Easy Cold Desserts

After the cooling winter-like breezy days, the weather here has slowly gone back to the usual hot and stuffy summer-like times… L

The best way to chase away the heat is eating sweet cold desserts! Matcha Jelly, Mango Sago and Avocado Smoothie are the desserts that my family enjoys a lot. They are yummy, healthy and easy to make.

  

This Matcha Jelly is very refreshing, chewy and full of green tea goodness. The recipe is adapted from The Modern Vegetarian but I made slight adjustments and also added Nata De Coco as my daughters love them.

Matcha Jelly with Nata De Coco

Ingredients:

• 1 packet (10g) konnyaku jelly powder
• 100g fruit sugar
•  900ml water
• Matcha mixture (4 teaspoons green tea powder, mixed with 100ml warm water)
• Some Nata De Coco

Method:

1. Mix the konnyaku jelly powder with sugar and set aside
2. Bring water to a boil in a pot. Stir in the jelly powder mixture; continue stirring to dissolve the mixture
3. Remove pot from heat and continue to stir until bubbles disappear and mixture becomes clear
4. Sift the liquid mixture into a bowl, and then sift in the green tea mixture too. Stir to combine the two
5. Pour the matcha jelly mixture into the jelly mould and add in 2-3 small cubes of Nata De Coco
6. Leave the jelly to cool before refrigerating until chilled.
7. Enjoy the chilled jellies

Many people stay away from avocado because of its un-appetizing appearance, relatively bland taste and high fat content. However, the fruit actually has tones of benefit for our health. (I’ve extracted some nutritional goodness of avocado and posted then at the end of this post).

Avocado Smoothie

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe avocado
• 125ml low fat milk (or more for a more watery version)
• About 6 ice cubes
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1-2 teaspoons gula malacca syrup (or more)

Method:

1. Cut Avocado into halve, peel away the skin and the seed
2. Blend the avocado in a blender, together with milk, ice cubes and honey
3. Pour out the smoothie to a bowl/glass
4. Drizzle with gula Malacca syrup on top of the smoothie
5. Stir and enjoy the goodness

Mango is many people’s favourite fruit. I did not add any sugar and it still tastes so sweet. Thanks to the fruit’s natural sweetness.

Mango Sago

Ingredients:

• 2 big and ripe mangoes (I used Australia mangoes)
• 250ml Fresh Milk
• 50g Sago
• Some ice cubes

Method:

1. In a pot with water, boil the sago in low heat. Stir constantly to prevent them from sticking
2. Once all the sago turns opaque, strain and rinse them with cold tap water. Set aside
3. Remove the mango skin, cut them into cubes. Set aside about 4 tablespoons and blend the rest in a blender into puree
4. Add in the milk, ice cubes and sugar syrup (if using) and blend to combine
5. Stir in the sago to combine
6. Pour into 4 bowls and top each bowl with one tablespoon of mango cubes
7. Serve chilled

Note: Can omit the ice cubes and place the mango sago dessert in the fridge to chill before serving.

Some good to know nutritional facts about Avocado:

1. Avocado is rich in magnesium that reduces risk of excess belly fat, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar.
2. Avocado is a good source of dietary fiber. One Avocado delivers a whooping 11 grams of fiber. It is also rich in vitamin A, vitamin K, Vitamin C, Foliate, Iron and calcium.
3. It is a good source of antioxidant too. The antioxidants in avocados are believed to help in the prevention of cancer, arthritis, heart disease, and eye cataracts; the fruit may also delay the aging process.
4. The fat content in avocado is believed to make you feel full quicker and thus help you to eat less saturated fats and sugar. Hence, it offers a good option for those on diet to shed some weight.
5. One avocado of 201 grams has 322 calories, 29 grams of fat, 17 grams of carbohydrates, 14 milligrams of sodium and 4 grams of protein.

Sweet Potato Loaf Cake

This is another of our breakfast over the last week.

I baked this Sweet Potato Loaf Cake based on a recipe from “The Australian Women's Weekly - Quick Mix Cakes”. I was so happy when I found this recipe that uses sweet potato. Sweet potato has full of nutritional values and natural sweetness so I always like to find ways of cooking with this root vegetable, other than sweet potato dessert soup.

This cake is moist with a nice texture to bite, thanks to the desiccated coconut and chocolate chips hidden in the cake. The natural sweetness from the sweet potatoes also sweetened the cake even though I have reduced the amount of sugar added into the cake.

