icing sugar
2-4 tbsp water(according to preferance)
1 drop pink colouring

Method
1) Sift flour and baking powder together.

2) Add sugar into flour and mix well.

3) Mix milk, egg, oil and vanilla essence together.

4) Pour wet ingredients into flour and mix gently till all combined.

5) Bake at 200 C for around 15-20min or until skewer comes out clean.

Glaze Icing
1)Mix sugar, water together till well blended.
2) Add in pink colouring one drop at a time and mix till your preferred colour.
3) Clingwrap the container to prevent icing from glazing over.





NOTE: For chocolate flavour cupcake base, use 145g self raising flour and 30g cocoa powder.

Char Siew Pao

This is a char siew pao that can be made within 3 hours. Recipe is taken from http://auntyyochanaindex.blogspot.com/, tested and verdict is the pao skin is fluffy and fillings is tasty. Thumbs up!










Ingredients
Dough:
(A)
300 gm. Hong Kong flour

2 tsp. Pau King double-action Baking Powder

(B)

60 gm. castor sugar
2 tsp. Instant Yeast
35 gm. Shortening

(C)

140 ml. water

Fillings

250 gm. Char Siew (diced)

1 shallot - diced

1 Tbsp. Oyster sauce

1 Tbsp. Soya Sauce

1 tsp. sesame oil

130 ml. water (combined with 1 1/2 Tbsp. cornflour)

Salt and sugar to taste

oil for frying

Method
Dough:
(1) Sieve (A)into a mixing bowl.

(2) Add (B) and mix, then pour in (C) and knead till a dough is formed.

(3) Knead the dough with your hands for about 15 mins.

(4) Let dough proof for about 30 mins.

(5) Weigh and scale into small dough of about 30 gm. each.

(6) Wrap with fillings and seal tightly.

(7)Place onto greaseproof paper and leave to proof for another 30 mins.

(8) Steam over high heat for 10 mins.

Fillings:

(1) Heat up oil and fry the diced onion until fragrant.

(2) Add in Add in char siew and the rest of the ingredients.

(3) Cook till thick.

(4) Leave to cool before wrapping.

Stuffed Glutinous rice Chicken Wings

This is a very simple to made dish that is healthy and delicious too.

Ingredients

5 chicken wings with bone removed

Marinade

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp shao xing wine

Stuffings

Dry mushrooms soaked and diced

120g Glutinous rice rinsed

1 tbsp soya sauce

1/2 tsp salt

Pinch of pepper

Method

1) Marinate deboned chicken wings with oyster sauce and wine for half hour.

2) Mix the seasonings and ingredients for stuffings well.

3) Spoon 3 tsp of stuffings into chicken wings pockets.

4) Place chicken wings on a plate and steam at high heat for 50mins.

5) Serve hot.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I got this recipe from this really interesting baking website http://auntyyochana.blogspot.com/ and did some amendments to the proportion of the sugar since i did not like pastries that are too sweet. I also made my cookies bigger as I prefer cookies of a bigger size.

















Ingredients:

250 gm. Butter

1 tsp. vanilla essence

100 gm. castor sugar

90 gm. brown sugar

1 egg

320 gm. plain flour

1 tsp. bicarbonate of soda

200 gm. chocolate chips

Method:

(1) Beat butter, vanilla essence, sugar and egg with electric mixer until smooth.

(2) Add in flour and bicarbonate of soda and stir in chocolate chips.

(3) Pick up one heap tablespoon of mixture and roll into ball.

(4) Place the ball onto the tray and flatten it. Make sure you leave some spaces in between cookies as the mixture will expand a bit during baking.

(5)Bake at 180C for 15 mins or till golden brown.

(4) Cool on wire rack before storing in airtight containers.

Burger Bun

Homemade burger bun is always healthier without any artificial preservatives and additive.


Ingredients
(A)
400g Bread Flour
20g Sugar
6g Salt
1 tbsp Milk Powder
2 tsp Instant yeast


(B)
250ml water

(C)
30g shortening



Method

1) Mix (A) well, then add (B) and knead to form dough.

2) Add (C) and knead for 10mins to form a smooth dough.

3) Let dough prove for 45 mins or till double in size.

4) Divide dough into 80g portions, mould into balls and put onto greased tray.

5) Let it prove for 15 mins, then flatten slightly and prove for another 30mins.

6) Brush with water and sprinkle some sesame seeds on top.

7) Bake at 190C for 12-15mins.

8) Slice bun horizontally.

Mixed fruits Scones

Some scones for tea!











Ingredients

(A)

250g Plain flour

1 tbsp Baking powder

1/2 tbsp Milk Powder

Pinch of Salt

40g Sugar

(B)

45g Butter

(D)

130ml Fresh Milk

(E)

Mixed Fruits

Method

1) Sieve flour and baking powder together. Then mix all ingredients in A well.

2)Add (C) into the flour mixture using rubbing in method.

3)Then add (D) and make into a dough.

4)Add (E) and mix well.

5) Let dough rest for 15 min then roll out to 2cm thick.

6) Use a 5cm round cutter to cut out rounds and put them onto lightly greased tray.

7) Brush with eggwash(optional) and bake at 200C for 15-20mins.

