Myhumblefood cookbooks are finally out!!!

Tags

myhumblefood; myhumblefoodcookbook

After two long years my books are finally done and dusted. I’ve compiled two books, the first Myhumblefood book concentrates on Asian home cooking. The second book is a little more fun; along with some Western home cooking, I’ve also added a section on Food Art which is something I really enjoy. They’re both priced at RM 300 a set for people residing in Malaysia, or SGD 120 a set for those in Singapore.

Free delivery for those in Bangsar and Damansara Heights only.

Please PM me for details!

Special note: 50% of gross profit from the sale of the books will be donated to the National Kidney Foundation as well as the Great Heart Charity Foundation. Should you decide to also donate in addition to buying the book(s), 100% of your donation will go directly to these causes.

Thank you all very much for your love and support!

 

DIY a birthday cake – pocky / pepero

Tags

cake, cake decor, cake decoration, DIY, do it yourself, easy cake decoration, pepero, pepero cake, pocky, pocky cake, quick fix

I was attempting to make a red velvet cake in time for a birthday… and then I was forced to realize that it’ll take a while, if never, for me to actually master a  red velvet cake to the standards of Just Heavenly (which has one of the better red velvets in KL that’s easily available to me). The decision was clear… since the birthday person is very particular about cake… that I’d have no choice but to buy the cake instead of making it at home.

The only problem is that Just Heavenly cakes have the most awful designs. Their red velvet cakes have the ugliest pink and white blobs on top with disgustingly coloured sugar bits. It all looks very artificial and old-fashioned.

So I ordered the cake from them and asked them to forgo the ugly icing on top and just give it to me plain. They still couldn’t resist but to stick chocolate squares on the side ;(

Well for this DIY cake, all you really need is a plain iced cake with icing all around the side (this allows the pocky/pepero to stick to the sides of the cake), and 8 packets of pepero/pocky – I used 7 packets of pepero with peanuts for a 6 inch cake. Of course you’d need more than 7 packets if you used pocky, since those pack more closely together. Other than that, you’ll require a piece of decorative string and fruits if you want to load the cake with it. It’s all up to you.
So this is the cake without the ugly pink frosting on top and chocolate squares stuck to the sides. I removed the chocolate squares and set it aside for later.
Remove the pepero or pocky sticks from their packets and trim them according to the height you’d like them to be when stuck on the cake. I just removed the non-chocolate covered bits.
Press each stick lightly into the frosting of the cake, and pack them as tightly as possibly next to each other.  Continue all around the cake until it’s all surrounded in a pretty wall of chocolate sticks.
Once that’s done, tie a ribbon around the cake to finish.As for the middle bit, I’d thought of piling the centre with fresh strawberries. Those make  for a beautiful cake. However since I needed the cake to last a while, I went without the fruit and stuck the chocolate squares in the middle instead.

Simple and quick way to jazz up a cake!

Green tea and Red bean muffin

Tags

azuki red bean paste, cupcake, dessert, green tea, green tea and azuki red bean muffin, green tea and red bean muffin, green tea recipes, muffin, quick recipe, red beans

Another quick recipe. Sister’s friend gave this recipe to us and we had some fun with it. It’s really moist and I love anything with green tea in it. Kinda makes me feel somewhat healthier, which isn’t really the case when I take a look at the ingredients! Takes less than an hour to pop these babies out. Fresh out of the oven, they’re delish!

Ingredients (makes around 18-20 mini muffins, using a 2.5inch diameter muffin paper cups)

• 250g All purporse flour
• 250g Salted butter
• 140g Caster Sugar
• 2 teaspoon Green Tea Powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 4 eggs
• 1 can of ready made sweetened azuki red beans

Instructions

1) Beat sugar and butter until it becomes white

2) Beat the eggs before adding them into the mixture

3) Combine flour, green tea powder and baking powder in a separate bowl

4) Add the flour mix gradually into the wet mixture and beat on low-medium speed until thoroughly combined.

