Dang those kids!

Hi everyone! oh my, can't believe it's been a month since I last posted anything here, which means it's been a month since I last bake anything! Don't worry dolls, I haven't lost my interest in baking or cooking, I just happened to be extremely busy for the past few weeks cleaning up my house and many more.

Anyway, I was watching Junior Master Chef Australia yesterday and I thought to myself.. damn! those kids are good!!!!!!! One of the kids was making this super delicious lamb vegetable pie, which inspired me to make one for myself too. I was too lazy to make my own pastry puffs, so I bought the frozen ones from the baking shop. I also used chicken instead of lamb cause it's easier to find.

This is actually my first time ever making a chicken pie, using my very own recipe and technique. I'm so glad it turned out super delicious! I named my pie The Glutton Pie - I basically put everything in there!

Makes 5 pies

Ingredients:

1 pack frozen puff pastry skin

(fillings)

2 tbs butter

1 clove french shallot (chopped)

½ large onion (chopped)

1 bunch celery (chopped)

2/3 cup all purpose flour

3 cups chicken stock

2 pcs chicken breasts

1 cup frozen mix vegetables

1 potato (peeled and cubed)

1 cup mushrooms (sliced thinly)

How to make:

1. Preheat oven to 200C.

2. Prepare your pie tins ( I used the small ones approximately 10cm diameter), sprinkle some flour on the surface and lay over the puff pastry skin. Set aside.

3. Cut puff pastry skin into round shapes slightly bigger than the tins for cover.

4. Melt butter on saucepan, add in chopped shallots, onions and celery. Saute, stirring for about 3 minutes.

5. Stir in flour until well blended.

6. Pour in the chicken stock while stirring gradually, simmer, stirring constantly until sauce thickens and boils.

7. Add the chicken, mixed vegetables, potato and mushrooms.

8. Pour the mixture into the pie tins.

9. Cover with the round pastry skins, pinch the edge.

10. Bake for 30 minutes.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

I named these creations of mine Christmas Tikar, I know you're probably wondering what 'tikar' means. Well in the olden days, people did not fur or fabric for carpet in the Javanese homes, they would wave some bamboo leaves and voila! a tikar is created, forming a criss-cross pattern.

The truth is I didn't know where I got this idea from, I just thought it would be cute to create a christmas cake with of course, christmas colors - green and red. So I came up with this eventually. It's pretty troublesome to create the 'patchwork' pattern. If you're not in the mood for art and crafts.. then I suggest just layered them and serve. It really doesn't matter how you serve them as long as the cake taste great, right?

Ingredients:

(Makes one single layer/color)

7 eggs

200g castor sugar

1g salt

140g low protein flour

1,5g baking soda

40g liquid milk

1/2 tbs vanilla essence

30g margarine (melted)

(Chocolate layer)

20g cocoa powder (sift together with flour)

(Green and red)

10 drops of green and red food coloring (mix in together with milk)

How to bake:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C

2. Prepare 3 (24x24x4) tins, layered with greaseproof paper.

3. Whisk eggs, sugar and salt until fluffy and light

4. Fold in flour, (cocoa powder for chocolate layer) and baking soda. Mix evenly and gently.

5. Add the milk (mixed with food colorings for the colored layers) and vanilla essence, mix evenly.

6. Add the melted margarine, mix evenly.

7. Pour mixture to the tin and bake for 30 minutes.

Not perfect but satisfying

This cake below is a traditional Indonesian cake called Lapis Surabaya. How it got it's name? I have no freaking idea, I'm guessing someone from Surabaya created it and somehow it tasted good and everyone just start making it. (Surabaya is one of the few large cities in Indonesia). This layered cake is extremely famous in Indonesia, you can find it almost everywhere! From traditional markets to exclusive cake shops. It might look easy to make but trust me, it's not! everything has to be perfectly in place in order to get the perfect result. Once you made even a slightest mistake, then say bye bye to the perfect Lapis Surabaya.

For me, I can never get it right! Damn! This is my second trial though.. so I'm pretty satisfied with it, even though, it doesn't turn out perfect. My first trial is even worse!!! It's so horrible that I threw it away once it's baked! So compared this one to the first one, I guess I should give myself a tap on the shoulder. You can find the recipe below, please do try making one for yourself, and if you managed to get a perfect result, please do share with me your tips and tricks! *kisses*

Ingredients:

(Yellow Layer [2 layers])

250g margarine

15 egg yolks

2 eggs

300g castor sugar

70g low protein flour

20g milk powder

30g corn starch

strawberry jam for filling

(Chocolate Layer)

125g margarine

7 egg yolks

1 egg

150g castor sugar

35g low protein flour

7g chocolate powder

2,5g milk powder

8g corn starch

How to bake:

