White Chocolate & Blueberry Muffins

One failed attempt after another in 2 weeks gave me the illusion that yes, I am not made to bake muffins. The last 2 attempts in making muffins turned out to be disastrous. When you are longing for baked goods and decides to spend 20 mins preparing and waiting an additional 25 mins for them to bake, one would be anticipating some wonderful, cake-like delectables right? Well, the last 2 times I baked, I felt like I was cursed. My 1st attempt was in making Spiced Peach Muffins, whilst the 2nd attempt was in making Mixed Berry Crumble Muffins...both were meant to be really nice but NO, my damn muffins stuck to the paper cases and the insides of the muffin came out doughy. I swear I didn't miss a step and followed the recipes to the T. So what went wrong? I've made cupcakes and muffins before and never failed so dismally. After thinking it through, I think it HAS TO do with those DAMN muffin paper cases I bought from Coles. If you ever go to Coles, DON'T EVER, EVER buy the muffin cases by the makers of "Bakeit" - these muffin cases look cute on the outside, with mini bananas and strawberries printed on them but don't be fooled - don't use them because your muffins will stick to the paper and you will have to literally rip the paper off your muffins.

Today was my 3rd attempt in making muffins - my 3rd time in 2 weeks. Lo & behold, they turned out soooo well! This time, I didn't use those cursed muffin cases but instead used my other cheap, plain, white & foiled muffin cases which served me well many a times. The muffins I tried this time around were White Chocolate & Blueberry Muffins. These turned out soooo well!! The muffins were very light and fluffy, and just right with the amount of sweetness. This recipe is definitely a keeper. I'm going to use this recipe and improvise a bit next time to make Dark Chocolate and Cherry Muffins. First we'll need to clear these puppies off first - which shouldn't be too hard! They're really really yummy. I'm so happy my 3rd set of muffins turned out so well. Let's just say I will never use those cursed muffin cases again and if you ever come across them in your supermarket, remember this - DON'T BUY THEM!


White Chocolate & Blueberry Muffins
(makes 15)

2 cups self raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar
125g white chocolate, cut into chunks
2 lights, lightly beaten
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract
100g butter, melted
1 punnet of blueberries

- Preheat oven to 180C. Line your muffin pan.
- Sift flour into a large bowl. Add sugar and white chocolate chunks. Stir until well combined.
- Whisk eggs, buttermilk, vanilla and melted butter together in a separate bowl.
- Use a large metal spoon, stir butter mixture into the flour mixture until just combined. Gently swirl through blueberries.
- Spoon mixture into muffin pan. Bake for 25 mins or until a skewer inserted into the centre of the muffin comes out clean. Stand in pan for 5 mins. Turn onto a wire rack. Serve.

Prawn & Chives Fried Rice / Watercress, Carrot & Pork Soup

Watercress, Carrot & Pork soup is a typical Cantonese style soup. What typifies a Cantonese style soup is that the soup is a clear broth that is prepared by simmering meat and other ingredients (vegetable and sometimes herbal ingredients) for several hours. You may eat the ingredients with your soup or dish them out and serve them with a little soy sauce to eat with rice and other prepared dishes.


Watercress, Carrot & Pork Soup

1 bunch Watercress, washed thoroughly
1 large carrot, chopped into bite sized pieces
1 piece of pork fillet
2 dried dates
salt to taste

- Add 3/4 water to a pot and bring this to the boil
- Add in pork fillet, carrots and dates
- Add in watercress
- Turn the heat down to medium and let the soup bubble away for 1 hour
- After 1 hour, turn the heat down to allow the soup to simmer for another hour
- Add salt to taste

I used pork fillet in the soup but some people prefer to use pork bones or chicken bones. If you are using pork bones, bring the water the the boil and add in pork bones first and let this boil away until all the bone marrow and scum float up to the top of the water. You will need to skim this away otherwise it will leave specks of grey in your soup so it won't look as clear. I used pork fillet because it's very lean so there is no need to skim off any fatty residue from your soup. Another tip worth noting is that you should boil your water first before you add in the watercress - if you don't, your soup will be bitter - that's what my mum told me.

