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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

This Is My Father's World (Part 2)

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The Is My Father's World

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What's Cooking

I have been urged been urged to put the few tried and tested that I have in my blog, for sharing with friends who are interested. Some of the internets are culled from the internet, others from cookbooks and newspapers, adapted to suit the tastes of my sisters.

Savoury Dishes
- Wuhan Jiaozhi
- Easy-To-Cook Claypot Chicken Rice (in rice cooker)
- Smooth and Fragrant Hainanese Chicken Rice
- Simple and Satisfying Oyakodon
- Yummy Yam Rice
- Delicious Yam Rice Cake (Or-kueh)
- Savoury Hokkien Kim Kuay Kueh (Steamed Pumpkin Rice Cake)
- All-Time Favourite Fried Hokkien Mee
- Flavourful Hokkien Glutinous Rice
- Chewy Chut Bee Png (You Png)
- Homely Kiam Muay (Savoury Pork Porridge)
- Easy Sushi Rolls
- Happy Hawaiian Pizza
- Cheesy Cottage Pie
- Barbecued/Baked Chicken Wings
- Delectable Kongbak Pau
- Scrumptious Ngoh Hiang

Wuhan Jiaozhi and Guotie

One of the happy memories my friends LL and K and I had of Wuhan was the jiaozhi-making taught by Chen Ah Yi (Auntie Chen), a very friendly Wuhan local. She awed us with her superb skills and experience, teaching us step by step from scratch. With such a culinary master, we are able to make the jiaozhi back home in Singapore though our standard is far from our Wuhan culinary master.

Ingredients

Dough
1 kg plain flour
Water (sufficient to make dough into right consistency)

White Cabbage Filling
1 white cabbage
10 dried mushrooms, soaked and minced
600 gm minced pork (preferably 3 parts fat to 7 parts lean meat)

Seasoning for minced pork
- half big white onion, minced
- 1 tsp minced ginger
- ½ tbsp salt
- 5 tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 eggs
- ½ cube chicken stock powder
- ½ tbsp sesame oil
- White pepper powder

Chives Filling
Chives, minced (about 1 big plateful)
3 eggs, scrambled with a pinch of salt
8 prawns, minced
200 gm minced pork

Seasoning for minced pork
- 2 slices white onion, minced
- 1/3 tsp minced ginger
- pinch of salt
- 1.5 tbsp vegetable oil
- pinch of chicken stock powder

Dipping Sauce
(1) Black vinegar, a little sesame oil and chopped garlic
(2) Black vinegar and young ginger strips

Method
1. White Cabbage Filling: Add 2 tsp salt to minced white cabbage, mix well and squeeze out water from the minced white cabbage. Add minced white cabbage and minced dried mushrooms to seasoned minced pork and mix well.
2. Chives Filling: Add minced chives, minced prawns and scrambled eggs to seasoned minced port. Add 3 tbsp vegetable oil and mix well. Alternatively, can use dried shrimps (instead of minced pork/fresh prawns).
3. Put flour in bowl and add pinch of salt to taste (about 1/2 tsp). Gradually add water and knead briefly. Dough should be drier for better taste but may be hard to roll. If the dough feels too wet, add a little flour to get the right consistency. Let dough sit for 1-2 hours.
4. Dust flour on board/table-top and stretch some dough into a long sausage. Cut into small sections. Dust more flour on the cut sections. For each section, flatten into a disc and use roller to shape – thinner at the sides and thicker in the center.
5. Place some minced meat mixture on a disc and shape into dumpling.
6. Boiled Jiaozhi: Water must be boiling. After water is boiled, put in about 20 dumplings into pan, cover, bring to boil (do not stir). Add some cold water and reboil (2 times).
7. Fried Guotie: Place dumplings into pan and add water to cover about half the dumplings. Bring water to boil (over high flame) and let steam cook the dumplings till water is almost dry. Drizzle a little oil into pan and let the dumplings pan-fry till golden brown at the base. Remove the guotie and serve with dipping sauce.

Easy-To-Cook Claypot Chicken Rice (in rice cooker)

When I first started to learn to cook three years ago (in 2008), it was a big challenge as I did not even know how to cook rice then. Sometimes, the rice turned out to be too dry; other times, it turned out to be too wet. Then, there was the problem of what and how to cook the accompanying dishes for dinner.

A friend suggested cooking simple one-dish meals such as claypot chicken rice which can be cooked in a rice cooker. So, off I went to search the internet for simple recipes. Here's the recipe that I put together after some trial and error.

Ingredients
(Serves 4)
Rice, 2½ cups
4 chicken thighs (cut to small pieces, make sure there are no chicken bone splinters)
Garlic, 3 cloves (minced)
Shallots, 6 cloves (minced)
Ginger, 1 cm thick (sliced)
1 Chinese sausage (cut to slices)
Pre-soaked dried mushrooms, 6 (cut to quarters) - can add more to liking

Seasoning for rice
- 2 tbsp light soya sauce
- ½ tbsp oyster sauce

Seasoning for chicken
- 2 tbsp light soya sauce
- 2 tbsp oyster sauce
- 1 tbsp shaoxing cooking wine
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- ½ tsp sugar
- white pepper powder to cover all the cut chicken pieces
- 1 tsp cornflour

Method
1) Add seasoning to cut chicken prices and mix well. Marinate for at least an hour in the fridge.
2) Prepare before starting to cook rice - Mince/Slice garlic, shallots and ginger. Cut Chinese sausage and dried mushrooms.
3) Heat a little cooking oil in wok and stir-fry Chinese sausage slices slightly and dish out.
4) Add more cooking oil and stir-fry minced shallots. Before shallots start to brown, add sliced ginger and stir-fry till fragrant. Add minced garlic and stir-fry quickly with low heat. Add Chinese dried mushrooms and stir-fry slightly. Add cut chicken pieces, flicking off excess marinade before putting the chicken in the wok.
5) Turn to medium/high heat and stir-fry chicken for about 2 min until half-cooked (when the chicken pieces turn from red/pink to white). Add a little water if the chicken sticks to the wok. Mix the Chinese sausage slices with the half-cooked chicken and dish out everything including minced shallots, garlic and ginger to plate.
6) Add seasoning to rice and water in rice cooker and cook rice as per normal. (Optional: For more savory flavour, add pinch of salt to the mixture in rice cooker and stir well before cooking.)
7) When the rice is half-cooked (after the rice is cooked for about 8 – 9 minutes), open rice cooker and add the stir-fried chicken, etc at the top of the boiling rice and continue to cook till rice is completely cooked (another 10 minutes or so).Leave the rice cooker on “Stay Warm” for 15 – 20 minutes before stirring the cooked rice and ingredients. Serve immediately.

Smooth and Fragrant Hainanese Chicken Rice

My nephew got tired of eating claypot chicken rice (which became a weekly staple at one time) and asked me for "chicken rice cooked with pandan leaves just like ah-mah's". It took me a while to realise that he was referring to hainanese chicken rice. Oh dear, how to cook hainanese chicken rice? Once again, off I went to the internet for rescue.

There are many, many different recipes on the internet for hainanese chicken rice, but I find none satisfactory. All, except one, boiled a whole chicken. I'm not inclined to struggle with the chopping up of the chicken after cooking. Only one recipe uses chicken legs (and not the whole chicken), and steam (rather than boil) the chicken legs. I like this recipe better as I reckon steaming will retain more flavour in the chicken meat than boiling.

After trial and error, here's the recipe that I use.

Ingredients
(Serves 4)
3 chicken legs (about 600 gm)
ginger, 6 slices
3 garlic cloves, smashed slightly

For Chicken Stock:
400 gm breast meat
1.5 litres water
1 cube of instant (Maggie) chicken stock
1 tbsp dried scallops (optional)
2-3 cm ginger

For Rice:
1.5 cups rice
1.5 tsp minced garlic (about 1 clove)
3/4 tsp grated ginger
3 shallots, minced
1/2 tsp salt
1.5 cups chicken stock
1 tbsp water

For Chilli Garlic Sauce:
10 fresh chillies
2 cm ginger
4 garlic cloves
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp lime juice
2 tbsp chicken stock

Sauce for Cooked Chicken:
1 tbsp garlic oil
1 tsp sesame oil
5 tbsp light soya sauce
1.5 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp chicken stock (or water)

Method
Cooking the Chicken Stock (soup)
1. Put chicken breast, ginger, dried scallops (optional) and water into a stockpot and boil for about 2 hours.
2. Use chicken stock to cook the rice and as soup.

Cooking the Chicken Legs
3. Clean the chicken legs by scrubbing with lots of salt (preferably coarse salt). This helps the skin to become smooth after cooking.
4. Remove the fat from the chicken legs and keep the fat.
5. Put the ginger slices and mashed garlic under the skin of each chicken leg and steam for about half hour.
6. Dunk the steamed chicken legs into a bowl of ice water for about 5 minutes.
7. Remove the chicken legs from the ice water and cut into pieces. Pour sauce over the chicken pieces and serve.

Cooking the Rice
8. Put the chicken fat in a heated wok and fry till the fat turns to oil. Discard the fried bits. Add cooking (vegetable) oil if necessary to stir-fry minced shallots and grated ginger . Add minced garlic and stir-fry quickly with low heat. (Garlic gets burnt easily.)
9. Add rice and stir-fry, mixing well with the fried shallots, ginger and garlic.
10. Add 1.5 cups chicken stock (soup), 1 cube of instant (maggie) chicken stock and 1/2 salt to the sauteed rice and cook in rice cooker. Place a few pandan leaves on the rice in the rice cooker.
11. Remove the pandan leaves and fluff the rice when it is cooked.

Simple and Satisfying Oyakodon

I was happy to read about Tan Hueh Yun's one-dish meal, oyako donburi or oyakodon for short, in her "Hunger Management" column (Sunday Times, 13 Nov 2011). This dish is easy to cook and nice to eat. Best of all, my very-difficult-to-please nieces and nephew like it; at least they don't complain and don't mind eating it.

Tan Hueh Yun says:

"This Japanese classic is made up of a chicken and egg omelette over rice. Oyako means mother and child, and explains the chicken and egg. There is something quite poetic (and macabre) about the name. Donburi is Japanese for rice bowl dish....

But oyakodon is really a simple, comforting dish that is easy to make and very satisfying to tuck into. There are some things you need to get right, though. One of them is the rice. It has to be Japanese short-grain variety. The long-grain jasmine rice we usually eat isn't quite the same.

I use Koshihikari rice, available in 1 kg bags from Meidi-Ya supermarket in Liang Court. Because the rice is new, itdoesn't need as much water as older grains. If using the latter, add 20 to 40ml more water.

To make the dish a complete meal, I add some vegetables. Mitsuba is available in Japanese supermarkets and, when cooked, tastes like a less pungent version of Chinese parsley. If you cannot find it, scallions will do just as well. Instead of the onion, you can also use Japanese negi or leek.

The chicken and egg are important too. Boneless and skinless thighs or legs are what I prefer because they do not dry out like chicken breast. I trim off as much fat as possible, although a little left on the chicken pieces is not a bad thing. As for eggs, I like the golden corn ones sold in supermarkets because the yolks are a bright yellow-orange colour.

Cooking the dish is a simple matter of poaching the chicken and onions in chicken stock flavoured with three ingredients used widely in Japanese cooking: shoyu or Japanese soy sauce, sake and mirin, a sweet rice wine. Then you add the mitsuba and egg and cook it until it is just set and better yet, still a little runny. The most difficult part is sliding the omelette onto a bowl of steaming hot rice, but practice makes perfect.

I like to make the omelette one at a time, although of course, you can make both portions in a larger pan and divide it over the rice. Then, just dig in with a spoon."

Here's Tan Hueh Yun's recipe for Oyakodon.

