Pandan leaves are widely used in Southeast Asia to flavour sweets and desserts. Most of our local kuih are cooked infused in pandan leaves. Pandan is also a popular flavour for cakes here. In Malaysia, apart from the common vanilla and chocolate flavoured cakes, you'll find pandan cakes as well in bakeries, markets and even commercial packed ones in the supermarkets. It's easy to plant pandan, just poke the entire plant with the root into the soil and it'll grow. They don't need much care. I have a pandan plant in my garden and it's very handy to have fresh pandan leaves off your garden when you need it for asian cuisine. I am thinking of planting more pandan since I use quite a lot of it in one go.
This Butterscotch Cream Pie is sure to please anyone who is in the mood for plenty of sweet and creamy butterscotch.
The recipe is adapted from Karen DeMasco's The Craft of Baking. I was intrigued with the concept of this book as the author teaches you how to create your own recipe from a combination of basic recipes. I like how the author made the recipes to be versatile so that it can be used in other recipes. For instance, the crust of this pie is made from the crumbs of ginger snap cookies. If you ever get bored of eating ginger snap cookies you could turn them into this wonderful pie.
If you already have a bottle of ginger snap cookies lying on your kitchen counter, this will be an easy and quick pie to make. You will only have to bake the crusts and pour the cooked filling into the pie and refrigerate it for a few hours before serving.
First off, whilst we are still in the month of January, let me take this opportunity to wish all a very Happy New Year!
If you're looking for a good chocolate chip cookie recipe, I say look no further because they are readily available for free on the internet! I cannot believe how delicious these cookies are!
First up is the Cornflakes Chocolate Chip Cookies by Momofuku Milk Bar. You will be pleased to know that not only is the chocolate chip cookies recipe available but many other recipes of their signature cakes and they are all for FREE! After trying several recipes, including the chocolate chip cookies recipe here, all of which taste phenomenal, I was convinced to buy their book. It is worth every penny even though some of the recipes can be found on their website. Crunchy on the edges and chewy in the center, the cookies have a caramel like sweetness from the melted marshmallows and each bite is buttery, crunchy and chewy.
Next, is a soft chocolate chip cookie from Baking is a Science, a fun and insightful blog by a home baker on the chemistry of baking. There are interesting posts on the writer's baking experiments where the writer provides useful explanations of how different ingredients react differently and why they would produce different outcome in a recipe. According to the writer, the secret in achieving soft and chewy cookies is to use bread flour instead of regular all-purpose flour. The writer experimented with different flour in her chocolate chip cookies and she liked the cookies with bread flour the best as it was crunchy on the edges and moist and chewy in the center. Unfortunately, the blog is down when I tried to access it today.
Both cookies were good but there was a clear winner between the two since most of my tasters and I included liked one more than the other.
My favourite recipes at the moment are those by Momofuku Milk Bar. I love their confetti birthday cake, the very cake which inspired me to come up with the Oreo Red Velvet Cake. Needless to say, when I was asked to bake a cake for my mum's birthday, I chose a recipe by Momofuku Milk Bar.
Apple pie cake is a safe choice since everybody enjoys an apple pie once in a while. This cake incorporates apple pie filling and half-baked cheesecake as the filling to the layer cake. You won't miss out on the crunch of the pie crust as pie crumbs are used in the filling and to top the cake. It's really an apple pie converted to a cake. It's genius!
It really isn't that troublesome to bake a Momofuku Milk Bar layer cake. Although their cake recipes require things like sheet pan, acetate sheet and 6" cake ring, you really don't need to go all out to buy those things to make one of their cakes. Firstly, the filling is thick and sturdy enough not to flow down the side of the cake even if you were to just spread the filling without the cake ring and acetate sheet. Secondly, I personally don't like my cake to be too tall. With the cake so tall, you'll only need a small wedge for one serving, especially for Momofuku type of cake which you can't eat a lot because it's so rich and sweet. It becomes problematic when you want to cut a high cake into small wedges. It doesn't stand. Everything just falls out into one big mess. I find that up sizing the pans to 7" or 8" gives you the best size and height for the cake. I bake mine in round cake pans rather than in a sheet pan.
