Date and Walnut Scones

Well I have a problem and it's quite serious. I have a craving, and I really need to find a solution to satisfy my cravings. I'm addicted to scones!....*blush* I have been making scones after scones, and searched up and down for the best scone recipe because I love those scones at my workplace so much ( I believe I mentioned this many times before in my previous posts....). Since I'm going back to Melbourne next week, probably won't be coming back to Ballarat anytime soon, I need to find a recipe I can replicate at home and make scones whenever I want to.

I think I've found "The One". The scone recipe that I shared last week was great. But date and walnut? The best so far...Well I might change my mind when I come up with a new combination, but so far this one is the best for me and my hubby. Well I found out that hubby doesn't like savoury scones. But he loved these date and walnut scones. He thinks they are better that bakers delight's. I'm not sure if they are better than bakers delight's but they sure were yummy. I used the same basic recipe that I used for my savoury scones, except that I added sugar, a little bit more butter and used dates with walnuts instead. The tops stayed crispy after 1-2 days which was great, and we just put them in the microwave for about 2 mins to warm them up and they were as good as coming out fresh from the oven. Hope you like them as much as we do.

Date and Walnut Scones

Ingredients:

• 2 cups plain flour, sifted
  
• 1 tablespoon baking powder


• 100 grams cold butter, cubed


• 1/4 cup dates, chopped


• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts


• 1/3 cup sugar
  
• 180mls or 3/4 cup thickened cream


• Pinch of salt


• Milk to glaze prior to baking
  

Methods:

1. Add flour, baking powder, salt and sugar to mixing bowl. Mix well.


2. Add in cubed butter and mix together until small clumps form. You can use hand or food processor if you have one


3. Then add in dates and walnuts.


4. Add in thickened cream and use a fork to mix together until the dry ingredients are moistened


5. Pour out all the ingredients onto floured surface and lightly mix until the dough comes together. Be careful not to overmix the dough or the scones will become really hard


6. Form a ball and cut into 6 triangles or you can use cookie cutter and cut into small rounds as well.


7. Glaze the scones with milk before baking


8. Bake in preheated 220 degrees celcius for 15-17 minutes until tops are browned and crunchy


9. Serve with butter
   

Tips:

• I found that my scones spread out a little bit when I baked and became a bit flat. What I noticed from this cafe at my workplace was they flipped the scones sideways halfway through baking. I will try this next time. So halfway through baking maybe after 5-6 minutes, I will try to change the position of the scones so that the sides are facing up. This might help to keep the scones tall. I have not tried this before but saw the owner of this cafe doing this and has maintained good height for their scones. =)
  
  

Chinese New Year Bake #2 - Kue Putri Salju

This is another traditional Indonesian Chinese New Year cookie. I don't think I have ever seen this sold in Malaysia. But I might be wrong. It's called kue putri salju ( snow white cookies) because it's dusted with icing sugar which makes it looks like it's covered in snow. Why snow white? I have no idea, maybe Indonesian loves fairy tale....?? ahhaha....I'm not sure but I guess it makes sense to call it snow white cookies as it looks pretty covered in snow-like icing sugar....=)

These cookies are usually shaped like a moon or we call it bulan sabit in Indonesian. If you feel lazy to make it moon-shaped then just make small rounds like peanut butter cookies. Try to leave some space in between cookies when you bake because it will expand in the oven and might stick to one another which will be troublesome to separate later on. What I did to shape these cookies was to roll a dough longitudinally and then bend it to make them look like moons. Also, just like my recipe for peanut butter cookies, the dough is quite sticky especially if you make it in hot Malaysia/Singapore weather. I suggest you get a bowl of flour handy next to you and dust your hands every now and then to make it more workable for you.

I'm also submitting this to Aspiring Baker #3- My favourite CNY cookies hosted by Jess' Kitchen.

Kue Putri Salju- Snow White Cookies

Ingredients:

• 250 grams unsalted butter
• 100 grams caster sugar
• 250 grams plain flour, sifted
• 200 grams ground roasted cashew nut

Icing sugar for dusting

Methods:

1. Beat butter and sugar until soft and fluffy
2. Add in ground cashew nuts and plain flour alternately until well combined
3. Leave dough in fridge for 1 hour (I didn't leave it in the fridge when I made it and it still came out well). I guess leaving in the fridge will make the dough easier to work with.
   
4. Shape dough into moon shapes. Dust your hands with a pinch of plain flour after rolling 3-4 cookies to make it more workable.
   
