what I call Feather Light!

Honestly, this is my second attempt. The first was gone before I captured a photo of it. The taste of cheese is very very mild, and the texture is very souffle like. I would definitely use my favourite milk for this recipe, cause the taste of milk is more dominant. For me, I prefer HL milk.

The marble effect not really obvious after baking, only until you slice it!

Feather Light Cheesecake Recipe
(adapted from Alex Goh)

250g milk
20g butter
125g cream cheese
50g cake flour
3 egg yolks
1 tsp Vanilla

3 Egg whites
1/8tsp Cream of tartar
80g Sugar
pinch of salt
1tsp Chocolate paste ♥

Method:

Line an 8inch square pan with parchment paper.
Beat cream cheese until smooth. Place milk and butter in a pot and stir until it comes to a boil.

Add in cream cheese and mix until well blended.
Incorporate flour into the mixture and whisk together over double boiler. Mix until it comes together and thickens. Stir in egg yolks and vanilla until blended.

Whisk egg whites until foamy. Add in cream of tartar and sugar. Continue to whisk until it reach soft peaks.

Combine the two mixtures of egg yolk and egg white. Gently fold in with a rubber spatula.

Pour about 3/4 of the mixture into prepared pan. Mix the remainder with chocolate paste then drizzle all over to cover the batter. Use a knife to make swirls for the marble effect.

Bake in a water bath at 160C for 50-60 mins or until a testing skewer comes out clean. The top should be golden brown.

Remove cake from oven and pan immediately to cool on a wire rack.
Best serve chilled.

~|Notes|~
♥ Chocolate paste was replaced with cocoa powder, about 2 generous teaspoons of it.

This cake is more souffle like than the normal japanese souffle cheesecake. You could taste the cheese and the milk, they were just melting in your mouth. A little something like ice-cream. Maybe you should try it out to figure what I'm talking about?

By the way, mum said I should bake this to serve everyday on CNY. So I think she likes it, no?

ps: My oven just died on me. I need to get one quick before CNY for my cookies. Could someone recommend me a good brand?
I was eying on DeLonghi's electric oven, until I found out that they did not have upper and lower heat settings.
Does electric convectional oven and microwave convectional oven works the same? From what I heard, microwave just cant bake cakes!

Please leave this poor ovenless girl a comment here.
Thankyou so much!

••♥ to the kitchen »

The Dazzling stones.

Still can't believe I would be baking for Chinese New Year. Schedule's pretty tight here. I never baked anything for CNY. Ofcourse, I do help out with mum during the past years, but never had I ever told mum "Lets go get ingredients. I want to bake cookies."
Though test and due dates are coming near, a little baking relieves all the stress.

Many things posted up here, are my first. Including these beautiful dazzling stones. I just can't take my eyes of them. Though they are sealed, I would take up the ugly red plastic containers and stare at these cookies.
The recipe was from Pei-Lin, another good cook and baker. She's just so talented in her bakings and photography! I'm so envious of her. There's just so much to learn, and she's very willing to teach and share her experiences.

I baked one batch of these cookies. They didn't make much. Only enough to fill up one of the small, round plastic containers. The taste of black sesame wasn't too strong, and the cookies weren't too sweet. It's a great cookie to munch on.

Black Sesame Seed Cookies Recipe
(adapted from Dodol & Mochi)

120g unsalted butter
60g castor sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla essence
180g plain flour, sifted once

40g pulverized roasted black sesame seeds
1/2 egg, at room temperature

enough black sesame seed
enough coarse/granulated sugar

Method:
Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Fold in vanilla essence followed by plain flour. Stop once a crumbly dough is formed. Divide the dough into half. Mix in black sesame seed and egg to one of the halves till well combined. Refrigerate both separately in cling wrap for 30mins.

Remove them from the fridge. On a slightly floured surface, roll the vanilla dough to shape like a log. Then roll the black sesame into a shape of a rectangle, same length with the vanilla dough. Wrap the vanilla dough in the black sesame dough and roll until a smooth log is formed.

Refrigerate it again for another 40mins till it's hard enough to be handled with hands. Slice the cookie dough and coat them with some sugar. Place them on a baking tray lined with parchment paper about 2cm apart. Sprinkle some black sesame on top of the cookies and lightly press them into the cookies.