I would never think of Oreo and red velvet as a good combination but some people commented on how their friends and family were raving about the red velvet cake with Oreo cream cheese frosting they've made. I shouldn't shut the door in the face of new things since experimenting with different and totally unexpected combination of flavours is necessary for creative growth. It shouldn't be so bad, after all, the experts at Kraft did produce a limited edition red velvet Oreo cookie. I think it's genius because, if you notice, red velvet doesn't have much flavour. It's basically a red cake with a little cocoa powder. So Oreo will be a breath of fresh air to plain old red velvet.
I'm baking this red velvet because it's a special request from a friend. I've been baking so many red velvet and it's quite off putting to be baking yet another red velvet cake, but I also didn't want to give her a different cake when she was clearly looking forward to a slice of red velvet. This spruced up red velvet would be a nice halfway point. It's always nice to be baking something for someone, makes it more meaningful.
I didn't want this red velvet to be just another red velvet with Oreo frosting. There must be something more to make it special. I'm still in my "Momofuku Milk Bar phase" so I thought why not do a Milk Bar inspired red velvet cake?
The construction of the cake involves making cookie crumbs from Oreo, buttercream frosting for the top of the cake and half-bake a cheesecake for the filling. And, just for fun, mix chocolate sprinkles in the cake batter before baking.
I have never made a pumpkin pie before. It is not something that is popular on this side of the world. We have pumpkin dishes but it's not something that people would make into a dessert here, which is strange because we use yam and sweet potato which have a similar texture to pumpkin in our local dessert, bubur cha cha.
This pumpkin pie is super easy to make and I was surprised how delicious it turned out even though it's my first time making a pumpkin pie.
I love the creamy and sweet taste of pumpkin. It tastes great whether as a savoury dish or made into a dessert.
Though pumpkin pie is commonly eaten during Thanksgiving in North America, it would make a nice Christmas dessert as well. Don't you think cinnamon and ginger taste very christmassy?
It's that time of the year. It really isn't Christmas without mince pie. I always have a mince pie or two when Christmas is near. It's something I picked up while studying in the UK and it stuck ever since. This year I decided to bake my own. Home made pies always taste great because you get to use as much butter as you want and control what goes into the pies. These mince pies are rich and buttery and filled with boozy fruits. Go ahead, tis the season to indulge.
I used store bought mixed fruits for the "mince meat" (it's called mince meat even though there's no meat in the filling -_-). If you're up for it, make your own mince meat. I think Mary Berry's or David Lebovit's recipes are good. Traditionally, suet ( pork fat) is used to make the filling. If you can't find suet, don't sweat, just use butter. These mince pies are super easy to make.
Birthdays to me are reminiscent of butter cake filled with cheap vanilla buttercream frosting. Back in the days, that was the kind of cake we got from the bakery to celebrate birthdays at home. This Momofuku Milk Bar Birthday Cake is exactly what birthdays taste like to me. The first bite I took really brought back old memories of birthday celebrations when we were still kids. We used to have some friends over for home cooked noodles, red eggs and chicken nuggets, and after hours of video games, we would get bored and it was time to sing the birthday song and cut the cake. The fun filled celebration always ends with a sweet note with a slice of creamy birthday cake for everyone.
My "baked main course challenge" would have to take a back seat for awhile to accommodate my current obsession with red velvet cake. Earlier, I baked a red velvet from a recipe by the man who came up with the "best ever red velvet cake", Cake Man Raven, but I found the cake to be very oily. I thought that I would not bother baking another red velvet again but I was wrong. Clearly, there is something intriguing about its taste. I tried three different recipes in order to come up with the red velvet that I like, one that is light and fluffy compared to the usual red velvet which is dense and has fine crumbs. For the third recipe, I use two different frosting and that explains the four cakes above.
If my hubby sees an interesting cooking video on youtube he will share it with me. Just the other day he showed me a video on how to make scotch eggs by Cooking With Dog. If you haven't heard already, CWD is a popular Japanese cuisine cooking show on youtube hosted by a grey talking poodle, Francis. He sits on the table next to the portable stove and narrate the cooking instructions in a funny but adorable accent. All the cooking is done by a pleasant looking Japanese lady known as Chef.
I've tried the dorayaki recipe from Cooking With Dog and it was a flop so I was a bit skeptical when it came to trying another recipe by them. But the scotch eggs look so good and I just had to have a go at it. If the recipe is good then it would be a keeper, if it's not then the eggs will end up in the bin. What's the worst that could happen, right?
