Blue gum honey is rich gold in colour with a smooth texture. It is good on toast and extremely good when stirred through Greek yoghurt. Greek yoghurt is thick compared to any other plain yoghurt and probably far more superior in terms of taste and texture.
On days when I need Greek yoghurt, I find placing plain yoghurt in a large cheesecloth over a large tea strainer helps. Let it sit for 30mins or so to drain out the excess liquid. They call it whey. I don't throw it, I stir in my leftover honey clinging to the spoon and make Aaron drink it!
As fro fruits, you can use blueberries or just macerated strawberries would work great too. I use blueberries because Ellie mentioned that Robert Pattinson diet when filming Twilight consist of Greek yoghurt and blueberries. Oh, how can I not eat what Robert eats? Even if I dislike the tartness in plain Greek yoghurt, I would still eat it because he eats it and really Ellie, I agree with you. Both Robert and this yoghurt are indeed healthy obsessions!
Recipe...erm, I don't know whether you considered this one a recipe. Simply dollop spoonfuls of Greek yoghurt into a glass. Drop a generous handful of blueberries over it and drizzle with blue gum honey. Stir them all around and serve!
Swan puffs....anyone? It's daddy's birthday today and I've made these swans to celebrate it with him, through the Internet, how sad.... Aaron and me will be eating these after we show it to him.
As I've said I might make cream puffs since I have remaining custard from my tiny fruit tartlets and I did. I just twist them a little and make swan puffs instead. Found this beautiful recipe here by Keiko and please click on her website here. I think everyone should subscribe and see for themselves.
Here's the video of Pastry Chef, Keiko doing it:
I know mine is sucky compared to hers but for my very first attempt, I think I did well! And I've quartered the recipe to make 2 cream puffs and two swan puffs. Here is what I have done and used:
Preheat oven to 200°C. Prepare two baking sheets, both lined with parchment paper and lightly greased with butter.
50ml water 20g chopped butter 1/2 tsp sugar Small pinch of salt
Place all the above in a pot and bring to boil over high heat. Meanwhile, sift 35g plain flour into a bowl and beat one egg. Make sure you beat the egg well. Measure out 50g of the egg and set aside the remaining to glaze the puffs later.
When the mixture comes to a boil, add in all the plain flour at once. If you add it bit by bit, you'll get lumps in the end. Using a wooden spatula, stir everything until the dough form a ball and releases itself form the sides of the pot and there is an obvious layer of dough clinging to the bottom of the pot. Cook the dough a while more over low heat and take it off the heat.
Transfer it to a larger bowl and cool it a while. When it's warm to touch, slowly dribble in the 50g of beaten egg, bit by beat,beating into submission each time. Add more or less egg mixture until you get a glossy and shiny dough, the texture of mayonnaise. Scoop all into a piping bag with a small round tip. Pipe 2 to 3 'S' shaped as the neck of the swan. Pipe a little more towards one tip of the 'S' so the beak is more obvious (hard to describe, easy to do, just watch the video!).
In another tray, pipe 4 round little mounds. Just use up all the remaining dough in the piping bag. I can't really tell you how big mine were. They were all of equal size puffs. With the remaing egg, use your fingers and dab the swan necks and puffs all over, evening out any peaks.
Bake the swan neck first. I did mine for 15mins at 200°C. It is best to bake the puffs when they are still slightly warm so I place the other tray of puffs in a warm place first. When the neck is done, bake the bodies, i.e., the puffs. For the puffs, bake them at 200°C for 30mins and turn down the heat to 170°C and bake another 20mins or so. Do not open the oven within this period else the puffs will deflate. Let it cool in the oven, with oven door ajar.
After 40mins or so, remove them from the oven. Slice the puffs into half, approximately 1/3 way down from the top. Slice the other smaller half into half lengthwise. These would be your swan wings(See the video if you're not following anymore!). Fill it with homemade custard or creme patisserie. Use a star tip to pipe whipped cream to completely cover the custard. Gently place the neck and the wings over.
Liberally dust it with sifted icing sugar all over and serve immediately. Here is the back of the swan. You could probably tell it's a hot day as the whipped cream didn't hold its shape long enough for me to shoot some photos.
I'll present this to Dad tonight through the webcam and sing him a song and blow his candle and eat it on behalf of him. I hope I'm not too evil to some of you guys! Try makign this, they really look impressive!
I made these yesterday and they were lip smacking good. I gave away some to my landlady and her family and kept some for ourselves. As usual, Aaron's first question was 'Honey, you think you can just make the pastry case by itself? It taste really good, like butter cookies!'.