I will definitely make this cake again, and will try using purple-fresh sweet potatoes; I am sure the purplish cake will look very much prettier than this orange one. J

Sweet Potato Loaf Cake Recipe:

 

Ingredients

• 200g butter, softened
• 100g light brown sugar (original recipe: 165g)
• 2 eggs
• 90g pecan, chopped coarsely (I omitted this, added 2 handfuls of mini chocolate chips instead)
• 40g desiccated coconut
• 1 cup mashed sweet potato
• 225g self raising flour
• 150 ml milk (original recipe: 125 ml, I added more as I find the mixture a bit too dry)

Baking Steps

1. Peel and cut sweet potatoes into small pieces, steam them over high heat until they become soft, about 30 minutes (I used Japanese orange fresh sweet potatoes)
2. Mash the soften sweet potatoes and leave to cool
3. Preheat oven to 160 degree C. Grease a loaf tin, line base and long sides with baking paper, extending paper over sides
4. Beat butter, eggs and sugar with mixer until just combined
5. Fold in coconut and sweet potato; stir in sifted flour and milk over 2 batches
6. Fold in the chocolate chips
7. Spread mixture into tin (the mixture is rather thick, unlike banana cake's watery batter); bake for 1hr 15 mins - 1 hr 40 mins.
8. Stand loaf 10 mins in the tin before turn it out to cool on wire rack

Joy Of Baking & Cooking

There is a saying that "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach". To me, food baked / cooked with love is also the best way to comfort the hearts of our dearest ones - the men and the women, the olds and the youngs.

So, do enjoy the time we spend in the kitchen, for we're blessed with our enthusiasm and flair to cook and bake! :)

Tangy Lemon Squares

I baked a tray of lemon squares in the weekend for my daughter to bring to her friend's place for their little girls' gathering. She requested me to bake something for her to share with her friends, so both of us browsed through the bookmarked recipe pages in my iPad  and this is the one she has chosen 'cos she loves tangy, lemony stuff. 

And so I went in the kitchen making these lemon squares and singing "Yellow Lemon Tree"  in my head...

....I wonder how

I wonder why

Yesterday you told me 'bout the blue blue sky

And all that I can see, and all that I can see, and all that I can see

Is just a yellow lemon-tree"

We managed to have a piece each before I packed them into a lunch box for the gathering. They are tangy and refreshing with nice lemon scent. One thing I will do next time baking this is to press the crust to make it a firmer base. This was a bit too soft and crumby, thus messy to eat unless you eat the whole piece in one mouth :). But overall, my daughter likes it and has put in request to make it for her again.

The recipe is adapted from Dodol Mochi:

Lemon Squares

(For 7x7-inch square baking tray)

• 113g unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 25g icing sugar
• 140g plain flour
• a pinch of salt
• 150g sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 80ml fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp grated lemon zest
• 25g plain flour
• icing sugar, for dusting (optional)

Methods:

1. Grease the baking tray and preheat oven to 170 degree C.
2. Sift together 140g flour and salt, set aside

For the shortbread base:

1. Cream butter and icing sugar till light and fluffy, fold in the flour mixture with a rubber spatula till just incorporated, do not over-mix it else the shortbread will be hard.
2. Spread the dough onto the bottom of the greased baking tray evenly, press the dough slightly so that the base will be firm when baked.
3. Bake at 170C for 20 minutes or till lightly browned.

For the lemon curd layer (can be done while the shortbread is baking in the oven):

1. Beat 150g sugar and eggs together till smooth. Stir in lemon juice, lemon zest and the remaining flour. Combine them well.

To assemble:

1. When the shortbread is well-baked, remove the tray from the oven and pour the lemon curd mixture over the hot shortbread.
2. Bake further at 170 degree C for another 20 minutes or till the filling is set. I took Pei-Lin’s advice not to overcook it and was monitoring the oven closely.
3. Once the filling is set, remove the tray from the oven and let cool completely on a wire rack.
4. Cut it into equal-sized small squares and dust with icing sugar (if using).

Yum! (X3)

Prawns with Peppercorns

As a weekend home cook, I always think that prawns are the easiest to handle among the many seafood varieties.  You can have them streamed with garlic, grilled with mayonnaise, stir fried with tomato/chili sauce or do the Thai way – craypot prawns with tang hoon. A dish of yummy-licious prawns can be easily whipped up; with little preparation and seasoning needed as prawns are tasty and sweet by themselves (I mean the fresh ones thoughJ).

I saw the big fresh prawns in the supermarket this morning and decided that we will have prawns for dinner tonight. As daughters are not too well (one down with bad cough and the other with stomach flu), they will have steam fish for dinner and thus, I decided to make the prawns in a spicy style since they are meant for the adults only. J

And, this is how the prawns ended up at our dinner table – being stir-fried with peppercorns (oops – they are fresh but not live prawns when I bought them home, so no cruelty to living things here).