Ingredients
250g Japanese short-grain rice (When I asked my friend, auntie Seiko, she said it's not necessary to use short-grain rice, normal rice would do. I tried using normal Thai rice the first time I cooked the oyakodon; it didn't taste so good. The second time round, I used medium-grain rice which my sis said taste the same as the normal Thai rice.)
300ml water
3 boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1 small onion
30g mitsuba or scallions
1 tbsp Japanese shoyu (Auntie Seiko said Lee Kum Kee's premium light soya sauce would do, not necessary to buy the expensive Japanese shoyu.)
1 tbsp sake (Auntie Seiko said this is optional.)
1 tbsp mirin (Auntie Seiko also said this is not necessary. Nonetheless, I concote my own substitute - 1 tbsp of light soya sauce with some sugar. Advice culled from the internet gives this more precise substitute for mirin - 1/4 tsp sugar and 1/4 cup white wine ie need sugar and something acidic.)
200ml chicken stock (I merely use 200ml water with 1/2 cube of Knorr chicken stock.)
3 eggs

Method
1. Wash the rice under running water three to four times, rubbing the grains with your hands. Drain, scrape the rice into a rice cooker, add water and cook.
2. Meanwhile, rinse the chicken under running water, pat dry with paper towels and cut into large chunks. (The chicken tasted very bland when I first cooked this dish. When I cooked it again the second time, I marinated the chicken pieces with light soya sauce and some sugar to make them more flavourful.)
3. Slice the onion thinly. Cut off the root end of the mitsuba and discard. Cut the stems and leaves into 1cm pieces. If using scallions, finely chop them.
4. Add the shoyu, sake and mirin to the chicken stock, stir to mix. Taste and add more shoyu, if needed. (I omit the sake and mirin and just add more light soya sauce and some sugar.)
5. Crack the eggs into a measuring jug, stir with a pair of chopsticks. Do not beat the eggs, you want streaks of white in the omelette.
6. When the rice is read, divide into two bowls.
7. Place a small frying pan over medium heat. Pour in half the chicken stock mixture and bring to a boil. Add half the onion and half the chicken pieces. Cook 1 minute, then turn the chicken pieces over and cook another minute. (Instead of cooking one portion at a time, I cook 3 portions together at one go.)
8. Add half the mitsuba or scallions, then half the egg. Let Cook 45 seconds to 1 minute. The egg should be just set and still slightly runny. Jiggle the pan to loosen the omelette and slide it on top of one bowl of rice. Covr the bowl with foil to keep warm.
9. Repeat with the rest of the ingredients to make a second omelette.

Serves two.

Yummy Yam Rice

Yam rice is easy to cook, though there’s a lot of cutting and dicing.

The only difficulty I have is the estimation of the amount of water to use.

Various recipes in the web use different quantities of water, which could be as much as 50% more water than rice.

For normal rice cooking, a friend had earlier taught me to use the same amount of water as the rice.

For the yam rice that I now cook, I use 15-20% more water than the rice. I’ve experiemented with 10% more water, but the yam rice turned out too dry.

Anyhow, the amount of water is up to each’s liking – whether the rice to be drier or more moist.

Ingredients

Serves 4-5:
Rice, 150 gm (roughly 1 and 2/3 cups)
Water to cook rice, 350 ml (about 15% more water than rice)
Yam, 300 – 350 gm (cut to small cubes)
Pork belly*, 300 – 350 gm (cut to small slices)
Dried mushrooms, 6 – 8 (cut to slices or quarters)
Dried shrimps, 50 gm (about 3 tbsp)
Shallots, 6 cloves (sliced) – can add more to liking

* Can also use “wu hua ruo” instead of pork belly.

Seasoning for pork slices:
1.5 tbsp light soya sauce
¼ tsp sugar
white pepper powder to cover all the pork slices

Seasoning for rice:
1 tbsp light soya sauce
1 tbsp dark soya sauce

Method

1.Marinate pork slices for an hour in the fridge.
2.Pre-soak dried mushrooms till soft, cut into slices.
3.Soak dried shrimps for about 5 minutes, remove dried shrumps and retain water used for soaking.
4.Fry shallots in oil till golden. Remove and set aside.
5.Stir-fry diced yam cubes in shallot oil till aromatic (slightly golden). Remove and set aside. Use paper towel to soak up excess oil from stir-fried yam cubes.
6.Add a little more oil if necessary to stir-fry dried shrimps. When dried shrimps are aromatic and the oil “bubbles”, add dried mushroom slices.
7.Add marinated pork slices and stir fry till cooked (no longer pinkish). If necessary, add a little water to prevent the pork and dried shrimps from sticking to wok.
8.Add yam cubes, turn heat to low (to prevent yam from sticking to wok) and mix well.
9.Add uncooked rice grains (well-drained after washing) and seasoning for rice, continuing to stir quickly and mix well. Can turn heat up a little when stir-frying rice with other ingredients. (Note: The rice grains may appear to be very little compared to the other ingredients when stir-fried. Remember yam is also a form of starch and, when cooked, will combine with the rice to fill tummies.)
10.Once rice is evenly coated with seasoning, remove and place into rice cooker.
11.Use water for soaking dried shrimps and measure out the appropriate amount for cooking the yam rice. If necessary, add water from tap. (Note: Add pinch of salt to water for more savory yam rice.)
12.After rice is completely cooked (about 15 – 20 minutes depending on rice cooker), leave the rice cooker on “Stay Warm” for 15 – 20 minutes before stirring the fried shallots into the cooked rice. Serve immediately.

Delicious Yam Rice Cake (Or-kueh)

I crave for my mom's delicious or-kueh. Alas, I had no interest to learn cooking when she was still alive and when she passed away, her recipe went with her to heaven.

An intensive search of the web gave me different recipes. The one that's closest to my mom's recipe (which uses pork belly) was from Happyhomemaker88's Virtual Home (http://happyhomemaker88.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/a-pictorial-recipe-yummy-yam-rice-kuih-aka-woo-tau-koh/).

As usual, I had great difficulty with the right amount of water to use. For the flour mixture, Happyhomemaker's recipe calls for "10 cups of water" for about 800 gm of a mix of 3 different types of flour. After some trials and errors, I came up with the ratio of 400 ml of water to a mix of 155 gm of flours.

The Straits Times "Ask The Foodie" column provides some advice on getting a smooth finish to carrot cake, which is valid for yam cake (orkueh) and pumpkin cake as well:

"To get a silky, slightly soft texture, you need to mix the rice flour with a starch that has a softer set, such as tapioca (cassava) starch, cornstarch or wheat starch (tang mien).

Ratios vary quite a lot from cookbook to cookbook: start with 20g of starch (which can be a single one or a mix of those mentioned above) for every 200g of rice flour, and see if the resulting texture suits you. Increase it to 30 or 40g if you want a still more delicate set.

Experience helps when measuring the water quantity. The optimum amount varies a little depending on the juiceness of the radish you have. Taro or pumpkin variations will also need water quantity adjustments. Very juicy radishes or crisp pumpkins need a tad less water.

Remember also that the flour-starch mixture has to be stirred with hot water or the hot par-cooked radish. The heat helps the starch to hydrate and gelatinise, and subsequently cook more evenly during the steaming.

If you're steaming the cake in individual bowls and serving it in them, then you can aim for a softer texture. If you want to pan-fry the cake, you need a firmer texture. Chilling the steamed cake overnight before slicing also helps you make neater slices."

Ingredients
200 - 250 gm yam (diced)
150 - 200 gm pork belly
35 gm dried shrimps (about 3 tbsp)

Rice flour mixture:
120 gm rice flour
15 gm corn flour (See advice from the Straits Times "Ask The Foodie" column, reproduced above.)
20 gm all-purpose flour
400 ml water
1/3 tsp white pepper powder
3/4 tsp salt

3/4 bowl of fried golden shallots

Method
1. Cut pork belly into small thin strips. (I remove most of the fat from the pork belly though most people would object to this as fat removal makes it less tasty. Reason for removing the fat? Less fattening of course! Then why use pork belly sans fat, why not use other cuts of meat? Pork belly sans fat is more tender than other types of lean meat.) Marinate with light sauce, a little sugar and white pepper and leave for an hour.
2. Rinse dried shrimps and soak in water for 10 min. Remove shrimps from water and chop coarsely. Reserve liquid for flour mixture later.
3. Fry shallots in oil and remove.
4. Use the shallot oil to fry diced yam till fragant. Remove fried yam and put on paper towel to soak up excess oil.
5. Fry chopped dried shrimps in remaining shallot oil, till oil bubbles and fried dried shrimps are aromatic. (My first attempt at making the or-kueh did not succeed - my sisters' verdict was that it was "buay phang" ("not fragant" in hokkien). A friend later advised that the dried shrimps must be fried till "fragant". Happily, after 3 attempts, I must say my or-kueh is close to my mom's standard.)
6. Add marinated pork belly strips and stir fry till cooked (no longer pinkish). Add diced yam, turn heat to very low.
7. Add 1/4 tsp salt to bind all the flavours together. Add the fried shallots.
8. Pour in the flour mixture, ensuring the flour mixture is well-stirred before adding to the wok.
9. Keep stirring the mixture in the wok until it gets thickened to a sticky paste. Scoop thickened paste into 6-inch square tin (lined with wax paper to facilitate easy removal and cleaning later).
10. Smoothen the surface of the kuih and steam for 1 hour over high heat.
11. Let cool for at least 1 hour. Garnish with fried golden shallots and red chilli. Serve with sweet sauce and chilli sauce.

Savoury Hokkien Kim Kuay Kueh (Steamed Pumpkin Rice Cake)

After trying my or-kueh, some friends requested for kim kuay kueh. I modified the recipe that I found on the web by Gina Choong(http://www.cuisine-asia.com/street_food/stf070917.asp).

Ingredients
400g pumpkin flesh, cubed (I bought half a pumpkin weighing about 850 gm. After cutting away the skin and removing the seeds, only about 400 gm of the flesh was left.)
50g dried shrimps, soaked and chopped
150 - 200g belly pork, sliced
6 dried Chinese mushrooms, soaked and sliced
10 shallots, sliced (This gives about 3/4 rice bowl of fried shallots.)

Flour Batter Mix:
250g rice flour
30g cornflour (This is to get silky, soft texture.)
2 tsp sugar
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
3 cups water (600 ml)

Method
1. Cut pork belly into small thin strips and marinate with 1 tbsp light soya sauce, 1/4 tsp sugar, some sesame oil, pepper powder to cover the pork belly strips and 1 tsp cornflour. Leave in the fridge for 1-2 hours.
2. Steam pumpkin cubes over high heat for 10 minutes and mash while it’s still hot. Set aside.
3. Rinse dried shrimps and soak in water for 10 min. Remove shrimps from water and chop coarsely. Reserve liquid for flour batter mixture later.
4. Soak dried mushrooms in water and reserve liquid for flour batter mixture later. Cut soaked mushrooms into thin slices.
5. Fry shallots in oil and remove. Use the shallot oil to fry chopped dried shrimps, till oil bubbles and fried dried shrimps are aromatic. Add mushroom slices.
6. Add marinated pork belly strips and stir fry till cooked (no longer pinkish). Add mashed pumpkin, turn heat to very low.
7. Add 1/4 tsp salt to bind all the flavours together. Add the fried shallots.
8. Pour in the flour batter mixture, ensuring the flour mixture is well-stirred before adding to the wok.
9. Keep stirring the mixture in the wok until it gets thickened to a sticky paste. Scoop thickened paste into 10-inch round tin (lined with wax paper at the bottom to facilitate easy removal and cleaning later).
10. Smoothen the surface of the kueh and steam for 1 hour over high heat.
11. Let cool for at least 1 hour. Garnish with fried golden shallots and red chilli. Serve with sweet sauce and chilli sauce.

All-Time Favourite Fried Hokkien Mee

The only one dish that I learned from my mom and even cooked better than her (in my opinion) is fried hokkien mee. I mastered this dish as I often had to contribute a dish for my cell group potluck gatherings. So while my mom cooked the fried mee for my cell group, I stood by her side and helped stir fry the mee.

My mom's fried hokkien mee is not the same as the hawker stall version which uses a mix of yellow and white round noodles and flavoured with slices of cuttlefish, prawns and meat and scrambled egg. My mom's recipe uses yellow flat noodles and dark sauce and does not have cuttlefish or egg.

My mom's fried hokkien mee is an all-time favourite with friends who have sampled it.

