Nuts about Almond Nut Butter

User discretion required : highly addictive.

Yesterday, I made almond nut butter.  Yup, from almonds.  From scratch.  Homemade.  And, guess what?  It's easy!  It's delicious too!

Steamed Pumpkin Muffins

 On a recent trip down to Singapore to visit my adorable nieces, I noticed a lot of steamed muffins being sold.  Aha....this must be the latest food fad in food-fad-mad Singapore.  This is one uniquely Singaporean trait - be it apple strudel, bubble tea, doughnuts, ramen, or Hello Kitty plush toys - come the latest fad, you will find Singaporeans queueing for hours to purchase the product and proudly sharing their find (spoils?) with all and sundry.  Then you'll find restaurants and kiosks sprouting up like lallang after the rain, all selling the same stuff.  And just as sudden as the next thunderstorm, it'll die down when the next new kid on the block comes along.  Economics 101, the law of supply and demand; real-life demo.  To be fair, you do get the same behaviour in Malaysia, but somehow just not as intense and frenzied. 

Beating the haze with a Lemon Yogurt Cake

The haze is back with a vengeance this year, with the API readings at unhealthy levels again.  It makes my nose itch terribly, and the air smells vaguely burnt.  Other than lighting up scented candles or fragrance oils to counter it (which isn't so smart since its already so hazy),  perhaps baking a cake will help.  There's comfort food, and there's comfort smells.  A baking cake in the oven is the best of both worlds - comforting, safe.  Ahhhh....

Fruit Compote in Ginger Honey Syrup

Breakfast is usually a rushed affair for me and means something quick with my morning coffee.  It's not quite grab-and-go as I hate eating on the run.  However it does mean no cooking and it has to be strong enough to kick start the day alongside the coffee (and believe me when I say I need a good kick-start to get going especially when I'm as fast as molasses on a Monday morning).  Since making my own yogurt, its been a regular breakfast staple.  To save on washing, I confess to eating it straight out of the bottle.  Oops.

Udderly Delicious Homemade Yogurt

Two cartons of yogurt walk into a bar.  The bartender says to them, "We don't serve your kind in here." One of the yogurt cartons says back to him, "Why not?  We're cultured individuals."  Badabam.  Haha.

Bad puns aside, I happen to be watching River Cottage on AFC one day, and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall made yogurt.   From scratch.  Without a yogurt machine.  I’d never thought of making my own yogurt.  Never one to shy from a challenge, I set out to understand the process better.  It’s all and well to follow a TV show but because this deals with milk, I was a little concerned over the food safety aspects of making yogurt.  But I didn’t have to worry.  It is very easy to do, as long as you remember the basics. 

Banana Apple Muffins - a healthy treat

I've been on a bit of a roll lately, a muffin roll to be exact.  After the goji blueberry muffins, and the banana muffins, this time it's banana apple muffins.  Over the last few weeks for some strange reason, we had plenty of bananas in the house (the fruit, not manic humans).  I guess the neighbourhood market was selling them on the cheap. 

Incidentally, the most expensive bananas I'd seen were in Sydney in 2006.  AUD10!  That worked out to AUD2 per banana - I almost fainted in Coles. Coming from a country where banana trees are a dime a dozen, and bananas equally cheap, paying so much for bananas was just mind-boggling.  I think they were expensive because Australia was plagued by a severe drought at that time.

This recipe is a variant on the banana muffin recipe.  It produces a moist muffin because of the apples.  They are good eaten on their own as the baked apples add a nice flavourful sweetness to them.  Who says you can't have healthy and tasty at the same time?





you can see the layer of diced apple in the middle

soft and moist

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients:

75g/3oz melted butter
250g/9oz plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
115g/4oz sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp honey
2 large ripe bananas
2 medium eggs
125ml/4oz milk
1 green apple

Method :1.  Preheat oven to 190c and prepare muffin trays with liners.
2.  Melt the butter in the microwave oven and leave to cool.  20 seconds on medium-high is normally sufficient.
3.  Mash the bananas.  Peel, cored and dice the green apple.
4.  In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, soda and ground cinnamon.  Add the sugar and mix well. 
5.  In a second bowl, mix the eggs, milk, honey and vanilla extract.  Stir in the mashed bananas and diced apple. 
6.  Make a well in the center of the dry bowl and stir in the egg/milk/fruit mixture.  Don't over mix.  Batter should be lumpy. 
7.  Scoop batter into muffin tins, about 3/4 full and bake for 20 - 25 minutes.
8.  Bake for 20 - 25 minutes.  Use a skewer to test for doneness.  Cool 5 minutes in tin before removing. 