 

5) Prepare the muffin cups, these cups are about 2.5 inches in diameter. Spoon the muffin mixture into the cups, about 2/3 full as the batter will rise during baking. Not to forget that we also need to add our red bean mixture once all the cups have been filled with the muffin batter.

6) Spoon the ready made red bean paste into a plastic sandwich bag, squeeze the bean paste into a corner and then cut off a corner to make a hole. This will act as a piping bag, to pipe the red beans into the muffin mixture. Don’t make the hole too small or too big.

7) Dip the piping bag into the muffin batter and pipe red bean paste into the center of each muffin cup. The total amount of batter should rise a little as red bean is inserted into the batter.

5) Bake at 170 degrees. If the muffins are small like mine, around 15 minutes will do.  Larger muffins take around 20-25 mins and if you’re making a loaf, bake for 50 mins. It should be lightly browned on top and well risen.

 

 

That’s how it looks when it’s cut in the middle. Looks good doesn’t it ;D

Next we had some fun with the mold that my sister insisted on using. Came out pretty cool too!

 

 

Enjoy!

Moist Brownies

Tags

baking, brownies, cake, chocolate, chocolate dripping, coffee, confectionery, dessert, heart, heart shaped brownie, heart-shaped cake, moist brownie, valentine, valentine's day

Here’s the second post of the day. Brownies. While I don’t eat a great deal of cake, chocolate cake especially, this brownie is pretty good when its warm and eaten with a large helping of Haagan Daz Strawberry ice cream ❤ And for special occasions, such as an anniversary or Valentine’s day, you can spiff this simple dessert up a little by adding some fresh fruits and delicate leaves, or you could try cutting out pretty shapes with a cutter.

For this heart shaped brownie I made a trip to Phoon Huat in Holland Village. I needed a heart shaped cutter and I desperately wanted to get some edible gold flakes. It was so difficult to find these two for some reason. Understandably not many shops carry gold flakes but the heart-shaped cutter should be more common. I never knew Valentine’s day was so widely celebrated that all heart shaped cutters get sold out quickly and that all restaurants are fully booked on this day. I’ve been out of touch for so long. Mostly, I spend Valentine’s day staring daggers at lovey dovey couples carrying gorgeous flowers who go around with hearts in their eyes and dizzily giggling with happiness.

That aside, I had an amazing time at Phoon Huat. Yes, I do love my kitchen utensils, props and supplies indeed. Also found the ever reclusive gold flakes XD

Ingredients

Brownie

• 6 1/4 oz plain flour (156g)
• 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp bicarbonate soda
• 8 oz corn oil (250ml/1 cup) – I would decrease this amount to 3/4 cup
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 12 1/2 oz caster sugar (310g)
• 2 1/4 oz Van Houten cocoa powder
• 6 ozs hot water (188 ml)
• 1 tsp Nescafe coffee
• 8 ozs evaporated milk (Nestle) (250ml)
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla essence

Chocolate Dripping

• 7 ozs plain chocolate (Van Houten cooking chocolate, around 1 1/2 whole bars of chocolate)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 ozs salted butter (40g)

Chocolate Dripping (edited for glazing)

• 2 whole bars of chocolate
• 1/2 tsp vanilla essence
• 40g salted butter
• heaping table spoonful of double cream
• 1/3 cup of full cream milk (may not be too accurate as I eyeballed the amount)

Cooking Instructions

1. Mix all dry ingredients together in a mixing bowl

2. Add in the corn oil and evaporated milk and beat at low speed for a minute. Scrape the sides of the bowl before beating the mixture again.

3. Dissolve the coffee into the hot water before adding it slowly into the mixture. Add the vanilla essence as well and continue beating until smooth.

4. Beat the 2 eggs in a separate bowl and add them into the brownie mixture, ensuring that it has cooled down from the hot coffee, otherwise you’ll get scrambled eggs in your brownie. You don’t want that do you? ;p

5. Preheat your oven to 170 degrees celsius.

6. Grease and line a 10″ round cake tin. Do not use a springform (removable bottom) baking tin for this recipe as the brownie mixture will leak out. If you’re worried about the brownie sticking to the bottom of the baking tin (and it WILL), grease the bottom and sides of the tin with butter and place baking paper at the bottom. Grease the surface of the paper as well.

