Simple plain scones

We have always love scones since AC days. We love the yummy scones from da paolo and treating ourselves once in a while during our AC days. And then, when we came to the UK, we realised how much fresher and more yummy scones are here. We have always been going for high teas just to taste yummy scones, and buying scones from the different bakeries and finally, we decided to make our own scones. We found the perfect recipe for scones and realise how cheap, easy and fast it was to make!

Ingredients:

230g Self-raising flour

50g Cold butter

120ml Milk

4 Tablespoon sugar

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 220degrees celcius. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl in this order - self-raising flour, sugar, butter and milk. Once mixing all the ingredients together, you should obtain a slightly sticky ball of dough. To makes things simpler, just scoop the mixture into a cupcake/muffin tin, and place into the oven for 10-12 minutes. 

Normally, you would roll out the mixture to make a round shape so that the scone will raise in a nicer way, however, we really like our scones to be irregular shaped as it looks cute! Lastly, you can add other ingredients inside to make 'flavoured' scones, such as a combination of raspberry, blueberry and white chocolate, or the typical sultana scone. Try it yourself! It is really easy and fast :)

We made about 16 mini scones!

Mushroom Risotto

So, Desiree and I have made mushroom risotto 4 times and we finally came to a consensus that this is a good recipe. But the bad thing about this dish is that it takes quite long to cook, so I would advice people to only cook this dish if they have time (e.g. after exams or before the school term starts). It takes at least 1hr and 15mins to cook the dish and about 5-10mins to prepare the ingredients. And also, the ingredients of mushroom risotto is really really cheap to get in the UK rather than to get it in Singapore because mushrooms cost a bomb in Singapore. 

The key thing about mushroom risotto is that you have to try to get all different types of mushroom to get the best flavour out of it. We tried using one type of mushroom only, and it did not turn out nice. For the white wine, we basically just got the cheapest white wine because we think that you will be wasting an expensive bottle of white wine. 

Ingredients: 

1 Chicken Stock (other recipe used vegetable stock)

300g of Mushroom (3 different types of mushrooms)

2 Tablespoons Olive Oil

2 Garlic Cloves, finely chopped

1 Onion, finely chopped

300g Risotto Rice, such as Arborio

175ml White Wine

25g Butter

White/Black pepper for garnish

Grated Parmesan/Italian-Style Cheese for garnish

Directions:

(If you're using dried mushrooms) Put dried mushrooms into 1 litre of boiling water. Soak for 20 mins, then drain into a bowl, discarding the last few tablespoon of liquid left in the bowl. Squeeze the mushroom gently to remove any liquid. In the 1 litre of mushroom water, add the chicken stock and make sure it complete dissolve in the water. Slice all the remaining mushrooms that you have prepared.

Heat the oil in a saucepan over a medium flame. Add the onions and garlic, then fry for about 5 minutes until soft. Stir in the fresh (and dried) mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and continue to cook until the mushrooms have softened, which will roughly take about 8 minutes. It is alright if the mushrooms start to give out water. DO NOT POUR IT AWAY.

Here comes the most tiring and tedious part. Add the rice into the pan and cook for 1 minute. Make sure that all the rice is coated with mushroom and its sauce. Pour over the wine and let it bubble to nothing so that the alcohol evaporates. Make sure to keep the pan over a medium heat. Pour in about 1/8 of the mushroom stock. Simmer the rice, stirring often, until the rice has absorbed all the liquid. Then add about the same amount of stock again and continue to simmer and stir - it should start to become creamy, plump and tender. By the time all the stock is added, the rice should be almost cooked.

Continue stirring until the rice is cooked. If the rice is still undercooked, add a splash of water. Take the pan off the heat, add the butter and scatter over some cheese and parsley. Cover and leave for a few mins so that the rice can take up any excess liquid as it cools a bit. Give the risotto a final stir, spoon into bowls and scatter with the remaining cheese and parsley (and pepper if you like)

If I'm not wrong, it feeds about 2-3 people :) Cheers!

Summer begins

So we finally reunited after a long academic year :) Triplets takes on Malaysia! Well, our parents are staying here now because of work, so welcome to our new room in Malaysia! As I was the first to enter  the room, I jumped straight for the bed, leaving my sisters to be left with no choice but to sleep on the mattress. Hehehe! :) :) Spending the next 4 days with my awesome doppelgangers and then back to Singapore. Can't wait to swim and gym with them :) :)

Prawn Congee with Century Eggs

It's basically exams period, and that can only mean 1 thing - more cooking, or more baking. But obviously since baking is usually higher in calories, I cook. Plus, I tend to finish my baking food within like an hour. I rarely, or hardly, ever cook Chinese food, because the measurements are usually pretty hard to define them. So please take note that the measurements may vary from one's palate to another.

