RECIPE - Soup Manhattan Clam Chowder

🥣 25 Oct 2023, Wednesday 

At this month’s ABC Trial lesson, we made an onion and bacon and cheese bun, and a tomato style clam chowder; I’ve just learnt it’s called Manhattan clam chowder. 

I have always known clam chowder to be creamy and milky and I especially love the Japanese one - especially the one I had at Tokyo DisneySea. It is similar to the one at MOS burger, just nicer🤣 

Here it is, the bowl of chowder with the bun

The bacon and onion and cheese oozing out. 

Here it is, still cooking on the stove. 

I love how the recipe was tweaked to use Kagome Veggie Juice. It made it that much simpler and was very yummy and somehow my brain tells me this is also healthy. There is no need to make the mirepoix- the celery, onion and carrot because it is all in the juice, AND more. There are apparently 21 types of vegetables in the juice. 

Sauté some onions with pieces of sliced bacon. Add in cubed potatoes and fry for a while. Add in garlic paste/purée and stir. Now, in goes the canned diced tomato, followed by the Kagome Vegetable juice, chicken stock (or water with consommé powder), oregano, salt, pepper, sugar, bring it up to a boil, and simmer about 20-30 minutes. 

Throw in the clams (frozen & thawed / fresh) when it is a rapid boil and cook for 2-3 minutes on high heat and turn off heat. Let it sit for 2-3 minutes covered before serving. 

You could also have it with pasta, here it is soup pasta style. I added in Capellini at the last few minutes of cooking. 

What I did was to increase the portion of diced tomatoes, and after bringing the soup back to a roiling boil, I added the angel hair pasta for 2 minutes, then I add the clams as per above description. 

Bon Apetit!

#cookwithdin #soup #abcrecipe 

RECIPE Kueh Lapis

Making Kueh Lapis is tedious work. The batter is mixed separately, and the cake baked one layer at a time. It would be real handy to have 3 mixing bowls to begin with. And if you're going to make one cake, you might as well bake the maximum amount of cake tins your oven can hold because then you can justify the time and effort spent on making it. It helps to have company over to chat with you while you bake the layers. 

To begin, measure the butter, condensed milk and vanilla essence. 

Using the paddle fixture, cream the butter  mixture til white, light and creamy. Takes about 15 minutes. 

It will look like this. Set aside. 

Measure out your egg yolks and egg whites. 

Set aside the extra egg whites- maybe a macaron making session?? 😱

Using a balloon whisk fixture, whisk the egg yolks, sugar and trehalose. 

Add in butter mixture once the egg yolk mixture has been properly whisked. 

When that is done, set it aside and wash mixing bowl. Make sure it is sparkling clean; free of oil and free of water. The egg whites get whisked up next with sugar and cream of tartar. Whisk til soft ribbon stage. 

Add the Hong Kong flour, corn flour and the spice flour into the butter egg yolk mixture and incorporate well. 

The egg whites go in two batches, carefully folding in til it's a consistent colour. 

Now the fun begins. The first layer goes in the oven at baking mode, which is top and bottom heat. The second layer onwards goes in at only top heat until the last layer, which is then baked at top and bottom heat. 

-RECIPE-

Prune and Chia Seed Kueh Lapis 

(Recipe from Phoon Huat) 

(A) 

450 gm  Unsalted butter 

4 tbsp  Condensed milk 

1 tbsp  Vanilla flavour 

(B)

15 Egg Yolks

70 gm Fine Sugar 

1.5 tbsp Trehalose (optional) 

(C) 

4 Egg Whites 

70 gm Fine Sugar 

1/2 tsp Cream of tartar 

(D) 

70 gm Hong Kong flour 

20 gm Cornflour 

1 tbsp Lapis spice 

Method 

(Preheat oven) 

