I’ve finally made my Matcha Cupcakes with Azuki Buttercream with my new Kitchenaid mixer! I even used my spanking new mini cupcake silicon tray and I must say that they’re adorable. 🙂 A few things that I learnt from today’s experiment: Do not use wholemeal flour for cupcakes, it will leave a texture that has too much bite (so much for trying to make ‘healthier’ cupcakes Do not be lazy and just fold in the azuki beans into the matcha cupcake batter instead of using the ‘Stir’ function of the Kitchenaid. It was too efficient at smashing up the...
17/04/201411/12/2020
First attempt at Char Siew Ramen
I amaze myself sometimes. Haha. I cooked Char Siew Ramen for the family tonight and I made almost everything from scratch. There are quite a few elements here and the pork and egg can be prepared the day before. Ramen Eggs 6 minutes. Set a timer. Take those eggs out after 6 minutes and dunk them into cold water. Peel them only when they’re cool. Soak them overnight in the following sauce:1 part light soysauce1/2 part dark soysauce1 part mirin/shaoxing wineFew drops of sesame oil1 part water Char SiewThis is simply barbequed pork. I followed the recipe on Makansutra generally....
17/04/201411/12/2020
Osmanthus Jelly 桂花糕
What you see here, my lovelies, is one of my Osmanthus Jellies. What is Osmanthus? In Chinese, it is called Gui Hua (桂花) and it gives off a very light but distinct floral taste. I fell in love with the taste when Yeo’s came up with their Osmanthus White Tea drink. Anyway, I made these jellies with Konyaku powder, which you can get from any supermarket outside of the US (konyaku has been banned in the US). It is a chewy version of a Jello or agar-gar, and I love this texture. The dried Osmanthus flowers should be easily purchased...
13/04/201411/12/2020
My ‘new’ Kitchen Aid mixer!
I’m so excited! I finally got myself a Kitchen Aid mixer to help me bake up a storm! I got them 2nd hand via this wonderful app named Carousell, which I am currently addicted to. So, the above video and photo were taken by the former owners. My kitchen doesn’t contain mouthwash 😛 As I’ve just brought it home, cleaned it up etc, I was too lazy to take new photos of it. Maybe I will do so when I’m in the midst of making my Maccha Cupcakes with Azuki beans! Alas, I’ll be busy for the next couple of...
07/04/201411/12/2020
Japanese Inspired Salad with Salmon Sashimi and Onsen Eggs
Trying to eat clean and increase my iron intake due to my condition plus general stress and exhaustion. So, I created this Japanese inspired salad which I’ve made for friends before but without the egg. I just wanted to perfect my onsen eggs so that when I’m good enough at it, I can make them into proper ramen eggs. It’s really very easy and a lot of ingredients can be substituted if you’re a vegan or a pure vegetarian. It’s really the dressing that makes this salad yummy. Recipe serves 1 as a full meal. Trust me. Half-way through this...
05/04/201411/12/2020
Salted Caramel Banana Chia Seed Cupcakes with Caramel Centres
Tadah! I’ve been wanting to bake salted caramel cupcakes ever since my bro’s friend’s friend baked the most awesome batch of those. So, I tried my hand at them but I made a few variations from traditional recipes. My recipe doesn’t have eggs and I added Chia seeds to make it a little less guilty (antioxidants and fibre!). Recipe below makes about 15 standard sized cupcakes. Pretzel decoration is optional. Ingredients For the cupcakes: 180g plain flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon sea salt 115g unsalted butter, at room temperature 220g, plus 2 tablespoons light brown sugar 1 mashed...
28/03/201411/12/2020
Wagashi (Japanese Traditional Sweets) Making
I learnt how to make traditional Japanese sweets (Wagashi) today! To read more about it, click here to jump over to my other blog.
15/03/201411/12/2020
Lobster Bisque Risotto
It was a nice quiet afternoon where mum and bro were overseas so there were no lunch plans for dad and I. Thus, I decided to do what I’m good at – 1 pot meals. I went a little lazy and used a can of lobster bisque soup for this dish. Really good for the lazy cooks. Ingredients: 1 carrot, diced 5 cloves of garlic, minced 1 chicken thigh (optional, I wasn’t planning on a pure seafood risotto) 6 prawns, shelled 1 squid, sliced 1 cup of frozen baby peas 1.5 cups of risotto rice 1 can of lobster bisque...
27/11/201311/12/2020
Seafood Risotto perfumed with Truffle Oil
Being Asian, I love rice – white/ brown/ sticky/ short-grained/ long-grained…just rice. So, we had a pack of risotto rice sitting in our cupboards for ages (don’t worry…it hasn’t expired and was vacuumed packed), so we decided to cook seafood risotto. The recipe below cooks for 4. Ingredients1.5 cups of rice (using a standard cup size and not the small little container that comes with rice cookers)1 squid, sliced100g clams1 chicken thigh, diced OR any fish to substitute 1/2 can of tomato puree4 cloves of garlic, minced4 shallots, sliced OR 1 pearl onion, chopped5 cups of stock or water1 tomato,...
21/10/201311/12/2020
Omakase Dinner at my place
Had dinner with ML and Siew Mai to celebrate ML’s birthday and when we were flipping through the menu, I couldn’t help but comment that some of the dishes were doable in my kitchen! Then the 2 teased and said that I should cook and then they come over to eat. That inspired my “Omakase” dinner. Omakase in Japanese means ‘leave it to me’ so in this case, leave it to me to come up with the following, which I cooked for 6 pax in total. For the amuse bouche, I did what is slowly becoming my signature, Tofu with...