Baked Mooncakes 2012

For myself, I always prefer baked mooncakes, compared to snowskin ones. I always find the snowskin too sweet for my liking. The lotus paste itself is already pretty sweet, snowskin, well, has high sugar content too.

These are the baked mooncakes I did. I also made some piglets. The mooncakes are single yolk ones, as I am not a yolk fan and it's high in calories and cholesterol. As for the piglets, they are only 35gms each and contain no filling.

Well, for the coming weekends, I SHOULD be making some agar agar mooncakes.... if i really made them, I'll definitely be posting the pics. :P

stacking them up, like in an angry bird game

The back view is so cute. lol

Lou Por Paeng (winter melon puffs)

I love eating lou por paeng, esp those from HK. While it had crossed my mind to try making some myself, I've not come across a recipe that was tried and tested and GOOD. so imagine my happiness when i saw SD posted a recipe in his blog! I gathered my confidence and that little experience in handling chinese pastries and went ahead to make these.

The results were really good, esp when it was piping hot out from the oven. I couldn't resist and took a bite.. and then the kids also tried and love it... and most surprisingly, DH also gave it the thumbs up! He never liked lou por paeng for some unfathomable reasons. LOL.

Thanks SD for the recipe.... only regret is that we dun have lard to make the dough with, or else it'll be perfect!

I only made one change in the recipe, that is, i used ground black sesame instead of the normal ones... for a simple reason that I have a pack of ground black sesame in the fridge!

The recipe can be found here.

Char Siew Baos ... again...

The CS Bao fan in me just had to have some! LOL...

Decided to try a simple recipe this time as I only had today to get the baos out.

Verdict?... The freshly steamed baos were good... when cold, it did not turn too hard and had a slightly chewy texture. The baos have a slight yellowish tinge but overall it was ok. A good recipe when u're tight for time.

Char Siew Baos

CS baos of all shapes and sizes.... LOL

I'm a lover of char siew baos.... of course given the chance, I'll love to try making some myself. However, somehow or rather, the to-do list kept getting longer and char siew baos were pushed right to the bottom. It doesn't help that baos are readily available, esp at my fav stalls! I remembered picking up a pack of Hong Kong flour on impulse (no surprise here) and it's been kept in the pantry for the longest time. While clearing my pantry that day, I came across the pack of flour and decided I've had enuf of procrastinating.... as I did not have any char siew on hand, I decided to try making mantous instead. It turned out a disaster! ( so folks, no pics of the failed mantous here)

With my confidence taken a beating on the failed attempt of mantous, I had to do more research abt making char siew baos. I bought a strip of char siew from a stall that sells roast duck 2 days ago. (i know very well that if i intend to make my own char siew, the baos will definately not see daylight at all! LOL). Then I looked thru some forums and online for recipes. Finally settled on a recipe that required alot of patience! It involved a dough starter and all the work for the dough alone will take 3 days. I decided on this recipe 'coz of the good reviews and also I was thinking, the resulting baos shd be really good if the dough needed 3 days of poofing! Furthermore, the 1st 2 days of the dough preparation involved very little work. I could do it at nite b4 I hit the bed, which suited me perfectly fine!

However, I realised that my char siew filling was not sufficient for the amt of dough I made. So I bought some more char siew at the wet market for more filling for the remaining dough.

So here I present my char siew baos... of all shapes and sizes! LOL.....

I'm rewarded with decent enuf baos, nice texture but my shaping skills are lousy and the baos were rather hard after left to cool off completely. hm.... I guess I've to move on to another recipe for my next try or simply buy them off the shelves next time a craving hits!One of the more nicely shaped baos...

The interior of the bao... I love the sauce tho', albeit abit salty.

Life of elegance?

My 1st taste of osmanthus was many years ago when i dined at a chinese restuarant serving "zha-jiang mian". on the menu, there's a dessert which is tang-yuen (glutinuous balls with different fillings) cooked with a sweet syrup infused with osmanthus. I was really capivated then, the very elegant and refined fragrance of osmanthus..... but then, being the young and impressionable me at that time, all i did was become a regular customer of that joint, to enjoy the dessert. I never occured to me to replicate this dessert at home, maybe 'coz i wasn't that much into cooking then.

Many years later, I chanced upon this recipe of osmanthus cake shared generously by Jo, of Imperial Kitchen forum. I heard that osmanthus cake is a favourite of a particular dowager in the ancient times. I know for sure that i'll give this cake a try! However, seems to me that osmanthus is not easily found locally, until one goes "searching" for it at medical halls or places that sells china foodstuff.

I finally made some y'day, having found the exclusive osmanthus at a c'town shop.... the family dun seemed to appreciate the taste of osmanthus.... hm.... maybe their tastebuds is not as refined as the dowager, or mine! LOL..... anyway, i really love the cake... and i find that maybe the taste of the osmanthus is not strong enuf. would love to get my hands on the dried flowers, to enhance the taste even more!

I love the shape of this mold....

'Cuze me while I brew myself a nice pot of tea and enjoy my life of elegance!See the osmanthus flowers in the cake? so pretty.....