Hanim Cooks!

10 Minute Chocolate Cake.

The best thing ever if you feel like having a quick fix. I cannot stress more on how easy this recipe is. The texture is in between spongy and fudgy with melted chocolate in the middle. 

Ingredients

4 tbsp flour
4 tbsp cocoa powder or Milo
4 tbsp sugar
1 egg
3 tbsp milk
3 tbsp melted butter
1/3 cup chocolate buttons (optional)

Method

Brush the inside on a ramekins (or microwave-able mug). Mix everything except for chocolate buttons in a bowl using a fork, mix well. Pour the batter half way up the ramekins, fill it with generous amount of chocolate buttons and top it off with the batter until it reaches just below the top of the ramekins. Microwave it on high for 3 minutes. Let cool, transfer it onto a plate. If you want, dust it with icing sugar, serve it with jam of your choice or with vanilla ice cream.

Note: You can keep the cake in the fridge up to 3 days. Reheat in the microwave on high for 1.5 minutes.

Pumpkin Cake with Golden Syrup Frosting.

My (tiny) obsession with pumpkin continues. 

This has got the be, by far, the ugliest photo of sliced cake in the world. I made a mistake of putting the frosting when the cake was not cooled completely. Complete idiot. And it doesn’t help that it was such a humid day. And I didn’t get the sun I wanted for this picture. Oh whatever!

If you’re not turned off by the sight of this picture, here’s the recipe:

Ingredients

Cake

1/2 cup butter
2 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tablespoon nutmeg
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
2 eggs
1 1/2 cup fine sugar
1 cup pumpkin puree

Golden Syrup Frosting

1/2 cup butter, soft
250g reduced-fat cream cheese, soft
1/4 cup golden syrup

Method

Preheat oven to 125 degree Celsius. Butter a 9-inch round springform pan.

In a bowl, sieve and whisk flour, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg. In another bowl, cream sugar and butter until pale. Whisk in egg and pumpkin puree until combined. Add dry ingredients to pumpkin mixture and mix gently until all smooth and combined.

Place the batter into the pan. Bake up to 45 minutes until toothpick inserted in center of cake come out clean. As the cake batter is a bit wet, you might need to cook it slightly longer, but maintain a low heat up to another 15 minutes.

Cool cake in a pan for 1/2 hour, then remove the springform pan and place on wire rack, right side up.

To make the golden syrup frosting, whisk butter, cream cheese and syrup until smooth. Spread on top of the completely cooled cake.

Pumpkin Puree.

Where I come from, canned pumpkin puree is almost unheard of because it’s uncommon. So we make our own. Which I don’t mind because it really doesn’t take that much effort.

I noticed a lot of the recipe calls for the pumpkin to be roasted. I prefer to steam it instead. So here’s what you need to do:

Get a large sharp knife. Cut the pumpkin into quarters or more, depending on the size. Put it in the steamer for half hour or until soft (you should be able to scrap with a spoon effortlessly). Scrap the pumpkin off it’s skin and puree it in the food processor. Or you can use the masher.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

You can trust her. I can vouch for it. 

goddessofscrumptiousness:

The Makings of a Perfect Brownie:

1) A perfect brownie should be crunchy on top that the surface cracks the minute you sink your teeth into it.

2) The texture should be chewy and moist and fudge-like that the act of chewing every morsel of it is equally pleasurable as that of having a foodgasm.

3) A perfect brownie should never contain any leavening agents such as bicarbonate of soda or baking powder (unless you want a cake-like brownie, then I believe one should just eat cake instead). Any brownie recipe that includes these sacrilegious additions is well, a sacrilege!

4) The proper mixing of all the brownie ingredients is also a factor. If you just mix all the ingredients together and dump everything into a baking pan, the brownie top won’t be as crunchy, unlike when you separate the egg whites from the yolks, beating the whites with sugar just until thick and frothy, much like a runny meringue before mixing with the rest of the ingredients is the secret to a crunchy top… I promise!

5) And lastly, of course a perfect brownie should taste like it is blessed by a Mayan god cacao connoisseur. It should be ooh-ing and screaming chocolate. So use the best quality chocolate bar or cocoa powder.

Crunchy Top Fudge Brownies

Ingredients:

1 cup unsalted butter

1 cup good quality cocoa powder (I use a German brand cocoa powder -Heintz, you can use a Dutch-processed cocoa powder… means it is alkalized)

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 cups granulated sugar

4 eggs (medium), separated

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups all purpose flour, sifted

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups dark chocolate chips

*2 cups whole walnuts (optional)

Procedure: 

Preheat oven to 350’F. Line a 9”x13” rectangle baking pan with baking parchment.

