Bread and Butter Pudding

This recipe is actually a combination of two different recipes. The original bread and butter pudding recipe is from Halwafy and the crust comes from an apricot cobbler recipe taken from a magazine. The recipe below is basically adapted for those who like sweet stuff but don't want it too sweet.

INGREDIENTS:

6 slices day-old bread

2 tablespoons butter, melted

1/2 cup raisins/ mixed fruit

4 eggs, beaten

2 cups milk

1/4 cup white sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C.Cut bread into triangles and arrange first layer of bread in an 8 inch square baking pan. Drizzle melted butter or margarine over bread. Sprinkle half the raisins. Then arrange 2nd layer of bread and drizzle butter over the bread. Sprinkle the rest of the raisins.In a medium mixing bowl, combine eggs, milk, sugar, cinnamon, and vanilla. Beat until well mixed. Pour over bread, and lightly push down with a fork until bread is covered and soaking up the egg mixture. Bake in the preheated oven for 45 minutes, or until the top springs back when lightly tapped.

Above is the basic recipe for bread pudding. If you want a cake crust on top, before baking, mix the following ingredients:
TOPPING
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar (I usually reduce this to 1/4 cup.)
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter, softened

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add egg and butter; mix well. spoon over pudding and put in oven.

Good luck baking. I've had it from friends that the added crust on the bread pudding gives it extra oomph. Also I'd like to say thanks to Tricia for dropping me a line. Well, I'd just like to say that where credit is due, credit should be given. Thank you to your mom for spreading so much joy through her cooking.

Tried and Tested Baked Cheesecake

Been wanting to post this in this blog for ages but never had the time. Now I am making the time as I am waiting for my cheesecake to bake in the oven.

Today, I baked my cheesecake a little differently.
Instead of using Digestive or Marie, I used 14 pieces of IKO biscuits - a mixture of the oatmeal biscuits and the ones that have pumpkin seeds in them. Used also about a third of a 250gm butter and 1 tbsp brown sugar as base.

500gm Philadelphia Cream Cheese + 1/3 cup and 1 extra spoon of sugar, still 2 eggs, 150ml apple yogurt (Dutch lady) and 3 spoons of lemon juice.

I reduced the sugar coz this yogurt is sweeter and increased the lemon juice coz the yogurt's not as sour as the original flavored one.

Had to improvise coz my plain yogurt has expired and I didn't want people having stomach ache or worse just because I wanted to save the yogurt.

Anyway, here's the original recipe:
Here are the ingredients:
Biscuit base:
1 cup crushed Marie biscuits (that's about 12-13 pieces) OR you can use digestive biscuits and reduce the sugar
1/3 to 1/2 cup melted butter
1 tbsp brown sugar

250 gm x 2 Philadelphia Cream Cheese + 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 container plain yogurt (150 ml)
1 tbsp lemon juice

For the base, crush 12 to 13 pieces of Marie biscuits, they don't have to be very fine. Then add melted butter and 1 tbsp brown sugar to the biscuit crumbs. Mix well, then press evenly in a 7 in" cake tin with a fork.Then, cream the cream cheese with 1/2 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the egg one by one, then the yogurt and lastly the lemon juice. Pour onto biscuit base and put into a preheated oven at 180 deg C for 45 minutes. Then cover with foil paper and bake for another 15 to 30 minutes.

Try it. It's my hubby's fave cheesecake

Creme Caramel

Creme Caramel

In a mixing bowl, beat 6-7 eggs (depending on the size) with 3/4 cup sugar. Then add in 1 tin of evaporated milk (475 ml). In the empty tin, put in 1 tbsp custard powder to 3/4 tin of water. Pour custard mixture into the mixing bowl.

In a glass bowl, or whatever else you can use that's about 4 inch high and 10 inches in diameter, spoon in Lyle's golden syrup, enough to cover the surface of the bowl. If you don't have that, then you gotta make your own caramel. Just pour 1 cup sugar into a saucepan and stir till sugar dissolves and turns golden yellow. Quickly pour the caramel into the mould/ glass bowl before it sets. Then pour in very very slowly and gently the egg mixture over the caramel/ syrup. Steam for about 20 minutes or bake it if you prefer it that way.

Simple Fried Chicken

Lazy to pound tumeric with shallots? Fret not, here is a simple Fried Chicken recipe.

Simply marinade half a chicken cut to your desired size. About 1 inch to 2 inches is good. Then deep fry the chicken over medium heat until chicken pieces are cooked and the skin, crispy. The colour of the chicken would be a dark brown colour.

Ingredients for marinade

1 1/2 dsp curry powder
2 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 dsp dark soy sauce
pinch of salt to taste
pinch of sugar to taste
1 tbsp cooking oil

Che Mek Molek & Potato Balls

The other day, I had a hankering for Che Mek Molek. So I bought 2 sweet potatoes weighing about 650gms.

There are 3 things that you can make from these potatoes. The first is sweet potato drink. The second is Che Mek Molek and the last is sweet potato balls.