This is awesome for kids party or as finger food. Mine were so tiny I could pop one whole tart in my mouth and still have room to munch. You think this one makes a lot, hell no! 45 tartlets are nothing really.
Since Christmas is around the corner, I strongly suggest you make these for diner parties. Simple reasons because you'll be so busy and you probably want something easy to impress and to prepare of course! You can make the crema first and chill it overnight and make the tart cases on another day.
When you wanna serve them, just simply dollop over the crema to give it the old-fashioned look. Top with some diced fruits and you're good to go. In fact, you can even not dice fruit and use whole fruits like blueberry, grapes, blackberries and raspberries.
Here, I've used diced mango, pomegranate seeds, baby grapes, blueberries and strawberries. I managed to bought some really cute looking grapes. They are super cute, I tell you! The whole cluster, not just one or two of them are all mini baby grapes. Really can't explain, you gotta encounter and see it for yosuelf to believe it!
I adapted the recipe from Tessa Kiros cookbook and no, I'm not posting up the recipe this time unless some of you all really want it. Because it's so simple, just use any tart case recipe and fill it up with your favourite recipe of homemade custard.
Don't know which tart recipe to use? Try this, this or this, all tested by truly yours! And custard recipe, try this by Stephie. It's really all about experimenting sometimes and I just wanna share the technique and presentation here. You really don't need to make a lot of custard because they each only hold more or less a teaspoon or so.
If you did make extra, use them to fill up cream puffs. I might be making some since I have leftovers so stay tuned!
This mango tartlet is Aaron's favorite's. What's yours? Mine is the blueberry tartlet. It is not often that Australia blueberry taste like blueberry. You really gotta be here to understand why.
Finally, out of total randomness and delay, here it is:
Anncoo, sorry for the long delay. I've finally picked up your Appreciation Award for my excellence. If you're reading this, a million thanks to you again for thinking I'm worth it!
And Kitty, this Honest Scrap award of yours is ever longer! I'm sorry but I guess I'm very much like you, hehe! And I'm glad you find me encouraging, inspiring and brilliant! So thank you to you both! Kitty and Anncoo, I think I'll make this a leaf node in the tags spanning across the blogosphere. In a quick 5 mins Google, it looks like most bloggers that I have known and those that I have not already known have already been tagged, and I'm not going to spread the contagion outside the organization further :)
The title says it all. Panna Cotta is so simple and versatile you could vary its milk and cream proportion to your liking. For me, if I were to eat them once in a blue moon, it better be worth it for my hips and you could probably tell where I'm heading, I always like my Panna Cotta with just cream and no milk. After all, Panna Cotta itself means cooked cream so you probably want to stick to just double cream do you?
This is very chocolaty and creamy that Aaron likes it just plain. This one uses dark choolate (like real good quality one please!) and dark organic cacao. For girls, I can't help but dress it up a little just so it look fancy. Unfortunately, when you overdo it like here, it kinda fail. What fail you ask me? The consistency of this Panna Cotta is smooth and yet it looked ugly and patchy upon plating. Blame it on my unmolding skills!
And the recipe I'm about to give you really just serve one or maybe two if you're sharing it after a romantic candlelight dinner like us. You could serve it in the ramekin or some see through martini glass but this recipe is suitable for unmoulding really. It produces a very soft and wobbly consistency, just how I like my aspic dessert to be. Feel free to increase the gelatine content if you like something more firm. And of course, feel free to double it and substitute the cream with milk.
I always try to use seasonal fruits to zest things up further. Pomegranate is in season and red paires well with dark chocolate. In terms of flavour, my sweet tart-ish pomegranate goes well with the dark manly chocolate Panna Cotta. You could serve this with raspberry coulis and a blob of cream but really, try this with just pomegranate seeds. They taste so good together!
Chocolate Panna Cotta
1/2 tsp gelatine powder 1 tbsp vanilla castor sugar 3/4 cup cream (Substitute up to 1/4 cup with milk if you want it less creamy) 2 tbsp real good quality chocolate chips 2 tsp dark organic cocoa powder
Swell the gelatine powder with 1 tbsp of cream from the 3/4 cup. Set it aside and combine the remaining cream and everything else into a small pot. Bring it to boil and whisk constantly until you get a smooth thick hot chocolate consistency mixture.
Pour in the gelatine mixture and whisk well into submission. Cook it on low heat for just a minute or so and no longer. Any more longer will cause gelatine to loose its gelling properties. Strain the mixture if you think it needs one into a 3/4 cup ramekin.
