Fruit-Filled Crepes

I woke up early one weekend morning and made these crepes for our breakfast. Growing up my mom used to make sweet and savory crepes for us. She will add chives and shrimps to the savory ones and sugar and coconut to the sweet ones. I think they are just perfect for breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner. All you have to do is stuff them up with different type fillings. Since I have a lot of fruits in my fridge I just used them for the filling but you can make them savory too. It can be scramble eggs, tomatoes, spinach, mushrooms, cheese and etc. This will be great if you are having guest over. Cook all the crepes and serve them alongside bowls of various fillings like jam, nutella, fruits, whipped cream etc... So everyone can choose their own fillings.

Marble Twist Roll

When I first saw this interesting roll up bread at Dari Dapur MadihaA's blog I was intrigued by it. Since this month Aspiring Baker’s challenge is roll up cake I am not sure if I can submit this. So I wrote to the host Obsessedly Involved with Food and asked her about it as I don’t want to break the rules. She said as long as there is flour, eggs and sugar, and rolled up looking like a Swiss roll she will be alright with it. So, I rolled up my sleeves and get to work. It is a lot of work making this bread but if you have some time to spare this will be a great bread to try out. It is very much different from the usual bread you bake. This bread is like a cross between sweet bread and a cake. I wish I have better skill in rolling it as you notice some part of the bread breaks. Nevertheless it taste pretty good with a cup of coffee or tea.

Baked Shrimp Toast

This is an all time favorite appetizer from the Chinese dim sum or takeout place, with shrimp paste spread on slices of toast and deep fried. I remember ordering it once and was not impressed with it at all. It was so oily and the shrimps paste was not cook. I have to send it back to kitchen and they re-fried them. Guest how it look like when it came back to the table. It was black and soaked in oil. We end up not eating it. What a waste of money as it cost us $4.95 for 4 slices.

Making this is pretty simple. Instead of frying it I baked them. This appetizer makes an excellent finger food for party. It can be prepare ahead of time and bake them up when your guest arrive. Instead of using the regular white bread I just used some baguette.

Mango Jelly/Mango Agar-Agar

We are having some crazy heat waves for the past two weeks. So I am not doing much cooking or baking for the time being. We just have salads or sandwiches for our meals. I am craving for something cold and refreshing to ease the heat. Since mangoes are in season and I always have a few in my fridge, I decided to make some agar agar with it.

Sponge Cake with Dulce De Leche Cream

I made this cake for my neighbor for her birthday a few months ago. It is just a simple sponge cake with Dulce De Leche cream frosting. This is the same frosting I used for Carlos birthday cake . Everyone seems to like this frosting a lot when they tasted Carlos cake so I used it again for Nancy’s cake. Thanks to Wendy for sharing the frosting recipe. Sorry I can’t show you how the cake looks like on the inside as I forgot to ask Nancy to take a picture of it.

Ingredients:
Source: My Kitchen Snippets

6 egg yolks
30 gram sugar
60 ml fresh milk
60 ml melted butter
120 gram cake flour
¼ tsp salt
6 egg whites
70 gram sugar

Strawberry Swiss Roll

This month Aspiring Baker’s theme is a bit challenging for me and I am actually contemplating if I should participate or not. The theme is ‘Swiss Rolling Good Time’ and participants have to submit Swiss rolls. I always have phobia making them as they failed me most of the time. True enough, it happened again. I made this roll twice and both time I failed miserably. The cake broke into pieces when I tried rolling them. I think I baked them too long and it turns out too dry. Before I embark on my 3rd attempt I went to YouTube for help. I watch how people roll the cake and finally I am brave enough to try it again. Much better this time and it came out alright but still need a lot of improvements.

Minang Fried Beef

Our Indonesia helper taught me to cook this dish many years ago. It is a simple Minangkabau dish. Minangkabau people are from West Sumatra, Indonesia. Their dishes are popular in South East Asian and is famous for its rich taste of succulent coconut milk and spicy chili. This dish that she taught me is very simple and didn’t use any coconut milk in it. Even without the coconut milk the dish has a nice fragrant of coconut because of the coconut paste/kerisik in it and it is not spicy at all. It goes really well with rice or bread.

