Pandan Cheesecake & more Snowskins

Pandan frenzy! Seems like I am baking every weekend now, with the theme of pandan! Here is the Pandan cheesecake I baked last week:

See the green tinge? I have never heard of pandan flavoured cheesecake, but somehow my mum managed to persuade me to add it in anyway. The plate was emptied, so I guess pandan and cream cheese does go together? ^^;;

Will post the Pandan Chiffon cakes i baked tomorrow...

And I made more snowskin mooncakes today! I also made some with lotus paste, but didn't take any pictures of it. The lotus paste was what made me make more mooncakes! It caught my eye in one of the Asian grocery stores. It was $4.30 for a packet, and I managed to get 5 decent size balls.

Don't they look better than last time? Practice does make perfect!

This is the taro filling, it was so much easier to make than red bean! And tastier too. Just steam, add brown sugar and roll into balls. I also added some almond flakes. But wow, the taro was so expensive, $7.59 per kg!

But all in all it's so much cheaper to make it on our own, even though the fillings are a bit pricey. I bet they upped the prices because of mooncake season... A box of four mooncakes cost $10, and I made 16 mooncakes for less than $13. Yay~ Money saved. =DDDD Plus I really love the taro filling! I could eat it all day. And at least I know what goes into my mooncake, so I won't feel too guilty indulging myself.... hehehe.

Mooncake 月饼

Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) falls on the 15th day of 8th month on the Lunar calendar, which is on 22nd of September this year! So we baked it practically a month early, because once Mooncake festival rolls around, I won't even have time to eat a mooncake, let alone make one, with my exams nearly coming up! *gulp*

It started with booming sales of mooncakes in Box Hill, where everywhere you walked mooncakes will pop up. But my mum saw this mooncake mould which cast all thoughts about buying mooncakes away.

"Why bother buying when we can make our own mooncakes?" She told me. Good question, why not try it out?

And we did. For the whole night, trying out recipes, haha. It was really fun, and we only had one disaster of a dough. The rest were sucesses! We made two types, snowskin and traditional baked.

Green Tea Snowskin Mooncake:

Pandan Baked Mooncake:

They look great don't they? When they first popped out of the mould after whacking it like crazy, it was perfect. Everything a mooncake should be.

The skin was too thick though, so next time we should roll it out more thinly.

The imprint is actually a lotus flower for lotus paste filling, but we made red bean filling instead.

Yummy mooncakes! But for flavours like durian, I would rather buy them because it's hard to get hold of fresh durian...

White chocolate and raspberry...eggs??

My friend's birthday is tomorrow, so I wanted to bake her something special. Cupcakes seem perfect, but I had a twist. I would bake them in eggs! Granted, the appearance is questionable.

"It looks like you baked chicks still in their shells." My brother remarked. And I agree, it's slightly horrifying. BUT! Once you crack them open, there is no question that these are white chocolate cakes with gooey raspberries! In Chinese tradition, we normally have eggs on our birthdays anyway, which symbolises happiness and renewal of life, so the concept is perfect. Never mind that my friend is not Asian.

Making these are so troublesome. Even though the results are excellent, I wouldn't bake these again in eggshells. It took me 2 weeks to get 20 egg shells. It needed to be poked with a knife to create a small hole for the egg yolk and egg white to come out. After the 2 weeks, I was so happy to be able to crack eggs normally again.

The cupcake batter went everywhere when I was piping it in the eggs, it was so sticky! It must be due to the white chocolate in the mixture. I also filled it too much, so during the baking process it overflowed out of the shells like larva out of a volcano. But I trimmed the edges, thus it looks decent.

The taste is delicious! Super soft, with the rich taste of white chocolate paired with raspberries. Those two flavours are like a match made in heaven, they pair with each other so well. There are actually three layers to this egg cake: the bottom is the white chocolate mix, middle is raspberry puree and top is the batter mixed with green tea powder. The green tea taste is not really apparent, as well as the colour. I should have added more, perhaps.

Really can't see the layers... *sigh* I cut it in the wrong place, so the raspberry filling can't be seen either. Oops!

My friend really liked it. The first reactions were generally, "How do I eat this?" It's amusing to see them peel the eggs, hahaha.

Kimchi

Kimchi craze again! Do you know that Koreans says "kimchi" instead of "cheese" when they have their photo taken? Hahaha ^0^ It really is a national icon.

Once we finished the last bit of kimchi, my mum and I felt like making it again. Trying a different recipe this time. Last time was without sweet rice flour, we had used an apple and a pear instead. But this time, we made two different kinds of kimchi: Nappa (cabbage) kimchi and Oisobagi (cucumber) kimchi.

