Almond Biscotti

I did not really have a good experience with biscotti as the first piece that I tried almost broke my teeth. Later then I found out that it is meant to be dunk into the coffee. But I still cannot appreciate this cookie until I tried the thinly sliced version. It is so addictive. Nutty and eggy.

I decided to make it at home as this type of cookie comes with a huge price tag. I tried this recipe from Food-4Tots since I have all the ingredients on hand.

The steps are easy, only thing to take note of is to flour your work surface generously. After the first bake, we have to slice the log into 0.3cm slices. Apart from a few breakages at the ends, most of them stayed intact. :p This thickness produced very crispy cookies. Love this recipe to the max. Just to take note, one recipe only yield 52 slices, quite a small batch, insufficient to satisfy my appetite.

Pandan Melting Moments

I saw this recipe in the June 2011 Good Food Magazine. I love this magazine. The photos in it are so beautiful and well-taken. The recipes will make me want to jump out of my bed and start cooking. Hee hee. This is one of the recipes that I have tried. This cookie is actually accompanied with a coconut cream. Since I am not a fan of cream and these cookies are meant to last for at least a week, filling them with cream is not a wise option. 

This is a relatively simple recipe to put together. I used a zip top bag instead of a piping bag. Not a good choice. The zip top bag spilt along the seam after I piped half of the cookies and I was in a big mess when it split. To save myself from more agony, I just used a teaspoon and drop the remaining dough on the sheet pan and baked them. The rosettes held their shapes well after baking and the dropped cookies looked like the Danish butter cookies, just that they are in green. 

No one can detect the pandan flavour in my cookies. I think I need to put in more pandan paste. Nonetheless it has beautiful butter flavour. My husband and I renamed them as Green Butter Cookies. :p But my parents feel that it is too sweet. They still prefer my Chocolate Chips and Almond Cookies. Opps. I have not blog that yet. Hee hee.

Ingredients:
200g unsalted butter, softened
100g icing sugar ( I will reduced to 80g the next time)
4 tbsp pandan juice ( I replaced with 1 tsp pandan paste and top up with water till i get 4 tbsp)
225g plain flour
4 tbsp cornflour

Methods:
1. Preheat oven to 160 degree Celsius.
2. Beat the butter, icing sugar and pandan juice until light and fluffy.
3. Sift in the plain flour and corn flour, and mix thoroughly until all the ingredients are well combined.
4. Place the dough in pipping bag fixed with a star nozzle and pipe the mixture into 1.5 cm rosettes or 3 cm
    long fingers.
5. Bake for 10-12 min until the cookies are firm and lightly golden. Set aside to cool on a wire tray.

Deep Fried Nian Gao in Spring Roll Pastry

What is sticky, sweet, gooey and delicious? Caramel? No. What I am describing is a traditional Chinese delicacy that is available only during Chinese New Year, the Nian Gao. It is made from glutinous flour, sugar and water, steamed for many hours in a mould lined with banana leaves. I have heard of several ways of eating it but I still prefer the deep fried version.

My mum used to sandwich the Nian Gao in between a slice of sweet potato and a slice of yam then coat it with a batter, deep fried till golden brown. I have been eating this once every year for twenty over years and not tired of it yet. :) But my mum always complained to me that the oil splatters everywhere, even onto her arms when she is deep frying them. So when I saw what Wendy did with her Nian Gao, I proposed this idea to my mum and she was in for it.We did some modification to the recipe. Instead of mashing the yam and seasoning it, we just cut the yam into rectangles, rubbed them with salt and steamed them for 10 to 15 minutes. After which, the assembling part is the same as what Wendy did.



The outcome is simply divine. Haha. When it just came out of the fryer, the Nian Gao is gooey and the pastry is crispy. Left it to cool for a while, the Nian Gao becomes a bit chewy and the pastry is still crispy. This is my favourite texture. If left overnight, the pastry will turn soft and crumbles but still taste good. The pastry will regain its crispiness after toasting but the pastry looks darker and full of wrinkles. Tastewise is as good as before. Yum Yum.