Ingredients:
From My Kitchen Snippets

1 pound beef – I used flank steak
2 tbsp chili paste or sambal Oelek
4 shallots
2” fresh ginger
6 cloves garlic
2 green chilies – cut small
1 medium size onion – slice round
3 tbsp tomato ketchup
2 tbsp coconut paste/ kerisik (recipe below)
2 tsp sugar
Salt to taste

Baked Ginger Sesame Boxing Chicken

I load up some chicken wings when they were on sale two weeks ago. Instead of the usual grilling I tried making Boxing Chicken. Boxing Chicken is a common finger food served at cocktail parties or get together in Malaysia. It is basically chicken wings with the meat pushed off the bone up to the end to form a ‘boxing glove’ look…thus the name. This is my version of the chicken dish. Instead of deep frying it, I baked them in the oven. It might not have the crispy effect but the taste and flavor are just as good as the fried ones.

Ingredients:
From My Kitchen Snippets

12-14 chicken drummettes

Irish Beef Stew

This Irish stew is traditionally made with lamb but since we are not a fan of it so I just used beef. The additional of Guinness beer really add a nice flavor to this rich and hearty stew. The beef is incredibly tender and great to serve it with some crusty bread.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 pounds stew beef – cut into 1” pieces
3 potatoes – peel, cut into chunks
1 large onion – cut into chunks
3 carrots – peel and cut into 1” length
½ cup green peas (optional)
6 cloves garlic - chopped
2 sprig thyme - remove the stems and chopped
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1 cup Guinness Beer
6 cups beef stocks
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp sugar
Salt to taste

Spicy Grilled Chicken Wings

The only thing I like about summer is the grilling. I will prepare the chicken, beef, wings, fish, corns, vegetables and let my hubby to do the grilling. This way I don’t have to heat up the kitchen. As you know I am not a fan of summer heat. We grilled up these wings when Diana came home last week and they turn out really good. We have these with some grilled corns.

Jemput Jemput Pisang/Banana Fritters

These freshly fried snacks from Malaysia are commonly sold by the roadside stalls during breakfast or tea time. Also known as kueh kadok or ‘toad cake’ due to the fritters uneven appearance. Beside the not so appealing appearance, these morsels are crispy on the outside, soft and moist on the inside. It is one of my favorite ways to use up all the overripe bananas. They are basically bananas all mashed up with flour, sugar, grated coconut all mix together and then deep fried.

I remember my school used to sell this in the size of tennis ball. They were huge, hard and had more flour than banana in it. We actually name them ‘kueh bomb’ because of its texture and size. I prefer fritters to be in bite-size pieces, packed with bananas and with only a touch of flour in it. Normally I will dust them with some powder sugar but I ran out of it. So I decided to melt some dark chocolate and drizzle all of them. They tasted pretty good together!

Unagi and Tamagoyaki Sushi Rice Bowl

This is my youngest nephew Eu-Xin absolutely favorite thing to eat. Each time he steps into a Sushi place of Japanese restaurant he will order this. He will be very happy if he get to eat this. I have to make it a point to prepare this for him when I go home. Making this rice bowl is so easy. You can find vacuumed packed pre-cooked unagi at the Asian store frozen section. All you have to do is take it out, bake or broil and serve it with some sushi rice. We will usually have this with some avocado or steamed broccoli but since I don’t have any in hand I just made some Tamagoyaki (Japanese rolled omelet) to go with it.

Blueberry Scones

I made these during the 4th July weekend for our breakfast with some leftover blueberries from the Summer Berries Sour Cream Tea Cake . These scones are perfectly light, tender, buttery and bursting with fresh blueberries. Now who can resist this especially with the blueberries oozing out of the scones. Carlos had two of it with some butter once it came out of the oven. It is that good :)

Inchi Kabin/Nyonya Fried Chicken

This is a Nyonya version of fried chicken. The nyonyas and babas are indigenous to the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca and Singapore and have their own cuisine which is mix of Chinese and Malay. Inchi Kabin is all know as Encik Cabin Chicken. And how does this dish have its unique name? The story goes like this. This dish was popularly cooked on the ship for sailors. Usually when the meal is ready, the chef will inform the sailors ‘Encik dalam cabin, chicken siap” (translation: Mister in the cabin, your meal is ready) this is how the dish got its name. This recipe uses simple combination of ingredients but the results were surprisingly delicious!