Serves 5-6:

Ingredients
Yellow flat noodles, 2 packets (Fortune brand from NTUC Fairprice is not oily and preferable to the ones from the wet market.)
"Wu hua ruo" (pork) 400 - 500 gm, cut to slices and marinate with 1 tbsp light sauce, a little sugar, some white pepper powder, 2 tsp sesame oil and 2-3 tsp cornflour
12 prawns, deshelled (optional)
12 crabsticks, cut into small pieces (optional)
Chye sim, 1 packet
Tau geh - optional but nice to have as it adds crunchy texture to the noodles
Shallots, 4- 6 cloves (sliced)
Minced garlic (about 2 tbsp)
2 fish cakes (available from NTUC Fairprice)

Method
1. Fry shallots till golden brown, Remove and set aside.
2. Use shallot oil to stir fry prawns (or crabstick) quickly with minced garlic. Add 1 tbsp dark sauce.
3. Add 1250 ml water (must be sufficient to cover noodles later) and let the water boil. Remove prawns/crabstick and set aside. (Friends have asked what kind of stock I use to make the hokkien mee tasty. I use merely plain tap water.)
4. Add pork slices and another 1 tbsp dark sauce to the boiling water. Add 1/2 tsp salt (optional). (My mom explained to me that the pork slices are not stir fried, else they would become tough. Instead, they are added to the boiling water to cook.)
5. Add the chye sim stems and yellow flat noodles. When the stock water boils, add chye sim leaves. Add tau geh, if any.
6. Add prawns/crabsticks and fried shallots and stir to mix. Dish out to serve.
6. Toast or bake the fish cakes and cut into slices. (Toasting is less oily.) Add fish cake slices to individual plates on top of the fried hokkien mee before serving.

Flavourful Hokkien Glutinous Rice

Another favourite that my mom used to cook on special occasions is "you-png" (glutinous rice). She would press the glutinous rice tightly to compact the rice and we would eat it at room temperature.

I came across a recipe for Hokkien glutinous rice, cooked in rice cooker, in the cookbook "Patchwork of Flavours". However, the rice (even after pressing and compacting) remains soft and not chewy like my mom's. I tried experimenting with different amounts of water to cook the rice, different ratios of glutinuous to normal rice and different durations to pre-soak the rice, but still failed to achieve the chewy texture that was well-loved by my nephew's god-father who craved my mom's glutinous rice. (Afternote: See next entry for Chewy Chut Bee Png.)

Anyhow, here's the recipe which I adapted from Patchwork of flavours.

Ingredients
150 gm glutinous rice (soaked for an hour)
100 gm normal rice (soaked for an hour)
290 gm-mark water (I use a measuring cup to measure out the rice. The water is measured using the same measuring cup and is about 15% more than the rice.)
300 - 350 gm pork belly
6 - 8 dried mushrooms (soaked and cut to thin strips)
6 tbsp dried shrimps (soaked for 10 min, liquid reserved for cooking rice)
1 rice bowl fried shallots

Method
1. Cut pork belly into slices and marinate with light sauce, a litte sesame oil and white pepper powder. Refrigerate for about an hour.
2. Use shallot oil to fry dried shrimps till aromatic and oil "bubbles".
3. Add dried mushroom strips and stir fry a while.
4. Add pork belly slices and stir fry till cooked (no longer pinkish). Reduce heat to low.
5. Add both glutinous and normal white rice, 1 tbsp light sauce and 1 tbsp dark sauce. Mix everything thoroughly.
6. Transfer everything in the wok to be cooked in rice cooker. For cooking the rice, use liquid for soaking dried shrimps; add tap water if necessary.
7. After rice is completely cooked (about 15 – 20 minutes depending on rice cooker), leave the rice cooker on “Stay Warm” for 15 – 20 minutes before stirring the fried shallots into the cooked rice.
8. Transfer the cooked rice to a shallow cassarole container or ovenware and press hard to compact the rice.
9. Serve when the rice is cooled and set.

Chewy Chut Bee Png (You Png)

I finally discovered how to get chewy texture for my glutinous rice, just like my mom's. Instead of cooking the glutinous rice in the rice cooker, just steam it in a steamer. As virtually no water is added to steam the rice (other than water vapour from the steaming), the cooked rice is chewy and not too soft.
The Straits Times "Ask The Foodie" offers several "sticky tricks":

"I have received many questions about cooking glutinuous rice over the past few months.

First, soaking. Soak white glutinuous long-grain rice for at least four to six hours, and up to 10 hours. The folder the rice is, the longer the soak needed. If you are pressed for time, soak for two hours in very warm water. Sturdier varieties, such as black glutinuous rice or brown sticky rice, need longer soaking for at least six hours.

Second, par-cooking. In many recipes, the soaked, drained rice is sauteed in oil with aromatics such as garlic or haybee (dried shrimp) before any liquid is added. This adds a lot of flavour and also par-cooks the grains, which makes them slightly less sticky when fully cooked, and less prone to over-softening.

Third, steaming vs boiling. Boiling - cooking in liquid as you would normal rice in a rice cooker - is faster, but required you to estimate how much liquid is needed. This is tricky, as you have to account for the rice's age, soaking time and other variables. I prefer steaming methods calling for minimal or no water, letting the rice absorb most of the liquid it needs from the steam bath itself. In this case you need not worry about exact liquid measurement, only about cooking time.

So, for plain unseasoned sticky rice: Place the soaked and drained rice in a large sieve or perforated metal bowl lined with wet muslin or thin cotton. Place over boiling water, which must not touch the bowl, and steam for 30 minutes or so, stirring and fluffing the rice midway through.

Another method appropiate for rice mixed with liquid seasonings: Spread the soaked, drained (sauteed or seasoned, as desired) rice in an even layer in a bowl or dish. Add water or stock to just under the level of the rice. Put the bowl on a steamer rack and steam for 30 minutes, stirring and fluffing midway through. In either method, use medium-high heat and start checking for doneness after 20 minutes.

Cooking times will be slightly longer for large quantities. Use a sider rather than deeper tray. Do not get fixated on the clock but just check and taste frequently, and stir the rice to even it out if necessary.

Fourthly, rice dumplings. You must use best-quality glutinous rice - low-grade rice will not perform well in chang. Long boiling times require neat, tight wrapping to prevent water from seeping too quickly into the rice.

Many recipes pre-saute the rice as above, or mix it with oil and oily ingredients such as coconut milk, and salt. Both techniques help the rice retain some form of texture instead of melding into a big stodgy lump that sticks to the leaves. Greasing the leaves very lightly with oil also helps. Other recipes, such as some Nyonya chang versions, steam or boil the rice until half-cooked before wrapping it. The resulting texture is softer and more cohesive.

To achieve their faintly jellylike firmness, kee chang were dosed, in less prudent times, with borax. It is now rightly banned as a food additive. Stick to the judicious use of alkaline water or bicarbonate of soda instead."

Ingredients
200 gm glutinous rice (soak for 7-8 hours)
300 - 350 gm wu hua ruo (pork, sliced)
Dried shrimps, 50 gm (about 3 tbsp)
Dried mushrooms, 6 - 8 (soaked and sliced)
Shallots, 5 - 6 cloves (sliced)

Seasoning for pork slices:
1 tbsp light soya sauce
1/4 tsp sugar
white pepper to cover all the pork slices
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp cornflour

Seasoning for rice:
1 tbsp light soya sauce
1 tbsp dark soya sauce

Method
1. Marinade pork for 1-2 hours in the fridge.
2. Fry shallots till golden. Remove and set aside.
3. Use shallot oil to fry dried shrimps till aromatic and oil "bubbles".
4. Add dried mushroom slices and stir fry for a while.
5. Add pork slices and stir fry till cooked (no longer pinkish). Add a little of the water used to soak the dried shrimps. Add a pinch of salt to bind the flavours. Reduce heat to low.
6. Add drained glutinous rice and seasoning for rice. Add half of the fried shallots. Mix everything thoroughly.
7. Transfer everything in the wok to a dish or tray for steaming. Add some of the water used to soak dried shrimps, to just under the level of the rice.
8. Steam at moderately high heat for 25 minutes, stirring and fluffing midway through.
9. Add the remaining fried shallots and mixed with the steamed, cooked rice.

Homely Kiam Muay (Savoury Pork Porridge)

My recent Ban-On missions trip brought back memories of my mom's "kiam muay" (savoury pork porridge). Our Karen (Thai tribal group) hosts served us their local-style "kiam muay" for breakfast; this was very much like my mom's Chinese version back home.

My mom's kiam muay has dried cuttlefish, cut to small strips; these make the kiam muay very flavourful. Instead of the dried cuttlefish, I use ikan bilis which is highly recommended in several recipes on the web. One food blogger said, "Anchovies (aka Ikan Bilis) is the secret ingredient to make the porridge really sweet and flavourful."

On my first try, I used about 1 tbsp of dried scallops but I found that this made the kiam muay a little too "fishy" for my taste. So, I concluded I should not be too greedy for flavour and have stuck to using 10 dried scallops (less than 1 tbsp).

I adapted a recipe from the web
(http://www.yumtrade.com/recipe.asp?type=chinese-cuisine-rice-noodle#Rec_4) to follow my mom's version more closely. My mom's version has fried diced tau-kwa and cabbage cut to strips. The original recipe from the web includes red dates which I don't add as I don't like their sweetness.

Ingredients
(Serves 4)
250g sliced pork (I use sliced pork, "wu hua ruo", instead of minced pork in the original recipe. Sliced pork is relatively more chewy than minced pork.)
1 1/4 cup rice (about 110g)
8 cups water (The original recipe uses 12 cups or 3000ml. I use 8 cups or 2000ml as my sister and nephew like to eat "thick" porridge. More water can be added, where necessary, to get the required consistency of the cooked porridge.)
2 tbsp dried shrimps
10 dried scallops
2 tbsp (deep fried or plain) anchovies (aka ikan bilis) (Plain ikan bilis would do.)
1 tbsp dark soya sauce ( (I use dark soya sauce instead of the light soya sauce in the original recipe, to give the porridge a richer colour.)
century egg, cup to small pieces (optional) (chopped spring onions and fried shallots for garnishing (optional)

Marinade (for the pork)
1 1/4 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp corn starch
1 tsp sesame oil
Ground white pepper

Method
1. Dice 1 block of tau-kwa and fry till golden. Put fried diced tau-kwa on paper towel to absorb excess oil.
2. Stir-fry cabbage strips, with some mashed garlic, until soft and set aside. (I think my mom cooked the cabbage in the porridge itself. As my nephew refuses to eat any vegetables, I've to cook the cabbage separately, so that his porridge is "vegetable-free".)
3. Add washed rice, dried shrimps, anchovies, dried scallops and water to pot, bring to a boil.
4. Leave the lid partially open and reduce heat to medium. Stir the bottom of the pot every now and then to prevent the rice from sticking to the base.
5. Boil for about 30 minutes to get congee (very fine consistency). Add more hot water if needed.
6. When the porridge has cooked to the required consistency, place the marinated pork slices and fried diced tau-kwa into the porridge, increase heat and allow pork slices to cook for about 5-10 minutes. It is better to cook the pork only when you are ready to serve as overcooked meat is tough. Season the porridge with dark soy sauce. Add pinch of salt to taste.
7. Add stir-fried cabbage strips and serve. Garnish with century egg, ikan bilis, spring onions and fried shallots according to preference.

Easy Sushi Rolls

Ever heard of moulds for making sushi? Instead of rolling the sushi rice (and ingredients) on a sushi mat, the sushi rice is pressed into a long plastic mould to form a cylindrical shape and then placed on a half-sheet of toasted seaweed to form a sushi roll.

I discovered the sushi moulds on an outing with my friend's mother who's Japanese. She was looking for the moulds for her daughter (my friend) who's in Shanghai. We found them at Daiso in Vivocity - cost only $2 each.

The sushi rolls are very easy to make with the moulds. They look "authentic". My niece loves them.

The following recipe is adapted from the cookbook "Oriental Cooking Class Cookbook".

Ingredients
2 cups short-grain white rice (makes 8 sushi rolls)
5 tbsp sushi vinegar (available from NTUC Fairprice which sells the same bottle more cheaply than Isetan supermarket)
16 Crabsticks (or any other preferred filling eg strips of raw tuna or salmon, strips of cooked carrot or fresh shiitake mushrooms)
Cucumber strips (to go with the crabsticks as filling) - optional
Mayonnaise for filling - optional
4 sheets toasted nori (seaweed)

Method
1. Wash rice repeatedly until water becomes almost clear. (I had to wash the rice 10 times to get the water clear. But perhaps there is no need to wash so many times.) Let rice drain in colander for 1 hour.
2. Cook rice in the normal way in rice cooker.
3. When rice is cooked, let it stand for about 10-15 min.
4. Transfer cooked rice to non-metal container (preferably wide and shallow) and spread out rice. Drizzle rice with sushi vinegar; toss gently with folding motion using wet larger wooden spoon or paddle until well mixed.
5. Continue tossing gently with one hand while fanning rice with other hand, until rice cools to room temperature, about 10 min. (Not so easy to do 2 different things with 2 different hands.) Rice can be prepared ahead to this point; let stand at room temperature, covered with damp cloth, up to 4 hours. Do not refrigerate.
6. Using scissors, cut nori sheets in half crosswise. Put some sushi vinegar in a small bowl and mix with some water. This is for moistening hands when handling rice to prevent sticking.
7. Use sushi mould to form sushi roll and place moulded rice roll on half-sheet of nori. Use sushi vinegar to join the two ends of the nori half-sheet to cover moulded rice roll.
8. Cut each sushi roll crosswise into 6 even pieces with very sharp knife; wipe knife clean and dip in sushi vinegar before each cut.