1. Preheat oven to 180C

2. Prepare 3 (24x24x4) tins, layered with greaseproof paper.

3. Whisk margarine until light and pale. Set aside.

4. Whisk egg yolks, eggs and castor sugar until mixture is light and fluffy.

5. Add the egg mixture into the margarine mixture slowly and mix evenly.

6. Fold in four, milk powder (chocolate powder for the chocolate layer) and corn starch. Mix evenly.

7. Bake for 25 minutes.

8. Spread strawberry jam on the bottom part of the yellow layers and both part for the chocolate layer.

9. Pile them up together, trim the edges and ready to serve.

Another creation

Today I tried making another recipe of my own. I call this one Dark Chocolate Doughnut Cookies. There's a good news and bad news for this one. The good news is that, you can make two different kinds of cookies from one mixture. The bad news is, I should've used white chocolate for the decoration instead of icing sugar, as a result, these cookies taste a little too sweet than they're supposed to be (or at least I thought so). Maybe you can try using white chocolate and tell me how they taste? Well anyway, despite the extreme sweetness, I think they taste quite alright. My husband actually loves them! he said the bitterness from the dark cocoa powder balanced the sweetness from the icing sugar. And since Christmas is just around the corner, why don't you try making some for yourself and serve them to your love ones :)

Ingredients:

75g margarine

25g butter

100g castor sugar

1/4tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1/2tsp baking powder

20g chocolate powder

10 milk powder

110g all purpose flour

50g chocolate compound (melted)

chopped almond for coating

How to bake:

1. Preheat oven to 150C

2. Whisk margarine, butter, sugar and vanilla extract until light.

3. Add in egg, mix well.

4. Fold in flour, baking powder, chocolate and milk powder. Mix evenly.

5. Take one teaspoon and round the dough. Roll them around the chopped almonds. Make a depression down the center using your thumb.

6. Place in a tin that have been layered with greaseproof paper and bake for around 25 minutes.

7. Fill the depression with the melted chocolate compound when the cookies are baked and cooled.

I separate the mixtures into two portions and make Simple Chocolate Almond Cookies. Just round the mixtures and coat them with chopped almonds, no need to add melted chocolate on top.

My first creation

I tried to create my own cookies today by combining few of the recipes I had. I don't have a name for it yet but let's just call them Butter Cookies Melted Chocolate.

Lets roll and have fun!

I made Swiss Roll today, this is actually my first trial at home and thank god it turns out perfectly fine! Just the way I expected!! Except for the strawberry jam, it has this weird essence which I do not like at all (I usually made my own strawberry jam but since I didn't make any, I bought some from the ingredient store). But overall, the taste is delicious!!!

Ingredients:

150g egg yolks

125g eggs

70g fine sugar

40g low-protein flour

10g milk powder

80g margarine (melted)

12g salad oil

How to bake:

1. Preheat oven to 200C

2. Line the base of the tin with greaseproof paper and brush the base with margarine, set aside.

3. Whisk together egg yolks, eggs and sugar until light and fluffy.

4. Fold in flour and milk powder, mix evenly.

5. Add melted margarine, butter and salad oil, mix evenly.

6. Pour in the mixture to the tin slowly until about 3/4 and bake for about 15 minutes.

7. Spread out a piece of greaseproof paper (slightly larger than the tin in size) on a work surface.

8. Turn the baked swiss roll onto the work surface with greaseproof paper, then carefully remove the tin and greaseproof paper from the bottom of the cake.

9. Spread strawberry jam (you can use any other flavor).

10. With the longest side facing you, roll up the cake away from you and your swiss roll is ready to serve.

A big warm welcome!!

Hello everyone! For those of you who are visiting my blog right now, big warmest welcome to all of you and I hope you enjoy all the delicious recipes that I'm gonna share with you. This blog is my new baby, it is gonna be all about food food food!! Whether it is cooking or baking.. I hope I can provide you with great recipes from my lovely kitchen (yes I love my kitchen to death!) So for the first recipe that I'm gonna share with you today is Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chips Cookies!

I got this recipe a long long long time ago but never had the chance to try it cause I was still living at my parents' house and it's extremely inconvenience to bake anything.. meaning.. my mom will scream at me for making a mess out of her dearest kitchen (apparently she loves her kitchen to death too, so yeah, I got it from my momma!!). But starting from today, I'm gonna be baking lot's and lot's of goodies cause I'm married now and my dearest husband provide me with the best kitchen ever!! Plus I've recently joined a baking class in which I learnt so many tricks about baking from.

Oh by the way, some urban legend about this recipe.. it was said to be the original recipe of the Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies. The truth is, I don't think it's true at all! They don't really taste like Famous Amos. Well why don't you give it a try and tell me what you think?

Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup brown sugar

3 cups oatmeal (blend until fine powder)

12 oz chocolate chips

9 oz chocolate bar (grated)

2 eggs

1 cup chopped nuts of your choice

2 tsp vanilla

How to bake:

1. Preheat oven 190C

2. Cream butter and add both sugars

3. Add in eggs and vanilla, mix evenly

4. Fold in flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda and blended oatmeal

5. Add in chocolate chips, grated chocolate and nuts

6. Bake for 10 mins

Notes:

- If you happened to come across butter that already has a strong aroma, maybe you should not add in vanilla accent anymore cause then the original buttery smell of the cookies will be overkilled by the vanilla.

- You can also reduce the amount of oatmeals if you do not wish to have a very chewy texture (oatmeals make the cookies soft and chewy).