There are a lot of baked goodies that son1 would request from time to time. I could easily make almost all of them except for doughnuts…I found this recipe from youtube but I changed it a slightly. My dilemma was    I deep fried it instead of baking so maybe it was not a good idea after all. The next time my son requests for donuts, I’ll bake this.

Ingredients:

1 egg
3/4 cup castor sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup of milk
50g melted butter

2 cups plain flour
2 tsp baking powder

Glaze:

chocolate bars
white chocolate bars

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1. In a bowl beat eggs using a hand mixer. Put in castor sugar, vanilla extract, milk and melted butter. Mix well.

2. Fold in flour and baking powder into the egg mixture and mix again, when it gets tough to mix, use a wooden spatula. Let the dough sit in half an hour or so.

3. Heat up oil for deep frying.

4. Flour surface (table or countertop) and flatten dough…not so thick so that they cook easily.

5. Shape your doughnuts, I use a small glass to shape the doughnut and I make use of a piping tip for the small whole.

6. When oil is hot enough, drop dough one by one, just when there’s enough space for them. Flip after 30-40 seconds using a wooden stick. If you think that they aren’t cooked through leave for some seconds more.

7. Let oil drip, leave doughnuts on cooling rack.

To make glaze:

I make glaze out of laziness; simply melt the chocolates and dip the dough one by one. You can add color to the white chocolate too, I made use of matcha powder for it. Decorate with assorted candy sprinkles. Serve.

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Food Friday

To be happy over someone’s misfortune is not my thing but to be thankful that I am one who doesn’t have allergy with shrimps must be the same thing.

We’re all shrimp lovers at home. It doesn’t matter which dish, as long as there’s shrimp, expect that there’d be none left.

This entry is almost the same (but different) from my Tempura post I did before…because I didn’t made incisions to straighten the shrimps. I basically used the same recipe though, please click here.

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We first got to savor a slice of Oreo Cake from a cafê that daughter and I frequent. We really liked it, even my older son who is very particular with cakes liked it too…When we visited mom-in-law at my brother-in-law’s place my son saw a box of ready-to-make Oreo Cookie cake. The idea is to make a cake that resembles an Oreo cookie…white filling – ‘cream’ or ‘creme’, sandwiched between two circular chocolate or golden cookie pieces, here that would be layers of chocolate cookie crust.

This cake is very simple I believe the packaged ingredients are the same with the original recipe. I saw that most have the same ingredients but this one is something I’ll try.

Ingredients

1 (20 ounce) package oreo cookies
1/2 cup melted butter

500 grams cream cheese (Philadelphia)
500 grams Mascarpone cheese
230 grams confectioners sugar, sifted
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
720 ml  cold heavy whipping cream

Directions

1. Crush cookies, leave some as bite size pieces or reserve some of the crushed cookies for the top. Combine melted butter and crushed cookies. Press the mixture into 9×13 pan. Leave in freezer for 5 minutes.

2. Beat half of cream cheese and half mascarpone in a bowl, pour half of sugar and mix in remaining cream cheese and mascarpone.

3. Include vanilla extract and slowly put in whipping cream, mix until smooth and thick.

4. Spread the cream cheese mixture evenly on crust and top with remaining crushed cookies or if you prefer bite size pieces, top the cream cheese with those. Put in the fridge for an hour or two.

 Carefully remove from pan, slice and serve. Voila, one happy lil’ kid…

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Food Friday

At first look you’ll know that this is like Morcon, a rolled meat with fillings of vegetables, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, hotdogs and pickles served on special occasions back home. Rouladen simply means rolled meat. The German and Austrian counterpart has less filling and has a different sauce from what I remember my mom makes. Well, I don’t expect them to be the same, that’s one good thing about food, there are similarities and differences that you get to enjoy whichever you like.

Roulade:
4-5 Beef Roulade (thin strips)
8-10 slices of bacon
2-3 onions
1-2 tablespoons spicy mustard from Dijon
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons butter
freshly ground white or black pepper
Sea salt or coarse salt ground pepper

Sauce:
2-3 onions
1  carrot (cut in half)
1 / 4 celeriac
1 clove of garlic
1 large tomato
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/2 l beef stock, chicken stock, veal stock, vegetable stock, broth or bouillon cubes
1 sprig of thyme
1 bay leaf
freshly ground white or black pepper
Sea salt or coarse salt ground pepper
butter

Preparation:
1. Peel the onions and cut into rings.
2. Wash the roulades and pat dry with kitchen paper.
3. Clean the carrots, peel and cut half of it into thin strips.
4. Sprinkle roulades with salt and pepper, brush with mustard and top with two slices of bacon, onion rings and carrot strips.
5. Roll up and fasten with toothpicks or roulade needles.

