Winner Of Bundt Pan Giveaway

Thank you everyone for joining in the fun at my first giveaway event and thank you CSN for sponsoring this giveaway.

To everyone who had left a comment, I truly wish everyone could have walked away with a bundt pan but unfortunately, we only have one giveaway this time. It was difficult to pick a winner without prejudice. In the end, I had asked L to randomly pick a number from 1 to 81... and Klee - you are the lucky 66th entry in my comment list. Congratulations!  I will be contacting you by email.

To the rest, it has been nice knowing you and I hope we will have a chance to play this again. Cheers!

Sakura Cookies - The Macrobiotic Way

Something wierd happened when I was traveling to Korea and Japan for business 2 weeks ago. It was mid April, early spring weather that ought to be warm enough for the Sakura (cherry blossoms) to start blossoming in full glory. On the day I was supposed to touch down in Korea, it started snowing in the morning and temperature dipped to 5C when it really ought to be in the 15-20C range. Luckily when I touched down in the evening, weather had become quite normal. My trench coat was enough to keep me warm. Then 3 days later, when I was supposed to move from Seoul to Tokyo, I saw with dismay that it too started to snow in Tokyo - the latest snow in history, according to NHK news. The weather fairy must have been  exceptionally partial towards me on that trip for by the time I touched down at Narita that afternoon, blue skies and temperate weather greeted me.

The Sakura was blossoming in full force when I was in Korea. I was at a reknowned reserach institute to do a technical discussion and the whole campus was bathed in the powdery pink softness of the blossoms. Utterly breath taking. Unfortunately by this time, Tokyo has already seen its Sakura blossom season come and go. However, the celebratory mood for the arrival of spring is still very evident. Food, pastries and fashion items with sakura motifs are prevalent.

During my trip to the fine baking supplies store Cuoca, I picked up a new sakura cookie cutter, sakura extract and Sakura flakes. While searching for a recipe to play with my 'new toys', I had really wanted to make something that is healthier - to experiment with something along the macrobiotic line - after I had spent 2 hours in a bookshop in Tokyo poring over their collection of macrobiotic recipes. I found my recipe reference eventually in my trusted Okashi Cookbook by Keiko Ishida. She had published an eggless green tea cookie recipe based on unbleached flour and ground almonds. Instead of sugar, brown rice syrup and maple syrup were used. Grapeseed oil replaced butter. I tweaked the recipe for my Sakura Cookies.




The end results is a subtly fragranced cookie with a slight saltiness from the Sakura flakes (the sakura flowers are usually salted in Japan for food garnish). The cookie has a firm snappy texture which I was a little unused to. When one has always been striving for the melt-in-the mouth texture in cookies, this cookie started me wondering if this is the way dog biscuits taste. It took a few more cookies for me to get used to the firm snap but I really don't mind to keep a bunch of these around for healthy munching.


Recipe:

Unbleached plian flour            100g
Baking powder                       pinch
Ground almonds                     50g
Brown Rice Syrup                  15g
Maple Syrup                          45g
Sea Salt                                 pinch
Grapeseed Oil                       25g
Sakura Extract                       10 drops
Sakura Flakes                        for garnish

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 150C.
2. Sift flour, baking powder and ground almonds and chill in the refrigerator for a few minutes.
3. Combine brown rice syrup, maple syrup, sea salt,extract and grapeseed oil in a bowl and mix well. Add the chilled flour and fold in with a spatula, then rub dough quickly with your fingers until crumbly.
4. Roll out to 5mm thickness and chill in the fridge before cutting.
5. Cut cookies with cookie cutter and garnish with Sakura flakes.
6. Bake at 150C for 15mins or until firm. Remove from heat and cool on a wire rack.

Coconut Tea Cake - Bundt Pan Giveaway

I believe most of us in Singapore are not exactly familiar with the Bundt cake. I myself, have only recently started to become a little familiar with it. Believed to have originated from Germany, the Bundt is usually based on pound cake or coffee/tea cake recipes baked in a special chimney mold known as the Bundt Pan. Good Bundt pans are not readily available in Singapore and the price of heavy cast aluminum pans by Nordic Ware starts from S$99.(US$70) I just couldn't bear to part with a hundred dollars for a baking pan.  Thanks to on-line shopping - I now own 3 bundt pans all bought from on-line shops based in the US. I bought my first pan 3-4 years ago just before my business trip to US. I had it delivered to my colleague and picked it up when I was there(most stores would not deliver outside US). Nowadays, thanks to facilities like vPost Singapore, we can take advantage of the strong Singapore dollar and shop to our heart's content on-line! (very dangerous!)

