Just like a dream comes true …

Bread or bun making has been in my to do list forever, unfortunately I am not good in kneading dough, therefore I always hold off on baking bread and bun myself. Last year, while I was shopping at Target, I saw this Breadman bread machine was on sale from $87 to $17. 75% off from the original price.. what an incredible deal right? Can’t resist myself to pass this opportunity, as a result, I bought this machine and has been sitting at home for almost 2 months now.

Right after we returned from my trip, I decided to give it a try with a few recipes.. From pandan raisin bun (too ambitious the first time) to a couple simple white bread, fully done by the machine itself, it was a total disaster. The raisin bun taste like a cake than a bun, the first white loaf I tried from the recipes come with the machine was too dry and hard right out of the machine, not to mention what’s that going to be turn out the next day.. like a rock. The 3rd recipe I tried was even discouraging.. taste like flour, and hard like a rock. It end up in my trash right after the bread was cook. What a discouraging experience huh?

Just though of returning my bread machine to Target ( since I am still within the return period), I saw this wonderful yummy green tea loaf from LCOM. Read the article and follow the thread to Happy Home Baking blog, patiently review all the wonderful comments about this milk loaf. It sound like a little fool proof recipe to me. OK… technically I still have until the end of month to return the machine, I decided to give it a try.

Take a look of what I got. This picture was taken the next morning. This is like a dream comes true to me… a fresh loaf of bread come out from my kitchen.

Not only the bread is soft, it is very flavorful and rich in butter flavor just like how Happy Home Baking describes in her blog. This also reminded me the Hokkaido raisin bread I brought from pavilion during my trip home. Not only the bread taste good when is fresh out from the machine, it taste as good the next day with the softer crust. I gave it light toast on the 3rd day with butter spread; it was still wonderful with a slightly crispier crust. Hmm.. yummy.

Hubby saw that I was so excited with the loaf, he decided to pinch the loaf while taking the picture to show how soft the it was when fresh from the machine :)

Many thanks to LCOM, Happy Home Baking and her reader’s review.. some motivation and encouragement on bread making… Going to try more recipes in this couple week before my return data is DUE!

Ingredient I used (Click here for link to original recipe):

• 143g warm 2% fresh milk
• 1 egg (room temperature)
• ~ 38g unsalted butter (room temperature)
• 25g caster sugar
• 5g salt
• 250g gluten flour
• ~ 4g Instant yeast (since my scale only measure in 5 gram increment, so I did a rough est)
• 1 tsp bread improver

Method I used:

• Put everything in the bread machine in the order listed above.
• Set to dough function for the first 20 minutes.
• Then set to auto program for basic white bread 1.5lb with light crust to finish the rest of the baking process.
• 2.5 hour later … VOILA! The loaf is ready.

While I was searching for bread recipe for my next creation, I saw that bread flour is actually not the same as the high gluten flour I used in this recipe. I know that most of the Chinese bread recipe call high gluten flour and I always thought bread flour = high gluten flour. After doing a little bit of research, found that they are not exactly the same in term of the protein value contain in these flour. Click here for more detail explanation. Seems like high gluten flour actually produce a more elastic effects

Most of the western bread recipe call for all purpose or bread flour. I have been using all purpose flour and bread flour for my previous baking and it was a disaster. I have seen people replace all purpose flour with bread flour or using regular bread flour for this recipe and the outcome is wonderful. This has truly make me wonder how much different will these flour made? Should I try my next bread with all purpose flour or stick with the gluten flour?

Year End Potluck Gathering

It's the end of the year and we hosted a small party at our house last weekend and invited a few of our close friend to join us for lunch. Hubby was able to capture some pictures of the food everyone contributed in the gathering.

Mini Spring Roll

Stir fry Vegetables

Cream Cheese Dip

Curry Chicken

Fry Bee Hoon and Devil Egg at the Backgroup

Orange Kiwi Seed Agar-Agar in the mold

Mix Fruit Konnyaku Jelly

Happy New Year 2008!

Wish you all have a wonderful New Year.

