Mochi and Quick Bread

Yesterday, I made Green Tea and Red Bean Mochi as I had been wanting to make it since I got back from Japan.
The recipe is really easy, but you must have a microwave oven before you can use this recipe.
The dough wasn't as sticky as I expected it to be, but it still stick quite badly sometimes.
Other than that, the other problem I had was shaping the mochi to look nice and round.
And of course, i failed so most of the time, they turned out odd shaped.Haha
I used the red bean paste that I bought from Daiso, not the canned one, the packet one.
There're different kinds of red bean paste:

• Tsubuan (粒餡), whole red beans boiled with sugar but otherwise untreated
• Tsubushian (潰し餡), where the beans are mashed after boiling
• Koshian (漉し餡), which has been passed through a sieve to remove bean skins; the most common type
• Sarashian (晒し餡), which has been dried and reconstituted with water

Source: Wikipedia

The one I used was Koshian as that is the one that is usually used for mochi.
Since green tea and red bean are a perfect pair, I decided to use those 2 for my mochi.
Green tea on the outside, and red bean on the inside :D
The result was really good, it wasn't too sweet, and the flavours came very well together.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup glutinous rice flour
½ tsp green tea powder
180ml water
¼ cup sugar

Filling:
Red bean paste

DIRECTIONS

1. In a microwaveable bowl, combine flour, green tea powder and water, mix well. Add in the sugar and stir till sugar has dissolved.
2. Cover with a plastic wrap and microwave on medium-high for 2 minutes. Remove and stir well. Return to microwave for another 30 seconds. Stir-well and and check if it's in dough form. If not, put it back for another 30 seconds, be careful not to burn it.
3. Flour the working surface with cornstarch and use a spoon to drop a ball of mochi on top and quickly cover it with starch. Divide into 8 or 10 pieces. Wrap the filling inside and cover with more cornstarch. Shape into balls and ready to serve.

Recipe source here

Today, I baked a Banana Quick Bread.
My dad left 2 bananas specially for me to use so how could I not use them? :D
Ovenhaven's post about this banana bread made me want to try it out very badly so I decided not to procrastinate and make this while I have time and the bananas. ;)
I happened to recall that my bread machine can also bake quick breads so I decided to give it a shot.
All I had to do was to place all the ingredients into the bread machine and start the program, and in less than 2 hours, I get a quick bread.
As easy as ABC ;)
The quick bread was fantastic, I swear.
The recipe called for 3 or 4 bananas but I only had 2 small ones, the results weren't affected though, still tasted very delicious and banana-y :P
Added some bittersweet chocolate drops as I like the combination of banana+chocolate :D
It was soft and not too dense, just right, and the flavour was just heavenly, especially if you're a banana-lover.
Here's how I did it:

INGREDIENTS

2 over-riped bananas, smashed
75g melted salted butter
¾ cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 ½ cup plain flour

DIRECTIONS

1. Place ingredients into bread pan according to the order recommended by manufacturer.
2. Select crust colour( I chose Light) and start the program.
3. When the bread is ready, remove the bread by lightly shaking it onto a cooling rack.

Recipe source here

By the way, I may take a break from blogging for a while as it's back to the usual hectic school days :/
I'll try and update whenever I can, though!
:D

Potato Loaf!

