Bababa Banana Bread version 1.0

After the holidays. Christmas - New Year - Lunar New Year... Oh My! I have gained quite a bit of weight here and there... wells basically the whole body la.. Sigh.. Have been eating healthier and hitting the gym more often.. On top of that, trying to build more muscles so that I can increase my metabolism rate..

Was a bit bored at home and have not been baking (hence no posts recently)... Work has taken most of my time.. by the time I reach home, I am so exhausted, the last thing on my mind is bring out that flour and bake some thing... It was kind of depressing though.. Not able to do what I like to do... Like my energy is being sucked away. Ok, I digressed a bit.. So... Back to me being bored at home.. I decided to bake something simple to kind of get the engine going... Macarons were out of the questions.. Brought the icing sugar and almond meal out only to put them back in a split second.. Saw some banana.. Ah Ha! Banana Bread then.. But banana and bread.. not very calorie friendly.. Hmm.. I went searching the internet.. looking of how i can make it healthier.. Wow.. a few nice substitutions  out there to replace high calorie ingredients to something more healthy.. I decided to go slow one at a time.. replacing one ingredient with a healthy one each time i baked.. So to experiment and to come out with a more healthy yet incredibly delicious one to recommend.. Am thinking if I should record my whole journey here or just the successful ones.. Wells lets start with version 1.0

Ingredients (make 1 loaf)

• 1 3/4 Cup of Plain Flour
• 1 tsp of baking soda
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 1/2 tsp of salt
• 1/2 tsp of Cinnamon Powder
• 1/2 Cup of low-fat yoghurt (thinking of trying greek yoghurt the next round)
• 1 Cup of sugar (thinking of lowing the sugar amount the next round)
• 2 large eggs
• 5 medium sized ripe bananas, mashed ("kim-jio" for those living in Singapore)
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• Zest of 1 orange (medium size)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 180C. Set aside a 9" by 5" loaf pan with parchment paper and greased with butter or non-stick spray. 
2. Mix the 1st 5 dry ingredients together and set aside. 
3. Add the orange zest into the mashed banana and mixed well.
4. In a mixing bowl cream the sugar and the yoghurt together for a couple of minutes. Add egg and continue mixing till well combined. 
5. Add in the banana-orange zest into the mixing bowl. Mix them till well combined. 
6. Lastly, add in the dry ingredients and stop mixing once 90% of the dry ingredients are combined. Using a spatula, fold to ensure all the dry ingredients are well mixed. This is to prevent over-mixing and the formation of gluten in the flour. If so, the bread will be tough. 
7. Pour the batter into the loaf pan and bake for 40-45 min or until when you insert a toothpick into the middle of the loaf and the toothpick comes out clean. 

I know.. Don't look that appetizing 

This bread surprisingly baked faster than the normal banana bread recipe.. Usually the bread will take around 1h or more to bake.. I checked it at the 40min mark and it turned out done.

But look how airy the bread is.. not those normal dense banana bread. The air pockets make it very chewy too

Surprisingly, the yoghurt turned out to be quite a good substitute for butter... Now I know.. Got quite a few good compliments from the family and friends.. Even the picky sunshine said it was good.. Moist and the sweetness is just nice... Yea my first experiment was a success!

Lil' Gingerbread Men...

Ho Ho Ho

Merry Christmas! It's the time of the year where giving is promulgated...  It's a time of giving. And during this time, I'll start baking a Lil sth for friends and family..  So happy that I can give...  Apparently, I love to give my baked goodies that I'm receiving lots of cook book this year..  Haha. Talk abt reaping what you sow..  Wells. That will be for another time of sharing..  Back to my gingerbread men..  So this year we decided to bake gingerbread men for the cg... Oh,  and by we, I meant Kim (my cousin) and me..

Kim came to help.. Pic of us when we were all exhausted. 

On the day before bake day,  I started making the dough..  Let's just put it this way..  Living in a tropical country with super high temp n humidity means ur dough melts like nobody business..  That is cos the dough is packed with lots of butter.. And butter melts fast in our climate. So I left the dough to sit in the refrigerator overnight so that the dough can harden a bit..  We made a total of 8 batches...  48 gingerbread men &  women..  