You should be able to find ingredients such as watercress and dried dates in your local Chinese grocery stores. The dried dates, carrots & pork add sweetness to the soup and when the soup is boiled, the taste and smell of watercress is very apparent. Soup is very good for you. Drinking soup apparently gives you nice skin and who doesn't want that?

I also made Prawn & Chives Fried Rice to go with our soup tonight. Hubby says I should clear out everything that's in our fridge/pantry before I'm allowed to buy anymore groceries. He thinks I go overboard when it comes to food shopping. I guess he's right! So for this coming week, I will attempt to come up with dinner ideas from food that we already have at home so I'll need to be creative.


Prawn, Chives & Ginger Fried Rice
(serves 2)

1 cup brown rice, cooked
8 frozen tiger prawns, thawed then cut
1 bunch of Chinese chives, chopped
2 tsp grounded fresh ginger
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp soy sauce
white pepper to taste

- In a frying pan, add in the ground ginger. Stir-fry until fragrant.
- Add in cooked brown rice. Coat well with fried ginger.
- Add in chopped chives. Mix well with rice.
- Add in prawns
- Stir-fry until all of the ingredients are cooked and mixed well together
- Add in lightly beaten egg. Mix this in thoroughly and should coat the rice. You don't want large lumps of egg in your fried rice.
- Add in soy sauce. Stir.
- Sprinkle white pepper to taste. Stir.
- Serve immediately

Chinese chives are flatter, longer and has a stronger smell than chives you may normally find in your local supermarket. The chives and ginger make the dish very very fragrant. It's worth trying this version over the typical fried rice you may find in Chinese takeaway stores. It's very tasty and extremely easy to make.

An Afternoon Hanging Around Glebe

It's been over a week since I've last posted. I've been really busy lately and haven't had the chance to cook much last week. I wonder if anyone missed me :)

My hubby and I ventured out to Glebe late Saturday afternoon to check out the Glebe Market. This Market is open every Saturday and it's a great place to look for vintage items at bargain prices as well as pieces from aspiring designers. There are also food stalls at the Market and one of them worth mentioning is a Turkish pide store that is always there without fail every Saturday. More on this in a minute.

First, let me share with you on my experience at the Fair Trade Coffee Co - a cafe on Glebe Point Road, located not far from the Market. My hubby and I came here before we went into the Market because by the time we got to Glebe, it was already 3pm and I was starving. It would've been 24hr+ since I last had food in my stomach. The only thing that kept me going til 3pm was water. So I was getting cranky and needed some food desperately. We headed into the Fair Trade Coffee Co. and I immediately ordered their Buckwheat pancake with strawberries & apples (asking them to bring me honey instead of maple syrup) whilst hubby ordered toasted sourdough with butter & honey and a flat white. Our orders came after 20mins and I was totally disappointed at the sight of my pancakes and my hubby's toast.

This is a photo of the pancakes:

The presentation of it was not good. The dish came with 3 pancakes and on top of each pancake were slices of strawberries and long thin slices of Granny Smith apples. When I ordered, I asked for honey instead of maple syrup but a small ramekin of maple syrup came with the pancakes instead so the waitress had to go back into the kitchen to swap it with honey. A minor mistake is OK with me. Since I was already starving by the time my pancakes arrived, I dug into it even before the waitress came back with my pot of honey. OMG, these pancakes were the worst pancakes I have ever tasted. First of all, it was cold..ok, a little lukewarm...secondly, it was slightly burnt...and the third point I want to raise is that they were tasteless and dry, like chokingly dry. The honey didn't make them any better so I ate 1.5 of them and got my husband to eat the rest but all he did was to eat a small piece of it and left the sorry looking pancakes on the plate.