We mix the paste with carrots and spring onions. Because there were so many varieties of kimchi, like sushi, we just throw in whatever we can thought would taste good in kimchi. Which is a lot.

Here are the cucumbers, pre soaked in salt water for 1-2 hours, rinsed and drained.

Toss cabbage with paste like tossing salads. =)

Make sure to spread paste inside cucmbers, coating evenly...

Place them in glass containers overnight...

...and into the refrigerator the next day. It takes about a week to ferment.

Can't wait to taste!

Pork puffs and...cheesecake again!

My mum and I made meat puffs this morning. We cheated with frozen puff pastry, 'coz really, who can be bothered to go through all that rolling and folding and rolling and folding... only to roll and fold again. Thank goodness for the frozen aisle of the supermarket. =)

Easy to make: Place filling on a square of pastry, fold into triangle, press fork on sides, brush with egg, sprinkle on sesame seeds, and voila! Done.

This is the minced pork filling, with spring onions and carrots.

Yay! Golden meat puffs fresh out of the oven.

They look and taste yummy; crispy on the outside, delicious moist filling on the inside...

I baked Japanese cheesecake for my Mum's cell group again. They really liked it the last time I made it, hahaha...

I am a really slow baker, taking my time to weigh out everything and making sure I have my measurements correct. So just making the cake batter took me 50 minutes! I have to speed up next time.

I provided step-by-step photos this time so the processes can be followed. =DDD Here is the beating of egg whites and sugar to form soft peaks.

And mixing the egg yolks in...

...add the flour and mix! Look how airy the mixture is, I was careful not to over mix or the bubbles of air will escape.

Pour it into a cake pan, crank up the oven to 160 degrees and bake.

Ta-dah! Cottony-soft cheesecake ready to be eaten. Tastes moist, soft, melts-in-your-mouth kind of cake.

I wonder how the bakers in bakeries bake so fast? And to produce so many too! I would love to see a professional baker, marvel at their speed...

Creamy Mushroom Pasta with Beef

I feel like I am making dinner more and more lately. Is this a cunning plan formulated by my Mum to get me to cook so she doesn't have to? Hahaha.

Well, there was some leftover cream in the fridge from the last baking adventure. Now that I know it is just regular cream, I can use it to make a white creamy sauce for spaghetti instead. =DDD

This pasta is different from the normal spaghetti-sauce-from-the-bottle pasta, because it was made with real cream and cheese. Hence, we rarely had white sauce spaghetti; it was always cooked the easy lazy way.

Actually, this pasta isn't so hard to make. Packed with loads of vegetables because they are so good for you. =)

I need to add more seasoning next time, not salty enough.

Green Tea Swiss Roll

I baked a swiss roll today! The thing that had me most worried was of course the sponge cake roll. The rolling part I was not so fussed about. It was the beating of the eggs, and folding in of flour; like what if I over mixed and the mixture lost its airiness? It'll just become a dense cake instead of it being light and fluffy. And I was careful not to over bake it either, or it would form cracks and not roll at all.

So here I am, watching it like a paranoid parent hawk. Constant Vigilance!

Woohoo it's out! I rolled it up immediately once it was out of the oven, and set it aside to cool. I was really pleased with it, it rolled up nicely with arguably minimal cracking. That crack in the picture does not look as bad on the cake, really. Heh.

Now for the filling. I had a bottle of cream, but it was unlabelled. So I couldn't be sure if it was whipping cream, or just normal heavy cream. I decided to mix it with an electric mixer anyway.

After 6 minutes....the mixture still looked the same. "Yea, It's not whipping cream." My brother helpfully supplied. Thank you, Captain Obvious. So into the bin the failed 'whipped' cream went, and I just spread some jam over it.

The cake is a bit crumbly, so I should have added in butter.

The combinations are endless with swiss rolls. For a chocolate sponge, add cocoa powder instead of green tea. Fillings could include, chocolate butter-cream, nutella. peanut butter, or ice cream for an ice cream roll. Hey, maybe I should try that next time.

Another plus: This cake has no fat at all, totally guilt free! I made it with just flour, sugar, eggs, and baking powder.

Oh yes, my mum made Kimchi. It's fermented cabbage, which sounds odd, but tastes so good! It's actually one of the healthiest foods in the world. It really packs a punch, because it's so spicy! I'm training my tongue to withstand spicy food, and I think it is working? Then I can eat laksa without drinking a litre of water next time I go back to Singapore, haha.