Wobbly Cooling Snack

Who could resist the wobbly cute Jell-O snack? It's cooling, swimming through your throat and most definitely it satisfies your sweet tooth, in non overwhelming mode. So care to join me?

Cream Puff

I've always thought that making cream puffs or eclair is hazardous to your kitchen because of their different method used. So I gathered some courage and manage to make tons of it yesterday. It's still hazardous in terms of how many times you have to wash your beaters, pans and pots, but the result is rewarding :)

333 gr milk
168 gr butter
4 gr salt
250 gr bread flour
8 eggs

• Bring milk, butter, and salt to boil. When it boils, quickly put all the flour on the pan and using mixer, beat it with low speed on moderate heat until the dough forms a ball and pulls away from the side of the pan


• Then take it aside and beat with low speed the eggs, one by one until smoothly incorporated


• With whipping pipe, pipe about 4cm straight for eclair or round circle for cream puff.


• Bake in 200C for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and crisp
  

240 gr milk
130 gr sugar
1 egg yolk
75 gr cornstarch
rum, to your taste

• Separate about small bowl of milk to mix in with cornstarch and set aside


• On the sauce pan, put milk, sugar and egg yolk. Stir in the egg yolk until it's fully incorporated with the milk before turning on the fire. Bring to boil and stir in the cornstarch. Keep stirring until it boils again and set aside.


• Quickly stir on to cool the custard and when it cools down, pour your favourite rum and stir on until it's incorporated.
  

Serving: Cut off bit of the side of the cream puff and spoon or pipe in the custard. Then, sprinkle the top with icing sugar or top it with ganache.

Maccha Cake with Azuki Beans

Been wondering how to incorperate the maccha into standard cake recipes and here is the result. Still in smooth texture but it smells heavenly with green tea aroma. Maccha must be accompanied by its partner, the sweet azuki beans to be called complete. So I splashed some of the canned azuki beans inside my maccha cake :).


170 gr butter
150 gr sugar
3 eggs
130 gr cake flour
20 gr green tea powder
4 gr baking powder
2 gr vanilla essence
1/2 can azuki beans

• Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy in high speed and add in vanilla
• Reduce the speed to low and add the eggs until well incorporated
• Still in low speed, add in all dry ingridients and resume to high speed untill the batter are well blended
• Using 8' round baking tin, pour 1/2 of the batter and spread it evenly, with spoon, spread the azuki beans, and tope it off with the rest of the batter
• Bake it for 30-45 min in 180C
• Serving option: sprinkle the top with icing sugar

Marble Cake

I admit it, I'm not so creative this week. I want to make some full-proof and not a time consuming cake, so that's why it's marble cake this week. The whole process from preparing to washing the kitchen take a total of 1.5 hour, so it's quite fast. The cake itself is quite versatile. So long as you cream the butter and sugar correctly, your cake will not get deflated or dry or burn or whatever disaster that you can imagine. It also will not dry if you forget about it in the oven for 5 more minutes from the supposedly baking time, but off course longer than that it's a blackhole (with a burnt smell).

100 gr sugar
1 tsp Vanilla extract
200 gr butter
4 eggs
13 gr milk powder
4 gr baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
210 gr cake flour
10 gr choco paste

1. Cream sugar, vanilla and butter in high speed until light and fluffy.
2. Lower the speed then spoon in the eggs one by one, until each of them is incorporated.
3. Still in low speed, mix in all dry ingredients and turn back to high speed for 10 seconds, and set aside the batter.
4. Take about 4 scoops of the batter and mix it with the choco paste.
5. On an 8-inch round pan, already lined with the parchment paper, pour in half of the white better, the pour about 4 scoops of chocolate batter then top again with the remainding of the white batter. With toothpick, swirl around the batter until the top looks like a marble.
6. Bake it for 40 minutes at 180C.
7. After baking set it off to cool.

Chocolate Fudge Cake with Ganache Icing

I was craving for something chocolatey this weekend. So I'm came across 1 recipe from the text book for Le Cordon Bleu which I found very easy to do and the result was satisfying.

Fudge Cake

160 gr Unsweetened chocolate

160 gr butter

200 gr eggs

200 gr sugar

40 gr bread flour

1. Melt chocolate and butter, set aside

2. Beat egg and sugar in high speed until light and fluffy

3. Add in melted chocolate and fold in 1 directin with spatula

4. Add in flour, fold until well mix

5. Baked in 175C for 20-30 minutes

6. Set it to cool on the cooling rack for icing

Ganache icing

100 gr heavy cream

20 gr sugar

20 gr glucose

100 gr dark chocolate

1. Heat the cream, sugar and glucose to the point of boiling and take it off from the stove

2. Stir in chocolate until all melt and well blended

To set: pour the ganache over the cake and smooth it over with pallate knife

** Tips: store the left over ganache for chocolate muffin

Bird Nest Soup

I purposely purchased a slow cooker to make this soup (you can also call it a dessert, either way is fine). Bird nest is a delicacy. I like it because it tastes good. After cooked, it’ll look like lumps of transparent chewy gel, and it’ll just slip and melt directly to your throat. It’s presumed to have lots of health benefit, but the ones that I believe it’s true is that by consuming it regularly, you’ll see your skin will look more radiant and you’ll stay healthy till your old age (I have seen the evidences). I like the one that I had when I was in HK 3 years ago. They added Gingko Nuts and Dried Longan. So, I try out my version and here it is:

