Green Tea with Azuki Beans Chiffon Cake (cooked dough method)

As mentioned, I did some experimentation with the cooked-dough method for chiffon cake. This time, using green tea with azuki beans.

The cake turned out denser and not as fluffy. After adding the flour, the batter turned very dry, kinda like the orange chiffon attempt I tried before. But did it turn out better than the orange chiffon. Not as good as the pandan one, but still soft and nice. Maybe more liquid is needed for Green Tea... will try this again when I have the time. :) Here's the recipe for anyone who wants to give it a go.

What you need

• 5 nos. Egg Yolk
• 110gm milk
• 50gm corn oil 
• 90gm Cake flour
• 1 and 1/2 tbsp green tea powder
• 100gm cooked azuki beans
• 5 nos. Egg white
• 80gm Castor Sugar  

What to do

• Preheat oven at 170 deg C
• Cook milk and oil together till you see some bubbles at the side of the pot, while is warmed add in sifted flour and green tea powder and mix well using a whisk.
• Whisk in egg yolks one by one and set aside.
• Whisk egg whites till foamy and add in sugar whisk till stiff.
• Add in 1/3 meringue into the cooked dough and fold well.
• Pour this mixture back to the balance meringue and fold well until well-combined.
• Fold in the azuki beans.
• Pour into a 20cm chiffon mould, bake at 150 deg C bake for 40 mins.
• Invert the cake to cool, unmould when completely cooled.

(Tip: Fold in whipped egg whites when the dough is still warm.)

Travel to Bangkok... Sights and Scenes in Chinatown

Sharing with you more pics I took during my visit to Bangkok Chinatown.

Along the streets... vendors peddling their stuff.

This is a coffin shop! Most are still going for burial after death, as you can see from the coffins they sell here. Who's that man in the middle of the pic? Frankly I did not even notice him staring at me! I was so focused on getting a shot of the coffin shop! LOL.



And this shop sells stuff that Chinese would need for weddings... and the surprise was that it's directly opposite the coffin shop! You can see that the Chinese there are still very traditional. They still buy these Chinese embroidery pillow cases.

As we wandered into one of the many lanes within Chinatown. Shops packed with people jostling for their buys.

On the right side of this image, those are preserved radish. They are the sweet type, which is really delicious. These are not available in Singapore, so it's another must-buy on trips to Bangkok. If you notice, there is a yellow flag in the middle of the image. It was the 1st day of a Chinese lunar month when we visited. Most of the shops sported these flags, as it's a day where most Chinese would go vegetarian. In fact, if you look carefully here, the items in this pic are all vegetarian food.

Pandan Chiffon Cake (cooked dough method)

I saw this cooked-dough method in one taiwanese blog a few months back. The blogger baked an orange chiffon using this method and I decided to give it a try. However, the cake did not turn out well. I had problems when I added flour to the batter. It was really dry and lumpy. Needless to say, the cake did not rise high and when baked it was more like a dense sponge cake. So I made rum balls with that. :P I had in mind to try it again soon. I was blog-hopping and came across Wen's post about her pandan cake using the same method. I knew it's time to give it another try.

I made slight modification to her recipe as I did not have pandan juice on hand. Here's what I did:

What you need

• 5 nos. Egg Yolk
• 110gm Coconut milk
• 50gm Butter
• 90gm Cake flour
• 1/2 tsp pandan paste
• 5 nos. Egg white
• 80gm Castor Sugar

What to do

• Preheat oven at 170 deg C
• Cook coconut milk, butter and pandan paste together till butter melted, while is warmed add in sifted flour and mix well using a whisk.
• Whisk in egg yolks one by one and set aside.
• Whisk egg whites till foamy and add in sugar whisk till stiff.
• Add in 1/3 meringue into the cooked dough and fold well.
• Pour this mixture back to the balance meringue and fold well until well-combined.
• Pour into a 20cm chiffon mould, bake at 150 deg C bake for 40 mins.
• Invert the cake to cool, unmould when completely cooled.

(Tip: Fold in whipped egg whites when the dough is still warm.)

The baked chiffon tasted very different from the ones made using the conventional method. This cake has a finer structure and it's really soft and fluffy. The family gave it the thumbs-up. I'll be using this method to try out different flavours. Stay tuned!

Travel to Bangkok... Traditional chinese sausages

It was my 11th wedding anniversary 2 weeks back and I made a trip to Bangkok (BKK) with my DH. It was a good trip, tho' the weather was similar to Sg, meaning, walking a few steps would result in alot of perspiration! I came back with a 30kg excess luggage, which I had to pay SGD15 for, as we took the budget airlines. Lotsa food stuff and tibits for the family! 