7. Pour the mixture into the centre of the tin (the weight of the batter will press down on the paper so it will be nice and even and won’t leak through to the other side of the paper) and pop it into the oven on the bottom rack for about an hour.

8. Once the hour is up, switch off your oven and leave the oven door ajar to cool off the brownie and so that it doesn’t cool so rapidly that it sinks in the middle.

9. Next, we work on the chocolate dripping. Chop up the chocolate into smaller pieces. If you leave it in big chunks like I did you’re gonna have a horrible time smushing it T____T.

10. Place the chocolate, butter and vanilla essence into a double boiler. (You can make one by boiling some water and placing a heat-proof bowl on top of this pot of water, ensuring that the bowl doesn’t touch the water).

11. Mix it all up together until it’s nice and glossy

12. Spread the melted chocolate on top of the brownie. I don’t know who took out a chunk of the brownie before I could even put the chocolate dripping on top 😡 

13. My feeble attempts at decoration. Heat up the brownie before serving.

So, for a more special occasion, here’s what to do:

1) Cut out shapes in the brownie like so. Make sure that the brownie is completely cooled, or refrigerator-chilled so that it’s easier to cut, and that you cut all the way through for a clean edge.

2. Remove the excess brownie and gently remove the shaped brownies. 

3. Make the chocolate glaze! I felt that the chocolate dripping was too thick for what I wanted to make so I amended it a little. I’ve been reading up on Japanese cookbooks and their chocolate glazes are absolutely perfect. Too bad I can’t make out half the words in those cookbooks otherwise I’d have had a smoother glaze. 

4. The glaze was still a little thick, but its ok. Place the brownies on a wire rack with a tray at the bottom to catch the excess chocolate. Grab a ladle and spoon a generous amount of chocolate on top of the brownie. I say generous because the chocolate has got to slosh over the sides to cover that as well.

5. If you can, slosh enough chocolate so that it falls evenly over the sides to cover everything evenly. If you were to use a knife to try to coat the brownie, its gonna end up in heartache and a bad frosting. The trick is the amount of chocolate and how quickly you work with the ladle.

Please check out the frosting on the left…. too much human handling spoils the chocolate.

6. Chill in the fridge. The chocolate will harden up and make the brownie easier to handle. You can then pretty up the brownie by adding some gold flakes, but do remove them before microwaving the brownie.

Awwww~~ next time this is gonna look better but I’m pretty happy with it already. Happy Valentine’s day!

Chocolate Chip cookies

Tags

best chocolate chip cookie, chocolate chip cookies, cookies, dessert, easy recipe, famous amos, gift, occasion, present, special occasion, valentine, valentine's day

I’m a real sucker for Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies so I looked up recipes that claim to be Famous Amos cookie-worthy back in university. When I hit upon this recipe and tried it out, while I’m not 100% sure it tastes exactly like the famed cookie, it comes pretty close and definitely hits the spot. I can’t remember where I got this recipe from, but when I do come across it again I’ll put up the credits here.

As today is Valentine’s day, thought I’d put this up along with a brownie recipe made a little more special as it comes in the shape of a heart ;D

Ingredients (yields 4-6 dozen cookies)

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1 cup butter (if its salted, then forego the salt later on in the recipe)
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1 tbsp milk
• 4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cream of tartar
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

First, thoroughly cream the sugars, butter, milk, oil and vanilla essence.

Then, add in the dry ingredients and mix well before adding in the chocolate chips. Mix in the chocolate chips with a spatula, try not to do it with your mixer unless you want the chips thoroughly incorporated into the batter -___-

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees celsius and place some baking paper on top of some baking trays/cookie sheets.

And now, the fun part! Using a teaspoon, drop cookie dough onto the sheets like so. Leave around 1.5 inches of space between each cookie as it will expand in the oven.

