Nutty Chocolate Cookie

I wanted my girls to remember me as the mom whose kitchen is always filled with cookies, cakes and desserts. For the same reasons, I started this food blog. To remind them of the food they had as a child and hopefully be able to do the same with their own children in the future.

My daughters love to dunk their cookies in milk. I love to dunk mine in hot coffee. Last week, I baked some chocolate cookies; packed and sent to the girls' Godma. I made sure it was freshly baked and sent on that very day. It was a decision hard to make because I wasn't sure if it will be delivered to her at all. Will the cookies be considered as prohibited items? Cookies are dry products, aren't they? I hope she receives them in the mail in the next few days. The registered mail states that it will reach her in 7 days, the least.

The rest of the cookies were shared between my two girls and they complained that it was not enough so I decided to bake more today. I had so much fun making the cookies today, actually. Last week's were walnuts, cashews and chocolate chips in a cookie. Today, I decided to make variations with Nestum cereal, some with Walnuts & Cashews, some Pink Strawberry Chocolate and some with Milo cereals.

The one with the Pink Strawberry Choc Kisses were a hit with the girls, because they adore Pink chocolates. After making these, I have more great ideas but I can only make more after the girls finish this batch or else there will be too much cookies.

My recipe for

Nutty Chocolate Cookies
There is no egg in this recipe, thus it has a nice crunch to it.

150g Butter, softened
100g Fine Sugar
40g Brown Sugar
250g Plain Flour
30g Corn Flour
1 tsp Vanilla Essence
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/2 tsp Salt
30g Cocoa Powder

Walnuts and Cashews, chopped coarsely
Milo Cereal
Pink Strawberry Chocolate
Nestum Cereal

Sift the plain flour, bicarbonate soda, salt, cocoa and corn flour in a large mixing bowl. Mix it well. Cream butter, white and brown sugar. Add vanilla essence. Using a low speed, add in the flour mixing till it is fully incorporated with the wet ingredients. Do it just very briefly. After this stage, you may divide your cookie dough into portions to mix with nuts, cereal or anything you fancy. Roll them, mould them or just use an ice cream scoop or parisian scoop for natural shaped cookies.

Preheat your oven to 180 deg C and bake them about 25 minutes. Cool and store in airtight container.

I made about one and half recipes and made four different variants of cookies.

Yummy, they taste.

Pink Strawberry Chocolate

Ready to be baked in the oven

No harm trying out different shapes and sizes with different condiments.

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Salt Baked Fish

We had Salt Baked Fish on Sunday. It was Chef's idea. He wanted to do this the week before but he couldn't find some suitable fresh fish while shopping for the groceries. Last Sunday, he thought perhaps we can try using a Red Tilapia instead because it was live and swimming in the large aquarium at the fishmonger.

Have you tried Salt Baked Fish before? This is totally Chef's recipe, not mine. I didn't cook it. He did but I am blogging about it since it was one of the best tasting natural fish dish I had.

What kind of fish
A large fish like Sea bass, Tilapia, Garoupa or any whole fish for steaming. Get it cleaned gutted but LEAVE THE SCALE ON. The fish, preferably should be about 2-4kgs. We bought 2 live Red Tilapia of about 1.6kg each. Fresh ones are better so that you don't get that mud-murky smell for this type of fish. The reason for leaving the scale on is so that it acts as a water-proof protective layer for the fish and the salt mixture does not actually get absorbed into your fish making it salty. On the contrary, cooking fish is similar to steaming, making it a very tender and moist dish, not to forget sealed in it's natural juices.


You will need
A large 2 kg FRESH whole fish, cleaned, gutted but leave scales on
3 large egg whites (more if you have bigger fish)
1.5 kg Coarse salt (more if you have bigger fish)
wedges of lemon (to squeeze on the fish upon serving)


Lightly marinate your fish with some salt and pepper, around and insides. You may add your favourite herb like rosemary or lemon salt if you like. Or you may prefer to do it the chinese herb style like adding Wolfberries/Goji Berries (Kei Chi).

In a mixing bowl, whisk your egg whites till stiff peaks. Add the salt into it and mix well. On a large shallow pan, place a third of this egg white mixture on the pan and lay the fish on it. Spread the rest of the mixture over the egg and the sides, sealing the fish like a crust all over.

Preheat your oven at 200 deg C. Bake your fish for 35 minutes. At the end of 35 minutes, use a knife to cut a small part of the salt crust (it should form a hard crust now) and gently lift up a small layer of the scaled skin. Your fish should be cooked and flakes easily by now. If your fish is very big and is stil uncooked, place a small piece of aluminium foil over the cut up part, cover it back with the crust and continue baking it for another 10 minutes.