For avid bakers/cooks, baking/cooking utensils which are either unavailable or ridiculously expensive here are now within reach at good quality on-line stores such as the CSN stores where you can find everything from barstools to cookware.
Back to the Bundt pans. The Bundt pan is characterised by the chimney in the centre of the pan, not unlike the chiffon cake mold. However, unlike the plain chiffon molds, Bundt pans are available in a wide selection of whimsical styles and designs - I am especially partial to designs that allude to Scandinavian or Bavarian motifs e.g. castles, beautiful folds and pleats. With a good quality, beautiful bundt pan, your cake needs no further adornment - my breath is always taken away when I demould my cakes. I made the mistake of buying a silicone mold once and am now packing it away to be donated to The Salvation Army. Though cheaper than the cast aluminum version, the silicone molds just do not brown as beautifully and the motifs often become blurry. As such, I would strongly recommend that one invest in a good heavy cast aluminum pan by Nordic Ware. They are possibly the best Bundt pan specialist, offering the widest range of designs and material. See here to be impressed by the beautiful designs.



My favourite Bundt pan is a set of mini garland bundt pans. I love the folds and the medieval motifs. Placed directly on the oven rack when baking, the fluted hole allows for good heat circulation to ensure the cake to be evenly baked. I had no problem demoulding the cakes after greasing the molds with Crisco Spray with Pilbury flour. The details of the design was so sharp and prominent on the cake that it looked like a professionally baked gourmet cake... and with this particular pan, I get all my favourite designs with just one bake.

For readers residing in the US or Canada, this beautiful bundt pan can be yours for free, courtesy of CSN. Just leave a comment and I will randomly pick a winner. The giveaway will be opened for a week and will be closed on 1st May 2010 4th May 2010. I will publish the winner on 2nd  5th May.

The recipe I have used today is Dorie Greenspan's Coconut Tea Cake recipe - possibly the most published bundt cake recipe in the blogosphere. Made with grated coconut and coconut milk, this is a soft and moist cake that bakes well and tastes great.



Recipe : (for more bundt cake inspiration for the Bundt pan, check out Carmen's site)

220g     all-purpose flour
1 tsp     baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 cup    unsweetened coconut milk (stir well before measuring)
113g     unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
4           large eggs, preferably at room temperature
400g     sugar
1 tsp     vanilla extract
2 tsp     dark rum (optional, but so good)
3/4 cup grated coconut (unsweetened or sweetened).

Method :

Preheat oven to 165C  Don’t place the pan on a baking sheet – you want the oven’s heat to circulate through the inner tube.


Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together.

Pour the coconut milk into a small saucepan, add the butter and heat until the milk is hot and the butter is melted. Remove from the heat, but keep warm.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the eggs and sugar at medium-high speed until pale, thick and almost doubled in volume, about 3 minutes. Beat in the vanilla and the rum, if you’re using it. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed and stopping just when the flour disappears.

Keeping the mixer on low, add the coconut, mixing only until it is blended, then steadily add the hot milk and butter. When the mixture is smooth, stop mixing and give the batter a couple of turns with a rubber spatula, just to make certain that any dry ingredients that might have fallen to the bottom of the bowl are incorporated. Pour the batter into the pan and give the pan a few back-and-forth shakes to even the batter.

Bake for 30 minutes, or until the cake is golden brown and a thin knife inserted deep into the center comes out clean. Transfer the cake to a rack and cool for 10 minutes before unmolding onto the rack to cool to room temperature.

The above portion will yield roughly 2 trays of bundt cake using this garland bundt mold.

Strawberry Cream Jelly ストロベリ クリーム ジェリー

My photos don't do justice to these berries but when you have strawberries this beautiful, it is almost a sacrilege to cook or bake with them - unless you have loads of them sitting around. Plenty of these, I have not. I bought my 2 precious punnets in Japan 2 days ago for a fraction of the price I would need to pay for similar superior grades here in Singapore. Each perfect heart-shaped fruit beckons with its jewel-like ruby red colour. These fruits are totally in a league of their own - far from the sickly, dull coloured and odd-shaped versions we get at our neighbourhood supermarkets. The only place one can find beautiful strawberries here in Singapore would be at the Japanese supermarkets which air-lift these precious fruits every year and sell them at a hefty price.
I have always associated the 'sweet bubble gum' strawberry flavour you get in strawberry candies, milk, juice etc with 'fake' articifical flavourings created by food chemists in the lab - that is until today, when I tasted these wonderful Japanese strawberries that I realised that such sweet candy like flavour does exist in the real strawberry fruit.

It is hard not to yield to the temptation to make something with these fruits. Hence in order to stay true to the original flavour of the strawberry fuits, I decided to make a cold dessert and aside from good champagne, I guess the next best pairing for strawberries would be cream. In Japan, where you find strawberries, you would almost always find tubes of condensed milk placed beside them. Hence, I decided to make a soft pudding like Strawberry Cream Jelly.