Since a long long time ago (I really cannot remember when)... when my parents visited Bangkok, they would always stop by a chinese sausage shop at the C'town area to pick up a kilo or 2 of chinese sausages. These sausages were all freshly and manually made. We love the taste of these sausages, especially when pan-fried to get a little crisp on both sides. It's not as oily as most sausages available in Singapore and it has a smokey taste to it too. At times it even felt like eating bak-kwah (BBQ pork slices often devoured during cny)!  Whenever we have family, friends or relatives going to BKK, my mom will always "tumpang" the person to go get some for us! LOL....

So without fail, I was tasked to bring home some chinese sausages during this trip too. I had not visited BKK for more than 10 years... when my mom passed me an old and tattered namecard and pointed to me the name of the shop, with the address on it, I was really sceptical. I was wondering if this shop still existed! I tried checking googlemap with the road name and nothing came out.

Little did I know, things had not changed much in the past 10 years in BKK, especially at C'town! The whole place was bustling with people and noise when I stepped out of the taxi we took. The driver did not bring us right to the shop, instead, he dropped us at a prominent landmark (White Orchid Hotel) at C'town. Once I stepped out of the taxi, I knew the shop would still be there... somewhere. I showed the namecard to the driver again, hoping that he would be able to point us to the correct direction... but I know that he, being a thai and non-chinese, I would be expecting a little too much. Well, he told us to walk toward our left and then turn into a lane from there... and there we went....

We turned into the lane and what greeted us was 2 rows of shop houses. The shops were small and most of them were not opened for business yet, as we went there pretty early. So DH and I decided to wander around and take our time figuring which was the correct shop. We walked up and down the entire lane twice before we finally found the shop! It was a really small quaint old shop tucked at one corner. I was so glad that the search was over! Apparently we had missed the shop when we walked past the 1st time coz it was not opened for business yet.

There was a middle-age man sitting at a recliner, watching tv when we stood at the shopfront. He finally noticed us and came forward. I remembered that most Chinese at C'town BKK spoke teochew, so I asked DH (a teochew) to ask him abt the prices of the sausage. The shop owner was surprised to hear us speaking in teochew with him and he got really friendly! So I asked if I could take some pictures of his shop and he glady agreed. He even directed us to the back of his shop and showed us where they processed the sausages. There was a huge cooking room, where piles of charcoal are laid on the floor and the strings of sausages hanging on the rods. He went thru the process of making those sausages with us. We got to know that he had inherited the shop from his father, and he's currently 58yo (and definitely don't look like it! I'll kill to get that nice complexion he has!)

We ended up buying 2 kgs of sausages from him. Apparently, he has 3 variety of sausages for sale, lean meat, mixed of lean and fatty meat, and the fatty meat type. I pointed out that the ones hanging out at the smoke room were longer and different from those he had on sale now... he said those are considered the poorer quality ones, which the locals like to buy. I don't know how true it is, but I'm happy with my purchase! Mission accomplished!

Here's sharing some pics I took of the shop.

Bunches of sausages for sale!

The shop owner (he doesn't look 58 rite?) showing us the "smoke" room... notice the piles of charcoal on the floor? It was really smoking hot (pun intended :P) even from where I stood when I took the pic. Tried taking a few step inwards and changed my mind!

The shopfront. The red signage is where the prices of the different varieties are listed.

This shop is located at 26 Plangnum Road, Samphantawong, Bangkok 10100.

Directions : From white Orchid Hotel, walk towards your left, the 1st lane you come to, there's a road signage that says "Samphtantawong". Turn into the lane, cross over to the opposite row of shop houses, and walk about 500m.

Chocolate chips cookies, for the craving.

I had a craving for chocolate chips cookies, so I baked some. :)

Lazy bread - focaccia

Was lazing ard on Sunday afternoon and then realised that I had to prepare dinner. :P

Decided to go easy and peeped into my freezer for any emergency supplies that I could use. Took out the pre-cooked and frozen Hungarian Goulash Soup and then baked focaccia to go with it. My last attempt with focaccia was sometime back, which means it's high-time to make them again!

Sharing with you the recipe here:

What you need

• 2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
• 1 tbsp mixed herbs
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 cup water (add 1 tbsp water if the dough feels dry)

For topping

• Olive oil
• More mixed herbs

What to do

• Add yeast into the cup of water and set aside.
• In a mixing bowl with the hook, stir together the flour, salt, sugar and mixed herbs. Mix in the vegetable oil and water (with yeast).
• Using the mixer, let it run till the dough is smooth (about 5mins).
• Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth, and let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 230 degrees C. Punch dough down; place on greased baking sheet. Pat into a 1/2 inch thick rectangle. make little indents with your fingertips and drizzle top with olive oil.
• Sprinkle with more mixed herbs and cheese as topping. Leave aside to proof another 10mins.
• Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Serve warm.

The brown bits were cheese. That's what you will get for forgetting abt the bake in the oven and busy FB-ing! LOL