Enjoy :)





Happiness is....

banana muffins baking out in the mornings ....it's enough to coax the most comatose from the arms of Morpheus.

There are some fruit and muffin combinations that always go together.  Bananas and muffins are like bananas in pajamas.  Remember them?  B1 and B2.  Lol. After making the blueberry and goji berry muffins, I decided to make some banana muffins.  There was a comb of bananas ripening on the counter crying out to be used.

I like making muffins.  It's easy to make and takes very little time to bake out.  In less than an hour, you get freshly-baked muffins.  And nothing beats the aroma of freshly baked muffins gently wafting out of the kitchen in the mornings.  These are guaranteed to kick start the drool glands even if you belong to the only-coffee-in-the-morning clan. Muffins are easy to eat.  You can eat them on the go and a little goes a long way, especially with banana muffins.  They are a power packed snack.  Small enough to pack into your handbag, yet power packed to boost your energy levels for a discreet mid-morning snack or after

yoga indulgence.

This is a tried and tested recipe which bakes out perfectly every time without fail.  And I love that there's nothing complicated about any of the ingredients.  The bananas, cinnamon and vanilla combine into the most delicious scent - eat your heart out Jo Malone!

coffee and muffins for the morning

Recipe adapted from nigella.com

Makes 12 muffins

Ingredients:
75g/3oz melted butter
250g/9oz plain flour
2 tsp baking pwder
1 tsp soda
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
115g/4oz sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp honey
2 large ripe bananas
2 med eggs
125ml/4oz milk

Method :1.  Preheat oven to 190c and prepare muffin trays with liners.
2.  Melt the butter in the microwave oven and leave to cool.  20 seconds on medium-high is normally sufficient.
3.  Mash the bananas.
4.  In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, soda and ground cinnamon.  Add the sugar and mix well. 
5.  In a second bowl, mix the eggs, milk, honey and vanilla extract.  Stir in the mashed bananas. 

6.  Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stir in the egg/milk/banana mixture.  Don't overmix.  Batter should be lumpy. 
7.  Scoop batter into muffin tins, about 3/4 full and bake for 20 - 25 minutes.
8.  Bake for 20 - 25 minutes.  Use a skewer to test for doneness.  Cool 5 minutes in tin

before removing.

 

Beer Bread

I can hear some cries now - drink your beer, not cook with them!  But if you ever have leftover bottles of beer sitting forlornly in your fridge, and you're not about to add more to the jackhammers pounding in your head, ta-dah...Beer bread!  Stupidly easy to make, and guaranteed to chase the blues away once you get a whiff of the aroma wafting out from the oven.  Ah guaranteah y'all that...quintessentially American. 

It only takes all of 5 minutes to put together.  Yes, you read that right.  5 minutes.  No kneading.  No proofing.  No rolling and shaping and what-have-you.  Just stir all the ingredients together.  Just 6 things.  At the end of it, you get a buttery, chewy bread with a faint hint of your favourite brew.  The texture is more like cornbread than regular bread.  Dip it in some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, serve it over some chunky soup, or simply slapped with some butter - it's a winner :)  

This is so seriously addictive, it ought to come with its own warnings.  Half the loaf landed in my tummy before you could say beer barrel polka.

So how does it work?  While there is no added yeast, there is yeast in the beer.  The beer, with the sugar and baking powder produces CO2 which reacts by bubbling and rising happily in the heat.  Don't worry about the batter - it should look quite thick, lumpy and sticky.  And shove the pan immediately into the oven as you don't want to lose any of the lovely CO2 before the heat gets to it.

How strong or mild the flavour is will depend very much on your beer.  I used Tiger beer which is a pale lager, so the bread was quite mild.  For something more robust,  I think I'm going to try a Guinness Stout next.  Black dog bread*, anyone?