Yes, and it's back to bread making! :)
From the title, you should be able to tell what I baked today.
After taking a break from baking( I was over at my friend's home the past 2 days), I decided to bake bread again.
I wanted to bake this as well as the Crunchy Peanut Butter Loaf, as both items are on my to-do list.
Many people, including Aimei of Baking Cottage and Elyn of E's Joie have given thumbs up for the Crunchy Peanut Butter Loaf recipe.
But I finally decided on the Potato Loaf as I have some mashed potato flakes to finish up, and I don't have Crunchy Peanut Butter, I only have the smooth kind.
I was pretty excited when I started measuring everything and pouring them into the bread pan.
Everything went well until the kneading started...
The dough was extremely sticky!
Even after 10 minutes of kneading, the dough still kept sticking everywhere even after I used a spatula to scrape the sides.
I kept on adding flour and after 20 minutes of kneading, the dough was still sticky!
I added more and more flour and I started to panic.
What if my dough becomes too densed because of the excess flour??
I stopped adding more flour and allowed the dough to be kneaded for another 20 minutes.
Sadly, it was still sticky...
I didn't have a good feeling about the bread since then.
I was worried that it'd turn out really bad...
When it was baking, the top was very uneven.
It sunk here and there, not like my previous loaf, which had a nice and even top :(
When I took the bread out, the crust colour was pretty light.
I used my finger to lightly tap the side and the bottom of the loaf to check if it was cooked, and thankfully, it was. ( You can tell if it sounds hollow)
Finally, when it has cooled down, I nervously sliced it.
And thank God!
The bread was okay, in fact it was really good!
It was holey and very soft.
I don't know if the loaf being holey is good, but the bread sure is nice and airy.
The loaf isn't exactly very tasty, but there's a hint of cheese here and there as I used cheese flavoured mashed potato flakes.
Overall, it's pretty good :D
I just had it for dinner, I sandwiched a slice of cheddar cheese and a fried egg in between 2 slices of buttered potato bread :P
Delicious!

INGREDIENTS
1 3/8 cups water
2 tablespoon canola oil
3 ¼ cups bread flour
¼ cups instant mashed potato flakes
2 tablespoon milk powder
2 tsp salt
2 tablespoon sugar
1 ½ tsp active dry yeast

DIRECTIONS
1. Place ingredients into bread pan of bread machine according to the order recommended in the instructions manual.
2. Select Dough program and allow dough to be kneaded. Stop the program when the kneading is done.
3. Select Basic program, preferred crust colour( I chose Light) and loaf size( I selected 700g) and start the program.
4. When bread is ready, remove bread pan and gently shake it to remove the bread from the pan.
5. Allow bread to cool completely before removing kneading blade( if necessary) and slicing.

Recipe source here

*Do prepare some extra bread flour as the dough is really sticky. If the dough is too wet, it'll affect the final results of the bread.
** Please pardon the bad quality pictures, they were taken with my handphone camera. -blushes

Matcha!

After making my previous 2 chiffon cakes, I was left with 3 egg yolks sitting in my fridge.
I didn't want to throw them away as it would be food wastage, so I went hunting for a recipe to use them up.
Just nice, I came across Elyn's post about the green tea sweets that she baked and decided to try it out since 3 egg yolks are needed for the recipe.
I think this recipe is fantastic.
It's fairly simple to follow and the ingredients needed are basic ingredients.
The recipe calls for unsalted butter but I don't have it on hand, so I just used what I have which is salted butter.
I used the green tea powder from Phoon Huat, the one I usually use.
But recently, I bought a packet from Sun Lik, costs me $4.50 for a packet of 50g, cheaper than the one from Phoon Huat($2.50+ for a bottle of 20g).
Anyway, back to the cookie...
It was really easy to work with the dough as it didn't stick and it was also easy to pick up the cut dough and "roll" it in sugar.
The result is fantastic!
My home smells of green tea now :D
And it tastes fabulous too, it isn't too sweet and the taste of green tea is very prominent.
This is definitely a keeper ;D
This is how I did it:

INGREDIENTS

63g icing sugar
140g unsalted butter, cut into cubes ( I used salted butter)
238g all-purpose flour
3 large egg yolks
1,5 tablespoon matcha [powdered green tea]
1 cup castor sugar [for coating]

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 165°C. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper.
2. Whisk the confectioner’s sugar and green tea together in a mixing bowl.

3. Add the butter and using an electric whisk, whisk on low speed until smooth and light in color.
4. Fold in the flour and mix until well combined.
5. Add the egg yolks and mix just until the eggs are fully incorporated and a mass forms.
6. refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.
7. Roll the dough out to ½” thickness.
8. Cut the dough with a cookie cutter.
9. Toss each cut cookie in a bowl of granulated sugar to coat.
10. Place the sugar-coated cookie on a parchment lined pan. Bake at 165°C for 13 minutes, or until slightly golden around the edges.

It's okay to fail so long you don't give up

It's been a while since I last baked a chiffon cake, and after seeing Happy Homebaker's Matcha Chiffon Cake and Elyn's Pandan Chiffon Cake, I got tempted to bake one.

