DIY Red Bean Pancake / DouSha GuoBing 豆沙锅饼

Had too much time stuck at home during Singapore's "Circuit Breaker", so I tried making something that I was craving for, but didn't want to buy/order from outside. There aren't too many places that do tasty Chinese red bean pancakes, and if they do, they usually serve it as a large serving meant for 6-8 persons to share as a dessert. 

I had some organic red adzuki beans on hand, but was quite sick of making red bean soup or red bean popsicles. I decided to try using frozen prata to replace the pastry encasing the red bean paste. The paste was easily cooked with the help of my pressure cooker. It did take a while to prepare this dish as I had to thicken the red bean soup to a thick paste, cool and spread it out as an even thin layer. This is a trick I learnt from watching ban jien kueh hawkers. 

Easy Mochi with Kinako

We had been making it almost a habit to take post-dinner walks in the neighbourhood where possible. And inevitably ended up looking for some sort of snack to satiate our sweet tooth (Haha!). Y was particularly partial to the Japanese mochi snack sold at Don Don Donki at 100AM, but I balked at the price for such a small pack, which is polished off within 10 mins by the three of us. So I started searching for the recipe and bought the ingredients at Daiso. 

It's so easy that I don't think I will be buying it in future.... 

Recipe from Mono + Co *

100g glutinous rice flour 

60g dark brown sugar ** 

180g water 

2 tablespoons kinako ***

*https://monoandco.com/2016/07/30/easy-mochi-with-kinako/

Luncheon Meat Bun 午餐肉包

I wanted to try the "Ferment Dough" function on the Mayer MMBM12 breadmaker today, so I chose a bakery bun recipe that would require manual shaping and baking in a normal oven.

This is one of our favourites, Luncheon Meat Bun. Basically the dough recipe is a sweet dough recipe that is used for most commonly found items in Chinese bakery shops. The fillings can vary from luncheon meat to sausage to char siew to curry, whatever is your preference. Thus I wanted to try this recipe and see if it is a keeper, so that I do not have to store so many different recipes.

I made only half a recipe as my Breadmaker's capacity is only 750g (a quick calculation put the ingredients at >900g). The steps were standard: mix all dough ingredients until no longer tacky->proof 30 mins -->punch back -->2nd proofing 30 mins-->shape -->final proofing -->brush with eggwash -->bake for 10-15 mins at 200°C.




Original Recipe from “港面包， 港味道” - 邱勇灵 编著

面团
高筋面粉 450 克
糖 112 克
酵母 7 克
牛油／猪油 42 克
温水 3/4杯
鸡蛋1只
牛奶1/4 杯
面粉改良剂 4 克

1杯为250毫升， 鸡蛋一只约为50克。

馅料
午餐肉16片

装饰
蛋液适量 （扫面）
马苏里拉 （Mozzarella）芝士碎适量

Gula Melaka Ogura Cake

This is a birthday cake for my sister. My family prefer light, airy sponge/chiffon cakes compared to butter/cream/fondant cakes, so I tried to make an Ogura cake. 

Original Recipe from BakingMom80, but I did some modifications as the original recipe was for a 6 inch square cake. A day earlier, I followed the recipe to a T, but used a 5x8inch rectangular tin instead of a 6inch square. Perhaps it was the larger eggs I used, but the batter overflowed the cake tin. On hindsight, I should have poured the excess batter to make cupcakes. 

Thus, for the actual birthday cake (I needed a 8 inch square cake to be enough for my family of ~20 pax), I used the following amounts: (text in red my own adjustments) 

(A)

5+1 egg yolk (I used large 60g eggs)

1 whole egg 

1/4 tsp salt 

60g canola oil 

70g+14g gula melaka - chopped into smaller pieces

20g+4g milk

75g+15g plain flour

(B)

