Heavenly Paradise@AdelineAng.com

A soft, squishy texture of this special dish has granted itself a unique name, otak-otak (meaning brain in Malay). Otak-otak is a fish cake prepared by blending fish fillet, onion, coconut milk and a mixture of spices (turmeric, lemon grass, galangal etc.) into a fine paste, wrapped in banana leaf, and then either steamed, grilled, or baked. It is a popular dish in Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

The otak-otak recipe caught my eyes one day and I decided to give it a try. Sure enough, it reminded me a lot of the Malaysian otak-otak. Yummy!

Ingredients:
(A)
~ 500g fish fillet, chopped
1 medium onion
1 tsp belacan chili
1 tsp lemon grass powder
1 tsp galangal powder
4 dried red chilies
180 ml thick coconut milk

(B)
1 tsp turmeric powder
1 egg
1/4 tsp sugar
1 tbsp cornflour
1/4 tsp salt

Directions:
1. Grind ingredients (A) with a kitchen blender until a fine paste is formed.
2. In a mixing bowl, mix together the fish paste and turmeric powder. Add the rest of the ingredients (B) into the fish paste. Beat the mixture until smooth.
3. Rub some oil on the banana leaf. Pour the fish mixture onto a 20 cm x 20 cm banana leaf. Wrap around tightly.
4. Bake in preheated oven at 400 F for 15-20 minutes, or until firm to touch.

I came across with this Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe last week and decided to give it a try. This is definitely a keeper! 

Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp hot water
1/2 tsp salt
2 + 1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:
1. In a mixing bowl, cream together butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla extract.
2. Next, dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to the batter along with salt. Stir in flour.
3. Lastly, stir in chocolate chips. On a ungreased cookie sheet, drop cookie dough by large spoonfuls, about an inch apart.
4. Bake in preheated oven at 350 F for about 10 minutes, or until edges are lightly brown. For crunchier cookie texture, extend baking time for another one to two minutes.

* Yield: ~ 4 dozens

Baked buns (or ” siu pau” in Cantonese, “shao bao” in Mandarin) are Miles’ new favourite. This time around, I made smaller buns (~ 18 buns) with thinner pastry and more meat filling.

Recipe can be found here. I used pork this time, for a change. It tasted just as great!

If there is snowman, there should also be snowwoman! Miles and I found a snowman cake pan from Wal-mart before Christmas. We’ve been waiting for to bake a snowman cake. And guess what, snowwoman is getting into the picture too!

Snowman is dressed in his manly black hat and a red scarf.

Snowwoman is dressed in a girly pinky scarf, with a purple and pink hat.

Christmas is just around the corner! For a Christmas potluck/Yankee swap at work, Miles and I made some gingerbread cookies with royal icing. Yummm…

It was my first time making gingerbread cookies and they turned out wonderful. Nonetheless, I’ll probably put an extra teaspoon or two of ground ginger next time around, for more “gingery” taste cookies :)

Gingerbread Cookies

Ingredients:
6 cup all-purpose flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup shortening, melted and cooled slightly
3/4 cup molasses
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup water
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
1. Sift together flour, baking powder, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and cinnamon.
2. In a mixing bowl, mix together shortening, molasses, brown sugar, water, egg, and vanilla extract until smooth. Next, gradually stir in the dry ingredients from (1), until they are well incorporated.
3. Divide dough into 3 pieces. Pat down to 1+1/2 inch thickness each, and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate dough for at least 3 hours, or overnight.
4. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Place cookies 1 inch apart onto a cookie sheet.
5. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 F for 10 to 12 minutes. Cookies will look dry when done, but still be soft to the touch. Cool cookies on wire racks.
6. Decorate cookies when cookies are cooled completely.

* Adapted from Allrecipes.com

Royal Icing

Ingredients:
3 cup icing sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
2 egg white, beaten

Directions:
1. In a mixing bowl, sift together icing sugar and cream of tartar. Using an electric hand mixer, beat in 2 beaten egg whites for approximately 5 minutes, or until mixture is thick enough to hold its shape.
2. Add food colouring into icing accordingly. Mix well. Insert icing into an icing bag and decorate cookies accordingly.

