Coffee Marble Cheesecake

Mum sent me a very nice book and I love it very much. The first cake that I baked from this book is the Coffee Marble Cheesecake. I have baked at least 3 of these in the past 2 weeks; one for ourself, one for supper after bible study lesson and another one for tea after church service. My my.... you should have seen how this is being snap off in just a blink of an eye. Truly glad that my dear friends enjoyed it so much. I didn't use sponge base as recommended by the recipe. I used digestive cookie crumbs instead. I still have a lot of request for this cake and even a dear friend who asked me to teach her how to bake this cake. Am going to bake it again soon :)





Recipe is taken from The Ultimate Indulgence Cheesecake by Chef Alan Kok

Mocha loaf

We all love this bread. I like it with cheese spread while Kenny likes his with hazelnut spread. The texture is a bit cake like, very soft and yet bouncy, moist and delicious. This recipe too is a keeper.




Ingredients:

• 300 ml water
• 1 tbsp oil
• 450 g bread flour
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder - sifted
• 2 tbsp instant coffee granules
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 tbsp light brown soft sugar
• 1 tbsp chocolate hazelnut spread
• 2 tbsp skimmed milk powder
• 1 1/2 tsp instant yeast

Settings used:

• Mode 1 (or basic white bread)
• 2lb loaf size
• light crust

Recipe is taken from The Complete Bread Machine Cookbook by Sonia Allison

Milk Loaf

Been very involved in bread making lately. Have been having great experimental time with our new bread maker. This milk loaf is soft and spongy at the same time. Really good recipe. Just put everything into the baking pan and after 3 hours, a beautiful nice and soft bread comes out!





Ingredients:

• 300 ml skimmed milk
• 1 tbsp melted butter
• 450 g superior white bread flour
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp caster sugar
• 1 1/4 tsp fast action yeast

Settings used:

• Mode 1 (or for Basic white bread)
• 2 lb loaf size
• medium crust

Recipe is taken from The Complete Bread Machine Cookbook by Sonia Allison

Maki and sushi

Been reading up a lot about Japanese food. Oh, how we love them! This is my first attempt to make maki and sushi. Plenty of room for improvement. Supermarkets and Asian Food Stores here are well stocked with ingredients for Japanese food and they are quite affordable too. We ate them with pickled ginger, soy sauce and wasabi. Speaking of wasabi, I read that wasabi is very expensive and that most Japanese food outlets use Horseradish (plus colouring) as a substitute. I then checked the wasabi powder that I bought. True enough, stated on the ingredients are 50% horseradish and only 10% wasabi. As a matter of fact, I even try to find a pure wasabi paste here but so far, I have not been able to find one. But, they taste and gives you the same wasabi sensation. I was just thinking, I might as well just use horseradish paste and mustard instead next time.

Cucumber, crab stick, mayo tuna and thinly sliced smoked sausage

Smoked salmon sushi

Sweet Dough

I have been spending some time reading up about bread and bun baking. As usual, I studied through methods and recipes that I found and then compare them. There are quite a lot of sites that guides you into baking such as Bread Baking 101 and How To-s. These sites are truly great especially for a beginner like me. Thus, after putting considerable amount of time into studying it, I finally put them into practise. I used a basic sweet dough recipe. Very good recipe, easy to make and very tasty.

This recipe is a keeper. I managed to make 14 buns and a loaf of bread out of it. I prepared two fillings earlier.

Freshly baked buns on cooling rack.

Sardine Bun

Mushroom Chicken Bun

My first loaf of homemade bread.

Eee (in Hokkien/Teochew)

The is a super duper late post; obviously! Anyway, better late than never. Just to keep mum up to date what we have been eating here and also not forgetting our chinese traditions. Speaking of chinese traditions, we have been considering about switching to chinese church. Should we?

Blogging up to date have been something that I have not been able to achieve. What a lousy blogger I am. Anyway, blogging really is not a `top' priority in my list of `to-do' at all; not when you have a toddler who demands 110% attention and a husband who loves to eat! ha...ha...

Okonomiyaki

A new dish that I learnt from watching YouTube ! Yup, internet truly is very informative. Okonomiyaki (Japanese assorted pancake) is actually quite like my mum's hakka pancake. But the preparation was extremely tedious as there were so many ingredients to chop and prepare. Not complaining really, as I find searching around for the ingredients very fun and oh... all the chopping is truly therapeutic! However, I was not able to find all the required ingredients but I try to make it as closely as I can. I would say my Okonomiyaki is about 90% to the one in the in the video that I watched and learned from. I like this dish a lot as it is everything in one; lots of protein and fibre.