Recipe book: Bread

I love this book!! It was originally written in Japanese and my version is the Chinese translated version. I'm not sure if you can tell from the cover, but the book name is something along the lines of "Bread that taste good andwon't make you fat!", and the cover explains why as well -all bread are "non butter non oil", explains it all!!

On the bottom you also see how they have cut down the calorie content of one of their breads. They actually have a calorie analysis for all of their recipes which is really nice :)

Another reason why I love this recipe book is because they use normal ingredients. Usually if you get calorie reduced foods, they tell you to use low fat margarine, or aritificial sugar or egg substitute, but this does not use any of these. There's four chapters:

1. Water as the liquid
2. Milk as the liquid
3. Egg as the liquid
4. Milk & egg as the liquid

and obviously they are in order of increasing caloric content.

What surprised me the most was that they managed to make fat reduced croissants!! Croissants made with yogurt instead of butter!! Must try!!

They're so cute!!

Yoghurt :O

Cream Puffs

Beard Papa is a Japanese chain store which sells "fresh'n natural cream puffs" and it is really popular at the moment. Many of my friends and family have been there and they really enjoy eating the cream puffs. (http://www.beardpapa.com.hk/eng_index.html)

I recreated these all famous cream puffs at home on Saturday. I made these for school last year, so its nothing new, and they weren't hard to make either :)


Ingredients (makes 6-8)
3/4 cup water
50 g unsalted butter
3/4 cup flour, sifted
3 eggs beaten lightly


1. Gently heat butter and water until it simmers
2. Take off heat and add flour all in one go, beat quickly with a wooden spoon 
3. Return to heat, beat until the mixture leaves the side of the pan. Remove from heat.
4. Beat eggs in one at a time, incorperating well after each addition. Beat until the mixture is stiff, glossy, and a wooden spoon stands in the mixture
5. Spoon tablespoonfuls of batter into a baking tray and bake at 210C for 20-25 minutes. 

Rising

Rising

POOF!

Topping:
200g dark chocolate
30g butter


Melt dark chocoalte and butter using a bain-marie method. Spread the chocolate on top of the puffs


Filling:
Whipped Cream, sweetened
Fresh fruits, diced


I used fresh mangoes and strawberries!

We had a little puff buffet hehe. Add fillings as you wish :)
Try it!!

Blueberry Muffin

Muffins!! So simple, so good! I've been wanting to bake them for the whole week, but I have postponed it due to a Biology test. Now that it's over, I finally have time to bake :)


And one more thing - Happy Birthday Priscilla!!

Blueberry muffin

Ingredients:
2 cup flour + 1/8 cup
3 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 cup blueberries
5 tbsp sugar

In the oven

1. Preheat oven to 205C
2. Combine 2 cups of flour, baking powder, salt and sugar into a large bowl. Combine them and make a well in the centre
3. Coat blueberries with remaining flour, mix into dry ingredients
4. In a separate bowl, beat eggs, oil and milk together. Pour the liquid into the dry ingredients all at once
5. Mix quickly and lightly with a large spoon, batter will be lumpy
6. Pour batter into small muffin cases, mine made around 20
7. Sprinkle extra sugar on top to create a crunchy topping
8. Bake at 205C for 12 minutes


The muffins were light, fluffy, cupcake sized and very quick to put together. The sugar topping gives a nice crunch to the otherwise soft texture. 

Blueberry muffins

Blondies

I first came across blondies when I was reading a recipe book. The name sounded odd (and slightly racist) to me. However, the description of the dessert brought me to my senses and I realised how the name 'brownies' may be a little offensive too.

Blondies

Nonetheless, they sound very appealing. I love brownies. They are the simpliest, easiest, fastest desserts to learn how to bake, yet they are the most indulging desserts ever. Brownies are always the first thing I would buy in bake sales. I particularly love brownies with a soft crust on top as they bring more texture and flavour to the brownie. 