For the recipe, I used Laura Vitale's recipe: (Yield about 48 Gingerbread Men/Women)

Ingredients: 

For the Cookie:

• 3 cups of All Purpose Flour
• 2 tsp of Ground Ginger
• 2 tsp of Ground Cinnamon 
• 1 tsp of Baking Soda
• ½ tsp of Ground Cloves (Did not have Cloves, changed it to 5-spice powder, works just as well)
• ½ tsp of Salt
• 1 ½ cups of Unsalted Butter, at room temperature
• 1 cup of Brown Sugar
• ¼ cup of Molasses
• 1 Egg

For the royal icing:

• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1 large egg white
• 1.5 Cup icing sugar
• Food Colouring

Directions

1. Mixed the first 6 ingredients into 1 bowl.
2. In another mixing bowl, cream butter, molasses and sugar till fluffy
3. Add dry ingredients together till a sticky dough is formed. 
4. in a well-floured surface, put the dough together till it becomes a dough. Cut it to 4 pieces and place each piece into a cling wrap and wrap it up tightly. Place it in the refrigerator for at least an hour (I put mine overnight)
5. Once the dough is chilled and good to work with, place the dough in between 2 parchment paper. Roll the dough to about half a cm thick. Using the gingerbread man cookie cutter, cut out desired shapes and place it on a baking tray lined with parchment paper.
6. Bake it for about 10 min in the oven at 180C
7. Let it cool completely before you decorate your gingerbread man :)

Note: 

• The weather is SIngapore is hot and humid.. This means that the butter in the dough will melt very fast.. What I did is to quickly cut and re-roll the dough.Immediately place it into the freezer section so that the dough can chill faster. If at anytime the dough becomes too soft to cut out the shape, place the dough straight into the freezer to harden the dough. 
• It is best to leave your decorated gingerbread men out for at least a couple of hours just to ensure the royal icing dries up completely before you pack them. Else your hard work will be smudge and gone to waste. 

Fresh out from the oven

Using white, neon pink & neon green to decorate the gingerbread man :) 

Angry Gingerbread Man

Merry Christmas! Have a gingerbread man with a cup of hot tea..Just Nice :)

JJ enjoying his gingerbread man :)

Shepherd's Pie OR Cottage Pie.. HMMM.....

Shepherd's Pie ... Cottage Pie... What's the difference..? I have no idea the difference before I started making it... I always thought Shepherd's Pie is made from beef and I have no clue what is cottage pie made from.

 

Apparently, to the chefs, it is wrong to put beef in shepherd's pie. The fact that it is called shepherd's pie is because it is made from mutton, something that the shepherds had readily - sheep.. "_" But alas, I only home cook.. I like beef in my shepher

First started cooking Shepherd's Pie as I thought it will be a simple dish to serve my guest... Wells.. You would not really go wrong with it... It's quite simple to  do cook... Just the preparation is quite a task..Hahah The grating is one tedious thing to do.. I usually spend quite a while grating them... But now no more.. My hand food processor is doing the job.. SO SO SO happy :) Done in a matter of minutes..


Here you go the recipe:

Ingredients (Feed around 4pax) (Adapted from Gordon Ramsay's Shepherd's Pie Recipe)

For the Filling

• 600g Ground Beef
• 1 Large Carrot, Grated
• 1 Big Yellow Onion, Grated
• 4 Cloves of garlic, Minced
• 1/2 Cup Tomato Puree / Sauce
• Fresh Herbs (Rosemary, Thymes or any substitute)
• Few Splashes of  Worcestershire Sauce
• 1/4 C chicken stock
• 3-4 Tablespoon of Red Wine
• Salt
• Pepper
• Oil

For the Mash:

• 6-7 golden potato
• 2 egg yolks
• 1/4 C of heavy cream
• 50g Butter
• 1/4C + 2T Parmesan Cheese
• Salt
• Pepper

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 200C
2. Boil the potatoes for 15minutes. Mash the potatoes using potato masher / fork / stand mixer (w/paddle attachment). Add in the rest of the ingredients for the mash (except the 2T of cheese), mix well. Set aside.
3. In a saucepan, add in some olive oil. When heated, add in garlic and stir for a while. Put in the beef and stir fry for a couple of minutes and add the herbs.  Place the carrot and onion and continue to stir fry for another 2-3 minutes. Pour in the chicken stock, tomato puree and the Worcestershire sauce; stirring after addition of each item. Pour in the red wine and let it sweat for about 5 minutes or until you reduce the sauce by half
4. To assemble: Place the filling into a casserole. Scoop the mash and even spread it over the filling. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the mash.
5. Bake the pie for 15-20 minutes or until the pie browned. Served hot.
   
