Just to use up the remaining thickened cream and other ingredients...

Ingredients:

200 g Lindt dark chocolate, 85%

50 g Cadbury dark cooking chocolate

200 mL thickened cream

5 Tbsp soft icing sugar

Dash of salt

3 Tbsp cherry liquor

Glace cherries

Ground cashew nuts

Cocoa powder

Cooking Methods:

1. Mix chocolate, sugar and cream in a bowl over a waterbath. Melt until combined. Add liquor and mix.

2. Cool chocolate mixture until hardened and can be shaped to balls

3. Fill with a small piece of cherry

4. Cool in the fridge again

5. Roll in ground cashew nuts or cocoa powder.

6. Keep in the fridge

When I read the recipe at Mariena's website, I planned to make it too one day. My favorite filling in the dish is actually only the banana and it has some sourness and sweetness. They just blend nicely.

Finally, I bought one sweet potato and some bananas (I think they are called as lady finger bananas. This type of banana is firmer and more suitable for cooking. Not the 'usual' bananas for smoothies and milk shake.). However, I got a different type of sweet potato as the colour is not orange. This type is similar to kumara and the taste is not bad with palm sugar syrup.

Ingredients

1 sweet potato, cut into pieces, half circle

1 banana, cut into pieces

1/2 palm sugar (gula aren), shreded, approximately

0.5 cup coconut milk, Kara

2 - 2.5 cups water

1 screwpine leaf (pandan leaf)

a pinch of salt

Cooking Methods

1. Put water in a small pot, add water, sugar and pandan leave. Boil till sugar dissolved
2. Add sweet potato, boil for about 15 minutes
3. Add banana, boil for another 5 minutes
4. Add coconut milk and boil for another 2 minutes
5. Serve warm or cold

Finally, I made the Paris-Brest. It's the first challange of the new founded baking club by Mbak Arfi. Here are the observations during the making of the pastry, the custard and the toffee...

I will post the step by step photos later to show where I went wrong. No time to put the photos together yet. Promise...

 

Choux Pastry

• Baking Instruction - I guess as Ci Irma mentioned, there are some information needed to make the baking temperature clearer, especially for those who never have made the pastry before. I followed the baking temperature as mentioned by Ci Ine.
• Ingredients - I used reduced salt butter and 65 g egg (with shell).
• Put too little dough on the tray - I should not use the small piping bag tip to shape the pastry. I used 5 mm tip and the result was a very thin dough on the tray. I followed the first stage of the baking time and I had to cut down the second baking time with lower temperature. The pastry has been cooked and become dry. Also, I did not have to slice the pastry into two rings as the pastry did not raise due to the above reason. I should think ahead next time.
• Baking Time and Temperature - The first stage was set at 230 deg C for 7 minutes. The second stage was set at 180 deg C (by not openning the door so it was only to turn down the heat but the temperature in the oven was still around 220 deg C) and supposed to be for 10 minutes. I had to shorten the second stage baking time to 2 minutes. Just forget the drying stage... my pastry was already crunchy by that time.
• Assembly of the failed baked pastry - I put 2 rings together!

 

Pastry Cream

• Quantity - I guess since my pastry did not double in size, I did not need as much cream as suggested.
• Ingredients - I use reconstitute full cream milk powder. The proportion was 1/4 cup (about 25 g) FCMP added with water and made to 1 cup.
• Process - I used a whisk to combine egg, sugar and corn starch.
• Taste - I used vanilla extract instead of vanilla pod as 1 piece of vanilla pod costs over $5.00. I find the cream is slightly too sweet for me.

 

Toffee

• Process - The toffee will still cook from latent heat eventhough it has been taken away from the heat. If you have a candy thermometer, use it. Use the toffee straight after the bubbles subsided or otherwise, it will thicken and difficult to work with. Brush the side of the pan with water to prevent burning of the sugar on the side of the pan.
• Quantity - It's the same comment as the pastry cream

 

Overall

I think the taste would be different if the pastry was made well. With the thin and small amount of pastry, the dominant taste was just the sweetness from the cream and the toffee. Hazenut cream is another option to have with Paris-Brest.

I must use the lemon before they are gone off! Finally, I found this lemon cake recipe that uses a lot of lemons and I thought I could use most of them. At the end, I still have quite a lot of lemons waiting in the plastic bowl. Surprisingly, the lemons had a lot of juice. I only used about 6.5 lemons for the whole recipe.

I got this recipe from Leite's Culinaria website and it was sourced from Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa Parties! book. If you ever watch her cooking show, you'll see how nice the foods look like. Only sometimes, I get scared off with the amount of butter and cream that she put it into the food. Nevertheless, she always makes cooking look easy.

