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Sunday, February 27, 2011

Peanut Butter Truffle Cookie!

Who loves the combination of peanut butter and chocolate. *raises hand* i do! and i should think that many people do too.

I found this recipe on an app i downloaded on my ipad. I made it once and brought it to work and they loved it. Some requested the recipe from me, which i was more than willing to share, but since it was on my ipad, it wasn’t a simple case of printing it out. So finally, i will be sharing it on my blog!

Peanut butter truffle
Using the same picture from my last post – see the cracks on the dough? what lies beneath is the chocolate truffle!

There was a problem with this dough – my dough was too soft and i could hold it’s own shape and kept cracking even before it was baked. I think i can attribute that to daddy and feng guang who kept asking me to put more and more and more peanut butter!

Ingredients

1. 125g plain dark chocolate (either a whole bar where you chop, or choc bits)2. 150ml double cream (this could have been the cause too, i used a normal thick cream, so maybe it wasn’t thick enough. Double cream is higher in fat content. It can be found in more obscure supermarkets like the one @ Tanglin Mall.)
3. 125g butter, softened
4. 125g caster sugar
5. 125g crunchy or smooth peanut butter
6. 4 tbsp golden syrup (i guess you could substitute honey for this – so just make your own over a stove with sugar and a bit of water, stirring till the syrup becomes a thick golden colour)
7. 1 tbsp milk
8. 225g plain flour
9. 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Chocolate Filling

Place the chocolate, which should be in small pieces, into a heatproof bowl (i used a pyrex bowl).

In a small saucepan, pour in the double cream and bring it to a near boil. Immediately pour it over the chocolate. Leave it to stand for a minute or two then stir/whisk till smooth. Set aside to cool until firm enough to scoop.

* It is at this juncture that i must assert that double cream be used. I used a normal thickened cream/pure cream that can be found in NTUC and the chocolate did not hardened on its own. I had to refrigerate it overnight for it to harden. I guess it’s ok, but it just threw my schedule off.

Peanut Butter Cookie

Cream the butter and sugar together using either an electronic hand whisk or a standing mixer until the mixture is a pale yellow and fluffy. Blend in the peanut butter, followed by the golden syrup and milk.

Add the sifted flour and bicarbonate of soda. Mix well and knead till smooth.

* At this point, you can take the dough out and knead it by hand and have wonderfully peanut buttery smelling hands or change the hook on your mixer to help you knead the dough.

Taking an amount of the dough, flatten it out and place a spoonful of the chocolate mixture into the centre of the cookie dough, then fold the dough around the chocolate to enclose completely into a ball.

* I had a lot of trouble here where the dough just kept breaking off and there was no way i could enclose it completely. I instead, took 2 pieces of dough, both flattened, place the chocolate on one of the dough then covered it with the 2nd piece of dough and sealed the edges. It roughly worked. Still, the flavour is great and no matter how it turns out, people still liked them! :)

If you are lucky and managed to get it in a ball shape, just place them on your baking sheet and flatten them slightly. If you had to resort to my method, just place them as they are on the tray.

Bake the awesome cookies you are able to eat in the preheated oven for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. Remove from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely and serve.

* Careful now, my cookies came out of the oven hot and soft – so be gentle in case yours are and you break them.

The cookies turned out to be soft and chewy cookies and not the hard and crunchy ones. I was afraid people might not like them as much but it doesn’t seem that way. Sadly, this seemed to have been better received than my brownies. :(

Sorry for the very wordy post :) wanted to note down everything.

Classes are starting tml and … wish me luck! :)

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Steamboat Dinner!

I love steamboat! Don’t always eat them at restaurants but we always have them at Reunion Dinner during CNY. That was a way larger scale though.

We have a mini steamboat here and i decided it would be nice to have a steamboat – just the 2 of us.

So, we set out today to eat steamboat for dinner. Simple ingredients.

Last week, i made an online order at butcher2u.com.au – they package the meat however you want to and deliver it to you on specific days. I got some chicken thigh, chicken breast, sausages, chuck steak, Basa fish fillets, pork chops and minced pork. Taking for example minced pork, i usually buy around 600gm at the butchers and take home and split them up into smaller bags. On the website i can specify exactly how much meat in total i wanted and how to split them. They would all come frozen and vacuum packed nicely and labelled with the product name, date, weight and price. So i always know what i am looking at. :) You know sometimes you go into your freezer and find this piece of frozen meat and you have no idea what meat that is? yup.

So today, i got out ard 250gm of chicken thigh (i bought 500gm and asked them to be split into 2 bags) and 100gm minced pork.

Steamboat aint difficult, just needs preparation and marinating (not long if you it was a last minute meal like mine was).

These are the ingredients of what we had tonight:

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A 300gm packet of sliced waygu beef that fish bought from the supermart downstairs. He marinated the beef in sake, mirin, soy sauce and ginger paste (we buy fresh ginger then grate it using a ceramic grater).

