Kumquat marmalade + pizza

It's citrus season now! When I walk through Queen Victoria Market there are stall holders yelling "Mandarins for $1 per kg!" And my uncle's kumquat tree is full of juicy kumquats. They gave us a bag of them, and so I decided to make kumquat marmalade. Kumquats are sour, but their peel is actually sweet, perfect for jams.

The hard work is mainly getting all the seeds out. After that I stew the fruit in sugar and its juices. Kumquats are really juicy, I reckon I've got half of the juices on me instead of in the pot.

I pour the jam into a glass jar...

And tried it out on a cupcake. It has a beautiful flavour from the kumquats.

Very shiny and glossy =DDDD

For lunch we made pizza! Prawn, capsicum, red onions and tomatoes, sprinkled with mozzarella cheese on top of a pizza base. It can't get more simpler than that!

Smells heavenly when it came out of the oven. Look at the golden melted cheese on top. *drool*

Lobak + Pumpkin soup

My mum and I made lobak today. We followed a recipe from my great-aunt, who is an amazing cook. She whips up the best Asian food, I really miss her cooking... It is also called Penang Five-spice roll. Basically it's filling made of minced pork and other goodies, wrapped in bean curd skin and fried to golden crispy perfection. Or baked, in our case. Much healthier.

Filling of... gosh we added lots of stuff. Well, it's mainly pork mince, water chestnuts, spring onions, five spice powder, etc. The smell made my mouth water, and it's not even cooked yet!

Then we wrapped it up in bean curd skin... making sure to seal up the ends. All those precious juices from the meat will leak out otherwise.

Into the steamer it goes~ For about 15 mins before it goes to the oven to bake.

Here it is in all it's savoury goodness. I love the added crunch the water chestnuts gives the lobak. Absolutely scrumptious.

I also made pumpkin soup, which is so easy with a hand blender. The first time i used it pumpkin went flying everywhere, haha. But my Mum came to the rescue and the pumpkin went to mush under my stick blender, mwahaha.

Creamy, rich and smooth pumpkin soup, so yummy with toasted home-made garlic bread.

Healthy cakes

It's back to uni time! Which means full days with hardly any breaks in between. One thing I hate is having a grumbling stomach while trying to concentrate on the lecturer at the same time. I absolutely cannot function when I'm hungry. So I decided to bake some healthy bite-sized snacks that I can sneak into my mouth during lectures, hehe. First up is a Sweet Potato Apple cake. I grated a sweet potato, an apple and added it to batter, plus some chopped almonds for protein. I didn't even add any sugar, just 2 tbs of honey. And it's fat-free. It turned out to be a sweet, moist cake that I really enjoyed.

Before it goes into the oven.... here it looks like carrot cake batter, haha.

Fresh out of the oven~

Next I made my fat-free pumpkin cake again. But this time I added some chopped chestnuts.

Soft, moist and sweet... Plus it's good for you!

I feel healthy just looking at them, LOL.

Strawberry White Choc Cream Cheese Pinwheels

Another cookie bake! Another attempt at pinwheels! I swear, my brother is addicted to cookies. His default answer to: "What should I bake...?" is "COOKIE."

And he goes around the kitchen, lifting containers and sniffing for cookies. You would think he would remember that he was the one who finished all the cookies. Anyway, enough rant about my brother's cookie obsession. I baked these for my cell group the other day. They are my SWCCC pinwheel cookies, since the name is too long to type out.

I used cream cheese in the cookie dough, and coloured it pink with a few drops of strawberry paste.

I also added some chopped white choc, so my brother was practically leaping with joy. Come to think of it, it has most his favourite ingredients: cheese, white chocolate in a form of his favourite snack. If I swap the strawberry with mint he would be flying through the roof with ecstasy, LOL.

Rolling out the pastry was troublesome, as the dough was too sticky and I had to liberally cover it with flour to roll it out. But it was fun to do and I'm glad I baked it, just to see the smiles on my cell group's faces. One of them commented it looked like the fake seafood in udon noodles... -_-;;

Pumpkin Tart

My mum bought a WHOLE pumpkin the other day, and we're still eating our way through the last pumpkin we bought. So i decided to bake a pumpkin tart. I wanted to test the recipe for the dough anyway, and to make more use of my tart pan which I have only used once so far. The pastry turned out really well. It was flaky and melt-in-the-mouth. I chilled it in the fridge before rolling it out to give the butter time to incorporate into the flour. That's how the flaky result was achieved.

The pumpkin filling was smooth and custard-y. I made the right decision of blending the pumpkin first, or else the mixture would not be as silky.

This tart was delicious, filled with the scent of nutmeg, cloves and cinnamon, each bite was a pleasure. Although the middle of the pastry was rather raw... I will blind bake it next time.

EDIT: Second attempt at pumpkin tart! I blind baked the pastry this time, for about 10 mins. Still golden and flaky, hahaha.

I also toned down on the spices this time, last time was kinda overwhelming with nutmeg, cinnamon, etc...

With the leftover custard, I just baked them in brulee cups, and they make a nice, creamy dessert on their own. =D

Jaffa Semolina Cake

Today was such a cold and cloudy day, not a nice day to go outside at all. But a perfect time to bake! My mum was having some of her friends and their families coming over for dinner, so I baked a cake for dessert. I was rummaging through the cupboard for flour when I came across semolina flour. I had no idea what it was, so when in doubt, google it. It is a flour made from durum wheat, and used widely to make pastas and bread. But I wanted to use it to make a cake, hence a Jaffa (chocolate & orange) semolina cake was born!

I made some caramelised orange slices to decorate the top of the cake.

My cake decorating skills still needs some work...

But wow, this cake is amazing. The texture is totally different from cakes made with all flour. It had a delicate crumb, was moist and slightly tart due to the sticky syrupy orange slices. The chocolate and orange flavours balanced each other out beautifully, making it a fantastic cake.

Everyone loved it and was delicious served with vanilla ice cream. ^^

Oh and I also made some naan bread to go with my mum's curry. It was easy, quick and requires no yeast!

Mochi choc cupcakes + Raisin pinwheels

I baked mochi cakes again! Chocolate cupcakes this time. The chewy texture is just too addicting... Sadly, there were cracks in them due to the white choc chips I decided to add in last minute. Shouldn't have done that! It resulted in holes in all the cupcakes...

Best eaten when warm, so the gooey white choc oozes out with the crispy top and chewy texture, yum~

Also baked raisin pinwheels. The shape was supposed to be round, and not... semi-circle. But because I had an hour to make them, so they had not enough time to firm up in the fridge. Oh well... No compromise on the taste though!

I love the raisin swirls in each cookie, there is a tangy-ness due to the orange zest I added in. Crisp and buttery, perfect with a cup of tea. ^^