Coconut Egg Rolls ( Kuih Kapit ) Aka Love Letter

 
Just cant have enough of all the Chinese New Year goodies. Please understand here in Australia we do able to grab everything ( almost everything) from our home country. But talking about home made vs machine mass production . I do prefer home made with love and knowing what is the ingredient put in the food we ate.

Ok, to fulfill my own satisfication of having all the CNY goodies I love , I got to be the one who home made the goodies I love. One of it , is this traditional goodies we all love in Malaysia and often store in Milo tin. If you are part of the family , your will have a milo tin as a token as CNY goodies from family member who make it that year.

I knew the traditional way of making this , sitting infront of a roll of  charcoal using a metal mold and have to look after each plate you put on the charcoal . If it get burnt, well you will get a scolded from the elder. I dont really have an experience on that. So I probably will not know how to do it. With the technology now, it is a pleasant experience to make this.

Here are the recipe I follow from this link ->Cheryl Marie Cordeiro.

Ingredients :

400 ml of canned coconut milk
5 eggs
150 g caster sugar
150 g rice flour
90 g plain flour

Method :

1.Beat the egg with sugar till sugar resolve .
2.Pour in the coconut milk , combine well .
3. Sift in the flour and mixed well.
4. Heat up the machine as per mannual
5. Place 1 table soup ( western soup) of batter in the machine and press it hard if you prefer a thin layer.
6. When is done , either roll it as a roll or fold it as a triangle shape.

I simple love the coconut milk fragrant in this biscuit and it did bring back all my good childhood memory. My cousin used to make this and we always got a tin from my auntie. Bear in mind , my cousin was a boy then, I admire his patience. I guess this is how Asian family show love and appreciate to one another. We seldom express love verbally often we show love in giving things that we make from home . So we do love to share food during all festival.

This season for all those who celebrate this festival , I wish you Prosperous Lunar New Year, good health and dreams come true in this Horse year.

I am submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #39: CNY Rock and Roll! (Jan 2014) hosted by Food Playground .



Pineapple Tarts

After welcoming 2014 , is time to prepare for another big festival of the Chinese . Lunar new year will soon be coming . This year it seem earlier than the usual date , the Chinese New Year( CNY) will fall on 31/01/2014. Most of my friends has planned to go back home for celebration . As the new year fall close with Australian Day ( 26/01/2014) is good to take some holidays and have a public holidays in between. Well, I hope is not a too lonely year for us who are "left behind".

This year I want to be more prepared than last year. So I have decided to start my baking of CNY cookies earlier and plan to sell it for a good start of my year 2014.

A lot of the friends has express their interest in this lovely goodies - Pineapple Tarts. This is my no 1 top love of the CNY cookies. We used to place order and from the best famous Malacca style pineapple tart. Only after making it myself I understand why this cookies is always the most expensive and at time one tarts can reach the price of $1.50 each. Not only is time consuming and the delicate of handling it require patience and again time .

I have make a batch of 81 pieces with the following recipe and would like to let my friends try out and see do they love this version and taste.

The recipe I used is from ->Table for 2 or more

I follow the pineapple jam recipe from hers as well ->Homemade-pineapple-jam

Yes I make everything from original and would love to provide the best natural ingredients in all I bake.

The recipe of Pineapple tarts dough is as below:

Ingredients :

250g Unsalted Butter
170g Cream ( Pouring Cream/Whipping cream)
50g   Cream Cheese
3 egg yolks
400g Cake Flour
30g Corn Flour

1 large egg yolk + 1 tablespoon of milk for egg wash.

Method :

1. Cream butter, cream cheese and sugar in a mixer. Till well combine
2. Pour in the cream and continue to mix in medium speed, scrap down the side from time to time. It might look lumpy at the beginning it will all combine well together as you continue your beat.
3. Beat in egg yolks for 1 minutes.
4. Sift the flour together and pour in half to the above mixture and continue to beat till combine and pour in the reminding flour and make sure is combine well but not over mix.
5. Let the dough sit for 10 min before handling it and wrap with the pineapple jam that has been roll in ball.
6. Gentle wrap the pineapple tart in this dough and brush with egg yolk wash .
7. Preheat oven to 165C , and bake the pineapple tarts for about 20min till golden brown.

Pineapple Jam

Ingredients :

1kg pineapple flesh
1 1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 small piece of cinnamon stick

Method :

1. Blend the pineapple flesh till fine ( is good to leave some fiber in )
As mention in Table for 2 or more recipe, include the core of the pineapple does make it more juicy and add fibre in the jam texture.
2. Pour all the blend pineapple in a deep base wok/pot and start to cook in medium heat.
3. When the pineapple started to dry up and like thick oatmeal, gentle pour in half of sugar and continue to cook in low heat.
4. Stir occasionally and make sure no burning of jam in the bottom.
5. When the water reduce to 80% pour in the reminding sugar, and stir every 8 min.
6. When the pineapple jam is cooked to your liking consistency , off the fire and let it cool down .

