Purple Ondeh Ondeh ~ Using Purple Sweet Potatoes

I love Nonya kuehs and ondeh ondeh is one of my favourite! My requirements for good ondeh ondeh are very simple:

1) The skin must be chewy

2) The inside must be of oozing goodness of gula melaka

3) It must not be too sweet

This is my first time attempting ondeh ondeh and I decided to use the recipe from My Mind Patch.

Ingredients:
(made approx 20 mini ondeh ondeh)

100g purple sweet potatoes (steamed & mashed)
90g glutinous rice flour
10g tapioca starch
60g hot water (may require more if dough is too dry)
50g gula melaka

80g grated coconut (I bought chilled packet ones from NTUC)
1 pandan leaf (cut into several pieces)
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp water

Just writing down the ingredients for my own record. I am not rewriting the recipe steps as I followed almost everything on the easy to follow recipe in link above. Do visit the website for steps by steps guide.

The slight difference is that I have used purple sweet potatoes so my ondeh ondeh are of a beautiful purple hue.

And for the gula melaka, instead of chopping it, I found it easier to just use a fruit peeler to shave them out.

Also, I picked up the pandan leaf from the grated coconut after steam and throw into the water for boiling the ondeh ondeh. Not sure if that helps to add a tinge of pandan fragrance to it.

The ondeh ondeh turned out fabulous, ticking off all my requirements for a good ondeh ondeh. This recipe is definitely a keeper!

:: Beautiful Purple Ondeh Ondeh ::

:: Oozing Goodness of Gula Melaka ::

Non Bake Mango Cheesecake with Baked Tart Base

Non bake mango cheese cake is really one of the easiest dessert to do. No baking or cooking required. It is also very flexible. For me, I prefer a less pronounce cheeee taste so I add more fruit puree. The end result is a very fruity with tinge of cheese savoury. The texture is creamy, a cross between mousse and ice cream.

:: Non Bake Mango Cheesecake with Tart Base ::

Normally most nonbake cheescake recipe will use crushed digestive biscuits with butter for the base. This time round I use a tart base which requires baking. I personally prefer it as the butter taste is not so strong, but my family prefers the nonbake version. In any case, the ratio for the nonbake base that I used previously digestive biscuit : butter is  2 : 1, means for example, 100g digestive biscuits, use 50g butter. Just crush the biscuits, melt the butter and mix together.

For the baked tart base, please refer to my previous post here, the amount is for 8 tart shells.
I use about 15g of dough for each mini cheesecake and made 12 mini base and left with about 50g of dough. Bake for 12 min in my morris tabletop oven @ 140 degree on knob (160 degree on thermometer).

The recipe for this mango cheese cake is modified from Lirongs.

Ingredients for cheesecake fillings:

100g cream cheese (soften at room temp)
120g mango puree
1tsp lemon juice
1/2 tbsp gelatin powder
1 & 1/2 tbsp water
100ml non dairy whipping cream

Optional:
Small mango cubes

How to do:

1. Beat the non dairy whipping cream till firm peak and set aside in the fridge for later use.
2. Place 1 & 1/2 tbsp water in a bowl and sprinkle 1/2 tbsp gelatin powder on top, let it stand for about 10min.
3. Place the bowl in pot of simmering water and stir till fully dissolve and set aside.
4. Cream the cream cheese till smooth (I use a manual hand whisk)
5. Mix the mango puree, lemon juice and gelatin mixture till well-combined.
6. Add the mixture to the cream cheese and mixture till smooth.
7. Finally, combine the whipping cream with the mixture till well mix.
8. Pour into the moulds with the tart base at the bottom and chill in the fridge till the cheese fillings set.

It takes about 3 hours to set in my fridge, but I only remove from moulds the next day (12hrs later) as I want to give them more time to set and firm up.

I did not use any sugar here as my non dairy whipping cream is already slightly sweeten and the mango puree is already quite sweet. If you prefer it to be sweeter, you can add powder sugar to the cream cheese and cream together till it fully dissolves.