Makes 1 loaf 9 x 4 inches

Ingredients:

3 cups plain flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/3 cup sugar
350ml beer - 1 can or 1 bottle
2 tbsp butter or olive oil

Method:

1.  Grease a 9 inch x 4 inch loaf pan.  Pre-heat oven to 190C/375F.
2.  Sift all the dry ingredients together into a bowl.
3.  Make a well in the centre, and mix in the beer until incorporated.  You should get a thick, lumpy batter.
4.  Pour the batter into pan and bake for 45 - 50 minutes. 
5.  5 minutes before time, brush the melted butter over the bread and finish up in the oven.
6.  Bread is done when you insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.  Turn out and cool on a wire rack before slicing.

Knock yourself out.

*  the Guinness Stout mascot used to be a bull-dog.  That's why it is colloquially known as black dog.  Not that I'm going to bake a black dog!

Goji and Blueberry - super berry muffins

I used to laugh at my mother for needing reading glasses to read the newspapers.  Yes, yes, nasty of me.  But the laugh's on me now.  I. Need. Glasses.  Quelle horreur!

I swear it happened overnight.  One day I was happily rattling off the fine print on a bar of chocolates.  The next, it was all a blur. Vanity dictated that I put off glasses as long as I could, but reality soon hit with a thud. It's a dead giveaway when you start holding everything at an arm's-length anyway.

Okay, so enter the goji aka wolfberry 枸杞.  Chinese mamas will tell you for good eye sight, eat goji berries.  In our kitchen, we always throw some goji berries into soups.  In recent years, goji has been hyped-up and touted as some kind of super food in the English media.  All I know is that it is likely that its rich anti-oxidant properties makes it good for the eyes.

There were some plump juicy goji berries sitting in the fridge and I wanted to explore using them beyond

soups.  I was inspired to use them in muffins as they reminded me of raisins.  A quick search later and I

netted this wonderful recipe.  It also uses blueberries, making this into a super-muffin.  Blueberries are

rich in anti-oxidants too.  The combination of sweet blueberries tempered with the slightly tart goji berries

make this a wonderful muffin - great to kick start breakfast or as a snack.  The muffins are literally

bursting with berries.

The muffins are suitable to freeze, but believe me, there's no chance of them even hitting the freezer as

they are so good.

Recipe adapted from SylviaH
Makes 1 dozen

Ingredients:2 cups - 315g plain flour
3/4 cup -185g brown sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp. sea salt
1 egg - lightly beaten
5 tbsp - 75g - unsalted butter - melted
1 Cup - 250g  buttermilk
2 cups - 250g berries - I used a combination of goji and blueberries

Method:1.  Preheat oven to 375F/190C and line the pans with muffin cases.
2.  Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt into a large bowl.  Add the sugar.
3.  Make a well in the center, add the egg, melted butter and buttermilk.
4.  Stir just until evenly moistened.  Batter will be a little lumpy.  You want lumpy batter.
5.  Fold in the fruits using a large spatula, gently.  Be careful not to break the blueberries.
6.  Spoon the batter gently filling each muffin cup.  Do not push the batter down into the cups.
7.  Bake until light golden brown, and springs back at the touch.  25 to 30 minutes, rotating the pan halfway
through the bake. 
8.  Leave in muffin pan for 5 minutes, before removing onto a wire rack to cool down.
Best served warm or at room temperature.

Notes:
Don't over mix the batter, or you'll end up with tough chewy muffins.
I had dried goji berries, so I washed and soaked them with some hot water for 5 minutes to rehydrate.

Easy chocolate cake

Chocolate cake...who doesn't love them?  From fudgey dense ones to light airy mousse creations.  Everyone has their favourites and their favourite recipes.  I've had my fair share of trials with different recipes.  My colleague generously shared her recipe.  This version gives a moist dense-looking cake, yet is pretty light when you bite into it.  If you skip the frosting, it's less rich and just as yummy.  As a plus point, making this couldn't be easier - no creaming, no folding.  I'm not a good baker - sponges and chiffons defy me with all that airy lightness. 

After a good round of thumbs-up from the first one, I thought I'd bake one out for a Christmas party.  And because it's for a party, it had better be all tarted up ie frosted.  The photos show both versions - the stay-at-home cake vs the paint-the-town-red cake.