I used to have this instant porridge packets, which basically takes me literally 3 minutes to cook it and it only cost me 0.75euros per packet. It's a cheap and easy dinner, and I basically throw in whatever ingredients I feel like eating that day. But since it is exams period (yes yes, I blame it on exams), I have more time to make it from scratch. Plus, the asian market doesn't sell my porridge anymore so I haven't been eating them in months.

Plus, my boyfie somehow wanted to eat congee. I wanted to make the more traditionally chicken or pork congee, but boyfie wanted seafood/prawns.

Ingredients:

1 Cup of rice

8 Cups of water

2-3 Tablespoon of Chinese cooking wine

A handful of dried shrimps

A handful of dried mushrooms (shitake)

Prawns

Shredded carrots (to your liking)

Century eggs

Crab meat (diced)

Vegetable stock

Spring onions for garnish

Directions:

Soak dried shrimps and dried mushrooms in hot water. After it has been softened, throw all the ingredients in, excluding the century egg and crab meat. I cooked it under "white rice" setting first, but then I changed to stew. The rice would slowly break up, so don't worry about it being all grainy in the beginning. Stew it longer if you like your congee thicker and add water if you like it more watery. I stewed mine for a good 1.5hours. Then throw in the prawns to cook it. Add the crab meat, century eggs and spring onions at the end when serving. 

I was reading recipes online and that they say you should marinate the prawns first, but obviously I was too lazy to do that. But go ahead if you like to. Variations also say that congee would taste better if you soak the rice in water or sesame oil + salt for a good hour. I didn't had the time to do that either. And I used vegetable stock because I'm a person who really likes a more flavourful taste rather than a plain white congee. But you can do without it, if you like. 

From the picture, you can't exactly see the crabmeat or prawns because I kind of finished it all in the first serving and usually the second servings do not have much ingredients left. I love the colour of the crabmeat, carrots and spring onions, giving it that colour to a mundane white congee. Ahh, all food only looks good. But pictures can sometimes be deceiving. 

I made a good 6 bowls/portions with these ingredients.

Sushi feast!

I have always loved sushi. It's really frustrating how Dublin's sushi are really expensive and not in any way the freshest. Then again, Singapore's sushi has been getting way to expensive. &I don't know, I always felt like eating Tamago nigiri or California rolls and etc (basically non-seafood sushi) at Japanese restaurants are such a waste of money. They probably cost about the same as a piece of Salmon nigiri or Tuna. I'm pretty much quite money minded when it comes to food, and also therefore like not to "waste" money on food like these as it is not worth it.

Tamago isn't that hard to make when you actually know the ingredients to it. After learning how to make a Tamago, you'll probably never buy them again at Japanese restaurants because it honestly just not worth it.




















Tamago recipe:
4 Eggs
2 Tablespoon of mirin
1 Tablespoon of sugar
1 Teaspoon of salt
1 Tablespoon of dashi (Honestly, I didn't measure how much I put in for it)
- It's completely up to you if you like dashi in your Tamago. You can also do without it

Directions:
Basically pour all the ingredients together and mix it well. The hardest part is getting a rectangle pan (or circular if you're more professional with it), and pouring it out a very thin (or as thin as you can get) layer of the egg mixture. The non-stick or oiled pan should be heated under medium fire for better control. And as soon as you see the top part of the egg getting cook (it should still be wet) and the bottom completely cooked, time to start rolling your eggs! You want to start folding them about 1cm. The beginning is the hardest part, so be careful of breaking/splitting the eggs because it is very thin. I suggest using a pair of chopsticks to fold it when you lift it up with a spatula. And just continue rolling them, it gets easier when dealing with bigger volume of egg. &Tadah, your wonderful Tamago is formed. Remember to refrigerate them because.. I don't know? Sushi taste better cold?

By the way, I'm so proud of my Tamago because of the beautiful layers. Looks a little like kueh lapis eh? So, since I've made Tamago, you can't not just have Tamago alone. You got to continue the second step of making a sushi. Or rolls/maki. Obviously, I don't have the money to buy seafood, but you can have any ingredients you like in a roll/maki. I'll do with the 'poor-people's' maki.

Ingredients:
Crab sticks
Cucumber
Tamago (Look above)
Avocado
Seaweed
-
2 Cups of Sushi rice
2.5 Cups of water
4 Tablespoon (or more) of rice vinegar
2 Tablespoon of sugar
2 Tablespoon of salt
-
Sushi mat, or if you don't have one, just use a parchment/baking paper. That's what I did, it works perfectly fine.

