Cheese and chocolate butter marble cake

Recipe: Adapt from The Nyonya Chef, Author and food consultant - Debbie Teoh

Ingredients: Cheese cake

250 g cream cheese, at room temperature

1/2 teaspoon salt

80g butter

80 g caster sugar

1 grade A egg

80 g plain flour, sifted

1/2 teaspoon baking powder, sifted

Method:

1) Preheat oven to 180º C, grease and line a 9" round cake tin.

2) Beat cream cheese, salt, butter and sugar until smooth. Add egg and beat until blended.

3) Fold in sifted flour and baking powder with a rubber spatula. Pour batter into a large piping bag and set aside . Snip the end of the bag and pipe the batter.

Ingredients - Chocolate butter cake

220 g butter

180 g caster sugar

4 grade A eggs

170 g plain flour, sifted

50 g cocoa powder, sifted

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda, sifted

1 teaspoon baking powder, sifted

100 ml fresh milk

Method:

1) Beat butter and sugar till creamy, adding egg one at a time, making sure it's well blended after each addition.

2) Fold in sifted flour, cocoa powder, soda and baking powder alternating with fresh milk.

3) Pour 1/3 of the chocolate batter, then pipe the cheese batter on top. Alternate between chocolate cheese batter one more time then finish with the chocolate batter on top.

4) Bake in preheated oven for 45-55 minutes or until skewer inserted comes out clean.

5) Remove from oven, leave to cool awhile before slicing to serve.

Cuttlefish Peanut salad

If you patronize the chicken rice stall, they sell this toufu (bean curd) salad at $2.50 - $3.00. You might feel the pinch and will be quite reluctant to pay for it. Why is it so expensive when there is only one piece of deep fried toufu, few slices of gratedgcucumber and carrot, together with the sauce? However, you still will pay for it because you like to eat. Here, I share with you my recipe that I find simply delicious and appetizing. Furthermore it is very much economical as compared to if you buy it from outside.

My improvised version is by adding cuttle fish, green semi ripe mango , cucumber, carrot and sliced big onion. This salad is simply delicious and will not fail you. I made this salad on Wednesday for my colleagues, they simply loved it very much and 赞不绝口. You only need 10 to 15 minutes to prepare.

Recipe:

Ingredients:

1 cucumber

1 big carrot
1/2 semi ripe mango
1/2 big onion
1 cuttle fish
5 small salted toufu

toasted chopped peanut
toasted sesame seed

Method:

1. Deep fry toufu, when cool, cut into 6 pieces or into your desired size.

2. Either you use kitchen grater or cut cucumber, carrots, mango into strips. Soak them into ice-cold water for 10 minutes. Drain and pad dry with kitchen towel.

3. Cut big onion into thin slices.

4. Cook cuttle fish into boiling water. When cool cut into your desired size.

5. Put all the ingredients onto a big serving plate, sprinkle toasted chopped peanuts. sesame seed, and pour sauce on top. Serve with garnishing.

Sauce:

3 tablespoon Thai chilli sauce (Rooster Brand)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoon lime juice

Method:

Mix well and pour on top of the salad

Note: I recommend you to buy the Thailand product - Rooster brand which has a woman photo on the label. It gives a better taste.

You can add on more sauce if you want to.

Masala Chicken

My family and I like to eat Northern Indian food. We frequent Shahi Maharani Northern Indian Restaurant at 4th floor of Raffles City. We always order their signature dishes like Rogan Josh, Vindaloo, Tandoori Chicken and Masala Chicken. I strongly recommend their cheese and garlic naan because they are made on the spot - fresh from the oven, crispy, fragrant and yummy. You must also try their saffron rice. every grain of rice tastes divine and out of this world.

A few days ago my nieces came over from KL and so we brought them to this restaurant for dinner. We ordered curry fish head, tandoori chicken, leg of lamb and vindaloo. Though it seemed the standard of food does not match our previous visits, neverthesless all of us still enjoyed the meal.

If you are interested to try this restaurant, I recommend going for a weekday lunch with a partner because they have a 1 for 1 lunch buffet at $40++. It is a VERY reasonable price and you get good ambiance and can definitely set your teeth into their flavourful tandoori chicken and rich gravy.

Below is a recipe I obtained from a magazine. On my first attempt, the taste is not bad! Of course this cannot be compared to the dish at Shahi Maharani.

Recipe

Ingredients:

~ l kg chicken (cut into big pieces)

~ 4-5 tomatoes (chopped coarsely)

~ 1 tablespoon garam malasa powder (available at supper markets )

(A) Grind and mix together ingredients:

~ 4-5 pips garlic

~ 10 shallots

~ 5 fresh red chillies ( seeds removed)

~ 7-8 chillies padi

~ 3 cm piece ginger

~ 1 cm fresh kunyit

~1 teaspoon jintan putih

~ 1/2 teaspoon jintan manis

~ 1 tablespoon ketumbar powder (coriander powder)

~ 1 tablespoon ground black pepper

~ 1 teaspoon white pepper powder

(B)

~ 5 cm piece kayu manis

~ 5 bubga cengkih (clove)

~ 4 bunga pelaga (split open)

~ 2 bulbs bunga kantan (ginger flower)

Seasoning: 3 tbsp. ghee/cooking oil, salt and sugar to taste.