This is my very first attempt at icing and decorating a cake.  Until now, all my cakes have been naked cakes.  After reading up on different creams and their performance in heat and humidity (KL weather), I decide to chicken out and do a simpler ganache.   No need to OTT on the 'make-up'.   Lacking the confidence to pour the ganache on, I decided to spread it instead - more control, less dripping and less mess to clean up.  You can see that I need to work on the cake decorating skill :)  Should have halved the strawberries instead of plopping them on whole. 

Have a merry Christmas and happy holidays.



stay-at-home plain jane





all tarted up to paint the town red


There should be extra ganache left over.  Apparently you can freeze this for later use and heat it up using a water bath or double boil.  Or make truffles.  I'll have a go at this later.

Makes an 8 inch round tray
Ingredients for cake:

2 cups plain flour
1 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

3 eggs
2 cups caster sugar (note: I reduced it to 1 1/4 cup)
250gm butter, melted (note: 1 reduced this to 200gm)
1 cup evaporated milk
1 cup warm water

Method:
1.  Mix the dry ingredients - flour, cocoa, leavening agents - and sift it to remove any lumps.  Set aside.
2.  Mix the eggs and sugar together.  Give it a light beating.
3.  Pour melted butter into the egg-sugar mixture.  Beat slowly for about 3 minutes just to incorporate the fat with the eggs. 
4.  Stir in the evaporated milk, then the water.  Mixture is quite runny at this stage.  Don't worry.

5.  Stir in the sifted dry ingredients, and your mix should come together and thicken.

6.  Pour into pan and bake at 160C oven for 45 - 50 minutes, depending on your oven.  It's safe to check at 40 minutes.  Mine took 55 minutes.
7.  Remove from oven, leave in pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto wire rack to cool.
8.  If intending to frost the cake, make sure cake is completely cool otherwise icing will just run off.

For ganache:
200ml whipping or heavy cream (35% - 40% fat)
200gm dark chocolate

1.  Chop the chocolate into smaller pieces to melt easier.
2.  Heat up the cream until just before boil.
3.  Pour the hot cream into the chocolate, wait about 3 minutes, then use a spatula to stir the melting chocolate.
4.  Keep stirring until you get a smooth glossy mixture.
5.  Cool to room temperature before using - about 20 minutes.  it should thicken slightly.  If you want to pour it on the cake, you can do it now.  If you prefer to spread it, then cool the ganache in the fridge, until you get a spreadable consistency.  I left mine for about 1 hour in the fridge.

you can see how shiny and glossy the ganache is

frosting work in progress

Notes:
1.  You'll notice that the both cakes cracked at the top.  I think it's because the oven thermostat is acting up and it was hotter than 160C.

Lemon and mint drink chill-out

This refreshing drink appears to be a favourite in the Middle East countries.  I couldn't get enough of this, and drank it at least once a day.  Simply, it's lemonade served with liberal amounts of chopped mint leaves.  It's tangy, citrusy and minty all at once - very refreshing too.  I also discovered that there were many variations to this drink.  The variations are in the amount of mint and whether it's chopped, bruised or whizzed in the blender.

Luck was upon me as the neighbourhood grocer had lemons on sale - 5 for $5, cheap eh?  The mint was plucked fresh from our little backyard garden.  Did you know that you can grow mint by sticking the stems into the ground?  That's how we grew ours.



our backyard mint peeking out from the pandan

Ingredients:5 lemons
10 tbsp white sugar (adjust to taste but I used 2 tbsp to each lemon)
1 handful mint
1 litre water

Method:1.  Make the syrup - bring 500ml water to boil and stir in the sugar to dissolve.  Allow to cool.
2.  Use only the mint leaves, discard the stems.  Finely chop the mint.
3.  Squeeze the lemons to extract the juice. 
4.  Throw everything together into a jug; water, juice, syrup, mint and give it a good stir
5.  Chill and serve over ice.

Notes :For a lighter mint flavour, bruise the mint with a rolling pin instead of chopping it.
I prefer using white sugar as brown sugar gives the drink an oxidised rusty colour.
You can serve this with sparkling water - it gives it a nice fizzy zing.
For even more zing, splash with some Bacardi for a Mojito :)