ayonecan-cook

First of all I wish all my friends from blog land and the real world and my dear blog visitors who celebrate Christmas a Merry Christmas .  This cake was made for N's birthday today and as always most times I end up making a chocolate cake. This is a steamed chocolate cake that I got from  San's Blessed Moments. Chocolate has always been a favourite in this house with everyone and also because ~  " Every time I hear that dirty word exercise I wash my mouth out with chocolate."  Unknown This was a moist and chocolatey cake with the perfect amount of sweetness ...meaning not too sweet at all. I covered it with fresh whipped cream because ... I had taken out the butter from the fridge, looked at it then put it back in. Since we had only cut the cake this evening I could not take a photo of a sliced piece. I hope to take a picture tomorrow. Do take note of the word "hope" though.  The recipe... 200 gm sugar 200 ml evaporated milk 180 gm butter 2 eggs 100 gm plai...

I have tried very hard to like strawberries because they are such pretty little things but I can't. T hat's why you will find few recipes with strawberries on this blog. I always find them tart and not at all sweet. Having said that, they were at the least ..juicy. I bought strawberries with the original intention of making financiers with sliced strawberries on the top like here. I thought they would look very pretty. But that didn't happen. This did. Because I did not want the strawberries to go to rot.  I used the same recipe as Sweet Potato Cinnamon Rolls but added dried cranberries and fresh strawberries instead. Then I placed the dough into cupcake liners and 3 mini loaf liners, scattered flaked almonds and sugar nibs that Sarah from Siliconemoulds had given me sometime ago on the tops. I made buns. They were very moist because of the sweet potatoes and fruity because of the cranberries and strawberries. Strawberries out.... next time.  The recipe is here . Just a...

I used to spy these gems at Chinese grocery shops. They were sold amoung many other kinds of biscuits which were stored and displayed in gigantic glass jars with push-down galvanized caps, usually placed strategically at the open end of the shop and were sold by the catty.  Apart form Iced Gems we also had our local 'Oreos', our local Chocolate Bourbons, our local custard creams and our local Jammie Dodgers.....all being delicious legacies left behind by our then colonial masters.  KGB (not the Russian kind) manufactures these biscuits locally today, packs them in large square tins and places them on supermarket shelves. The only thing that's missing in them are Iced Gems and loads of flavour.  So this post was inspired by what I saw at Molliemakes . I now vehemently and officially declare Molliemakes as my number one craft magazine. Trust me ~ However, it wasn't as simple as getting the weighing scale out and dusting off the flour.  I found a (only) recipe for it fr...

  Forgive me for the long silence. Things have been a little hectic. But I'm back and there is no better way to start off a-blogging than with these moist, scrummy and fudgy brownies. These are the most delicious brownies ever! They're chocolatey, fudgy, slightly chewy, with that shiny crackly skin on the top. They are addictive. You can't stop at one. Swear to god. They are even better cold straight from the fridge and I've even had them half frozen from the freezer. I had kept them in the freezer so we would not gorge on them in one sitting but apparently frozen brownies were even more engaging to eat. I don't think these brownies would ever get dry. They were born from a small home business run by a young man who is an engineer by day and brownie baker by night. How more intriguing could that get? And they have crossed the seas to Singapore, Sri Lanka and Brunei. They are baked in a 10 inch by 10 inch tray. Yum!

S eeing that I have only one one rack in my oven a Dobos Torte was not something I was keen to attempt. But I did it. In 4 hours. The sponge layers took only 5 minutes to bake but must be watched and baking those thin layers should never be paired with accidental naps in between. The chocolate frosting made me falter and I almost went for another recipe because 3 raw egg yolks could mean salmonella attacks, hospitalization and doctor's bills en masse. I decided to be brave and went ahead. We are all well, alive and hungering for more Dobos Torte. Thanks be to God. I had cut the last piece of sponge layer into 8 wedges and seperated them a little before pouring the amber caramel over. One thing I learnt was that you only need to cut through the caramel when the caramel has hardened. With a very sharp knife. It is much easier than having sticky caramel globbing up your knife and gooey caramel threads stretching between your fingers endlessly. A Dobos Torte looks much harder to make t...