Happy Hawaiian Pizza

My nieces and nephew love pizza. So I was very happy when my friend gave me her recipe from her AME "cookbook". As I don't have the AME pot, I baked the pizza in my convection oven.

Allrecipes (http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Topping-and-Baking-Pizza/Detail.aspx) has this advice on the order of topping of pizza (topped with tomatoes and fresh basil):

"The order in which the ingredients are layered is important: the same ingredients layered in a different order will yield a completely different product. If we had put the cheese down first, the tomatoes, then the basil, the basil would burn and the cheese would not brown. We selected Mozzarella, Fontina and Parmesan cheeses to top our pizza. These cheeses are all very low in moisture and will brown fairly quickly. The tomatoes, however, have a high moisture content and will not caramelize, but will dehydrate slightly for a more concentrated tomato flavor. With the cheese on the top, the basil will not burn, and the tomatoes will retain most of their moisture."

Ingredients

Pastry:
1/3 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar (Sugar is necessary ingredient as the yeast will feed on the sugar to "grow". As the yeast feeds, it begins to "pass gas" into the mix which gets trapped in the glutten (caused by the flour and water mixture)).
1 tsp yeast
180 gm plain flour
1/3 cup or 80 ml fresh milk (I substitute with warm water and stir the salt, sugar and yeast into the warm water. Once, I had no warm water in the thermos flask and boiled some water to use. On that occasion, my dough didn't rise at all and the whole pizza crust was ruined. On hindsight, I learnt that the boiling water that I used was too hot, even though I had added some cold tap water, and so killed the yeast.)

Toppings:
3 tbsp pizza quick (I use Prego pasta sauce.)
2 slices of ham
pineapple slices (For variation, I use sliced chicken sausage with the ham. This variation tastes better than the traditional Hawaiian pizza with ham and pineapple slices.)
1/2 pc or 125 gm mozzarella cheese, shredded

To replace pizza quick:
1 tsp olive oil
1 clove crushed garlic
1/2 cup tomato paste
2 tbsp tomato sauce
1 tsp dreid oregano leaves

Method:
1. Preheat oven at 210 deg C.
2. Sieve plain flour or self-raising flour.
3. Stir yeast with milk (or warm water) thoroughly. (A cookbook has this instruction: Leave the yeast mixture, covered with plastic wrap, in a warm place for 10 min or until the mixture is foamy.)
4. Make a well in the center of the flour, add the yeast mixture and mix to a dough. Knead the dough on a lightly flouted surface for 5 min or until smooth and elastic. (If the dough feels dry, add a little water and knead well.) (http://www.answerbag.co.uk/q_view/92149
When kneading dough, is it possible to overknead? gives the foll info: "The reason we knead the bread is to 'pop' the larger bubbles of gas, and force them to become smaller. In order for the bread to rise (from the expanding gas bubbles), it has to have an airtight seal over the entire surface of the loaf. If you continue mixing, or kneading bread for a long period of time, the surface will begin to tear, allowing the gases to escape, and the dough will not rise evenly, or maybe not at all." Take care not to over-knead the dough, else all the air would be squeezed out and the dough would become denser and "tougher".) Leave dough to ferment for 1 hr till dough rises.
5. Spread butter on a piece of paper on roasting pan. Spread pizza quick, cheese and toppings.
6. Bake pizza for 30 min till the pastry browns slightly. (According to Allrecipes, the pizza is done when the cheese is melted and medium to dark brown in colour - colour is flavour.)

Cheesy Cottage Pie

I chanced upon a recipe for cottage pie in a magazine in the waiting room of my optometrist. My nieces and nephew love lasagne, so I thought they would like cottage pie as well. And so they did.

Ingredients
(Serves 6)
750g white potatoes, skinned
50g butter
100ml milk, warmed
100g mature cheddar cheese, shredded
1/2 tsp olive oil
1 large onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
500g beef, minced
1 cube beef stock
1 large carrot, diced
100g peas or 2 sticks of celery, diced
1 can tomatoes, about 300g, or 3 fresh tomatoes
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper

Method
1. Boil potatoes for 15-20 minutes in salted water and drain.
2. Mash with butter, warm milk and cheddar cheese. Set mash aside.
3. For pie filling, heat olive oil in a pot or deep pan. Brown onions and garlic before adding minced beef. Stir well and add stock cube, carrots, peas and tomatoes. Simmer for 10-15 minues. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
4. Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Scoop pie filling in shallow over-proof dish. Cover with a mound of mash potatoes and score the potatoes with a fork. Bake for 30-40 minutes until mash is lightly browned.

Barbecued/Baked Chicken Wings

Inspired by the spicy chicken drumlets that we used to order from Pizza Hut, I tried a recipe for sweet chilli chicken wings from a friend's cookbook. The marinade comprises sweet chilli sauce, honey, soft brown sugar, white vinegar, light soy sauce, ground black pepper, oil, crushed garlic and grated ginger. Surpringly, the chicken wings turned out to be rather bland.

A recipe from another cookbook, "Authentic Recipes from Malaysia" gave much better results. I think the oyster sauce and rice wine in this recipe gives the chicken wings a stronger flavour. My adapted recipe is given below.

Ingredients
10-12 chicken drumlets (about 600 g)

Marinade:
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp rice wine
1 tbsp light soya sauce
2 tsp dark soya sauce
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
Pinch of salt (optional)

Method
1. Marinade chicken drumlets and leave in fridge for at least 6 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 220 deg C. Drain the chicken drumlets and place them on a roasting rack over a baking tray or in a deep baking dish. Bake for 30 min or until the chicken is crisp and cooked through. (In the original recipe, the chicken wings are to be baked for 10 min. However, my chicken drumlets were still not cooked after 10 min. Eventually, it took about 30 min to cook them.)
3. Serve hot.

Delectable Khongbak Pau

Khongbak pau is another well-loved one-meal dish that my mom used to cook for us. There are very few such recipes on the internet. I was happy to find a very do-able one at: http://www.deliciousasianfood.com/2007/03/06/kong-bak-with-ho-hup-pau/

This recipe was very well received by my sisters and friends. My nephew even gave up eating chicken rice (from hawker stall) which he loved, to eat the khongbak pau; he eate about 5 of the pau's at one go. So, it's really good. I like that the five spice is not too overpowering.

Ingredients
1 kg of pork belly (approximately 1 feet long x 3 inches wide) - cut into 2 pieces for ease of blanching and frying (At my first try, I cook only about 230 gm of pork belly and adjust the rest of the ingredients accordingly. The 230 gm of pork belly is sufficient for only 4 buns, one for each of us at home.)
20 pieces of chinese dried mushrooms (pre-soaked till soft, remove stalk) (I skip the mushrooms.)
Water for blanching
Oil for frying (semi-deep frying)

Marinade
5 tablespoons dark soya sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons tomato ketchup
2 teaspoons white pepper powder
2 teaspoons five spice powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 tablespoons chinese cooking wine
3 to 5 cinnamon sticks
5 to 8 pieces of star anise
2 whole bulbs of garlic (I mash the garlic, with skin on, before mixing with the marinade.)

Method
1. Bring water to boil in wok or pot and blanch the pork belly for approximately 30 seconds. You will notice that the meat is slightly cooked and the skin is slightly toughened. Remove from water and drain. Prick the skin with the sharp end of a knife or sharp fork. (My knives and forks are not sharp enough to prick the skin, so I left the skin unpricked. Anyway, we remove the skin after it's cooked as we don't eat it.)
2. Heat up oil in wok and fry the pork belly 20 seconds on each side (skin side and meat side). (According to the Straits Times "Ask the Foodie", deep-frying blisters the pork skin, which helps it to soak up sauce and flavour during the steaming.) Remove and place on a rack for to cool and to let excess oil drip. You will notice that the meat and skin is now slightly browned and the whole piece of pork belly is slightly firm.
3. Cut the pork belly into 1 to 1.5cm-width slices. Place the pork belly slices together with mushrooms in a suitable container and marinade them with the marinate above for at least 2 hours or longer.
4. After marinating, arrange the pork belly slices on a tray (suitable for steaming) and pour all the marinade over it. Steam it for at least 1 1/2 hours. ( I steam for 2 hr 30 min so the pork belly is more tender. If the pork belly is marinated overnight, then it needs to be steamed for a longer time.)
5. To serve, steam to heat up the buns. Prise open the bun just like a kebab bun and place a slice of the khong bak (belly slices) and mushroom into the bun.

Scrumptious Ngoh Hiang

Ngoh Hiang is very easy to make - just mix minced pork and prawns with diced water chestnuts and seasoning, steam, then pan-fry.

I adapted a recipe from http://cinnlove2cook.blogspot.com/2009/09/ngoh-hiang.html. In this recipe, the ngoh hiang is cooked through frying only. As my sisters and I are not inclined towards deep-fried food, I steam the ngoh hiang first, then pan fry it.

Ingredients (Makes 4 rolls)
300gm minced pork
6 medium-sized prawns - minced
6 pieces chestnuts - peeled & diced
1 egg, lightly beaten
1/2 tbsp plain flour
1 large piece of dried bean curd skin
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1/3 tsp pepper
1/2 big onion or 1 small onion - chopped

Method
1. Place the minced pork into a bowl or container. Mince the prawns, dice the chestnuts into smaller pieces, wash and chop the big onion. After that add all into the minced pork. Add in the plain flour, five spice powder, pepper and the egg. Mix well all the ingredients together. Cover the container with cling wrap and place it into the refrigerator. Marinate for 2 hours.
2. Remove the bean skin from the plastic. Use a clean damp cloth to wipe the skin, by doing it, you can wipe away the excess salt that is on the skin. This will make the skin taste less salty. It's a big piece of skin so you can cut into big strips like the above.
3. Take one strip of the skin, place a spoonful of marinated mixture at the edge of the skin. Leave some allowance at the edge and both side of the skin. Take the edge of the skin then wrap round the marinated mixture then slice off the balance of the skin with a knife.
4. Steam the Ngoh Hiang for about 15 minutes.
5. Heat up the wok till it smoke then add in enough oil to pan fry the steamed Ngoh Hiang for a few seconds. Fry till it turns golden brown then place them on a paper towel to soak excess oil.
6. Slice the Ngoh Hiang and serve hot with sweet chilli sauce. This dish can be eaten on its own as finger food, it can be very filling.

Cakes and All Things Sweet
- Perfect Prune Cake - Versatile Muffins
- Hand-made, Fuss-Free Fragant, White Bread
- Soft, Tasty Nutella Bread - Spongy Steamed Banana Cake
- Better-Tasting Baked Banana Loaf
- Lemon Blueberry Loaf
- Rich Steamed Chocolate Fudge Cake
- Soft, Crumbly Chocolate Cake
- Steamed Marble Sponge Cake
- Rather Good Coconut Cake
- Not-So-Sweet-And-Sinful Ornee
- Exquisite Orh-Chut (Black Glutinous Rice Porridge or Bubur Pulut Hitam)
- Well-Loved Lek Tau Suan
- Baked Tapioca Cake (Bingka Ubi Kayu)
- Home-made Traditional Kaya

Perfect Prune Cake

Having no experience and no confidence to bake cakes, I borrowed several cookbooks on baking techniques from the Bishan Library. Interestingly, one of them, "The essential baking cookbook", contains photos of all types of basic utensils for baking. So I learnt eg how a citrus zester looks like, what is a tube tin, what is a palette knife used for.

I adapted a recipe for sultana cake in "The essential baking cookbook" to bake prune cake. I like this recipe as it doesn't use that much butter compared to pound cake.

Ingredients
250 grams unsalted butter, softened (Take butter out from fridge and leave in open for about 1-2 hours to soften. Do not use any heat to soften.)
250 grams caster sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons lemon zest (I use all the zest from 1 lemon.)
320-340 grams pitted prunes (This is about one packet of pitted prunes.)
375 grams plain flour
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
170 ml milk mixed with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice. (Let the milk mixed with lemon juice stand for about 30-40 minutes. The milk will curdle after a while. It is important to mix with the lemon juice.)