If you like the chocolate chips to be less visible, you can hide the chips in the dough. It will come out nice and even once cooked with little chocolate surprises when you bite into it. You can even make shapes with the cookies. Try making heart-shaped cookies for Valentine’s day ;D

Pop it into the oven for around 8-12 minutes. For it to be crunchy, leave it in for longer, it should brown slightly around the edges. If you like chewy cookies, bake it for 8-9 minutes. The crunchy ones last longer though.

Remove from the oven and let it cool completely.

Repeat with the rest of the dough.

Isn’t this jar cute? I got it from Muji. Super rustic.

Please remember to let it cool completely before storing the cookies in the jar. Otherwise the chocolate will still be all melted and gooey and will smudge the inside of the jar. Not a pretty sight. 

And here it is, the final product!Happy Valentine’s day!!! Brownie recipe next up.

Green tea mochi cream with azuki red beans

Tags

azuki beans, cream, dessert, flutinous rice flour, green tea, green tea cream, green tea ice cream, green tea mochi, green tea mochi ice cream, green tea mochi ice cream with azuki beans, japan, japanese desserts, mochi, red beans

 

 

Truthfully I’m not a great fan of mochi, I do like the Chinese mua zhee (glutinous rice flour cakes tossed in sugar and peanuts) as well as tang yuan (glutinous rice flour balls boiled in a pandan,ginger and sugar syrup), but otherwise mochi and mochi ice cream were never really far up my list of cravings.

These days the trend is mochi ice cream. I never understood it. The mochi is hard and chewy and the ice cream just didn’t seem to go well with it. And then I tried “Mochi sweets” in Kuala Lumpur. Now THIS is good mochi. It isn’t exactly mochi ice cream, its more of a mochi with cream inside I think. They’ve got everything down perfect, from the mochi, to the temperature it has to be consumed, to the ratio of mochi to fillings.

Now I thought I’d try to replicate it, but I still have some ways to go instead of the actual measurements, because I eyeballed the amount of cream and red bean used in each mochi T____T. Pleased with the way the mochi turned out, soft, smooth and chewy and super easy to make. In fact you can just use this mochi recipe and create your own fillings 😉

 

Ingredients

For mochi:

• 1 cup Glutinous rice flour
• 200ml water (room temperature is fine)
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tbsp green tea
• pinch of salt

For the fillings:

• canned azuki beans (You can boil your own red beans in some sugar and water but this is so much more convenient!)
• 2 tbsp sugar (or more if you like the cream to be sweeter)
• 1 1/2 tbsp green tea
• 200ml cream
• pinch of salt

Instructions

• It is advisable to do the fillings first. To prepare the cream , pour the cream into a mixing bowl, add the sugar and green tea and blend with a blender until stiff peaks form.

 

• Using a teaspoon, place some cream onto the centres of small squares of cling wrap. Twist the loose ends so you’ll end up with this:-

 

 

• The whole point is to create balls of cream and place them in the freezer. It is so much easier to handle frozen cream as it doesn’t ooze out of the mochi as easily. So into the freezer it goes for about an hour or until it has completely hardened up.
• Next, place the azuki beans in a blender and add the salt

 

• Blend into a chunky paste. If you’d like the paste to be smoother then just blend it a little longer. Set aside until you’re ready to make your mochi.

• Now to proceed to the mochi. Place the flour, green tea and sugar into a bowl and mix to combine
• Add water slowly, and stir into the flour using a rubber spatula

 

• Make sure that there are no lumps in the mixture

 

• Cover the bowl loosely (don’t cover it completely!) with some cling wrap.
• Microwave the mixture for 1 minute at 1000watt. Remove the bowl from the microwave and stir the mixture before covering the bowl (loosely) again with the cling wrap and microwaving it for another 1 minute at 1000 watt.
• You should get the following end result:

• Prepare a tray and dust it with potato starch.
• Scrape the mochi mixture onto the potato starch and sprinkle more potato starch on top of the mochi

 

• Remember to put enough potato starch on the surface so it doesn’t stick to your hands. Flatten the mochi down and cut into 12 equal pieces.

