Butter Cake

 

It is my family tradition to make butter cakes for the new year. Throughout the years, I have tried asking my mum why we have this tradition.

When I was young, she would tell me, "It's for Papa to eat while he works" - my dad was a taxi driver who worked 365 days a year. CNY was the time of the year where he gets the most 'customers'. The cake was probably my mum's way of showing love for my dad for working so hard on a day where most people would spend with their own family.

When I grew older, she would say, "The cake is for our relatives to snack on in case they are hungry."

Whether it's for our family's consumption, or a treat for relatives when they come over, I have taken over the role of making butter cakes in the recent years. Although I had mum's Hong Kong flour butter cake recipe, I made two cakes with recipes that I found on the internet (Hugbear's and Ju's recipe) this year. Both these recipes called for milk to be added as I wanted the end result to be moist.

Butter Cake
(adapted from Baking Mum)


Ingredients

250g Butter
180g Caster sugar
6 Eggs
300 Self-raising flour (sifted)
180ml Evaporated milk (Carnation Brand)

Method

• Preheat oven to 160`C. Line cake pan with baking paper.
• Cream butter and caster sugar.
• Add eggs one at a time and mix well.
• Add evaporated milk and mix well.
• Fold in flour into mixture and mix well.
• Pour into lined cake pan and bake for 60 minutes*.

* Halfway through the baking, cut a slit in the middle of the cake to create the 'open' effect.

The second cake failed terribly. The batter looked very watery. I had miscalculated the amount of milk to be added.  The milk overdose caused the cake to turn into a 'kueh'... Hahahaha....

新年快乐，万事如意！

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy Tigger Year!!

Pineapple Tarts

Being a career woman who only has three free hours per weeknight to play with, I can only afford to try out one kind of Chinese New Year goodie each year. Last year, I tried making kueh bangkit. This year, I decided to make pineapple tarts because it's both my mum and mother-in-law's favourite CNY goodie.

Chinese are very supersticious people, we like to have all kinds of 'lucky' things surrounding us during CNY so that we will have good luck for the rest of the year. One of my colleagues who doesn't cook will always keep a fish and some prawns in her freezer during CNY. That's because fish represents 年年有余 (a year of abundance) and prawns represents 笑哈哈 (full of laughter). After the new year, she will take the fish and prawns to her mum's place so that her mum can cook them for dinner. Imagine a person who doesn't cook doing this, so how can cooks not do something to increase their luck?!

My pineapple tarts will do the trick. Pineapple (黄梨) is pronounced as ong lye in dialect. Ong sounds like 旺 (good luck) while lye sounds like 来 (come). Add them up, it means good luck come come v(^___^)v

Experimented with Ju's melt-in-the-mouth pastry recipe with some variation in the butter and amount of corn flour. I came up with something that might suit my mum's fussy tastebuds.

Pineapple tarts

(adapted from The Little Teochew)

Ingredients:

380g plain flour
70g corn flour

6 tbsp icing sugar

280g cold, salted butter cut into cubes
3 egg yolks, beaten

3 tbsp ice-cold water

Method:

• Sieve the dry ingredients into a large bowl.
• Add cold butter cubes into flour mixture and cut butter into tiny pieces, coating them with flour after each cut till it represents fine breadcrumbs.
• Mix egg yolks with ice-cold water and add to 'breadcrumb' mixture.
• Form the mixture into a dough. Do not knead or overhandle the dough.
• Rest and chill dough for at least 20 minutes.
• Roll dough out into 7mm thickness and cut dough with pineapple tart moulds.
• Lay on baking tray and chill for 10 minutes.
• Put pineapple jam onto the cookie.
• Bake at 175`C for 20 minutes, turning the tray after 12 minutes of baking.

Time for my favourite K-drama Daja's Spring now... Ciao! ^^

Fried Bee Hoon with Canned Pig Trotters

I'm HOME ALONE today. Yay!! Time to cook up yummy stuff!

There's cabbage in the refrigerator... and I remember seeing a can of braised pig trotters in the cupboard... I know! I can make fried bee hoon (rice vermicelli) with the pig trotters! Yummy but sinful stuff! *chuckle chuckle*

I remember my mum requested for twelve cans of pig trotters from Mr Tofu (boyfriend at that time) for Guo Da Li. The canned pig trotters is right most container featured here. She said this was what Teochew mothers would request as part of the formal wedding gifts. Mr Tofu and his sister (the matchmaker) had a hard time carrying them to my house (very heavy lor) that day. LOL...