Directions:
Wash your rice and add water. Pop it into the rice cooker. Isn't a rice cooker just so convenient nowadays? Meanwhile, waiting for the rice, combine the rice vinegar, sugar and salt together. Cut up your crabsticks, cumber, Tamago and avocado into slices. Once your rice is cooked, open the lid to let it cool down for a little while. And once it is warm, add the mixture into it and stir! The rice gets dry pretty easily, so I suggest using a towel to cover the pot if you're not using it.

There's 2 ways into making a maki - either the rice inside the seaweed or outside. Either way, put your seaweed shiny side down on your sushi mat or parchment paper and add your rice. Make sure it is somewhat evenly spread out, you don't have to flatten it just yet.

a) Rice inside seaweed
Take a whole seaweed and spread the rice on it, leaving about 2cm of the top part empty. Then add your ingredients! The tricky part is rolling it. Take the end of your seaweed+rice and you want to cover ALL the ingredients. Tug your ingredients underneath it. When doing so, make sure you press the ingredients in so it is compact. After getting the "shape", let go of the parchment paper and make sure your ingredient (or at least 9/10 of it) is inside. Then start rolling it again, it's pretty simple once you get the hang of it. You also want to keep in mind that you want a "squarish" maki, so make sure you mould it into that shape.

When cutting the maki, the most important thing is your knife. Make sure it is VERY sharp and clean. Don't press your knife downwards against the sushi, but actually slicing it. A sharp knife makes it all much simpler. Remember if there is rice being stuck to the knife, wash it and do it again. You only have 1 chance of cutting the make right. &Because you usually hold and press onto the maki while cutting it, the tip is to "remould" it again with the parchment paper AFTER slicing all of them.

b) Rice outside seaweed
You have to cut your seaweed into 2, because it would be too big a maki for 1 seaweed. &Like again, shinny side down. This time, spread ALL the rice on the seaweed. You don't have to really care about compressing it now. Flip the seaweed and rice over and this time, press it down to "compress" the rice. Don't worry, the rice would not stick to the parchment paper, that's the beauty of it. Add your ingredients in the middle & roll it up the same way as above. Top your sushi with toasted sesame seed to make it look more professional than it already is.

Wal-lah, beautiful sushi makis. Easy to make. I made about 6-7 rolls with the amount of rice. &If you are ever too lazy to cut them up, YOU CAN HAVE A SUSHI BURITO. Dum dum dum.

Crepé

Spontaneous midnight snack.

Ingredients:

1 cup of all-purpose flour

2 eggs

1/2 cup of water

1/2 cup of milk

1 teaspoon of melted butter

A pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients into a bowl

2. Heat up a circular pan on medium heat

3. When pan is hot, pour one scoop of mix onto pan and spread immediately around

4. Cook for about 2 minutes on each side, or till brown

5. Add any ingredients you want in it

    E.g. bananas, strawberries, chocolate, ham, cheese, eggs etc

Brown scones

Carbs are my favourite food of all time. And so I've been eating brown scone every day in the past 2 weeks for breakfast. They cost me 70cents (euros) every time I buy it at the bus stop shop and 1.65 (euros) when I buy it at the hospital. I don't know how much I've wasted because brown scones are probably one of the cheapest things you can make. So I decided to make mine myself for this week.

I prefer brown scones than to white ones because they have like grains in them? Which makes it nicer to chew and stuffs. And also, they are healthier! :D

Ingredients:
1.5 cups of wholemeal flour
1/2 cups of plain flour
2 tablespoon of melted butter
1 tablespoon of baking soda
3/4 cup of buttermilk

I made buttermilk myself by putting 1 tablespoon of lemon juice into the measuring cup and fill the rest with milk (I used low-fat). Just leave it for a good 5 minutes and stir it. And tadah, you get buttermilk.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Basically combine all the ingredients together and form into a dough. Add more buttermilk or flour if it is too dry or wet. Then roll the dough out to approximately 1.5cm and use a cookie cutter and cut it. Obviously, I only have cliche heart shapes cookie cutters and thus my scones are heart shaped. Spread the remaining buttermilk on top of each scone and pop them into the oven for a good 15minutes. :)

I love eating them refrigerated, but it's completely up to you! I'm gonna try substituting butter with greek yoghurt the next time and I'll tell you how it goes! :D

Healthy pancakes

So I tried to start eating more healthily so I bought a whole bunch of avocados. But my diet plan failed over the days and I'm left with a whole bunch of almost-overriped avocados. Had to do something with them plus I was craving pancakes, as usual. 

