Pineapple-Upside-Down Cake

Today, hubby had a sudden hankering for Pineapple-Upside-Down Cake. Good ole google turned up the recipe by Nigella: www.nigella.com/recipes/view/pineapple-upside-down-cake-51.  It was very easy to do. Adapted recipe below ...

Pineapple Upside Down Cake ... soft, moist, yummy & nostalgic!

Ingredients
1 Tbsp of melted butter (for buttering dish)
2 Tbsp brown sugar
4 slices of pineapple (from tin) + 3 Tbsp of juice
6 glace cherries, halved.

100g cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
100g butter, softened
100g caster sugar
2 eggs

Method
1) Preheat oven to 200°C.
2) Butter a 9" tin or dish that is NOT loose-bottomed/springform (or it'll leak).  As I was using a Pyrex dish for the cake, I microwaved 1 Tbsp of butter in it, then spread it around. 
3) Sprinkle brown sugar over the base & arrange the pineapple & cherries nicely.

4) Put all the other ingredients in a mixer/processor & mix till batter is smooth.
5) Pour the batter carefully over the fruit in the tin.
6) Bake for 30 mins.
7) To unmold, loosen edges with a knife, put a plate over the top, and flip over. Voila!

Pineapple UD Cake baking in Pyrex dish

Homemade Yogurt

Yellow liquid is whey. It can be stirred back or frozen & used in bread-making

(in place of milk or water) or as face toner!

Ingredients A
1 Cup hot water
3/4 Cup low fat milk powder
1 Tbsp sugar (optional)

Ingredient B
1 Tbsp natural set yogurt

Whisk Ingredients A till blended. Cool to 40-43C (hand hot). To speed cooling, "pull" milk between 2 containers ~ 20 times. Then, stir a little of the milk into the yogurt till smooth. Pour the "liquidized" yogurt into the rest of the milk & mix well.

Pour into a few disposable bowls & pop lids on. Put in a warm place for 6-8 hrs (I put in Tiger vacuum pot on a rack over hot water). Or cooler box with bottles of hot water. Or leave in hot car?? Chill when set. Keeps about 1 week.

Lemon Loaf Cake

Today I decided to try out an online recipe I found: http://www.food.com/recipe/our-favourite-lemon-loaf-38953. The comments were all very positive, so I was very optimistic. It took me ~15mins to prepare & 45mins to bake. I omitted the saucing bit.

Adapted recipe:

Ingredients A
1.5 Cup cake flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Ingredients B
125gm butter (1/2 a block), slightly softened
1 Cup castor sugar

Ingredients C
2 eggs
1/4 Cup milk
Grated zest & juice from 1 lemon (about 1/4 Cup)

1) Pre-heat oven to 180°C.
1) Sift Ingredients A and set aside.
2) Cream Ingredients B, then gradually beat in eggs, milk, then lemon juice & zest.
3) Pour in the flour, mix and stir till well-blended.
4) Pour into greased & lined (for non-stick tin, just line with baking paper) 9" x 5" loaf tin & bake for 55mins. With my water oven, I removed the cake after 45mins. 

Note: Cake has a lemony tart zing, great for those who love lemons & limes like me! It tastes great on its own, but can also be dressed up with cream cheese frosting.

Got a bit worried about all the cracks!

My To-Try List

Slice & Bake Butter Cookies

Carol's Pavlova

Dinner Rolls

Durian Cream Cake

Kek Surabaya

Century Egg Porridge

Paper Sponge Cake

Pistachio Macarons

Pound Cake

Light Cornflour Sponge

Amy Beh's Crispy Calamari

Pistachio Cookies

Browned Butter Cookies

Thai Claypot Tung Hoon

Pineapple Tarts

Blueberry Pie

雞蛋仔 / recipe 2  / (stove-top mold / electric mold)

Handy Life Hacks

Garcinia Forte Fat Burner

ieatishootipost best Sweet Sour Pork (Chef Sin Leong)





 

Pineapple Tarts

Jam
1 whole Malaysia pineapple, grated
90g sugar (or more to taste)
3 cloves
1 Tbsp lemon juice

My short-cut: Cook in a non-stick pan over high heat to evaporate water asap. Have the fan turned up high to speed process & keep yourself cool. Stir often till whole thing is stiff, sticky & golden brown (~ 30 mins). Note that the proper way is to stir jam over very low heat for many hours. 

