Hokkaido Milk Loaf

This is another wonderful milk loaf recipe that I would definitely keep and recommend to everyone. Another thanks to for LCOM recommending this recipe in her blog. The loaf came out lovely, soft and fluffy just like the one you can get it from most of the Asian bakery store back home.

At first I was a bit worry about the loaf getting harden without the bread improver and I was wrong.The loaf remain soft and tasty even after the 3rd days. Yum! Yum! it's all I can say about it.

Since this recipe have been try and proven by so many fellow bloggers, everyone seems to have their own way to bake the loaf and this is how my bake mine.

Ingredients (Click here for original recipes)

• 125g whole milk (warm)
• 75g heavy cream (warm)
• 1/2 tsp + 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 large egg room temperature
• 40g sugar
• 270g gluten flour
• 30g cake flour
• 5g dry yeast
• 15g milk powder

Method:

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

30 minutes or less Instant Tofu Pudding

Bought this instant Tofu Pudding mix couple months back and finally got the chance to try it this week. The package I believed cost about $2.00 USD and it has 6 individually packed tofu pudding mix.



It is very easy to prepare and can be done in 30 minutes of less. I poured the amount of water as indicated on the package into a small pot. Bring it to boil. remove the pot from the heat and slowly stir in the powder mix until well mix. Cover the pot and wait for 15 minutes until the pudding is set.


Scoop out the pudding with my brand new tofu paddle brought my Malaysia (yes, my new toy)and it is ready to serve. No sugar syrup needed because it's all included in the package. Isn't that easy!!
As you can see the tofu texture is very soft and silky just like the one you get from dim sum place, however, taste wise just ok given that I can actually make this in 30 minutes of less. I still prefer my tofu pudding in palm sugar ginger syrup.

Korean Bean Sprout (Sukju-Namul)

While I was looking for other way to prepare the bean spout, suddenly thought of this Korean side dish we ate few months back from the Chosun Korean BBQ restaurant. I like this dish very much because it taste very light and refreshing especially when they serve it cold. So after some recipes hunting online, I found this recipe and decided to give it a shot.

Ingredients:

• 250g green bean sprouts
  
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp sesame oil
  
• 1/8 tsp minced garlic
• 2 tsp chopped green onion
  
• 1/8 tsp white sesame

Method:

• Boil some water in a pot
• Add in bean sprouts when the water boiling. and let them boil for 2 mins
• Drain the water. let them cool.
• Sprinkle the salt on top, mix well and let it sit for about 3 mins.
• Squeeze the green bean sprouts with your hands to discard the water
• Add the remaining the seasoning sauce, and mix them well.
  

Verdict: Lighter than the one we had from the restaurant but overall I like it. Probably will add a little more salt or soy sauce next time to enhance the flavor a little bit.

Ok..here's how the next picture was taken. It was weekday night I prepare the dish. As you know I broke my camera few weeks ago, so I asked hubby to take a picture of the dish before he eat since I need to feed Aidan. Instead of taking the picture of the spout on the serving plate, he took the picture below. The bean sprout on his rice bowl before he took his first taste... duh! luckily got caught, other wise this will be my only picture to show off the dish hmm...

An Edible Cinnamon Raisin Loaf

Usually hubby and I will have a glass of milk with cereal for breakfast before we leave to work. This week as we ran out of milk, I decided to bake a loaf of bread with the remaining ingredient I had on hand. Cinnamon Raisin Swirl loaf has been one of my favorite bread of all time. I usually just love it eat it plain. After some googling online, I found a recipe with quite a bit positive reviews and raving about how soft the bread and flavorful the loaf is and the recipe are quite simple and straight forward. So right after I reach home from work around 6pm, I quietly prepare and load all the ingredient into the breadmachine to make sure the bread is done before my time to bed. This time I experiment my loaf with ½ all purpose flour and ½ gluten flour because I want to see what’s the end result of using all purpose flour.

3 hours later, voila.. The bread is ready. It looks ok.. the loaf is soft and raised well when fresh out from the machine. Hubby and I take a few small bites to taste the loaf and we both think that the texture of the loaf was a bit dense and does not smell as good as the milk loaf I baked few days ago. Well I do not expect the loaf to smell as good as the milk loaf as this loaf as much less ingredient compare to the one. But overall, it was ok. At least edible haa.. No recipe post for this loaf as I am not planning to keep this recipe but continue my bread baking experiment with other recipes.

Next week, I will have my GCT (Glucose Challenge Test) for to check for gestational diabetes. My friend told me to avoid taking any sweets 10 days before the test, so I can pass the test. ( I failed the 1 hour test but passed the 3 hours test on my first pregnancy). I really home I can pass the 1 hours test and skip the 3 hours test this time.. it was really a pain to stay in the lap for 4 hours and have the technician drew my blood every hour. Do you think taking less breads and cakes this week will helps? I wanted to try the sponge cup cake recipe and a panda sponge cake recipes so badly in the past few weeks and I just can’t make time to do it. Thinking of trying it this weekend, or should I wait until I pass my test?

Assam Laksa Anyone?

This is my friend J not so easy version of Assam Laksa. When you are away from home and craving for assam laksa, having a bowl of it with the taste as close as you can get it’s like heaven especially to a pregnant women like me. So I call up J last Friday asked for the recipe and invited her family come over to taste and provide me some feed back since I am going to note down exactly the amount of ingredient I put while I was cooking.

So here there are..

Ingredients:

• 1 package of Hup Loong Assam Laksa spice

• 2 oz belachan
• 1 sweet yellow onion
• 5 dried chilis
• ½ medium size jicama
• 1 stalk lemon grass
• 1 ½ oz Laksa basil

• 4-5 tamarind skins/Assam Keping
• 3 can 6 oz tuna drained
• 2 can 15 oz Sardine in tomato sauce
• Soy sauce, salt and sugar to taste

Method:

• Add belachan, onion, jicama and chilies into blender and blend until smooth paste. Note may need to add some water to get the blender running.
• In a large pot, boil about 12 cups of water.
  
• After the water is boiling, add in lemon grass, laksa basil and blended ingredients and tamarind skins, bring to boil, turn the heat to medium and let it simmer for about 30 minutes to 1 hour.
• Add in tuna and Sardine, a little soy sauce, salt and sugar to taste.
• Serve it laksa bee hoon garnish with some lettuce, pineapple, cucumber and red onion.
  

Note: This recipe can probably serve around 10 people.

Her secret ingredient of increasing the sweetness of the soup is by addition blended jicama and sweet yellow onion. I was also told that, to prepare the soup 1 day ahead to increase the flavor and sweetness from all the spices. I find it rather interesting using jicama for sweetness. Nevertheless, I love the outcome and taste.

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!