Cover with plastic wrap and chill it overnight for best result. When unmoulding, loosen the top edges wuth your finger and wrap a hot tea towel around the sides of ramekin for no longer than 10 seconds. Place a serving plate on top of ramekin and flip it upside down in one swift motion. If it refuses to come out, jiggle it a little. Repeat the hot tea towel wrapping if necessary.
Flodd the serving plate with more softly whipped cream, top the Panna Cotta with pomegranate seeds and drizzle with chocolates all around. Serve chilled. Yes, I couldn't resist a shot even when we're busy eating halfway through!
I like these very much. These are called Grissini, Italian crispy bread sticks. I first tried them in Kuala Lumpur in a high end restaurant. They serve this as appetizer. They are served exactly like these, in a tall glass, right smack at the centre of a round table.
They are good to munch on just by itself or sometimes, I make these when I am having cream of mushroom soup for dinner. They act as a stirrer in my hot chocolate too. In that case, I would usually leave them plain.
Here, I've used black sesame seeds, white sesame seeds, parsley, mixed herbs, oregano and thyme. I did not glaze them. I thought they look very good just by itself with no sheen whatsoever.
I adapted the recipe from Agnes Chang book, I Can Bake. As silly as the title of the book may sound, I've made lots of breads and buns from this book and they all turn out very good. Agnes bakings are all typical things you would find in an Asian bread shop. I like them especially when I am here in Adelaide and things like chicken floss bun could cost 3 to 4 dollars just for one.
Finally, I like this recipe because it does not call for much proofing time, though proofing it for 15mins or so helps a lot because when you roll them out into long sticks, it will not shrink back much. Here's the recipe and it is so so so, I cannot tell you how easy they are!
Parsley Thyme Oregano Mixed herbs Black sesame seeds White sesame seeds
Combine the liquids in a spouted cup and pour them into the flour mixture. Briefly knead with hands for 10mins or so until smooth and elastic. Cover dough with a damp, clean cloth and let it rest for 10 mins.
Knead again for 10mins and divide them int 10g pieces. I yield about 22 pieces. Here, Agnes ask to roll them into long sticks but I cover these individual balls with damp cloth and let it rest another 15 mins. They don't shrink back at all when I roll them into longish shape after that. Your choice! After 15 mins, roll them into long sticks. The longer and thinner they are, the crispier they are so roll them long! Work with one stick at a time, covering the rest in damp cloth. When longish, scatter a little of your choice of scattering around the stick and roll the stick around to pick up the scatterings. If it doesn't stick, sprinkle a little water over the sticks but they usually stick very well.
It won't take up much time really so repeat that 20 times and place them on a greased and floured tray, about 2cm apart. Bake them in a preheated oven at 200C for 15-20 mins until they are dry and golden brown.
Remove from the oven and cool before serving. Easy and done!
I'm a full time Masters student working towards my Petroleum Engineering paper. When I'm off from studying, I play with food in my tiny kitchen.
This blog consist of things that I have always wanted to do and love doing. Here, you'll find recipes that I adore collected over time, usually by Tessa Kiros and some of my favourite blogs. Sometimes it would be a self-invention by me when I could spare some time from my busy schedule.
All photos here are styled (there's not much of styling anyway, I know and I'm working on it!) and photographed solely by me unless otherwise stated in the post.
To know more about each and every post or more about me, email me at : bakingquinn@gmail.com
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Blue gum honey is rich gold in colour with a smooth texture. It is good on toast and extremely good when stirred through Greek yoghurt. Greek yoghurt is thick compared to any other plain yoghurt and probably far more superior in terms of taste and texture.
On days when I need Greek yoghurt, I find placing plain yoghurt in a large cheesecloth over a large tea strainer helps. Let it sit for 30mins or so to drain out the excess liquid. They call it whey. I don't throw it, I stir in my leftover honey clinging to the spoon and make Aaron drink it!
As fro fruits, you can use blueberries or just macerated strawberries would work great too. I use blueberries because Ellie mentioned that Robert Pattinson diet when filming Twilight consist of Greek yoghurt and blueberries. Oh, how can I not eat what Robert eats? Even if I dislike the tartness in plain Greek yoghurt, I would still eat it because he eats it and really Ellie, I agree with you. Both Robert and this yoghurt are indeed healthy obsessions!
Recipe...erm, I don't know whether you considered this one a recipe. Simply dollop spoonfuls of Greek yoghurt into a glass. Drop a generous handful of blueberries over it and drizzle with blue gum honey. Stir them all around and serve!