 

• Take one piece of mochi and cover the rest with cling wrap to keep it from going dry
• Here’s where you can experiment with the proportions! Once you’ve pulled the mochi to your desired thickness, brush off the excess flour from the mochi, otherwise it’s going to be pretty hard getting it to stick and close up after adding the filling later on.
• Add a dollop of red bean paste to the mochi and top with a chunk of frozen cream. Add more red bean paste on top and close up the mochi, making sure none of the red bean and cream spills out. Then you can gently pat the mochi into shape with the help of some potato starch. Place the mochi into the freezer.
• Repeat with the other pieces of mochi.
• The below method of placing the filling in the middle of a round circle and attempting to close it up from there was pretty messy! I preferred pressing the mochi out into a longer strip, and placing the red bean and cream on one end and I’d fold the other end on top and seal the edges that way before arranging it into a round shape.

 

• Before serving, remove the mochi from the freezer to sit at room temperature for 15 minutes. This allows the mochi to get back into a soft and chewy, rather than a rubbery texture, while still allowing for the cream to be somewhat like an ice cream. If you prefer it as a cream then just leave it for 20-25 minutes or so 😉

 

Serve alongside the extra red bean paste.

Longan Soy Milk Agar Jelly

Tags

agar, jelly, longan, longan soy milk agar jelly, longan soy milk jelly, pandan leaves, soy milk, soy milk jelly, vegetarian

Agar jellies tend not to be as sweet or as soft/wobbly as normal jellies. Agar is also a natural vegetarian gelatin substitute so this is suitable for vegetarian days/diets and the fact that it is made up of 80% fibre makes it all the better for diets LOL. Whatever it is, agar jellies are really yummy and addictive XD.

Here’s an agar recipe that my sister and I really enjoy. Not for those on a diet though 😉

Ingredients

2500 ml  water

30 grams agar

1.6 litres soy milk

Sugar

1 tin of evaporated milk

2 tins of longan

A couple of pandan leaves cleaned and tied in a knot OR 1 tsp pandan extract

Instructions

1) Boil water in a large pot. If you’re using pandan leaves you can add it when the water has boiled.

2) Set out the containers that you will use to hold the jelly. You can get these at supermarkets.

3) Place 2-3 longan into each cup/container.

4) Add the agar into water and stir until the agar dissolves.

5) Add pandan extract to the agar and water mixture

5) Add soy milk little by little, stirring all the while.

6) Add evaporated milk and sugar to taste.

7) Sieve the liquid before pouring into the containers. Refrigerate

And unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of the completed jelly =(

If you like, you can also replace some of the water with the sugar water that came with the longans. Don’t waste it as the water is deliciously longan scented!

Pineapple Jam Tarts

Tags

biscuits, chinese new year cookie, cookie, festive, pineapple, pineapple jam tarts, pineapple tarts, tarts

It’s that time of the year for Pineapple tarts!!! I love love love this Chinese New Year cookie! Pineapple in Hokkien is “Ong Lai” which means “luck is coming” which is very auspicious and also very apt as a food to bring in the new year. I remember asking my mom to send over a couple of jars of these delicious crumbly tarts to the UK when I was in university. I savoured every bite.

This year I thought I’d try making this on my own. If I ever have children/grandchildren I’d want them to have fond memories of “Mom’s or Amah’s” kitchen. God knows my mom can’t cook and is ticking time bomb in the kitchen.

So here is my second batch of cookies! The first batch came out sloppy and slightly burnt as I was lazy and followed other recipes and baked at a temperature of 170 degrees celsius. Not a good idea.

Ingredients

Pineapple Jam (Makes 1.6 kg worth of jam)

5 1.5kg average sized Malaysia honey pineapples

3 cups sugar (or more if the pineapples aren’t sweet)

1-2 sticks cinnamon

1 star anise

25 gram butter

Makes around 1.6kg worth of jam

Pastry for 400g of jam:

200gm salted butter (cut up into smaller chunks and freeze it before use)

2 cups plain flour

1/2 cup corn flour

2 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tartar or baking powder

2 egg yolks

1/2 tsp vanilla essence

7-8 tsp ice water

2 more egg yolks for glazing

Cooking instructions

1. Remove the outer skin, leaves of the pineapple and cut out the “eyes” of the pineapple. Instead of wasting all that pineapple by slicing off the the sides with the eyes, it would be better to cut the eyes out in grooves instead as seen in the pictures below.