So I made wholemeal pancakes layered with smashed avocados! In the beginning, the wholemeal pancakes tasted weird. But maybe that's because I'm not used to eating wholemeal stuffs. After awhile it tasted much better. The batter even looked like oats. I had more avocado to spare, so I made avocado banana smoothie too! It's probably of the best smoothies I've ever tasted, surprisingly. I never really liked avocados because when I was young, my mum forced me to have them. Definitely going to make more of those from now on. 

Wholemeal pancakes recipe: 

- 1 Cup wholemeal flour

- 1 Cup Greek yoghurt

- Dash of cinnamon (because I love it)

- 1 egg

- 4 Tablespoon of sugar 

I used Splenda for healthier choice. I think you can substitute it with honey if you want it healthier or just do without. These are my interchangeable ingredients for any baking/cooking food.

- Pinch of salt

- Water 

The mixture got a little thick because honestly there aren't much liquid stuffs. So I just added water to it can be stirred nicely into a proper pancake batter

- Baking soda for fluffiness. 

- 1 Avocado

Basically just combine everything together. Smash the avocado separately and spread them over the layers of pancakes. If you like yours healthier than mine, don't add the maple syrup. I also realized cooking wholemeal pancakes to normal flour pancakes take way longer. So turn up the fire and leave it on the pan longer. Wait till it's nice brown in colour. 

~ Makes about 8 small pancakes (I used 2 spoonful of batter per pancake)

Avocado banana smoothie:

- 1.5 Avocado 

I know people used 1 avocado, but I had spare.

- 1 Banana

- Greek yoghurt 

I think it's about a cup, I basically just used my spoon and took about 3 big spoonful? I don't really measure

- 2 Tablespoon of honey

I feel it can be less, it's a little too sweet. Especially if you're using sweet yoghurt instead of Greek.

Combine everything together in a blender. Add a spoonful or two of water if you like yours more watery. 

Dauphinoise Potatoes

Because I ate it at a restaurant the other day and it tasted so good that I went to search the recipe on how to do it. Well, potatoes were on offer too, and it's the holidays. So why not? :)

Ingredients:

2 large baking potatoes

500ml double cream

Garlic cloves (up to you on how much you want to put)

100g Gruyere cheese (but I used mozzarella cheese instead)

Salt (to taste)

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees Celsius

2. Prepare the potatoes: peel and slice into 3mm pieces

3. Place potatoes into a shallow baking dish

4. Add salt and cheese, and mix well

5. Arrange the potatoes that they are evenly distributed

6. Pour double cream till it covers the top layer of potatoes

7. Bake for about 1 hour

8. Remove and add more cheese on top and bake till brown (optional)

9. Leave to stand for 5 minutes

Apple Crumble

Before:

 

After:

 

 

So I had spare apples and on a lazy Saturday, I wanted to do something simple and easy for fun.

Ingredients:
- For the Filling:
450g of medium to soft apples
2 tablespoon of caster sugar
Pinch of ground cinnamon (optional, I did not use them)
- For the Topping:
115g of butter
115 of caster sugar
175g of all-purpose or plain flour

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius
2. Prepare the apples: peel, core and chop the peeled applies into chunky pieces
3. Placed them into a shallow baking dish
4. If using cinnamon, mix with 2 tablespoons of sugar and sprinkle over the apples
5. Mix butter, flour and sugar till coarse mixture
6. Sprinkle crumble topping over the apples
7. Bake for about 35 minutes (you can seethe apples bubbling)
8. Leave to stand for 5 minutes

Variations:
1. Add raisins to your apples
2. Change flour to whole wheat for darker crumble topping
3. Change sugar to soft brown for more caramel-type flavour
4. Add couple of tablesppons of muesli or oats to crumble

Pancakes strikes again

So pancakes strikes again. I need to learn something nicer and better! But since I have a pretty photo of pancakes again, shall post them! :):) same recipe again! 

Recipe:

2 cups of self-raising flour

1.5 cups of milk

4 tablespoon of sugar

4 tablespoon of melted butter

2 eggs

1 pinch of sale

Topped with golden syrup, strawberries and blueberries. The secret to making pretty pancakes is controlling the heat of your pan. And the best thing to use is a non-stick pan so you don have to add extra butter/oil on the pan and therefore having an evenly cooked pancakes! :)

Lemon fudge bars.