Fried Bee Hoon with Canned Pig Trotters

Ingredients (serves 4)

200g Bee hoon or rice vermicelli (soaked in cold water)
1 can Braised pig trotters (chilled)
Half a Cabbage (cut into thin strips)
3 cloves Shallots (chopped)
3 cloves Garlic (chopped)
1.5 cups Water
1 tbsp Oyster sauce
1 tsp Soy sauce
1 tsp Salt


Preparation

• Soak bee hoon in cold water till it turns from translucent to opaque white.
• Chill the entire can of braised pig trotters. Let the layer of oil in the sauce harden and turn white. Remove the hardened oil. Remove the bones of the pig trotters. Place the meat and the sauce in different bowls.
• Mix pig trotter sauce, water, oyster sauce, soy sauce and salt in a bowl.

Method

1. Fry shallots and garlic till light golden brown.
2. Add de-boned braised pig trotters and fry with the shallots to draw out the fragrance from the pork.
3. Add cabbage, bee hoon and water-oyster sauce mixture and turn down fire to let it simmer. Allow bee hoon to absorb the liquids (takes about 5 minutes).

Wondering why I'm home alone but cooked 4 portions?

1 portion for lunch today

1 portion for dinner today

1 portion for breakfast tomorrow

1 portion for lunch on Tuesday

~ hahaha... that's how much I love fried bee hoon... :D

Apple Pie

STORY

Ms Moon: The assistants really helped a lot in my work. If one of them goes on leave, it would feel as if I had lost an arm.

Ms EY: Do you frequent the bakery?

Ms Moon: (confused by the sudden change of topic) Huh??

Ms EY: Do you often buy a kind of pastry called the HUMBLE PIE from the bakery to eat?

Ms Moon: Ohhh.... Hahahaha..... I'll take that as a compliment (-____-)lll

Hahahaha... This was what happened at work this afternoon.... I was telling a colleague that I have to rely much on the expertise of my capable assistants at work. She, in turn, teased me on my humbleness... I honestly wasn't trying to be humble.... arrgh... but the more I tried to clarify, the more she teased me.... We would usually use the Chinese proverb 越描越黑 to describe a situation like this... hahaha.... XD

Coincidentally, Aunty Ann showed me the pictures of her recent visit to her aunt in UK. During the visit, Aunty Ann's aunt made apple pies, so I linked it with the HUMBLE PIE incident to present the next recipe.


Apple Pie


Filling:
1/3 to 2/3 cup Sugar
60g Plain flour
1/2 tsp Ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon
1 pinch Salt
8 Apples (Granny Smith are the best)
2 tbsp Margarine

Crust:
1 pkt Frozen shortcrust pastry

Method:
* Heat oven to 200`C.
* Peel, core and slice the apples. Try to keep the size of the slices even.
* Mix sugar, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, and salt in large bowl.
* Stir in apples.
* Pour into pastry-lined pie plate.
* Cover with top crust and seal the edges. Cut slits in the top.
* Bake 40 to 50 minutes or until crust is brown and juice begins to bubble through slits in crust.


 














Bottom of the picture: Aunty Ann's husband does not like apple pie, so they made a special chicken-filled pie for him.

German Pork Knuckles

Yesterday, Mr Tofu surprised me by suggesting to go Werner's Oven for dinner. It wasn't any special occassion, but I just agreed as it was one of the rare times that he expressed an idea on what to eat (usually, I'm the one who is full of ideas).

Opened since 1998, Werner's Oven is a German restaurant owned by a Singaporean lady and her German husband. In the restaurant, you can see many photographs of the restaurant in its older days.  I remember one of my ex-colleague, Mr EL, telling me how he was a good friend of the boss's son and how the guys used to go to the restaurant for free lunches during their teenage days.
















The pork knuckles are usually marinated for a week before they are boiled and roasted. Boiling softens the meat and roasting creates a crisp skin for the knuckle. I could feel the tenderness of the meat as I cut through it. The skin was crispy too. But I got the feeling that they deep-fried the knuckle to achieve that texture. I couldn't find the smell of wine and herbs that I read on the Internet on Werner's pork knuckle. To me, it tasted more like Chinese roasted pork belly or shio bak (烧肉).

The knuckle was served with sauerkraut (German sour cabbage) and mashed potatoes. Sauerkraut helps to take away some of the greasiness from the meaty kunckle. As for the mashed potatoes, I guess provides carbo to make you feel full.

Also decided to have green pea soup, after hearing the waiter say that most Germans who visit the restaurant will order it.