This fish is soo tender and succulent... No, you don't really taste salt in this because the salt acts like a vacuum keeping heat in and not as a marinade. But cooking this way, the fish retains its natural juices so it's very yummy.

When out from the oven, it looks like this.

To serve, you must remove the crust. The crust becomes hard like a clay, easy to remove.

With both crusts removed, it should look like these. Fish with skin, scales on.

Using a knife, gently remove the top part of the skin with the scales, revealing a moist layer of delicate fish.

Looking closely, the fish looks very glossy. But it is not from any oil nor seasoning, but from it's own juices! This fish is only seasoned with salt and pepper, lightly. No oil - very healthy dish!

BURP! okay, we made a mess by digging in.
No need to turn the fish over to get to the other side. Just dig into the other side, but remove the bones with care.

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My Metric Carrot Cake

I wanted to bake a cake to commemorate my girl's last day of exam, today. Not for her, for me! Carrot Cake is comfort food for me! She will be home only at 3pm after an excursion to Marina Barrage for an educational trip.

There's so much bread posts going around the past week. I've been baking bread almost every day or alternate days. Fresh breads are just so lovely and my kids have been eating them plain and with their favourite spreads or filings. Guess it's time for a cake post.

I know my kids will not like Carrot Cake because of the spices and the carrots. As much as they love Carrots, they cannot accept these vegetables in Cakes! LOL!

I searched high and low for the Ultimate Carrot Cake. But until I bake them and try, I will not know what is the Ultimate Carrot Cake. I enjoy the one sold in Coffee Bean cafes. I used to hang out in Holland Village's Coffee Bean to enjoy my Carrot Cake with Cappuccino or Latte and a good book.

This morning, I found this recipe in Food Network and saw the many good reviews, so decided to give it a try.

The original recipe called Gigi's Carrot Cake can be found here. Well, I went through some trouble trying to convert them into metrics because I do not have those standard measurements in 'cups' in hand. So it may not turned out to be the perfect recipe like Gigi's Carrot Cake as I have altered it, somewhat. I also added Cashews to the recipe because I love the rich nutty flavours of Cashews. The cake turn out nice, as a matter of fact. It is moist, fragrant and delicious. And because I didn't use too much sugar, it is just right. Some cakes use brown sugar but I tried those and found those a little too rich. And I didn't want my carrot cake to turn out too dark.

This cake is about 3/4 of the original recipe. I believe the original cake might be too much as it would only be my hubby, myself and my helper eating. I don't think my kids will eat them.. they aren't into cinnamon scented-vegetable in a cake cakes!

Fad Mom's Metric Carrot Cake

250g Butter
200g Sugar ( I added 180g only)

200g Flour
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/2 tsp Ground Nutmeg
3/4 tsp Salt

3 large Eggs

180g Grated Carrot
1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence
1/2 tsp Orange Essence

50g Chopped Walnuts
50g Chopped Cashews


Method
Cream butter and sugar till pale and creamy. Add dry ingredients, alternating with the eggs. Mix them well. Add vanilla and orange essence, mixing well. Add grated carrots, beating on medium speed for a few minutes. Fold in the Walnuts and Cashews.

Preheat oven at 180 deg C. Divide batter into two pans or a 9 inch round pan. Baking takes about 40 minutes to an hour more depending on two 8-inch pans or a larger 9 or 10 inch pan. It is advisable to bake in two 8 inch pans actually. I did mine in an 8-inch deep cheesecake pan so the centre part of the cake was still wobbly and it took more than an hour to be fully set, so I tented it with a piece of aluminium foil.

Remove from oven when the cake leaves sides of the pan or insert a toothpick to make sure it comes out clean and dry, no sticky batter.

Cool the cake on a pan. For me, I sliced the cake into portions and make the Cream Cheese topping separately. This is so that I can keep the cake without the topping in the fridge and it lasts longer without cheese. I kept the cheese in a piping bag and piped out the topping only after I warm the cake before serving.

Pipe out the cream cheese frosting before serving, to your whims and fancies! I even did mine rich with frosting in one.. yummy

Cream Cheese Topping
250g Cream Cheese
50g Butter Softened
100g Icing Sugar
4 tsp Lemon Juice
1 tsp Grated Lemon

Cream Cheese and Butter till soft and fluffy. Add Icing Sugar gradually beating well. Add the lemon juice and lastly grated lemon. You can either frost the top of the cake, spread it on when serve or pipe it out on your cut out wedges.

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Conversions In Baking

I, too get confused over conversions of weights from cups to grams.