1. Cream (A) til light and fluffy. Set aside. 

2. Whisk (B), then incorporate (A mixture). Set aside. 

3. With clean bowl and whisk, whisk (C) til soft peaks. 

4. Sieve (D). Incorporate with (A+B mixture). Mix well. 

5. Fold in (C soft peaks meringue) to mixture. 

6. Prepare prunes by slicing in half and pressing flat. Standby bowl of chia seeds. 

7. Spoon 5 tbsp into a 7" x  7" cake tin lined with parchment paper. Bake for 8-10 minutes. 

Barcardi Rum Cake Recipe

Yo-ho-ho!! Next on my list is this:)

#todolist 

Barcardi Rum Cake

http://everybodylovesitalian.com/original-bacardi-rum-cake-recipe/

Prep time: 40 mins
Cook time: 60 mins
Total time: 1 hour 40 mins

Recipe Notes
Pan: One 10″ Tube or 9″ Fluted Tube Pan Prep: Greased and Floured Oven Temp: 325° Storage: Covered, Room Temperature
Ingredients
Batter:
1 cup walnuts or pecans, coarsely chopped
1 (18 ounces) packaged yellow cake mix with pudding in the mix
4 large eggs
½ cup cold water
½ cup vegetable oil
½ cup light or dark rum

Glaze:
½ cup unsalted butter
¼ cup water
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup light or dark rum

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Prepare one 9 or 10 inch fluted tube pan; generously grease the pan with shortening and dust with flour.

Batter:
Sprinkle the nuts over the bottom of the prepared pan.
In a large bowl of an electric mixer, combine cake mix, eggs, water, vegetable oil, and rum; beat until thoroughly mixed. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula so the mixture blends evenly. Spoon the batter over the nuts and smooth the surface with the back of a large spoon.

Bake: Bake 1 hour or until a long toothpick, wooden skewer, or cake tester inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place pan on a wire cooling rack to cool for 10 or 15 minutes then remove cake from the pan and place the cake on the wire cooling rack to finish cooling.

Glaze:
In a small heavy saucepan over low heat, melt the butter. Stir in water and sugar; bring to a boil and boil for 5 minutes stirring constantly so mixture does not burn. Remove from heat. Stir in the rum.
Use a long toothpick or skewer to poke several small holes in the top of the cake. Spoon the still warm glaze over the top of the cake and allow to soak in. Repeat until the glaze is used up.

RECIPE Fish and Pork Leek Soup

 🥣 25 Oct 2023, Wednesday 

#dinskitchen #cookwithdin 

 To future me, 

This soup was yummy. To make it again, 

Fry thin sliced ginger (2-3 slices) & garlic (4-5 cloves) in hot oil. Add in coriander roots. 

Add thinly sliced leek. (1 piece) 

Add some thin slices of Shitake mushroom (4-5 pieces) 

Deglaze pan with Harvey’s, add stock or water (this time I used dashi concentrate) 

Boil then simmer about 20-30 minutes. Remove the coriander roots 

Cook quickly the pork shabu in soup (shimmering but not boiling) til 90% done and set aside on a clean dish. 

Velveteen the fish slices (marinade with sesame oil and soya sauce) - dip in cornflour slurry. 

Bring soup to boil, toss fish inside and let boil for 2-3 minutes and turn off heat. 

ENJOY! 

RECIPE Swiss Roll Sponge

🍰 25 Oct 2023, Wednesday 

This is using Keempossible’s recipe. I have made Swiss rolls over and over again using this recipe because I like it so much. Sometimes I decorate it and sometimes I just make it plain. I’m so glad I attended her class. 

Here I made it CandyStripes style. It was very challenging because it was very liquid and runny and was flowing very quickly out of the piping bag.  

This particular time when I rolled it, there were little cracks because the filling was frozen. I had put gula melaka Kaya custard and kaya mascarpone cheese and the mascarpone was very runny so I stuck it in the freezer to harden but I should have curb my eagerness and let it thaw a little bit. 

However, even though it cracked, I left it in the freezer overnight after rolling and next morning, I managed to slice nice round slices, it wasn’t a disaster at all and still tasted nice. 

Here are the ingredients for one portion - this matches the pan that I had bought from her that she got from Malaysia. 