Traditional Delicacy

Chinese New Year Bakes

It is Chinese New Year again. This is my favourite time of the year. Somehow or rather I got very busy during this period every year. Be it at work or at home. Time is always not enough. However, I will still set aside one day to make my dad's favourite pineapple tarts. Ever since my auntie stopped making hers, my dad could not find the type of tarts that he adores until November 2008. Haha. I found a recipe in the internet and decided to try out. He fell in love with them and ever since, he will ask me to make it every CNY. I am sorry to the owner of this recipe because I could not recall where I took it from and thus could not acknowledge it in my post. I am thankful that you shared this recipe and I have been very loyal to this recipe. Making it every year. :)

This year, I made 352 open faced tarts with the help of my mummy. I prepared the tarts and she rolled the pineapple paste into little balls. I used store bought one as my family like the taste. Not too sweet and it goes well with the tarts. This recipe yields melt-in-your-mouth tarts. The downside of this recipe is that it is hard to pack them into the containers. Very delicate. But who cares. It is for our own consumption. ;)


Pineapple Tarts (make about 70 tarts)

300g plain flour
half tsp of salt
4 tbsp corn flour
200g butter
2 egg yolk

Instructions:
1) Sieve flour, corn flour and salt into a mixing bowl.
2) Rub in cold butter and add in the egg yolk to form a dough.
3) Roll our the pastry into 0.5 cm thick and stamp out.
4) Place the little pineapple paste balls on top and bake in preheated oven at 150 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes or till the bottom is light brown.
5) Cool them on racks and store in air tight container.

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #3: My Favourite CNY Cookie. Hopefully I am not too late.

I am Back!!! (Again)

Ever since I started this blog in 2008, I have not been updating it as regularly as what it should be. I am really guilty of that. Sigh... Never place my blog under my to-do list and I began to forget about it. I still visit my own blog very often as this is the door to my food blog-o-sphere. I hoped from one blog to another during my lunch time but could not leave any comments. I suppose the computer at my workplace barred us from doing that. Sad. :(

Though I was not actively blogging, I am actively cooking and baking as and when I have the time to spare. Now that I have a kitchen of my own, I stock up with equipment and ingredients that I used to dream of having in the past. I was very happy with my house until this morning when I discovered that I was invaded by ants. I kept all my things clean and tidy but where do they come from. The worse thing was I could not find the source of these invaders. Anyone has any solutions to get rid of these ants asap? I could not stand the sight of them and not to say cohabit with them.

Back to my food blog. One of my New Year resolution is to update my blog every fortnightly and leave comments in the blogs that I visit. I even set alarm in my handphone to remind me of that. Really serious this time. (Hope so :p) Another reason is because I bought a toy that I was dreaming of every day. Kitchen Aid. Haha.

This is my most treasured toy. Most expensive too. I chose the gray one because of the Matt finish. And the first recipe that I tried out with this toy is kuih balu. I made this once last year but failed terribly. All my kuih got stuck in the mould. To make the matter worse, I used a recipe that called for 6 eggs. Crazy mess. How come I never thought of halving it at all. Never mind. Lesson learnt.

This time round, I did my homework before hand and I decided to use the recipe from Elinluv's Tidbits Corner. The sweetness is just nice for me. However the texture did not pass my mark. It looks like sponge inside, big holes. I believed that I should have used a lower speed to beat the eggs instead of the highest one. And my folding skills as well, need more practise. Lesson learnt - even though you have a good piece of equipment, you still need skills to produce good results. I will definitely try again.

Puppy's Creation 001 - Pineapple Tarts and Peanut Cookies

Wah. Almost 2 months since Puppy updates my blog. So sad. But I don't blame her. She is so busy that she hardly has time to play with me. Luckily she still bakes, at least once every two weeks. She picked up this hobby since September 2008. Until now, she has 15 creations. Maybe I start introducing her most recent masterpiece.

This is the first year she bakes her own Chinese New Year cookies. She attempted pineapple tarts and peanut cookies. The pineapple tarts taste good. The pastry was the softer kind, not cookie-like and it melts in my mouth. The pineapple jam was from Phoon Huat. Not too sweet, just nice for me. The ingredients are simple and easy to make. This recipe is definitely a keeper. See, even the stupid husky is trying to pry open the bottle to get one. Haha.

The second CNY goodies she made was peanut cookies. Another simple recipe for a greenhorn like her. I can describe the method to make these cookies in one sentence - mix all the ingredients in a big bowl and knead it into a dough. Haha. That's it. Then you can make them into the shapes and sizes that you want. Haha.

Puppy gave Barney one bottle of each creation. Hope he had enjoyed the goodies and the cookies did not increase his waistline. Haha.