If adding the mango cubes, fill the moulds with cheesecake mixture till half full, add in the cubes then fill up the moulds fully. I didn't add in mango cubes but I cut the mango into strips and dress it up like a rose.

:: Pretty Mango Rose on Mini Mango Cheesecake ::

Honey Wholemeal Milk Loaf

I am continuing to experiment with wholemeal bread in hope to make it as healthy as possible.

This is a variation to my 90% wholemeal bread. This time round, I replaced sugar with honey. Honey, I presumed, should be healthier than sugar. I also reduced the amount of salt.

This bread is baked in my Song-Cho Breadmaker.

Ingredients:

270g organic wholemeal flour

30g cake flour

2 + 1/2 tbsp milk powder

2 + 1/2 tbsp honey

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp instant yeast

1 large egg

95g milk

75g plain yogurt

How to do:

1. Pour the wet ingredients into the bread barrel 1st, followed by the flour(s) & lastly the yeast.

2. Select menu '5. Sweet' on the breadmaker & press start.

I didn't let the bread proof on the full cycle on my BM as I was checking the state of the bread and when I felt it was ready for baking, I stopped the sweet mode and started the bake cycle.

I am very pleased with this recipe as it yielded what I feel is a perfect loaf of bread - no dented top!

:: Perfect Loaf of Honey Wholemeal Bread ::

:: Slice it up and it is perfect for breakfast ::

:: The wholemeal bread is soft and stays soft till the next day ::

Not only is this bread healthy, it is very yummy too! It is soft with a tinge of honey fragrance.

Very Soft Hokkaido Wholemeal Milk Loaf - using 90% Wholemeal Flour

I am very excited as I am writing this post... My 4th attempt at the Hokkaido Wholemeal Milk Loaf seems to be on its way to success.. It is currently rising high and baking in my Song-Cho Breadmaker.

I thought I have absolutely no luck with this recipe, which Miss B from Everybody Eats Well in Flanders described as the wholemeal bread that can do yoga, as 3 unsuccessful attempts were really disheartening. Let me bring you through my heart-aching journey...

1st attempt
When I first saw this recipe, I was really keen on trying out as I was looking for a wholemeal bread uses almost 100% wholemeal flour. This is all because my parents had switched to eating wholemeal bread to watch their sugar level. But I see the wholemeal bread selling in the market, I am really quite skeptical about the percentage of wholemeal flour that they used in the bread. Whenever I do any recipe for the first time, I always test out recipe by doing half portion so that if it fails, I don't waste too much of the ingredients.  Anyway, it didn't end up well... The bread did not raise at all and was as hard as rock...

2nd attempt
A few days later... I decided to attempt the recipe again.. I thought my first failure was due to my halving of ingredients and this recipe to meant to follow 100%. And so I followed everything in the recipe, BUT history repeated itself... same results...

3rd attempt
A few weeks later... I am still dreaming about this recipe.. so I decided to give it another go... This time I tried the 'Wholemeal' mode on my breadmaker instead of the 'Sweet Bread' mode using 100% recipe. And nope.. the issue is not about the mode used either... I gave up...

A few months passed... during a conversation with a baker friend who used to live in UK, she told me that the wholemeal flour in Singapore is very different from those in UK. Those in UK are very fine.. whereas the ones sold in Singapore are very coarse. We are of course referring the most common wholemeal flour available in supermarket starting with P.

Hm... perhaps it's the wholemeal flour... but I can't seem to get any other brand of wholemeal flour... Finally, just a few days ago, I spotted organic wholemeal flour hiding among the organic items of my neighbourhood supermarket. The flour seems to be as fine as our normal bread flour. Excitedly, I bought it for my 4th attempt!

:: Organic Wholemeal Flour ::

4th attempt
After adding all the ingredients into the breadmaker and starting it, I can see that this time is different. The ingredients quickly formed into a soft, sticky but together dough. During my previous attempt, even after 10 minutes of kneading, it was still a very fluid, shapeless mess.

Recipe adapted from  Everybody Eats Well in Flanders 

This bread is baked in my Song-Cho Breadmaker.

