Chocolate Banana Cake

Moist banana chocolate cake served with ice cream 

This is the most easiest cake that I have done....measure and mix together. No beater and less clean up.

Ingredients

2 cup sugar

1 3/4 cup flour

3/4 cup cocoa

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 eggs

1 cup mashed banana ( about 2 banana)

1 cup warm water

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup corn oil

Method

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease two 8 in pan.
• Sift dry ingredients in a bowl and mix in sugar.
• Mix all the wet ingredients in another bowl.
• Combine the wet into the dry ingredients and whisk till there is no lumps.
• The batter will be runny.  Pour into prepared pan and bake for at least 45 minutes or tested clean when inserted a toothpick.

Cool completely on a rack.  It can either be dusted with some confectioner sugar or glazed with cream cheese frosting or ganache. Taste good with some good ol vanilla ice cream too....

Beef with Flat Rice Noodles/Hor Fun

 We love to order this dish whenever we go out to the chinese restaurant so I looked up for the recipe and cooked it for dinner.  This was an instant hit in my house. Kids just love the juicy tender meat. It tasted great with some green chili in vinegar.  I just needed to add in a little more dark soy sauce for my noodles before frying them. Overall the dish was really good.

Note : I am sure most of you will be wondering what the bicarbonate soda does in the marinate.  I have read that it actually acts as a tenderizer and true enough the meat was really tender and bouncy. 

Ingredients:

A pkt of fresh flat rice noodle

1/2 lb Beef fillet/sirlion - slice thinly across the grain

1/4 cup sliced carrot

1/2 lb Yu Choy - wash and cut into 2 inch lengths ( I also used few broccoli florets)

1/4 cup of sliced young gingers

Oil for frying beef and noodle

Marinate

1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1/2 tsp sugar

1 tsp light soya sauce

1 tsp dark soya sauce

1/2 egg white

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp shaoxing wine

1/2 tsp pepper

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tbsp tapioca starch

2 tbsp water

2 tsp cooking oil

Gravy

3 tbsp oyster sauce

1 cup chicken stock

1 tbsp cornstarch

Method:

• Knead the marinate except the oil, thoroughly into the sliced beef and when well mixed, add in the oil and knead again. Leave to marinate in the fridge for 30 minutes.
• Fry the flat rice noodles. Heat 1 cup oil and when it is hot, fry the beef by batches. Fry beef until 3/4 cooked.
• Remove all the oil and leave 2 tbsp. Fry the ginger slices, then add in the beef and vegetable. Stir fry, then add in the gravy ingredients. Cook gravy thickens and pour over the noodles.
• Serve hot.

Spiral Curry Puff / Karipap Pusing

I love making curry puffs and most of the time I opt out by using store bought pastry sheets.  But sometimes it is nice to do from scratch and this spiral curry puff is actually my first time trying to do it. It is better to do a lot and freeze them as it takes a lot of time and fry them whenever needed. I still need to practice on crimping the puffs.

Ingredients


Water Dough

400gm flour
225 ml water, mixed with 1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp shortening/margarine

Oil Dough

200gm flour
150gm margarine/shortening

Potato Filling

250g potatoes, diced and boiled
150gm big onions, diced
3 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp vegetarian oyster sauce
salt and sugar to taste
dash of pepper

To make the water dough, sift flour into a mixing bowl and rub in the shortening and add water gradually. Knead it to form a smooth dough. Set aside for 10 minutes. Divide dough into 24 equal portions.

To prepare the oil dough, sift flour into mixing bowl and rub in shortening into flour to form an oily dough. Leave aside for 10 minutes and divide dough into 24 equal portions.

To make the pastry : Wrap the oily dough inside the water dough. Flatten the dough and roll up. Flatten it out again and roll up like a swiss roll.

Cut the rolled dough into two. Circles can be clearly seen on each piece of the cut dough.

Use a rolling pin to flatten the dough into a circle. Add 1 tablespoon of filling, fold into half circle. Pinch the edges neatly to form a scallop design.  Deep fry the puffs in medium hot oil until light brown in color.

