Mocha fondant

I found a recipe of fondant in a cookbook that I have at home, as I said I am not a fan of chocolate dessert, but my husband is, so I wanted to try it :)

The result is surprisingly good - crispy edge and melted heart :) it's really rich

What mocha consists of? it consists of hot chocolate with espresso

Ingredients
175g butter
275g chopped dark chocolate
4tbsp instant expresso dissolved in 2tbsp hot water (original recipe = 2tbsp instant expresso)

250g icing sugar
3 eggs
100g flour

Instruction
1. By bain-marie method (see the pic below), melt the butter and dark chocolate in a small mixing bowl, stir the mixture regularly
when the chocolate mixture is completely melted, add in instant coffee, set aside and let it cool down

2. Preheat the oven at 160°c
Beat icing sugar and 3 eggs, then add in flour, mix well

3. Add the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture little by little

4. Pour the mixture into a 8" mould (greased)
Put the mould into the oven and bake for 55mins or until the surface slightly cracked

Serve hot with whipped cream!

Enjoy!

Apple tart - recipe Cordon bleu

It has been long time that I made apple pie! Autumn is coming, apple pie is the best match with the weather :)

If you want to make your own pie crust, you can choose between the following recipe
- Shortcrust pastry (highly recommend)
- Fast & easy pie crust

For the topping I recommend to use green apples because when you bake in the oven, the red apples become soft and collapse while the green apples hold better the shape

Ingredients (for 16.5cm/6.5"ring mould)

Apple filling
2.5-3 red apples, peeled and chopped into small pieces
30g butter
30g cane sugar/ brown sugar
vanilla
cinnamon

Topping
2-2.5 green apples
some butter
cane sugar/ brown sugar


Instructions
1. Prepare the pie crust the night before, store in the fridge in plastic wrap (well wrapped)

2. The next day: roll out the pie crust evenly, place it on the mould
Use a fork, pinch some holes at the bottom
Put in the freezer (you can also put in the fridge)

3. Prepare the apple filling
Put all ingredients EXCEPT apples in a sauce pan, stir them until they blend together

4. Add in red apples, let it cook at medium heat until the apples are not too soft
Use a fork to test:
if you need some force to poke into the apple => not ok
if you can poke into the apple quite easily => ok
be careful overcook the apples = too soft, you can tell by appearance by the cut edge becomes round

Let it cool down

5. When the apple filling is nearly cool down, prepare the topping
Slice the green apples
Melt some butter

Preheat the oven at 180°c

6. Assemble:
Take the crust out from the freezer / fridge
Place the apple filling on the crust, avoid the juice pouring into the crust, which will soften the crust during baking

7. Place carefully the sliced green apples, place them around the edge, then towards the center

Brush some melted butter on the apple topping carefully!
Then sprinkle some cane sugar on the top

8. Bake for 40mins or until the crust becomes golden

You can serve with crème fraîche or greek yogurt or vanilla ice-cream or caramel sauce ... yummmmm

Enjoy!

Chinese white fungus sweet soup for dry weather

It was so hot last week, the temperature drops very fast, it's cool this week, I feel drier too!

There is good Chinese sweet soup which can hydrate your body & skin effectively. The main ingredient of this soup is Chinese white fungus/ snow fungus - it is great to hydrate your skin!

It's mild too, so you can try to make it if you never make any Chinese sweet soup.

There are several versions that you can choose the one you want.

Ingredients
Recipe 1
1 big* Chinese white fungus (or several small)
10 dried red dates
2tsp apricot seeds (mix of bitter apricot seeds and Prunus armeniaca L. seeds)
1 apple, peeled and diced into small pieces
2 pears, peeled and diced into small pieces
6 cups water
1 rock sugar (you can add more if you want sweeter)

*After soaking into the water, it is big as your palm

You can see in the photo, left = dried white fungus, right = soaked white fungus (Thanks tastehongkong.com for the photo!)