Ingredients:

270g organic wholemeal flour

30g cake flour

2 + 1/2 tbsp milk powder
40g sugar

3/4 tsp salt

1 + 2/3 tsp instant yeast

1 large egg (mine was 65g)
110g milk (I used low fat milk)

75g plain yoghurt (original recipe calls for heavy whipping cream)

How to do:

1. Pour the wet ingredients into the bread barrel 1st, followed by the flour(s) & lastly the yeast.

2. Select menu '5. Sweet' on the breadmaker & press start.

And about 2 hours 50 min later...

:: The loaf is ready!! ::

I personally disliked thick bread crust so I wrap my bread barrel with aluminum foil (shiny faced inwards). Thank you this wonderful piece of tip, Miss B!

:: The loaf is ready for cutting :

I could never imagine that a 90% wholemeal flour bread could be this soft.. I am glad I preserve and finally succeed in making this bread. Eating wholemeal bread would never be the same again!

:: Yoga Wholemeal Bread ::

**Update on 19 Jun 2015
Have been using this recipe for quite a few times and my family absolutely loves it!
But then one day, the recipe just stopped working for me. The bread collapsed in the breadmaker when it started to bake.

I suspected that the bread has been overproofed. Not sure why because I use the same ingredients and same baking mode. After a few failures, I decided to manually stop my BM proofing time when I feel that the bread is proof enough and start baking mode. But this will defeat the purpose of using a BM as the whole idea of having a BM is just put everything in and a nice bread comes out at the end of the cycle.

Somehow, the dough feels much warmer in the BM recently. Could it be that the temperature of my BM has somewhat increased?

In any case, I experimented for a few times and now I only use 1 tsp of yeast and this allows me to use the 'sweet' mode on my Song-Cho BM without overproofing the bread.

Apple Crumble Rose Tarts ~ Rose Rose I love you!

After the pretty pretty mango rose, I am addicted to create beautiful rose using fruits. This time round I am creating apple rose to go with one of my favourite dessert ~ apple crumble.

:: My version of apple crumble ~ with apple rose ::

Apple Fillings Ingredients:
(fills 8 tarts shells)

2 red apples

1 green apple 

1/2 tsp lemon juice

1 and 1/2 tsp white sugar

2 cup and 2 tbsp water

How to do:

1. Dice the apples and set aside a portion of the diced red apple (approx. 1/2 apple)

2. In my Toshiba rice cooker, add 2 cups of water, lemon juice, and the diced red & green apple and hit the 'cook' button as if cooking rice.

3. By the end of the 'cook' cycle, the apples will be mushy like applesauce.

4. Transfer the applesauce into a saucepan, add the remaining portion of diced red apple and 2 tbsp water.

5. Using medium low heat, further cook the apples till the water has been reduced and the diced red apple slightly soft. Add more water if required to soften the diced apple, be careful not to burn the applesauce.

6. Set aside for later use.

:: Apple sauce with soften diced apple ::

* I used rice cooker to make the apple sauce because I was lazy to watch fire on stove. Rice cooker is very efficient in turning apple into applesauce without burning it.

** I use green apple because I prefer some sourness in my apple crumble

*** Amount of sugar is subjective, depending on individual taste-buds and whether the apples are sweet. Taste and adjust the sweetness accordingly.

 Apple Rose Ingredients:
(makes 8 roses)

2 red apples (*Use the very red apples for a nicer color hue.)

1 tsp lemon juice

1/2 tbsp light brown sugar

1 and 1/2 cup water

How to do:

Check out this video that I had created on how to make the apple rose:

Crumbles Ingredients:

25g salted cold butter, cut into small pieces
45g all-purpose flour

How to do:

1. Press the cold butter into the flour using fingertips till resemble breadcrumbs

*Most recipe I found require 1:1 ratio for butter and flour but I could not get breadcrumbs texture using that ratio so I added more flour.

:: Crumbles should resemble breadcrumbs ::

For the tart shells, I am re-using the recipe for my mango pudding tarts as it is foolproof for me!

Instead of fully bake them, I half baked them before adding the apple fillings & crumbles.

