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Of Food and perhaps a little about me
Archive for Recipes: Dessert
January 6, 2009 at 11:39 pm · Filed under TWD, Recipes: Dessert
Lovely, sweet and absolutely delicious!! As I’m extremely pleased with the result, I am still grinning away while typing this. Readers who have read my previous post about my Twofer Pie will come to know that my crust went totally wrong. But this time, it’s perfect for me! The right amount of butter and proper tart pans were used and the French pear tart came out looking so good.
The recipe uses a sweet tart dough to make the crust which is actually cookie dough. It’s the base for French sables or shortbread. As I do not have a food processor, I used my hands again to rub in the butter into the flour. I halved the recipe to make 2 small tarts. Best of all, there wasn’t a need to roll out the dough. All I need to do was to press the dough into the fluted tart pans.
Canned pears were used as I couldn’t find any fresh pears in the supermarket. You can replace with other fruits like peaches, it should work well too. I didn’t really understand the instructions on the arrangement of the pears on the tart as there wasn’t any photo that came along with the recipe. My first tart looked weird and ugly as it was my first time arranging fruits on a tart. B came to my aid and helped me arrange the pears for the second one. Boy, the tart looked quite professionally done. He insisted that I take a photo of both the tarts to show everyone who did a better job.
A little problem I encounter was when the tarts were in the oven baking, the almond cream overflowed. The one that was nicely arranged had a lot of cream flowing out. I guess it’s because there were more slices of pears? And this one, the almond cream didn’t set well, still soggy after it was baked. Perhaps I forgot to pat the pears dry before putting them on the tart. On the other hand, the uglier tart didn’t have the almond cream ooze out much, and set much better.
With the nice sweet aroma lingering in the kitchen, I couldn’t wait to eat the tart! Just a few quick shots of the pear tart, I quickly got a knife to slice the tart. Oooo… Awesome!! It’s a little tart and I thought it tasted a bit like pineapple tarts. The almond filling goes so well with the pear and the sweet tart. It’s pretty hard to impress B but he commented that this pear tart is good. And that puts a smile on my face.
This week’s recipe is chosen by none other than the author of the book herself, Dorie Greenspan, for the first Tuesdays with Dorie bake for the year 2009. With Dorie choosing this French pear tart, this must be one of her favorites. It indeed was a very satisfying dessert. Thanks, Dorie!
November 30, 2008 at 10:45 pm · Filed under TWD, Recipes: Dessert, Recipes: Baking
Finally! I have joined the fun group, Tuesdays With Dorie. I read about great reviews of this book, Baking from home to yours by Dorie Greenspan and had wanted to buy it since. I got it for only SGD20.00 after a 20% discount with the addition of a $20 voucher.
I’m already late with this entry. Although we do not celebrate Thanksgiving, I don’t mind trying out the recipe as this will be the first time I’m making a pumpkin pecan pie. Sounds delicious, isn’t it? Vibi from La Casserole Carrée, is the host this week. Check out her site for the recipe.
The recipe asks for shortening and I didn’t managed to buy them, so I just skipped that totally by adding more butter. With no food processor or a pastry cutter, I went ahead to make the pie dough using my fingertips, the rubbing-in method. I knew that I had to work fast. But it seemed that there wasn’t enough flour for me to work with and the butter starts to melt a little. The whole dough seemed so greasy and wet and I’m not sure if I was doing it correctly.
The dough was to stay in the refrigerator for an hour for it to harden up before rolling. The rolling was tough with a new rolling pin, although I made sure I rolled the dough on a floured kitchen counter. First roll out, and the dough cracked. Gee.. was the dough too hard? This is really tough for me! The rolling was so frustrating with the dough sticking to the rolling pin which I’ve floured it as well. With the help of B, we managed to place the pie crust onto the foil tin, with holes, of course. We patched up the crust with the remaining dough. Whew! Ugly, but finally done. After all, it’s my first pie! If only I knew earlier, I could just use a stand mixer to help me out on the dough.