Method
1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees C.
2. Line a 8-inch (20-cm) square cake tin. (Fruit cakes need a double layer of baking paper for the base and sides for protection because of the long baking time.) Cut 2 squares of baking paper, using the base as a guide. Cut a long strip of baking paper that can go round the whole square tin. For this long strip, fold a 2 cm deep cuff along the length of the strip, then make diagonal cuts up to the fold line about 1 cm apart. Fit in the tin, with the cuts on the base, pressing them out at right angles so that they sit flat around the base. Place the squares of baking paper over the cuts.
3. Using a pair of clean scissors, cut the pitted prunes into slices. Each prune can be cut into 3-4 slices. Put 1 tablespoon of plain flour into a sift and dust the flour over the sliced prunes so that they are not sticking together. If necessary, use another 1 tablespoon of plain flour to dust the sliced prunes. Dusting the sliced prunes will ensure that they do not sink to the bottom of the cake when baked.
4. Cream the softened butter and sugar in a large bowl with electric beaters until light and fluffy (ie mixture is light yellow in colour). Gradually add the egg, eating thoroughly after each addition. Beat in the lemon zest and vanilla. (Note: Can add the vanilla to the egg and beat with the eggs first.)
5. Using a metal spoon or a rubber spatula, fold in the prunes and sifted flour and baking powder, alternately with the milk mixed with lemon juice. Follow this procedure:
First, add about 1/3 of the flour and baking powder mixture to the creamed butter and sugar batter. Fold the flour into the batter with the spoon or spatula.
Second, add about ½ of the dusted sliced prunes into the batter. Fold the prunes into the batter.
Third, add about ½ of the milk with lemon juice into the batter. Fold the milk into the batter.
Fourth, add and fold the next 1/3 of the flour into the batter.
Fifth, add and fold the remaining ½ of the prunes into the batter.
Sixth, add and fold the remaining ½ of the milk into the batter.
Seventh, add the last 1/3 of the flour into the batter.
In short:
>> 1/3 flour >> ½ prunes >> ½ milk >> 1/3 flour >> ½ prunes >> ½ milk >> 1/3 flour.
{Start with dry ingredient (flour) and end with dry ingredient (flour)}.
6. Spoon cake batter into the prepared tin and smooth batter into the corners of the square tin.
7. Bake for 1 ¼ - 1 ½ hours, or until a skewer comes out clean when inserted in the center. If the top turns brown too quickly, cover the baking tin loosely with a piece of aluminium foil (non-shiny side facing up) for the last 15-30 minutes.
8. Cool in the tin for 20 min, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool further.

Versatile Muffins

I bought a new Rowenta oven and got 2 free baking classes at OG. I went on to attend another 6 baking classes conducted by various chefs at OG. I like the classes by Chef Oi Lin. Her recipe for versatile muffins which she taught at OG is reproduced below.

The Straits Times "Ask the Foodie" column has this to say on how to get muffin tops to form neat peaks:

"First, measure the leavening properly. There should be no more than 1 tsp of baking powder per 100g of flour. If baking soda is the leavener, there should be no more than 1/4 tsp per 100g of flour, plus sufficient acidity from a sour ingredient to react with it. Too little leavening leads to insuffficient rising and too much yields big unstable bubbles that pop instead of persisting and hence less or even no rising.

Secondly, make sure the dry ingredients are well mixed and the final batter very lighted mixed. The batter should look lumpy and uneven; beating too much over-develops the flour's gluten proteins, resulting in a tough crust that may not be flexible enough to allow maximum expansion.

Thirdly, fill the cups almost to the brim, about 90 per cent full. This gives the batter no room to expand outwards, so it has to expand upwards.

Lastly, the oven should start off hot. This sets the top crust quickly which allows the batter underneath to stay liquid, build up pressure and eventually burst up like a volcano.

Muffins typically bake at around 190 to 200 deg C, but you can preheat the oven to 220 deg C and then turn it down to the right temperature after putting them in."

Ingredients
180ml milk
2 tsp fresh lemon juice (This makes the baking soda work better.)
370gm plain flour
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
140gm unsalted butter, softened (Take the butter out from fridge to soften for about 1-2 hours, do not heat to soften.)
190gm caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method
1. Mix milk and lemon juice. Cover for 40 min till curdled.
2. Preheat oven to 190 degree C. In order for muffins to rise properly, oven must be pre-heated properly. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Mix well.
3. Beat softened butter at medium speed for ½ min. Add sugar and beat 3 min till fluffy and light yellow in colour. Add eggs and vanilla essence and beat ½ min.
4. Add 1/3 of flour mixture and beat on slow speed for 5 seconds. (Alternatively, can use spatula to fold in the flour and milk so as to avoid over-mixing.) Add ½ of the milk mixture and beat 5 seconds. Repeat above steps. The sequence is:
1/3 flour >> ½ milk >> 1/3 flour >> ½ milk >> 1/3 flour
ie start with dry (flour) and end with dry.
5. Use spatula at the end (to avoid over-mixing else muffins will be hard). Scrap and fold until flour cannot be seen. The batter should look lumpy.
6. Add flavouring ingredients eg
¾ cup (or 200g) chocolate chips (can use Hershey semi-sweet) or
1 cup dried cranberries or
1 cup sultanas or
3 level tsp orange zest (about 3 oranges).
Fold gently with spatula into batter.
7. Spoon batter into each hole in muffin tray. A soup ladle is about the right size for each hole in the muffin tray. Use a soup ladle to scoop from the mixing bowl and then a spoon to scoop/scrape from the soup ladle into the muffin hole. As the batter is lumpy, it will not fill the muffin hole smoothly. Do not waste time trying to smoothen the batter in the muffin holes. (Remember the baking powder and baking soda will start to react as soon as they are mixed with the milk mixture.) As soon as the muffins are baked, they will smoothen out in the muffin holes. Bake for 15 minutes, then turn tray around and bake another 5 minutes till golden brown. (Note: The muffins can rise quite high during baking, provided the batter is not over-mixed or left standing for too long in the muffin tray before putting in the oven.)

Hand-Made, Fuss-Free Fragant White Bread

I was very happy that my baking class at OG included bread baking. Chef Oi Lin taught us two of her recipes - one for white bread and the other for wholemeal bread. Her recipe for fuss-free white bread is reproduced bellow.

The white bread that I bake at home turns out to be miky and fragant. I don’t want to buy a whole tin of Nespray milk powder just to use 1 tbsp for the white bread according to Chef Oi Lin's recipe. So I leave out the milk powder. Instead, I use milk to substitute for the water. As my milk is refrigerated, I warm the milk before mixing with the flour. How warm should the milk be? Cookbooks have recommended temperature for warmed/heated milk, but I just dip my finger into the heated milk - if my finger feels ok, then the milk is heated enough and should not be too hot for the yeast. Overheated milk could kill the yeast.

The Sunday Times "Ask The Foodie" says:

"Velvety-crumed breads such as Asian-style loaves and Italian pandoro depend on high-protein flour for their texture. During kneading and proving sessions, gluten proteins link up to build a strong, stretchy network. This is needed to trap all the bubbles required for a soft, light internal structure.

Milk is used in enriched bread formulas to make their crumb softer and finer, and their crusts more deeply golden. However, milk also contains a naturally occurring enzyme called glutathione. Left underchecked, it breaks down gluten networks, slackening the raw dough and making the finished breads less airy, less tall and more coarsely textured. Heating milking to between 85 and 88 deg C denatures and renders its flutathione powerless. Depending on the exact pasteurisation method used, regular pasteurised fresh milk may not have all its glutathione destroued, so it is a good idea to scald it.

The above also applies to powdered milk. However, powdered milk that has been treated with high heat does not need scalding and is often sold specifically as a baking ingredient. You can look for it in baking supply stores or online. If milk powder packaging says nothng about high-heat treatment, assume that you need to rehydrate and scald it to deactivate its glutathione.

Some readers have asked about bread improver. This is a catchall term for additives that benefit bread texture. A widely used improver in commercial bread is ascorbic acid, a.k.a., vitamin C, which helps to combat glutathione action and repair damaged gluten. You can try finely crushing pharmacy-bought ordinary vitamin C tablets and dissolving them in the liequid for your bread dough - about 40mg per 500g of flour - to see if it nets you a better loaf."

And so, I add 1 tsp bread improver to my ingredients in order to get a better-rising bread. Bread improver can be bought from Phoon Huat.

I find it’s difficult to use the electric mixer with dough hooks to mix the ingredients. My electric mixer is not heavy-dutyand does not have the power to stir and mix the dough. (A cookbook recommended electric mixer of at least 800 watts.) After adding the egg, my dough get stuck to the hooks instead of getting mixed. So I switch to hand-mixing and hand-kneading. With practice, I find that I don't have to buy a bread-making machine or heavy-duty electric mixer to do the mixing/kneading - all done by hand!

I have tried hand-mixing/kneading with ordinary, plastic hand glove on but the dough get all stuck to the glove. I then try using close-fitting surgical glove which is slightly better but the dough still get stuck on the glove. Subsequently, when I was doing another bread recipe a week later, I found that dusting the surgical glove lightly all over with bread flour helps to prevent the dough sticking to the glove. A year later, I learned from a cookbook that spreading the butter over my hands before mixing into the dough helped to stop the dough from sticking to my glove. Kneading the dough by hand is a breeze thereafter.

Chef Oi Lin advised to take care not to over-knead the dough else the bread will be hard/dense. Pl see more info on over-kneading in my blog (http://myutmost-hishighest.blogspot.com/) under “Happy Haiwaiian Pizza”. Since I am not using electric mixer to mix/knead the dough, I double the time specified in Chef Oi Lin's recipe for machine mixing/kneading when I do by hand. So if her recipe calls for machine mixing/kneading for 1 minute, I do by hand for about 2 minutes.

I use a 9.3” x 5.2” x 2.7” non-stick loaf pan as I don’t have the 8” x 4” x 4 “ loaf pan that Chef Oi Lin got from Phoon Huat. Even though my loaf pan is non-stick, I still oil the pan so that the bread can come out more easily after baking.

The crust of my bread turns out to be very dark brown, almost black (like the roti-long bread in the good, old days) after 30 minutes baking. It could be my oven’s too hot or the dark-coloured loaf pan absorbed too much heat or the dough’s baked for too long. Subsequently, I reduce the oven temperature by the recommended 20 deg C to take into account the dark-coloured loaf pan. I also use a piece of alumunium foil to cover the loaf pan after 10 minutes' baking in the oven.

LL commented that the colour of my bread inside is different from her French loaf. My bread’s slightly yellowish in colour, on account of the egg added.

Fuss-free bread – Yield: 1 loaf

By Chef Oi Lin

(Additional comments/explanations by Chef Oi Lin are in green in the recipe below.)

Ingredients
370gm Bread flour
30gm Potato flour (to make the bread moist)
1 tbsp Milk powder (to make bread fragrant. Use full-cream milk powder, not infant milk powder. There’s a special milk powder for making bread and confectionery, sold at Phoon Huat. Else can use Nespray full cream milk powder.)
1 tsp Dried instant yeast
2 tbsp Sugar (can double sugar if eat bread on its own)
½ tsp Salt
240 ml Water (can replace with milk to make bread more fragrant)
1 Egg (to enrich the colour of the bread)
1 tbsp Cooking oil or melted butter (about 15 gm)

Method
1. Sift bread flour, potato flour and milk powder. Add yeast, sugar and salt. Mix well.
2. Add water. Mix for one minute using dough hooks. Add egg. Mix another minute. Add oil. Mix for 5 minutes. Knead for a minute using your hands.
3. Line loaf tin (8” x 4” x 4”) with greaseproof paper and grease with oil. Place dough in it and leave in closed unheated oven for 1.5 hours, until at least double the volume. Take dough out, punch down and knead again for 5 minutes. (As the dough becomes sticky after kneading, I knead for less than 1 minute and then slam the dough a few times on the kitchen counter as taught by a friend. The dough is supposed to be slammed till it looks shiny and smooth. A cookbook advised that the dough could be kneaded, squeezed, slammed - it doesn't matter how it's done.) (Raisins can be added at this stage if so desired.) Proof for another 1.5 hours. (Note: If the dough is over-proofed, bread will be sour.)
4. Remove dough from oven. Preheat oven to 210 deg C. Bake dough for 30 minutes or until golden brown. (When I first baked bread, I left the loaf in the pan to cool. The cooled bread became soggy at the bottom! What happened was the baked bread contained moisture which evaporated during cooling. So, the baked bread should be turned out from the pan as soon as it's taken out of the oven and cooled on a wire rack. A cookbook recommended that the baked bread should be left to cool for at least 30 minutes before cutting, no matter how tempting the fragance of the freshly baked bread. Being the kiasu Singaporean, I leave my baked loaf to cool for 3 hours before cutting.)

