Last night's dinner

It's been a while so I thought I'd better start posting up some more stuff. Last night I had some friends over for dinner. Just a girlfriend and her future hubby! So, a simple meal is what I dished out:

Some Garlic Prawns

Simple San Choy Bay with Salted Fish (yum - salted fish)

Soy Pork

Tumeric Beef

Will post out recipes very shortly :)

Slice of cake anyone?

Now, most people buy cakes for every special occassion - birthdays, anniversaries, engagements, weddings, newborn babies etc. And most cakes costs an arm and a leg. Some don't even taste that yummy. So, I decided the best way to satisfy the pocket and the tummy is to make your own favourite cake and deck it out real nice with pretty icing and decorations. Today, I'm going to teach you how to bake and ice your own cake!

I made this cake with two different flavours. The top tier is a carrot cake and the bottom is chocolate. But to make things easier, let's stick to just one flavour.

Chocolate Mud Cake

500g butter

500g dark chocolate

4 tablespoons instant espresso coffee powder

300g plain flour

300g self raising flour
1 cup cocoa powder

2-4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1100g caster sugar

4 tablespoons oil

1 cup buttermilk

eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degree Celsius. Lightly grease a deep 12cm and a 25cm square cake tin and line the base and side with baking paper.

2. Put butter, chocolate and coffee in a pan with 370ml hot water. Stir over low heat until smooth. Remove from heat.

3. Sift the flours, cocoa powder and bicarbonate of soda in a large mixing bowl. Stir in sugar and make a well in the centre. Add the combined eggs, oil and buttermilk. Using a large metal spoon, slowly stir to include the dry ingredients. Slowly stir in the melted chocolate mixture.

4. Pour the mixture into the 12 cm tin and bake for 1 hour (Bake 25cm tin for 1 hour 40 minutes). Test the centre with a skewer. If the skewer appears just lightly wet, remove the cake from the oven. Do not remove cake if centre looks raw. Just continue to bake for another 5-10 minutes. Leave the cake in the tin until completely cold. Then turn out and wrap in plastic wrap.

*You need to bake TWO cakes for this two tier boxes of gifts style.

Decorating the cake

80 g of apricot jam

9 x 500 g packets of ready made soft icing

pure icing sugar to dust

assorted food colourings

1 egg white

1. Cut a cardboard square the same size as the smaller cake. Trim the tops off the cakes so they are similar heights. Invert the cake onto the cardboard and place the largest on a cake board. Warm the jam, strain and brush over the cakes.

2. Knead 3 1/2 packets of the icing on a work surface dusted with icing sugar. Tint the icing pake pink. Roll out the icing to about 5mm thick and large enough to cover the largest cake. Use a little icing to fill in any holes in the cake to ensure an even surface. Roll the icing over the rolling pin and re-roll over the top of the cake. Gently press over the cake using the palms of your hands dusted with icing sugar. Smooth and trim any excess. Add more pink colouring to the leftover icing to tint it darker pink and warp in plastic.

3. Insert 4 skewers into the cake to support the layers. Knead 2 1/2 packets of the icing and tint pale yellow. Roll out to cover the smaller cake. Tint leftover icing darker yellow.

4. Place the cakes on top of each other. Roll the darker icing out to about 3mm thick. Cut small hearts from the pink icing and stick onto the pink cake with a little egg white. Cut strips from the yellow icing and stick onto the yellow cake. Using a cutter or knife, cut daisy shapes from the dark yellow icing and stick onto the yellow cake. Cut small rounds from the pale yellow icing for the centres. Re-roll the remaining yellow icing into strips of 3 cm wide. Stick to the cake to form a flat ribbon. Cut another two strips. Trim the ends and fold in half and support with cotton wool. Wrap the small strip of icing over the centre of the join for the centre of the bow. Place in the centre of the ribbon. Remove the cotton wool when set.

And there you have it, your own special two tier cake! :)

Some of my other cakes:

A simple dinner

So, here I have a picture of what a simple dinner in my home would look like. I have Fried Fish, Garlic Prawns, Crispy Skin Pork and some nice green veggies. In this picture, I used Bak Choy which is easily available in any grocer including Coles and Woolworth.

Fried Fish (Pompret)

Many Australians are not familiar with pomprets because they don't swim in our waters. However, this is my favourite fish when I lived in Malaysia and to deny me of this fish is to tell me the world has ended. I have since introduced this fish to some of my friends and they love it. You can purchase Pomprets from Chinese Seafood Shops. Market City has ample of these seafood shops. Eastwood has it's share too. I buy mine from the Asian Grocer in Eastwood at a bargain price. Four medium size pomprets for $13 and when the sale is on, it's 10% off. Woohoo!! :)

The secret in fried fish is in maintaining the tenderness of the fish meat yet achieving the crisp all over the outer part. So here's what I do:

- Clean the insides of the fish

- Cut 2 parallel diagonal lines on both sides of the fish

- Pat dry the fish so it isn't dripping wet (this is prevent the oil from jumping on you when you insert the fish into the pan)

- Marinade the fish with a little bit of salt and pepper (you can afford to be more generous on the pepper)

- If you have a deep pan, the better because the deeper the fish sinks into the oil, the better the fish will cook.

- Fill a deep pan with oil (use Canola, Vegetable or Peanut oil or if you can afford it Olive Oil is fine too)

- Make sure there is sufficient oil.. (enough to immerse the fish into)

- Heat the oil till very hot

- If you are using a not using a non stick pan, sprinkle salt into the pan to prevent fish from sticking onto the pan.

- When the oil is hot enough, insert the fish into the pan and leave for 3 minutes. Then flip the fish around. And leave for another 3 minutes. If the fish is not golden brown, continue to rotate the fish until it's golden brown and looks deliciously crispy.

Remove the fish from the oil. It's okay to leave the oil on the fish when removing from pan because the oil will drip onto the serving plate. Pour some light soy sauce on the fish. It will merge with the oil and form a nice black golden gravy. Make sure you don't overuse the soy sauce otherwise it will be way too salty.

And voila.. Your Fried Fish is ready! you can garnish with some coriander leaves and serve hot with rice! Enjoy!

Food for thought..

So, I've been thinking. Many people don't really enjoy eating out yet they don't quite do as well in their own kitchen. I was rather surprised to learn that most people hardly use their kitchen for cooking.. and those that do, do it because they have to.. Therefore, people take-away. Everything is instant these days. We have instant noodles, instant fast food, instant soup, instant dating (speed dating).. etc. What happened to the old fashion ways of doing things? I'm a conservative when it comes to food! I love my food and I love cooking my food. It's really not that difficult. In fact, I do believe that if everyone knew how simple it was to make yummy home cooked meals, everyone would opt to just stay in and cook..

So, I've decided to blog my recipes for all those food lovers out there who would LOVE to cook but think it might be a wee difficult. AND for the new mothers who are struggling to find recipes for their little precious bundle, I have them too. I have trialed and error many of my own recipes which I will gladly share with you. Here are my very own home cook recipes which I know you'll love and they are easy as ABC to 'implement'. I sure hope you enjoy them and if you have any queries, feel free to ask.

Happy cooking and may your tummy always be happy!

This Chinese New Year, my sister decided to visit. So, with my brother in law at my place for the first time, I decided that I had to cook something yummy yet easy because I have a toddler AND my sister has a 5 month old baby. With time against me, I decided I will make Fried Fish, Prawns, Crispy Skin Pork (Siew Yoke) and Mustard soup (Choy Kiok). So I'll post the pictures of these dishes and then the recipes.. Watch this space!!