5. Bake in preheated 160 degrees celcius oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown
6. Leave cookies to cool
   
7. Once cookies are cooled, dust both sides with icing sugar

Wish all of you a wonderful and Happy Chinese New Year

Chinese Herb Salt Baked Chicken - Dong Quai Hong Cou Yim Kok Kai

I love Yim Kok Kai. When I was young, my dad would buy special " salt chicken " from a famous shop in Jakarta whenever he went there for business trip. We call it "Kiam Ke" in Hokkian aka salty chicken. I believe it's similar to yim kok kai in Malaysia. It was so delicious and my mom being a great cook herself would use the left over bones to boil the best chicken congee ever. I think it was the saltiness of the chicken and the fragrance of salt in it, it was just so good to have it with plain rice. And the congee that was made out of the bones was divine. I always looked forward to have the chicken congee the next morning for breakfast. Gee, can't believe I have been a foodie since I was like 10 years old.

Yim Kok Kai really reminds me of this kiam ke from Jakarta. I always wanted to try making it. Then I saw this recipe from the malaysian cuisine and I set my mind to make yim kok kai for dinner yesterday. I made my own adaptations to the recipe. I added some chinese herbs to it, namely dong quai and red dates. You can get them from any asian groceries. I just thought it would add a really nice fragrance to the whole dish. Something different from the traditional one. And boy was I right, the dish came out delicious. My whole family enjoyed it so much. It was so simple to make, yet so tasty and went so well with a bowl of rice. I would definitely keep making this again in the future. I also took some step-by-step photos on how I wrap the chicken in baking paper and aluminium foil with coarse salt. Hope you enjoy it.

Chinese Herb Salt Baked Chicken - Dong Guai Hong Cou Yim Kok Kai

Ingredients:

• 3 chicken marylands - each chopped into 3 smaller pieces OR 8 chicken drumsticks
• 500 grams coarse salt
• Baking paper and aluminium foil
• 15-20 pieces of red dates
• 8 pieces dong guai
  

Marinade ingredients:

• 1/3 cup shao tsing cooking wine
• 2 tablespoons light soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce ( I used ABC kecap manis)
• 2 tablespoons sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon salt
• 1 teaspoon five spice powder
• 1 tablespoon garlic ginger paste ( you can refer to yau fan for recipe OR you can just use 1 tablespoon grated ginger)

Methods:

1. Marinade chicken with all the marinade ingredients for at least 2 hours
   
2. When you are ready to bake the chicken, preheat oven to 220 degrees celcius
3. First of all take a big piece of baking paper and put the chicken pieces ( without the marinade sauce) on it. Then add the dong quai and red dates.
   
   
4. Put another piece of baking paper on top and wrap the chicken pieces by folding in the sides, top and bottom. I used stapler to staple the folded sides so that they stay in place like this.
   
   
5. Place the aluminium foil in a baking tray and spread half the coarse salt on the foil. Then, add the wrapped chicken on top of the salt.
   
   
6. Add the remaining of the salt on top of the chicken.
   
   
7. Lay another piece of aluminium foil on top of everything and wrap it all up.
   
   
8. Bake in oven for 60 minutes
9. Take chicken out of the baking paper and serve with rice.

Tips:

• You can reuse the salt if you want so that you won't waste it. The only thing will be to wrap the chicken in another layer of baking paper if you really want to recycle the salt because the sauce from the chicken sometimes will leak out of the baking paper and the salt might become wet from the sauce. So to prevent that I'll just wrap the chicken with another layer of baking paper before putting it on top of the salt.

Another CNY bake coming up tomorrow. Kue Puteri Salju - Snow White Cookies, another traditional Indonesian CNY cookies.

Scones take 2 - Chives, Bacon and Sundried Tomato

My second attempt on savoury scones. This time I put chives, bacon and sundried tomatoes. I tried a different recipe this time. The last one was adapted from Masterchef of which did not require butter. But I was really curious if it will make any difference with butter added as that seems to be a usual ingredient in scones. The verdict? I prefer the ones with butter in them...ahhahahaa....It just somehow tasted better, lighter, fluffier with a more crunchy top. I think it was the butter that made the difference.

You can certainly make them into sweet scones, just add 1/3 cup of sugar and cut down the salt to the dry ingredients and the rest remains the same.