2 pc medium bird nest (soak 4-5 hours in water)
1 pack Gingko nuts
2 bar honey brown sugar
10 slice US ginseng (if you have the thinner slices, use more)
500 ml water

In the slow cooker bowl, put in bird nest, Gingko nuts brown sugar follow by water and bring to boil on the stove (you can use slow cooker directly but it’ll take 2 hours to boil) then transfer the bowl to the slow cooker and add in the ginseng. Let it stand for about 2.5 hours.
Best served cold, although it’s soothing to eat it warm.

You also can add on Honey dates on top of Gingko nuts but you must reduce the honey brown sugar in return and add more ginseng will add deeper flavor in your soup.

Vanilla Blueberry Crumb Cake

I made this cake yesterday and the result is quite nice, the only downside is that mine was a bit bloated for what they call it crumble. But, nevertheless, it tastes good with soft texture (I like this kind of outcome) and it's not so sweet. The recipe itself is from 'Chocolate & Vanilla' by Gale Gand. So here's the recipe copied over from the book:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 tsp pur vanilla extract
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 pint blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350F. Butter and flour a 9’ square cake pan or line it with parchment paper and set it aside.

In a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine 1 ½ cups of the flour, the granulated sugar, brown sugar, and butter on low speed until the mixture is blended and starts to forms clumps. Set aside 1 cup of the mixture to use for the crumb topping.
In a small bowl, whisk together the sour cream egg, vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, and salt until combined. Stir in the remaining ½ cup flour, then scrape this mixture into the mixer and beat on medium speed until it forms a smooth batter. Spread it into the prepared cake pan. Sprinkle the blueberries over the batter, press them down a little and then sprinkle with the reserved crumb topping.

Bake for 40 minutes or until the cake is form to the touch and a skewer or toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let the cake cool in the pan set on the cooling rack.

Pear Compote

Hohoho... I've been craving to make this pear compote eversince my friend gave me half bottle of red wine (free red wine --> I don't drink red wine and I'm not an alcoholic --> DESSERRTTTT on the go hahahaa)... Anyway, since I never do before, I did a research for the recipe (wow, they use lots of ingredients for a slow-cooked pear haha)... So due to the limited availability of ingredients in my kitchen, here we go:
Ingredients:
1 cup of red wine (I don't care what kind of red wine, as long as you like it)
3 green pears, peeled and cut big cubes
1/3 cup of sugar
1 tsp of vanilla escent (it will be wonderful if you use the real vanilla bean)
5 slice of peeled lemon/orange/grapefruit (in my case, I use grapefruit because I just happen bought them)
Sauce:
2 cup of milk (DO NOT USE NON-FAT MILK)
1/3 cup of sugar
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp of corn flour, diluted with water
1 tsp vanilla escent
3 tsp of ruhm (or to your taste)
How to make:
Sauce:
1. Put all the ingredients into a sauce pan except the corn flour, vanilla and ruhm then bring to boil, keep stirring to prevent the egg yolk to become a scramble egg
2. When it boils, start to pour the corn flour bit by bit until it is as thick as cream soup, then bring to boil one more time
3. Remove from heat and keep steering to prevent skin forming, put in vanilla and ruhm. Once it's a bit cool down, set aside and put inside fridge
Pear compote:
1. In a saucepan, put in all ingredients and slow cook around 1/2 hour or until the pear soft and absorb the wine colour, and the alcohol already gone, left with the sticky wine residue (don't throw this away!!!)
To serve:
On a plate, layer the sauce then place about 6-7 cubes of pear in the middle. With a teaspoon, splater the plate with the wine residue. Then top the pear with vanilla ice cream (I'm thinking of Hagen Daaz ice cream) ...

Bird Nest Dessert

Haha... Don't get me wrong. It's only the name. It does not mean that you have to use those expensive bird nests (actually you can, but I can't guarantee you the taste hahahaa... let's leave the bird nest for now). Lots of varieties can be derived from this simple recipe. You can put in your creative mind and voila, the new kind of dessert created
Ingredients:
1 pack of agar2, boiled in 400 ml water and 1/3 cup of sugar and chilled, shred and set aside
1 canned longan
1 canned lyche
How to make:
1. Mix all the ingredients in the big dessert bowl then add water if needed
PS: for variery:
1. Change longan and lyche with cocktail fruits
2. Change the syrup with rose, vanilla, or cocopandan syrup
3. Can mix #2 with condensed milk, then add grass jelly (green or black)
4. Can change syrup with fruit juice (eg. mix fruit juice and mango juice)