2. Some recipes call for the core to be removed and trashed but I think the jam needs fibre to hold it together. Thus I use the core. It helps that the pineapples are ripe and sweet and the core is not hard and tough.

3. Separate the core and the softer flesh such as below. They will be blended separately. If the flesh is too soft and the core is too tough you’ll end up with liquid flesh and large chunky bits of the core. However, if your core is pretty soft then just skip this step.

4. Cut up the pineapples into manageable chunks and blend the core and flesh separately. Don’t over blend, the fibre makes it easy to roll the jam later on.

5. Pour the blended pineapple into a colander and strain the excess pineapple juice out. Do this if you don’t want to spend an extra hour stirring the jam over a hot stove.

6. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a non stick wok and add the star anise and cinnamon sticks. Pour in the strained pineapple and the sugar and stir every couple of minutes over medium heat to ensure that the bottom doesn’t burn.

7. Stir until the jam thickens, turns golden and most of the excess moisture has been cooked out. Remember, if the jam is too moist, it will be hard to roll the jam and will spill out of the pastry. If the jam is too dry it could burn easily in the oven and makes for an unpleasant eating experience. The picture below shows an ideal jam texture (ideal to me that is).

8. Let the jam cool and refrigerate overnight. It is so much easier to handle the jam when it is cold. If you find that you’ve made too much jam, just freeze the excess.

9. Have a drink of strained pineapple juice before starting on the pastry 🙂 It’s delicious cold and no additional sugar is required if your pineapple was sweet to begin with.

10. Starting on the pastry, sieve the plain flour, corn flour and cream of tartar into a mixing bowl before adding the sugar.

11. Using your finger tips, rub in the frozen butter and mix into the flour bit by bit until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. The idea is to have many little bits of cold butter covered in flour. This will give the biscuit a crumbly and thus “melt in your mouth” texture.

12. If your butter is starting to melt, put the mixture back into the freezer for a minute.

13. Beat the 2 egg yolks and vanilla essence in a separate bowl. Slowly mix this into the butter-flour mixture until just incorporated.

14. Add a few teaspoons of ice cold water to the bowl until the dough just comes together. Most recipes call for 5 teaspoons, sorry to say it took me a lot more than that to bind the crumbs together. Try not to go over 10 teaspoons though, and don’t overwork the dough, otherwise the pastry becomes tough and bread-like.

15. Lightly flour a clean board/kitchen surface area and rolling pin. Roll out the dough until it is 6mm in thickness.

16. Using your favourite cookie cutter, cut out the pastry into preferred shapes. Chill in the fridge for a couple of minutes.

17. Preheat your oven to 160 degrees Celsius.

18. Place the cookies into trays lined with baking paper and brush the top with egg yolk for that beautiful golden sheen when its baked.

19. Now this is important, you have to roll out the jam into balls before you even put the pastry dough into the oven. This is because you will be baking the cookie for 10 minutes without the jam, and you’ll need to take the cookies out and place the jam in the centre before baking it for another 15 minutes.

Because I was lazy and sloppy, my jam was uneven and came out slightly burnt as I baked the tarts with the jam right from the start. This was my first batch:

Pretty sad even though it still tasted good.

So yes. 1) Pre-roll the jam. 2) Bake the cookie for 10 minutes 3) Add the jam balls to the cookie 4) Bake for another 15 minutes

Then you get this!!

Beautiful golden tarts with even coloring !

20. Let the cookies cool on a rack before eating/storing. Try to finish the cookies within 3 days 🙂 enjoy!

Strawberry Japanese Cheesecake

Tags

cake, cheesecake, desserts, Japanese cheesecake, shortcake, strawberry

I’m not a big fan of cakes, but I love cheesecake and strawberry shortcake. And now I’m infatuated with Japanese cheesecakes as they are so light and fluffy with a subtle cheese flavor.

