Recipe Dedication: Nicolette's EGG TARTS!

Recipe Dedication: Nicolette's EGG TARTS!

Some of the recipes here are gonna be dedicated to friends. Here's my very first one.

During poly school days, I have this friend, Nicolette, and every time we get out of class to get some food/drink, she would always go, "let's go kofu, eggie tart!". From then on, I realized that she likes egg tarts and will go "awww" if there aint no more egg tarts at the canteen that we go.

So Nicolette M'dear. Here's to you love!

Egg Tarts

========

Ingredient List

----------------

Base:

- 200g flour

- 50g sugar

- 1 egg

- 100g butter

Egg Filling:

- 3 eggs

- 80g sugar }Mix together to make sugar syrup.

- 100ml hot water }

- 100ml milk

Instructions:

!~! Pre-heat oven to 180C, Middle Shelf!~!

1. Lightly mix flour and sugar together.

2. Rub in butter into the flour mixture to get a bread crumb texture.

3. Add egg and mix well into a knead-able dough.

4. Press dough into Egg Tart Molds

5. Add eggs to milk and mix well.

6. Add in the sugar syrup to the egg/milk mixture and mix well.

7. Sieve the mixture twice.

8. Pour egg mixture into dough casing

9. Put to bake for 20 mins.

Printable Recipes Available Here!: Print Page

Enjoy People! Stay tuned for Easter Special!

With love,

Sheila <3

Non-Bake Lemon and Lime Cheesecake

As requested by someone, I've made a sour cheese cake this time! I usually make plain cheesecake, chocolate cheesecake or tiramisu. xD The weather is super hot recently, but I want a treat so badly! I don't want to turn on my oven or stove or anything to do with heat! So, I did a non-bake cheesecake. =D

I've used the recipe from taste.com.au

Ingredients (serves 10)

* 150g plain sweet biscuits, processed to fine crumbs
* 80g butter, melted, cooled
* 500g cream cheese, softened
* 3/4 cup caster sugar
* 1 lemon, rind finely grated, juiced
* 2 limes, rind finely grated, juiced
* 1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice
* 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
* 3 teaspoons powdered gelatine
* 300ml thin cream, lightly whipped


Method

1.

Grease and line base and sides of a 5.5cm deep, 22cm (base) springform pan with baking paper. Combine biscuit crumbs and butter. Press into base of prepared pan. Refrigerate while preparing filling.
2.

Using an electric mixer, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Beat in lemon and lime rind. Heat 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice, 1 1/2 tablespoons lime juice and gelatine in a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring with a fork until hot and gelatine is dissolved. Set aside to cool slightly. Beat gelatine into cream cheese mixture until well combined. Fold in cream, mixing until well combined.
3.

Spoon filling over base. Smooth surface. Refrigerate for 4 hours or until set. Serve.

In my case, I've used 250g of digestive biscuit and 120g of butter for the base. I sort of over estimated the filling (judging on the amount of base I have... =.=), I've multiplied the recipe with 1.5 and ended up with too much filling. XD Ran out of digestive biscuit already, I used the regular jacob biscuit instead. It's a little on the salty side, so I added in a tbsp of honey to give it a unique flavor.

First timer or not, do watch up this youtube video about cheesecake. It has a recipe for baked cheesecake, but the basic information mentioned are pretty useful and applied to both baking/non-bake cheesecake. =D

The Base:


Digestive biscuit crumbs mixed with butter.

I've totally forgotten to take a picture of crushing the biscuit and mixing in the butter. >_<;
Anyway, you can crush biscuits by just simply putting the biscuit in a ziplock bag or a plastic bag, probably 2-3 biscuit at a time to achieve even crumbs. Use a rolling pint or your hand/feet/body weight/whatever to crush it, till it become small and fine crumbs. Melt your butter or just room temperature butter(tropical country room temperature.. xD), mix it into the biscuit crumbs evenly.

You can use any biscuit/cookie crumb as the base. Just adjust the amount of butter accordingly, not too dry or moist. If you're feeling luxury, go ahead and use famous amos cookies as the base. I'm talking about the freshly baked ones that are sold in their outlet. Hehe xD


Line your pan with aluminum foil or baking sheet before filling in the crumbs.
Scoop the well combined crumbs into your pan and press it down firmly. If you skip this step, when you remove your cake from the pan, the base will not stay in shape and crumbles easily. D=


Shooting star!

The filling:

Ignore random objects behind/around the ingredients. xD
Here we have cream cheese, whipping cream, sugar, powder gelatine, limes and lemon!

