German cookies

A very famous chinese new year cookies among Malaysia and Singapore bloggers since year 2011. It took me 4 years to try out the recipe. lol.

Ingredients:
125g unsalted butter
40g powdered brown sugar(I reduced to 30g)
80g unbleached flour(sifted)
125g potato starch

Method:
1. Beat butter and brown sugar until creamy and pale in color.
2. Add in flour and potato starch. Mix well.
3. Lay parchement paper on baking tray.
4. Form small balls(about 6g each) and place on parchment paper.
5. Use the back of a fork to press on each of the balls.
Tips: After each press, dip the fork in water. This will avoid the dough to stick on the fork.
6. Bake at preheated oven at 170'c for 15 minutes.

Even though I have reduced the sugar, but I still feel that the butter content and sugar is a bit on the high side for toddlers. Luckily my son prefer the flaxseed crackers. He said it is pancake. :p

Flaxseed crackers

I will try to adapt any recipes with the healthy ingredients on my kitchen shelf. This recipe is quite similar to the almond cracker recipe. For this recipe, you can substitute the flaxseed with sesame seeds. And if you have a digital scale that can be reset to zero, then you can prepare this with a single bowl and a spoon, which means less cleaning to be done later. ;) I use a salad bowl.

Ingredients(This recipe yields 2 tray):
20g melted unsalted butter
2 medium eggs(~100g)
30g powdered brown sugar
60g sifted low protein flour
100g flaxseeds

Method:
1. Beat butter and sugar with a spoon until sugar melted.
2. Add in eggs and mix well.
3. Fold in flour and flaxseeds.
4. Lay parchment paper on baking tray.
5. Scoop a spoon of batter on the parchement paper, use the back of the spoon to spread out to average and thin layer.
6. Bake at preheated 170'c for 10 to 15 minutes until slightly golden.

Molasses Oatmeal Cookies

The idea of this recipe comes from Barbara's Smackimals cookies. I bought one pack and found that it is too sweet so I decided to make my own. I like this recipe because oats and molasses are good. All my cookies recipes use minimum sugar, so if you find that store bought cookies are too sweet to your liking, you should try making your own cookies. Making cookies is fast and easy!

Ingredients:
120g oats(I used rolled oats, instant oats is fine too)
120g flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp sea salt
70g molasses sugar
1 cup/220g oil(I used grapeseed oil)

Method:
1. Put all ingredients in food processor and pulse until well mix. If you do not have a food processor, then just knead with hands.
2. Take out the mixture, knead into a dough. If too dry add a bit of oil, if too sticky add a bit of flour.
3. Keep in refrigerator for 20 minutes.
4. Roll out and shape with cookies cutters.
5. Bake in preheated oven at 150'c for about 10minutes.

Italian Cookies

savoury cookies with tomato and mixed herbs

I bought one pack of organic tomato powder. It can be used in the recipes that require very rich tomato flavour but do not allow too much liquid. I created my own version of tomato cookies. While baking the first tray, I was thinking of discarding the second tray if the taste is horrible. Luckily it turned out nice. So I moved on to bake the second tray.

Ingredients:
70g low protein flour
60g rice flour
30g potato starch
1/2tsp baking powder
2 tbsp lemon juice
1tbsp tomato powder
1/4tsp sea salt
2 tbsp brown sugar
italian mixed herbs
black pepper
extra virgin olive oil

Steps:
1. Mix all the dry ingredients.
2. Add in lemon juice.
3. Add in some olive oil and knead into dough. Just add olive oil until it can bearly stick together to form a dough.
4. Roll out into thin layer of about 0.5cm thickness.
5. Cut into desire shape with cookies cutter.
6. Bake 10-15 minutes in preheated oven at 180c.

Jelly Mooncake Recipe

With no indications, my hard disk submitted resignation letter to me two hours after my previous post. Even tough I have most of my data backup, but I still lost some of the recent works. So, no more jelly mooncake photos to share(see previous post for photos). :( Anyway, here is the recipe that I have promised earlier.