Did you know that a cup of flour is not the same as a cup of butter? Well some of the US recipes are in cups and our cakes/bakes go wrong because sometimes we think we measure them as a cup of dry ingredient = to a cup of liquid ingredient.

In US, a stick of butter is 113g in weight, and a cup of butter is not the same is a stick of butter.

If you come across a US recipe that calls for measurement in cups, use this information below as a general rule for some common ingredients. I hope it helps you. Then again, after baking them once, we can always fine tune it to your own taste and reweigh them in grams as your family recipe. I prefer to use metric recipes.. sometimes I boycott the recipes that comes in cups.. sigh


Granulated sugar: 1 cup = 200 grams
Brown sugar: 1 cup, packed = 220 grams
Sifted white flour: 1 cup = 125 grams
White rice, uncooked: 1 cup = 185 grams
White rice, cooked: 1 cup = 175 grams
Butter: 1 cup = 227 grams

Almonds, slivered: 1 cup = 108 grams
Oil: 1 cup = 224 grams
Maple syrup: 1 cup = 322 grams
Milk, non-fat: 1 cup = 245 grams
Milk, sweetened condensed: 306 grams
Broccoli, flowerets: 1 cup = 71 grams

Raisins: 1 cup, packed = 165 grams
Milk, dry: 1 cup = 68 grams
Yogurt: 1 cup = 245 grams
Water: 1 cup = 236 grams
Confectioners sugar: 1 C = 110 g
Cocoa: 1 C = 125 g

Giant Buns

Not Enough! Not Enough!

I just cannot get enough of making breads/buns or using my breadmaker! I just lurvve it so much! Saves me so much time kneading. All I need is just to add the liquids, flour/dry and let it knead a while, then add some butter to it. And the rest of the kneading and proofing is all done in the machine.

After using the kneading functions a few times, this time I wanted to try the full function with one of the menu buttons - 'Sweet'. I used my own recipe and it didn't come out the way I wanted. Maybe next time I should try other buttons like Sandwich or Ultra Fast, etc. It may turn out differently.

You see, my sweet buns recipe was probably not suitable as the loaf came out rather hard at the crust. It was also very brown outside, even though it is soft inside. The texture was rather holey and rough, less dense. Perhaps it is advisable to use their provided recipe in their manual first to understand the texture it will yield with different function.

Using the bake function for 'Sweet', the bread crust was thick and dark.

There's a menu for making Basic Bread, French, Whole Wheat, Quick breads, Sweet breads, Ultra fast 1 & 2, Dough, Jam, Cake, Sandwich and lastly a button just to bake.

In the meantime, I am rather happy using the dough function and baking it in my oven after the breadmaker does the proofing. And I can control how brown I like my crust to be.

See, if I bake it in my oven, I can make large giant buns!

Recipe
450 gm Bread Flour
40 gm Castor Sugar
3.5 gm Bread Improver (optional)
15gm Milk Powder

7.5 gm Dry Yeast

250 gm Fresh Milk
50 gm Cream (replace with 50mls more fresh milk for a lighter loaf)
7.5 gm Salt

30gm Butter (softened)


How I made them in the breadmaker.

1. Sift the flour, improver, sugar and milk powder, mix it well.
2. Mix the milk, cream, salt in a small bowl

In your bread pan, add the milk mixture first.
Slowly scoop in the flour mixture to cover the liquid, leaving about a scoop of flour mixture left in your mixing bowl. Add the instant dried yeast to the remaining flour mixture and mix it well. Add this flour and yeast mixture to the top layer of the flour so it is not in contact to the bottom liquid layer.

Start your breadmaker (dough function), let it knead for about 15 -20 minutes. Stop the machine so that you can take the smooth dough out. Flatten the dough so you can add in the butter by stuffing it inside the dough like a filling. Place the dough back into the machine and start the dough function all over again. This time the machine will be left to knead and proof till the end of the proofing cycle, probably taking about 1 and half hours. (include proofing)

At the end of this dough cycle, you can turn off the breadmaker, open up, punch down the gas and divide your dough into small 50gm portions, add fillings or you can do like what I do, portion into two or three large ones. Make sure you tuck in the 'seams' as you place them into your greased pans. Cover with cling wrap to keep the dough moist. Let them rest in your pans for about 10 minutes. It will continue to rise a little, don't worry about that. Remove cling wrap after 10 mins.

Bake them at (preheated 10 mins) 175 deg C for 35 - 40 minutes, then turn off the oven and leave the bread inside for 10 more minutes before taking it out. About 20-25 minutes into baking, you may like to cover the top part of the buns with foil so that your buns are not too browned at the top. This will ensure that the buns continue to be baked, soft and moist and the crust is not hard nor too browned.

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