With a badly done crust, it might not hold the filling well after I cut the pie. Will it just crumble? This has to be the most challenging and time-consuming bake I’ve ever done. And I’m glad I managed to come out with a decent looking pie. Oh yes, it’s ONLY decent looking from the outside.
Being the first attempt, everything looked and tasted so wrong!! Just as I cut the pie, it feels so soggy. The pie was already baked for 60 mins but the pumpkin filling didn’t firm up. What went wrong? I’ve no idea. Can someone enlighten me on this? The pie crust is no better. There’s just oil oozing out as I cut the pie. It seems under-baked. Did I used too much butter? Or was it the mishandling of the pie dough in the initial phase?
Ok. The pie can’t be eaten, it’s just too greasy. I’m glad that I tried. At least, I have gain some experience making my first pie. No, I’m not showing my unsuccessful bake this time round. LOL
July 13, 2008 at 2:59 pm · Filed under Recipes: Dessert
There is always a first time for everything. And this was my first time making ice-cream, semifreddo to be exact. I like ice-cream, don’t you? Especially on a hot, humid day here in Singapore, an ice-cream is so hard to resist!
So what’s a semifreddo? It has a texture icier than ice-cream yet still creamy if you let it melt a little. It’s somewhat between a mousse and an ice-cream. I set my eyes on this recipe when I saw Milk and Cookies execute it from Donna Hay’s magazine. And since I have that issue as well, I thought why not give it a try especially when this recipe doesn’t need an ice-cream maker to do the churning.
My first try was a disaster as I messed up the whipping of the cream. The egg mixture was nicely whipped and left to cool. As I proceed to whip the cream to soft peak, I decided to try hand whisking it quickly. How hard can it be right? That was a mistake. The cream needs to be whisked fast and I couldn’t as my hands got tired after a while. I wonder if it’s the type of cream I bought that caused the problem (I bought Bulla pure cream). I stopped whisking to rest my arms and continued to beat the cream. While resting, the cream hardened and no matter how hard I beat, it began to curdle and stayed hard. Without any extra cream to make a new batch, I felt really disappointed that night as I was looking forward to enjoying the semifreddo on a weekend night the next day. And I ended up sulking in front of the TV the whole night.
I did whipping of egg whites to stiff peak before for my tiramisu using the mixer. That was so much easier. So the following night, I re-did everything from scratch. And this time, I used the mixer instead. Lesson learnt. A different cream was used as well. I got the whipping cream instead which I thought might be easier to whip.
The original recipe asked for only raspberry, but I added some blueberries in and reduced to 2/3 the portion. Instead of letting the berries puree sank to the bottom, I made some swirls to make it looked more beautiful. I used the normal vanilla essence as I didn’t purchase any vanilla pods. I think you can make do with vanilla extract too. Everything went well the second time. Happy.
After leaving the semifreddo to set in the freezer overnight, I eagerly went to taste it the next morning. It was a bit hard to scoop partly because of the frozen berries puree. But once it starts to soften, it melts very fast. I like how the slightly sweet cream was paired with the tangy berries. Every mouthful was a delight, of course, eating my first home-made ice-cream.
My Canon G3 was giving me some problems some time back, so I was ‘forced’ to use B’s DSLR. See the semifreddo melting in the bowl? I still haven’t figured out how to use the DSLR properly. As I fumbled through the settings, the semifreddo couldn’t stand the heat and started to melt! It’s really frustrating as I was so used to the G3. With a flip screen, it was even easier for me to compose the shots comfortably. To take photos using the DSLR without a flip screen and with a pair of very unsteady hands, I got so panicky seeing the ice-cream melts. I guess it’s time to start learning again.
Raspberry Ripple Semifreddo
Recipe from Donna Hay magazine, issue 36
3 x 120g punnets raspberries
3 eggs
2 egg yolks, extra
1 vanilla bean, split and seeds scraped
1 cup (220g) caster sugar
13/4 cup single or pouring cream
Place the berries in the food processor and process until smooth. Set aside.