We enjoyed the combination of natural sweetness from the fresh prawns and spiciness from the peppercorns very much. Daughters were drooling away while seeing us licking our fingers happily:)

Prawns with Peppercorns, my concoction, without exact measurement as I add the seasoning without measuring, just like how our mothers do their cookings:) :

Ingredients:

• Fresh big prawns, cleaned and shell on
• Minced garlic and minced ginger
• Freshly grinded peppercorns
• Chinese cooking wine
• Thai Fish Sauce
• Spring Onions, cut to about 3cm in length

Methods:

1. In a wok with 1-2 tablespoon hot oil, sauté the garlic and ginger
2. Add in the prawns and stir fry till their shells begin to turn red
3. Sprinkle the freshly grinded peppercorns over the prawns and stir to mix well
4. Add about 2 tablespoons of Chinese cooking wine into it, continue to stir
5. Stir in the spring onions and about 1-2 teaspoon of Thai fish sauce.  Stir and mix until cook

Serve hot and enjoy!

French Apple Cake

Baked this French Apple Cake last night using the heart shaped spring form pan but the result is not very satisfying. Taste wise, this cake is as good as how David Lebovitz has described in his blog. But as you can see from the photo at the bottom below, it probably need less than the 45 minutes which I have taken to bake it. The top was a bit over-baked.

This cake is featured in Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan.  She named it French Apple Cake simply because it was her French friend who first made for her. It is a relatively easy to assemble cake and the most distinctive character of this cake is it uses little flour, only slightly more than 100g, barely enough to coat the apple cubes. The whole house was filled with rum-vanilla scent while the cake was still being baked in the oven. I was so afraid the kids will wake up from their sleep because of the delicious smell :P

We had the cake for our breakfast this morning. It was so moist and yummy despite it un-appetising appearance. The texture is less cakey but more custardy and you get to chew of loads of soft, moist  apple in every bite. I will certainly bake this again. And since this cake is so yummy, I am gonna to submit this post to "Aspring Bakers #4: Love in the air! (Feb 2011)" hosted by Cuisine Paradise at this link HERE

Recipe for French Apple Cake

Ingredients:

110g all purpose flour

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

pinch of salt

4 large apples of any choice

2 large eggs, at room temperature

85g fruit sugar (original: 150g sugar)

3/4 teaspoon rum paste (original: 3 tablespoons dark rum)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

115g unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature

a handful of berries (blueberries and blackberries)

Methods:

1. Preheat oven at 180 degree C.  Butter an 8-inch spring form pan and put it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
2. Sift and whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together.
3. Peel the apples, core and cut them into small cubes.
4. In a clean mixing bowl, beat the eggs with until they’re foamy. Pour in the sugar and whisk to blend.
5. Whisk in the rum and vanilla. Whisk in half the flour and when it is incorporated, add half the melted butter, followed by the rest of the flour and the remaining butter, mixing gently after each addition so that the batter is thick but smooth. (you can either use a hand whisk or mixer up till this steps).
6. Use a rubber spatula and fold in the apples, gently turn them so that they are all coated with batter. I also throw in some blueberries and blackberries that I didn't use up in my last bake (Berry Friands).
7. Scrape the mix into the pan and use the spatula to spread evenly.
8. Bake the cake for 45 minutes, or until you can see that the top of the cake is golden brown, test the doneness by inserting a knife deep into the centre. It should come out clean and the cake should pull away slightly from the sides of the pan too.
9. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes then gently transfer the cake out from the pan to the cooling rake.

Berry Friands

These were for our breakfast this morning. I baked these Berry Friands last evening as I finally bought my blueberries and blackberries after several supermarket visits over the last few days. I guess the season for blueberries is now over as I don't see supermarkets piling up with them recently, like they used to few months back when I was hooked on baking Blueberry Buckles :)

  

Friand  is a French dessert which is a small cake baked using grounded almonds and little flour. I googled for its pronunciation and this is what I found:  free ya(n) . I am not sure if traditionally it is supposed to use just egg whites or is it just this recipe that I followed called for egg whites instead of whole eggs as a lighter and healthier variation. Anyway, I set my eyes on this recipe as it uses ground almond, berries and  the friands in the photo are so pretty looking, as if they are all smiling at me :). The recipe can be found in this baking book titled "Everyday Easy Cupcakes and Cakes" which I found during my usual weekly library visit.

The original recipe yields 6 muffin-cup sized friands but as I intended to bring some to the office to share with the colleagues, I doubled the portion and gotten 12 friands. My girls like them very much and their daddy ate 2 last night and 1 this morning. I brought the remaining 5 to the office and all of them said the friands are yummy and they like the texture of the baked ground almond.