Bake cookies at 170C for 15-18mins or until they start to brown at the sides. Remove from oven completely to cool on a wire rack. Store cookies in airtight containers.

These would probably make good cookie swaps for CNY, if any of you are planning to do so. They look classy and elegant, just like diamonds fitted on a long black evening gown,.. at least to me.

Thanks for the recipe, Pei-Lin!

••♥ to the kitchen »

Dressed to fit.

Cookie making has not been easy. I'm actually quite afraid that I might not have enough time to finish up my cookie baking as my test week comes before CNY. Not to mention my due dates for tons of assignments and reports! Gosh.

So here is a little quick meal, when you're busy like me!

I'm no big fan of mayo. They're too boring for a dressing, besides I don't really like the smell of it. Most of them come in big jars and they tend to expire before I even finish them. So, to avoid waste, lets give a quick and nutritious dressing to the salad, shouldn't we? I mean, that was wad salad was for anyway. Why bother sabotaging the point of having salad?

Zucchini Salad Recipe
(serves 2)

1 medium sized zucchini/cucumber
some baby carrots
handfuls of cherry tomatoes
handful of baby corn (steamed)
1 large onion (or any other)

hard boiled eggs

Yogurt Dressing

1cup plain yogurt (low fat or not)
1 heaping tbsp dijon mustard (or any other)
2 tsp honey (optional)
1 tsp chopped shallots
salt and freshly grounded black pepper

♥ Mix all ingredients of yogurt dressing and pour over salad!

Very quick and simple salad, dressed to fit your busy schedule and low fat diets (getting prepared to feast during CNY).
Got to get back to studies. Sorry, dear readers!
More CNY bakes from me soon, pinky promise :)

••♥ to the kitchen »

Melt me down.

It's about time, I joined the pineapple tart bakes. It was years ago when I last made them. Okay, I didn't make them, I was helping mum with it. The memories all came back only when I cooked the pineapple jam with it's attractive strong scent of pineapples..

"hey, wait a minute.. I've done this before.." and
mum said "Now only you know ah?" trying to make me feel like I'm old and nyanyuk.
Fine fine.. I've got a very bad memory. Short term memory, I call it. I never remember anything and I've been known for it. I see things, do them, and forget completely. That's what photos are for, eh?

Well, I asked mum of her pineapple tart recipe. As far as I could recall, it was pretty good and everyone in the house loved them. She tried searching for it but with no luck, off I go hunting for a new pineapple tart recipe. It's not hard to find one. I'm totally inspired by Ju's melt in the mouth pineapple tarts and Quinn's cute golden gems. They seem to have found their perfect recipe. Have you found yours?

Hearing the oven ring, mum couldn't help but to come downstairs and see how my tarts were going. She stared at them and questioned of it's shape.
"So cute.. what is this?"
"Pineapple tart lah!"
"Why like this geh?"
?!?!?!?!
LOL, call me a shapist! I like it round. Round is always cute, and mum agrees so. Just that maybe she've never seen tangerine style pineapple tarts. Nastars are more commonly sold. The good thing about tangerine style pineapple tarts is that the jam filling would remain moist as they are enclosed and prevented from being dried out.

I was looking for a pastry with a more milky and crumbly texture and at the same time holds together, so I could be able to form little tangerine shapes with the least cracks. I know, I'm such a fussy pot yet I can't tell whether they were good or bad. I went to mum for comments, and they weren't that much of melt-in-your-mouth when they were freshly baked. I was kind of disappointed as I told Pei-Lin and Quinn about it. Quinn suggested I add a little custard powder. It made sense, and I would try it with custard powder the next time. Thanks, girls! :)

After leaving the pineapple tarts for 2 days in an air tight container, I brought them with me to my god mother and sisters. Surprisingly, they were very fragile, not that kind which melts in your hands but certainly melts in your mouth! It's crumbly texture with the sweet sour pineapple tart filling was perfect. I was so happy that god mum said that my baking have improved - just cause of this recipe.

I came home, to ask mum to taste them again, and she said that we shall stick to this recipe.
Just that maybe the next time I would be using a full fat milk powder because the skim milk powder I used didn't give a distinct milk taste to the pastry. The fact that my god sister could never tolerate the taste of dairy, yet she could swallow my pineapple tart says it all. What a way to test dairy content in food!

