Hanim Cooks!

Grilled Pineapple with Ice Cream.

Most of the time I haven’t got time to bake time consuming desserts so this is the best bet to an ending of any great meal. Light, simple and may I add, cheap.

1 can of pineapple in sugar syrup, pre-cut into rings
2 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 pint vanilla/coconut ice cream
Maple syrup
Desiccated coconut, lightly browned

Strain pineapple. Sprinkle some brown sugar and ground cinnamon on each side of the pineapples. Grill until golden brown. Let cool before serving it with ice cream, maple syrup and sprinkle some desiccated coconut.

mothernaturenetwork:

Recipe: Pumpkin Bread Pudding
This dessert ought to come with a parental advisory, considering the groans and sighs sure to rise from the table.

But of course I have to reblog this. It’s pumpkin, my friend.

thedailywhat:

I Hate My Hipster Parents, Why Can’t I Just Be Elmo? of the Day: “I’ve never even heard of Andy Warhol!”

[explore]

This is too cute! They’ll look back and will thank their parents!

thedailywhat:

Pumpkin Spice Latte Ice Cream of the Day: No way we’ll be sick of pumpkin everything by the time this lands in stores November 1.

[thedailymeal]

I love anything pumpkin. And I’m sure I’ll love this too.

*salivating*

Pear Upside Down Cake.

Do you feel that there’s too many fancy cakes out there? I do. Bakers race against one another to bake the prettiest looking cakes with fancy fondants/icings with outrageous patterns and they will charge a hefty price only to be disappointed when you bite into the cake because all you can taste is spongy plain “cake”. There’s nothing worse than spongy cake. And have you seen on telly how they make the cake, touching it with their sweaty bare hands? Ewww.

So that’s why simple cake is the best and taste trumps every other factors in cake baking. I don’t deny that there are cakes worthy of accolades for many reasons combined i.e. taste, look, presentation, blah blah blah. But if you’re me and you enjoy baking but not toiling in the kitchen like mad just so you can get the petal of a flower right, taste is the thing that matters most. Honestly because that’s the only thing we can argue on, har har! 

Last week I was watching a cooking show (I do this every night actually) - the chef baked a simple Pear Upside Down Cake. I thought well why don’t I try that. It only uses basic butter cake ingredients + caramel + pears. It definitely is not a birthday cake material but if you’re having a tea party or bringing something for potluck, this is perfecto. You will get praises from non-bakers for sure! Har har, again!

Ingredients

50g butter
1/3 cup brown sugar
5 pears, peeled and cut into quarters horizontally
150g butter
1 cup brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/3 cup flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method

Preheat oven at 160 degree Celsius (fan forced).

Line the base of a 22cm spring form cake pan with a very thin layer of butter (as glue) and baking paper.

Melt 50g butter + 1/3 cup brown sugar on a low heat. Do not take your eyes of this process so you can monitor it from burning. Swirl slowly when the sugar starts to brown. Do this until the it turn golden brown. Now you have caramel. Please be careful, it is extremely hot. I burned my tongue and finger for stupidly tasting it when it is still hot.

Cover the pan with the caramel. Arrange pears in whatever pattern you like. 

Beat together butter and sugar until pale and creamy. Add vanilla essence. Add eggs, one at a time after each beating. Stir in sifted flour and baking powder. 

Spoon the batter into the cake tin. Bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

Let cool for 15 minutes before inverting onto a serving plate.

Serve with whipped cream.

Whipped Cream.

Don’t buy those nasty whipped cream from the dairy aisle, it’s atrocious! Make your own instead. It will only take 10 minutes tops. 

With a hand mixer or whisk, whip 1 cup heavy cream until it reaches soft peak. Beat in 1 teaspoon vanilla essence and 1 tablespoon of icing sugar until peaks form. Make sure not to over-beat because the cream will then become lumpy. 

Happy Birthday!

Today marks Julia Child’s 100th anniversary, god bless her soul.

Checkout her virtual kitchen at the Smithsonian. Pretty rad. 

Rustic Strawberry Galette.

I use the term rustic every time my food look, how do I say this, not that pretty and perfect. Then again for this dessert, it is supposed to be rustic because galette loosely means round, flat and freeform crusty tart in French. So there.

Making it is easy. There are 2 parts to it though - the galette dough and filling.

Galette Dough

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 6 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut in cubes
• 1/4 cup ice water
• 1 egg yolk
• Sugar for sprinkles

In a bowl, mix the flour with the sugar and salt. Using your fingers, cut in half of the butter until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Cut in the remaining butter until the largest pieces are the size of lima beans. Drizzle the water over the dough and stir until moistened. Gather up the dough into a disk, wrap in a plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes

Strawberry filling

• 3 cups diced strawberries
• 6 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbsp flour

Mix everything in a bowl, refrigerate for 30 minutes. 

