Light Japanese Soufflé Cheesecake

Baking has always been my weakness as it involves accuracy and many steps, not to forget the horrible washing after all the mixing bowls used. Nevertheless, with all the time I have in the day as well as to hone my baking skills, I knew I should do it! Anyway, its a great way to save money when a family member celebrates their birthday as cakes can be really expensive!

Anyway, decided to cook this after eating a really nice chiffon orange cake baked by my aunt-in-law. However, changed it to cheesecake because my children simply loves cheese!!

This is a great recipe as its light and fluffy!

Enjoy!

Ingredients (for 9 x 9 x 2 inch square tray):

160 ml milk
80 g butter, at (tropical) room temperature, cut into small pieces
280 g full-fat cream cheese block, at (tropical) room temperature, cut into small pieces
100 g cake flour, sifted
30 g cornstarch, sifted (if you have corn flour instead, use twice the amount (60g)
1/4 tsp salt
140g egg yolks
 4 tsp lemon juice

 350 g egg whites
 150 g caster sugar


The eggs should amount to about 8-10 eggs depending on size.

Steps:

1) Spray the baking tray with oil/butter, then place baking paper on it.
2) Wrap the sides of tray with aluminium foil
3) Heat milk till warm. Then, place the milk in a mixing bowl, together with the small pieces of butter and cream cheese. Mix it evenly.
4) Add the egg yolks and lemon juice into the mixture of cream cheese.
5) Sieve the mixture twice or more to make it very smooth
6) Place the sifted flour (both cake and corn flour) as well as salt into the cream cheese mixture.
7) Mix it really well and even.
8)Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C
9) Mix the egg whites with a mixer till it creates soft peaks. While mixing, add in the sugar gradually.
10) Fold gently in the egg whites to the yolk mixture in 3 rounds. Get rid of big air bubbles.
11) Pour batter into the tray slowly to avoid creating bubbles
12) Put hot water on a big rectangle tray, then place the square tray in to act as a water bath during baking to keep the cake moist.
13) Place the tray into the oven and bake it at 170 degrees C for about 50-60 mins.
14) Test it with a skewer to see if its ready.
15) Remove cake from oven and cool it on a rack

Enjoy!

Spinach Pork Congee (Porridge)

This dish is perfect for those who are sick, for cold weathers or simply, just to cook a healthy meal for the family. For the record, my kids, including myself slurp this whole thing real fast as it is very sweet and tasty!

A nice, simple, economical and tasty meal for the family. How can you not try it?

Ingredients
- Spinach (chopped)
- Dried Anchovies/ Chicken bones of one chicken
- Minced pork to make pork balls/ sliced pork
- rice (I use only one cup of rice for 2 adults and 2 children)
- water
- salt and pepper to taste
- ginger (3-4 slices)
- sliced fish cake (optional)


Steps
1) Boil the dried anchovies/chicken bones in a pot of water (filled 3/4 of the pot) under medium high fire

2) Then let it cool down after about 30 mins of boiling and drain to use the stock.

3) Wash your rice and boil them in a pot with only the stock you use from Step 1. Add the ginger slices as well. If you did not boil enough stock, and you find that you need more liquid to make the rice soft, then use normal water and add it into the pot. Main thing is try to use as much of the stock as possible as that is the one that makes it sweet.

4) Boil using low fire till you are satisfied with the water to rice ratio (not too watery or not too thick) and you see if the rice is of the softness you want. (Check out the picture closely to see how the rice should be like) Keep stirring so that the bottom does not get burnt or to prevent the rice from sticking below.

5) During the last 15 mins or so, you add the chopped spinach and pork slices/pork balls.

6) Season with salt and white pepper to taste.

I added my favourite pickled cabbage for the crunch to the porridge. Another of my favourite compliment dish would be the fried dace canned food with black beans.

These are two pictures of the times I cooked this dish. One was pork balls, and the other was pork slices.

Look healthier as I was sick then

Had this bowl when I was craving for porridge. Not sick

Enjoy!

Mee Goreng

This is a very comforting dish that my helper has made it to be. Though it is not very healthy, I enjoy having the various kinds of ingredients all coming together to make this dish so tasty!

Basically, this is yellow noodles cooked with sambal belachan. I have the steps to make sambal belachan in this blog.

So you basically fry this with minced garlic, onions, bean sprouts, prawns, squid, fishcake, noodles, spring onions (the top green ones) and sambal belachan. Then you can fry an egg as a side and sliced cucumber and tomatoes as well.

It is very easy. Great dish for breakfast or lunch!

Sourdough sandwich with maple glazed pork belly

Recently I have been fulfilling my dream in making my own bread, without getting a bread machine. I insisted on not buying one as a bread machine is huge and it takes up so much space.

Since my last post on baking plain white bread, I decided to do the lazy way by just making sourdough from the premix. And what's best about this is that, it does not require any kneading. So its so simple and effortless!

I got this from Cold Storage Supermarket.

Just follow the simple instructions in the box and voila! There's even instant yeast provided in the box. So all you need is just warm water.

I was very happy with the results as its nicely crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. Great for sandwiches!

I cut it up and placed them in the fridge for the next day's breakfast.