* Adapted from Allrecipes.com

Josie, a good friend of Miles and I celebrated her birthday last weekend. We wanted to prepare a birthday cake for her during a Christmas/birthday party at her place. The first question that came into my mind was, “how am I going to incorporate the two themes into the cake?”

Tier cake, fondant covered cake, layered cake etc. After a few days of discussion, we finally decided on a checkerboard cake. Mind you, it’s a festive checkerboard cake!

Josie’s wedding bouquet had her favourite white roses and orange lilies. To personalized the birthday cake, I handmade the flowers with fondant and gum paste as cake decorations.

It seems like a long process preparing just a 4-layer 8-inch round cake. Nevertheless, Miles and I had great fun preparing it, despite the challenging part where we had to put the rings of cake together. A good try!

We were glad that Josie enjoyed the cake. All the “wows” and ‘wahs” we received for the pretty flowers and a surprise festive checkerboard pattern as everyone savoured the cake.

What’s my favourite cake? For something simple, marble cake. For something fancy, Tiramisu cake!

Tiramisu is a popular Italian cake, prepared with lady finger biscuits dipped in strong coffee, layered with a whipped mixture of mascarpone cheese, coffee flavoured liqueur, and sugar, and topped with cocoa powder. Yumm..

I’ve made Tiramisu cake with lady finger biscuits in the past and found that they turned soggy easily after soaking in coffee and liqueur. However, if they’re not soaked long enough, the cake will be less flavourful.

Miles came across with this Tiramisu cake recipe that called for regular white cake. It turned out to be fabulous! It was a hit :)

Ingredients:

(A) Cake
1 package of moist white cake mix
1 tsp instant coffee powder
1/4 cup coffee
1 tbsp coffee flavoured liqueur

(B) Filling
~ 230 g (8 oz) mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp coffee flavoured liqueur

(C) Frosting
2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp coffee flavoured liqueur

(D) Garnish
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
~ 30 g (1 oz) semi-sweet

Directions:
1. Prepare cake batter according to the direction on cake mix package. Divide two-third of the batter evenly between two greased 8-inch cake pans.
2. Stir in coffee powder from (A) into the remaining one-third batter, before transferring it into another greased 8-inch cake pan.
3. Bake cake at 350 F for 20-25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, before transferring onto a wire rack to cool completely.
4. Mix together the 1/4 cup coffee and coffee flavoured liqueur from (A). Set aside to cool.
5. To prepare the filling: In a small bowl, beat together all ingredients in (B) with an electric hand mixer on low speed, just until smooth. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate.
6. To prepare the frosting: In a medium bowl, beat together all ingredients in (C) with an electric hand mixer on medium speed, until stiff.
7. Fold 1/2 cup of frosting mixture from (6) into filling mixture from (5).
8. To assemble the cake: Place one plain cake layer on a serving plate. Using a thin skewer, poke holes in cake, about 1 inch apart. Pour one-third of reserved coffee mixture from (4) on cake, then spread half of the filling mixture from (5) on cake.
Next, place the coffee-flavoured cake layer on top, and poke holes in cake. Pour another third of the coffee mixture on cake and spread the remaining filling mixture on top.
Subsequently, top the cake with remaining cake layer, and poke holes in cake. Pour remaining coffee mixture on cake. Spread sides and top of cake with frosting.
9. Lightly dust the top of cake with sifted cocoa powder.
10. To prepare chocolate curls, use a vegetable peeler and run it down the edge of the chocolate bar. Garnish cake with chocolate curls.
11. Refrigerate cake for at least 30 minutes before serving.

More baking! Miles and I did more baking last weekend. There was something new that we wanted to try preparing–gum paste.

Similar to fondant, gum paste is a pliable dough that can be easily shaped for cake decorations. As the name implied, the latter has more of a gum texture and it holds its shape better than fondant.

Cake baking, cake cooling, cake leveling, cake icing, cake chilling… all happened on the first night. Fondant and gum paste were prepared on the same day.

The next morning, we moved on to rolling out the fondant and laying the thin sheet (1/8 inch thick) onto the cake. Miles did a fabulous job transferring fondant onto the cake on his first attempt!