Apricot seed/kernel 
Left: bitter apricot seeds
Right: Prunus armeniaca L. seeds (sweet)















Recipe 2
1 big Chinese white fungus (or several small)
10 dried red dates
2tsp dried goji
6 cups water
1 rock sugar (you can add more if you want sweeter)
Optional: 2 dried fig

Recipe 3
1 big Chinese white fungus (or several small)
50g dried longan meat
10 dried lotus seeds
10 dried red dates
6 cups water
1 rock sugar (you can add more if you want sweeter)

Instructions
1. Soak the fungus for 15mins or until it is soft, cut it into small pieces, remove the hard part in the middle by a scissor

2. Put all ingredients EXCEPT sugar in a pot, heat it until it boils, reduce the heat to small and cook for 1.5 - 2 hours

3. Turn off the heat and add sugar

Serve hot :)

Enjoy!

Sponge cake - bain-marie method - temperature is important

May be you have horrible experience that - baking sponge cake but the cake shrinks back after cooling down, like collapsed completely :( it looks so nice in the oven but why it shrinks so fast when cooling? Imagine the cake as the hot air balloon, it rises by the hot air, without hot air, it drops. Got it?

So the solution is to let the temperature of the cake approaches the room temperature. In this recipe, with the help of bain-marie, the sponge cake can hold its spongy texture after cooling :) click here to see what is bain-marie.

This is my 2nd sponge cake recipe, see my 1st sponge cake recipe, it works well too! 

The difference between these 2 recipes are the 1st recipe uses bain-marie before baking in the oven, while this recipe use bain-marie during baking in the oven. 

Also, this recipe is not very sweet, if you want to eat more sweet, add 30-40g more sugar to the egg yolk mixture.

So try these 2 recipes out to see which one you like better.

Ingredients
4 egg yolk
23g sugar
26ml cooking oil (vegetable oil)
50ml milk
76g flour(seived)

4 egg white
23g sugar
1/2tsp tartar powder or lemon juice

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven at 160°c

2. In a large mixing bowl, whisk egg yolk & sugar until the color becomes lighter
Add in cooking oil & milk, mix well
Add in flour, set it aside

3. Beat the egg white, when it has soft peak, add in sugar & tartar powder/lemon juice little by little
Beat the egg white mixture until it has firm peak

4. Fold 1/3 egg white into the egg yolk mixture, fold well
Then fold in the rest to the mixture, with fast and light motion!

5. Pour the mixture to a round mould, I used 8" diameter X 3" height mould
Bain-marie method: Place the small mould in the bigger mould, I used 10"d X 2"h, fill in 1/3 water carefully

Place it in the oven

6. Bake for 10mins at 160°c

Then turn it down to 150°c for another 1hour or until the surface become golden

7. Wait the cake cool down to let it set and then remove the mould
Note: it is normal the cake springs back a bit, the texture is still good

Tips: serve with greek yogurt and fruits will be great!

Enjoy!

Mango Lassi - Indian drink

I love Indian food, I tried their sweet lassi, which was rich and delicious. That's why now I want to share with you the recipe of lassi!

They have salted lassi and sweet lassi, consumed by different countries (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan...). The main ingredients are yogurt & water.
Salted lassi consists of spices while sweet lassi consists of fruit, mainly mango
I remember my friend from Bangladesh asked me to try salted mint lassi - it was special :p

Well... If you like other fruits you can use strawberry too

Last time I made lassi I tried to use coconut milk - even more tasty - but it won't be called lassi :)

Ingredients
1 cup Plain yogurt
1/2 cup milk*
1 cup chopped mango or strawberry
Optional: 4tsp sugar / honey

*Traditional lassi uses water

Instructions
1. Peel the mango by cutting it in half, use a big spoon to scoop the meat out, chop it into pieces
=> peel off the skin around the stone, you might want to eat directly the meat around the stone :)

2. Blend all the ingredients in a blender/ food processor until it's combined and well mix

3. Pour the lassi into a jar

To serve: You can serve immediately or even better - put in the fridge for few hours (consume it up to 24hours)

Got some strawberries, so made strawberry lassi :)

Enjoy!

Pizza dough with poolish

It has been quite long time I haven't made pizza! 
This time I want to try poolish pizza dough, to have better texture and taste :)

All you need is time! Poolish takes time to develop, so we do not need a lot of yeast.
If you don't have time, use this recipe.

The following recipe is for 4 pizzas!