To make Sweet Potato Drink, you need to wash and peel potatoes. To shorten cooking time, cut the potatoes into managable chunks and boil in water. When the potatoes are soft and cooked, remove potatoes from water, and add in a chunk of ginger which you've cracked beforehand. Add sugar to taste, and there you have, sweet potato drink.

For Che Mek Molek, you need to mash the potatoes while they are still hot and put in a pinch of salt and about 1/4 cup of all purpose flour and 3 dsp of rice flour. The dough shouldn't stick to your hands when you roll it. The size should be about the size of a small lime. Then flatten the dough and in the middle, put 1/2 tsp of sugar before you shape the dough, closing the sugar in. Inside, it's hollow. (Please refer to the pictures below.) Then it's ready for frying. When the oil is hot, fry the Che Mek Molek until golden brown.

The sweet potatoes I used were purple in colour. I made about 9. That's about half the dough. The remainder dough was used to make potato balls which Mika absolutely loves.

Sweet Potato Balls
To the leftover dough add 3 tsps of sugar and 1 dsp of rice flour. Mix well and start rolling in 20 sen sized balls and they are ready to be fried. Deep fry until golden brown. You can also get creative like we did (Inez and I) and made star shapes, heart shapes, a car shape, snowman. flowers, paw prints. It's like playing with Play Doh except that it's edible and yummy.

Spaghetti Bolognaise (the short cut way)

My hubby loves spaghetti. So does Inez (but she only eats it with plain sauce). Mika has his moods. He prefers mac and cheese.

If I make my own sauce, it's usually a lot and I could also make lasagna with the leftover sauce.

This recipe is for when I want to whip up a meal in a short time. I usually stock my kitchen with a few tins of spaghetti sauce at a time. In Kuantan, the place to get Prego very cheap is at Eng Hong. A tin costs about RM3.90. Standard retail price is RM4.30. One tin of sauce is enough for 2-4 adults depending on their appetite and hunger level.

First of all in a pot of hot water, boil about half of the 250gm packet of spaghetti. That should be enough for 2-4 ppl. Inez likes to help me, so I let her break the spaghetti in half before throwing it into the pot. Ideally, one should put some salt and pour some olive oil into the hot water, but it's okay if you don't do that. FYI, I like to buy the really thin spaghetti, the same way I like to buy the tiniest sized macaroni. They cook faster. When it's boiled, you can either wash it or not. Jamie Oliver doesn't. His spaghetti goes directly to the plate.

In the meantime, prepare the stuff for the Bolognaise sauce.

Ingredients
1 tin of Prego Spaghetti sauce (the orange tin, with basil)
1 big onion, diced finely
1 big tomato, diced finely
Mushrooms (sometimes I even use oyster mushrooms) finely or roughly diced (My hubby isn't allergic to mushrooms but if he can see it, he sets the mushroom aside)
Green pepper, diced finely (optional)
1 - 2 pips garlic, crushed
Oregano (I usually get oregano from the bakery for under RM3)
Minced meat or chicken
Kurma powder

In your pot, heat some olive oil, throw in the garlic and some oregano (abt 1 dsp) until you can smell the delicious aroma of garlic and oregano. Then put in the diced onions. Stir until the onions go soft, then put in the mushrooms, until they too go soft. Then you throw in the green pepper if you like and tomatoes. Next, put in the meat abt 3 handfuls. Pour some kurma powder over it and stir until meat is cooked. Lastly stir in the Prego sauce and wait for the sauce to boil. Then it's ready. Serve with grated parmesan or grated cheddar cheese and garnish with parsley. Mmmmmm, I like a lot of parsley on my spaghetti.

Simple Cupcakes

I promised Inez that I'd make cupcakes with her for her birthday. Though somewhat belated and amateurish, we were quite happy with the outcome.

I bought all the stuff I needed to make Inez's cupcakes. I got myself disposable plastic piping bags, an icing nozzle, some red ladybirds (made out of sugar and damned sweet). Everything else, I figured I already have at home. I wanted something light and maybe spongy for the cake and used this lemon roll cake recipe, which thankfully has no lemon in the cake, only lemon in the filling. I wasn't sure if Inez would eat lemon cake. Since the cake is easy to make, I thought, "Perfect!"




So here's the cake recipe:


Ingredients


3 eggs
1/2 cup sugar
3 tbsp cold water
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder


Icing
Whipping Cream
Green colouring

First, in a mixing bowl, beat sugar and eggs until creamy. Then add in cold water and stir. After that, add in flour, salt and baking powder mixture and stir. Spoon batter until it fills half of the paper cups and bake in a heated oven for about 10 - 12 minutes, or until cake springs back. It makes about 10 cupcakes.

For the icing, I simply whipped some whipping cream until it's stiff. I didn't add any sugar as it was already sweet and divided it into 2 portions: one of which I added about 2 drops of dark green colouring to. In my mind, my ladybugs will be nestled in some green leaves on white background. So using my creativity, I spread some white icing over the cakes and piped some green icing over it. Voila! 3 ladybugs on some leaves, 1 ladybug on a green heart and 1 ladybug in a green circle of 'leaves', which don't look like leaves. Still need some practice I think.