Curry Puff/karipap

Curry Puff is a dough stuff with filling commonly with curried potato and chicken, sardine, anchovies. It is then deep fried. It can be either done with a special mould (below) or just cut a round circle and put the filling in the middle, then put both ends together and shape the top with your finger. It will take some time to get used to it. I have inserted a utube video here on how to fold the curry puffs.

Curry Puff mould

The end result.....a flaky and soft curry puff

Ingredients For the Dough


375 gm flour
1/4 tsp salt
185 gm margarine 
1/2 cup cold water


Put all ingredients in a bowl and knead till soft. Leave aside for couple of minutes. Shape dough into rounds and put filling in them. Deep fry till golden brown, drain in paper towels and serve.

Filling

5 tablespoons oil
1 medium red onion (finely chopped)
1/2 tbsp chicken curry powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 cup of finely diced chicken breast meat
2 large potatoes (boiled and finely diced)
1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt

METHOD:

Make the filling first. Heat oil and fry onion gently until golden brown. Add the curry powder, chili powder and fry gently. Add the chicken, potatoes, sugar, pepper, salt and cook for 5 minutes. Mix well and leave aside to cool.

Fried Rice

Fried Rice is a versatile dish and uses any vegetables or any meat.  The key for a nice fried rice will be day old rice. You can add spice if you need it to be spicy. 

Note: The color of my rice will be off slightly because of lighting.  

Ingredients

Cooked Rice (3 cups)
Thumb size ginger - minced
1 shallot - sliced thinly
2 chicken boneless thigh - cut into strips / any meat or seafood
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
Dash of white pepper
Celery - sliced thinly (optional)
Frozen mixed vegetable - 1/4 cup ( or as much as you like)
2 eggs - lightly beaten

• In a hot oiled wok, saute the garlic and ginger. Add the chicken meat and stir fry till lightly browned.
• Add the vegetables and all the sauce mix. Stir well and add the rice in.
• Taste for seasoning. At this point the beaten eggs can be added in and let it set awhile before turning and mixing it with the rice. ( The eggs can also be fried like an omelette and cut into strips and added on the rice once it is dished up, or added in before the rice is added to the wok, either way is fine) 

I hope you will enjoy the fried rice as much as I do......

Sardine in Croissant

We had a lunch party for the Chinese new year celebration and was looking for something easy so I decided to make a finger food with croissant and sardine.

Ingredients

2 cans of sardine (drain out the liquid)
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp ginger garlic paste
1 big onion
1/2 tsp lemon juice

In a wok with little oil, saute onion and ginger garlic paste. Put in the sardine and chili powder. Cook till dry and fragrant. Season to taste and before taking it out add the lemon juice.

Bought a readymade croissant

We even had the awesome Lion Dance

Red velvet cake

Since today is Valentine's day I thought i would surprise my dear ol hubby with a cake.  I made a Red Velvet cake which I got from here but of course I did not have the time or patience to do a layered cake. I just halved the recipe and used a 9 in pan but then I cut it in half and filled in with some buttercream. Well, I also made a buttercream icing for this but the recommended icing would be a cream cheese/mascarpone icing.  Oh well, the end result was that my valentine loved it....

Fried Radish cake/Chai Tow Kway

There are 2 versions of this radish cake, one white without the dark soy sauce but mine is with the dark sauce. I just did not add a lot of dark soy sauce.  This is actually my first try in making the radish cake from scratch and it was really easy.  This meal can be done in many ways. The original form is just using preserved radish and egg as the main ingredient but you can also add shrimp, beansprouts and chili paste for spice. Well, I am glad with how it turned out. I really enjoyed making the radish cake and I am so happy to learn another new dish....yay!

Ingredients

700 gm shredded radish/daicon + 50 ml water

150 gm rice flour

250 ml water

1/4 tsp salt

Over low flame, steam the grated radish and water for 30 minutes. Take it out and allow it to cool a bit.

Meanwhile mix the rice flour, water and salt.  Add the mixture to the radish.  The mixture should resemble like a coleslaw.  Steam for another 40 minutes. Let it cool completely (best leave it in a refrigerator overnight) It will be easier to handle so that it does not stick to the knife when cutting to cubes.