Soft, Tasty Nutella Bread

I adapted my teacher (Chef Oi Lin)'s recipe for white bread to make nutella bread. My nephew loves this nutella bread which is very soft and tasty.

Ingredients
400gm Bread flour
1 tsp Bread improver (I bought this from Phoon Huat.)
1 tsp Dried instant yeast
2 tbsp Sugar
1/2 tsp Salt
240 ml Milk
1 Egg
1 tbsp Softened butter (about 15 gm)
Nutella (cocoa spread)

Method

1. Mix bread flour, bread improver, sugar and salt. Add yeast. Mix well.
2. Add warmed milk. Mix for two minutes by hand. Add egg. Mix another minute. Add butter. Mix another minute. Knead for 8-10 minutes using your hands.
3. Place dough in lightly greased container and put in closed unheated oven for first rise (1.5 hours).
4. After first rise, take dough out from oven, punch down and knead briefly for 1/2 minute. Slam dough down for 40 times, or until dough is shiny and smooth. (A friend taught me this slamming method which apparently improves the texture of the bread. A cookbook which uses this slamming method recommends slamming the dough for 200 times.)
5. Place dough on a flat board or shallow pan and shape into thin large rectangle. Spread nutella on one-third of the dough on one side, then one-third on the opposite side, leaving the centre one-third without the nutella. Roll the dough like a swiss-roll, then fold in the two ends of the rolled dough to seal it.
6. Line loaf tin (9” x 5” x 4”) with greaseproof paper andlightly grease with oil. Leave the shaped dough with nutella in loaf tin and put in closed unheated oven for another 1.5 hours for 2nd rise, until at least double the volume.
7. Remove dough from oven. Preheat oven to 210 deg C. Bake dough for 30 minutes or until golden brown. As the top of the bread browns very quickly, place an aluminium foil, shiny side up, to cover the top of the loaf pan loosely after baking for 10 minutes.
8. Remove baked bread immediately from loaf pan and cool on wire rack.

Spongy Steamed Banana Cake

I love the fragant sweetness of banana cake. While surfing the web for recipes of steamed sponge cakes (which my picky sisters preferred to baked butter cakes), I found a simple recipe for steamed banana cake
(http://amandalwh.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/steam-banana-cake/). As I did not have self-raising flour, I substutited with cake flour plus more baking powder. I tried using all-purpose flour* but the cake turned out to be chewy, like bread. As I also did not have baking soda, I used baking powder instead.
* As a rule of thumb, all-purpose flour can be substituted for self-raising flour by adding 1 tsp baking powder for every 100 gm of all-purpose flour.

My steamed banana cake turned out beautifully at my third attempt, thanks to some tips from a friend who was trained in cooking in a London finishing school.

First, after sifting the flour, do not tap the bowl/plate as this would cause the air in the flour to escape.

Second, do not let the batter stand after mixing in the flour. This is because the baking powder will start to react as soon as it gets wet. The boiling water for steaming must therefore be gotten ready while the flour is being mixed into the batter.

Third, if there is a need to add water for steaming, lift up the cover just a litte (so that as little heat as possible escapes), enough to pour in the additional boiling water into the wok used for steaming. It is important to keep the steaming temperature as constant as possible.

Ingredients:
2 Eggs
100g sugar
2 very ripe bananas*, mashed (200g)
150g cake flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
75g oil (any flavorless oil) (I use my normal cooking oil.)

* I use "red flesh" bananas which we buy every week to eat as a fruit. I just put 2 bananas aside to ripen (till dark spots appear).

Steps:
1. Sift together cakeflour and baking powder, set aside.
2. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together eggs and sugar till ribbon stage. (This means that the egg foam should be so thick that when you lift up the whisk out of it, it leaves a ribbon-like trail which keeps its shape for several seconds on the foam’s surface. It takes me about 15 min to do the whisking by hand. With electric mixer, takes about 5-7 min.)
3. Mix in mashed bananas, beat with a fork till combine.
4. Gently fold in flour mixture and oil, taking care not to deflate the eggs and sugar mixture. (I pour in about half the oil first, fold into the batter with a whisk, then pour in some flour and fold, then the rest of oil, followed by the rest of the flour in batches. Using a whisk enables the folding of flour to be done more quickly, so as to minimise the reaction of the baking powder before steaming.)
5. Pour batter into a round cake tin (6.5 inch diameter), lined with wax paper. (Alternatively, can use a 8" x 4" loaf pan.)
6. Steam over high heat for 20 - 25mins or till an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Better-Tasting Baked Banana Loaf

My sisters don't like cakes with strong buttery taste and fragrance. So I was very happy to chance upon "quickbread" recipes which use less butter and don't require the use of electric mixer.

Here's a recipe for banana bread from http://www.joyofbaking.com/breakfast/BananaBread.html. This banana bread is more cake-like than bread-like, probably because it uses plain flour and not bread flour (which has more gluten).

Ingredients
1 cup (115 grams) walnuts or pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped (optional)
1 3/4 cups (230 grams) all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated white sugar (Use caster sugar.)
1 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup (113 grams) unsalted butter, melted and cooled (According to my baking teacher, Chef Oi Lin, the butter should be melted till 1/2 is liquified and the remaining solid butter is then mashed with a fork into the liquified butter.)
3 ripe large bananas (approximately 1 pound or 454 grams), mashed well (about 1-1/2 cups) (The number of bananas would depend on their size. I had to use about 6-8 bananas to get 400-450gm.)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place oven rack to middle position. Butter and flour (or spray with a non stick vegetable/flour spray) the bottom and sides of a 9 x 5 x 3 inch (23 x 13 x 8 cm) loaf pan. Set aside.
2. Place the nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly toasted. Let cool and then chop coarsely.
3. In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and nuts. Set aside.
4. In a medium-sized bowl combine the mashed bananas, eggs, melted butter, and vanilla.
5. With a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, lightly fold the wet ingredients (banana mixture) into the dry ingredients just until combined and the batter is thick and chunky. (The important thing is not to over mix the batter. You do not want it smooth. Over mixing the batter will yield tough, rubbery bread.)
6. Scrape batter into prepared pan. Bake until bread is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 55 to 60 minutes.
7. Place on a wire rack to cool and then remove the bread from the pan. Serve warm or at room temperature. This bread can be frozen.

Lemon Blueberry Loaf

Fresh blueberries sold at the supermarts are expensive. So I had not thought of making any cakes with them, till my niece told me that fresh blueberries could be bought from the market for just a few dollars. Indeed, one small box of about 120gm of fresh blueberries sells for about $3-4 at the market.

My blueberry loaf turned out to be very good. I didn't add the lemon glaze according to the recipe ( http://www.joyofbaking.com/breakfast/LemonBlueberryBread.html) as I didn't want it too sweet.

Ingredients
1 1/2 cups (195 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons (85 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated white sugar (Use caster sugar.)
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon grated lemon zest (outer yellow skin of the lemon)
1/2 cup (120 ml) milk
1 cup fresh blueberries (I use about 120gm.)

Lemon Glaze:
1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated white sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C) and place the oven rack in the center of the oven. Butter (or spray with a non stick vegetable spray) the bottom and sides of a loaf pan (9 x 5 x 3 inch) (23 x 13 x 8 cm).
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of your electric mixer, or with a hand mixer, beat the butter until softened (about 1 minute). Add the sugar and continue to beat until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract and lemon zest.
4. With the mixer on low, add the flour mixture (in three additions) and milk (in two additions) alternately, starting and ending with the flour. Mix only until combined. Gently fold in the blueberries.
5. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 55 to 65 minutes, or until the bread is golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
6. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, bring the 1/4 cup (50 grams) of sugar and the 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to a boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves.
7. When the bread is done, remove from oven and place on a wire rack. Pierce the hot loaf all over with a wooden skewer or toothpick and then brush the top of the loaf with the hot lemon glaze.
8. Cool the loaf in the pan for about 30 minutes then remove from pan and let cool completely on a wire rack. This bread is best served on the day it is made.

Rich, Steamed Chocolate Fudge Cake

My sisters and I enjoy the famed Lana chocolate fudge cake. So, when I come across Anita Khaw's STEAMED CHOCOLATE CAKE Recipe (http://www.cuisine-asia.com/Reader_recipes/READERec071008.asp), it seems simple enough for a novice like me.

Indeed, Anita's recipe for the cake itself is very easy - doesn't even need any whisking, beating or creaming. Just stir everything together.

The difficult part for me is making the chocolate fudge. This is done using a double boiler until the mixture thickens into the fudge. Somehow, I couldn't get the mixture to thicken even though I followed Anita's recipe. I have tried reducing the amount of water from 175ml to 100ml, but the mixture still wouldn't thicken after 40 minutes' stirring in the double boiler. So, no choice, switch to direct heating of the mixture, which causes it to become lumpy.

Anyhow, the final outcome is a rich, chocolatey cake that's not too sweet (despite the huge amount of sugar used in the cake and fudge, probably because of the huge quantity of cocoa powder used). My friend commented that it's more like a pudding and appropriate for Christmas.

Ingredients:
185g butter
250g fine sugar
200ml evaporated milk
2 eggs, lightly beaten
125g all-purpose flour
70g cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder (The original recipe uses 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp baking soda. As I do not have baking soda, I just double the amount of baking powder.)
1/2 tsp vanilla essence

Method:
1. Combine sugar, evaporated milk, vanilla essence and butter in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved and butter has melted. Remove from heat.
2. Add the beaten eggs into the slightly cooled mixture and stir till well mixed.
3. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and baking soda into a large mixing bowl. Add the eggs mixture over the flour and stir till well mixed. (Batter should be runny).
4. Heat up the steamer.
5. Lined and grease a 6-inch square tin. (Original recipe uses 9-inch baking pan.)
6. Pour the batter into prepared pan and place into the steamer. Cover the top of the pan loosely with a piece of aluminum foil.
7. Steam over medium heat for 45 minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a skewer into the cake. If it comes out clean, it’s done. If not, steam for a further 5 minutes.
8. Cool the cake in pan before turning out for further decoration.

CHOCOLATE FUDGE
(The fudge should be done only after the cake has been steamed and cooling.)

Ingredients:
35g cocoa powder, sifted
1 cup evaporated milk (I equate 1 cup to 200ml, according to my measuring cup.)
2 egg yolks (50g)
50g butter
100ml water (Original recipe has 175ml. I do not know why water is needed when there is already evaporated milk. Even with 100ml water, it still seems too much.)
200g sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
50gm corn flour, sift together with the cocoa powder
1 tsp Nescafe (instant coffee powder)

Method:
1. Mix all ingredients well (except the butter. stir over double boiler at low heat till thickened.
2. Add butter, turn off fire and stir till the butter melts.
3. Pour the warm fudge over the cake to coat evenly.
4. Chill the cake in the fridge before serving.

Soft, Crumbly Chocolate Cake

In my quest to improve my baking skills, I borrowed book after book on baking from the Bishan Library. These books give me great pleasure in satisfying my intellectual curiosity on baking techniques, ingredients and equipment. Some of the cookbooks provide helpful tips on why cakes, muffins, scones, etc sometimes fail.

I was very pleased to find a picture of a zester in one of the cookbooks - this is used to remove tiny strips of peel from oranges and lemons for baking. I had no idea earlier how a zester looks like; with the picture, I was able to buy one from Robinsons. It's now one of my prized baking gadget.

Along the way, I have picked up some cake recipes from the cookbooks. One recipe which I like is for Chocolate Cake (from the essential baking cookbook) as it is soft and crumbly. It also doesn't use that much butter, so suits my sisters.

