Monday, January 26, 2009

Happy Birthday Yuski

Though this blog is mainly about my cooking experiments, I can't resist sharing the most recent photos taken for my Yuski. In fact today is his special day, his birthday! Thanks Yuski for all the joy, the fun and cheefulness which brihgten my days.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Taro puff pastry - 芋茸酥

Yam or Taro is one my favourite - Taro buns, Taro bread, Taro milk tea, Taro sponge cake, Taro paste (called "Or Nee" in Teochew), Taro pastry, Steamed Chinese Taro Cake, Taro fried rice, the list goes on and on and on ......!


Have been thinking of making something with Taro for a long time, mainly to satisfy my own cravings. After watching an online video on Taro puffs, I decided to give this a go. When Esther came over last Sat I "convinced" her into helping me making the pastry together. We broke the process into 2 sessions, preparing the pastry and Taro filling then went out for yummy japanese dinner and came back to do the fun part of rolling and wrapping the taro. However for some reasons we are yet to figure out, the pastry wasn't as elastic as it supposed to be hence it took us quite awhile to wrap (or rather force) the taro into the pastry and sealed it.

The baking temperature instruction given in the recipe was a bit confusing and we had to re-adjust the temperature to bake the puffs. It has upper and lower temperature (maybe because it's different type of oven?).

We are quite happy with the result in general, maybe I will try modifying and make green tea puffs next time.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Banana Yogurt Cake


I bet almost every passionate baker would have a favourite banana cake recipe up their sleeves. Banana cake seems to be a favourite at most occasions and it is also a good way to make use of the otherwise too ripe to eat bananas. For those banana cake lovers, it is true that what is someone's trash is another's treasures. What I mean is some people would throw away bananas which has blackspots, probably thinking it would be smelly and rotten! But this is the best time to make banana cake as you need over ripe banana to make good banan cakes!

This is not my usual banana cake recipe but I've always wanted to try out one with yogurt. To balance the healthy yogurt, I added chocolate chips ... hmmm now it is a "well-balanced" banana cake ;)

Friday, January 2, 2009

First Chiffon Cake - Green Tea Chiffon Cake with Mango




The clock was ticking away last night and I was struggling to find the motivation to bake a cake for a friend's birthday. The lack of motivation was mainly due to fatigue (well I have been on holiday for more than a week so first day back at work today took a lot out of me haha). Was deciding between buying one or baking one then I thought of trying out chiffon cake. Have been brewing this idea for a long time but I don't have a chiffon baking pan so put this idea on hold for awhile. I finally gathered my enerygy and started weighing the sugar, flour etc and then suddenly I seemed to get more and more alert and the tiredness seemed to gradually go away! Amazing ... maybe this is called cooking therapy?

Initially the plan was to use red bean as the cake filling but at the end I used mango which is in season. I forgot to take a picture of the cross section of the cake, but amazingly it looked really nice - green colour contrasts with the rich yellow mango colour. I am really encouraged to hear some good feedback on my second layered cake, now I can start thinking (or dreaming) of my third ... forth ... etc?