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This was actually not originally meant for steamboat. I had brought it out earlier in the day to defrost cause my tummy wasn’t feeling too well and i thought i might make myself porridge to eat. but since we decided to have steamboat, i just lightly marinated the minced pork in sake, soy sauce, sesame oil and a little ginger paste. I didn’t know what i was going to do with it until the last minute. I just used my chop sticks, grabbed a small amount and put it into the soup. Almost like meat balls – irregularly shaped. :)

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Chicken of course – after hui’s awesome chicken at our reunion dinner. I used the chicken thigh meat after removing much of the fat and sinews. then sliced them into thin bite sized pieces. marinated them in soy sauce, sake, sesame oil and ginger paste too. (By the way, it looked like a really small amount in the bowl and when i finished cutting it – but it’s deceptive. We couldn’t finish all the chicken. granted that fish preferred his beef and chicken and pork were mostly for me.)

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We went downstairs to get noodles and i got a pack of oyster mushrooms. cause i love mushrooms. and it was an absolutely right decision. I love these mushrooms after they’ve had a good soak in the soup. It absorbed all the lovely flavours. and i had a great time eating them – cause fish didn’t appreciate them! :)

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Hmm. i should have stuck to normal hokkien noodles. these were. not the best.

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What was seriously lacking was chilli! and not just any chilli! sambal chilli – and i don’t believe in the ones sold at supermarkets. So the sauce master – fish – came up with this dip that was amazing. It had dashi powder, soy sauce, japanese 7 pepper spice, hua diao jiu, sesame oil and a little water. Yum yum yum.

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We didn’t have those spoons we usually use when eating steamboat, and it was difficult to hold on to a piece of chicken waiting for it to cook. so i remembered the colander and it fits perfectly. so the mushrooms and veggies are on the outside, and the meat and noodles can be cooked within the colander. The best thing, the handle of the colander doesn’t even get the slightest bit of heat. so it’s absolutely safe! and my meat won’t disappear!

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So this was our little spread tonight.

If you look carefully, there are 2 ingredients that i did not mention – on the bottom right hand corner. It is a piece of egg tofu and a pack of fuzhou fishballs. – which under normal circumstances, i love.

The tofu tasted off – Shi hui…..
The fuzhou fishballs were EWW! They smell really really fishy. but i ignored it and put 4 balls into the soup. and when it was ready, i tried one and it was disgusting.

you know the nice thing about these balls is the springy texture and the soup you get from the pork inside the balls. these were hard and rubbery. there was no soup, instead it was all oil. and not even pork fat which might have tasted better. It tasted like i broke open a pill of pure fish oil. it was so so so so so so fishy and disgusting tasting. I threw the rest of that ball, took out the other 3, the rest from the freezer and down the bin it went. Eww. just in case, i don’t remember the brand – but it writes there in red – first in Australia – i think the last would be more appropriate.

Onto much better tastes….

the soup!

we just took a pack of Campbell’s Real Chicken Stock and added the same amount of water. Fish added 2 carrots, 1 big onion, a whole lot of corn kernels, spring onions and cilantro. Just boiled it together for a while for everything to soften.

The soup was very sweet and tasty – just one carrot next time ok fish?

it was just enough for the 2 of us in our small little hotpot and we started dinner around 2030 and ended (including the washing up) at a little after 2230.

yum yum.

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This is the leftover soup and veggies – fish ate a lot of veggies which made him very full. This soup is now a thick and delicious smelling soup – you can smell the veggies, the beef, the pork, the chicken all in it.

It is one invincible soup too. The eww-ness of the fuzhou balls and the slightly spoiled tofu didn’t mar the soup one bit.

But the soup is very oily now obviously, with the fats from the wagyu beef and the sesame oil used in marinating.

So it’s in the fridge now, and when it cools down, the oil will coagulate, forming a layer of white fat on top of the soup, which we can then proceed to remove easily before heating it up when we need it. :)

i had a great great dinner with fish tonight and i hoped you have had a great one too! :)

Foggy’s kinda cranky today. :p

Sunday, February 20, 2011

I’m back!

Hello!

I’m back after a very long break. I’m back in Sydney for my masters.

Holiday in Singapore was… good. Had to work, got a new oven (i can’t even bear to look at the oven we have here in sydney after getting the Gagganau).

but now, i’m back and will blog more often. :)

Let’s review a little about what happened in Singapore.

We had another laska party!

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Delicious! Made with Prima Taste Laska Paste. Added more onions and dried shrimp.

I also made more brownies before coming back to Sydney!

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A little more cracked on the top but delicious all the same.

I also made it in a rectangular dish since my relatives were going to have a gathering at my house the day after i left. and it looked like a volcano. haha.

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Cool eh. It will flatten down when it cools.

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My mum has been going for vegetarian cooking class at the same place where we take guzheng classes. One of her first dishes she learnt was to make 发糕. So since it was chinese new year and we had to pray, so we made up a batch of coconut 发糕 – a big one and many small cute ones. :)

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Dinner one night with just me and feng guang. so i cooked up a simple fried tofu with leeks and kaarage chicken!

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The chicken was great. Only thing is that i should have added a lot more ginger and garlic. Yum Yum. Have already bought chicken thigh to make this soon soon! :)

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I made cookies too! This is a delicious delicious peanut butter soft chewy cookie. What’s with the cracks? Can you see the chocolate oozing between the cracks? hehe.

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ohhh… how pretty is this… i wish i could bring this oven over with me!

Other than these pictures.. i still have some more about places that me and fish and his family and my family (in different combinations)..

This is all for now though! :)

O week starts tomorrow so i’ll be going to join in the fun!

Foggy says hi!