   
   
   
   
   

   

   Hope you like the pie.. I know sunshine did :)

   
   

Macarons - A love hate relationship

Nutells Macarons

Macarons oh macarons... I have my fair share of the temperamental macarons... It is so complicated to make them. First you need to be exact in your measurements. Then you need to grind the almond meal and icing sugar to make them finer. After which you need to sieve them to prevent any lumps. Any big pieces are also not allowed: the macarons will look grainy... That is not all, when you fold the egg whites, you must fold till an exact consistency; too little folds and the batter will be too thick to work with, too many folds and the batter will be too watery and will spread too much giving a flat macaron shells.

My macaron journey started last year when I thought my baking skills was good enough to try something more complex and tested my baking skills to another level. Gosh. I think I exhausted like a few kg of almond meal and icing sugar, at least 100 eggs wasted. And the results: my confirmation that this macarons are really a pain in a ass that is as temperamental as a woman’s emotion.. Seriously, the number of times I succeeded can be counted using my fingers. But I made like 50+ times.. You could imagine how many times I failed badly.

Anyway, enough of me ranting. I must say the moment I succeeded a few times consequitively, it was when I felt such great achievement! I must warn you that there is no gain without pain... You need determination and patience when making macarons.. You really need to "sayang" these temperamental pastries. For this round, I made Red Velvet Macarons with Cream Cheese. For those who love red velvet cupcakes/cakes, you will love this recipe.


For the ingredients (for 30 macarons)

To make the macarons shells

• 120g almond meal
• 200g icing sugar
• 50g sugar (as fine as you can find)
• 100g egg whites
• Red food colouring paste

To make the cream cheese filling:

• 1 pkt Philadelphia cream cheese, room temperature
• 115g unsalted butter, room temperature
• 210g icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

For the macaron shells

The batter should spread after piping an inch.

1. Lay 3 baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside
2. Combine the icing sugar and the almond meal together and place the dry mixture into the food processor to grind the mixture finer. Use the pulse setting for a good minute of so. Shift the dry mixture and grind further for those that cannot be shifted. Set aside
3. Using the whisk attachment, at low speed, whisk the egg whites till foamy. Add in the granulated sugar. Start whisking at medium to medium high speed. When the egg whites are whisked till stiff peaks, add in the red food colouring. 
4. Fold in the dry mixture into the egg whites. Mix well and until the mixture becomes shiny and a magma consistency. 
5. With a piping bag and a 0.5inch piping tip, transfer the batter into the prepared piping tip. Pipe the batter onto the baking sheet an inch wide. Keep each macaron shell an inch apart. After piping, tap the baking sheet onto the table until the 'nipples' on the macaron shells disappear. You will see the batter spreading a bit. This is normal. Set aside the batter to dry for at least 30 minutes. Meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 150C.
6. Once the surface of the batter has dried up, place the batter into the oven and bake for 15-17min depending on size of the macaron shells.
7. Wait for the shells to cool slightly before removing them from the parchment paper.
8. Pair up the macaron shells according to their sizes.

For the filling:

1. In a mixing bowl, mixed the butter and cream cheese until pale and smooth, Add in the vanilla extract. Mix well
2. Slowly add in the icing sugar and mix till the correct consistency.
3. Bag the filling into a piping bag with a 0.5inch piping tip.

Finale:

1. Pipe in the filling into the macaron shells and sandwich it like a hamburger.
2. Place the macarons in an airtight container and refrigerate it for 24h before serving.

Mini hamburger  😍

Note:

1. You need to use a metal or glass bowl when whisking the egg whites and the bowl must be oil free. Any oil residue will compromise the whisking of the egg whites. That is why you cannot use plastic bowl as there is always a layer of oil residue no matter how u clean it.
2. Food colouring paste is preferred to liquid version as too much liquid can affect the outcome of the macaron shells. Also. Macarons do not really work well with light colouring. You need to use more colouring as the colour will become lighter after you bake.
3. To know whether you macaron shell batter is dry, using your finger and gently touch the side of the batter. A dry batter will not stick onto your finger. If the surface of the batter is not dried up sufficiently, the macaron shells will crack and be footless when baked.
4. Macarons taste best after 24h of making. This is supposedly coz the macaron shells will absorb the moisture from the filling and becomes soft inside while the exterior portion is still relatively hard.

Must have some photos of people eating the macarons.

花生鸡爪炖汤

Recently Drama Mama has been into cooking food for the family and I have made it a point to cook every Saturday... There will definitely be a soup cos I like soup a lot!!!!