Poolish ingredients
100g strong flour
100g water
0.3g instant yeast* (= 0.9g fresh yeast)

*For information: 1/8 tsp = 0.39g

1. Mix evenly the ingredients in a bowl

2. wrap the bowl with plastic wrap and leave it at room temperature for 8 hours

Dough ingredients
250g strong flour
8g salt
5g instant yeast (= 15g fresh yeast)
about 120g lukewarm water
some cornflour for dusting

Tomato sauce (from Jamie Oliver's recipe)
olive oil
one clove of minced garlic
1 can of tomato
fresh basil
salt & pepper

1. Place the poolish in the mixing bowl, add in flour,salt and yeast
Add in water little by little and knead the dough for 7mins or until the dough becomes smooth
Note: the dough should not stick around the bowl but slightly at the bottom

2. Place the dough on a slightly floured working surface
Grease the tray with oil, set aside

3. Divide the dough into 4, roll them into ball shape, place them on the tray, slightly sprinkle the surface with flour or grease the surface with oil, then cover them with plastic wrap

Let it rise for 1 hour at room temperature

4. Prepare the tomato sauce - heat olive oil and minced garlic on a pan at medium heat, add in tomato, then basil, salt & pepper, mash the tomato with a wooden spoon and leave it cook 20mins or until it becomes thickened
Set it aside

5. Preheat your oven to 250°c, take out your oven shelf bar, lay a piece of aluminium foil on it and sprinkle some cornflour on it

Place the dough on the floured working surface, floured your hands, then flatten the dough by your palm
Then roll it out with a rolling pin and stretch it in round shape until it becomes 25cm

6. Spread the concentrated tomato sauce on the dough (leave the edge to have some crust to chew!), add the ingredients that you like - mushroom, ham, black olives, mozzarella (no liquid in the package), other cheese...
Note: be careful not to use any wet ingredients -> fresh tomato, mozzarella in package with liquid... you will wet the pizza dough

7. Put the pizza into the oven at the lowest rack, bake for 10-13mins or until the pizza becomes golden color and crispy

8. Take the pizza out and place it on a wooden board
Wait for a minute before the ingredients are well set
Ready to serve!

Enjoy!

Lemon tart recipe

I have found that I haven't posted the recipe of lemon tart, yet I made it quite often! :s

Each time I made it for somebody or even for ourselves, we just love it. It is a super recipe. It is also very simple, all you need is egg, sugar, lemon/ lemon juice.

I have already showed you the recipe of shortcrust pastry/ basic pie crust.
For any tips to make perfect crust, click here

Ingredients of lemon mixture:
75g butter
3 eggs
150g sugar
2 lemons

Instructions:
1. Pre-heat the oven at 200°c. Melt butter 

2. In a mixing bowl, mix eggs with sugar well to become foamy mixture

3. Rince the lemon under warm water to remove dirts and pesticides, grate the lemon zest into the mixture of step 2. Then squeeze the juice into the mixture
Note: If you don't have fresh lemon at home, don't worry, I have tried to use 1/4 cup of lemon juice to replace 2 lemons, the taste is good also. You might want to increase or decrease the amount of lemon juice indicated.

4. Mix in melted butter

5. Pour the mixture into the pastry dough/pie crust ready in the mold. Put the mold into the oven and bake it for 25mins.

Enjoy!

Homemade yogurt - without yogurt machine

I don't have any yogurt machine at home,  recently I saw a promotion of yogurt machine, I was tempted to buy one, but then I got a recipe from a friend, which needs a crock pot, well, I don't have one at home.
So... what I tried is to use a heavy duty pot without any towel wrapped around, my first batch was not completely very successful yet it is not liquid like milk, it's runny yogurt.

Then I did some research on internet, I learnt that there are several factors to make yogurt successfully: temperature & time
Yes you need to maintain at certain temperature and you need patience! It's a long process for the active bacteria to be active and react under optimal temperature!
A food thermometer is really important in my opinion. If you later make it all the time, you will find it energy & time saving!

So I tried the 2nd time, it was much better this time! I even tried to strain the yogurt to become greek yogurt. Greek yogurt is richer and firmer than conventional yogurt because it is strained after incubation. The yellow liquid strained out called whey, it is rich in protein. It is used to make your next batch yogurt or sourdough bread....

This is my 2nd batch, strained for 6hours, it becomes very firm

This is my 3rd batch, without any strain but the texture is like regular yogurt, not runny




















Again I searched on internet the nutritive value of greek yogurt, since everybody talks about eating greek yogurt, is it really better? click here to have a look.