Pastry
8 oz plain flour
5 oz cold butter - diced
2 egg yolks (save whites for other stuff, like pavlova)
2 tsp castor sugar
0.5 Tbsp ice-cold water
1 tsp vanilla essence

My short-cut: use a plastic bag to cut down on cleaning

Sift flour into a large sandwich bag. Put in butter pieces. Close the bag top loosely & press bag contents till they resemble breadcrumbs. Pour in the rest of the ingredients & give a few quick squeezes till a nice dough is obtained. Don't over-knead. The cooler everything is (so butter doesn't melt), the lighter the pastry will turn out. Chill 30 mins.

While still keeping dough in bag, roll out the dough flat to slightly less than 1/2" thick. Cut away the plastic top to expose pastry & stamp out tart shapes onto a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. I use a special spring-loaded stamper.

Turn oven on to pre-heat to 160 dec C. While oven is getting hot, press little balls of pineapple jam onto tarts.

Bake for 20 - 30 mins till pastry is lightly browned. Cool before storing. Makes about 40+ tarts.

News Articles

Web Appeal For Funds (on Indiegogo)

Easy Braised Soya Sauce Chicken

This recipe is the easiest and tastiest ever, and one of the kids' firm favourites.

Wash & dry 500g chicken drumlets. Put inside a clean sandwich bag and pour in 1/4 C Lee Kum Kee Chicken Marinade. Twist the bag top to seal out air, and leave in fridge for several hours. To cook, empty contents into a pot, top up with some water to just cover chicken. Bring to a boil and simmer till chicken is cooked and sauce has thickened a little (~ 20 mins). For an extra "kick", throw in 2 red chillies and a handful of dried wolfberries (kei chi) to cook with chicken. Serve with steamed white rice.

Less Mess Kueh Bangkit

My preferred brand of santan (coconut cream) is "Kara".
Kueh Bangkit baking in my Healsio oven (using "Oven" function)

Kueh Bangkit is one of my favourite traditional Chinese New Year cookies. A good KB is fragrant, light, crisp, and melts delightfully in the mouth. But if not done properly, it is hard and sticks in the mouth! Getting it right is a little tricky, not to mention the preparation can get messy.

Traditionally, the tapioca flour is dry-fried in a wok till light. In the process, the whole kitchen gets coated in a light dusting of flour! I hate getting messy, so I've adapted by using microwave to dry the flour. The other "innovation" is to knead the dough in a plastic bag rather than in a bowl (& getting my hands all sticky). The plastic bag not only keeps all the mess in, but also keeps the dough from drying out. And as I prefer my KB to be slightly "toasty", I make them small and bake them a little longer than necessary. I must stress that I'm not a great stickler for authenticity or traditional methods, but IMHO, the resulting cookies are really rather nice.

Ingredients
2C + 3T (~ 240g) tapioca flour / tapioca starch
1 - 2 pandan leaves, cleaned & cut into 1" sections (optional)
2/3C (~ 80g) icing sugar, sifted
1T margarine (or Crisco)
1 egg yolk
1/3C thick santan (~ 85ml)

Method:
Put tapioca flour (and pandan, if available) on baking paper in a large microwave bowl. Zap 1min on HI, stir, repeat 5 - 6 times. Cool (preferrably overnight, but I waited ~ 2 hrs).

In a large clean sandwich bag, put icing sugar, margarine & yolk. Squeeze bag to mix. Add 1/3C (~ 85ml) santan & squeeze till well mixed.