5+1 egg whites

40g castor sugar 

1/4tsp cream of tartar

Steps

1. Grease and lined 8 inch baking tin. Prepare larger tin with boiling water (and a cloth to prevent baking tin from moving) for waterbath. Preheat oven to 150 degree Celsius.
2. Warm milk and add to the chopped gula melaka. Mix until dissolved. Strain to remove larger  particles.
3. In a large mixing bowl, whisk all ingredients in (A) except for plain flour, until light and fluffy. Set aside. 
4. In a separate, grease-free mixing bowl, beat egg whites until foamy. Add in cream of tartar, continue beating and add in sugar in 3 separate batches.  Beat until you attain firm peaks.
5. Fold the meringue into the yolk mixture in 3 batches. 
6. Pour batter into the cake tin slowly, letting large air pockets burst while pouring (this prevents the formation of large air pockets in the baked product). Smooth the surface of the batter with a spatula. 
7. Drop the prepared cake tin from a height of about 10cm from tabletop, to release any more air bubbles. 
8. Place the cake tin in the waterbath (I place a cloth between the waterbath tray and the cake tin to prevent any movement, which may happen if the waterbath level is too high)
9. Bake in the middle rack of oven at 150 degree Celsius for 70mins. 
10. Check doneness using a cake tester/satay stick. Once done, invert onto cooling rack for 5minutes, then unmould and remove baking paper before cooling upright. 

Cooling my 8 inch Gula Melaka Ogura cake

Purple Sweet Potato Muffins

I was just finishing up the Ogura cake for my sister, and wanted to make use of the oven (since it took so long to heat up and cool down anyway!). Googled and found a recipe for sweet potato muffins, which were easy enough to whip up (I had less than an hour before I had to pick Y from school then)

Sweet Potato muffins (makes 12) 

1 Cup Self-raising flour

1 Cup sugar (I used 3/4C)

1 tsp cinnamon powder

1/2 egg

1 Cup mashed sweet potato flesh

1/2 Cup oil

Steps

1. Line a 12-hole muffin pan with liners, if using. Preheat oven to 375F/190C.
2. Sift the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, cinnamon)
3. Beat the egg til pale, then add the sweet potato flesh and oil. Mix well. 
4. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, until just moistened.
5. Bake in preheated oven for 15-18 minutes.

Note: for some reason, the baked purple sweet potato turns green, so my sisters and nephews were a bit hesitant to eat when they saw green spots dotting the muffin (looking exactly like mouldy food) I read later that it was due to a reaction with baking soda/powder. 

Purple Sweet Potato muffins waiting to be consumed

2nd try at Mango Pudding 5 Jan 2017

I had some mangoes leftover and both hubby and girl were sick, so I decided to find a way to just utilise them or freeze them. Since it was the start of school term, I decided to make some mango pudding when I go to my parents' place for weekly dinner (there are more people to share and finish up cakes/desserts!)

Just sharing pictures of my second try at mango pudding. got the plastic containers and covers from SKP.  Recipe from here. 

Homemade mango pudding

I had a mango in my kitchen and was racking my brains about what to do with it. I eventually decided to make mango pudding after a quick google search for recipes. I had the other ingredients on hand anyway.

The recipe was from http://www.thehongkongcookery.com/2016/05/hong-kong-style-mango-pudding.html?m=1, and it tasted just right (not too sweet, nor bland). I did not serve it with the suggested additional mango cubes and sweetened condensed milk, though.

However, I did not have those single-serve moulds on hand so I simply ladled the mixture into 4 round plastic takeaway containers. Thus when they were served, I simply scooped portions into serving cups/bowls, which looked terribly messy. My sisters agreed that the end result tasted better than it looked, so I was happy enough.

Kongguksu for lunch

I had made a batch of soyabean milk from scratch for the first time (soak soy beans overnight, remove skins, blend, boil, strain) and was racking my brains to figure what else to do with the massive containers of soybean milk that resulted. It was all my fault for keeping that packet of dry beans in my pantry for too long and forget about it. So it was expiring soon and I did not have the energy to make another batch within the next 2 weeks. 

Then I happened to be watching one of the episodes of #3MealsADay, where they were grinding beans (See Series 2 Ep 9), so I tried something similar. I usually google for recipes, but #maangchi (https://www.youtube.com/user/Maangchi) is becoming my go-to reference for Korean food cooking demos and advice. This Kongguksu 콩국수 is made simply from whatever I had on hand

Simple steps: 

Cook some meesua, drain water, rinse under cold water; 

Pour chilled soybean milk over noodles; 

Serve with cherry tomatoes and shredded cucumbers. 

It was a cool and refreshing lunch! yummy...