Pineapple Tart Pastry

(adapted from House of Annie - makes 48 tangerine style tarts)

140g all-purpose flour ♥
140g cake flour flour
200g butter
40g sugar ♥♥
40g milk powder
1 egg yolk

egg wash ♥♥♥
some pineapple jam filling

Method:
Line a baking tray with parchment paper. Preheat oven to 175C. with hands, rub in butter to all the other ingredients until a crumbly texture. Lightly pat it into a dough form and wrap it with a cling wrap. Chill for 30mins.
In the meantime, roll out your pineapple jam filling into their shape.
For tangerine style pineapple tarts, roll the pastry into round shape. Flatten it and wrap the jam filling.
For nastars, pipe out the pastry dough and roll the pineapple jam filling into the pastry.
Bake for 20mins or until slightly brown. Let it cool on a wire rack before storing.

~|Notes|~
♥ I replace 10g of all-purpose flour with corn flour
♥♥ I replaced with 30g of icing sugar, use more if you have a sweet tooth.
♥♥♥ For an even brown colour, use egg yolk only.

Check these websites for detailed tutorials on the shaping method:
Pinkcocoa Tabetai
Malaysia Best

The verdict is the pastry would absorb some of the moisture in the pineapple filling and lose some of it's crispiness, soften and melts in your mouth. Also, because I made them in tangerine shapes, the jam is prevented from drying off.

••♥ to the kitchen »

it wasn't planned..

Cherry hunting was wad we were up to on a fine Sunday morning. As we know, Pasar Borong only opens on alternate Sundays so we decided to try our fifty-fifty luck to see if we could get some fresh dark red jumbo sized cherries. Mum and I were already very excited when we saw the shops opened for us.

There were cherries, but we didn't buy them because they were overpriced! Not what we were looking for. Instead, there were bundles of bananas, papayas and pineapples.. Wait a minute.. did I say "pineapples"? Since we were talking about making pineapple tarts, lets just buy some and make them today. They only cost around RM1-ish per pineapple, and that's a good bargain. At least, we didn't go home empty handed, we had six pineapples with us, some of them were Josapine. Sweet, but not exactly good for pineapple tart's filling because they were too juicy. When we make pineapple jam, it's the flesh we're looking for.

Oh boy, we've got lot's of pineapples to deal with. Pastry, cakes and cookie making often happens at night, when the sun's not up to kill me with it's over powering heat. I was so ready for pineapple jam cooking as I had heard from my god sister that it would take more than an hour.
Meditate. Breathe in. Breath out.

what is this??
..
..
...
...
....
....
.....
.....
......
......
.......
.......
......
......
.....
.....
....
....
...
...
..
..

Gosh, mum had to embarrass me. Fine fine.. In this case, height is a factor!! Incase you are wondering why it was necessary, I was actually trying to get my face further away from the heat and watch the pineapple cook at the same time. This is called close watch. LOL. Okay, not THAT close but I tried to make sure it doesn't get burnt cause it's a whole lot of pineapples in my hands now. If I burn it, the whole pot is going in the bin and most importantly I want to sleep peacefully, without disappointment and the nagging, ofcourse..



Here's how 2kg of pineapple looks like and when they're blended. Lots and lots of juice. Half of them were Josapine pineapple. How fresh and yummier could these get?
It took me almost 2 hours to get this done. Mum's command not to drain the juice as it would give natural taste and sugar to the jam. That's why it took a longer time. If you're not up for the challenge of patience, just drain at least half of it. Take my advice, drain it.


After cooking for 50mins or so.

Pineapple Jam/Tart Filling Recipe

2kg pineapples
250g sugar ♥
2 cinnamon sticks
1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

Method:
Blend or grate pineapples, make sure not too fine, you would still want to bite into. Cook pineapples with cinnamon powder and cinnamon sticks for an hour or so at medium heat until the mixture thickens. Gradually add in sugar and taste until you get the sweetness desired. Keep stirring and cook until the mixture dries.
Let it completely cool before storing in air tight container.

~|Notes|~
♥ I used a mix of brown and caster sugar
♥ This recipe makes about 1kg of pineapple jam
♥ Store in fridge up to a year, according to god sis.

Aren't homemades the most satisfying thing?

••♥ to the kitchen »