Method:

~1) Marinade chicken with 2 tablespoon of ingredients (A) and put aside for 1 hour.

~2) Heat a heavy based saucepan until just hot. Add in ghee and fry (A) and (B) until fragrant.

~3) Put in marinated chicken and tomatoes. Cover with lid and allow to simmer over a low heat until chicken is tender and gravy is thick.

~4) Add salt and sugar to taste.

~5) Serve.

Red Bean Bao

As you can see I placed the bao too close to each other, as a result after steaming they stuck to each other. Luckily they still looked like bao.


I bought the red bean paste from Phoon Huat. The red bean is fine, smooth and fragrant.




Two days ago , my niece came over from K.L. and visited me. She said she wanted to buy some baking stuffs. So after breakfast, I went with her to Phoon Huat, Simei.

The Autumn Festival is around the corner, there are many variety of moon cake fillings /paste are available. As I have planned to make red bean bao this weekend, I bought 500 g of red bean paste.

Recipe (makes 28 - 30 bao)

Ingredients A:

375 g Hong Kong flour
200 ml warm water
10 g instant yeast powder

Method:

1) stir in instant yeast powder into warm water and rest for 10 minutes.
2) Mix in flour and knead into smooth dough . Cover them with a wet towel and rest for 1 hour.

Ingredients B:

125 g Hong Kong Flour
150 g fine sugar
1 1/2 tbsp double acting baking powder
10 g shortening (crisco)

Ingredient C:

Red bean paste 500 g. Roll into a 30 g small ball. (about 28 balls)

Method:

1) Sieve flour and baking powder in a bowl. Add in sugar, and fermented Ingredients B, except shortening .Knead till mixtures are combined.

2) Add in shortening and knead till sugar is dissolved and it becomes soft and smooth.. And rest for 5 to 10 minutes.

3)Divide dough into smaller 30 g dough, round them into a ball shape. Use a rolling pin to flatten it. Put the red bean paste filling into the centre, wrap and seal it tight. Place it on top of a pre-cut parchment paper square 1.5" x 1.5". Repeat until you finish the dough and ingredients.

4) Lay the bao into steamer (make sure leave some space in between the bao as they expand after steaming).

5) Steam for 15 minutes over high heat.

ENJOY!

Raisins and Chocolate Chips cupcakes

The other day I visited http://hslingkitchen.blogspot.com/. I like her raisin cup cakes. So today i baked and gave them to my colleagues. They like them very much.

I improvised the recipe by sprinkling sun flower seeds on top of the cake. The healthy sunflower seeds are crunchy and gives extra bite to the chewy raisins and soft cake.

Recipe (makes 7)

Ingredients:

120 g butter
80 g fine sugar
120 g (about 2 eggs) eggs
120 g low protein flour + 1 tbsp baking powder, sift together
40 g raisins
40 g chocolate chips
sun flower seeds

Method:
1) Cream butter and sugar.
2) add egg one at a time, beat well.
3) Fold in flour.
4) Add in raisins and chocolate chips.
5) pour into paper cups until 3/4 full.
6) Sprinkle sun flower seeds on top of the cakes.
7) Bake in preheated oven at 150º -160º C for 15 - 20 minutes or until cooked.

Pandan Coconut cupcakes

Happy Teachers' Day! We had a Celebration at Pan Pacific, Marina. We had so much fun and enjoyed the food. And I was so lucky that I won a lucky draw and recieved Capital Land Cash vouchers and an electric toothbrush. I was really overjoyed.

Teacher Pek bought us ice-cream. Teacher Kwee Lan gave every one of us a small gift, and the Principal gave us a treat at Sakura Japanese Buffet Restaurant, ....so many many . Is my turn for return favour. I baked cup cakes for them. I make Pandan Coconut Cake and Raisin chocolate Chips cake. They like the cakes very much and give good compliments.

Recipe (makes 16)

Ingredients:

(A)

280 g butter
200 g sugar

(B)
5 eggs
60 ml coconut milk
2 tablespoon pandan juice

(C)
240 g plain flour
25 g custard powder
30 g desiccated coconut
1 teaspoon baking powder

Topping:

Mix well

1)40 g butter

2) 35 g icing sugar

3) 55 g desiccated coconut

Method:

1) Cream (A) till light and fluffy.

2) Add (B) a little at a time and cream till smooth and light.

3) Fold in (C) and mix till well blended.

4) Pour the batter into paper cups or a 10" round mould.

5) Sprinkle topping on top of the cake.

6) Bake at 175º C for 50 min. (For cup cakes bake at 160º C for 25 min - 30 mins.)