Savoury Spicy Dried Shrimp Cookie

It's DOUBLE cookie recipe galore today!! lolz

Yes you can really taste the flavour of the shrimps!
A good change from the usual 'sweet' cookies. :)

Ingredients (Recipe adapted from Yum-Yum books)
200g butter
80g icing sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 large egg
300g plain flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
20g grated parmesan cheese
10g curry powder
50g dried shrimp (chopped and fried in oiless wok)
10g deep fried crispy shallot

Method:

1. Cream butter, sugar and salt until light and fluffy.

2. Slowly beat in egg.

3. Fold in flour, baking powder and baking soda.

4. Stir in rest of ingredients into a soft dough.

5. Roll into small balls and arrange on lined baking tray.

6. Flatten lightly with a mallet (usually used to tenderise meat).

7. Bake in preheated oven at 180C degrees for 12-15 min or until light golden brown.

8. Cool before storing into airtight jars.

Adding this to the festive CNY bakes @ Aspiring Bakers CNY favourites.

Wishing everyone again Gong Hei Fatt Choy.

Lemon Butter Bunnies that hopped in late last night

It was a mad rush - almost like the Mad Hatter Rabbit. But am pretty pleased that I FINALLY have some cute bunny rabbits around for CNY as planned.

Adapated recipe from dailydelicious. Its a good dough, perfect base for sugar cookies and eggless too!!

Ingredients (yields approx. 46 bunny cookies)

200g butter, room temperature
pinch salt
80g icing sugar (if you want sweeter, you may increase it by another 20g)
240g all purpose flour, sieved
90g corn flour
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon paste (or can substitute with 2 tbsp lemon juice)
zest of 1 lemon

Method:

1. Cream butter, sugar and salt until light and fluffy.
2. Mix in lemon paste and vanilla extract.
3. Fold in flour and lemon zest and knead lightly until you get a nice pliable dough.
4. Cover and rest dough in fridge for 20 min.
5. Roll out and cut out with cookie cutters.

*Side track note - initially my cookie cutters were giving me some angst since the dough refuse to dislodge itself from the mould (shy probably?). After a few attempts, decided the best way was to make a light imprint and break out the shape. Thus requiring more invovled attention and time compared to other cookie cutters I normally use.

6. Bake in pre-heated oven at 160C degrees for 15 min or until turning slightly brown at the edges.

Am gonna join in some festive CNY baking fun by submitting and sharing this @ Aspiring Bakers CNY favourites

So if you are still wondering what to bake for CNY, do check out more on the recipes and festive goodies there.

Happy CNY 2011

Gong Hei Fatt Choi. May this year of the Rabbit come with plenty of warm bounding health, hopping wealth and leaping prosperity.

Yes wishing early all those celebrating as I close my kitchen for the new year; with simple CNY ornaments around the house. It’s been a mad rush with Master Prince now schooling in the morning and crazy work deadlines, leaving less time to bake and experiment, not to mention no time to plan my trip. But I did manage to make some cookies and because of time constraint M and I kept to our family traditional favourites:

Almond cookies

Choc chip cookies

Green pea cookies (eggless)

And even managed to try some new recipes, one for a vegan friend and the other, a savoury – just to satisfy M’s curiosity. Planned to make some bunny cookies but looks like there's not going to be any since I'm still swamped at work.

Butter cookies (eggless)

Savory dried shrimp cookies

Last minute addition - cornflake cookies but preferred last year's recipe.

Back to the trip, its only a few more days but my busy schedule is preventing me from planning my trip properly and even getting excited about it. But I take comfort that I’ll have plenty of time on the plane to get organized. Yes, am gonna chill out for a few leisurely days in Tokyo.

Am really looking forward to it as I’ll finally be able to personally check out all the lovely cute bento stuff and other trendy stuff at Tokyu Hands, KiddyLand and Loft. :)

Also will be trying out some local favourite places for ramen and tsukemen/tonkotsu. Haven’t tried the latter before and am so looking forward to tasting it. I actually prefer soba but the more popular local places seem to be for ramen. Hope this time I will not find the soup too “porky” – don’t know whether you understand what I mean but a colleague brought me to a popular ramen place at Harajuku but unfortunately found the soup too porky for me, the smell and the taste was really strong and didn’t enjoy it as much as I’d hoped to.

