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.

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.