You can substitute gelatine powder with agar agar powder, 1:1. But in this case, we're dealing with acidic ingredient, so extra agar agar powder will be required. Some say around 1/4 extra, but I'm not very sure of it myself because I never tried it before. Probably next time!


Rind your lemon/limes before squeezing the juice!

Hahaha dealing with acidic stuff on marble table, very smart of me. >_>;


I just loveee the colour <3


Strain the lime and lemon juice into a pot.
Heat up the lime + lemon juice, combine the gelatine powder in.
Not boiling! Just hot enough to dissolve the gelatine powder. You may have a little lump at first, but no worries, just continue stirring it. It will eventually fully dissolve. The mixture will turn out like a thick/gluey sauce. XD It may smell a little odd due to the gelatine, but everything will be alright when you mix it into the cream cheese.
Strain them again before adding into the cream cheese.


Make sure your cream cheese is in room temperature! Else it'll have lumps which is not good! D=
Sift sugar in while beating the cream cheese, add in gelatine mixture and lime & lemon rinds and continue beating. Be careful not to over beat it!


After beating in the gelatine+ lime & lemon juice and lime & lemon rinds


Fold in the whipping cream probably by a quarter or half at once? If you pour the whipping cream all in at one go, it'll be harder to incorporate the cream cheese in.
Don't be lazy and beat it in with a mixer! You'll have too much air bubble in it by beating it in.

Assembling:

You can just pour the mixture on your base, tap the container on a surface to smooths the surface and be done, or decorate it!
I've set aside about a cup of the filling without lime & lemon rinds, mix in a drop of green food coloring for decoration. Alternative, you can use melted chocolate or diluted jam.
Put them in a piping bag and start decorating!

Simply pipe the content on your filling, tap it on surface to incorporate it to the filling. Leave it this way, or continue decorating it as below.


Using a toothpick/satay stick/needle or anything similar, draw line across the pattern you've done. Drawing at different direction creates different pattern.

The one shown above are drawn from the edge towards the center.


In between the "draw in", draw outwards, from the center to the edge.


Tap on surface again to smooth the filling.






You can also pipe words on the cake with a semi-chilled cream cheese filling! The surface of your cake must be set before you can pipe words on. I've blurred the text on the image due to privacy. =P


When you're done, just pop it to the fridge! I left mine sits in the fridge till the top sets, then put it into a container, return it to the fridge. I'm keeping mine in the fridge till the next day.

Whoala~ It's done!............... NOT!


It's clean up time now! oTL oTL oTL



Tasting:

Tadah~ Out from the pan!
This is the one with Jacob cracker base.


The star shape one is out from the pan as well! But to conceal the writing, I'll only show a side picture. XD
It's with digestive biscuit base.


I still prefer digestive biscuit base more than crackers. =3=

Anyway! The cheesecake itself is not really sour, just a hint of tangy-ness without loosing the cream cheese flavor. Lemon & lime flavor enhanced by the rinds, also creating a little texture in between the smooth cream cheese.
The tangy feeling stays in mouth for sometime, and it sort of made my tongue feel numb. XD
I was afraid if it will turn out to be too sour because I kept tasting while making it. Probably just cause of eating too much, that's why it felt so sour. XD


Enjoy!

Good luck in trying!
I hope you enjoy the recipe as well!

Have a nice day~

With love,
Aiko

Feedback: Japan Food Hour: Tofu Umegae Mochi

Looking at Sheila's post, I began to feel tempted with making one myself! Refer to her post for the recipe. Here's my bunch of pictures! XD


I've chosen Japanese pressed tofu over silken tofu because the tofu flavor is richer. Chocolate chip and toffee bits(which then became caramel) as filling.
PS: I'm staying in dorm, so I have to cook in my room. Hence the background with LCD. xD


Tofu tofu~


Rolled into individual serving before putting in fillings


Pre-test! XDDDD nyom nyom nyom chocooo


Looks like scallop isn't it? xD


Final product! Tadah~
The top 2 are with Milk Chocolate filling and bottom 2 are with Caramel filling. <3 Personally I like both in their own way.



If you're planning to try making the one with caramel filling, please do not warp the filling in if you're not cooking it as soon as you made it. The filling will melt inside the uncooked mochi. >_< My toffee melted into water puddle before I can manage to cook it. T_T
Not very pretty but it taste good! =D

Good luck in trying!
I hope you enjoy the recipe as well!

Have a nice day~

With love,
Aiko

Japan Food Hour: Tofu Umegae Mochi

--Tofu Umegae Mochi--

This is a healthy snack that you can make under an hour or even half hour when you get the hang of it. Tofu Umegae Mochi is Toasted tofu rice cake with your desired fillings such as red bean paste, soybean flour paste or even chocolate(milk/white).

