Happy Baking: Black forrest cake

Looks good from the top, isn't? bit messy from a side :P I followed the recipe from Food Safari. It's more a traditional version. Do you know that Black Forrest Cake came from Germany. They would have the cakes with black coffee and yes, they pour in lots of kirsch (cherry brandy) into the cakes. The cake it self isn't soft sponge cakes. It's bit more solid like mud cake because you need it not to be soggy when you pour in the kirsch. It has layers of cake, cherry jam, whip cream, cake, chocolate mousse, cake, chocolate ganache and chocolate shavings which is the forrest^^

This is probably the most intensive labour cake that I've made so far. Took me a week to create this cake!!! Just because of my lacking of patisserie skills. I never knew that someone can fail making a whip cream!!! which I did, I whipped them too long and the cream was not cold anymore… so it turned into butter T_T I also thought making chocolate shavings is easy… I saw it once when Jamie Oliver did it… I followed his advice, but ermm… it doesn't work T_T Anyway, there's more drama involved in making this cake, but i think it's too embarrassing to tell.

Overall, it has been fun making the cakes — like making Kirsch cocktails at 9am in Saturday Morning ;)

On my wish list: Food Safari

You know how much Brisbane has grown. I found another new spot for me to hang out!!! Just opposite Borders at Queens Street Mall, Dymocks open their store. It's pretty big. I found couples nice design book where I could comfortably skimming them :P (not like in folio where the store so intimate. the cashier just around the corner).

The first thing that I picked up was Food Safari by Maeve O'Meara. If you don't live in Australia, maybe you are not familiar with Food Safari. It a tv shows from SBS that takes you on a culinary globetrot across Australia. The producer and presenter is Maeve O'Meara. I've been collecting the DVD, it's now up to the third one. I was amazed because it's really covered the whole seasons from the show, packed up with the recipe.

I really like Food Safari. Well, I rely on their recipe quite a lot. It's very easy to follow, no gimmicky. All the cooking was just done from three-hat chefs to passionate home-cooks. I really don't know what to do if I lost all their recipes ahahhaha… My top list dishes was inspired from watching their show. Which I just cooked last night, Ikan bumbu bali!

Another that surprise me that given me hard time to put down the book was — it's beautifully design. You've seen lot's of cook book design, they're all pretty nice. But this one is extra nice. Hoefler & Jones typeface — Archer combined with Avenir strikes me. It could be using the new Sentinel but could be just normal Clarendon (it's too much luxury if they do). The way the photos were laid out covered with nice pretty patterns, is just lovely :)

I love the book! and its has Maeve O'Meara autograph!!!

Check out the book, here. You could dowload the sample pages as well. So you could see the design and the recipe :)

Therapeutic baking

Well, in general I’m fine. But emo-moment absolutely unavoidable for a girl like me. I told you I haven’t meet up with him for a while. I was really really looking forward to see him… Until, I got the news that he couldn’t make it. My heart didn’t break into pieces at that time. He had disappoint me the day before… the day before that… before that…

So my heart was quite numb to it. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about him since… I really hate my self for that. After all the effort of being Miss. Independent and leaving the insecure girl behind, with no complaining … all back to cycle one -_-“ But mostly I hate my self that I couldn’t hate him! Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all. (the agony of ‘love?!!’)

Day after day… hoping that we’ll meet again… (LOL, like a Disney princess story). Until, at the end of weekend, I was lying in bed realising he might never come back. I was filled with tears, trying to accept what’s coming. I deleted about 200 text messages from him.

After, I had enough sobbing moment, I went out and decided to bake. It’s a new hobby of mine. I found it’s rather therapeutic, same reason why I enjoy cooking. I was planning to make pineapple tarts (It was Hari Raya/Lebaran on Sunday. Even though, I don’t celebrate it. I just want to be part of it).

Unexpectedly, my mobile rang and it was him! ^^

My pineapple tarts or should I say pineapple cookies :P turns out quite nice (LOL). It took me half of my day making them. I just slouched in the sofa after baking them. Get the recipe from My Kitchen Snippets.

Cuppa tea and forestberry muffin

It's a long weekend here in Brisbane. Today is a labour day! I was so looking forward for it. Me and "my-not-ye-bf" was planning to go to Gold Coast again. And then… he told me he had to attend a wedding for the whole weekend 0_0. Of course, I was very very dissapointed… and yet, today this last free day, he had to make an emergency excuse not to see me T_T sigh…



To redeem my self, I turn my self into baking, retail therapy and redecorating the house during the long weekend :P I am feeling much much happier after sucessfully made the right muffin. People say it's easy to make muffin. But I am so inexperience in baking. My first experience was an apple muffin. I couldn't make the texture right. Somehow, it was too dry.



But finally, my forestberry muffin is near perfect!!! I read couple few different recipes to make muffin. One tricks that helping me is by filling the paper cups with water before baking, to keep the paper moist. I tried this recipe from RasaMalaysia. I enjoy eating them with a cuppa of taiwanese green tea (All San High Mountain tea). My lovely teaset shown above was a Christmas present from "my-not-yet-bf" ^^It's such a sweet teapot.



So I spent my last Monday, relaxing… drinking tea… muching my delicious muffin :P The weather has been so nice. It's been so calming just staying at home (since I've got the whole house for my self and I've tidy up the house yesterday). There's nowhere else better to be rather then just stay at home^^

Bulgogi stew

I cooked bulgogi stew the other night. It's quite a hearty meals to have during this autumn seasons. It has been quite chilly lately.