- Melt butter in a medium sauce pan over low heat. When melted, remove from heat and add cocoa powder, mix until smooth.

- Add brown sugar, salt, vanilla, egg yolks and flour. Set Aside.

- Using a hand mixer/wire whisk/stand mixer, beat egg whites until frothy. Then slowly add the granulated sugar until meringue gets into a soft peak stage.

- Fold the meringue mixture into the chocolate mixture. Then mix in the dark chocolate chips and walnuts (optional).

- Pour into prepared baking pan and bake for 50 minutes to an hour or until when toothpick inserted in the center of the brownie comes out with moist crumbs (not wet brownie batter).

- Cool in pan for 15 minutes, then lift from the baking pan and cut into 24 square pieces. Cool cut brownies on wire racks.

- Store in an air tight container. Laid flat and layers separated by parchment paper.

Makes 2 dozens

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Peach Pastry.

This dessert will be perfect if I had some slithered almonds and icing sugar in my kitchen pantry for decoration. But I think this is good enough.

I finally got around to translate the recipe in my head into writing - only because someone actually asked for it, gasp! Hope I didn’t screw anything up. 

Simple Custard.

I use this simple recipe as a base for my pastry desserts.

One advice - always stir the custard when it’s on heat so it won’t burn. And do not leave it out of your sight no matter how boring it is staring and waiting for it to thickens; it’ll only take roughly 7 minutes anyway. Ok, that’s two advices. 

Cinnamon Rolls.

I made this sweet, sweet delicious buns for my friend’s tea party.

The recipe is simple but the explanation is a bit lengthy - only so that you’ll get it right.

Just thought I let you know that the recipe calls for yeast so naturally you will need to spare some time to let the dough rise. Don’t make this if you are in a hurry. 

Serve ‘em warm. 

Stick licking good Gelato on sticks at Stickhouse. 

Hazelnut + chocolate gelato coated with dark chocolate sauce and pistachios. 

Ahhh.. Living a good life.. 

Maple Cheesecake.

There’s a distinction between baking and designing cakes. I bake cakes. To be more precise, “rustic” looking cakes. Heh. 

I made this for Mister Birthday Man (with much love and affection, mind you). We celebrated it at The Bee in Publika with his close friends and acquaintances. IF people are being honest with me, the cake was superb and I received good reviews. 

Don’t take my word for it, perhaps you should try it for yourself. Here’s the recipe. 

Poached Pear in Cranberry Juice with Vanilla Cream.

I was running on the treadmill at the gym when I felt the sudden urge to make this. So I ran faster so I can finish faster and dash to the supermarket to get the ingredients. I did make a pit-stop and had Japanese food for dinner; I was hungry and light headed from all that rushing.

Poached pear is a typical dessert option for cold winter nights as it is typically served warm. Poaching maximizes the pear’s natural sweetness and the spices enhances the taste; truly decadent. 

Anyway, the recipe is very easy. Normally the recipe calls for port wine; I opt to use cranberry juice instead. Another alternative are orange or pomegranate juice.

You’ll like it, trust me.

Ultimate Fudge Brownies.

Brownies has got to be the easiest chocolate dessert to make. Brownie ingredients always seem to be readily available, does not require much fussing about and the batter is scraped into one pan with no need to roll out, cut shapes from or bake batch after batch with. When baked, brownies are cut and served right from their pan, making clean-up simple. 

All brownie recipes seem to have five ingredients in common: chocolate and/or cocoa, flour, sugar, butter and eggs but in varying amounts depending upon the texture desired. Personally I like fudgy brownies. I mean, if I want to eat cake-like brownie, I’ll make chocolate cake instead.

Fudgy brownies have little flour and no baking powder at all. Melting the butter rather than creaming it with sugar yields a denser, fudgier outcome. Unsweetened chocolate is the standard, with a full cup of sugar required to balance its bitterness. Either granulated or brown sugar may be used; substitute one for the other in equal proportions. 

Overmixing the ingredients can cause brownies to turn out tough. Mix wet and dry ingredients just long enough to blend them, taking special care not to overbeat after the eggs are added.

When baking, remember to only use glass or shiny metal pans. Dark or non-stick pans will cause brownies to be soggy and low on volume. Also, line the pan with aluminium foil - this saves up on clean up not to mention easy to cut and serve.

If you want to know if brownies are done baking, they just begin to pull away from the edges of the pan with the center still molten. So don’t bake it like normal cake; they will firm as they cool.

By far I think Jamie Oliver’s Bloomin’ Briliant Brownies is the best and easy to follow. I’ve adapted it into a recipe sheet with the tips so it’ll be easy for you to refer to.