As for my husband's toasted sourdough bread with butter and honey - sorry we didn't take a picture of it so trust me on my description of it. When his order came, he wasn't given a butter knife so he had to ask the waitress to go get one for him. But the most shocking thing was the size of the order - 2 tiny, thin pieces of toasted sourdough bread were laid out on the plate and they just looked so tiny on a normal sized plate. I can't remember how much it was but our reactions were "gees, we paid money for this?! why are they soooo small?!" I felt jipped, so jipped. The only thing that was good was the coffee. Well I thought it was good because I like weak coffee but hubby said it was just alright...and he's a coffee drinker so he knows coffee way better than me.

I wasn't satisfied after our cafe experience. I was still starving and was getting even crankier. So we headed off to the markets and I had to find the food stall I can always rely on for a quick and tasty meal. I headed directly to the Turkish pide store (run by 2 Turkish ladies - I think it's a mother & daughter team) and ordered their vegetarian pide. They sell 2 types - (1) Spinach & Fetta (2) Spinach, Fetta & Lamb. I ordered the Spinach & Fetta pide. As soon as I gave the lady my money, her mother chopped the pide into 6 pieces and placed it on a plastic plate and topped it with a sliced piece of lemon. Oh it smelt soooo good and it was pipping hot. We found a spot near the lawn and sat down to enjoy this somewhat oily but delicious pide and did some people watching. Here is a photo of the pide. It totally satisfied my empty stomach. I didn't need any fancy buckwheat pancakes, a pipping hot & oily pide did it for me that day.


The Fair Trade Company Co.
33 Glebe Point Road
Glebe NSW 2037
Phone (02) 9660-0621

The Glebe Market
Glebe Public School
Glebe Point Road
When: Every Saturday
Time: 9.30am-4.30pm

Mini Cinnamon Palmiers

I haven't eaten Palmiers in ages. Palmiers are also known to me as "butterfly biscuits" - that's what they call these in HK and the name is so fitting because the curly bits really do remind me of wings on a butterfly.

Since I had only 1.5 pieces of puff pastry in my freezer, it wasn't a hard decision to use them all up to make my butterfly biscuits. I made mini cinnamon palmiers which are perfect as mid morning snacks.

I packaged these mini palmiers and took them to work for a few friends of mine. They were very well received!


Mini Cinnamon Palmiers


1.5 sheets of puff pastry, partially thawed
1/8 cup raw sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp honey
2 tbsp hot water

- Preheat oven to 220c. Line a tray with non stick baking paper.
- Place puff pastry on the workbench. Sprinkle one side with raw sugar. Turn this over and sprinkle the other side with raw sugar and cinnamon.
- Tightly roll one end of the puff pastry to the middle. Do the same with the other end. Cover with cling wrap and put this in the freezer for 15 mins until the pastry becomes hard.
- Take the pastry out of the freezer, unwrap cling wrap and cut roll into 0.5 cm slices. Place palmiers on the lined tray. Allow room for the puff pastry to expand when baking.
- Bake this for 8 mins. Meanwhile, dissolve the honey in hot water. After the palmiers have been baking in the oven for 8 mins, take the tray out and brush each palmier with the honey water. Put the tray back into the oven for an extra 3-4 mins until brown.
- When browned on one side, slip each of the palmiers over and brush the other side with the honey water. Bake for another 3-4 mins until brown.
- Cool on wire rack.

Cooking Salmon - 2 Ways

I went grocery shopping yesterday and bought a pack of salmon fillets from Coles. A pack of salmon comes with 2 equal sizes of the fish and since I'm home alone again, it served its purpose over 2 dinners. So economical.

Yesterday's dinner was Pesto Salmon on Wasabi Soba, accompanied by steamed broccolini. Tonight's dinner was Green Curry Salmon with Tofu and Mushrooms. Both very quick and easy to make. Dinner for 1 can be just as enjoyable. All the more reason for cooking up something tasty and enjoying dinner whilst watching your favourite TV show.