While the cake is being chilled in the fridge, we cut out various patterns on gum paste. Then, they cut-out patterns were placed in mini tin foil cupcake liners to hold their shapes. Painting was the next step. We used mainly gel paste food colouring for painting. Meanwhile, home-made chocolate icing was artistically piped along the top and bottom edges of the cake.

Finally, we assembled the gum paste ornaments onto the cake, placed a maraschino cherry on each flower, and garnished cake with milk chocolate curls.

Final results:

It was a heart-breaking moment to have to cut the cake. Oh well, that’s what the cake is for–consumption! More importantly, Miles and I had great fun preparing the cake and everyone enjoyed eating it ;)

Allergic to eggs? Ran out of eggs? Try this awesome eggless chocolate cupcakes!

Ingredients:
3 cup all-purpose flour
2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2/3 cup vegetable oil
2 cup water
2 tbsp vinegar
2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:
1. In a mixing bowl, mix together flour, white sugar, cocoa, salt, baking soda.
2. Next, stir in oil, water, vinegar, and vanilla extract. Stir until well-blended.
3. Line a muffin pan with paper muffin cups. Pour batter into the muffin cups about 2/3 full.
4. Bake cupcakes for about 25 minutes in preheated oven at 350 F.

* Modified from Allrecipes.com

Yield: ~ 24 medium cupcakes

The cupcakes tasted wonderful! Better still, by reducing the baking time a minute or two will keep the cupcakes moist and yummy ;)

Ingredients:
1+1/2 cup butter, softened
2 cup white sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Directions:
1. In a mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth, with an electric hand mixer on medium speed. Beat in eggs and vanilla extract.
2. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.
3. Next, stir in the flour mixture from (2) into (1). Mix ingredients with hand mixer at medium speed for about 2 minutes. Cover and chill dough for at least one hour, or overnight.
4. Roll out dough on a floured surface, about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into various shapes with cookie cutters.
5. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet.
6. Bake cookies for 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven at 400 F (200 degrees C). Remove cookies from the oven when cookie edges turn light brown. Cool completely.

* Adapted from Allrecipes.com

How to make fondant? How to lay fondant over top of a cake? Here is my experience working with fondant; fun but challenging!

Ingredients:
1/2 cup white corn syrup
1/2 cup shortening
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 vanilla extract
~ 450g icing sugar

Directions:
1. In a mixing bowl, mix together white corn syrup and shortening. Subsequently, mix in salt and vanilla extract, and then sufficient icing sugar to form a firm dough. If the dough is sticky, add in more icing sugar for a smooth texture.
2. Lightly dust a clean working surface with icing sugar. Roll out fondant with a rolling pin to achieve the thickness of 1/4 or 1/8 inch (as thin as possible).
3. Roll the fondant on the rolling pin and drape over a frosted and chilled cake. Be sure that the fondant is smooth. Trim off the excessive fondant on the sides of the cake.
4. Fondant can also be used for making other cake decorations by cutting it into shapes.

*Adapted from Allrecipes.com

Two marble cakes. Each of them is cut into half to make a four-layer cake, with frosting in between them. Lastly, put frosting on the top and sides of the cake.

On a working surface dusted with icing sugar, roll out fondant with a rolling pin. Thanks Miles for his great effort :)

After several attempts (at least 5 times), the fondant has finally landed on the cake without breaking.

Remove the excessive fondant around the edge of the cake. The cake is now ready for further decorations.

I’m fascinated by beautifully decorated cakes with delicate edible ornaments. For the past few months, I’ve been watching the cake show on TLC channel, the “Cake Boss.”

“Cake Boss” is a show that films some absolutely stunning cake preparation processes, prepared by the Carlo’s Bakery in New Jersey, U.S.A. Needless to say, one of the most popular items on their cakes is fondant. I thought to myself, “I’m going to give it a try making it some day!”

Knowing that it’s going to be a time consuming process to decorate the cake, I opted for a quick and easy way to cake the cake by using cake mix. My favourite marble cake! Thanks to the Duncan Hines Marble Fudge cake mix. The cake turned out fabulous!