Ingredients for 12 muffin-cup Berry Friands:

• 165g icing sugar (original: 200g)
• 90g plain flour
• 150g ground almonds
• 6 large egg whites
• 150g unsalted butter, melted
• 300g fresh / frozen berries (I used blueberries, blackberries)

 Methods:

1. Preheat over at 200 degree C
2. Sift flour and icing sugar in the mixing bowl and add in ground almond, mix well
3. In a separate clean mixing bowl, whisk egg whites until it forms soft peaks. Careful not to overbeat. It should be frothy and foamy but not stiff.
4. Add in the melted butter into the  flour mixture, mix until well-combined
5. Gently fold in the flour mixture into the egg whites to form a smooth batter
6. Spoon batter into the muffin cups
7. Scatter the berries over each cups, gently press the berries down into the batter so that they all fit in
8. Baked for 30 mins or until golden brown and risen
9. Leave to cool

 Hmmm, now I need to think of what to do with the 6 egg yolks which are now resting in my fridge.....

Peach flognarde

This is a simple and yummy dessert I made few nights back as next day’s breakfast because the daughters said they are sick of having cereal + milk as breakfast and it was near 10pm and too late to go out to get bread. Hence, I browsed through my KIV list and picked this relatively straight forward and easy to prepare dessert.

Flognarde is a French dessert that has a pudding-like texture. To me, it makes quite a good choice for breakfast.


I got the original recipe  Mango and Coconut Milk flognarde from flagrantedelicia. However, I baked a peach flognarde instead since I only have canned peach and milk instead of mango & coconut milk on hand. 


Here is my adapted recipe for the Peach flognarde:

• 60 g sugar
• 60 g all purpose flour
• 15 g butter, melted
• 250 ml low fat milk
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 3 eggs, whisked
• 400 g peach (canned), diced

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180º C
2. Grease with melted butter a pie pan (22 cm diameter)
3. Combine flour and sugar in a mixing bowl
4. Add in milk, vanilla, melted butter and the whisked eggs
5. Stirring until mixture is uniform before adding in diced peach
6. Pour the batter into the pan
7. Bake for 45 minutes

Easy, isn’t it? :)

Bread-Making: Sweet Potato & Sausage Buns

Recently, I bought a bread-making book “一种面团做60种排队面包" by a Taiwanese lady 陈明里. 

The dough making process is quite straight forward and it yields just the right quantity of buns that I needed.  For the previous batch of milk custard buns which I baked 2 weeks ago (picture below), the buns were soft and tasty and do not get hardened when we ate them the next day.

Today is my 2^nd attempt in baking  buns using the same basic dough recipe which yielded me 10 buns with 2 different kinds of fillings: chicken sausage and sweet potato.

  

 Here is the translated recipe for the basic bread dough:

Basic Dough ingredients:

• 323g bread flour
• 58g caster sugar (I used 40g of fruit sugar instead)
• 6g milk powder
• 5g salt
• 6g instant yeast
• 168g water
• 26g egg (I used 1 whole small egg instead, as it is difficult to divide out the egg to the required weight accurately)
• 32g unsalted butter

1. Mix the dry ingredients(1^st 5 listed above)  together in a mixing bowl
2. Add in water and egg
3. Mix at low speed (I used my hand-held mixer with the dough hood fixed on) until all dry ingredients are well blended with the liquid ingredient
4. Turn to medium speed and continue to mix until the dough no long stick on to the bowl and is smooth and not sticky
5. Add in butter and continue to mix on medium until the dough is smooth and shinning (To test readiness, stretch the dough into thin layer. It should not break/tear)
6. Add a little olive oil into the bowl to grease the dough so that it can be taken out without sticking to the hand (I simply rub both hands with olive oil)
7. Smoothed the surface of the dough by “tuck-in” the uneven parts to form a dome-like smooth dough
8. Place the dough back into the mixing bowl
9. Let rise for about 90 minutes until the size doubled (I left it in the oven (power off) and cover it with  plastic bag though out  the rising process)
10. Once doubled, take out the dough, press down and repeat step 7 to form a smooth dome and return it to the bowl to rise further till it double again, about 30 minutes
11. Take out the dough, flatten and roll it into long stripe. Cut the dough into 10 small dough, each weigh about 60g
12. Lightly knead each dough to form small individual ball Leave them on lined baking tray to rest for 10-15 min
13. Ready for use

To make sweet potato fillings, I cut sweet potato into small pieces and steam them until soft. Add in some butter, mash them thoroughly and leave the mashed potato in the fridge until ready for use.

To make Sausage Buns: Roll the bun dough into long stripe, place one sausage at one end of the stripe and roll the dough over the sausage

To make Sweet Potato Buns: Roll about one tablespoon of  mashed sweet potato into small individual ball, flatten the bun dough and place the sweet potato ball in the centre of the flatten dough, wrap it up with the dough to form a ball. To get the petal shape, slightly flatten the dough (with filling inside) and use kitchen scissors to make 6 cuts around the flattened dough.

Leave the buns on the lined tray and let rest until the buns doubled in size (I waited about 30 minutes)

Bake in pre-heated over at 200 degree C for 10 minutes (I baked mine at 180 degree C). Brush the top of each bun with melted butter while they are still hot. This is to give the buns a shinny look.