Chives, Bacons and Sundried Tomatoes Scone

Ingredients:

• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 90 grams cold butter, cubed
• 1/4 cup dried chives
• 1/4 cup diced bacons
• 6 pieces of sundried tomatoes, chopped into small pieces
• Pinch of salt and ground black pepper
• 180mls or 3/4 cup thickened cream
• Milk to glaze prior to baking

Methods:

1. Sift flour and baking powder to mixing bowl. Add in cubed butter and mix together until small clumps form. You can use hand or food processor if you have one
2. Then add in chives, bacons, sundried tomatoes, salt, pepper and mix well
3. Add in thickened cream and use a fork to mix together until the dry ingredients are moistened
4. Pour out all the ingredients onto floured surface and lightly mix until the dough comes together. Be careful not to overmix the dough or the scones will become really hard
5. Form a ball and cut into 6 triangles or you can use cookie cutter and cut into small rounds as well.
6. Glaze the scones with milk before baking
7. Bake in preheated 220 degrees celcius for 15-17 minutes until tops are browned and crunchy
8. Serve with butter

Tips:

• Other variations: Cheese and chives ( just add one cup of cheddar cheese), cheese and olives, mediteranian ( olive, cheese, sundried tomatoes and bacon). Sweet scones: date and walnut, apricot and coconut ( use shredded coconut), etc etc. Just need to change the ingredients added and you can make a whole lot of different varieties.
• If serving the next day, just put in microwave for 30 seconds to warm it up.
• For plain scone: just add 1/3 cup sugar with pinch of salt. Serve with whipped cream and jam....perfect for afternoon tea.

Kue Kacang Skippy - Peanut Cookie

I have a confession to make. I love peanut and this is my favourite peanut butter cookies.

My wonderful mommy passed this recipe down to me. It's one of my favourite Chinese New Year cookies ever. I'm sure my sister mydatewithfood will agree too. It's a bit different from the usual peanut cookies we find in Malaysia or Singapore I think. In Indonesia we just use peanut butter, good old Kraft Skippy Chunky Peanut Butter. Hence the name Kue Kacang Skippy. I'm not sure if you only find this in Indonesia as most of the peanut cookies recipes I read from foodblog use roasted peanuts that are processed to powder form ( which is equally delicious too). Call us Indonesians lazy...ahhaha...but these cookies are oh so good and easy to make. Only 4 main ingredients needed. The moment you put them in your mouth, it just melts away. That's one of the difference with the peanut cookies using roasted peanuts, I find those to be a bit on the crispy crunchy side which is really yummy too, but this one is more on the "melt in your mouth" side. Give it a try and see if you like it. It definitely saves me the time roasting and grinding the peanuts.

I'm also submitting this recipe to Aspiring Bakers #3: My favourite CNY cookies hosted by Jess' Kitchen.

Kue Kacang Skippy - Skippy Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients:

• 500grams Chunky Peanut Butter
  
• 900 grams plain flour, sifted
• 400 grams vegetable oil
• 400 grams pure icing sugar, sifted
• Pinch of salt
  

2 egg yolks to glaze the cookies before baking

Methods:

1. Put all the ingredients ( oil, peanut butter, flour, icing sugar and salt) except egg yolk in a big bowl and mix well.
2. Form the dough into small balls of 2-3cm diameter
3. Glaze with beaten egg yolks and bake in 180 degrees celcius oven for 15-20 minutes until the tops are browned.
4. Well, that's all you need to do really. SEEEEEE??? Told ya it's easy...=)

NOTES:

• The dough will be on a sticky side. So get a bowl of flour ready just next to you, and after rolling 3-4 cookies, dust your hands very lightly with just a pinch of flour. Justttt a pinch, like this. Repeat dusting every 3-4 cookies.
  

Dust your hands with a bit of flour after rolling 3-4 cookies.
This will make the dough easier to handle.

• With the full recipe I managed to make 3 big containers like this. And a bit more to munch before CNY..=)...

Molten Chocolate Cake

Who doesn't love a good serving of molten chocolate cake? Unless if you really hate chocolate or allergic to it or had bad experience with it, I really can't find a reason to NOT like molten chocolate cake. Personally, I think it's the best way to serve chocolate in all its glory. Sweet, warm, melty, goey, all in one serving of this wonderful dessert. Whoever created this cake would be a GENIUS.....I was thinking maybe it came out as an error.....Maybe the founder did not even plan to make it molten but took out the cake a little bit too early and was still a little undercooked in the middle and thought " MMM...it actually tastes even better than getting it fully cooked...." Whatever it is I'm glad this cake was created.

Molten chocolate cake is my favourite cake of all times. Whenever I go to restaurant, I will always choose this over any other deserts if it's available. I found this wonderful recipe from again, Ree " The pioneer woman ". The recipe was actually shared by one of the members of Tasty Kitchen ( Ree's food recipes sharing website). I have to say, it's absolutely gorgeous. You can whip it up in less than 15 minutes, and just need to bake in oven for 12 minutes and you've got yourself the BEST dessert of all times. It's elegant, tasty and sofisticated. Your guests would adore you and asks for more dinner parties at your place. =)

Molten Chocolate Cake

Adapted from Tasty Kitchen

• 112grams Semi-sweet Baking Chocolate
• ½ cups Butter
• 1 cup Powdered Sugar
• 2 whole Eggs
• 2 whole Egg Yolks
• 6 Tablespoons Flour
• 2 cups Real Whipping Cream (seriously It's So Much Better!)
• 2 Tablespoons Sugar
  

Methods:

1. Preheat oven to 220 degrees celcius
2. Spray 4 custard cups with oil or butter the custard cups and place on cookie sheet.
3. Microwave chocolate and butter in large bowl on high for about 1 minute, until butter is melted. whisk until chocolate is also melted.
4. Stir in sugar until well blended. Whisk in eggs and egg yolks. Stir in flour.
5. Divide between cups.
6. Bake 12 minutes until sides are firm and center is soft. Let stand 1 minute.
7. Combine sugar and heavy cream and whip until stiff.
8. Invert cakes on dishes and top with whipped cream.