Tart Shell Ingredients:

(makes 8 tart shells)

60g salted butter, softened & cut into small pieces
30g icing sugar
1 large egg yolk 
120g all purpose flour

How to do:

1. Cream the soften butter till it is smooth and pale yellow. I used hand whisk.

2. Add icing sugar and continue to cream till light and fluffy.

3. Add in the egg yolk nd continue to mix till well combined.

4. Sift in the flour in 3 installments, using a spatula, mix well for each addition till the mixture becomes a soft dough.

5. Shape the dough into a cylinder shape, wrap in cling wrap and place in the fridge for about 15 - 20min.

6. Remove the dough from the fridge and cut the dough into 8 equal portion.

7. Shape them into a ball and placed in the tart mould.

8. Press the dough ball in the center against the mould and push it up against the wall till its full height. After baking, the crust will expand slight above the mould and it is easier to remove from the mould.

9. Use a fork to poke holes at the base of the tart shells. This is to prevent the base from rising during baking.

10. Place them in a preheated oven and bake at 150 degree (on my Morris oven dial, real temperature should be about 170 degree) for 5 min.

11. Take out from the oven and set aside.

*DO NOT grease the tart mould, the tart shell can be easily removed with a gentle knock. Greasing the tart mould will cause it to stick to the mould instead.

:: Tart Mould ~ Size 3.5cm base 7cm top::

To assemble:

1. Egg wash the tart shells.

2. Scoop a bit of the apple fillings into the tart shells.

3. Place the apple rose into the center of the tart shell top of the applesauce.

4. Fill the side with more apple fillings.

5. Carefully sprinkle the crumbles onto the apple fillings area.

4. Bake in preheated oven at 150 degree (on my Morris oven dial, real temperature should be about 170 degree) for another 15-20 min or till the tart shell & crumbles are browned.

:: Just can't get enough of my pretty tarts ::

Mango Pudding Rose Tarts ~ So Pretty that I Almost Can't Bear to Eat Them!

It's been a while since I blog about my bakes. Finally found the motivation to blog about my latest bake because it turned out to be so pretty and so yummy! 

It is the mangoes season now and many bakers are posting yummy mango related cakes and desserts photos online. I am so tempted to try out some mango-y desserts.

Since my previous longan beancurd tarts were so well-received, so I thought why not make mango pudding tarts. And I wanted to make them look so pretty, so I used the mango strips to make into mango rose. I am very pleased with the result - both look and taste!

:: Mango Pudding Rose Tarts::

For the Tart Shell

The tart shell recipe is similar as my egg tart post here, but I made a small change to it. Instead of using a portion of a whole beaten egg, I use only egg yolk. The reason is that I can't think of how to use the remaining beaten egg yoke and I doubt it can be kept in the fridge for use another day. By using just the egg yolk, I can save the white by freezing it and use it for macarons or chiffon cakes recipes that require more egg white. The result of using just the egg yolk is that the tart shells seem to be a bit softer than when I use whole egg. I also use salted butter instead of unsalted simply because I ran out of the unsalted ones... haha...

Tart shells are baked in my Morris tabletop oven.

Tart Shell Ingredients:

45g salted butter, softened & cut into small pieces
20g icing sugar
1 egg yolk
90g all purpose flour

How to do:

1. Cream the soften butter till it is smooth and pale yellow. I used hand whisk.

2. Add icing sugar and continue to cream till light and fluffy.

3. Add in the egg yolk nd continue to mix till well combined.

4. Sift in the flour in 3 installments using a spatula, mix well for each addition till the mixture becomes a soft dough.

5. Shape the dough into a cylinder shape, wrap in cling wrap and place in the fridge for about 15 - 20min.

6. Remove the dough from the fridge and cut the dough into 6 equal portion.

7. Shape them into a ball and placed in the tart mould.

8. Press the dough ball in the center against the mould and push it up against the wall till its full height. After baking, the crust will expand slight above the mould and it is easier to remove from the mould.