I have never been a fan of bombs. Because of that I have never attempted to make them. Generally speaking I like dainty and pretty food which explains why I like desserts. Or at the least I like making them. I like looking at them. But when they look like 'bombs' and are huge the interest wanes. But when I saw these here on this very practical and interesting blog of Lily Lai Sek Hong's I thought they looked quite appetizing. Although I do think that the name is a little outdated by now. These days their namesakes come in all shapes and sizes. Anything but round I believe. But having said that I can't think of a better name at this moment. So bombs it is. I followed Lily's recipe largely. Particularly the recipe for the dough. It turned out pretty good but I think H was expecting something more chewy. I watched the back of his head from the kitchen while he ate it and waited for that mmmmmm....sedapppp ...but it didn't come. H was, I know, expecting the other ...

Dragon fruits are flamboyant with their shocking pink skins and their even more shocking purple-pink insides. However they are, in flavour, not such the drama queen that they appear to be (its more elegant twin is white inside).  It is not an overwhelming fruit. It is mildly sweet, soft and quite refreshing and the seeds somewhat nutty in texture. It is native to South America and today it is cultivated widely in Vietnam for commerce.  I stared at it sitting in my fridge in all its pink and purple glory. I had bought it skinned and sliced. I thought it would make an outrageous looking jam. I had originally bought it because I had wanted to make a natural food colouring. But I realised after checking at Tes's lovely blog that it is not the flesh that is used to make a pink/red food colour but the inside of the skin. Experiment abandoned. So I made jam ~  It turned out looking beautifully purple pink. And because it does not have an overwhelming flavour I quite liked it....

I love my Malay cakes even if they are plain toads ( kodok ). These are authentic. There is no grated coconut meat in it, no baking powder is used and no egg at all....all of which would give these bites airiness, lightness, puffiness and turn them into dainty, too perfectly round, bland, made-over versions of the original toad bites. Purists, however,  would swear by the original kampung (village) version which is crisp and chewy on the outside and soft, mushy and banana-ey on the inside. And quite toad-like in looks.....irregularly shaped, flat, heavy, ugly and greasy but absolutely to die for. I love my Toad Bites or Kuih Kodok. Rice flour is added to the batter for a crisp and chewy skin, plain flour to hold the batter together and of course the mashed banana gives the inside the mushy and banana-ey goodness that we die for. I don't see why anyone would not love these.  Anything greasy has to be good.  Kiddies especially love these.....imagine chubby little fingers...

I blog in spurts. I keep telling myself that I will never blog in spurts again. It's bad. As bad as gorging on chocolate cream filled chocolatey biscuits when you're trying to be healthy. Or trying to walk in a straight line. Sorry for the an unplanned absence. I have been uninspired and distracted. For many reasons. The heat, mega sales, the heat, friends, the heat and family. And mainly mega sales. And the heat. Nevertheless, these English chocolate cream filled chocolate biscuits are reminiscent of the chocolate bourbons from Marks and Spencer that I gorged on thirty years ago. So busy was I that I got yelled at by a man with a heavy load on his shoulders. I almost walked into him. I jumped out of his way in the nick of time. I'm sure he would have hit me on my head if he could. Thank god Mary Berry had a recipe for it. Thank god I bought her Fast Cakes recipe book thirty years ago. And thank god they taste just like my memory of it. The biscuits I mean. These a...

These are what kept me busy the past 2 weeks. For a close friend. I'm glad it they turned out all right and that A was very happy with them. She wanted them pink with touches of brown. I made the simplest of roses. One of the type of roses that I had learnt to make at the sugar craft class ...a few months ago. I am so glad I attended the class. But after a hiatus since the class it took time to get my mojo back and after a few trials I managed to make sense of the process required to make those "simple" roses. They were simple really but like everything else it takes consistent practice not to lose it.  I wish I had been calm enough to take some photographs to show you how they were made but as usual I just wanted to get on with them and at the time nothing was more important than getting the roses completed satisfactorily. I will show the steps in a future post though. So keep a look out. The cakes were simple and the ribbon was chosen by A to match the decor for the res...