Decided to share chicken feet with peanut soup (花生鸡爪炖汤) because I think it is the easiest to prepare among all the soup I made. No need to chop, de-seed, peel skin, etc etc.. In fact, all you need is to cut nails.. Sounds funny eh.. hahah

For the Ingredients: (Feed 6pax easily)

1. 1.5 Cup of Peanut
2. 15 Chicken Feet
3. 1 Big Bone
4. Dried Squid
5. A few Red Dates (红枣) & Honey Dates (蜜枣)
6. Salt & Pepper to taste

Directions 

• Soak the peanuts for at least an hour. 
• In a small pot of water, boil the big bone for a good 30-40min to remove the greyish stuff from the bone. If not, the soup will look dirty.
• Cut away the nails of the feet (You would not want to have something pricking you when you are drinking the soup)
• In a big pot, add in around 1.5l water, bring it to a boil. After that, add in the big bone and peanuts. Give it a boil for 25 minutes. 
• Add in the rest of the ingredients. Boil over high heat for 20 minutes. Then bring it down to a low heat for around 45 minutes or until the peanuts become soft. Add salt and pepper to taste. 

Hey feety feet... 

 Apparently this soup is super good for women... It contains high amount of collagen (Both the chicken feet and the big bone contain collagen). And we Chinese has a saying, where we need to nourish, we eat that part. Like if you need to strengthen your legs you eat animal legs. So I guess chicken leg soup is good for strengthening our legs. dunno how true that is though.

Nutritious bowl of Chicken Feet with peanut soup

Soups are easy to make... And good for the soup... I'm going to make more soup ;D

Rosemary Garlic Focaccia - Bread Bread Bread.. My never ending fascination with them

This is just the start of my addictions :)

Bread bread bread.. I have been so fascinated with them… you really get great satisfaction when your bread comes out fresh from the oven. Wells, at least I do… And the smell of the bread fresh from the oven is just so amazing. You would think your house has instantly turned into a bakery. Amazing amazing.. You might have seen my post on sandwich loaf bread. If not, go check it out. The next bread I went to try out is Focaccia. I am always clearing the focaccia in Italian restaurant. You have been to Italian restaurant like Modesto’s, you would have realise that they provide free flow of focaccia FOC!!! (Haha. I’m not that cheapo la.) You must dip your focaccia bread in balsamic vinaigrette. The taste is just fabulous. Carb overload!!!

My fave: Dipping Focaccia bread into Balsamic Vinaigrette

 Apparently focaccia and pizza crust share the same dough. The different with pizza and focaccia is that pizza has the topping covering majority the dough while the dough in focaccia is amply visible. Another major difference is the height of the dough. Focaccia is way thicker than pizza crust.

For this recipe, I made herb oil. Very simple to do.. You just need a few herbs of your choice (fresh or dry also can), garlic, salt and olive oil. Infused the garlic and the herb for a couple of hours and ta-da, your very own herb oil. Good to make focaccia and used it as a dip together with balsamic vinegar.

I made my recipe with fresh rosemary and whole garlic, but there is no stopping your creativity… You can put in caramelized onion, meat and cheese. Basically anything you like.  

For The Ingredients (Feed 8-10 pax)

For the Dough:

• 475g Bread Flour
• 11g Salt
• 4g Instant Yeast
• 275g Luke Warm Water
• 1 Tb Herb Oil

For the Topping:

• 2-3 Sprigs Rosemary (more if you prefer)
• 6 garlic cloves
• 2 Tb Herb Oil

Directions

1. Mixed the dry ingredients (#1-3) well in a large mixing bowl. Add in the lukewarm water into the dry ingredients. Knead gently (I used kitchen aid speed 2) until combine. Add in the herb oil and knead for another 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and not sticky
2. Spread some oil on a large mixing bowl. Form the dough into a ball and place the dough into the oiled bowl. Spread some oil on the dough to prevent drying of the dough. Cover the mixing bowl with towel or cling wrap for 45 minutes or until double.
3. Once doubled in size, pour the dough onto an oiled rectangular sheet pan and using your Spread the rosemary, washed garlic (w/ skin) and herb oil. Use your fingers to dimple the toppings into the dough.
4. Let the dough rest and rise for around 30-40 minutes or until double in size. Preheat the oven to 260^oC (or max temp) during this time.
5. Once the dough is ready to be baked, sprinkle more herb oil on the top of the dough. Baked for 12-14 minutes or until golden brown in colour. 

Yum Yum.. This bread can easily feed 8 pax for starters

Look at the bread.. Don't you just want to bite into the piece.. 