Since one of the reviewers said the cake was too sweet, I decided to reduce the original quantity of the sugar in the cake by 20%. I changed most of the volume measurements into weight so it is easier for me to adjust the quantity later on.

The taste of the cake is really refreshing. Tangy... sweet... smooth lemon buttery flavour, yumm.... A good company for tea breaks! Here is the recipe after some adjustments/changes.

Ingredients

Cake

230 g unsalted butter, room temperature, Danish style (if it's just from the fridge, just put in the microwave at lowest setting for a minute or two to take out the chill)

320 g caster sugar

4 extra large egg (59 g with the shell per egg)

15 g lemon meyer zest, grated with microplane (grate before squeezing the lemons)

330 g all purpose flour sift together with

½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

¼ cup lemon meyer juice, freshly squeezed mix together with

¾ cup buttermilk, room temperature (ok to use the ex-frozen one)

1 tsp vanilla extract, Queens

Syrup

100 g caster sugar

½ cup lemon meyer juice, freshly squeezed

Icing

2 cups soft icing sugar

3½ Tbsp lemon meyer juice, freshly squeezed

Cooking Methods

Cake

1. Preheat convection oven to 180^oC. Grease three 185 x 90 x 50 mm loaf pans. Make sure the surface is well greased. If using oil spray, it’s better to line the bottom with a parchment paper. Otherwise, you may not be able to take the cake out from the tin in one piece.
2. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy in a mixing bowl using low-medium speed mixer, about 7 minutes. Increase speed to medium speed; add egg, one at a time, until properly mixed with the butter mixture and add lemon zest.
3. Fold gently the flour and buttermilk mixture alternately to the batter, until well distributed. About ¹/3 of the quantity at a time, beginning and ending with the flour.
4. Divide the batter evenly between the pans. The total weight of the batter was about 1.6 kg. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave for 10 minutes in the pan then invert them onto a rack over a tray or a parchment paper (to catch the excess syrup and icing).

Syrup

1. While waiting for the cake, make the syrup.
2. Put juice and sugar in a small saucepan and heat over low heat until sugar dissolves and makes a syrup. Takes about 20 minutes.
3. Spoon the lemon syrup over the cakes. Allows the cakes to cool completely.

Icing

1. Mix icing sugar and juice in a bowl. Mix with a whisk until smooth
2. Pour over the cake and allow the glaze to drizzle down the cake.

I got this recipe from the internet some time ago but I cannot remember the original source. The cream is really nice and smooth. It matches well with the choux pastry.

I adjusted the recipe to my taste. Here is the recipe that I have halved from the original portion and reduced the quantity of the sugar. I also used reconstitute milk powder instead of whole milk.

Ingredients

3 egg yolks

1 egg

1 Tbsp caster sugar

1½ Tbsp cornstarch

1½ Tbsp all purpose flour

½ cup full cream milk powder

1½ cups water

¼ cup caster sugar

25 g unsalted butter

1½ tsp vanilla extract

Cooking Methods

1. Mix eggs and sugar in a big bowl
2. Add cornstarch and flour to the egg mixture then mix using a whisk until smooth.
3. Put milk, water and sugar in a pot. Set it over medium high heat and stir until the milk begins to steam.
4. Whisking the egg mixture constantly and pour half of the hot milk to the egg mixture. Stir until smooth
5. Pour the combined egg mixture to the pot and bring to a boil, whisking rapidly to prevent scorching.
6. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and vanilla.
7. Stir the cream to cool it down slightly
8. Put the cream in a container and cover the entire surface with a cling film, pressing the film onto the surface of the cream to prevent skinning.
9. Keep in the fridge

Variations

You may want to add rhum or other flavouring such as strawberry, lemon, orange, coffee, chocolate etc to suit the dessert.

Creamy custard: Need to add extra cornstarch in the custard to make it thicker. Put thickened cream (about 150 mL) in a bowl and whip till thickened and add 1-2 Tbsp icing sugar. Whip until stiff peak. Fold into a small amount with the custard. Watch out for the desired viscosity. 

I got the base recipe from Ci Ine's website. She wrote a really complete, comprehensive, elaborated (you name it) choux pastry recipe and method. If you follow the instruction properly, for sure, you will get it done well. I change the quantity of the egg to get a crispier pastry but it is still not as I expected.

The picture shows the deflated pastry that I baked. As usual, I read the instruction half way. I will post the good ones in my other multiply.

Here is my version of choux pastry recipe.