It's healthy because there's no need to add sugar to the dough at all, it's just tofu and glutinous rice flour and the sweet flavor/taste comes from the filling itself.

So here goes!

Ingredient List

=============

- 120g Glutinous Rice Flour

- Half package of silken Tofu

- Water

Fillings are as what you desire to put in. I went with Cadbury Dream, White Chocolate [ I'm a super fan of white chocolate! ]

- one bar of Cadbury Dream, broken up into individual pieces.

Instructions

===========

1. Mix the tofu and glutinous rice flour together, to obtain a soft pliable dough. The dough should be soft as your own earlobe. [ Japanese people would describe it like that. ]

!~! If the dough is too dry, add a bit of water and mix. Or if the dough is too wet, add rice flour !~!

2. Divide and shape/mold your dough into balls.

3. Flatten the dough out and place your filling(s) in the center and wrap them up.

4. Prepare a pan over low heat, Add a bit of oil if needed. Cook one side for 1 min, then flip to the other side for 3 minutes. The rice cakes should expand in size and will be toasted on both side.

!~! If you're afraid that the rice cake may not be cooked well, cook a bit longer, flipping the rice cakes every now and then. !~!

Enjoy this lovely healthy snack hot or cold! It can be eaten cold because of the tofu!

Printable Recipe Available Here! : Print Page

With Love,

Sheila<3

Japan Food Hour: Mochi

We'll be labeling food from the Country of the rising sun, Japan as Japan Food Hour. =D

---MOCHI---

Mochi (Japanese: 餅) is a Japanese rice cake made of glutinous rice pounded into paste and molded into shape. In Japan it is traditionally made in a ceremony called mochitsuki.[1] While also eaten year-round, mochi is a traditional food for the Japanese New Year and is commonly sold and eaten during that time. Mochi is also a prominent snack in Hawaii, South Korea, Taiwan, Cambodia, and Thailand. [With thanks to wikipedia!]

The traditional way to make mochi is to pound cooked rice into a sticky white dough.
Now, you can make mochi in your own kitchen without going through all that hard labour of pounding the rice. Here's how to make your easy mochi!

Ingredient List
=================

- 1 Cup of Glutinous Rice Flour
- 3 1/2 tablespoons Sugar
- 1 1/4 Cup Water + extra water
- Potato starch/Corn starch/tapioca starch

Yes, that's all you need to have to make mochi, sounds rather cheap to get. well It is! *super thumbs up(Y)!*

*~As for fillings, it;s entirely up to you, from chocolate chips, to red bean paste, to even ice cream.~*

!-! For ice cream mochi, shape ice cream into proportioned balls and let it freeze for at least 2 hours. It would be certainly easier to handle when you wrap the mochi around the ice cream !-!

Instructions
==============

(Y): Dissolve sugar into water first, it would much easier to mix the sugar water with the rice flour.

1. Mix the rice flour, sugar and water together until there is no lumps is present.

2. cover bowl with cling wrap/plastic wrap and pop it in the microwave, on high, for 3 minutes. Meanwhile, prepare a small bowl of water and spoon/spatula/rice paddle that you used to mix the ingredients together.

3. After 3 minutes, remove from microwave. Remove cling wrap/plastic wrap. With a moist spoon/spatula/rice paddle, mix the pre-cooked mochi, damping the spoon/spatula/rice paddle every mix.



This should be what you'll get.

4. Cover with cling wrap/plastic wrap again and pop it back into the microwave for 4 minutes. During this 4 minutes, prepare a baking tray or a big plate or even your table, dust with generous amount of starch

(Y): The starch will help you in separating/molding the mochi without getting your hands burnt.

5. After 4 minutes, remove from microwave and remove cling wrap/plastic wrap. Mix well for a few times and transfer the hot mochi onto the dusted baking tray/plate/table and dust the top of the mochi with starch.

6. Dust your hands with starch and proceed to make mochi balls.

!Caution! Always starch your hands, and if the mochi is too hot to handle, you can let it cool down for a bit and continue. OR constantly dust your hands while shaping your mochi balls !Caution!

7. You may start wrapping your desired filling with your mochi. To seal filling(s) in, gather the sides of the mochi to the center and pinch the folds in together. Lightly dust and shake off excess starch. Serve cold or room temperature with tea or other delicious beverages.

Enjoy making your mochi!

Printable Recipe Available here! : Print Page

With love,

Sheila<3