I always have a special liking for lemons. Lemon tarts, lemon crepes, lemon anything. Lemon taste so good, despite people constantly saying that it is really sour. I honestly love lemons. So I finally decided to make lemon bars! I made a lemon loaf before but that turned out horribly, so I didn't dare make another batch. Plus my oven is really bad. So this recipe would be much better.

Also, I've found a replacement for healthier bakes! :) I now use greek yoghurt to replace butter and splenda to replace sugar. Though I'm still trying around about the measurements for the greek yoghurt to replace butter because of the texture. &I always forget to use splenda, so I used sugar instead for this. But I'll definitely make more in the future, so I'm looking forward for the next "healthy" bake!

Recipe for the crust (the bottom):
1/2 cup greek yoghurt
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour

Recipe for lemon fudge (the top layer):
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup flour
4 eggs
2 lemon juiced (I basically bought lemon juice in a bottle and pour it, I didn't measure how much I used, but if you like lemon... ADD MORE!)

Directions:
- Preheat your oven to 175 degrees Celsius
1. Combine greek yoghurt and softened butter together and mixed till it is smooth/creamed
2. Add in the sugar
3. Add in flour by 1/2 cup each time.
I suggest not to use a hand mixer. I used my hands to "kneed" the crust slowly. Probably the longest and most tiring process.
4. Press down the crust into your 9x13 inch pan
I used a much smaller pan because I was too lazy to wash my 9x13, and thus you can see from the picture that the crust & the fudge is actually quite thick. I should have halved my ingredients. You don't have to use baking paper because the crust do not really stick. Try to make it all even, even though it is pretty hard.
5. Put it in the oven for 15-20mins.
I put mine in for a good 20 because my crust was really thick and took longer to cook. While waiting, make your lemon fudge!
6. Combine sugar and flour together and mix it well.
7. Crack all the eggs together and add lemon juice
8. Once your crust is done, pour it over and put it back in the oven for another 20minutes (?)
I questioned mark the time because after 20minutes, mine turned out to be slightly burnt. It may be because of my lousy oven, but do check that it should not be burnt!
9. It will firm up as it cools down.
The edges of mine was pretty nice as as it cools down, it all firmed up. But the center of it was still slightly too watery. And I honestly blame it on my oven.

I'll try this recipe again another day in mind of things to be change:
- Change sugar to splenda
- Add more greek yoghurt instead of butter
- Halved my ingredients if I were to use the same pan for thinner crust & fudge
- Bake 2nd round at 18minutes

Nutella Cookies

Nutella cookies. Probably the simplest cookies you'll ever make and can never go wrong. 

I honestly hate making cookies so much because I never seem to perfect them. Can never seem to find the consistency with the dough. Made one years ago (look at archives) with my sisters, and it came out looking horrendous as well. And I also tried making sugar cookies for valentines and that also didn't turn out too well. Maybe because I substitute butter for margarine and that wasn't the wisest choice I've made. Tasted pretty horrible that I had to half coat it with chocolate to mask up the taste. It looks pretty but looks can be deceiving.

So I was contemplating between Nutella brownies or cookies, and my boyfriend decided on cookies for me. I was preparing myself for another failure of baking cookies. Started looking through google for a few recipes and comparing them and deciding on my quantity and what I should use. (That's how I usually bake, I don't follow specifically a single recipe. I usually scroll through about 5 and decide on the ingredients myself based on previous baking experiences and how I expect them to be.)

So ingredients are basically:

1. A jar of Nutella - I used 200grams

2. 3/4 cups of plain flour

3. 1 egg

+/- hazelnuts or chocolate chips 

I really wanted to add hazelnuts, but I was too lazy to get them. But I'm sure they will taste heavenly. 

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to about 180 degrees celcius 

2. Line your tray with baking paper

3. Mix all your ingredients together until it is smooth and consistent.

(I had some problems with this because I got too tired as they were getting really lumpy, so I added one tablespoon of chocolate milk and everything mixed so much more easily) 

4. Roll them into little balls

5. Use your thumb or a cup to slightly press them down. 

(Make sure you don't make them too thin whereby the edges cracks off and is not in a nice circular shape.)

6. Put in the oven for 5/6mins (most people say 6-8mins, but I feel the cookies usually would be burned by then)

7. Allow them to cool down on the grill until it hardens up. 

(I must say some times it's hard to take them off the baking paper because it's really soft and would break apart)

8. Have it with a glass of chocolate milk

You can always put them back in the Nutella jars. It fits perfectly and looks so presentable as a gift. (: 

I would never ever make any other kind of cookies anymore. (I'm kidding, I'm attempting on making lemon sugar cookies one day.)