People always think when it comes to bulgogi, as such a meaty meal. But it's really up to you, depends what do you want to put in. The beef is necessary for the broth but you could balance everything with lot's of veges and mushrooms. That's what the right bulgogi stew all about! Not just purely meat like normal bulgogi.

I love eating more of the mushrooms and usually leave all the meat behind for my sister to finish :P (well, I am always towards more to vegetarian, just incase you don't know). With the beef, there's two type you can use… the big chunk of tenderloins meat chopped or just the bulgogi beef that you could buy at Korean's shop. With the chunk of meat, long marinating is necessary (a day would be perfect). when it comes to cook it, you just boiled them in long hours, it will produce so much better broth. Since I am not a big fan of meat, I just use the thin strips bulgogi beef. With this type of meat, an hour marinate will do. However, when it comes cooking this meat. You don't want to really over cooked them (it'll become hard). You have to have your broth ready first (drained the marinate sauce from the beef, put them in. Add in chicken stock, soy sauce and sugar for taste). Put the potato noodle (needs about 20 min to be soft) and mushrooms into the stew before you put the meat in. When everything boiled and the noodle is quite soft put in the bulgogi beef (serve portions only). It will cook pretty fast since it's very thin (2 minutes will do). Have the soups straight away. You could just add in the beef everytime you want to eat.

One other thing to note, if you are using enoki (golden) mushrooms. Just blanch this mushroom with hot water for few sec then top it up in your bowl (you could see in the picture, the enoki just placed in the corner by it self :p). Don't put in enoki mushrooms together with the stew. This mushroom is just as nice to eat it raw. I just knew this recently btw ;)

For the recipe, please visit here. It's slightly differents steps since it used the big chunk of meat. It's really up to you. But remember, in order to have soft chewy potato noodles you need to boil it for awhile. Hope you'll like it.

Chocolate Brownies for Valentine’s

I made some brownies during Valentine’s day^^ I’ve never baked before, except from Mrs. Fielding instant package (I don’t think that is counted, right?). It’s really funny, because I really like eating dessert. But unfortunately, I’ve never tried making them. So, I give my self a chance. The results, wasn’t bad at all. It was so easy!!! Definitely gonna make some more brownies in the near future. I love baking now… I’ve even already planned to make chocolate cookies and cupcakes with my friend next week.



Well, since it was my first experienced baking. I did one stupid mistake. I used half size too small pan to baked. Luckily, it was still turned okay^^ Everyone loves it! (too bad he didn’t have a chance to try it. He’s been busy. I’m a little sad with this. Oh well, more for me, then. ehehehe)

The recipe is coming. I’ve got it from Donna Hays.

Did you make your own hand made chocolate to your love one? What did you give to your special someone this Valentine's?

update: I wish I read this before: DIY sweetheart brownie Valentine from Twig & Thistle.

Kimchi fried rice and enoki mushrooms pancakes

Korean food is my current favourite dishes. I don't know how long has it last, but I always crave for Korean dishes. I would suggest going to Korean restaurants for most occasion.

During winter, Korean dishes are the best to serve. Since most of the cuisine is always hot and spicy. It's not hard to cook Korean dishes, once you know their basic fundamentals, which are:

• hot & spicy, they use Gochuchang (Korean fermented chilli paste) for their spicy dishes.
  
• Sweet, they always add sugar in their dishes. For beef marinade, they use Nashi pear to give the sweetness. This is used to marinate Bulgogi beef.
  
• Garlic, they love garlic. Garlic will always be in the main ingredients.

I cooked Kimchi fried rice (Kimchi Bokkumbap) and enoki mushrooms pancakes (Paeng-ee Beosut Jeon) few weeks ago. I found this really excellent blog called My Korean Kitchen filled with simple, original Korean recipe written by a Korean girl. Sadly, the blog has stopped. There was no explanation why she stopped writing. Although, surprisingly, the forum is still alive, people still come and discuss the recipe that she posted.



You can follow the simple Kimchi fried rice recipe from here. But I made my own modification by added Gochuchang and tomato sauce mixed with sugar and water. Since there is only little kimchi juice when you bought the Kimchi. The combination sauce that I added was actually a based sauce for Bimbimbap (hot stone rice).



The enoki mushrooms pancakes wasn’t quite look the same from what it looks like at Korean Kitchen. But it was taste great, I am happy. Definitely, going to make them again. The recipe is available here.

So, care to give it a try? Do you have any favourite dishes that you would like to share?

summer-fruit tart

Yummm... deliciously fruit tart pie…oh, I just made up other name. Well, I’ve got the basic recipe from Coles Christmas catalogue. The pastry shell is ready made, I bought it from Wollies instead :P It’s very easy, just need to make the vanilla custard. After the custard cooling down, the fruit cocktails are ready to spread over the top. Then, as the finishing touch, glaze it with transparent jelly.

Since I've been doing nothing much over the holiday. So I start practicing my dessert cooking skills. Honestly, I have never really made any dessert. I think I am really bad at it. My expertise in cooking is in deep-frying and stir-frying -_-“ hehe. But it looks good, doesn’t it? It only took 20 minutes to make the custard, very easy. Message me if you want the recipe hehehe…Oh yea, I’ve got three of this tart, I am happy to share it. I don’t really like dessert, well not too much. I just enjoy to make them and see the presentation.