Life is about enjoying good food.. We shall diet tomorrow.. :D

xoxo
Drama Mama

Wholemeal Sandwich Loaf (汤种 mehod)

It has been so long since I blogged. Too many changes in Drama Mama's life. First I changed job.. Then went to a new company where the laptop is so bulky. Drama Mama is so used to carrying x-series think pad that when she had to carry a T series it is like  boulder to bring home. As such, with no laptop at home, I was not able to blog like I used to.. I no personal laptop.. Multi-functional ma - this is what I call work-life integration.. Anyway, long story cut short, no laptop at home means cannot update my blog... Aiya.. Finally got a laptop now.. :) Can start updating my blog... Wah.. Suddenly I got so many recipe to share with you guys.. Many a times, I happily ate without taking photo.. So smart of me hor..

But nonetheless, I still manage to capture some photos that I can share with all of you :) Let me start with something that I have been trying for many many months ~ plain-o-bread!

Don't know what strike me one day but I decided to make bread. I tried some recipe from allrecipes.com and the bread turned out to be stone! Rock hard stone! It was horrendous.

Can you believe it. I made 2 loaves of hard rock. It did not rise as expected.  OMG!!

Look how short the bread is. 

After that bad experience, I went to search for a method to bake soft bread - those that you can get from Gardenia.. Finally I found this method called Tangzhong (汤种). Basically it is to add in a sponge like starter to your dough. This supposedly made the bread soft and fluffy. Tangzhong is made from cooking 1 part flour with 5 parts water/milk/both till it becomes thick and starchy. I quite like the results, but because I am new with bread making, I am still experimenting with what they call the baker's percentage (wells, that is for another blog altogether on what is baker's percentage.. haha keep you all in suspense.)

Wells here goes the recipe:

For the Tangzhong:

Ingredients (Enough for 1 loaf of bread):

• 25g of Bread Flour 
• 125ml of water / water-milk mixture / milk

Directions:

1. Mix the bread flour into the liquid. Stir till there is no clumps
2. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and cook under medium heat. Stir constantly from preventing the mixture from being burnt. 
3. The tangzhong is ready when you see the mixture thicken and you can draw circles and the circles stay on the saucepan. (i.e. the mixture is not fluid enough to flow back) 
4. Scoop the tangzhong and let it cool till room temperature before you can use to make your bread.

For the Sandwich Loaf: (Adapted from Christine's Whole meal Bread)

(Makes 1 loaf)

Ingredients:

• 180g Bread flour
• 170g Wholemeal flour
• 6g instant yeast 
• 5g salt
• 40g sugar
• 110g milk
• 100g tangzhong (1 serving of the tangzhong made earlier)
• 1 large egg
• 40g butter, at room temperature

Directions:

1. Mix the first 5 ingredients together. Whisk the dry ingredients evenly. Set aside
2. In another mixing bowl, whisk the milk, tangzhong & egg till combine. 
3. In your stand mixer with dough attachment, combine the dry and wet ingredients together and slowly mix it. (I kept my at level 1-2)
4. When all the mixture have combine to form a sticky dough, add in the butter and increase the speed of the mixer a level. Let it mixed for about 10 min until the dough is smooth and not sticky. Slightly oil a mixing bowl. Form the dough into a ball shape and place it on the oiled mixing bowl. Add some oil to the surface of your dough to prevent it from drying. Loosely wrap the bowl with cling wrap / wet towel and place it in somewhere warm and draft free. Let the dough proof for 40min or until double it size. 
5. Once the dough has double in size, punch the dough a few times to get rid of excess carbon dioxide trap in the dough. Cut the dough into 3 equal size and roll them into small balls. Let the dough 'rests' for 15min.
6. Roll each of the balls into rectangular shape, at the shorter side, roll up the dough (like kitchen roll) and place it into the loaf pan. Continue for the other 2 balls. Let it proof for another 35min or until 90% filled on the loaf pan. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 170C.
7. Bake the dough for 30-35min or until the bottom sounds hollow. You can add melted butter on the baked bread straight out from the oven for a softer crust. 

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MANY ROUNDS OF BAKING THIS BREAD BEFORE I DARE TO SHOW YOU GUYS!!! I keep making and forcing my family and friends to eat them.. Did not want to waste them, but in the end I still had to throw like a couple batches cos they are just inedible. hahaha..

Finally something decent to show you guys

The bread is so soft, just that it did not rise as much as I would hope it would. 

Look how soft and fluffy the bread is :)

I think I am liking the process of bread making. Most likely this will be the first of many posts on bread ;) hahah..