Sift cooled flour, discarding pandan. Reserve 3T for dusting KB molds and add the rest to bag.

Squeeze bag & knead well to a smooth, pliable dough, neither crumbly or sticky at all(add a little extra flour or santan if necessary). Rest dough in bag for 30 mins.

Dust KB molds with reserved flour, press in dough & tap sharply out onto paper-lined tray. Alternatively, roll to ~ 1/4” thick, cut shapes & pinch with KB pincher.

Bake at 150 deg C for 15-20 mins (till light, dry & very faintly tinged).
Cool & store in air-tight tin. Makes 100+ 1” cookies.

Thai Green Curry

Herbs fresh from the garden

Ingredients
500g chicken fillet (washed, dried & cut into bite-sized slices)
1 C marble-sized baby eggplant or 1 standard eggplant.

Paste
1 large bunch of Thai basil leaves (discard stems, wash & dry leaves)
3 Kaffir lime leaves, washed & sliced smaller
2 serai, use bottom 5" only, sliced
3 green chillies, sliced
1 tsp coriander seeds (or 1/2 tsp ground)
1 knob of ginger, sliced
5 cloves of garic, peeled
1T cooking oil

Seasoning
100 ml santan
100 ml stock (water + 1 tsp chicken stock)
2T fish sauce
1T light soya sauce

Method
Process paste ingredients finely.
Heat 1 T oil in a pan. Fry paste for 1 - 2 minutes till fragrant.
Add chicken pieces and fry till cooked.
Add seasoning ingredients and bring to a boil.
Add eggplant and cook another few minutes till eggplant is cooked.
Adjust seasoning (add a little more fish sauce if not salty enough).
Serve with steamed white rice.

Thai Style Stir-fry with Basil

Ingredients
1 pkt (~300gm) pork sukiyaki/shabu shabu or chicken, cut into smaller pieces
3 chilli padi (remove seeds to reduce spiciness)
1 onion, sliced
1T minced garlic
1 large bunch sweet or Thai basil (discard stems & wash leaves)

Sauce Mix
1T oyster sauce
0.5T fish sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 C hot water
dash pepper

Method
1. Heat 1T of oil in a pan. Fry onion, garlic and chillies for 1 min.
2. Add pork slices and stir till cooked.
3. Add sauce mix and basil leaves.
4. Bring to a boil and cook 1 - 2 mins till leaves have wilted. Adjust seasoning.
5. Serve hot with steamed white rice.

Quick Microwave Kaya

Ingredients
4 Eggs
200ml Kara thick coconut milk
1/2 Cup castor sugar
Pinch salt

In a small bowl, beat 4 eggs (enough to blend yolks & whites). Put aside. In a large microwave bowl, mix 200ml thick strained santan (Kara tetrapak or squeeze from 400g freshly grated coconut) with 0.5 cup castor sugar (or more to taste) and salt, then zap on HIGH for 1 min & stir with wire whisk till sugar is dissolved. Zap 30 sec more & stir. While stirring, stream beaten egg into hot santan. Zap kaya mix on LOW 5 mins, stir, repeat. Reduce zapping time to 3 mins, stir. Repeat 2-3 times till kaya is nice & thick. If lumpy, use a hand-held blender to smoothen at the end.

PANDAN Kaya
Add a few drops of pandan essence OR juice squeezed from pounded wet pandan leaves OR 2 knotted pandan leaves to the mixture and cook.

CARAMEL Kaya
Make basic kaya first. Then, heat 1/3C sugar with a little water in a pan to a rich brown syrup (watch VERY carefully cos BURNT syrup is nasty!) and quickly stir in hot kaya with a silicon spatula till well mixed (my MIL's way). I might try using brown sugar or even gula melaka syrup instead of white sugar for the basic kaya next time instead of making caramel.

Making Vietnamese Rice Paper

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I took this video in Cu Chi, Vietnam. The rat-tat-tats in the background were made by tourists trying out rifles & machine guns at the nearby range. Well, looks like I won't be making any rice sheets myself! Like, where would I find the space to stick all my freshly made sheets? I found another rather similar video on Youtube ... click here.