Treasure Hunt from Malaysia

I started my Malaysia shopping list right after we bought the air ticket.. so finally here they are all goodies from home..

I must say the most exciting shopping I had was at the bakery specialty store at Taman Megah,PJ. I was able to purchase all items from my shopping list plus additional. Call me crazy or not, besides the bread improver, cake stabilizer, panda paste etc.. I even brought the cup cake liner, aluminum tart mold and to fu fa paddle all the way from home. Glad that hubby was ok to let me shop like a crazy women. Now is the time to get my hand dirty with all these baking goodies. Hopefully I can start to play with them soon.

Next stop was my pre-package spices hunt. I don’t know about you, for me this is a must in my shopping list. We usually don’t get these much is spices from home.. but since we know our next trip home won’t happen in the near future.. I better stock up with no regrets. I went to look around some recommended brand of spices from LCOM and Lily’s website, but have no luck finding them in Malaysia.. I guess.. now that I know I still can get it online.. it won’t be so bad huh.

Then my snack station consist of some local roasted coffee powder( main for hubby), sambal shrimp roll, meat floss roll, Thai peanut, dry guava ( this is my favorite snack of all time), Nestum whole family cereal, Japanese rice crackers for my little one and some Twisties for my friends.. ( no in the picture)

Last and not least, Chinese herbs for my up coming confinement preparation. Chinese herbal soup premix package, homemade ang chiu (Chinese red wine), red dates, goji, dried logan, dong kwai etc..Yes, we are expecting baby #2 this coming April sorry for hiding the news for so long.. . Since my mom will not be to come and help out, she wanted to make sure I get everything I need to take good care of myself during the confinement.

Besides we also brought home some early childhood education books in Chinese for my little one cause we want to teach him Chinese as much as we can before he become americanized by his school and friends :)

I was a bit worry that our luggages will get rejected due to the weight limit but when we checked in at the airport, total weight for a 3 luggages was only 75 lb… still have maybe 20 lb to go.. I wish I can squeeze more stuff in it.. but it’s too late. Anyway, I am pretty happy with what we got right now and felt lucky that we able to pass the US custom without any problem hee..

Home Sweet Home

Do you feel that time flies like the speed of light when you are on vacation. Still remember 2 months back when we bought the air ticket and I was starting to count down my days for the trip. And now we were back from Malaysia and busy unpacking, catching up some rest, cleaning and decorating the house for Christmas and new year celebration.

We have been home since the 12^th of Dec but were so busy adjusting our sleep routine especially the little one , then working and shopping. Just thought I have a 4 days break last weekend where I can took some nice snapshot of all the goodies I bought from Malaysia, I accidentally drop my camera on the table and broke it. DUH.. so still don't have pictures to show off and yet I need to mail my camera for repair. What a bummer!

Anyway, the trip was great but too short as usual. I wish we can spend more time enjoying the food, the hot weather and just stay relax. This is the first long trip for Aidan. To our surprise, he was doing pretty good. He was able to sleep on the bassinet and play with other kid who sit next to us. He has no problem adjusting the sleep schedule when we reached Malaysia but he was having jet lag when we returned from Asia. Overall, I think it was pleasant experience travel with a toddler as my friend always told us.. prepare the worst and hope for the best.

The main purpose of the trip is to bring my son home to meet my family and relatives. So we did not get to travel to any places besides spending couple days shopping in KL,few days in Ipoh, a half day trip to Pangkor Island and the remaining time mostly stay home with my family.

Can't resist to share with you one of my favorite picture we took from the trip. Enjoy!

No Food but Flu

Flu season is here.. sometime you definitely not looking forward especially with kids at home.
I started not feeling well last Friday evening and have been sick since then and hubby started to pick up my stomach flu yesterday.. so no cooking, no eating for the whole weekend but depends on milk and oatmeal to survive in the last couple days.

Thanksgiving is almost here, some of you might be start preparing the family feast to celebrate the holidays, for us who don't celebrate, usually looking forward the holiday break to catch up some rest and sleep and shopping especially the day after thanksgiving.

