Queen Cakes

Hi guys, Long time no see. I am so sorry for disappearing for so long. My family jst came to Adelaide visiting me and attending my graduation ceremony. Ya, finally after 4 years, i had finished my Master degree. Okie stop long winded, in order to sincerely apologise my MIA, i am going to post 2 recipes today. Here come the 1st one: Queen cakes. Erm....I have no idea why they are called Queen cakes, maybe they are something for Queen to eat during high tea. Tell u a secret, they are also the cakes i baked for my Queen previously for her birthday, she love them and of cos i got a big hug and kiss for return *shame* :p

Oh ya, forget to say, they are also the first cakes since i started my baking journey. As they are easy and delicious, they lead me to bake more cake cos i feel so satistified after baking it. Alright let start the recipe:

Queen Cakes (make 12)
Ingredient:
1½ cups self-raising flour
2/3 cup caster sugar
125g butter, at room temperature
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla essence
¼ cup milk
2 tbs currants

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 180oC. Line 12-hole muffin tray with paper cases.
2. Sift flour into a mixing bowl. Add in sugar, butter, eggs, essence and milk and beat until smooth and pale. Stir through currants.
3. Fill each muffin case ¾ full with the batter. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden and firm to touch. Cool on a wire rack.

You can enjoy the cakes as they are now or you can dust them with icing sugar; or you can decorate it as I did to bring for party.

For icing:
150g block cooking chocolate, chopped into pieces
Enough mini M&M
Rainbow sprinkles

Method:
1. Melt the chocolate in microwave according to the instruction on the packaging.
2. Cool melted chocolate slightly. Transfer melted chocolate into a zip-lock bag and cut a small hole on one edge then squeeze it from the hole and design the cake as you like.
3. Before the melted chocolate has cooled completely and solidified, decorate cakes with M&M and sprinkles. Some examples are shown below:

They are a very versatile cake, you can add in anything u like, nuts, dice apricot, apple, etc. They are great for breakfast, snacks or dessert. Hope you will enjoy this simple but super nice cake.

Pumpkin Gnocchi with Buttery Ham

Okie, since i have been posting so much sweet stuff (i am sorry cos i do have serious sweet tooth :)). Here is a savory dish i would like to share. It is actually an italian dish, Gnocchi. You can make Gnocchi from plain flour, pumpkin or sweet potatoes. So far i had tried pumpkin and sweet potatoes, both of them are nice. Nonetheless, since i am a pumkin fan, i would love to eat this dish again & again.

Pumpkin Gnocchi with Buttery Ham (2 serves)

Ingredient:
100g pumpkin, steamed, mashed & cooled
150g plain flour (extra if the dough is too sticky)
50g butter
100g shredded ham
1 cup baby spinach
½ lemon, juiced

Method:
1. Mix mashed pumpkin with flour until a soft dough is formed, extra flour is needed if the dough is to sticky;
2. Dust a working station (I use chopping board) with flour, divide dough into 4 portions and roll each into log about 2.5cm thick. Cut into 3cm pieces;
3. Bring a large, wide saucepan of salt water to boil. Cook gnocchi in 2-3 batches, until they rise to surface (about 3 minutes). Remove with a slotted spoon and transfer to a large plate lined with baking paper. Repeat with remaining gnocchi.
4. Melt butter in a large frying pan. Add shredded ham and cook for 5 minutes. Add in lemon juice. Add cooked gnocchi and spinach and toss lightly to coat with butter and until spinach is wilt.
5. Spoon onto serving plate and season with cracked pepper.

Does it sound very simple? Yes it is. It is an ideal dish for lunch and dinner. Until next time, hope u will enjoy this gnocchi as main course then the queen cake as dessert. Cheer.

Mini Banana Bread Pudding

How i started to make this dish? It is because i have a friend who always cant finish her bread and so i help her to think out a method to use the leftover. It is also a very versatile dish which u can use different leftover bread and mix with different kind of fruits. Normally this dish is prepared in a big tray but i change it into muffin size, therefore it is easy to store and eat (even thou i can eat three in a time, Hahahaha). I also put in banana as it is my favourite fruit. Ok let get it start:

(to make 7)
Ingredient:
2 slices white/wholemeal bread, cut into cube
1 cup milk
2 eggs
¼ cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
½ tsp ground cinnamon
50g butter, melted (extra for greasing)
½ lemon rind
1 banana, mashed

Method:
1. Soak bread in milk for at least 30 minutes
2. Preheat oven to 180oC (conventional) or 160oC (fan)
3. Grease the muffin tray
4. Beat eggs with sugar until pale and thick
5. Stir in vanilla, cinnamon, butter, banana and rind
6. Pour in the milk mixture, mix to combine
7. Divide the mixture into 7 muffin trays
8. Bake for around 30 minutes or until metal knife goes in coming out clean

Hope you will like this dish. You can eat them as breakfast, snack or dessert. You can have them with ice cream (super yummy !!!). See you next time.

Sweet Potatoes Ondeh Ondeh

Wow.....I m getting excited, how abt u? Here is the first recipe i m going to share. Why i choose this for my "opening" recipe? Few reasons: (1) it is my favourite dessert; (2) my first nyonya kuih; (3) high demand; (4) high popularity; (5) different version available (the reasons can actually go never ending), Hahahahaha.......