I had used a little more gelatine because I had wanted to get a firmer pudding so that it would demould and photograph better, otherwise, the gelatine quantity can be reduced (1gram less) to get more smoother and creamy texture. How was the taste? Delicious with a capital 'D' - and I humbly attribute the beautiful taste to the strawberries - I cannot take any credit for these.



Recipe

Pink Layer
Strawberry Puree         100g
Sugar                           25g
Lemon Juice                 1 tsp
Gelatine powder           3.5g (for more creamy texture, use 2.5g)
Warm Water                1 tbsp
Milk                             80ml

White Layer
Milk                              200ml
Condensed Milk            2 tbsp
Sugar                            1 tbsp
Gelatine powder            6g (for more creamy texture, use 5g)
Hot water                      2 tbsp
Vanilla extract                1/2 tsp

Method
Pink Layer
1.  Mix gelatine with hot water until transparent. Set aside.
2. Add strawberry puree,sugar, lemon juice into a saucepan. Heat to dissolve sugar. Add milk and heat into just before boiling.
3. Add (1)
4. Pour into mold and set until firm.

White Layer
1. Mix gelatine with hot water until transparent. Set aside.
2. Add milk, condensed milk and sugar into a saucepan. Heat to dissolve sugar. Add vanilla extract. Heat until just before boiling.
3. Add (1)
4. Cool mixture down to 40C before pouring over set pink layer.

Macrobiotic Experience In Korea

One of the problems of traveling for business is the tendency to over eat and to eat unhealthily. I have tried my best to eat in small portions throughout this trip in Korea and I am still nursing my disappointment over my colleague's choice of a family seafood buffet dinner the night before. It was a place where one goes for quantity than quality. Food was at best mediocre and I watched in resignation as my colleague happily devoured plates after plates of cold crabs.

Hence, when my ex-colleague,who is now my customer, told me he was going to take me to an impressive restaurant, I couldn't contain my curiosity. Perched on a steep little hill in the outskirts of Daegu, the restaurant has a little farming patch behind the main building where it grows its own vegetables. To the side of the restaurant laid huge urns of preserved kimchi.

The restaurant exudes an air of raw simplicity which was extremely calming. I must say I was a little apprehensive about the type of food they were going to serve, worrying that I would be eating tasteless bark-like food.

The first dish was a green bean porridge with a mild comforting taste. The next dish was a colourful plate of various roots and stem cut to the finest shreds. Eaten with the colourful pancakes pigmented with natural vegetable colour and flavoured with the Yuzu dressing in the center of the plate, this dish is refreshingly uplifting - instantly instilling in a sense of general well being.

The next dish is  bamboo shoot tossed in a flavourful sweet spicy sauce. Do not be fooled by the intense colour of sauce, it actually tastes quite mild. Nothing on the table tastes over-powering. Tastes are mild but the elegant subtle flavours will not escape you.

I especially like the next dish which is a salad dish dressed with a fruity vinaigette. Accompanied with crisp  nashi pears and topped with dried persimmons, I never dreamt that salad can taste so good.

The cabbage did not leave a deep impression with me but in-line with the rest of the dishes, it was subtlely flavoured allowing the natural sweetness of the cabbage to manifest.

What I have shown above are only the starters and the portion in the photos were meant for 2 person. I did not take pictures of the main dish as I was busy eating. The main dish was a very beautifully charcoal grilled fish, seasoned just right with Chinese herb infused sea salt and served with fluffy brown rice. (yes, brown rice can be fluffy)

I am in awe at the way they have managed to accentuate the natural flavours of the vegetables with equally natural and healthy seasoning. Without fuss, without gimmick, this meal is totally unforgetable. It has made me curious about Macrobiotic food and I will definitely find out more about this interesting lifestyle.

Cheese Biscuit Sticks

There are not many baking specialty stores in Singapore where we can go for our baking supplies. Most stock very mundane and uninteresting merchandise that fails to fulfill and excite avid bakers. As a result of which, shops like Shermay's which manage to move in to fill the gap in this need, quickly become popular. However, the lack of competition also means that we often have to pay hefty prices for e.g. that bottle of Nielsen Massey Vanilla extract or the covetable Microplane grater/graters (honestly the Ferrari of all graters) . Phoon Huat and Sun Lik are 2 shops which have served avid Singapore home bakers quite faithfully for a long time. They stock some of the less fancy merchandises and ingredients but have also started to offer some more interesting quality products  e.g. Sun Lik actually stocks the basic range of Valrohna chocolates and french butter.