CHIFFON ROLL: 

4 egg yolks 
40g oil 
60g milk

80g cake flour

1 tsp vanilla / Pandan essence / matcha powder

4 egg whites 

60g castor sugar

1/2 tsp cream of tartar 

The method is chiffon cake method. Make sure the meringue is at least firm peaks but not too hard or stiff, so it’s easier to fold in. 

Mix with whisk (in 3 batches) 

Bake 180 °C for 18 Min (no fan) 

 

#bakewithdin #cake 

RECIPE Caramel Banana Pound Cake

🎂 updated 26 October 2023, Thursday 

I adapted this recipe from ABC’s Gugelhupf recipe. 

To fit my Bundt pan, the recipe has been increased to x2.5 portions 

Start with the caramel: 

75g sugar 

25cc water 

In a pan. Heat and cook til dark brown take off stove and add the following

75g cream

25cc milk 

Mix those together and pour in to the caramel and stir. Bring it back to heat and stir. 

Stir in a pinch of salt / flaky salt 

Make the cake: 

Preheat and bake at 180 °C, bake for 30-45 min 

Butter and dust cake pan with flour. Turn it upside down to knock out extra flour. 

225g unsalted butter (room temp) 

200g sugar 

Beat til light and creamy and sugar dissolved 

150g banana, mashed 

Beat banana in

175g egg 

Add in the egg, one at a time, roughly 3 eggs 

300g cake flour 

2.5tsp baking powder 

Sieve the above in to mixture

40cc rum 

Stir in the rum, divide the cake batter into 2, add the caramel to one portion. There are now 2 batters. 

Drop scoops of batter alternating between the two, into Bundt pan - create marble effect. 

Bake at 180 °C for 30-45min 

ORIGINAL POST. Updated recipe is above. 

Caramel- 

30g sugar

10g water 

Melt over medium fire til caramel then slowly stir in 

30g cream 

10g milk 

Make sure to be careful of hot stem and caramel bubbling 

Set aside to cool. 

Cake- 

90g butter unsalted 

90g brown sugar 

60g ripe bananas- mashed

70g eggs 

110g cake flour 

1/2tsp baking powder 

10ml rum 

Cream butter (room temp)  and sugar til light and fluffy. Mix in mashed bananas. Slowly mix in egg, tbsp by tbsp. Sieve in flour and baking powder, fold thoroughly. Drizzle rum and fold in. 

Separate batter into two. One portion, fold in caramel. 

Put the Both batters back in same bowl again, fold 2-3 times for marble effect. Pour batter into cake tin and bake at 180 °C for 30-40minutes, til cake skewer comes up clean. 

The cake tin: oil/butter, or spray oil and then dust with a fine layer flour to enable easy unmoulding of cake. 

RECIPE Soy Sauce Chicken

Soy Sauce Chicken

This has nothing to do with baking but I wanted to keep this recipe that I have tried out. It's fragrant and tasty:) 

Ingredients:

600-800g chicken 

(2 breasts & 2 thighs)

1/2 cup Feng He Garden soy sauce

2 tablespoons Feng He Garden dark soy sauce

2-3 cups water

1 tablespoon Hua Tiao wine

5 slices  ginger

4 cloves  garlic, peeled & smashed

1 tablespoon rose wine

10g  rock sugar

Some spring onions

Dash of pepper

  

Steps:

Add everything in except chicken into a pot. Let it boil for 10mins.

Add in the chicken to the pot.

Cover lid and simmer under low fire for 8 mins.

Turn the chicken pieces after the 8 mins if you cannot submerge the chicken in the sauce fully.

Continue to cook under low fire for another 8mins.

After 16mins of cooking, scoop out the chicken, chop and serve.

Scoop out some of the remaining stock and thicken it with some corn/potato starch. 

This is to serve on rice & chicken.

1) Rose buds is optional. You can get the rose buds from Chinese medical shop.

2) You can use this recipe for whole chicken too. It works well but please adjust your cooking time accordingly. (30 minutes in total for a chicken)