The next morning, I took out slices of pork belly in my fridge which was leftovers from steamboat last night. So it was perfect.

I just grilled this and brushed over some maple syrup on it at the very last few mins before it is done.

Finally, I put on top of my sourdough and let it melt together with my shredded cheddar cheese by popping the bread into the oven together with the maple-glazed pork belly and cheddar cheese on top to let the cheese melt and to just heat up the sourdough.

After the cheese is melted, remove them from the oven and put some iceberg lettuce in it!

Very simple!

You have the sour-ness from the bread, sweetness from the maple syrup in the pork belly, the saltiness from the cheddar cheese and the crunchiness from the iceberg lettuce!

Perfect meal for breakfast or lunch!

Curry Puff

This has been one of my favourite snacks since young. But it has been growing increasingly expensive- from 40 cents to the present, $1.50.

Anyway, thank God my helper makes quite good curry puff and so it was a great opportunity learning from her so that in future, I can make for myself or even for parties. Definitely useful to learn!

Ingredients (for making 15)

4 potatoes
3 big red onions
7 shallots
curry leaves
3 packets of chicken thighs (can use breasts too or mixture)
5 eggs
Planta margarine
rice flour
plain flour
sugar
salt
water
meat curry powder

As you can see, the ingredients are quite straight forward and easy to get. If you cant find curry leaves, it is ok. Its just to make the filling more fragrant. And also if you are abroad and do not have the specific Planta brand margarine, it is also ok. Don't kick yourself or skip this recipe just because you cannot get those 2 items. As for the rest, I am confident you can get it!

Steps
1) Skin the potatoes and dice them. Then, put them in boiling water to cook. Drain them out after its cook

2) Then dice the shallots and big red onions

3) Put the chicken thighs in boiling water to cook them before dicing them up

4) Boil the eggs till they are hard boil. Then you cut them up in quarters, lengthwise.

5) Then pluck out the curry leaves and wash them.

Now, the tricky part is the dough. There are basically two layers of dough in curry puffs- the water dough and the oil dough.

6) Water dough - put 200g plain flour into a mixing bowl, together with 1 egg, 60ml of water, 1TB of rice flour and 1 tsp of salt. Mix and knead till its like that.

7) Oil dough- put 100g plain flour, 85g of planta margarine, 1 TB of rice flour, 1 tsp of salt. Mix and knead.

8) Then weight the water dough and roughly divide the weight to 15 portions so that you can cut it up and distribute evenly. Do the same for the oil dough and divide them into 15 equal portions. I used the weighing machine to be exact.

This will turn out to be a huge curry puff. If you prefer smaller size ones, then I suggest when splitting up the dough into equal portions, you can maybe divide them into 20-25 equal portions instead of 15.

9) Then take one water dough and flatten it with your hand, then put the oil dough in it.

10) Wrap the water dough over the oil dough before flattening both down.

11) Then use a rolling pin to flatten and roll it horizontally and vertically.Then just make it like a ball and put aside. Do for all 15 of them by placing the oil dough inside the water dough.

12) To cook the ingredients, have all this stand by

Diced onions, shallots, potatoes, chicken, curry leaves

13) With a little bit of oil in the frying pan, add the shallots first. Fry till its fragrant and then put in the red onions. Do it step by step.

14) After both shallots and onions are translucent, throw in the diced chicken and potatoes

15) Stir and mix it up before adding the curry powder. For the curry powder, put 1 TB of curry powder in a bowl first with a little water to dissolve the powder before pouring into the frying pan with the ingredients.

16) Add curry leaves, salt, sugar, white pepper to taste after stirring and mixing. If the colour looks too pale and you like spice, then add one more TB of curry powder. If you find that the potatoes is still quite sturdy looking, add a little water to the pan so that the potatoes can go mushy. Cook till the water/gravy has been absorbed by the ingredients.

potatoes still in blocks-straight edges

That is what you want to attain- mushiness with no gravy.

potatoes gone soft and edges are rounded and outcome is mushy

17) Once turned mushy, off the stove and leave it to cool for about 15 mins.

18) Then get ready to start wrapping

19) First roll the dough to a rough circle.  then place the egg and the ingredients on top before wrapping.

20) Then you just wrap them up. Twirl and pinch at the sides to seal. Do this for all your doughs.

21) I cut up plastic bags to wrap my curry puffs as I only wanted to fry these curry puffs the next day. So for storage, I wrap the curry puffs in plastic and put in the freezer.

22) The next day, when I open it up, it will look like this

23) To fry, I used peanut oil. Make sure when frying, the oil is enough to cover the curry puffs.

24) Fry till its golden brown

You can vary this recipe with whatever ingredients you like. Other variation can be sardines. You can just get the canned sardines and fry with shallots and onions. Main thing is to make the ingredients like a paste with no gravy so that it will not soak through the dough.

Enjoy this delicious snack! 

Croque Madame Muffins

Enjoy this simple, tasty breakfast or snack for the family!!

However, if you really love eggs that have runny yolk at the end of the day, use less time then what she said in the video as I followed accordingly and my yolk was still dried up after that.

Nevertheless, its still a very enjoyable food to prepare!