Is easy to handle the jam after chilled  in a fridge.

The post written by Wendyikk is very helpful and details. Do used her blog for more details information.

Happy baking and I do hope this will be well received by my friends or customers :)

Rainbow Cake

December is a month full of celebration . My birthday fall in the month of December. But this is not the only celebration we do in end of the year. Follow by Christmas and jumping into new year. Is always a month have lots of celebration .

I make this cake first for my own birthday. The interesting thing is , I have started my baking "business" ( cant really consider as full business but I bake by order from friends who want cake for any occasion ) . So my friends order a cake from me for my birthday . Wahahaha!! Reason given - " we cant find a cake that you will like. So we will pay you to bake a cake for your birthday party. "

Well I did not complain , afterall I got to experiment and get to pay for it. In Australia it does has a culture to bring your own cake to the office and celebrate with your colleague. ( Do not ask me why, I can not figure out the reason as well ). So I treat this as an honor and there was this cake I would always love to try out - Rainbow cake !!!!

I look for the recipe and mostly is all using coloring. NOPE this is not what I prefer my cake to be. So when I find this ->Peng's Kitchen. I am happy to use this recipe and adapt to the ingredients I can find in Australia.

Hereby this is the cake I have make and right after my birthday I have an order from a lovely husband who want a colourful cake for his lovely wife. So I did make the 2nd Rainbow cake and improve a lot from my plain decoration version.

My recipe as below :

Natural Colourings :

Ingredients

Red : 2 Tbsp of cherry puree + 1 little drop of red velvet color ( Is difficult to get the red )

Plain yellow : 1 egg yolk + 1 tbsp milk

Orange: 2 Tbsp of mango puree

Green : 2 Tbsp of pandan juice or 1 tsp of pandan essence

Blue : 2 Tbsp of blueberry puree + 1 tsp of lemon juice ( a tiny drop of blue color, as blueberry tend to become purple)

Purple : 2 Tbsp blackcurrant puree +2 tsp of lemon juice

Chocolate : 1 Tbsp of cocoa powder + 2 Tbsp of hot water ( Mix and dissolve)

White Velvet Cake ( I have added half portion of the original recipe)

660g Plain Flour

3 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

300g sugar ( original should be 375gm)

90g butter

2 tbsp oil

3 egg white

375ml milk

188ml natural yogurt

3 tsp vanilla paste

Method

1. Cream the butter with oil and sugar till white and fluffy. ( It take about 2min)

2. Add in the egg white and beat till well combine

3. Mixed the vanilla, milk and yogurt well in a bowl.

4. Sifted the flour with baking powder and baking soda.

5. Add in the liquid ( step 3)  and flour alternately in step 2 . Be careful not to over mix.

6. Preheat Oven at 160C

7. Divide the cake mixture into 7 portion by having  3/4 cup batter into separate bowls and mix in natural coloring into each bowl.

8. Pour the batter into a 7" round pan and bake for 15min or until the toothpick inserted come out clean.

9. Take out the cake leave it to cool (5min) and use a thin knife go arout and the cake pan and have the cake out and cool on rack.

I bake 2 cake at one time as I happen to have 2 mould. It help to shorten the time of the baking.

After finished all the baking , make sure the cake cool down before frosting.

I frost one of the cake with strawberry Italian Merigue Buttercream and anoather with blueberry Italian Merigue Buttercream. For Italian Merigue I am using the recipe from ->Cake Journal

Decorate the cake with your favourite fruit , I used cheeries & blueberry . Simply love the look of this cake and the height of it. The cake did bring a "wow" factor after one slice was being cut out. However the cake is not as moist and soft as I would love to. I will try other cake base and see what it will bring next time when I bake this again .

Rainbow always mean something speacial to my heart, as it remember GOD's promise for me and my dear one on our wedding. At time things get tough and life is not always easy , I bake this cake to remind myself GOD's goodness in this season and trust HIM will bring a more of HIM 2014 in our life again!

Happy New YEAR !!! May GOD blessings fall upon you and the love one in 2014 . You will be a great blessings to those around you .

I am submitting this post to Baby Sumo's Christmas Recipes Collection 2013 event which is hosted by Baby Sumo of Eat Your Heart Out.

Remember every cloud has silver lining and rainbow always come after storm !!

 

P/S : The picture in this blog is taken by a talented brother. Really love how it make the cake looks so like magazine picture.