Here's the recipe:

Ingredients
125 g unsalted butter, softened
125 g caster sugar
40 g icing sugar, sifted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla essence
80 g blackberry jam (I use raspberry jam, as this is what I have in my fridge. The problem with raspberry jam is the seeds embedded in the jam. When I first baked the cake with raspberry jam, I wondered why the cake has hard bits. I later realised these hard bits are the raspberry seeds. For subsequent bakes, I've tried to remove the seeds as much as I can.)
155 g self-raising flour (I use plain flour instead, and add 1.5 tsp baking powder.)
60 g cocoa powder (I sift this to remove any lumps.)
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
250 ml milk (I add 1 tbsp vinegar to help the bicarbonate of soda work better.)

Chocolate buttercream
50 g dark chocolate, finely chopped
25 g unsalted butter
3 tsp cream
30 g icing sugar, sifted

Method
1. Preheat the oven to moderate 180 deg C. Lightly grease a 20 cm square cake tin and line with baking paper.
2. Cream the butter and sugars in a small bowl with electric beaters until light and fluffy. Add the eggs gradually, beating thoroughly after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and jam. Transfer to a large bowl. Using a metal spoon, gently fold in the combined sifted flour, cocoa and soda alternately with the milk. Stir until the mixture is just combined and almost smooth.
3. Pour into the tin and smooth the surface. Bake for 45 min, or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the tin for 15 min before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely.
4. For the buttercream, stir the ingredients in a small pan over low heat until smooth and glossy. Spread over the top with a flat-bladed knife. (My buttercream did not turn out well on first try. I did not sift the icing sugar and lumps of icing sugar in the buttercream make it gritty.)

Steamed Marble Sponge Cake (Kueh Neng Ko)

My sisters love to eat "Kueh Neng Ko" (steamed sponge cake) like the one that my mom used to make, using only sugar, eggs and flour, without butter, milk or cream. I found a recipe that's closest to my mom's at

http://www.razzledazzlerecipes.com/chinese-recipes/steamed-sponge_cake.htm. I modified this recipe to add in a cocoa layer. Unfortunately, I was not able to achieve a marble effect, as the cocoa layer tended to sink to the bottom of the cake.

While I use steaming instead of oven baking, much of the advice in the Straits Times "Ask the Foodie" on baking chiffon and sponge cake is very useful and relevant:

"Baking is a discipline that requires precision and so the first thng to ensure is that you follow the recipe to the letter. In a well-formulated recipe, every ingredient, ratio and method step should have a specific reason for being there.

Check that your oven reaches the right temperatures, that your ingredients are fresh and measured correctly and that your cake pans are the right ones.

For example, you cannot willing nilly bake a chiffon cake batter in a non-chiffon pan, or a loaf pound cake formula in a shallow round tin, or batter for a 20cm cake in a 28cm cake tin, and expect it to come out right. Similarly, you can't substitute ingredients at will without flavour and texture repercussions.

If you've followed a recipe strictly and the results still bomb, ditch it in favour of a more detailed one with troubleshooting tips or explanations of the ingredients and method. Search out authors known for demystifying baking recipes, such as Sherry Yard, Rose Levy Beranbaum and Alice Medrich.

For many sponge cakes, you need to beat whole eggs or egg yolks until they are "ribboning". This means that the egg foam should be so thick that when you lift the whish out of it, it leaves a ribbon-like trail which keeps its shape for several seconds on the foam's surface. Whether you're beating by hand or machine, it always seems to take a bit longer than you think to reach the ribbon stage, so just keep at it. It helps to set the mixing bowl over a pan of hot water to warm up the eggs a little before you start beating.

Probably the single most common chiffon cake mistake is overbeating the egg whites. Stop beating as soon as the whisk leaves behind a peak when you life it - slowly - out of the bowl. If the peak tip curves slightly, that is fine. The beaten whites should still look glossy and moist. Beating them as stiff as a socialite's harido will cause them to weep liquid and deflate when you then fold them into the batter.

When folding ingredients together, always fold the lighter mixture into the heavier. Sweep your spatula right to the bottom of the bowl. A larg but thin-edged spatula and a large, wide mixing bowl make this easier.

Lastly, virtually all cakes naturally sink or contract slightly as they cool. Cake tops should settle down into flatness or slight domes.

If made properly, no cake should sink and form a crater, apart from the few species of chocolate cakes and soulfle cakes that are engineered specifically to do that.

It is perfectly fine to let cakes cool completely in their pans, as long as you have lined them to make removal easier. Or even if you haven't, in the specific case of ciffon cakes, which are so riddled with air holes they must "hand" from their inverted, unlined, ungreased pans while cooling, in order to set their fluffy structure."

The "Kueh Neng Ko" that I make always end up with a flat top. The traditional Kueh Neng Ko that my mom made usually has a raised, split top, like a big smile. Not sure why my Kueh Neng Ko doesn't smile. Well, I'm not the only whose Kueh Neng Ko doesn't have the "huat".

A reader posed this question to the Straits Times "Ask The Foodie":

Q I have made the traditional steamed sponge cake so many times and failed to produce the really light fluffy texture with the "huat" (top split). I used top quality flour, I bought the highest domed steamer I could find and I switched to a bamboo steamer. I have also tried baking soda, cream of tartar, milk powder, brown sugar, icing sugar. But every time, my sponge cakes never quite make it. My 82-year-old mum used to beat the mixture by hand when she was young and her sponge cake would "smile". What did I do wrong?

Answer from "Ask The Foodie":

"The "huat" happens when rapidly rising batter bursts through the kueh's top skin, which sets quickly, during the first few minutes of steaming.

Eggless huat kueh expands mostly in the steamer, as the leavening agents and yeast generate gas.

Sponge cake, in contrast, expands mostly in the mixing bowl, as the whisked eggs foam up and trap air. This means that an insufficient amount of the rising occurs in the steamer to produce a huat.

I cannot say for sure why your mum's sponge "smiled", but many things have changed since then - flour and sugar quality, egg size, even whisks.

In the old days, beating eggs with a spiral whisk in a basin took torturously long to work up a foram. Adding carbonated soda was a short-cut to frothiness.

The large bubbles it causes are actually more unstable and make the batter deflate more when the flour is added. When I tried it with mixer-beaten batter, it yielded sunken, sticky sponges.

Bottom line: Do not worry about it - a huat is not essential for lightness of texture. I have eaten cakes that had good huats but were very heavy.

Try this recipe, which gives me good results. Line the base of a deep 18 or 19cam round cake tin with paper. Whisk 130g Hong Kong flour (look for it in baking supply stores), 10g potato starch and 1 tsp baking powder together well to mix, then sift mixture twice.

With a stand or hand mixer on medium speed, beat 220 eggs (weighed without shells), 140g sugar and 45g condensed milk together until the volume at least quadruples.

When lifted out of the bowl, the whisk should trail a thick ribbon of foam that stays on the surface for at least 10 seconds.

It may take five to six minutes of beating to reach this stage, so be patient. Once you achieve this, beat in 3/4 tsp vinegar.

Sprinkle half the flour over the egg foam. Gently but thoroughly, fold it in with a large whisk - make the same over-and-under folding motion as you would with a spatula.

When it is nearly mixed in, sprinkle over the remaining flour and fold just until the batter is smooth. Scrape it into the tin, and steam over high heat for 22 to 25 minutes.

Do not overcook or the cake will be tough."

Anyway, here's my adapted recipe for steamed marble sponge cake.

Steamed Sponge Cake (Soy Zing Dan Gow)

Servings: 8-9

Ingredients:
4 large eggs
1 large egg white
3/4 cup granulated sugar (This is about 150 gm.)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup sifted cake flour (This is about 114 gm.)
1/2 tsp baking powder (I use "double-action baking poweder" which has 2 leavening actions. Double-acting powder releases a small amount of carbon dioxide when mixed and the balance when heated. This gives me more time to mix in the cocoa powder after mixing in the flour.)
1 tbsp cocoa powder, sifted

Method:
1. Line the bottom of an 8-inch round cake pan (with 2 to 3-inch tall sides) with wax paper cut to fit.
2. In a large bowl, with a mixer on high speed, beat whole eggs, egg white, and sugar until thick and pale yellow, 4 to 5 minutes. Stir in vanilla. In a small bowl, mix flour and baking powder until blended. With a whisk, fold flour mixture into egg mixture until evenly blended.
3. Put about 1/3 of batter into another mixing bowl. Mix in the cocoa powder.
4. Pour the rest of batter into the cake pan. Drop spoonfuls of the cocoa batter over the top of the white batter.
5. Steam cake over medium heat for 25 - 30 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. If necessary, add more boiling water to maintain level. Remove cover quickly and carefully so condensed steam doesn't drip onto cake. Remove cake from steamer.
6. Let cake cool at least 10 minutes. With a serrated knife, cut cake into diamonds or wedges. Serve warm or cool.

Rather Good Coconut Cake

I had some leftover grated coconut (after baking tapioca cake using okto recipe) and decided to try baking a coconut cake.

A recipe from a friend's cookbook 'Cooking, a commonsense guide' turned out to be rather good.

Prepn: 15 min
Cooking: 55 min
Serves: 8

Ingredients:
185 g butter, chopped and softened
250 g caster sugar
90 g desiccated coconut (I used my leftover fresh, grated coconut which turned out well.)
125 ml buttermilk or plain yoghurt (I left this out as I don't have any at home. My niece commented that my coconut cake was too dry. On hindsight, maybe can try using coconut milk the next time.)
2 tsp vanilla essence
3 eggs, lightly beaten
185 g self-raising flour
40 g cornflour
1 tbsp caster sugar, extra
2 tbsp desiccated coconut, extra

Method:
1. Preheat oven to moderate 180 deg C. Lightly grease a 23 x 13 x 7 cm loaf tin with melted butter or oil. Line the base and sides with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter, sugar, coconut, buttermilk or yoghurt, vanilla and eggs briefly with electric beaters until combined. Add the sifted flours and beat on low speed to combine. Beat on medium speed for 1 min or until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Do not overbeat.
3. Carefully spoon the mixture into the tin and smooth the surface with a spatula. Sprinkle the combined extra sugar and coconut over the top.
4. Bake for 50-55 min or until a skwer comes out clean when inserted into the center of the cake. Cover the cake loosely with foil during the last 15 min of cooking to prevent the coconut topping from overbrowning. Leave the cake in the tin for 5 min before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

Not-So-Sweet-And-Sinful Ornee

I can never resist ornee (Teochew yam pudding). As I have stopped eating out at restaurants, I wanted to learn to cook it myself.

I used a fork to mash the steamed yam, and the ornee turned out to be somewhat coarse. A blender would give a smooth paste, but I was too lazy to use and wash up the blender.

The following recipe by chef Lee turned out to be very good - very fragant (due to the use of shallot oil) and not too sweet.

Yam Pudding with Pumpkin & Gingko (Gim Gua Bei Kuih Oh Nee) Recipe

by Chef Lee Weng Eng
http://kuali.com/recipes/viewrecipe.asp?r=1864

Ingredients
· 150g peeled pumpkin
· 600g yam, peeled
· 300 ml water
· 20 gingko nuts, shelled
· 1 tablespoon sugar
· 500 ml water
· 100g lard/oil/shortening
· 2 shallots, sliced thinly
· 120g sugar
· 1/8 tsp salt

Lotus Root Sauce (optional):
· 1 tablespoon lotus root powder or cornflour
· 3 tablespoons water
· 1/2 tablespoon sugar

Method
1. Steam pumpkin until soft, then mash, cube or puree it.
2. Cut yam into thick slices and steam over high heat for approximately 20 minutes, or cooked through. In an electric blender, liquidise steamed yam with water. Sieve.
3. Split gingkoes and remove the bitter-tasting plumule. Place gingkoes, sugar and water to cover in a small pot and boil over low heat until water dries up and gingkoes turn a shiny yellow.
4. In a pan, heat oil and fry shallots to make shallot oil. Remove shallot crisps for other use.
5. Add sugar and salt to the shallot oil in the pan. Stir slowly over very low fire and at the same time add the yam puree. You may add a little oil from the edge of the pan so that the yam paste will not stick to the pan.Continue stirring until thoroughly mixed, about 20 minutes.
6. Dish out onto a shallow dish or individual moulds.
7. Top with the pumpkin and gingkoes. Serve warm.

Lotus Root Sauce:
Mix the lotus root powder or cornflour and water. Place in a pan with the sugar and boil until it thickens. Pour onto the yam pudding to enhance its smoothness.

Note: LEE WENG ENG is a Teochew and owner-chef of the New Formosa Restaurant. Trained in Taiwan and Hong Kong, he specialises in Teochew, Sichuan and Taiwanese cuisine.