Place the eggs, egg yolks, vanilla and sugar in a large heatproof bowl. Place over saucepan of simmering water and whisk the mixture with a hand-held beater for 4 – 5 mins or until thick and pale. Remove the heat and continue whisking until cool. Whisk cream until soft peaks form and gently fold into the egg mixture. Reserve 2 cups of the mixture and pour the remainder into a 12-cup capacity dish (any container will do actually). Fold the reserved mixture through the pureed berries and spoon stripes over the semifreddo. Place in the freezer for 4 – 6 hours or until set. Serves 10.
This will be my first entry to Sugar High Friday! SHF is a monthly event organised by The Domestic Goddess. The theme for this month is berries and is hosted by Food Blogga. Thanks Sihan for enlightening me on this.
I am also submitting this entry to Red & White Foodie Photo Contest, a collaboration of three foodie bloggers Dhi-Fitri-Dwi, in celebration of Indonesia’s Independence day. I am really eager to see what other foodies have come up with.
December 8, 2007 at 5:52 pm · Filed under Recipes: Dessert, Recipes: Quick & Easy, Recipes: Baking
How often does one consume fresh blueberries in Singapore? Not very often, I would say, at least for me. These berries don’t come cheap here in Singapore. One small punnet sets you back by $6.50. The organic ones cost about $10.50 per punnet. By the way, this post is way overdue. About half a year back, the cost of fresh blueberries was reduced to almost half their usual price, $3.20 per punnet! I was an elated woman when I saw the price tag. My initial thought was, my hamsters were in for a treat. They love these mildly sweet blueberries! Lucky little rodents. Without further hesitation, I quickly grabbed 2 punnets home.
Since I can’t keep these berries for long and my hamsters won’t be able to eat much, I surfed around looking for some nice recipes where I could make use of them. What a coincidence when I went to Cherly’s food blog, her latest post was on Blueberry Muffins! Woooh, the way she described how the blueberries burst in the muffin, the thought of it made me drooled. Alright then, the remaining berries would all go into my blueberry muffins.
As I wanted these muffins bursting with the flavour of blueberries, I reduced the amount of sugar slightly. The word ‘streusel’ for this muffin simply means toppings that form a crumbly top on the muffin. Muffins are one of the easiest to make but make sure that you don’t overmix the batter, else you won’t get the dense texture a muffin should be. Prepare the toppings after you’ve prepared the batter. I made a mistake preparing the toppings first and the butter had already melted a abit, resulting in the not so crumbly, but lumpy look. When preparing the toppings using the rubbing-in method, you have to really do it quickly using only your fingertips(heat from the palm will melt the butter).
The aroma in the kitchen when the muffins were baking in the oven was wonderful. Eat them fresh on it’s own, or with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a glass of milk. Perfect for breakfast or tea.
Blueberries are low in calories and packed with anti-oxidants. They are a very good source of vitamin C, manganese, and both soluble and insoluble fiber like pectin. Blueberries are also a good source of vitamin E.
How to Select and Store
Choose blueberries that are firm and have a lively, uniform hue coloured with a whitish bloom. Avoid berries that look dull in color or are soft and watery in texture. They should be free from moisture since the presence of water will cause the berries to decay. Ripe blueberries should be stored in a covered container in the refrigerator where they will keep for about a week. They will be freshest if consumed within a few days. Always check berries before storing and remove any damaged berries to prevent the spread of mold. But don’t wash berries until right before eating as washing will remove the bloom that protects the berries’ skins from degradation. If kept out at room temperature for more than a day, the berries may spoil.
Tips on preparing blueberries
Fresh berries are very fragile and should be washed briefly and carefully and then gently patted dry if they are not organic. Wash berries just prior to use to not prematurely remove the protective bloom that resides on the skin’s surface.
There are many ways to enjoy blueberries other than eating on it’s own. Add them to your breakfast cereals. Use them in your cheesecake, pies, tarts and muffins. Or you can make blueberry pancakes and waffles.
I wonder if the price of fresh blueberries will drop again. Hee.
Blueberry Streusel Muffins
Recipe from Williams-Sonoma Muffins
Makes 12 muffins.