It was while I was browsing at Sun Lik last weekend that I came across some old fashioned kitchen tools for traditional treats. I loved the rickety Aluminum pancake press used to make Love Letters and I was strangely moved when I played with it... thinking to myself that surely I would have to get one of these before the art dies off.... I found myself  picking up little knick knacks from the shelf and asking the lady at the counter, "what is this for?" ...   This multiple joint cookie cutter was one of the gadgets I picked up for enquiry.
"Cheese Biscuits"  - she said. Then, memory came flooding back - oh yes, I remember those short cheese crackers I used to eat.  At that point, I was hooked and obsessed - I must try to make cheese biscuits with these. Ideally, I would like to make a Ritz cracker like biscuit with these cutter but I just couldn't find a recipe for Ritz Cracker - well if there is anyone out there who knows, please do share.

What I did find on Tastespotting is this equally tempting snack published by One Perfect Bite. Known as the Australian Buster, it is really a cheesy, buttery and flavourful cheese biscuit snack eaten e.g. with a salad.
I like it that you can play with it by using different types of cheese, herbs and spices. The combo is unlimited and I can attest that this will be a great crowd pleaser as a party snack.






Recipe From One Perfect Bite (Please see here for the original scrumptious snack)
8 tablespoons/ 113g  butter, cut in 1/4-inch dice
2 cups/220g  all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
3-1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese, loosely packed (I used 2 cups of shredded Parmesan)
6 to 7 tablespoons water
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (I added some dried chives instead)

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. Spray with nonstick cooking spray. Set a side.
2) Place the flour and salt in a medium bowl. Add butter. Rub butter into flour with tips of fingers until particles are very small. Still using your fingers, mix in the cheese. Stir in water and cayenne pepper with a fork. Turn onto a lightly floured work surface and roll dough out to 1/4-inch thickness. Cut into 3-inch rounds and place on baking sheet. (I cut using my new cheese biscuit cutter) Collect and re-roll scraps as required. Prick each biscuit 10 times with times of a sharp fork. (As my sticks are small, I did not prick)
3) Bake for 15 minutes. Remove from oven. Let sit in pan for 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool. Yield: 16 biscuits.

Tender Shortbread

When I saw the headlines -The Last Shortbread Recipe You'll Ever Need by The Cookbook Chronicles popping up in my follow list, I knew I had to check it out. When I saw the photos, I was sold!

Shortbread has always been one of my favourite English Tea items. I had my first shortbread finger that came in one of those scottish plaid packing many many years ago. I remember getting hooked to the buttery, melt-in-the-mouth texture of this cookie. It was not a common item then, it was available, I believe only in fine supermarkets and priced more expensive than the usual biscuits and cookies. As the years go by, these became more accessible and Marks & Spencer has since been the place where I stop by when I crave for shortbread.

True to Lorna's promise, this is a super tender and crumbly recipe that simply melts in your mouth. The original recipe, published in Chicago Time Out calls out to start with butter softened to the consistency of whipped cream - rather unsual for a shortbread recipe - most of which starts out with cubed, firm butter. As a result , the dough was rather pasty (especially in the warm Singapore weather and could not be rolled.) I could have stuck it in the chiller to firm it up a little before laying it out in the pan but I did not. There was no way to cut or shape the dough prior to baking. Hence, I just followed the instructions and cut it after it was baked. Unfortunately, my shortbread didn't turn out pretty like Lorna's but it sure tasted out of this world. I can easily believe that this possibly the last shortbread recipe you will ever need. What I would do a little differently the next time, I would try to use cubed butter and see if I would have a better chance of shaping it more nicely.

Recipe ( replicated from Chicago Time Out)

510 g (about 39 tbsp, or 4¾ sticks) unsalted butter, softened to the consistency of whipped cream

1 tsp sea salt
140 g (about ¾ cup) granulated sugar, plus about ½ cup more for tops of cookies
510 g (about 4½ cups) all-purpose flour
150 g (about 1 cup, plus 1 tbsp) cornstarch

Method
1. Preheat oven to 175C. Generously butter a 15-by-10-inch sheet pan.
2. Combine the butter, salt and sugar in an electric mixer bowl fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat until the butter is very creamy, has lightened in color and increased in volume (four to six minutes). Stop the mixer.
3. Sift together the flour and cornstarch and add to the butter mixture. Mix just until a dough forms, about 30 seconds. (If any dry ingredients are still visible, mix by hand until just incorporated.)
4. Press the dough evenly into the sheet pan with your fingertips (it should fill the pan but not rise above the rim). Bake until medium golden brown, about 25 minutes. Cool the cookies on a cooling rack until just warm to the touch. Sprinkle the top with a generous and even layer of granulated sugar. Cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for one hour.
5. When cookies are thoroughly chilled, cut into small rectangles. Let cookies return to room temperature before serving