Our bake-away weekend...

Last weekend was bit of a snowed in. Or maybe we are just too lazy to brave the cold and do anything that needs to leave our cosy hide. And I brought my first cake tin and tart tin...to honor my new purchase, I immediately look up for egg tart recipe :)

Cantonese egg tart is always my favorite guilty pleasures. Definitely not the healthiest dim sum...but I crave for it from time to time so it would be handy to finally learn the way to master it. I scaled down the recipe from Christine (as usual, always the easiest-to-follow recipes!) to do a trial run of two tarts. Well they don't look amazing, in fact they looked like being in a fight (ouch!). Taste is fine but the proportion of egg and cookie is not right. Well...there is always next time...



On the next day I tried to bake something again - this time with a cake mix. It is bit of a cheat so there is nothing too exciting about it. Just the cake was mega tall....so that was my breakfast for an entire week.

Our dinner that evening was a roast - Cantonese style of course. Roasted pork (Siu Yuk) made by d! It is the first time he was trying to make it and it was amazing. I made the soft-boiled eggs  =D (yay...finally something successful!) xx

Tiramisu (egg-free)

Tiramisu is one of those evil things that I could not possibly resist trying whenever I saw it on the dessert menu. It is such a simple pudding (or shall I call it a cake?), yet every cook has its own interpretation which makes it exciting every time it comes onto the table.  Endless possibilities for improvisation...so as a proud owner of a new hand mixer, I have to give it ago!! 


Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp instant coffee powder ( I use some instant capuccino powder I brought over from Rome...)
• 60 ml hot water
• 60ml Port wine
• 150 ml double cream
• 2 Tbsp icing sugar mixture
• 150g  Mascarpone cheese
• 6 pieces sponge finger biscuits
• 2 Tbsp grated black chocolate
• cocoa powder, for garnish

Method: 

1) Dissolve coffee powder into water. Cool and mix with half of the wine.

2) Mix cream and sugar with handmixer until mixture before fluffy. Mix with cheese and rest with the wine with a spoon.

3) Layer finger biscuits, pour coffee mixture to soak the biscuits. Layer with cheese and cream mix. 

4) Garnish with cocoa powder and chocolate. 

5) Put into fridge overnight. 

Bench notes: 

This recipe is modified from christinerecipe.com, since I could not find any thickened cream in the UK :( It is such easy to follow recipe that I adapt without any difficulty, and it tastes great! I will probably add less cheese next time though. 

P.S. So sorry with the chinese style plate!! 

(Danish) Butter cookies - beware of the calories!

Both my boyfriend d and I absolutely adore butter cookies, especially the piped one sold by Cherikoff in Hong Kong. Although it is probably the simplest recipe ever existed, I have actually never attempted to bake any cookies.

Ingredients:
120g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
45g icing sugar
135g plain flour
2 tsp vanilla essence

Method:
1) Preheat oven to 180C. Line baking tray.
2) Cream butter and mix with icing sugar. Mix with flour  followed by vanilla essence.
3) Place dough on tray. Bake for 12-15 minutes.
4) Allow cookies to cool. Done :)

Bench notes: 
- I failed to get hold of any star-shaped pipe in Waitrose so I decided to make random shapes instead.
- This recipe actually tasted more like shortbread than butter cookies. Perhaps the ratio of butter to flour is not optimized? Anyway I like butter shortbread too :) Just they made me even feel more guilty...

Ajitsuke tamago (Japanese soft-boiled egg) 味付け玉子

Ajitsuke tamago is one of the essential topping of a good ramen. While making tonkotsu seems like a daunting task, one could start by taking one step at a time - attempting the flavoured soft-boiled egg. The internet is full of all kind of recipes, the key is to control the timing of boiling the egg to ensure the yolk is still runny. Before I get my hands dirty, I have spent ages researching for the easiest way to do it...partly because I was lazy, and party because I would rather not wasted food as consuming too much eggs is no good for heart. 

1) Bring eggs to room temperature.

2) Put water and eggs to pot. Bring to boil.

3) When the water starts to boil, count to 4 min.

4) Transfer egg to cold water for 5 min. Remove shell under cold water. 

5) Put egg in marinate (1tbsp each of mirin, soy sauce and sake) for 6 hours in the fridge. 

Fool-proof and fuss free :) 

Yet Another Blog

On the night from our end-of-year trip from Belgium the telly was showing "Julie & Julia", the story about a young girl fed up with her daytime job taking up the challenge of cooking all 500 sth recipes of a French cookbook within a year. I was thinking...maybe I could do sth similar and learn to cook properly. Cooking everyday is probably asking too much of me, I am being easy on myself :P

So...another blog for the brand-new year. :)