I tried making strawberry shortcakes, then I tried making Japanese cheesecake. One day I decided to just put the two together and make a strawberry Japanese cheesecake.

It took many tries to make it. In one attempt, the cake had a slightly denser texture to it (more like normal cake rather than the airy light Japanese cheesecake), another time it was too moist and didn’t rise enough because I tried it with less flour and more lemon juice and sprite. For some reason my mom and dad liked the moist one. Most of the pictures here are attempt number 3 or 4, which had the denser cake texture. I’m using pictures from two attempts, you can see that one cake was done during the day and the other at night. The night attempt is my latest and most successful attempt, but the day attempt has nicer pictures =D

I adapted the recipe from Diana’s desserts and reduced the flour amount as I find that the cake comes out lighter this way.

Ingredients

For the Japanese cheesecake

– 140g fine granulated sugar

– 6 egg whites

– 6 egg yolks

– 1/4 tsp cream of tartar

– 50g butter

– 250g cream cheese

– 100ml fresh milk

– 40g cake flour (can also use plain flour)

– 20g corn flour

– 1/4 tsp salt

 For assembling the strawberry cheesecake

– a box of strawberries

– 2 tsp grand marnier for the strawberries

– 2 cups cold heavy cream

– 1/4 cup sugar

– 2 tsp sugar for sprinkling on strawberries

– 1 tsp vanilla extract

– 1 tsp unflavoured gelatin (I did not use it in these two attempts as the cream froze up the last time I tried.)

– Icing sugar for decoration

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven at 160°C

2. Mix the cream cheese, butter and milk over a double boiler. I didn’t have a double boiler so I put a big bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Smooth out the mixture and try to get rid of the lumps.

Smoothen out the mixture as much as you can. But don’t mull over the bowl too long otherwise the mixture will start drying out.

3. Take the bowl off the saucepan (or just turn off the double boiler) and let the mixture cool.

4. While the mixture cools, you can sieve your flour, cornflour and salt into a bowl and separate your egg yolks and egg whites. 

5. Mix in your egg yolks into the cooled cream cheese mixture, and fold in your flour. It should look like this:

6. Sieve the cheese/yolk mixture through a wire mesh so that you get a smoother batter.

7. Whisk your egg whites and cream of tartar on medium-high speed until foamy. Then add in the sugar and whisk on high speed until soft peaks form and the mixture can stand on its own when you scoop it up with a spoon. This could take a while, but it is essential that the white stuff has stiff peaks. Perhaps towards the last few minutes you could slow down on the speed so you won’t have lots of air bubbles in the batter. Your egg white mixture should look like this:

8. Add the egg whites to the cheese mixture to and fold until it’s just incorporated.

9. I lined the an 8-inch round springform cake pan/removable-bottom cake pan with some baking paper. I suppose you could also grease the inner surface of the pan but I think it’s easier to peel off the paper after baking? Make sure the baking paper is higher than the cake tin by about a couple of inches as the cake will rise while baking.

10. Fill a deep tray with hot water and place on the bottom rack in the oven. An alternate water bath if you must, and it is not so heavy and dangerous to remove both a water bath with your cheesecake in the middle of that hot water bath. One slip and you’ll have a soggy cheesecake. So tray with hot water goes on the bottom, while the cake tin takes the center rack.

11. Also I tried to “cover” the cheesecake while it’s in the oven with some paper or aluminum foil (aluminum works better just because it’s heavier and has staying power) so as to prevent the top from burning/browning too much.

12. Bake cheesecake over the water bath for 1 hour 10 mins or until set and golden brown at 160°C.

13. Leave to cool in oven with door ajar, about 1 hour. Sudden changes in temperature may cause the cake to cool too quickly and collapse. As you can tell, I’m pretty impatient so my cakes tend to deflate/collapse. I just turned them over on their heads XD

The difference between sieving the cheese mixture and switching from high to low speed when mixing the egg whites can be seen in the next two photos.

This is the one where I was lazy and didn’t sieve and whisked the egg whites on high speed all the way. There are lumps and inconsistency in the cake.