I was contemplating between 2 Vanilla Chiffon Cake recipes, this and this.
I finally decided on the latter since the picture of the cake is so enticing ;)
It was stated that the recipe is for a small to medium size tube pan and I had no idea whether my 21cm tube pan is small, medium or large!
Since I was too impatient to wait for the owner of the blog to reply my comment, I decided to just try my luck.

I kinda lost touch with everything since I've been baking bread recently so I couldn't really remember anything about beating the egg whites.
And halfway through making the batter for the cake, I realised that the recipe doesn't use cream of tartar!
Although I've completely forgotten what cream of tartar is for, I still added it into my egg whites as I remember it plays a crucial part in beating the egg whites...


Egg whites need an acid to bind and hold them together. Without an acid, they will separate during whipping and then they will be hard to incorporate into your recipe, or on their own (meringues). Cream of tartar also prevents the whipped egg whites from releasing their water content, giving you more time to work with them, if needed. If you've ever whipped egg whites without any acid, you will have noticed that within a minute or two after being whipped, that water had developed in the bottom of the bowl and that the egg whites are floating over it. You don't want to add this water to your recipe because it will alter the recipe and will not produce a good cake or finished product. Whereas, if you had added a bit of cream of tartar, the eggs would have started to release their water content after 5 - 6 minutes instead, of their whipping, thus giving you a bit more time, just in case, with the recipe.
Source: Aki's Kitchen

Now that I know why, I'm glad I added the cream of tartar into my egg whites :D
Unfortunately, I was horrified when I overturned the cake pan.
It wasn't the lumpy surface that scared me, but it was the fact that the cake shrank away from the sides!
I decided to lay the slices on a tray and bake them again for another 15 minutes.
Silly me, I lowered the temperature to about 150°C and should have baked the cake for a longer period of time, but I forgot and baked it for the amount of time stated in the recipe.
No wonder it was uncooked and hence looking so horrible :(
But anyhow, after baking it again, the cake tasted good.
It was super soft, but not fluffy and rather yummy too, although the vanilla flavour wasn't very strong.
Sigh...
Do give this a shot if you're confident of achieving a nice and fluffy Vanilla Chiffon Cake :D

INGREDIENTS

130g cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
80g sugar
80ml canola oil
130ml water
1 tsp vanilla essence ( can increase the amount for a stronger vanilla taste)
4 egg yolks
6 egg whites
½ cream of tartar

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 170°C
2. Sift flour 3 times with baking powder
3. Whisk half the sugar with the egg yolks until sugar has dissolved.
4. Add the oil, water and vanilla essence and whisk until the mixture is well combined.
5. Add the flour mixture and mix using the whisk until well combined.
6. Beat egg whites until frothy, add cream of tartar and beat till soft peaks form. Add sugar gradually and beat till stiff peaks form.
7. Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture in 3 parts.
8. Pour the batter into ungreased tube pan and bake for 45-50 minutes.
9. When cake is baked, invert pan to cool. Unmould and slice cake after allowing cake to cool completely for an hour.

Credits to: Yuzuki of Little Food Boutique

And that's my failed attempt. But not wanting to give up, I baked another chiffon cake.
On separate days of course, I baked the vanilla one on sunday, and the banana one today :)
And this time, I really put all my heart and my soul into this cos I really wanted to get it right.
Gosh I just realised I made a mistake!
I used ½ TEASPOON of baking powder instead of ½ TABLESPOON.
Sheesh is that why my cake's so short?!
Anyway, the egg whites took a longer time to be beaten to stiff peaks but I didn't want to give up just yet especially when I thought of my chiffon cake with a half sunken top.
I carried on beating the egg whites until it finally reached the stiff peaks stage.
I folded it into the egg yolk batter very carefully and thoroughly and then popped it into the oven and prayed for the best.
I didn't follow the recipe for the baking part as I found it too troublesome to cover the cake with a piece of aluminium foil.
So I just agak-agak adjust the temperature and the time taken.
Thankfully, the cake turned out great!
Despite the fact that it's short[like always :( ], the cake's soft AND fluffy this time.
It's very fragrant, perhaps because I added an extra ½ tsp of vanilla essence.