This year.. we are heading home for the holidays.. home I mean Malaysia.. leaving on 21st, mean not much cooking and baking for this coming week but shopping, packing and house cleaning before we leave.

I am so looking forward to this trip especially all the comfort food. First time traveling with toddler, hope I pack enough food and toys to entertain him and at the same time i could some rest.

So see ya in 3 week with more food and trip info.

Bubur Cha Cha

My friend's son was celebrating his Big One this Sunday, so I helped prepare one of the Malaysia specialty sweet soup Bubur Cha Cha. In Hong Kong they usually cook it with Taro and sago, but Malaysia version we put sweet potatoes, taro and sago. It's has been a while since I had this yummy soup kinda miss it.

To make the dish looks more colorful, I used Japenese sweet potatoes ( yellow), American sweet potatoes or yam ( orange), taro and sago. There are many way to cook this dish. my family use to steam all the roots until they become tender before they add everything in the sweet soup base. Some people put everything in the pot and cook until the roots get tender. I find that American sweet potatoes we get from regular groceries store tend to get soft and mushy quicker then the sweet potatoes we get from Asian. So to prepare this, I cook the Japaneses sweet potatoes and taro over night with my slow cooker and finish up the reminding ingredients on stove the next morning before the event.

Here are the ingredients I used:

• Japanese sweet potaoes ( yellow)
• American sweet potatoe or yam ( orange)
• Taro
• Sago
• Sugar to taste
• Thick coconut milk
• Water

One Saturday Morning

This past Saturday was our 4th wedding anniversary and hubby prepared this wonderful stuff scallop, croissants and scrambled egg breakfast to start the day. It was delicious and healthy breakfast. Love it and thanks hon for the wonderful meal. Wish I can have it every week :)

According to the anniversary gift suggestion, the traditional gift for 4th anniversary is Fruit or Flowers. So in returned, I "prepared" this fruit basket for hubby. Oh wait.. actually I order it from Edible Arrangement. It is called the Perfect Pear. The fruit basket consist of strawberries, pineapple daisy, grapes and my favorite chocolate dipper pear. The basket looks kinda different from the picture showed on their website but overall I am happy with the this order. I wish I can spend some time to make my own though.. maybe one day..

Chosun Koren BBQ

Last week, a friend of us paid us a visit from Singapore just for a day trip drive all the way from Iowa to KS. It was so nice of him to squeeze out his busy schedule to visit us. Since he has been in KC for so many time, we didn't bring him to all usual visitor location but just spent some time relax and chat at home and of course to play the little one. For dinner, since I have been craving for hot and spicy food lately, we decided to try one of new Korean BBQ Chugon close to out house. This place serve main the the BBQ dish but they do have some soup and appetizer like dumpling etc. Besides bulgugi, we don't really have any korean BBQ dish in the past.. so after check out the fancy menu with pictuce.. we order the BBQ COMBO which consist of Rib and sirloin steak and a bow of soup with share.
As usually the order come many side dishes which include salad, daikon kimchi, nappa cabbage kimchi, soy sauce beanspout and bean cake, cucumber Kimchi and fried chillies anchovies.
Everyone was served with a bowl of rice with a coleslaw salad.



For the BBQ plater, we were served 2 marinated rib and some thinly slice sirloin, mushroom and some onion. This combo was for 2 people serving, within an additional bowl of soup I think it's perfect for 3, not to mention the refill for the sides are free.

Overall, I like enjoy the meal. The food served were not too spicy and the service were great.

Calling all baking expert!

Hubby has been requesting me to bake egg tart since I started this blog. After N months finally I manage to get the tart mold and put myself together to work on this egg tart recipes I collected long long time ago.
So here are my first egg tarts..
what a total failure and disaster.

The pastry sink after baking and leave no room for the custard. I think I should make is as thin as possible but was wonder why it shrink :( As for the custard, do you think I over bake them. The egg mixture wasn't whisk well as you still can still the egg while in the custard.. What a disappointed egg tart!