The baking process took me about 35 minutes and about 20 minutes for icing the cake. However, the decorating process took Miles and I nearly 2 hours (equivalent to 4 man hours)!

The cake turned out great, simple yet colourful. It wasn’t bad at all, considering that was our first fondant attempt.

Are these cupcakes? Or muffins?

The definition of these terms based on the online dictionary as follows:

Cupcake – a little cake for one person, baked in a small, cup-shapred mold and often iced

Muffin – a quick bread made with eggs, baked in a small cup-shaped mold and usually eaten hot

These are banana muffin (recipe can be found here) topped with fondant (or known as gum paste). In my opinion, they shall be called banana muffin cakes!

I was in a “decorative mood” when preparing these. I wanted something unique; not the plain old muffin nor the typical cupcake with icing. How about some colours and patterns on the muffins to make muffin cupcakes?

Just as the name suggested, Melting Moments can easily melt in your mouth! Sharing a similar texture and taste as shortbread cookies, these bite-size Melting Moments are delicious treats! They resemble the Mexican Wedding Cakes, except that the latter contain nuts.

I was excited to try out the cookie recipe that I found here. Some even said that they look identical to snowballs, a festive treat during Christmas.

The soft texture, buttery flavour, a hint of savoury taste, sweet icing topping, and the melt-in-your-mouth nature of these Melting Moments…are simply fabulous!

Ingredients:
(A)
1 + 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup corn starch
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup icing sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract

(B)
1/2 cup icing sugar

Directions:
1. With an electric hand mixer, cream the butter and icing sugar from (A) on medium speed, for 1 to 2 minutes. Beat in the vanilla extract.
2. In another mixing bowl, mix together all-purpose flour, corn starch, and salt.
3. Add the flour mixture into butter mixture gradually. Beat until well incorporated.
4. Refrigerate the dough for at least an hour or until firm. Alternatively, freeze the dough for about 30 minutes.
5. Form the firm dough into small balls and lined them about an inch apart, on a lined baking sheet.
6. Bake at preheated oven at 350 F for 12-14 minutes, or until the edges of cookies turn light brown.
7. Cool cookies for about 5 minutes. Sprinkle sifted icing sugar from (B) on the top of cookies.
8. Serve immediately or store in an airtight container up to a few weeks.

* Yield: ~ 5 dozen cookies

I’ve cravings for Malaysian food from time to time. This time around, it’s the famous Seremban Siu Pau! I found the bun recipe on Kuali.com and it turned out fabulous when I tried it the last couple of times.

Yumm…yumm…yummy!

Ingredients:
(A) Meat filling
~ 1 lb chicken breast, cubes
1.5 tbsp cooking oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 tbsp oyster sauce
2 tsp light soya sauce
1 tsp dark soya sauce
1/4 tsp ground white pepper

(B) Water dough
200g bread flour
60g shortening
2 tbsp white sugar
1/4 tsp salt
120ml water

(C) Oil dough
160 bread flour
100g shortening

(D) Egg glaze
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp evaporated milk

Directions:
1. Heat the cooking oil in wok, and saute onions until brown. Add chicken breast and all other ingredients in (A) to cook.
2. To prepare water dough, combine all ingredients (B) in a mixing bowl. Mix together until a smooth dough is formed. Cover with a damp tea towel for about 10 minutes to rest.
3. To make the oil dough, pour in bread flour in a mixing bowl. Rub in shortening gradually to form a smooth dough.
4. Divide both water and oil dough into pieces (~ 10).
5. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the water dough with a rolling pin. Place the oil dough in the middle and flatten it. Roll up the dough from one end to the other, in a Swiss roll style. Then, roll out the dough flat in a circular shape with the rolling pin.
6. Repeat step (5).
7. Place ~ 1.5 tbsp of meat filling at the centre of dough. Wrap and pleat into pau shape. Repeat procedure using the rest of the dough.
8. Bake in preheat oven at 400 F for about 25 minutes.
9. Remove pau from the oven and brush them with egg glaze.
10. Bake pau in the oven for another 5 minutes, or until they are golden brown.

* Yield: ~ 10 buns