Banana cake

Wah .. I think I “perfected” this :) Pisang emas with walnuts, and some choc rice in my fav banana cake :) Just hot out ! Moist, Yum ..

Richard & Rina - you came too early - tmrw wanna drop by and pick some up ?

Mini (or not) Chicken Pies

Shan - This is specially for you :)

We girls can take shortcuts and use ready-made stuff. These can make about 2 normal sized pies or 24 (give and take) mini pies (aka muffin sized ones).

Key ingredients are
* 1 can of chicken mushroom soup
* 1.5 cans of water
* 1.5 TBS of flour
* Puff pastries
* 1 cup of frozen mixed veggies
* 2 chicken thighs (deboned, slightly seasoned with salt and pepper if you wish, and roasted) or just buy ready ones
* 2 potatoes (if you want - boiled and cubed)

Steps
1. In a saucepan, cook mushroom soup, water and flour till consistent. Then add the shredded chicken, veggies and potatoes and cook another 1-2 mins. Crush some black pepper (I like that !)
2. Preheat oven to 200 degC.
3. Slightly oil the muffin trays or pie trays. If making the mini pies, use a small saucer (just slightly bigger than the muffin circle and drape a little over the sides) to trace the puff pastry (let it soften a little else it will crack). Same for the pie trays (then use 1 piece of puff pastry).
4. Pour the soup mix into the trays.
5. Cut a smaller piece of puff pastry (I use the Chinese teacup - about the same size as my muffin tray) and cover the pie. Press the edges (must press else the mixture will spill out !!!)
6. Prick some holes on the top of the pies to let steam out when baking.
7. Put in oven and bake for 20 mins. Watch that the top doesn’t burn.
** If you want the pie to look nice and brown then bast the top of the pies before baking with a egg yolk and 1 TBSP water (lightly beaten) mixture.

I made 12 mini pies and 1 big pie with the ingredients… sorry no pictures as the mini ones burst cause someone didn’t press (haha) and the big pie we were so hungry we ate it all up !!

Enjoy la and tell me if you like it.

Marmalade

Hmm had some oranges in the fridge and though I am not a big jam fan, I love marmalade, so I thought why not try making marmalade :)

Had to boil the peels 3 times and clear the 2 orange piths, etc, added half the sugar required in the original recipe and after 1.5 hours… I have a small nice jar of marmalade !

Ooo this will go nicely with my bread and even cornmeal bread :)

French bread..

I guess the name is the shape of the loaf :) texture is baguette type. Tried this yesterday but didn't manage to rush home in time to add garlic powder ! But this proves that the bread maker can make this type of bread !! The cycle is however 5 hours - will go and buy these in future ;) The electricity bill can probably pay for a gazillion of these !!

Slow cooker cooking - Pork stew with Peppers

For all those busy people but whom still want to have some home-cooked food, you need to get a slow cooker and / or a magic pot (aka thermal pot.. we will go into that another time).

I found this recipe which I tweaked a little to make it healthier (less salty, oily, etc) and it turned out pretty nice. And you can eat it with rice, bread (what I did for dinner), noodle, and this is keepable for reheating for follow-up meals.

First time I made this - using pork pieces (you can use beef but hubby doesn’t take beef), lots of bell peppers (capsicums - I only had the green and yellow in the fridge, use any you like), some onions and a can of tomato stew. Pretty much left the concoction in the slow cooker for the entire day on low and voila …

It’s easy enough !

KA :)

I wanted to start a KAadict posting (so excited hubby agreed that I could get one - did it during the Tangs sale !!) never really got around to it .. so let’s just add it here :)

First introducing my KA !

And here is what I baked using the KA - my Cedele wannabe carrot cake !

Yummy especially with the cream cheese frosting, which the KA is superb for :)

Homemade Foccacia

Pris says I am testing her Engrish with the word !! But seriously you can make focaccia using the breadmaker ! This is a little hard but with some nice extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, the combination is heavenly .. especially with the rosemary from my little herb garden :)

Besides rosemary, I have some overgrown dill (higher than the fence !), some sad-looking Thai basil (need to regrow), luscious pandan... Tried growing cherry tomatoes from seed a couple of times but the birds are out for the plants. Need to find a way :)

Experimenting..

Started this a while ago but never got around to posting any stuff ;(

Since am ooa for a while let's see if I can be successful ;)

Used my fav Zojirushi bread maker to bake a cornmeal cake or bread today. My first cornmeal recipe :) it's quite nice, moist enough but think the next time I will add another TBS of brown sugar and some corn kernels. Not as crumbly as the Kenny Rogers muffin but healthier !!

Enjoy !