Procedure:
1. Wash tomato with hot water and quarter them.
2. The fat can be extremely hot, fry the roulades on all sides, add salt and pepper.
3. Dice the remaining carrots.
4. Remove the roulades from the pan and pour off most of the fat.
5. Fry the diced vegetables and herbs (onions, carrots, garlic, celeriac, thyme, bay leaf) in butter. Let contents of the pot thicken with tomato paste.
6. Scrape off the browned bits with a wooden spoon from pan bottom.
7. Bring the sauce to a boil and place the roulades.
8. Then add in chopped tomato.
9. Let boil and let simmer for about 1 hour and 50 minutes.
10. Pour sauce and season to taste.

Serve with rice or pasta.

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Food Friday, Yummy Sunday

Winter is getting the better of us. We’re becoming much like squirrels…we only get out of the house when need be. That is to go to school and buy food. That is why I am so thankful for the corner shop that sells vegetables and fruits in bulk, they also have meat that I can get for less – well, compared to grocery prices. Most importantly, eggs in abundance. I can get 30 eggs for 4euro whereas 10 eggs at the grocery shops cost 2euro already. The eggs are important for hubby and I, building up muscles from protein, for the macarons that we so love to make and for the cupcakes…for the same reason as the macarons.

There are a number of red velvet cake and cupcake recipes around but I wouldn’t go test each of them as they did here. Though I got to be thankful I know now which recipe I should follow next. These cuppies were made some months ago, unearthed from archives and posted oh so late. ^_^ I anyway hope you enjoy these eye candies. This is from one of my favorite bakers, Stephanie Jaworksi of Joy of Baking.

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Food Friday, Yummy Sunday

 I am not much a fan of spicy food, hubby is and the kids took that from him. Wasabi peanuts? Go ahead, they’ll munch on those as they would popcorn. If there’s one chili dish to exempt, it would be chili con carne and when I cook it, it’s not really that spicy. Actually I am missing the chilli hotdog that hubby and I like from 7-11, a 24-hour store back home. Being often out late due to the nature of our work (publishing), 7-11  has become a favorite hangout when we get hungry in the middle of the night.

For the recipe I follow this one I found online sans the yogurt and coriander garnish. I also had to put less spicy ingredients, the kids and hubby could spice theirs later. I dropped in red beans too and since I removed the yogurt, I topped it with cheese instead.

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Food Friday

I think I’ve been overlooking that particular shelf…hmm more of I can’t see it for the height of me. Yep, I sometimes ask someone to help me get the item from up the shelf. I’m 5’3″ and shelves are made for taller people. hihi.

So as simple as this recipe gets you’ll need:

a can of tuna
a can of tomato sauce
ricotta
a pack of gnocchi (you can make them too)
garlic
onion
olive oil
basil leaves
pepper
quattro formaggi (optional)

If you bought gnocchi, simply follow the cooking instructions.  If you’d like to make them on your own, here’s Mario Batali’s Gnocchi recipe. There are gnocchis that have ricotta already so if you get those then opt the ricotta out.

Saute garlic and onion on olive oil.
Pour tomato sauce and let simmer.
Stir in ricotta and tuna flakes.
Flavor with pepper and set aside.
Pour sauce mixture over gnocchi, garnish with basil leaves and cheese.

Serve as is or with baguette.

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Food Friday

]]> http://kitchenmaus.gmirage.com/gnocchi-tuna-and-ricotta/feed/ 9 http://kitchenmaus.gmirage.com/beef-braised/ http://kitchenmaus.gmirage.com/beef-braised/#comments Sat, 19 Nov 2011 22:47:36 +0000 gmirage1 http://kitchenmaus.gmirage.com/?p=4385

Back when hubby and I are still dating we would have favorite restaurants and certain dishes that we order in pair like our palate and tummies are synchronized. ^_^ There was a restaurant, whose name now lost in memory, that served a dish we still remember – it’s savory aroma still reminiscent of our visits. They have the best braised beef – a side dish of carrots and green onions on top of rice – that we often have for dinner. Been attempting to duplicate it since we moved here but to no avail.

I did at one time followed a recipe I found online and posted it here, it tastes more of the Chowking version. It wasn’t easy to do too…so when I found this braised beef sauce at the Asia shop I was relieved and ecstatic. We were having braised beef often ever since.

Braising is a long process. Here is a detailed procedure, complete with photos that I found online. What I do, for lack of time or for laziness as well, is to put the beef in a pressure cooker – a lot of them actually in different cuts meant for stew and gulasch. After half an hour of cooking, I’d let the meat cool down and marinate it with the special sauce (would check the brand later) for 20 minutes or so. I then heat up oil and put the marinated meat in, cooking until the sauce somewhat looks it’s been absorbed and pour all sauce in. I turn off the heat then and let the sauce thicken up.

Hubby often asks for boiled egg and carrots for side dishes but mashed potato and broccoli are the kids’ request. Serve with rice, and yes, so tender are the meat you can use chopsticks for them! ^_^

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Food Friday, Yummy Sunday