Ingredients

100 g Logicol margarine

250 mL water

½ tsp salt

175 g all purpose flour

260 g eggs (3 yolk + white to make up the weight)

½ tsp baking powder

Cooking Methods

1. Boil margarine, water and salt in a pot. Mix until margarine is melted.
2. Add flour to the margarine mixture; mix briskly with a wooden spoon until flour is well combined. Remove from heat.
3. Cool down the dough until about 60^oC
4. Add ¼ of the egg at a time and mix until combined. Repeat until finish.
5. Add baking powder, mix till combined.
6. Preheat oven to 230^oC
7. Prepare a baking sheet with a parchment paper. Put few dots of the dough on the tray to secure the paper in place. Shape the dough, either using a piping bag or a spoon.
8. Place the tray in the middle rack and bake at 230^oC for 15 minutes
9. Reduce the temperature to 200^oC and bake for another 10-15 minutes until golden brown.
10. If the surface is still wet (bubbles on the surface), leave them for another 5-10 minutes. Reduce the temperature when necessary.
11. Serve with vanilla pastry cream and melted dark chocolate or milk chocolate 

Note:

-        It happened to me today that I didn’t read the instruction properly! I baked the pastry for 15 minutes only at 200^oC. Guess what? The pastry collapsed and was still very doughy. Nevertheless, you can still put them back into the oven and bake for another 10-15 minutes until golden brown and they are all revived!

-        I still find that the pastry is not as light and flaky as Beard Papa’s. I’ll try again next time by adding other ingredients.

I love muffins. It's very easy to make and the taste can be made in various flavour, up to your imagination.

I got this recipe from cooks.com and modify the ingredients according to my pantry stock. I added some nuts in it to boost the nutrient contents . The result is quite delicious and ready for the next day for tea break time. However, I think I still need to adjust some of the ingredients to make it fluffier.

Here are the ingredients.

Ingredients:

Dry ingredients

3 cups plain flour

4 tsp baking powder

3/4 cup (minus 2 tbsp) caster sugar

1 1/2 cups walnut, chopped coarsely

Wet ingredients

220 g Philli cream cheese, 60% less fat, room temperature

2 eggs

1 cup milk

3 tsp vanilla extract

110 g buter, melted

lemon zest from 1 lemon

Methods:

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C and grease muffin tins with oil spray.

2. Sift flour and baking powder in a big bowl and add sugar and walnut

3. Beat cream cheese and egg until combined in a separate bowl. Add milk, vanilla extract, butter and lemon zest.

4. Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture. Mix until just combined. Do not overmix as it will yield tough and rubbery muffin.

5. Bake the muffins for about 16 - 18 minutes. 

Alternatives toppings:

- Fresh whipped cream

- White chocolate icing or melted white chocolate

- Cream cheese frosting

- Raspberry sauce

This recipe is for MFM #4 - Chocolate

This muffin is based on Vania's recipe but I got to know this recipe from Mbak Syl's MP. Thanks for sharing the lovely easy recipe.

I made some adjustments to the recipe according to the ingredients in the pantry. Just to make it a healtier muffin, I added some wholemeal flour to 'boost' some fibres .

Ingredients:

Dry Ingredients

1 cup all purpose flour

0.5 cup wholemeal flour

0.5 cup castor sugar

3 tsp baking powder

0.25 tsp salt

2 tbsp alkalised cocoa powder

0.5 cup dark chocolate, chopped coarsely

Wet Ingredients

0.25 cup salted butter, melted

1 egg

50 g vanilla ice cream, melted (coz I don't have milk at home)

0.75 cup water

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C (Conventional Oven) and grease a muffin tray with oil spray.

2. Sieve all dry ingredients on a grease proof paper and put in a mixing bowl

3. Mix all wet ingredients

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Fold gently until just mixed. Fill each muffin cup about 3/4 full.

5. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 minutes or until a screwer comes out clean.

I love mango and I love mango pudding too. Whenever I go for yum cha, this one will be the closing deal of my meal. Here, I use mango nectar juice as the total replacement of the fresh mango juice in my mango pudding. The pudding is lovely with added strained mango puree. It gives the extra dimension to the texture.

This recipe is easy and full of sweet fragrant mango flavour.  It's a delicious dessert for a hot summer day.

Ingredients:

700 mL Mango nectar juice (Golden Circle)

200 mL Evaporated milk (low fat Carnation)

2 tbsp castor sugar

100 mL hot water

15 g gelatine

Methods:

1. Dissolve gelatine in hot water

2. Combine mango juice, sugar and evaporated milk in a pot

3. Warm the mango mixture

4. Add gelatine solution

5. Mix the mixture well and gently on low fire until all ingredients are well mixed. Avoid exceeding amount of bubbles.

6. Strain the mixture

7. Pour in moulds and cool in the frigde to set before serving.

Note: The quantity in the recipe has been modified.