Pineapple Tarts

Wow.... Chinese New Year is around the corner... Now you can find alot of those New Year Cookies all around Singapore. Pineapple tarts is one of the most famous cookies of all. Since I had a packet of pineapple paste which is in the fridge, I decided to do a trial on this before making the actual stuffs for New Year next two weeks. This recipe is from one of the mum's in the M4M site but I modify it a bit with the ingredients. The texture of this cookies is those Melt In Your Mouth type..... so you will find it very hard to resists yourself on keep eating them.....




Ingredients Pastry Dough:
300g Plain Flour
40g Milk Powder
1.5 Tablespoon Icing Sugar
250g Cold Butter, cubed
1 Egg Yolk, lightly beaten
½ Teaspoon Vanilla Essence
1 Beaten Egg, for glazing

Methods:
1. Put sifted flour, milk powder and icing sugar in a mixing bowl.
2. Rub in butter until mixture resembles breadcrumbs. (must be fast or else the butter will melt and the dough will became very soft)
3. Beat in the egg yolk and essence.
4. Mix well to form a dough. Place in a plastic bag and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
5. Roll pastry out to 0.5 cm thickness on a lightly-floured tabletop and cut out rounds with a tart cutter.
6. Glaze the tart based with beaten egg then fill each piece of cut-out pastry with pineapple jam filling.
7. Cut thin strips of pastry to form a lattice on top of each tart.
8. Preheated oven at 180°C and bake the tarts for 15 minutes.
9. Reduce the temperature to 170°C and continue to bake for another 5 minutes or until golden.
10. Turn tarts out to cool on a wire rack before storing in air-tight containers.

Notes: This is a very soft dough, so you can divide the dough into a few portion and keep the rest in the fridge while working with 1 portion.
Or you can flour the dough with some extra flour and work fast with the cutter, cut out all the tarts base frist then brush with beaten egg and top with pineapple fillings.
You can get those ready made pineapple filling from most baking stores, you can roll them into small cherry size balls and place it in plastic container first before making the dough.

Low Fat Carrot Cake

I had always wanted to try making English Carrot Cake which I found it rather strange. As for this Low Fat Carrot Cake recipe since it does not require any oil or butter so I decided to give it a try. And surprisingly it really turn out to be nice......... It had the taste and fragrant of carrot, lemon and ground almond. And it's rather moist and spongy as well.




Ingredients:
70g Plain Flour
35g Ground Almond Meal
100g Carrot, finely grated
1 Lemon Rind
3 Egg Yolks
35g Caster Sugar
3 Egg Whites
35g Caster Sugar
1 Tablespoon Of Raisin
1 Tablespoon of Pumpkin Seeds
25 x 9 x 6cm Mould, greased

Methods:
1. Peel the skin from the carrot and finely grated it.
2. Wash and finely grated the skin from 1 Lemon.
3. Sift Flour and Ground Almond together and set aside for later used.
4. Cream the egg yolks with 40g sugar until light and creamy.
5. In another bowl beat egg white until bubbles then slowly add in the sugar in a few batches and continue to beat until almost stiff peak form.
6. Add carrot and lemon into egg yolk mixture and stir well, then stir in 1/3 of the egg white mixture until well combine.
7. Next gentlely fold in the rest of the egg white mixture slowly and follow by the sifted flour, ground almond and raisin.
8. Pour the mixture into the mould and baked at 170 degree for 30-40 minutes, sprinkler the pumpkin seed on top of the cake at about 20 mins after the cake had baked.
9. Test with a skewer to see whether the cake is cooked thru.
10. Leave the cake overnight before cutting.

Notes: I used those type of 18 x 7 x 4cm disposerable paper mould and bake for about 25 mins.

Perilla Chicken Roll

Perilla(紫苏/大叶) is broad and has a sweet flavour with the scent of plum. They are commonly used in Japanese Barbecue skewers, salads and sashimi. After searching for a longtime I finally managed to find this Perialla leave at Takashimaya Cold Storage which cost about $2.05 for packet of 10 Leaves.


