Chocolate cake

The best and foolproof chocolate cake recipe ever... from Australian Women's Weekly:

185g of butter
2 tsp vaniila essence
1.5 cup of castor suga
2 cups of self raising flour
3 eggs
2/3 cups cocoa
1 cup of water (if you use milk to substitute, you must add more water or milk)

Combine all ingredients and beat on low with electric mixer.



When everything is mixed, change to medium speed and eventually high. Mixture should be creamy and have changed colour. Put in oiled mould. Usually I make it in a loaf tin but this time I tried my more fancy iron cast mould. And the result:



Bake in moderate oven but if you are going to use small moulds, use low oven. The cake has a tendency to crack... but it tastes yummy!

Caramel Choc-Chip Mud Cake

I so like this... It is from the Australian Women's Weekly book on Chocolate

90g white chocolate (I used Valhorna)
90g unsalted butter
1/2 cup (110g) brown sugar
2tbsp golden syrup
1/2 cup (125ml) milk
3/4 cup (110g) plain flour
1/4 cup (35g) self raising flour
1 egg
2 tbsp milk choc bits (I used semi-sweet choc chips)
1 tbsp icing sugar (I don't use this)

Melt chocolate, butter, sugar, syrup and milk over fire.



Cool the mixture.

Whisk (by hand, when I used the machine, it did not turn out as good) the flours (sifted) and the egg.



Once it is all mixed, add in choc bits (it is impt that you let the mixture cool or else the chocolate will melt when mixed).
Put in friands tin. Bake for abt 20-25 mins. Oven is 160degree C, you must have preheated oven first.

Cheesecake

For once, my cheesecake turned out decent - it is not hard and does not crack. I think the secret is in the baking, 10 mins high and 45 mins slow....This is the recipe I got from my friend Noraini Tusin (Nora Aronson)

New York Cheesecake
Ingredients
2 1/2 Cups graham cracker crumbs (Keebler or Honey Maid)
1 1/2 sticks of butter (melted)
1 1/4 cup of sugar
2 pounds of cream cheese (4 - 8 oz)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup (8 oz) sour cream
Method
Preheat oven to 450F. In a bowl, place graham cracker crumbs butter and 2 tablespoons sugar; blend well. Press mixture onto bottom and sides of greased 9 inch spring form pan. Chill in freezer while preparing filling. In mixer bowl, beat cream chesses and remaining sugar until smooth and light. Beat in eggs and vanilla just until blended. Stir in sour cream. Pour mixture into spring form pan and bake for 10 minutes. Reduce temperature to 200F and bake 45 minutes. Turn off oven; allow to cool with the door opened slightly for 3 hours. Remove sides from pan and chill.

Peach Garden

Today is National Day and I was privileged to be part of a high powered lunch... One of the girls I worked with decided to switch and learn dance. Somebody high powered hosted lunch for her and I was invited. My cat lovers gang was also there. The nice thing was that the high powered people I was with were in a highly relaxed mood... we did not talk about work, but more about arts, even gossips and scandals.

The lunch was a typical Chinese lunch at a very good Chinese restaurant, Peach Garden, 33th floor OCBC Centre. The view was absolutely fabulous. Almost everybody sort of tried to be dressed in red... So back to the food. Considering it was a Chinese lunch, my thoughtful host, taking my diet into consideration made everything vegetarian or sea food only the appetiser had duck and chicken floss, which I did not take. So this was the menu:

Appetiser - Sea Bait deep fried with spices
Soup - Wintermelon Soup with Sea food
Mains - Sea Perch steamed, Tofu with Spinach and Crab Meat
Dessert - Mango and Pomelo in Young Coconut

It was light and healthy and I was happy... just nice!

Raspberry Friands

This is one of my favourite current bake. I got the recipe from Marie Claire's breakfast recipes:

125 g plain flour
185 g (but I use only 150g at most) icing sugar
100 g hazelnut meal
45 g dessicated coconut (I don't like coconut, so I just increase the hazelnut meal by 40g)
180g butter, melted and cooled
100g raspberries
50g marschmallows
10 extra marsh mallows
5 egg whites

Preheat oven. Grease friand tins (you can get friand tins from Sun Lik, they are slightly smaller than the silicone ones, but they will do. they are only 50 cents a piece)

Sift flour and icing sugar. Add in hazelnut (and coconut if you use cococnut)

Whisk egg whites until foamy, fold in the dry ingredients above. Mix also the melted butter.

Mince the raspberries and marshmallows. Fold them into the mixture.

Pour about 1.5 to 2 tbspoonfuls into the tins and bake for about 15 to 20 mins at 150 degrees centigrade.

Nabin's

For those of us who were familiar with Samar cafe, it was rather disappointing to see it closing down - it was one of the places in Singapore which raised eyebrows... what my friends from overseas would talk about. But close down it did. I never really fancied the food there... but when Nabin's, the spin off of Samar (the manager of Samar opened his own food place now), i decided to give it a try. The manager, being Nepalese, added Nepalese food and unlike Samar, there was alcohol.

My friend SWHM and I had the Arabic starter sampler - which was huge. We tried the Nepalese appetiser Momo - which was good but must be eaten warm... and the serving was just huge! We tried one main dish, the Moroccan chicken - it was disappointing. For drinks, I tried the Palestinian milk and honey freeze which I thought was beautiful. The atmosphere was nice there... good for 2 friends to catch up and laugh... I say, try the milk freezes and the sampler...they were my top favourites. Momo was good too... but the next time I am there, I will try a different main dish.

Savoury Tart

I first tasted savoury tart when I was at the three tarts cafe in New York (9th Avenue). I have thereafter tried to reconstruct it. Here is my version:

Crust:
50g plain flour
50g wholemeal flour
50g butter (cold)
3 tablespoon of shaved parmagiano cheese
1 teaspoon of mustard powder
Salt (very little and only if you like it)
Cold water

Rub in butter with flours until they resemble bread crumbs. Mix with cheese and mustard powder and salt. Add just enough cold water to knead. Once it resembles a ball, refrigerate for twenty minutes. Bake the crust blind first until 80% cooked.

Filling
3 red onions
5 tablespoons of Balsamic vinegar (I use the one with caramel)
1 tablespoon of brown Sugar
10 Olives - chopped
5 pieces of dried but soft figs
Good quality olive oil
Water
Feta cheese

To make caramalised onion, slice the onions thinly. Heat 2 tbsp of oliveoil. Put in sliced onions, brown sugar and 2 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Cook onions, stirring occassionally.

In time, soak fig with the rest of the balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoon of olive oil and water, just enough to cover the figs. Leave at least 2 hours if not overnight.
Chopped to pieces

Assemble the tart - drizzle olive oil, put caramelized onion, figs, olive. pour the liquid from the soaked figs. Top with feta cheese. Bake for about 10 mins.