It tastes a little weird though, I don't know how to describe that taste...
Maybe the weird taste was caused by the type of bananas used?
The bananas weren't really over riped, so I guess if I used more over riped bananas, it would have been more fragrant.
Nevertheless, I'm absolutely happy with my cake( although it was unmoulded pretty badly. Haha!) and I shall strive to make better chiffon cakes ;D

INGREDIENTS
yields a 21cm cake

4 egg yolks
40g castor sugar
¼ tsp salt
50g flavourless oil ( I used 30ml olive oil and 20ml canola oil)
130g mashed bananas
120g cake flour
½ tablespoon baking powder ( I used ½ teaspoon)
1/8 tsp baking soda
5 egg whites
40g castor sugar
½ tsp cream of tartar

DIRECTIONS

1. In a bowl, using hand whisk, whisk egg yolks and sugar till sugar dissolves.
2. Add oil and salt, whisk and add mashed bananas. Stir well.
3. Fold in sifted flour and mix well.
4. Beat egg whites until frothy, add cream of tartar and beat till soft peaks form. Add sugar gradually and beat till stiff peaks form.
5. Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture in 3 parts.
6. Pour the batter into a 21cm chiffon tube pan. Bang the pan on the table to get rid of bubbles.
7. Bake in preheated oven at 160°C-170°C for 40-45 minutes. ( I baked mine at 150°C for the first 30 minutes and 140°C during the last 10 minutes. I use a convection oven.)
8. Invert pan when cake is done and allow it to cool completely before slicing.

Credits to: Rei of All That Matters



*The weird orange light you see on some of the pictures of the Banana Chiffon Cake comes from the torch light I was using to shine on the cake. LOL. I couldn't get any natural sunlight anywhere you see... :)

Expected?

I baked something today!
It's really delicious and tasty, but yet not too overpowering.
The texture is great and simply heavenly!
Can you guess what it is?


























Haha it's BREAD!
Of course it's bread, I'm on a bread craze right :D
Haha
Sheesh my to-do list is starting to be flooded with more and more recipes each day, and most of them are well... BREAD recipes!
-grins
I came across this recipe at KWF's blog a few days ago and I was enticed by the yogurt bread!
It looked really fluffy and yummy!
But since I recently made a plain loaf, I decided to add something to this loaf...
And that is raisins!
Unfortunately, the raisins that my sis wanted to let me use for the loaf were invaded with umm... weevils @_@
So we threw everything away...
But at least I can BUY raisins.
However, on my way to get the raisins, other ideas popped into my head.
Like, what about using dried strawberries, or maybe dried raspberries, dried cranberries would be good too...
In the end, I decided to use dried cranberries and blueberries first :D
No regrets using cranberries and blueberries, they're simply awesome ;)
The bread is very soft despite the fact that it was completely "machine-made".
Most have the impression that bread machines come up with bread that's hard and dense, but this one isn't!
It's soft and light, the complete opposite(:
The bread as a whole is great, the dried fruits plus the good texture...
Mmm!
Maybe next time I'll try adding raisins, unless I get new ideas again...
Like chocolate chips, or maybe poppy seeds... And the list never ends :D
But there's something that I'm unsure about the bread.
The recipe didn't state the size of the bread(700g or 900g??) and the loaf turned out pretty small.
I could only cut the loaf into 7 slices..
And the sides were pretty brown, not sure if it's because I didn't take the loaf out right after it was done..
Ohwell I shall have to continue experimenting and exploring the world of breads :D

INGREDIENTS

250g bread flour
100g yogurt
60g fresh milk
25g egg
20g sugar
3g salt
30g butter
2.5g dry yeast
70g dried cranberries and blueberries(optional)

DIRECTIONS

1. Put all the ingredients except butter into bread machine according to the order recommended in the instructions manual.
2. Select Dough program and allow dough to be kneaded. After 10 minutes, stop the machine and add in the butter.
3. Select Basic program, preferred crust colour( I chose Light) and loaf size( I selected 700g) and start the program.
4. Add in the dried fruits if desired when a beep signals you to do so.
5. When bread is done, remove bread pan and use a rubber/silicone spatula to loosen the bread. Slowly shake the bread out of its pan onto a cooling rack, and allow it to cool completely before slicing.