Ingredients:
300g Chicken Fillets
100g Small Asparagus or Carrot, cut into long strips
10 Perilla(紫苏/大叶) Leaves
1 Packet Lee Kum Kee Terriyaki Sauce
Ground White Pepper

Methods:
1. Rinse chicken fillet, pat dry and sprinkle ground white pepper on it.
2. Cut each small asparagus into 3 short lengths or carrot cut into long strips. Then blanch them in hot water until tender and drain in tap water.
3. Lay chicken fillet flat, arrange perilla leaves and a section of asparagus/carrot on each chicken fillet.
4. Roll up and fix the open end with a toothpick.
5. Heat oil in pan and fry chicken rolls until cooked or golden brown.
6. Pour in half packet to 3/4 packet of Terriyaki Sauce with 2-3 tablespoon water and let the chicken roll absorb the favour for a minute then serve.

Note:
You can used Japanese Eel Sauce instead of Terriyaki Sauce.

To us, the taste of the Perilla Leaves is sort of like Lemon Grass. It's indeed a very interesting dish to try on.

Assorted Melting Moments

A perennial favourite, these buttery little treats will bring back memories of taking licking the cream and the biscuits. It'a a very easy to make cookies which take about 30 minutes to prepare. For these Assorted Melting Moments, I used butter cream, coffee cream and chocolate cream.




Ingredients: (makes about 25)
250g Butter
80g Icing Sugar
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Essence
75g Cornflour
225g Plain Flour

Methods:
1. Preheat the oven to about 170 degree and line baking trays with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter, sifted icing sugar mixture and vanilla with an electric mixer until pale.
3. Stir in the combined sifted flours in two batches.
4. With lightly floured hands, roll two level teaspoons of mixture into balls and place on oven tray about 3cm apart.
5. Dip a fork into a little extra flour and press down lightly onto each biscuits to flatten slightly.
6. Bake in oven for about 20 minutes or until biscuits are a pale straw colour.
7. Stand the biscuit on the trays for 5 minutes then transfer to wire racks to cool.

Butter Cream:
80g Butter
100g Icing Sugar
1 Teaspoon Finely Grated Lemon Rind
1 Teaspoon Lemon Juice

Methods:
1. Beat the butter, sifted icing sugar mixture and rind in a small bowl with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy.
2. Beat in the juice.
3. To serve, sandwich two biscuits with a teaspoon of the cream and dust with a little extra sifted icing sugar.

Christmas Log Cake

I had actually wish to make a decent Log Cake since last year. Some of the Christmas Cake Decorations are bought last years........ So after much Struggler and inspiration from those expert in the M4M site. I decided to come try and make a Mini Log Cake using bit and pieces recipe that I collect for the cake and cream. Actually the cake itself is not difficult, the most challenging part is the cream and how to spread it nicely and add in the decorations. I believed everyone can do it and it's only a matter of time and efforts. So do give it a try if you are interested.




Ingredients For Cake:
3 Medium Eggs
90g Sugar
30g Plain Flour
2 Tablespoons Cocoa Powder

Methods:
1. Preheat the oven to 200 degree and grease the base of a Swiss roll tin.
2. Place the eggs in a bowl with sugar and beat with electric beaters for about 8 minutes or until the mixture is thick and creamy.
3. Sift the flour and cocoa together and gently fold into the egg mixture with a metal spoon.
4. Spread the mixture evenly into the prepared tin and bake for about 12 minutes or until the cake is just set.
5. When the cake is cooked, turn it out immediately onto the prepared paper and roll the cake up from the long side, rolling the paper inside the roll and using the tea towel as a guide.
6. Stand the rolled cake on a wire cake rack for 5 minutes then carefully unrolled the cake and allow it to cool at room temperature.