Well, according to the recipe book and reviews I read online, blondies are just like brownies -without the chocolate -this intrigues me. How can a brownie be a brownie without chocolate? Thus I tried this 'Blonde Brownies I' recipe by Sue Bush on Allrecipes (http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Blonde-Brownies-I/Detail.aspx). According to the responses, the recipe is soo goood and it does not need to be modified; I trusted them -except I omitted the walnuts, mixed brown with white sugar and added M&Ms on top. 


Ingredients:
1 cup sifted flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla essence
2/3 cup chocolate chips
1/4 cup M&Ms


1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. Melt the butter and mix with the sugar
3. Lightly beat on egg, mix it with vanilla essense and beat into the sugar
4. Mix sifted flour with salt, baking powder and baking soda
5. Slowly sift the dry ingredients into the sugar and egg, mix well after each addition
6. Fold in the chocolate chips
7. Spread into a 9x9 inch baking tray. Arrange M&Ms on top and bake for 20 to 25 minutes

Pre-baked (excuse the messy kitchen)

A really thick batter was formed (just like in brownies). I baked mine in a heart shaped silicon mould and I took it out after 20 minutes. I tried spreading it on a 9x9 tray but it made the blondie really thin, and I like thick slices of brownies, so I decided not to use the square tray. I used half white sugar and half brown sugar because I wanted to blondie to look white, however, it still ended up dark in colour :( 

Just out of the oven

I love how a crust formed on top of the blondies after it was baked. As I said before -I love brownies with a crust on them! It adds a nice crunch to them. 


I lined orange and red M&Ms onto my blondie to create a heart shape for a decorative effect. I love using M&Ms to decorate my food because I love their attractive colour. However, as I baked, the M&Ms started to melt and sink a little -are there any ways to prevent M&Ms from melting whilst baking? 

Blondies

Chocolate Pie

-First post!!-

It’s my friend, Queenie’s birthday tomorrow and she has this thing for pi. Not the food pie, but the 3.14 ∏ pi. Oh yeah, her birthday’s on pi too, 14th March… 3.14? lol. Did I meantion that she’s really smart as well? Big surprise!! Maybe this is destiny?

Anyways, I decided to make her a Chocolate Pie for her birthday. I found the recipe when I was looking through YouTube. The video was made by the One Pot Chef, his channel is called the ‘OnePotChefShow’ and here’s the link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUy5UHUTDD8. I was really excited when I found this because the steps were so simple yet it looked so good!

However, I changed mine a little. I live in Hong Kong so it’s almost impossible to buy frozen pie crust here so I used a graham crust instead although I’m sure the pastry one will give a better texture. For the chocolate flakes, I just got a bar of chocolate and peeled it using a fruit peeler -sounds odd, I know... you're meant to use a grater but I don't have a good one. Also, I whipped some cream up and covered the top of the pie. 

'Peeled' chocolate

Here’s what I did:

Ingredients:
1 Graham pie crust
2/3 cup Whipping cream
300g Milk Chocolate, chopped (the eating type)
-Garnish-
Whipped cream (sweetened)
1 bar eating chocolate, grated

Heat the whipping cream on top of a stove until it is boiling. Take it off the heat and add the chopped chocolate. Stir until the chocolate and cream are combined. Pour the chocolate cream into the pie crust. Refrigerate for 2 hours.

In the meantime, use a peeler to ‘peel’ the chocolate bar into flakes. Set a side.

Once the pie has been chilled and the filling has hardened. Spread whipped cream on top of the filling and sprinkle the chocolate flakes over. 

Un-garnished pie

This pie was so surprisingly easy to make -it took me no more than 10 minutes to get it done and into the fridge. I whipped the cream by hand. Usually I’d do it using an electric whisk but I wanted it to be a little more special.

Finished chocolate pie

I can only comment on the ease of the procedure and the appearance right now since I haven’t tasted it yet. It looks so smooth  yet firm. It’does not look like a mousse at all (at least it doesn’t look moussy), which was really reassuring. I don’t like mousses, I prefer firmer desserts. 


I tasted the chocolate filling whilst I was washing the bowls and it tasted really decadent. Hoping it'll turn out good.

Happy birthday Queenie!