Method (according to guide & video)
Mix roughly equal parts rice flour & water with a pinch of salt, and leave to rest for 30 mins. Then, use a large ladle to stir batter & spread a small amount into a thin round on a flat pan (or cloth stretched tight) over boiling water. Cover and steam for about 20 seconds. Lift out using a large cloth-covered roll or stick and deposit onto a large bamboo mat. When full, take bamboo mat out under the sun to dry the sheets out.

A packet of 15 sheets of Vietnamese Rice Paper (100gm) with recipe for Deep Fried Springrolls (click to enlarge pic for recipe). Available in supermarkets for less than $1.

I found a recipe for making thicker rice sheets (might be suitable for guotiao or kway chap or chee cheong fun) at this website: click here. So far, the nicest, silkiest, smoothest guotiao I ever had was the fishball kway teow tng in Penang. The difference is in the water ... and perhaps additives ... incidentally, home-made guotiao are unlikely to be "springy" like the commercial ones, as those usually contain BORAX. Don't eat too much char kway teow ... besides coronary risks from oil & lard, borax is banned as a food substance in some countries as it is really bad for the kidneys. Common uses of borax: cleaning, laundry, roach killer!!

Soya Bean Milk / Soya Bean Curd

.Available at Tangs. They do demos daily there.


Spooked by all the recent horror stories about toxic milk and candy from China, hubby suddenly demanded to know why I'd been buying expensive & mass-produced stuff from Marigold when I should be making him his fresh soya milk myself?

Wash & soak 100g (measuring cup provided) soya beans for 6 - 8 hours. Drain & feed into the Smart Bean Soya Milk Maker. Add 1.2L of water (there's a level mark on the jug) & turn it on. 10 mins later, it beeps, and voila ... 1.2L of fresh, piping-hot soya milk. Strain & sweeten to taste (I usually strain once through a seive, and again with muslin placed over the seive.)




The ground bean left ("okara") is rich in protein & nutritious. Use it for biscuits, cakes, falafel, vegan burgers/meatballs/"crab" cakes etc or to bulk up other foods. Mostly I don't bother. I mix it with more water & dump it around my plants so they can also benefit from the goodness of soya milk.




Bean Curd / Douhua / Tau Huey / Tau Foo Fah

After soya milk is done, strain it and reboil. Meanwhile, dissolve 1.5 tsp edible gypsum powder ("sek ko" from any Chinese Medical Hall. Costs 50 cents for 50g) in 1/4C hot water. Cool a little, strain through a piece of muslin, then stir in 1T cornstarch (don't stir cornstarch into boiling hot water or it will turn into gum!). Put this mixture in an insulated container which will be used for the douhua. Traditionally, douhua is made in thick wooden tubs, nowadays plastic insulated containers are used.

Quickly dump 1L boiling hot soya milk into the container so that everything gets mixed up thoroughly. Put a tea towel over the bowl and cover tightly (the cloth prevents condensation drips). Do not disturb this for the next 15 mins while it sets. Once set, use a large flat scoop to carefully scoop thin layers of douhua into bowls (it is very soft & fragile) & serve with syrup or gula melaka. For thicker tofus like the tau kwa, nigari is used as coagulent. Ahem ... gypsum (calcium sulphate) is supposedly non-toxic to humans but it's the same stuff used in roofing & orthopeadic casts ...



Here are more recipes which make use of this machine:
http://www.soymilkmaker.com/recipe.html


Chilled Bean Curd

I was thrilled to find this recipe for chilled bean curd at ieat.ishoot.ieat. It's the very silky type of  bean curd that is not set with gypsum, and I had been trying to "get it" using gelatine, agar etc.  The secret is jelly powder from Phoon Huat. I halved the coffee mate and it was very nice. For almond flavour, just add 1/2 tsp of almond essence.

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