Chocolate Cream
Ingredients:
125ml Whipped Cream
30g Dark Chocolate, melted
15ml Milk

Methods:
1. Mix the milk with melted chocolate until well blended.
2. Add it into the whipped cream, stir until well combined then spread it on the Swiss roll and roll it up.
3. Place the roll, seam-side down on a tray and refrigerate covered for at least 30 minutes then spread the chocolate ganache.

Coffee Whipped Cream
Ingredients:
250ml Whipped Cream
1 - 1.5 Teaspoon Coffee Essence

Methods:
1. Whipped the cream until soft peak form then add in the coffee essence and continue to beat until stiff peak form.
2. Cut the Swiss roll to assemble it into a log then spread the cream thickly onto it.
3. Mark with the prongs of a fork to resemble barks.
4. Next add in some Christmas Decorations and dust with a little snow powder.

Notes: You can used any type of favour for essence like Rum, Brandy or etc

Christmas Gingerbread Cookies

Had wanted to try baking these colourful and interesting Christmas Gingerbread Cookies for very long time. After sourcing the Christmas Cookie Cutters, we managed to give it a try today......and it's really fun in making it.......


Ingredients:
125g Butter
100g Brown Sugar
1 Egg Yolk
375g Plain Flour
1 Teaspoon Bicarbonate Of Soda
1.5 Teaspoons Ground Ginger
1 Teaspoon Cinnamon Powder
125ml Golden Syrup

Methods On Gingerbread Man:
1. Sift all the dry ingredients in a big bowl and set aside for later used.
2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, then add in egg yolk, beat well.
3. Gradually add sifted dry ingredients and golden syrup, mix well.
4. Knead dough on lightly floured surface until smooth; cover, refrigerate 30 minutes.
5. Roll dough between sheets of baking paper until 4mm think, cut out cookies using specially shaped cutter.
6. Lift carefully on to lightly greased oven trays. Bake at 180°C for 15 minutes; cool on trays.
7. When cold, decorate biscuits with coloured royal icing fill it into a small plastic bag and snip off the corner so that it makes a piping bag.
8. Pipe mouth and features on to gingerbread men with the royal icing and other cookies then decorate with colourful bits.



Decoration Bits:
Chocolate Rice
Thousands and one
Rainbow Rice
Royal Icing:
1½ Cups Pure Icing Sugar
1 Egg White
2 To 4 Drops Lemon Juice

Methods:
1. Royal icing: Sift icing sugar. Beat egg white lightly in a small bowl, using a wooden spoon.
2. Add icing sugar one tablespoonful at a time, beating well after each addition. When icing reaches desired consistency, beat in lemon juice.
3. Amount of icing sugar required depends on size of egg white.

Lemon & Coffee Pork Chop

Saw this dish from a cookbook that I borrow from the library. So I just thought maybe can give it a try... see what's the taste of Lemon and Coffee together........


Ingredients:
500g Pork Chop Fillet, ard 8-10 pieces
2 Tablespoons White Sesame Seeds
1/2 to 3/4 Lemon Juice
1 Egg, beaten
Seasonings:
1/4 Teaspoon Pepper
1 Teaspoon Sugar
1 Tablespoon Soya Sauce
1 Tablespoon Cornflour
Sauce:
1.5 Tablespoons Tomato Sauce
1/4 Teaspoon Sesame Oil
1/2 Teaspoon Soy Sauce
1 Tablespoon Sugar
2 Teaspoon Instant Coffee Powder

Methods:
1. Wash the pork fillet, put in a bowl and pour in beaten egg and seasonings and marinate for at least 30 minutes.
2. Wash and cut the lemon into halve then squeeze out the juice and set aside.
3. Preheat a pan and stir-fry the sesame seeds until fragrant or abit golden brown then dish up and set aside.
4. Preheat oil then deep-fry pork fillet until golden brown and drained.
5. Heat up a pan with 1 tablespoon oil, add in Tomato sauce and stir till fragrant then add in the rest of the sauce ingredients and lemon juice, stir till well combined.
6. When the sauce boiled, add in pork fillet, simmer in low heat until all sauce dry up then sprinkler the white sesame seeds.