Rose Mantou

Rose Cake

I wanted to make wife cake but I couldn't find any dry melons in store at this time of the year as they only sell them during chinese new year so I thought what can I use instead...........? Then it came to me hmmmm I like turkish delight so why not rosewater?!

glutinous filling - few drops of rosewater, desiccated coconut  and almond flakes both finely chopped.

This actually turned out better then i expected but it can do with more coconut flavour.

Books

I've been searching for bilingual (Chinese/English) baking books online for a very long time, as most site was in Chinese it was very hard to find.  

Until one day I came across this website  廣達網店, there wasn't a huge variety of baking books but just enough.  You can pay by pay pal and the service was great I received my books within 5 days of confirmation.

These were the books I ordered......... and may I mention I was not disappointed at all! 

冰皮月餅 - Snowskin Mooncake

I love traditional mooncake I came across this lovely colourfully container - Ice Moon cake.  I was fascinated by its colourful packaging/design, I was more intrigued when i read Ice Moon Cake in 4 different flavour. 

Flavours -

2 x Black Sesame Seeds

2 x Green Tea & Jasmin

2 x Taro

2 x Seaweed & Green Beans

I just couldn't resist, I just had to try one!  Very Naughty of me. lol. but the Moon Festival is about a month away! I can't wait that long!

Look how beautiful it is! - Black Sesame Seeds.  

It tasted good........................ too! 

Can't wait to try the others.

Mooncake - 中秋節 2011

Mid Autumn Festival is approaching very soon!  I previously attempted baking moon cake twice and failed twice, this time i found a fantastic recipe book rather then online blogs.  

Title 'Hong Kong Memorable Bakery'.

It not perfect......... practice makes perfect!  I used red bean paste instead of lotus seeds as this was a trial run I didn't want to spend too much on ingredients. 

My aunt gave me a wooden mini mooncake mould, its great!  The only tip I would give on using wooden mould is to flour the inside before placing the dough, otherwise you would have difficulties getting it removing the dough.

Finally the RESULT...............!

Balloon Festival

I took my little girl to our first balloon festival yesterday. The weather was nice and sunny, the wind did picked up nearer to the time when the show was suppose to start, it got delayed by an hour.  

There were suppose to have around 25 balloon to fly, after the fifth balloon took off the wind picked up and started to rain. At least we got to see some took off which was a brilliant experience for me.  

I will definitely return next year but next time we will be camping on the site as the balloons only fly 6am in the morning and 6pm in the evening this is due to do with the weather or something along that line. lol.

we were going to return today to see more balloons and the night glow, unfortunately my daughter wasn't feeling very well.  O well, there's always next year!  

Sweet Potato Pancake

My aunt makes the best sweet potato pancake, so i decided to have a go at it myself.  She mainly makes this on special festivies occasion.


I had a go at it today, almost perfect, it was a little soft it needed more gluteniouse rice flour other then that it tasted great.

光酥餅

I tried to buy 光酥餅 from china town for a while, no one actually sell this anymore i guess it isn't that popular.   

My Grandma loved 光酥餅 she use to buy this every time we made a trip to china town. I love the taste of this cake/bun, it hasn't got a strong flavour to it, it is just plain but i love it.  

It took me a very long time to find this recipe eventually i came across lily's wai sek blog http://lilyng2000.blogspot.com/2010/02/kong-so-paeng.html. 

I finally had a chance to attempt to make it, it turned out great but i did tweak it a little and it still tasted great.  

Chicken Claypot

I finally had a chance to sit down in peace to upload and edit my photos.  I cooked traditional Chinese chicken with rice in my favourite clay pot for 25 minutes then let it set for 5 to 10 minutes.

This is the out come of it!  It smelt and tasted so great, just like the way grandma use to make it.

INGREDIENTS

  I used the following ingredient to make my Chinese chicken cooked in my favourite clay pot.

Clay Pot

I brought this clay pot beginning of the year from an Chinese supermarket, it is great i use this quite often and not burnt it once.

I love cooking with clay pot it gives this lovely fragrance taste and smell. A bit of advice if anyone using clay pot to cook is to keep an eye on the fire otherwise you will burn your food and ruin your pot.

I will be posting my chicken pot rice soon.

Week off work.

I had a go baking opera cake last week, it turned out ok it tasted great but didn't look too good it could do with staying the fridge a bit longer.  on the same day I made semi dark chocolate truffle it didn't turn out great I think I added too much rum lol. I had some white chocolate so i thought i have a go making white truffle which a lot of people say white chocolate is very hard to work with but I found it is much easier to work with then dark chocolate0 I guess I had some good tips from great chef I worked with.

I've decided to learn to ride a bike. The last time I ridden one was when i was 6yrs so i will need protections and lots of plaster just in case but first thing first i will need to buy one so I went bike shopping today and found this lovely girlie pink bike but then I thought it will stand out too much and then saw this lovely lilac one which looks perfect.

I also wanted to do some baking, what shall i bake?  I just cant decide from cake or bun!

I shall be posting more post very soon.

My day

I am currently training for a 4km run for Macmillan charity in mid June.  so far I manage 2km jog yesterday, I just need to manage 4km very soon as I haven't got much time left to train.  


I decided to workout at the gym after work today.  I only manage 1.5km today my legs were giving up on me so I've decided to give tomorrow a miss and train again on Thursday.  I attended body conditional class, the last lesson was great using weight bars but this time it was skipping rope, the last time i skip was 15 years ago, it didn't go very well, it was hard work i'm hoping its going to paid off with all this training.


Any way enough of me going on about my day, I'm hoping to make 'Kong So Paeng' which my grandmother use to buy in China Town bakery but they don't sell them anymore.  the last time I had Kong So Paeng was in Hong Kong 2002.  They only sell them beginning of the year for Chinese new year, the last time I was in Hong Kong in 2011 which was last year they didn't have them anywhere, I was devastated!  Some people say this doesn't have much taste to it but i think it has some sort of plain flavour to it which I love. 

First post

This is my first post for my blog.  I will be posting my baking experiment in future so watch out for new pictures.  


I will be posting mainly Chinese baking such as light sponge cake, birthday cakes, wife cake, red bean cake etc... and experimenting with ingredients such as tofu.