NOTE: Do not overmix the dough or else the scones will turn out tough.

Braised Pork

Braised Pork or Lor Bak is a good dish to go with porridge, mantou and rice. It is very simple to make too.

Ingredients

500g pork belly or front thigh meat

Seasoning

3 cloves of garlic

1 star anis

1 stick of cinnamon

3 pieces of Danggui

1 tbsp dark sauce

1 tbsp soya sauce

120ml of water

1 small piece of rock sugar or 1 tsp of sugar

Method

1) Add in the water and seasonings into a claypot.

2) When the water boil, add in the pork.

3) Turn the fire to small.

4) Slowly simmer for half hour, turn the pork to the other side.

5) Simmer for another half hour. Switch off the fire.

6) Serve with rice or mantou.

Fried Carrot Cake ( Char Kway)

I fried my own carrot cake today. It is really simple and the ingredients are cheap and easy to assemble.

Plain carrot cake

Ingredients

500g of radish grated

2 cups of rice flour

2 cups of water

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp oil

Method

1) Grease a 7 " round tin and heat up a steamer.

2) Heat the skillet and add in oil. When the oil is heated up pour in the grated radish.

3) Stir fry the radish for around 15min until the radish is soft and the fluid has dried.

4) Pour rice flour and salt into a mixing bowl and pour in the water. Mix the flour and water well.

5) Add the fried grated radish into the flour mixture and mix well.

6) Pour the mixture into the greased tin.

7) Put the tin into the steamer and steam for 50 min, or until the centre has solidify.

8) Leave the cooked carrot cake to cool down completely before covering the tin with a plastic wrap and chill in the fridge.

9) Leave it over night or at least 8 hours.

Ingredients for frying the carrot cake

2 tbsp chai bor ( preserved radish)

1 garlic chopped

2 tbsp oil

Spring onion chopped

2 eggs beaten

3 tbsp fish sauce

1 tsp sweet sauce

1 tbsp black sauce

some pepper

Method

1) Dislodge the carrot cake from tin and cut into cubes of 3 cm each.

2) Heat up the oil in a frying pan, add in the garlic and chai bor, stir fry till fragrant.

3) Add in the carrot cake cubes, stir fry for 3 mins.

4) Make a well in the middle of the carrot cake cubes and add in the eggs.

5) Fry the cubes and eggs together till well mixed.

6) Add in the fish sauce, pepper, sweet sauce and black sauce.

7) Make sure the carrot cake is well coated with the sauce.

8) Add in the spring onion, switch off the fire and stir the spring onion into the carrot cake.

Note: Make sure the carrot cake is almost ready before adding the sweet sauce and black sauce or else the carrot cake will become bitter. If you are replacing the fish sauce with soya bean sauce, you should mix it together with the black sauce and sweet sauce first before adding to the carrot cake. This should also be done only when you are sure the carrot cake is already cooked.

Snowskin Mooncake

I had been doing alot of baking recently since I bought my first oven. However, I have not taken photo of any of my creation due to laziness haha. The next time when I take photo of my creation, I will also upload the recipe. Mid-Autumn festival is round the corner and I thought I will save some money and make some mooncakes. Being a fan of snowskin mooncakes, I decided to make these. I successfully made snowskin mooncakes, after 2 failures, which my mooncake skin turn out flaky and not smooth like those commercial ones. After doing quite a bit of troubleshooting, I finally made my first batch of decent looking ones.

Ingredients

Skin

90g Kao Fein
10g Tang Mien Fen (Wheat starch)
30g shortening

180ml water
4 tbsp sugar ( 80g sugar if you like it sweeter)
1 blade of pandan leaf
1 tbsp fresh milk

Filling

2 tbsp melon seeds
260g Lotus seed paste

Method

1)Boil water, add in pandan leaf and dissolve sugar. Cool the syrup then put in fridge to chill it.

2)Mix kao fein and tang mien fen together. Add shortening and use rubbing in method to mix in the flour into crumbly form.

3)Add in fresh milk and syrup into the flour mixture.

4)Knead into a soft dough, it should be mildly sticky. Do not overmix or else skin will be hard.


5)Mix melon seeds into paste.

6) Roll lotus seed paste into balls of 20g each. Set aside.


7) Roll the dough into balls of 30g each. Put a ball of dough between a transparent plastic wrap and roll it out.

8) Do not roll out too thinly or else the skin will break easily.

9)Gently pick up the rolled out dough and place one ball of lotus seeed paste in the middle.

10)Carefully press the opening shut and place the ball into the mould, making sure the opening is facing you.

11) Knock out the mooncake and chill it at least 1 hour before serving. Keep the mooncakes in container before storing in the fridge and the softness of the skin should last at least 4 days.

Note: All ingredients can be bought at Phoon Huat, including the lotus seed paste. But if you are free and adventurous enough, you could make your own, it's at least 2 times cheaper. Be warned though that it's tedious work and need alot of arm power since you need to stir the mixture for at least 1 hour. I spent around 5 hours altogether from cooking the lotus seed till it soften to having the end product. You could get the recipe of the lotus seed paste from the website given above, I have gotten the recipe for the snowskin mooncake from there too, but did some modification according to what I have experienced from my failures.