This is the successful attempt. Notice the air bubbles are smaller and the cake has more consistency?

13. Back to assembling the cake, first, cut a few of the strawberries into nice thick slices. This will go in the middle of the cake. Sprinkle the strawberries with sugar and some grand marnier.

14. Mix the cream, vanilla extract and sugar and whisk until the cream forms stiff peaks. A lot of recipes out there call for “stabilized cream” where they add gelatin to the cream, however when I tried it the cream just froze up and became disgusting and lumpy. So I went without this time, might give it another go in the future though.

15. Slice the cake into half and lightly brush the cut surfaces with a mixture of grand marnier and sugar.

16. Spread a layer of cream onto the bottom half. Next, lightly press your strawberry slices onto the layer of cream so that it looks like the picture below. Just one layer will do, do not stack strawberry slices on top of each other as it makes the top and bottom halves of the cake susceptible to falling in separate directions when cut into slices. This way it is also prettier to photograph.

17. Spread another layer of cream over the strawberries and top with the other half of the cheesecake.

18. Frost your cake with the cream, I do a terrible job of it so I load up the top with fruits to hide the appearance =(. I forgot the icing sugar!!! Put two or three tbsp of icing sugar into the sieve and lightly tap over the fruit topping. Gives it a nice wintery effect.

19. EAT!!!! I suggest wiping your knife, dunking it into hot water and drying it before each slice you make. It comes out so much cleaner!

Strawberry Hearts Jelly No Bake Cheesecake

Tags

cheesecake, dessert, easy, jello, no bake, strawberry, strawberry jelly cheesecake

This happens to be one of those “inspirational foods”. The tiny strawberry hearts and the clear jelly that encases it are just so exquisite! Even the taste is yummy and pretty addictive despite being so easy to make! Perfect for Valentine’s day or a special occasion. Or just a snack 😉

Ingredients

Crust

300 gram McVities digestive biscuits (crushed)

140 gram melted butter

Cheese Filling

2 blocks Philadelphia cream cheese

4 tsp gelatine powder

7 tbsp sugar

1 cup hot water

1 tsp vanilla essence

Strawberry Jelly

1 box strawberry jelly (Brand: Jell-o can be found in cold storage or Jason’s)

2 cups hot water

A box of strawberries for decoration

Instructions

1) For the biscuit base, blend biscuits until fine and mix with melted butter. Mix thoroughly

2) Press mixture into a 10″ square tray. Chill in the freezer to let it set and harden a little

3) Slice off the strawberry skins and cut out strawberry heart shapes out of them. The hearts should not be too thin and should show the red outer layer of the berry. Set aside at least 30 of these hearts.

4) Stir gelatine powder into the boiling hot water until it dissolves

5) Beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla essence until creamy before slowly adding the slightly cooled gelatine. Beat until smooth. Pour half of the cream cheese mixture on top of the digestive biscuit base.

6) Place the tray back into the freezer to set the first layer.

7) Once the first layer is set, pour the rest of the cheese mixture evenly on top. The reason why I do this is so that the strawberry hearts will not sink to the bottom of the cheese mixture and remains sticking out of the last layer of cheese where it is prominently shown.

8) Before setting the last layer of cheese, place the hearts uniformly on the cheese and ensure that the red hearts do not get covered by the cheese mixture. Once you’re done placing the hearts to your satisfaction, place the tray back into the freezer to set the cheese and hearts into place.

9) Now to prepare the jello layer, dissolve the Jell-o into the hot water, stir and let it cool for a while. It should be warm but not hot so that it cooks the cheese and strawberry hearts. And it shouldn’t be too cool so that the jelly sets and can no longer be poured.

10) Using a ladle, ladle the strawberry jello mixture evenly over the cheese cake. The jelly mixture should cover the strawberry hearts.

11) Refrigerate to set the jelly. To serve, slice with a hot knife. The strawberry hearts will be enclosed in a ruby jeweled casing (i.e. the jelly) and it is super pretty! The jelly is clear and red so you can see the delicate strawberry hearts resting on the cheese.