Egg Yolk(Make about 50)
=======================
Ingredients:
50g lotus paste
250 water
1/2 tbsp agar-agar
100g sugar
90g fresh milk
1/4 tsp salt

Method:
Mix all the ingredients and bring to boil. Add few drops of orange coloring. Pour the mixture into the mould. Remove from the mould when it is set.

Filling(Make about 24)
======================
Ingredients:
240g fresh mango paste/sweet corn paste(canned)/red bean paste/lotus paste
480ml coconut milk
130-150g sugar
1tbsp agar-agar powder
100ml fresh milk
1/4 tsp salt

Method:
Mix all the ingredients and bring to boil. Pour the mixture into the small mooncake mould and place the egg yolk in the center. Remove from the mould when it is set.

Mooncake skin(Make about 24)
============================
Ingredients:
21/2 tbsp agar-agar powder
2l pandan flavoured water(Boiled water with pandan leaves)
120-150g sugar
4 tbsp condensed milk 4

Mango filling: mango essence(optional) and yellow colorings
Sweet corn filling: green colorings
red bean filling: rose essence(optional) and red colorings
Caramel lotus filling: 4 tbsp instant nescafe

Method:
Mix all ingredients and bring to boil. Add related flavours and colorings. Pour the mixture into the big mooncake mould until 80% full. Slowly put in the filling when the mixture is half set. Remove from mould when set.

Peanut Butter

I have new gadget!

It is a 800W, 2000RPM multifunction blender which could do a lot of wonders. Even though it is a more powerful blender, I would have hesitated in buying it as I am targeting on Kenwood Prospero which comes with a free blender attachment. But I am still very excited when I received it as a gift.

This powerful blender can blend almost everything into fine and smooth texture so you do not have to do filtering. It can blend ice cubes too so I could use it to make smoothies or even ice-cream. Another great advantage of this blender is it can take in boiling water. The food will be cooked when you blend it with boiling water. So, there is no need to cook the food after blending. A good example will be soya bean.


brand new blender

The first thing I made using this blender is peanut butter. It was very time consuming as the peanut had to be toasted and then the peanut skin had to be removed. The toasted peanut was blended together with extra virgin olive oil and brown sugar. I could smell the nice aroma of peanut when I opened the lid. I slept at 1am to get this done.

This morning I blended organic 10-grain rice(十谷米） with this blender. Will blog about it when I have time.


Peanut butter

Chinese New Year Sticky Cake with Dessicated Coconut

I had a long CNY break, 11 days to be precise.
CNY was for quality family time, old friends reunion and relative visiting, with lots of good food. :p
Everything seemed to be so wonderful until I lost my handbag on the last day.
Okay, that was about 2 weeks ago.
Now everything is back to the normal track.

This was a lovely snack with CNY sticky cake.
The sticky cake was steamed until it was warm, soft and melted.
Then, it was coated with dessicated coconut.

Something sweet for the Valentine Day, even though it was not planned.
Happy Valentine Day to all my readers!

Arrowroot for CNY

One would never notice that their baby is ugly, same for me.
I spent one whole afternoon peeling and frying arrowroot.
For a first timer, of course the process wasn't that smooth.
I cut my fingers, cracked my nails and had sore throat the next day.
But at the end of the day, in my humble opinion, I somehow felt that the outcome was perfect. :p
Until just now my colleague pointed at my photo and told me that my arrowroot has ugly edges.
My heart was broken. Sob Sob.
I am not going to forgive him for waking me up from my dream. :p

Prawn Fritter

There was this Yonex Japan Open, followed by Macau Open last weekend.
Live started from 2pm and ended around 5pm.
I do not have a habit of enjoying snack in front of the TV.
Of course, I won't say no to it.
Another reason was I wanted to clear my refrigerator stocks before my trip.
I had a small box of prawn, half chicken, fish and etc.
A plate of all-time favourite prawn fritter and a pot of chinese tea would be a good choice.

I bought this tempura flour from Tesco.
Mixed with water and added in some salt and pepper, and the batter was ready.
Wasn't it simple?



Finished it in no time as it was so crispy, hot and nice.