9. Use a fork to poke holes at the base of the tart shells. This is to prevent the base from rising during baking.

10. Place them in a preheated oven and bake at 150 degree (on my Morris oven dial, real temperature should be about 170 degree) for 7min.

11. Take out from the oven and egg wash* the tarts. The holes of the base will close up considerably after egg wash.

12. Put back into the oven and bake for another 5min or when the tart shells turn slightly brown.
13. Remove from oven, unmould once the moulds are slightly cooled down enough for hands to handle. Continue to let them cool on a metal rack.

*Can use some of the egg white for egg wash or for me, I used the evaporated milk

**DO NOT grease the tart mould, the tart shell can be easily removed with a gentle knock. Greasing the tart mould will cause it to stick to the mould instead.

:: Tart Mould ~ Size 3.5cm base 7cm top::

For the Mango Pudding 

This bake is quite an impromptu creation. As I was looking at various pudding recipes, most require condense milk and or coconut milk. I had non of those in my fridge so I was very happy when I finally found one recipe that require only evaporated milk which I had at home. My pudding recipe is modified from http://allthatmatters2rei.blogspot.sg/2008/05/mango-pudding.html  As my family and I like our dessert less sweet, I reduce the sugar considerably. 

Mango Pudding Ingredients:

2 mangoes
1/3 cup evaporated milk

2/3 cup water

1/8 cup sugar

1 tbsp gelatin powder

How to do:

1. Peel off the skin of the mangos.

2. Continue to use the peeler to peel the mango flesh into long stripes. 

3. Use the stripes of mango and arrange them to look like a rose in the tart shell.

4. After that, blend the rest of the mango stripes until they are smooth, yielded slightly more than 1 cup of mango puree.

5. Bring the water to boil in a saucepan, pour in gelatin powder and stir till fully dissolve.

6. Add in the sugar and continue to stir till dissolve.

7. Lower the heat and add in the evaporated milk and mango puree.

8. Stir till it starts to simmer, then remove from heat.

9. Pour the mango pudding mixture through a sift. This is to remove any lumps and give it a smoother texture.

10. Gently pour the pudding mixture into the tart shell, avoiding pouring directly onto the mango rose. As the mixture is quite thick, pour via different side of the tart shell so that the mixture is evenly distributed.

11. Put into the fridge and chill for a few hours.

They are ready to serve once the pudding is set.

*For the mango rose, you can check out how to do here. I prefer to do the rose first before pouring in the pudding mixture as I feel that it is less messy. It is my first time handling the mango stripes to make a rose so I don't want to risk it. However, this will also mean that the center part of the rose might not have the pudding as the mixture is quite thick and does not flow easily. I did pour a little bit of the pudding mixture into the center of the rose, but must be very careful else, might ruin the shape of the rose.

For the amount of ingredients above, I manage to do fillings for 6 tarts and 6 puddings in 3inch size ramekins.

:: Mango Pudding with Strawberries ::

The day Singapore stood still...

It's been a while since I have posted.. Things have been busy after Chinese New Year and my little one is getting more and more mobile.. So while I might have the time to bake, I don't necessarily have time to blog. ;(

Anyway, today's post is not about baking...

The past week have been a really emotional week for me and many others alike. The founding father of Singapore, Mr Lee Kuan Yew had decided to take his rest forever. I may not know him personally but I know him through the things that he has done for Singapore. The greenies, housing, clean water, safety etc.. almost everything I touch, use, breathe & enjoy is the result of a man who had selflessly devoted his whole life to build for us.

The state funeral was held on 29 Mar 2015. A minute of silence was observed for Mr Lee across Singapore at 4:30pm. During that minute, many people in Singapore or Singaporeans reside overseas stopped whatever they were doing as a mark of respect for Mr Lee. Even my little one, as if understanding what is happening, didn't make a sound.

During that minute, my heart was filled with so much gratitude.  I think for many years to come I will always remember it was the day Singapore stood still.

Lastly, I just wanted to say this again.. Thank you Mr Lee Kuan Yew for everything that you have done for us. Thank you for building that rainbow that we can ride. Please rest in peace.

Farewell.