Assembly

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degree celsius.

2. Remove dough from fridge. Using 2 square baking sheets (about 16-inch), place the dough in between and flatten it using the roller until it is about slightly more than 1/2 cm thick. 

3. Drain any juice from the strawberry as much as possible and spread on the dough leaving about 2-inch border all around. Fold up the edges of the dough, overlapping and crimping as you go. Brush the dough with egg yolk and sprinkle sugar.

4. Bake the galette (bottom lined with baking sheet) in the lower third of the oven for 55 minutes or until the pastry is crisp. Cover the strawberry with aluminium foil to avoid over browning it. Slide the galette onto a wire rack and let cool before serving.

My go-to canned tomatoes for any tomato based sauce. It is stewed with onions, green capsicum and celery; means it adds flavor and I can skip peeling, slicing and sautéing them.

Sweet Potatoes.

It just occurred to me to share with you this. Why not swap the normal potatoes that we use with sweet potatoes instead?

Growing up, sweet potatoes to me are normally associated with making desserts. So it never hit me that I can make savory food using sweet potatoes. Why don’t you try it too? Start with mashed potatoes and any recipe that uses mashed potatoes such as shepherd’s pie and potato croquettes. There’s also potato wedges, roasted potatoes that you normally have with your fish or chicken, potato salad, potato curry puffs, fries, potato in curry gravy, potato gratin, etc..you get the gist, right?

There’s no need for you to change the recipe, simply replace the potato with sweet potato. If the recipe requires sugar, which is hardly ever the case, maybe you can opt not to add it as the name has suggested, sweet potato is..well..sweet.

Have fun experimenting! 

Bechamel Sauce.

I’m planning to bake lasagna this weekend and I thought well maybe I can share one of the component of the recipe, that is the bechamel sauce also known as white sauce. If you do not know this, bechamel sauce is a layer of sauce incorporated in lasagna recipe, normally as a base before your line your casserole with the first layer of lasagna and top it off before sprinkle the cheese on top of the last layer.

This sauce is typically used as a base of many French cuisine but the Italians adopted it and is one of the basic foundation of baking a lasagna (I will talk about it more on detail in another post).

So what is bechamel sauce? It is basically scalded milk mixed with butter and flour until it reaches a consistency that you want. I found the basic recipe here but it lacks in flavor so I came up with something a little bit different, though common. My recipe below is perfect for lasagna.

• 5 tbsp butter
• 4 tbsp all purpose flour
• 4 cups low fat milk
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

In a saucepan, heat butter over medium-low heat until melted but not browned. Add flour and stir until smooth. Cook until the mixture turns light about 5 minutes.

In another saucepan, heat milk just before it reaches boiling point. At milk to the butter mixture 1 cup at a time, consistently stirring with a whisk to avoid lumps. Bring to a boil. Cook for about 10 minutes until it becomes thick and leaves a thick film on your spoon when..err..spooned (umm..i’m not sure this word is appropriate for recipe instructions but I think you got what i mean, right?). Season with salt and nutmeg and set aside.

Other usage of bechamel sauce:

Add some of your favorite cheese and turn it into toppings for veggies such as carrots, potatoes or broccolis.

Add some gruyere cheese and leeks, perfect for grilled fish/chicken gravy.

Add some pureed walnuts, garlic, parsley, ricotta and turn it into walnut sauce for pasta.

It really is versatile. Maybe you can come up with your own recipe :) Also, this sauce can be made few days in advance. Make sure you cover with cling film and keep it refrigerated. 

Bread and Butter Pudding.

When you need easy comfort food, bake this. You can never make any mistakes with the recipe. It’s one of the dessert that I first learned to bake using my mom’s Betty Crocker recipe book published back in the 70’s (and we still have it, though tattered). Enjoy!

• 8 slices bread
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 3 eggs
• 2/3 cups granulated sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 2 1/2 cups milk, scalded*
• 1/2 cup raisin
• Pinch of salt

Heat oven to 175 degree celsius. Butter a medium sized casserole. 

Toast the bread, spread butter and sprinkle a bit of sugar and cinnamon. Cut into squares and arrange the bread in the casserole, butter side up. Sprinkle raisins.

In a bowl, beat egg together with salt, sugar and vanilla. Stir in milk and pour over bread.

Place casserole in a pan of very hot water about an inch deep. Cover casserole lightly with aluminium foil, bake for 25 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking for another 30 minutes or until toothpick/knife inserted from edge of casserole comes clean. Cover with foil if tops get too browned. 

Alternative: Replace bread with croissant and raisins with chocolate chip for a different twist to the original recipe. 

*Scaled milk means heating the milk just before it reaches boiling point.

Poaching salmon in milk, thyme, salt and pepper. (Taken with Instagram)