Tips:

• The baking was stated as 13-14 minutes on the original recipe, but for my oven I found that 12 minutes is perfect. Just the right amount of goeyness and set on the outside
• I served with vanilla ice cream. I prefer ice cream better than whipped cream. But that's just my personal preference...=)
• Sorry the dessert was too good that I finished it all up in like 5 minutes and didn't get or bother (*blush*) to take the photos of the cake when it was out of the oven. So impatient of me, but I promise if I make it again I'll post it up. So the photo was actually taken before it went to the oven. It was that good you see? You just can't wait to dig in.

Hope you enjoy it too

Garam Masala Noodle

This dish was inspired by Neil Perry's pressure test recipe on last year's masterchef " Garam Masala Poached Fish with Semolina Noodle". What a long name ha? But I adapted this recipe from his recipe and make little adjustments here and there. Of course, I don't have the patience to make my own noodle so I just bought the usual yellow hokkien noodle from any asian groceries. It's still really satisfying. A bit of fusion between Indian/Thai flavour. I served this for one of the dinner parties we had at home and my friends loved it too.

I didn't cook it as long as Neil's recipe, and I made some changes to it as well. The colour looks a bit different too from his recipe. Haahahahha... but it's still good. I used Basa fillet, I kinda like this fish as it has nice firm flesh and a distinct flavour to it. I don't need to be afraid of overcooking it really. But you can replace it with any white flesh fish you like. Neil used snapper fillets.

The recipe I made is for about 8 servings. But you can cut it down to half of course.

Garam Masala Noodle with Fish

Adapted from Neil Perry's Masterchef pressure test recipe

Ingredients:

• 1kg Yellow Hokkien Noodle
• 200-300 grams snow peas
• 5 Basa Fillets, cut into 5-6cm pieces
• 5cm piece ginger, shredded
• 1L coconut milk
• 2 cups water
• 1/2 can diced tomato ( you can just use fresh tomato if you want. I was too lazy...=)..)
• 10 kaffir lime leaves
• 1 bunch Thai sweet basil leaves
• 1.5 big piece of palm sugar ( mine was a 5cm diameter piece, you can adjust accordingly)
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 3 tablespoons salt

Spice paste:

• 2 red shallots
• 5 cloves garlic
• 5cm piece ginger
• Red chillies, optional ( you can add more if you like it spicy. I didn't add any chillies for mine)

Dry spice:

• 2 heaped teaspoon garam masala ( you can get it at any big supermarket or asian groceries)
• 1 teaspoon tumeric
• 1 teaspoon whole black pepper, dry roasted
• 8 green cardamom pods - dry roasted, cracked and black seeds removed
• 2 cloves, dry roasted
• 2 star anise, dry roasted

Methods:

1. Grind all the dry spices together until fine. Make sure you dry roast the cardamom/cloves/star anise and black pepper first before grinding. And crack the cardamom pods with your mortar and pestle to remove all the black seeds after you dry roast them before grinding.
2. Process the shallots, ginger and garlic into smooth paste and mix in all the ground spices
3. Heat up oil in frying pan, and fry the shallots/spice paste on low-medium fire for 10-15 minutes until fragrant.
4. Then add in the canned tomato and fry on low fire for another 5-10 minutes until slightly dried up.
5. Add in the coconut milk, water, kaffir lime leaves, shredded ginger and boil on medium fire for another 20-30 minutes until all the flavour of the ginger and lime leaves are infused into the stock.
6. Add in seasoning ( sugar, salt and fish sauce). Adjust seasoning accordingly.
7. You can just switch off the fire now if you're not ready to eat yet and put in the fish whenever you're ready to serve the noodle.
8. When you're ready to serve, reheat the stock and put the fish into the stock and simmer on low fire for another 15 minutes until the fish is cooked.
9. Blanch your noodle and snow peas in hot water until soft
10. Arrange noodle and snow peas in a bowl

11. Put all the basil leaves into the curry stock and switch fire off.

12. Pour the stock with some fish on the noodle and serve warm

Bon appetit!