I discovered my thermo is the best tool to make yogurt (lucky) - it can keep maintain the same temperature for quite long time! if you don't have one, you can use an oven or a crock pot to make it
- recipe of using oven is here
- recipe of using crock pot is here

If you don't have oven neither crock pot, you can still use big towel(s) to help!

The recipe below is my trial by using thermo OR simply by "the stove + towel" method














Ingredients
2L milk*
2tbsp whey or 2tsp yogurt (either homemade or commercial)

*I used whole milk, some say you need at least 2% fat, some say fat-free... you can try out skim milk or non-fat milk, but no guarantee...

Instructions
1. Heat the milk until about 180°F/ 82°C at low heat

If you have no food thermometer, you can simply heat the milk at the lowest heat for 2hours 45minutes

If you find any "skin" on the surface, remove it

2. Let the temperature drops to 110°F/ 43°C - 120°F/ 48°C, then scoop a cup of milk in another bowl, add in whey or yogurt, stir well. Then pour it back to the remaining milk. This way you can evenly mix the yogurt and the milk

3. Put the pot into the thermo, let it incubate for at least 12hours, I do leave it for 16hours in the thermo (because heat released completely at last hours). You might need more or less time according to your environment and tools that you use, you need to try out to see how long you need

If you have no thermo, don't panic, you can use a large towel or 2, eg beach towel, to wrap the pot around, it is to maintain the temperature as long as possible. Then put it at a warm place!

4. Do not disturb the yogurt during the incubation, when the yogurt is ready - that means you can see the yogurt at the edge of the pot is solid enough to be able to separate from the pot when you move it a bit

5. Now if you want to make greek yogurt, place a bowl below a fine sieve, strain the yogurt through the sieve
Note: some say use cheese cloth, but I prefer sieve as it is easier to wash! If you use cheese cloth, fold it into 2 or more layers to strain away the whey
Strain the yogurt during 3-6hours according to the firmness of yogurt that you want

Useful tip: How to strain the yogurt without losing a lot of yogurt - click here

6. Pour the yogurt into a container and store in the fridge several hours before serving
You can now serve it plain or with honey, sugar, fruits, dried fruits....

Enjoy!

Popcorn - healthy snacks

Usually I buy popcorn in the cinema when I watch a movie, especially here in Belgium, they taste too good, I like sweet one.

I found that popcorn actually is a healthy alternative for the snacks :) as it is actually corn. However, people add sugar or butter in it => that becomes fat and unhealthy.

If you like crunchy texture, I will highly recommend you to make popcorn instead of eating chips!
Eating plain (sugar/salt free) is still tasty.

You can also make different flavors according to your taste - click here to discover your favorite taste :)

My observation is that you need enough oil to make the popcorn pop, more oil is better than less oil...

Ingredients
1/4 cup popcorn kernels (for 1 person)
2tsp vegetable oil/coconut oil (I'll try coconut oil next time!)

For sweet popcorn - add honey/ sugar/ chocolate... yummm
For salty popcorn - add salt & unsalted butter

Find a saucepan which is large enough to let the popcorn kernels all evenly spread at the bottom

Instructions
1. In a saucepan, heat the oil at medium/high heat
If you use coconut oil, let it melts
Note: If you want to make salty popcorn, add salt at step 1

2. When it becomes hot, add a few popcorn kernels in the pot, wait until they pop, then you can add the rest of the popcorn kernels, be sure that they lay on the bottom of the pan evenly
Cover the pan immediately

3. Let the popcorn pop (nice sound)
Shake the saucepan regularly => not to burn the popcorn at the bottom!

4. When the pop sound stops, turn off the heat
Pour the popcorn into a large bowl

5. Now you can eat:
- plain => nothing to add (the healthiest option)

- sweet => add honey/sugar directly to the bowl, stir well. 

Caramel popcorn: click here to get the recipe

Chocolate popcorn: melt chocolate in microwave (low heat) and pour into the popcorn

- salty => melt some butter (try 2tbsp and adjust the quantity next time) in the same pan that you just cooked the popcorn, when the butter is melted and becomes golden color, pour it into the popcorn and stir it, mix well

Enjoy!