Initially was very keen to make a visit to the Ramen Museum @ Yokohama that Annathered and Nate blogged about but finally am opting to spend more time shopping at Shinjuku instead.

More interestingly, found out recently that there are some pretty good patisserie chefs in Tokyo so plan to squeeze in visits to Hidemi Sugiono, Sadaharu Aoki , Higashiya and Toraya. That's quite a list already right (?) - hopefully can cover all if not most of them. Planned to also visit Toshi Yoroizuka where I’ve read that they prepare the desserts in front of you but have to be honest to myself that while I have the biggest greedy bone in me and love to food porn, unfortunately I eat like a rabbit or rather my stomach capacity is as big as one. Secretly, I pine that I can be one of those who eats like a horse but stay skinny as a stick; unfortunately fact is I’m in the other category!!! Hahaha… Anyway, all the must-see-eat-visit food places on my list will definitely roll me out of Tokyo for a FATT FATT Chinese New Year (don’t mind them lining my pockets not on the body leh) lolz

As I do not speak or each a word of Japanese, wish me luck as I hang out in Tokyo!

Btw, I’m open for suggestions too for a must-visit or must-eat or must-do or must-see.


Some other blog sites which I found useful:
epicurious-deb
iitokorone
whiteonricecouple
chubbyhubby

Ramen blogs:
ramen-otaku
ramenate

Carrot-apple cake with vanilla cream cheese frosting

A healthy, light and moist cake for a 90 year old lady!

And it seems everyone agreed since there were two carrot cakes that night!! lolz....fortunately all the guests are fans of this cake!!

Finally decided on the recipe from Annie Eats but think generally all carrot cake recipes are generally full-proof recipes so you don't really have to worry about messing it up. Like I did - was rushing for time and didn't read that this recipe uses both caster and brown sugar. I missed out the caster sugar and so while the cake tasted lovely, it wasn't sweet. Fortunately made up for it wtih the cream cheese frosting, phew. Everyone who tried it told me later that they liked it because it wasn't sweet - guess everyone's tastebud seem to lean to the 'less/reduced sugar' route. Guess the 'natural' sugars from the carrot, apple and raisins helped a lot too.

Changed the recipe a little by adding grated apple, raisins and toasted walnuts.

Recipe adapted from here

Ingredients (Makes about 35 small cupcakes)

358g All Purpose Flour
1¼ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1¼ tsp. ground cinnamon
pinch of salt
3 cups of carrot, grated (used about 4 medium carrots)
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, chopped
3/4 cup raisins (combination of sultanas, raisins and currants), plump them up in hot tea (lightly squeeze out the liquid before using)
2 small green apples, grated (lightly squeeze the juice out before using)
1 cup packed light brown sugar (used 90g but would up this next time so that can be eaten without the cream cheese frosting) Nb. if have sweeter preference, you will need to increase this amount.
4 large eggs
130g vegetable oil

1. Preheat oven to 150C degrees.

2. Using a hand whisk, beat eggs, sugar and salt lightly.

3. Add oil and stir to combine ingredients properly before folding in the flour, cinnamon and baking agents.

4. Fold in properly grated carrot, grated apples, raisins and nuts.

5. Spoon into prepared tins or if preferred, can be baked it as a whole cake.

6. These cupcakes took about 20 mins or bake until skewer in the centre comes out clean.

For the frosting:
230g cream cheese (softened)
125g unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 tbsp vanilla extract or pods from 1 vanilla bean
190g icing sugar, sifted

7. Beat cream cheese and butter until light and fluffy.

8. Mix in the vanilla extract. Gradually beat in the confectioners’ sugar until totally incorporated, increase the speed and then beat until smooth.

9. Frost cooled cupcakes as desired.

Have a goodweekend everyone!

Snapshot

You may not know this but I've had a long dissapointing battle with ginger snaps. Yup, you read right. While I am pleased with the taste of my snaps, I've always had trouble of getting consistent signature cracks on top.

Haha...finally solved the 'mystery'. The tip is to make sure the dough is well chilled before baking. Needless to say, I'm super pleased to finally solve this.