For the muffins:
7 tablespoons (3½ oz/ 105g) unsalted butter, at room temperature
¾ cup (6oz/185g) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2¼ cups (11½ oz/ 360g) all-purpose (plain)flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup (8 fl oz/ 250ml) milk
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract (essence)
1½ cups (6 oz/ 185g) fresh blueberries or frozen unsweetened blueberries, unthawed.
For the topping:
¼ cup (1½ oz/ 45g) all-purpose (plain) flour
2 tablespoons each granulated sugar and firmly packed light brown sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces.
Preheat the oven to 375 Fahrenheit (190 degree celcius). Grease 12 standard muffin cups with butter or butter-flavoured nonstick cooking spray.
To make the topping, stir together the flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a small bowl. Using a pastry cutter or your fingers, cut or rub the butter into the dry ingredients just until coarse crumbs form. Alternatively, combine the dry ingredients and the butter in a food processor and pulse just until coarse crumbs form.
To make the muffins, in a bowl, using an electric mixer on medium speed, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each edition until blended into the butter mixture.
In another bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture in 2 increments, alternating with the milk and vanilla. Stir just until evenly moistened. The batter will be slightly lumpy. Using a large rubber spatula, gently fold in the blueberries just until evenly distributed, no more than a few strokes. Take care not to break up the fruit. Do not overmix.
Spoon the batter into each muffin cup, filling it level with the rim of the cup. Sprinkle each muffin with some topping.
Bake until golden, dry, and springy to the touch, 20-25 minutes. A toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin should come out clean. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let cool for 5 minutes. Unmold the muffins. Serve warm or at room temperature.
November 15, 2007 at 5:51 pm · Filed under Recipes: Dessert
This is one easy dessert I’ve been wanting to make since last year. The recipe just got ‘buried’ deep down in my digital recipe folder. B and I had a nice mango pomelo dessert at a friend’s wedding dinner. We wanted more and so we went to get some mangoes the next day. But it wasn’t the mango season, the mangoes we bought were not very sweet. Honey mangoes were not in season then. Anyway, we went ahead with it.
The hotel’s version didn’t have cornstarch added and was more watery compared to the ones I had at the dessert stalls, which is of gluey texture. B sulked when I followed the recipe by adding in the cornstarch to acheive the texture, which he didn’t like. Oh well… note taken. This dessert would have tasted much better if honey mangoes were used.
One thing I realised is that the mango fibre tissues can’t be blended smoothly. Does anyone knows how to solve this problem? Or was it the mango?
Mango Sago Dessert
Recipe from The Lazy Chef which was from Zu’s Kitchen which doesn’t seems to be around anymore)
Serves 4 to 6
600g mango (abt 2 honey mangoes)
400ml mango juice (Peelfresh or any other similar brands)
125ml evaporated milk
80g sago pearls (original uses 300gm pomelo, split into small pieces)
250ml water
2-3 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp cornflour/tapioca starch (optional)
1 tbsp water
extra 100ml water
Method
- Boil 250ml water and sugar till sugar dissolves.
- Mix cornflour/tapioca starch with 1 tbsp water and pour into the syrup and stir over low heat until mixture is smooth.
- Take syrup and cornflour mixture off the heat and leave it to cool.
- Cut the sides of the mango and cube them.
- Scrap the remaining mango and put in a bowl, add 100ml of water to blend, put aside.
- Add blended mango, cubed mango, mango juice and evaporated milk into the syrup solution (from 1) then stir.
- Add sago pearls and stir, if too thick, add abit of cooled boiled water or more mango juice.
- Chill before serving.
Preparation of sago pearls
- Boil about 3 cups of water in a saucepan. Add in sago pearls and bring to boil.
- Once it boils, cover saucepan and turn off heat. Leave for 20 minutes.
- Remove the lid, stir the mixture, turn on the heat and bring it to boil again.
- Once it boils the second time, cover again, turn off the heat and leave covered for 10 minutes. The sago should be cooked by now.
- Drain the sago from the hot water and rinse. Soak in cold water (to stop it cooking further). When completely cool drain again and set aside.
Enjoy!