Exquisite Orh-Chut (Black Glutinous Rice Porridge or Bubur Pulut Hitam)

I've always wanted to try cooking "orh-chut" (black glutinous rice porridge), a sweet dessert that my mom used to cook. But I didn't do so earlier as I thot a lot of stirring would be required (else the black glutinuous rice may stick to the pot) or else a slow cooker (which I don't have) should be used.

As I had some leftover coconut milk (after cooking chicken curry), I decided to give the orh-chut a try. I used an ordinary pot over gas stove and contrary to my earlier expectations, the stirring was required only towards the end when the rice porridge began to thicken - so no need for slow cooker lah.

I've tried orh-chut which uses vanilla ice cream instead of coconut milk. My personal preference is still coconut milk. While the ice cream has rich milky flavour, it makes the black glutinous rice too "cold" whereas I like it to be piping hot.

Black Glutinous Rice Porridge (Bubur Pulut Hitam) Recipe by Amy Beh
(http://kuali.com/recipes/viewrecipe.asp?r=119)

Ingredients
(Serves about 12 persons)
300g black glutinous rice
5 litres water
100g castor sugar
100g palm sugar
75g dried longans, rinsed
2–3 pandan leaves, knotted

Combine:
2 tbsp corn flour and 3 tbsp water (I didn't add the corn flour mixture as I find the cooked black glutinous rice to be thick enough.)

thick milk from 1 coconut (I used Ayam brand, trim coconut milk, which comes in a pre-packed package - available from NTUC. This was highly recommended by one of the Straits Times food writers as substitute for fresh coconut milk.)
1/2 tsp salt

Method
1. Wash glutinous rice thoroughly and soak in water for several hours.
2. Put rice and water into a pot and cook over medium heat until rice is soft and almost creamy.
3. When rice has reached the desired consistency, add dried longans and pandan leaves.
4. Add both types of sugar and simmer for a further 10–15 minutes over gentle heat. (Never add sugar to the glutinous rice at the start or you’ll have difficulty cooking it.)
5. Add thickening to the glutinous rice and bring to a boil, then remove from heat.
6. To serve: put two to three tablespoons of thick coconut milk into each bowl of glutinous rice porridge.

Baked Tapioca Cake (Bingka Ubi Kayu)

We used to eat steamed tapioca with sugar when we were young. Once, one of my aunts brought us a baked tapioca cake; it was so delicious. This baked tapioca cake is similar to the one sold in Bangawan Solo (bingka ubi kayu).

My first attempt to bake tapioca cake was based on a nonya recipe from the mediacorp okto website (http://oktonite.sg/microsites/waysofthematriarch/recipes.htm). Alas, my sisters do not like the okto recipe as it uses butter. I was happy to find another recipe that does not have butter (http://www.resepirrrecipe.com/recipe_details.php?rec_id=200). This recipe for Malay traiditonal cake turned out to be rather good.

Ingredients
1 kg tapioca tubers (ubi kayu)
220g white sugar (gula putih)
400 ml coconut milk (santan)
1 egg (telur)
Pinch of salt (secubit garam)

Method
1) Grate the tapioca, avoid taking the tough fibre that runs down the centre of the tubers. Weigh the grated tapioca, you should obtain a final yield of 800g.
2) Squeeze it in a muslin cloth or press in a sieve, collecting the juice in a small bowl and retaining the grated tapioca. Leave the juice undisturbed for 15 minutes and then carefully pour off, discarding the liquid on the top, leaving behind the tapioca starch the bottom of the bowl.
3) Combine the grated tapioca, tapioca starch, sugar, coconut milk, beaten egg and salt.
4) Lightly brush the inside of a shallow round or square cake tin roughly 16cm across, with light vegetable oil or butter. pour the tapioca cake mixture into the tin.
5) Level the top with a spoon and bake in a preheated 200C oven for about 40 minutes or until golden brown.
6) Cool before cutting in squares.

Well-Loved Lek Tau Suan

My sis didn't like the tau suan that I cooked for the first time - too starchy for her palate. Hence, I was very happy to read the Straits Times "Ask the Foodie" column writing about thickners to use for tau suan in response to a reader's query :

"Intrigued by the variations in different tau suan recipes, I set out to investigate. I collected 11 thickeners: rice flour, glutinous rice flour, sago flour, potato starch, sweet potato starch, arrowroot starch, mung bean starch (hoon kueh flour), cornstarch, tapioca starch, water chestnut starch and wheat starch (tang mien).

I dissolved 5g of each starch in 150g water, then brought each solution just to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly, before taking it off the heat.

Here are the results: Gritty water chestnut starch needed to be crushed to a powder before being dissolved, but in the end, had the best mouthfeel, velvety and smooth without being too sticky. Second best was sweet potato, followed by sago and then potato. Tapioca, the only one of all the starches to not form a skin on cooling, had the stickist, gummiest mouthfeel.

Arrowroot had the most neutral flavour and sweet potato starch had a non-neutral but pleasant, very faintly sweet taste that I imagine would be compatible with most Asian desserts. Potato starch had the most colourless and also most translucent appearance. Sago flour, curiously, had a noticeable pinkist tint.

As for thickening ability, rice and glutinous rice were the most powerful thickeners, followed in order by potato starch, sago flour, water chestnut starch, sweet potato starch, wheat starch, tapioca startch, arrowroot, cornstarch and finally, mung bean starch.

So here is a tau suan recipe: Begin by soaking split, skinned mung beans in water for 30 min. Drain them well, then spread them in a wire sieve and steam over high heat for 20 - 25 min, until tender. Taste the beans frequently after the first 15 min to check if they are done.

Rinse the cooked bean lightly under running water and set aside. Simmer knotted pandan leaves with rock sugar - some cooks also add dried tangerine peel - to make a light syrup, sweetened to suit yourself.

For every litre of syrup, dissolve 20 g of water chestnut starch and 15 g of potato starch in a little water, then stir into the syrup and simmer for a few min until it thickens. Stir in the mung beans and when the tau suan just comes up to aboil, turn off the heat. Serve immediately.

Once most starches reach their thickening peak, further stirring and heating will thin them out, so if you want to make tau suan in advance, cook the mung beans and make the syrup first, then thicken and assemble the dessert just before serving."

The recipe from "Ask the Foodie" is very similar to other recipes that I found on the internet. I find the recipe from Desserts (Mini cookbooks series) (http://www.noobcook.com/2008/10/13/tau-suan-split-green-bean-soup/), published by Marshall Cavendish, gives the best results (according to my sisters' standard). My adapted recipe is given below.

I've tried Chef Lee Weng Eng's recipe (http://kuali.com/recipes/viewrecipe.asp?r=1862) but my sisters found the tau suan too watery and didn't like the orange peel added to the tau suan. Chef Lee's recipe uses twice as much water as Marshall Cavendish's.

Ingredients
(Serves about 10-12 persons)
500g split green (mung) bean
4 pandan leaves, washed and tied to a knot
170g rock sugar
50g granulated sugar (I added granulated sugar to the original recipe as I found that 50g of rock sugar was not sweet enough)
2 litres water (I use slightly more water than the original recipe.)
2-4 “you tiao” (fried dough fritters/”you char kway“), depending size and liking, sliced

Thickener:
80g sweet potato flour (or water chestnut flour), mixed with 250ml water (I use much less thickener than the original recipe as my sisters don't like the tau suan to be starchy.)

Method
1. Soak the beans in water for 1 hour, drained and rinse again with water. Drain again.
2. Steam the beans for 25 minutes, or until they are soft. (I steam the 500g of beans in 2 batches, using a tray with wire mesh bottom so that the condensed steam will not collect at the bottom and soak the beans. The beans are steamed with pandan leaves to make them more fragant. A friend taught that I should tear the leaves in the middle, rather than cut them with a knife, so as to release the fragance of the leaves.)
3. In a pot, add water, pandan leaves and sugar. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, and add in the steamed beans.
4. Before using the thickener, stir the solution again to make sure it is even. Stir in the thickener slowly until mixture thickens.
5. Ladle into serving bowls and top with you tiao. Serve hot or warm.

Home-made Traditional Kaya

Shortly after my mom's death, I tried making kaya, based on what I could recall of how she did it. My mom's method involved cooking the egg-sugar-coconut-milk mixture over a low fire and then steaming the mixture. The end result was terrible - the mixture remained watery and did not thicken to the expected consistency. I suspect the steam condensed into the mixture, that's why it remained watery.

When my uncle asked me recently to cook kaya for him (just like my mom's), I decided to try a kaya recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook, "Local Kueh". This time, my kaya did thicken but the egg white separated from the mixture and the egg white could be tasted in the kaya. I had done exactly what the cookbook recipe said - mix the eggs with sugar, then stir in the coconut milk before cooking the mixture in a small pot placed inside a large pot of boiling water. No steaming was required.

So why did the egg white separate from the rest of the mixture when it was cooked? I gather from two internet recipes that the eggs, sugar and coconut milk need to be beaten together (with electric mixer) so that they combine thoroughly, not just stirred together with a spoon.

So back to the stove to try again using the method from the internet recipe at http://www.kaya.sg/kaya_recipe.htm. Instead of electric mixer, I used a balloon whisk to beat the eggs, sugar and coconut milk by hand. End result? The egg white did not separate from the mixture this time and the kaya was an improvement. However, somehow the sugar did not caramelise and the kaya remained yellowish in colour and not fragrant enough. Not sure if it's because I used a ceramic pot (instead of steel pot) to cook in the big pot of boiling water. Or perhaps the kaya needs to be cooked over direct fire so that the sugar can caramelise, instead of cooking in a pot of boiling water. More experimentation to be done .....

When I shared my kaya-making experiments with my dear friend Annie who's Peranakan, she gave me her sister's recipe. This recipe requires a portion of the sugar to be carmelised separately. At first, I used a steel pot to try carmelising the sugar over low direct heat; the sugar became very dry but did not carmelise. Annie advised me to use an enamelled pot. And so I did at my next attempt. And the sugar did melt and carmelise to a nice golden colour in the enamelled pot!

Annie's recipe is reproduced below. Instead of using fresh coconut milk, I use the Ayam brand of packaged coconut milk. The packaged coconut milk comes in a pack of 200ml. So I use only the 200ml of coconut milk with 5 eggs+1 egg yolk. Based on the recipe from the Joy of Cooking cookbook, I should use 450ml of coconut milk with 10 eggs or 225ml of coconut milk with 5 eggs. Not sure if shortfall of 25ml of coconut milk affects the kaya, but I'm not prepared to open another package of 200ml just to use 25 ml.

Ingredients
Coconut milk from 1 fresh coconut (squeeze out without adding water)
6 medium eggs minus 1 egg white (ie 6 yokes and 5 egg whites)
1 1/2 cups of coarse sugar (approx 300 gm)
A few pandan leaves

Method
1. Coconut milk should be fresh, pure and undiluted. Packed coconut milk (available from super markets) can be used as substitute. Make sure the coconut milk is NOT diluted.
2. Add coconut milk to the eggs, stir in one direction only to mix together. (Important: Do not beat so that the texture will not become coarse.) Test by using chopstick to ensure egg white is broken. Sieve the mixture (to remove bits of egg white).
3. Take out 5 or 6 tbsp of sugar and put the balance sugar into the sieved coconut milk-egg mixture. Stir until sugar is melted.
4. For the 5 or 6 tbsp of sugar taken out, put into an enamelled pot and cook (without water) over direct low heat. Stir vigorously until sugar is melted and carmelise. It takes about 5-10 minutes for the sugar to carmelise.
5. Pour the coconut milk-egg-sugar mixture onto the carmelised sugar in the enamelled pot, add the pandan leaves and double-boil at a very low flame. Water should be at boiling point.
6. Stir the mixture continuously until it is thickened to a texture like condensed milk (about 25-30 min). Make sure the spoon/spatula touches the bottom of the pot when stirring to avoid burns at the bottom. When the kaya has thickened and stick to the pot, cut the flame and leave aside to cool. (Shelf life of the kaya is shorter if the mixture leaves the side of the pot.)

Note:
For double-boiling, pour water into a bigger pot and set it to boil. Meanwhile the kaya will be inside a smaller pot immersed in the boiling water. This prevents the kaya from direct contact with the flame, which eliminates kaya burns. Put some oil in the water to prevent boiling water from splashing into the kaya. Note that constant stirring is still necessary.

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