Pesto Salmon on Wasabi Soba & Steamed Broccolini

1 piece of salmon fillet
1 tsp pesto
1 handful of organic soba
1 tbsp Hakubaku Wasabi Noodle Sauce
1 bunch broccolini
1 tsp extra-virgin olive oil
Dijon mustard
salt and pepper

- Rub pesto over salmon; refrigerate for 10 mins;
- Meanwhile, bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil. Add in broccolini and cook for 2 mins. When ready, transfer the broccolini to a sieve. When dry, place on plate.
- You can use the same water that was used for the broccolini to cook the soba. Cook for 4 mins or until the noodles are just tender. Drain & rinse over with warm water.
- Toss the noodles with the Wasabi Noodle Sauce. Place on plate.
- Add olive oil to a heated pan. Cook the salmon, 2 mins on each side or until cooked to your liking.
- Serve salmon on the Wasabi soba and drizzle Dijon mustard on top.


Green Curry Salmon with Tofu and Mushrooms


1 piece of salmon fillet, cut into cubes
6 button mushrooms, sliced
1/2 pack of firm tofu, sliced
1 tbsp green curry paste
1/4 cup buttermilk
Coriander, to garnish

- In a saucepan over medium heat, add in the green curry paste. Cook until the flavour comes through.
- Add in buttermilk and a splash of water. Bring this to the boil then add in salmon cubes and mushrooms. Let this simmer for 2 mins.
- Add in tofu. Cook for another 2 mins.
- The dish should have enough flavour in it so you shouldn't need to add in any salt or pepper. However, if you wish, you could add in a few drops of fish sauce (but I don't think that's necessary)
- Garnish with corinander.

Double Chocolate & Macadamia Nut Cake

This cake was made for my brother's gf, M, who celebrated her 2x bday yesterday. Happy Birthday! I thought it would be fitting to make her a birthday cake to celebrate the occasion.

From what M told me, she likes chocolate and nuts, and she has a liking towards white chocolate. So that's how this Double Chocolate & Macadamia Nut cake came about.

This is my first birthday cake attempt. Maybe it was me and I was very particular about getting it right, the whole process took me a few hours to make. Most foodies out there will probably take a lot less time than me. Initially I wanted to make a round cake but alas, my cake box was alot smaller than I had thought so I had to cut the cake into a square shape instead. The cake ended up being smaller than I had in mind. Eventually, after many hours in the kitchen, my creation was born. I got some reviews back and the birthday girl said the cake was delicious. Am so happy it turned out well.

Happy Birthday M! I hope you had a great one!


Double Chocolate & Macadamia Nut Cake

Chocolate Cake:
3 eggs
2 cups sugar
6 tbsp cocoa
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
1 cup margarine
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup boiling water
2 tsp vanilla essence

- Preheat oven to 180C
- Line 2 round cake pans (8 inch - I used a 9 inch and made this twice coz that's all I had) with baking paper, grease the sides
- Sift the flour, baking soda, cocoa and salt into a bowl
- Add in the eggs, margarine, buttermilk, vanilla and water
- Using an electric mixer, beat on low setting then increase the speed until the batter is smooth
- Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan and bake for 40 mins, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean
- Cool in the pan for 30 mins then turn the cakes out onto a cooling rack to cool completely.

Dark Chocolate Frosting:
180g unsweetened dark chocolate, melted and cooled
1 cup butter, at room temperature
2 cups icing sugar
1 tbsp vanilla essence

- In a bowl, beat butter until creamy
- Add icing sugar and continue to beat until fluffy
- Add vanilla
- Add cooled and melted chocolate
- The icing should look glossy and smooth

Decoration:
18 caramelized macadamia nuts
White chocolate shavings

- When the cakes are cooled, use a spatula and spread the dark chocolate frosting evenly on the top of one cake
- Place the second cake on top
- Continue to spread the frosting evenly on the top and sides of the cake
- Decorate the top of the cake with the caramelized macadamia nuts and fill the rest of the top layer with white chocolate shavings

Foodie Blogroll

I'm now on the Foodie Blogroll! Yay! I've wanted to join this since I've started my blog so I could start sharing my recipes with other food enthusiasts out there.

To join, simply go to this website: Foodie Blogroll

I hope I'll meet and interact with more of you out there. Happy to be a part of the group now :)