Durian Chiffon cake

I found a pack of frozen durian while cleaning and clearing the refrigerator this morning because friends and I are going to Pantai Remis, a fishing village to purchase fish and prawns from the fishing boats. I defrost the durian and decided to bake a durian chiffon cake for our travel to Pantai Remis.

the ingredients
6 egg yolks
110 g mashed durian
150 g milk
30 g pumpkin seed
50 g sugar
140 g self raising flour
60 ml corn oil
6 egg whites
1/2 tsp cream of tartar
100 g sugar

Preheat oven at 160 degree C.  In a food processor beat the cream of tartar , the egg whites and 100g sugar until stiff.
In another bowl, mix the egg yolks and 50 g sugar well.  Add in the mashed durian then the corn oil.  Mix in the flour and the milk alternately until all are well mix. Blend in the beaten egg whites into the egg yolks mixture,finally stir in the pumpkin seeds. Pour the batter into a 8 " round tin and bake for 45 minutes or until is done.

This took me 45 minutes with a little smiling face

When the cake is cool, I manged to slice into 14slices. My husband came back just in time to taste my durian cake.  He really love it.  I packed some into a food container for our trip on the next day.

Vegetable porridge

My father -in-law is not filling well, no appetite to eat rice. I decided to look into my recipe book to cook something different from the usual teo chew porridge.  Finally settled to cook vegetable porridge.  Checked the refrigerator and found these green veges and some dried prawns.

the ingredients
1 cup of rice
4 stalks of veges(any type of veges)
4 tbs of dried prawns
8 cups of water
salt and pepper to taste

Wash the rice, add in the water to soak for 20 minutes.  Cook the rice and bring to boil, turn the fire to low to cook for half an hour.
Wash the vegetables and cut into 3 cm in length. Wash the dried prawns, soak and  cook with the porridge. Add in the vegetables when the porridge is ready. Add salt to taste.  Serve hot with dash of pepper.

Mm.... look so appetizing and taste good too.  I will and have to cook many other porridge for the next few days.

Birthday cake

Tomorrow will be Mei Wan's birthday. I promised to bake her chocolate cake but I changed my mind. I bake her a butter cake with butter cream and fondant decoration that I learnt recently.  I made some flowers and leaves from the fondant icing in advance.

These are the pink and yellow roses and the green leaves made from the fondant.

I bake a butter cake this morning. Cool it and decorated with the butter cream and the fondant flowers.

This is the first time I do cake decoration.  I am not very satisfied because the stars that squeezed out were not even in sizes, but proud of my fondant flowers. I will improve in my technique of cake decoration in the future, practice make perfect.

Completed with the decorations, put in a box and sent it to Mei Wan in her office.  She was so happy to receive the cake. I am glad that she like it.

Emperor Chicken

Two weeks ago, a friend gave me prepacked herbal soup and emperor chicken ready mixed each to try on and saying is very easy to prepare.

By following the instructions from the back of the package, I bought a free range chicken weighing about 1.5 kg. Wash the whole chicken with salt inside and outside of the chicken. Pat dry with kitchen towel.  Rub the herbal mix in and outside of the chicken..Wrap up the chicken with the plastic wrapper and followed by the aluminium foil, place on a deep plate and steam in low fire for 2 hours.

To make sure the chicken is well done, I used a chopstick to poke at the thigh part as this is the though est part. The meat is done when there is no blood oops out from the place i poke. Once i open up the wrapping, the smell was so good herbal,the taste should be too.

I did not chop into pieces, we like to tear by hand while we eat.  The liquid that came out from the chicken was really sweet and very tasty.  You should try it and it is very easy to prepare as well.

The Emperor Chicken

Cup cakes decoration

Made appointment with Nurainie 3 days ago on the Internet to learn cake decoration from her. I found her in Malaysian cake decorators' club(MCDC). Found her house then introduced ourselves.  Without wasting much time, we started by baking butter cup cakes.  While waiting for the cake to be bake, we started mixing our butter cream for decoration. Next, we came to the interesting part. the fondant . We started by making small and big flowers like roses, ribbon roses, small and bigger leaves, making colours; making lady buds and teddy bears too.  After making whatever we wanted, put aside and let dry.

The teddy bears and lady buds look real cute and the flowers are really sweet and lovely

and all the green leaves

Before we put on the decoration, we have to lever up the surface of each cup cakes by the butter cream.

We used piping begs with different tips to pipe out different colours and also different patterns. I loved that.

After finishing the piping, we moved to fondant decorating. The teddy bears, my first love.

See the lady bear and the boy bear, so adorable.

The mother and baby lady buds

The garden

The final result of fondant decoration, so lovely.

The mixture of butter cream and fondant decoration

I really learnt a lot for just a few hours. Thank you to Nurainie and it was really fun and I appreciated the time given to me.

White carrot soup

Ingredients for my carrot soup
300 g white carrots
300 g pork ribs
5  medium dried scallops
7  red dates
1 slice of dried squid
1 tsp of peppercorn
7 bowls of water
salt to taste

Peel the carrots and cut into triangle in shapes. Scald the pork in hot water for about 5 minutes,wash and rinse. Wash the red dates.dried scallops and dried squid.  Lightly crash the peppercorn. Boil the water in a soup pot, put in all the ingredients except the salt. Let it boil for 1 and half hour in slow fire. Add salt to taste. Garnish with parsley and serve hot.

My clear and sweet carrot soup

Steamed ginger chicken

Ask myself what to cook for lunch today?  Got half of free range chicken  and some pork ribs from the freezer, young gingers, white carrot and a bunch of spinach. So decided to steam chicken, white carrot for soup and oyster sauce spinach.

ingredients for steam chicken

400 g chicken, chopped into bite pieces
200 g young gingers, grated
1 tbs sesame oil
1 tbs chopped garlic
salt to taste
marinate
1tsp soy sauce and pepper
1tbs wine
garnish
chopped spring onion and
chopped red chili

Marinate the chicken for half an hour. Leave aside.
Heat up the sesame oil in a wok, fry the garlic till fragrant.  Add in the grated ginger and fry till fragrant. Dish all  out and place on top of the seasoned chicken and steam on boiling water for 20 minutes or until the meat is tender.  Garnish with chopped spring onion and chopped red chili . Serve hot with rice.