Frying the radish cake

(Use half of the steamed cake-it should be enough for 2 person)

1-2 tbsp preserved radish/turnip

2-3 eggs lightly beaten

3 cloves garlic-minced

About 2 tsp fish sauce (optional)

3 tbsp oil

dash of white pepper

Chili paste/sambal oelek (optional)

About 1 tbsp dark soy sauce ( add more if need it to be darker)

3 stalks chopped spring onion

• Cut up the steamed radish into small chunk. The smaller its better since it will crisp up better. The final taste is the charred crispy crumbs.
• In a wok, heat oil and fry the cubed radish cake till lightly browned on all sides
• Add minced garlic and preserved radish
• Add fish sauce, pepper and chili paste. Stir well to coat with the radish.
• Pour beaten egg all over the radish cake. Allow the egg to set before flipping over.  Its okay if it breaks up when flipping it over.  At this point you can take it out and serve with spring onion if its the white version or just add the black/dark soy sauce if you want it to be dark.  
• Dish up and sprinkle the spring onion liberally.

Will make it a little darker the next time.....

Serimuka (Glutinous Rice with Pandan Custard)

Glutinous Rice with Pandan Custard Layer or better known as Kuih Serimuka is one of the popular kuih or cakes in Malaysia. The bottom layer of the cake is made from glutinous rice that has been steamed with coconut milk. The top layer of the cake is a custard base, made from eggs, coconut milk, flours, and most importantly the fresh Pandan juice. The cakes are delicious and have just the right sweetness level.

Manage to get my custard layer out in time before the hills start forming

Ingredients
Glutinous Rice Layer
1 1/2 cup Glutinous Rice, washed and soaked overnight
3/4 cup + 1 tbsp thin coconut Milk
1 tsp Salt
3 Pandan Leaves, cleaned and tied into a knot

Pandan Custard Layer
150 ml Pandan Juice
3 Tbsp Cornstarch
3 Tbsp All-Purpose Flour
2 Large Eggs
200 ml Coconut Milk
3/4 cup Sugar

Note : If using pandan paste, use 1/2 tsp of paste and 350 ml of coconut millk.

9 inches round tray
A piece of Banana leaf or an aluminum foil

Method

To make the glutinous rice layer: Mix rice, coconut milk, water, salt and Pandan leaves in a baking tray.

Steam the rice mixture over a high heat for 25 minutes until cooked. Remove from the steamer and discard the Pandan leaves. Fluff the rice with a fork and use a banana leaf to press and compact the rice layer.

Return the rice layer to the steamer. Continue to steam for another 10 minutes.

To make the Pandan custard layer: Combine Pandan juice and all the flours and mix well. In another bowl, whisk eggs, coconut milk and sugar together and add in the Pandan mixture. Mix well and strain the mixture into a clean medium size bowl.

Prepare a water bath and stir continuously until the custard mixture begins to thicken. (About 15 minutes) Pour the mixture into the rice layer and continue to steam over a low heat for about 25 to 30 minutes.

Allow the kuih to cool completely and slice to serve.

Note: To make the Pandan Juice. Blend 10 Pandan leaves with 200 ml water

made a little swirl with green coloring on top. 

As you can see my custard layer is not thick enough. Had a little accident when i was about to steam it. The whole thing tilted and some of the custard mixture poured onto the table but oh well I still manage to get it done !

Dried Squid Sambal

Got this wonderful dried squid from my friend's dad who came from Malaysia. I have been wanting to do for a long time and finally got the chance to cook this. The squid itself is dried and tough.  It has to be either boiled or soaked in water for couple of hours. We love to eat this with white rice and cucumber.

Ingredients

2 medium dried squid
2 onion-sliced thinly
1 clove garlic-minced
Tamarind juice
1-2 tsp brown sugar
1/2 tsp shrimp paste (belacan)
1 1/2 tbsp chili powder (depends on how much spice you want, add more if necessary)

• Boil the squid until it is tender. Drain and cut into small cube or whichever size needed.
• In a wok, add little oil and saute the onion and garlic. Add the belacan. Fry in low heat till it is aromatic.
• Add the chili powder, little tamarind juice, brown sugar and salt. Taste for flavor.
• Put in the cubed squid and add little water. Cook till it is dry and test the squid for taste. Dish out...

My version of cooking this squid is different and I am sure there are many ways to do this.  I also like using chili powder rather then grinding dried chili.