Best of 2010 (meme)

Most memorable trip?
Out of the places visited, it has to be HK/Macau because over-walked and over-ate. Not the best combination, it was fun until it became a 'torture' (which reminds me my backlog on this post).

Most rewarding baking/cooking project?
Tried many things in 2010 and even managed to tick off the oldest to-do items on my list such as fortune cookies, macarons, cake pops and decorating sugar cookies.

Most challenging baking/cooking project?
Handling chocolate is not as easy as I hoped, so it would have to be cake pops.

Favourite kitchen utensil/toy or bento tool?
For kitchen tool, gotta be the microplane zester. I’m still super pleased with this buy.

Still the scissors and tweezers for bento tools.

Most frequently used/repeated recipe?
No brainer – it has to be Ina Garten roasted tomatoes caprese salad; made many guest very happy.

Best/tastiest dish tested?
This is a hard one. Think Julia Child’s beef bourguignon and kumquat marmalade probably nudges out as the most surprising (exceeding expectations) in terms of taste.

Worst tried/disaster recipe experience?
Rainbow balls jelly, still have yet to find a solution around bleeding issues experience. Actually the solution is to used packet jello flavoured jelly instead of food colouring but yet to have another go with this.

Most memorable achievement?
Definitely goes to lowering my cholesterol level.

Most rewarding experience?
Meeting in person other fellow bloggers (you know who you are!!).

Most unforgettable disaster experience?
Burning hard boil eggs definitely without any doubt tops my list. Thank goodness I was able to scrub out the blacken pot!!

Most enjoyed/best watch drama series/movie/book?
For me, tend to watch more Korean Dramas.
Another hard one – probably My Girlfriend is a Gumiho for short episodes (less than 20) since I didn't watch Chuno, Giant or Dong Yi (all over 20 episodes). For making my eyes all puffy & red, it has to be Kim Tak Ku. For the most read & researched, it would have to be Sungkyunkwan Scandal.

Plans for 2011?
Its gotta be more La Dolce Far Niente!!!


Now, the fun part - tagging and ropping 3 others to do this:

HK Choo

Mary

Emily

La Dolce Far Niente

An Italian phrase and roughly translates as the "art of doing nothing" or "the sweetness of doing nothing".

According to Liz’s friend Luca Spaghetti, “the beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more exquisitely and delightfully you can do nothing, the higher your life’s achievement.”

If you've watched the movie: Eat Pray Love, I'm sure you know what I'm referring to. And how many of you joined me in being amused with "Ketut" or "Luca Spaghetti" or "muffin top"!! ;p

Watched the movie first. So I had certain preconceived ideas while reading book itself.

Didn't find the book as interesting somehow (probably for the lack of new books around the house) managed to kept plugging, reading in small parts and sections. And viola before I knew it, finished the book.

Anyway, there is a scene in the movie (not in the book if I'm not mistaken) where Liz buys herself a beautiful blue/purple(?) nightie in Italy and she dresses up lounging on the floor with some simple heart food and take part in the Italian way of Dolce Far Niente. Like it written here too.

While I did not lounge around the floor in a new skimpy nightie, I wanted to recreate my La Dolce Far Niente moment by doing something for me to pamper myself, relax or self-indulge. Some of you would be thinking massage or manicure/pedicure but being a foodie at heart, self indulge on the pleasure of eating instead (haha) - something simple and fresh yet wholesome slowly over a book/magazine in my 'own world peace' or 'zen'. Away from distraction of others and life/daily demands. Chilling out and just simply enjoying where I am at the present moment!! :)

Its gonna be my motto for 2011! :)

Here's my take - Garlic bread, poached egg, grilled asparagus and mushrooms with mozzarella.

Happy New Year Everybody!!!

Originally wanted to post something on 010111 but got sick. Yeah, not a good way to start the year and hopefully its not a sign for what's to come this year.

Misplaced my drawer keys for a few days which held my camera card reader device (I should get a back up).

Then I was super busy busy busy with new school routine having to push Master Prince out of the door early hours of the morning. It didn't help either that work is crazy busy - 24 hours just didn't seem enough for me to complete my tasks :(

Praying for some 'normality' to seep back in soon.

Hope your start to the new year is better! :)