Apple Crumble

this was specially made for layz and boon for their birthday! we celebrated their belated birthday at cblc last wednesday.

i made the shortcrust pastry for this one. yupp so there were three parts to it - the base, the apple filling and lastly the crumble top.


and i also added mixed fruits to the apple filling - raisins, cherries, orange peel etc etc..

layz said she liked the crust!

but i wished i had added more of the apple filling cos it turned out too flat haha. i used 5 granny smith apples this time; maybe i'll use about 8-9 the next time round!

this is a rather simple bake! i used my hands to mix everything; no mixer used at all! haha which also meant i had less washing up to do :p yea i hate having to clean up after baking!

schoolwork is piling up :( so there will lesser bakes coming from me during this period:(:(

i'll be back baking sooooooonn i hope :)

Recipe for the crumble and filling is adapted from FatBoyBakes. Pastry recipe was adapted from alex goh's "Irresistible Pastry".

Shortcrust Pastry:

125 gm. plain flour
75 gm. chilled butter
20 gm. sugar
1 small egg yolk
20 gm. iced water

Rub flour, butter and sugar with fingers until resembles fine breadcrumbs. Then add in iced water to form a smooth dough. Knead dough lightly. Wrap dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 mins.

Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface or in between 2 pieces of non-stick baking paper to thickness required and line the oven-proof dish.

Preheat oven to 180C. Place a sheet of aluminum foil over pastry.

Bake for 15-20mins or until pastry is golden brown.

Pour the apple filling over the pastry, then lightly sprinkle the crumble topping over it.

Bake in a 180 degC oven until browned for about 30 minutes.

Filling:

5 granny smith apples, peeled and cored, cut into thin slices.
2 table spoons of brown sugar
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of clove powder
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
1 cup of mixed fruits

I cooked the above mixture in a large pan for about 15 minutes on low fire. I like my apples to be soft and tender.

Crumble:

2 cups flour
125 gm. butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup of quick-cooking oats

Rub in the butter into the flour & sugar, until it resembles breadcrumbs. I used my hands! Be careful not to over do it. Rub in the quick-cooking oats last.

Enjoy :)

Mandarin Orange Butter Cup Cakes

i made these cup cakes with the two korean sisters - jenda and victoria! they came over to my house to play and wanted to bake something! they call my home the mini bakery haha. yupp so i found this simple recipe from alex goh's "creative making of cakes" but modified it a little. haha more importantly i had all the ingredients for it :p i definitely had fun baking with the kids!

little princess victoria is helping me sieve the flour :)

say "cheese'! i love her to bits; she's soooo adorable!

jenda the elder sister helping to spoon the batter into the cup cake mould.

there you go! it's ready..

haha she was so eager to try the cup cakes. and she gave them thumbs up!

Here's the recipe if you want to have a go at it yourself. And if you have too many left over mandarin oranges from CNY, this is a good recipe to try :)

Ingredients:
200g flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tbsp milk powder
250g butter
5 eggs
150g sugar (original was 175g)
2 tbsps of mandarin orange juice
zest of one mandarin orange

Method:
1) sieve flour and baking powder together.
2) cream flour mixture, milk powder and butter till smooth and fluffy.
3) whip eggs and sugar till light and thick.
4) add mandarin orange juice and zest into egg mixture and mix till evenly blended.
5) then finally add the flour mixture into it and mix till well incorporated.
6) Place batter into cup cake moulds.
7) Bake at 190 deg C for 20-25mins.

Valentine's Cream Cheese Cookies

i made these cream cheese cookies for valentine's day! they're great to be given away as gifts to friends. and they look so pretty! all thanks to aunty yochana :)

i added more cream cheese to mine and as usual cut down the amount of sugar. the cookies turned out to be very fragrant! i divided my dough into 2 portions; of which one i added cocoa powder to it. could have added more cos i think the cocoa taste wasn't enough.

haha as you can see i ended up with a heap of cookies!!! cos i made double the portion - some to be given to friends and everything else for him!

and it's so much fun to bake them. the korean kids were at my house playing and they were so eager to help me. haha the two girls were happily cutting out heart-shaped cookies :p

cookies galore!

nicely packed as vday gifts :) happy valentine's day!

Egg White French Toast

what do you do when you have so many egg whites left in the fridge? i'm sure that's a common problem most bakers face since some recipes call for egg yolks only!

well, you can make egg white french toast! Simple to make and delicious at the same time:)

so i woke up one morning and prepared this for breakfast!

the ingredients i used were:
egg whites, a few slices of wholemeal bread, sugar, butter, honey/maple syrup.

i added the ingredients based on 'feel' haha so i don't really have the exact amounts.

but basically i first heated the pan with a layer of butter. then i added sugar into the egg whites and placed the bread slices, one at a time into a plate, letting slices soak up egg mixture for a few seconds, then carefully turn to coat the other side.

then i pan-fried the bread till a nice brown colour was obtained.


depending on how sweet a tooth you have, you may wish to sprinkle some sugar on both sides of the bread. the sugar caramelizes rather quickly to give a nice brown colour :)

ready to serve with maple syrup/honey! you can omit this if you find the toast sweet enough!

ready to be eaten!