Ok let get it starts, this ondeh ondeh is actually sweet potatoes based rather than the common one which is flour based. I have never done the flour based one (dont ask me why i just dont do it). Ok here are the ingredients you need:

(To make 10)

150 g (orange) sweet potatoes

1 tbsp caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract*

100 g glutinuous rice flour (or enough to form a soft dough**)

100 g grated gula melaka

200 g dessicated cononut

(optional) : 1 pandan leaf, 3 cm ginger (crushed), food colouring

Method:

1. 
   
   cut sweet potatoes into small size (leave the skin on) and steam over half-pot boiling water until the sweet potatoes are soft***


2. 
   
   when the sweet potatoes are soft, leave them to cool before removing the skin (you will burn your finger if you do it when the sweet potatoes are too hot) and keep the water in the pot


3. 
   
   after the sweet potatoes are cooled, remove the skin and mash them with a fork


4. 
   
   leave the mashed sweet potatoes around 10-20 minutes to evaporate the moisture


5. 
   
   add in caster sugar and vanilla extract into mashed sweet potatoes and mix well


6. 
   
   add in flour bit by bit, knead the mixture every time after adding the flour


7. 
   
   add the flour until a soft dough is formed (the dough no longer sticks to your finger)****


8. 
   
   prepare a big plate lined with baking paper


9. 
   
   roll the pieces of dough into small balls with your palm, then flatten the ball with your thumb and put a bit of filling in the centre


10. 
    
    seal the balls and roll again into round balls, then place on the prepared plate


11. 
    
    remain to form the balls with the remaning dough


12. 
    
    when the dough is half way done, boil the reserved water until boiling (while waiting the water to boil, continus to form the balls)


13. 
    
    after all the dough is done (the water should be boiling now), drop the balls into boiling water until they float to surface


14. 
    
    remove the floated balls with a strainer (try to shake off excess water)


15. 
    
    coat the round balls with dessicated coconut


16. 
    
    share with your friends or have them by yourself !!!

PS: it is better to finish all the ondeh ondeh within the day they are prepared. The skin will become hard after refrigerated overnight.

Here are some tips for this recipe:

* You can use pandan juice (blend 2 pandan leaves with 2 tsp of water then strain the juice out), or ginger juice (grated ginger and sqeeze the juice)

** The amount of flour you need to use depend on how wet is your mashed potatoes and how much vanilla extract you put in, more flour is needed for mashed potatoes with high water content

*** You can steam the sweet potatoes by putting the pandan left and crushed ginger to give more favourite (my mum teached me this)

**** If the dough is too hard (accidentally put in too much flour), you can add some water (bit at a time, you dont want to end up with a huge dough)

***** food colouring can be added to make colourful ondeh ondeh (divide your dough into portions and mix with different colours)

The following are photos of my ondeh ondeh i made for my Malay friend during Hari Raya

Step 1: Steaming sweet potatoes with pandan leaf and crushed ginger

Grated gula melaka

Step 10: Green (green colouring) and orange balls are ready to go into boiling water

Final Product

This is a very versatile dish, u can let ur creation goes wild to form different dough (using pumpkin instead of sweet potatoes, using starch flour instead of rice flour, etc), using jam or nutella for the filling, etc.

So far, i had used ginger juice instead of vanilla extract and it is really good for winter. I had tried corn flour, starch flour and plain flour, however, the glutinuous rice flour gives the best texture. I also put grated dark chocolate for the filling and it turns out as good as the original gula melaka version.

Okies, that's all for my "opening" recipe, hope you will like it and try to make it. Let me know if you find out any variation is good. Looking forward to see you again.

Welcome and Intro

Hello all, Welcome to my new blog: Jeffery's Kitchen.

Let's start a little bit of story how this blog is created: Due to the broadcasting of Masterchef (Australia), i am in love in cooking especially baking. I start from cooking from recipes till modifies recipes; and now i am able to create some dishes. I put the photos of my dishes on Facebook in album "Jeffery's Kitchen" and it receive overwhelming feedback, and my friends start to ask for the recipes, and "dang dang" this blog is born.

Kitchen, to me, is a place for fun and gettting connection with your love. I remember i always like to follow my mum in the kitchen & look at her when she cooks. I like to help her in the kitchen & i believe that is the reason why the connection betwen me and her is so TIGHT. I have known so many good friends from cooking. We always organise some cooking weekend & that bring us closer. To me, food is not just only to fill your hunger, but also full of love and passion. It will lead you to a world you never discover until you start to prepare it. One more thing, i can get away from my work and stress everytime i start cooking. Those are all the reasons i love cooking. Hope after reading this blog, you will start to love cooking and bring more love to the world.

Before i start the first dish, i would like to thanks my friends to encourage me to set up this blog as i always have no confident with my food to share with others. Besides, i also would like to let you know that my blog "healthy tip" will cover the recipes for juices which will not be included in here. For most looking for ideas about freshly-made healthy juices should go there. Thanks.