My CNY Reunion Dinner!

this is a long over-due post haha. but anyway i managed to capture the spread i had during reunion dinner. i actually had two reunion dinners - the earlier one with my maternal grandparents cum relatives and another one on CNY's eve with the paternal side of the family. and as usual, we had our lau hei :) enjoy the yummies!

we had the reunion dinner at my house for the maternal side of my family...

we had this big fish! mama sliced the meat and we cooked it in steamboat.

2 steamboat pots and lotsa food!

yu sheng! this one was bought from sakae sushi.

grandma cooked this vege dish - 'gua cai'.

the usual steamboat ingredients and alot more food haha :p the one with the lid still on has abalone hidden inside! haha :p

over at the paternal side of my family; we had a scrumptious meal too...

we also had yu sheng! lau ahh :D

fishballs, mushrooms, tofu stuffed with meat, scallops, cuttlefish...

nasi briyani from my grandparent's malay neighbours. they give that to us every CNY; so nice of them :) we had ngoh hiang too! and alot of pig's innards which i don't eat. haha and i wonder why are they such a delicacy?!

Almond Cookies

haha yea those pineapple tarts weren't my last CNY bakes afterall. i baked these on the first night of CNY since relatives were coming over to my house on the 2nd day of CNY for visiting.

after a whole day of CNY visiting i wanted to bake something simple yet delicious. found this recipe on aunty yochana's blog. it's really really easy to bake these almond cookies, not energy and time consuming at all. and what's more, they taste great, with the melt-in-the-mouth feeling too :)

basically all i did was to measure everything and mix them together in a large bowl till i get a dough. then divide the dough into equal portions which are then rolled up into balls. egg wash and off they go into the oven.

oh yea i cut down quite alot on sugar (from 150g to 115g of caster sugar) and they turned out fine, just nice in fact :) cos my family doesn't really like sweet stuff! so it's up to individual preference!

this recipe is definitely a keeper! a must bake!

xin nian kuai le once again!

Happy Chinese New Year :)

Wishing everyone a Happy CNY!!! May the year of the rat bring for us many many more great bakes and cakes :p

Gong Xi Fa Cai! May this be a prosperous year for us :)

More Pineapple Tarts!

my final CNY bakes :) made more covered pineapple tarts but this time the design of the tarts is much simpler. just roll it up into a ball and press down with a fork!

egg wash

all done:)

Fruit Cake With Rum

made this fruit cake weeks ago. fruit cake with rum is one of his favourite; he loves anything rum haha. and it's my first time trying this. hope it tastes good :)


fruit cakes actually taste better the longer you keep them; and especially so if you drizzle rum on the cake everyday! what you will get is a rich and flavoursome cake.

to get a light and fluffy cake i beat the egg whites till stiff peaks form

i soaked the raisins and mixed fruit in rum for about two weeks to plump them up; doing so enhances the rum flavor too!

then kept the cake wrapped up in cling film in the fridge for 2.5 weeks and drizzled rum on it everyday.

yay just in time to pass it to him for CNY!

nicely wrapped up :)

Mousey Pineapple Tarts

have a mousey lunar new year!

it's the year of the rat come this lunar new year! haha came across aunty yochana's blog where she created the golden mouse pineapple tarts. they were so cute! so i drew inspiration from her and created mine too :D

but mine just doesn't seem to look like a mouse! haha some think they look more like pigs!!! enjoy the pics :)

used black sesame seeds for the eyes. then created the ears and tails by using scissors to cut some dough out.

my platoon of mice :P thanks to sis who helped me out!

preparing the pineapple filling from scratch was sheer hard work. i made them the night before and my arms ached just from de-skinning and grating of the pineapples. and i stood awake in the middle of the night stirring and cooking the grated pineapple filling.

my version is less sweet cos i didn't add much sugar. i think the natural sweetness of the pineapples would suffice :) and it's healthier too!

going to let cblc peepz try some on mon! so far feedback has been good :)

haha i wanna laugh when i see this.
yea they really look like pigs!

Cigarettes

made these 'cigarettes' with the few egg whites left from making kueh bangkit!

the batter is really simple to prepare. but when it came to rolling them up it was a challenge. it was hot hot hot! haha but he did most of the rolling cos i did a bad job. see those on the right! and since they harden very quickly after taking them out of the oven, you've got to be really fast. just like making love letters.

surprisingly he was quite good at it :p

sadly these cookies don't keep very well. so it's best eaten the same day. somehow they soften the next day despite being kept in an air-tight container. so eat it straight out from the oven while it's still crispy :)

a lot of hard work baking this. but most importantly we had fun!

Recipe adapted from Alex Goh's Joy of Making Cookies:

130g butter
100-110g icing sugar
3 egg whites
100g plain flour

1. Cream butter and icing sugar till light.
2. Add egg whites and cream till smooth.
3. Drop a tbspful of the mixture into tray lined with baking paper and spread it evenly (as thin as possible), allowing for 4 per tray for easier handling. (that's the tedious part!)
4. Bake at 170 deg celcius for about 10-12 mins till edges are lightly brown.
5. Remove it from tray by spatula. Roll IMMEDIATELY around a cylindrical rod (or chopsticks will do). Leave until set.