Orange Butter Cake

 

Last CNY our relative made us a very nice orange cake. After tasted such good orange cake, I just want to bake one myself. She told me she took recipe from Google. So I did the same and after much searching I found this recipe from eatapieceofcake. The cake posted in the blog looks like the one my relative made. I mean the colour and texture. Therefore, I baked it! To my surprise, the result was very good and family loved it so much that we finished within few minutes.
Visit also my facebook page Catherine's Cooking Journal

Ingredients:
227gram/2 sticks butter – room temperature( I used 250g)
200 gram sugar (I used 170g)
220 gram flour
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
4 large eggs
Zest of an orange (I used the zest of 2 oranges)
5 tbsp orange juice (freshly squeezed)

Method
Grease and line an 8” round baking pan. Preheat oven to 350 degree F (175 degree C).
Sieve flour, baking powder and salt and set it aside.
Cream butter and sugar until light and creamy.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition until mixture is light and fluffy.
Add in the orange zest.Slow down the mixer and slowly add in the flour. Finally stir in orange juice. Mix until well combined.
Turn out mixture into prepared tin. Level out mixture at the sides but allow a shallow well in the centre. This is to enable the cake to level up evenly during baking.
Bake for 50-55 minutes or until cooked through when tested with a skewer.Ingredients:

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Orange Muffins

Butternut Pizza Crust

Today my princess and I were like "Master Chef" playing in the kitchen. ..We wanted to have a healthier choice of lunch.. Searching through Google and reading up others blogs. With the butternut pumpkin that I bought yesterday. We decided to make butternut crust pizza. There are some recipes which uses butternut and ground almond, that is totally gluten free pizza. However, we do not have ground almond at home, so we chosen the recipes with wheat flour.

First attempt using butternut for pizza crust. Surprisingly, it taste very good, especially the crust. We loved it! The crust turned out very beautiful - golden brown. The aroma is fantastic. Yes! we love it. We are going to do this more often.

After reading through few recipes, this is our ways of doing. I usually do not follow through the recipes. Only see how others do it and then I will do it my way. haha!!!

In case some do not know how butternut looks like, this is the picture

Ingredients

2¼ tsp Instant Yeast
½ Tbsp sugar
1 cup warm water
3½ - 4 cups bread flour ( I replaced with 1 cup wholemeal flour and 1 cup fine corn polent)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1½ tsp salt
1 cup butternut squash, cooked, and mashed

Method
Pour all the above ingredients into a big bowl to form dough. Usually 3 to 3.5 cups of flour in total is sufficient. The exact amount will vary with the water content in the butternut. Add flour slowly until a moist but not sticky dough forms. Cover the bowl with cling wrap and place in a warm location. The dough will rise to double the initial volume.
Turn the dough out on a floured surface and knead the dough and roll out on a lightly greased pizza pan.
Spread your favorite toppings on the pizza. Bake at 200 degree C for 15-18 minutes. Thicken crusts may require you to turn the oven down after baking 12minutes to 180 degrees C to complete the baking without burning the crust.

Topping:
Top with pizza sauce, cheese, minced beef, tomatoes, sliced mushrooms and olives.

or any of your choice of toppings. This is what we did.

My princess help to spread the pizza sauce , follow by cheese, minced beef, cut cherry tomatoes, sliced swiss brown and black olives.

Enjoy! God bless.

Orange Muffins

The very first time that I tried baking orange muffin was early this year.  In every Chinese New Year we bought lots of mandarin oranges. This is year we bought extra and we were having problem consuming them. So, to consume them, I tried to make mandarin oranges jam and also blending it to drink and also blending it to bake muffin. This is one of the muffin that turn out very moist and soft and nice and very fragrance. It was a "try and error", however, it turned out good! I went into several blogs and read up their posts. I am glad that I tried and I must said it is worth the time baking it. My daughter loves it so much because of the orange aroma.  Personally, I love it too. Since then, I have been baking orange muffins. My family have broke the record! We used to like only chocolate muffin which  you can also find my post on  double-chocolate-chips-muffins .But now we also like orange muffin. After CNY, I am using Sunkist oranges instead of mandarin orange to bake my muffins. I bought those 3 for $3.45 from Fairprice , big and juicy. As we are going to use the skin of the orange, so I will rub the orange skin with salt to remove the pesticides on the surface as much as I could and then rinse it with water. Using a grater to grate the outer orange skin of the entire of orange. After that  blend the whole orange with skin removed.  This is what I do, let get started!

Ingredients
2 1/2 cup self-raising flour
1/2 cup caster sugar(*see note)
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs lightly beaten
125g melted butter
1/3 cup milk
1 cup fresh orange blend
Zest of an orange

*Note : My family prefer things that are less sweet. So this is a less sugar recipe. If you refer sweet and very sweet, you may want to increase sugar to 3/4cup or 1cup.

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 190°C. Place 12 paper cups in a muffin tray.

2. To get the zest of an orange. Wash the skin of the orange clean by gently rub the skin of orange with salt and then rinse.
With a grater, maintain enough pressure to remove the top layer of the rind. Take off only the rind of the orange's skin, and not the white pith, which tastes bitter. Set it aside.

3. Remove orange skin and seed. Put whole orange into blender or food proccessor and blend it into orange puree and set aside. (Orange puree is juice with the fibre.)

4. Place butter in a small pot  over low fire and melt it. Be careful not to burn it.

5. Place flour in a large  bowl.

6. Place lightly beaten egg, melted butter, milk, orange puree, orange zest, sugar and  salt into a separate bowl and mix.

7. Then pour the wet ingredients into the flour. Quickly combine the mixture. Do not over mixed.

8.. Spoon the mixture into paper cups to 3/4 full. Then place into the preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the muffin turn golden brown or when skewer tested.

You may like to try these other muffins recipe
1. Blueberry Yoghurt Muffins
2. Blueberry and Bananas Muffins
3. Orange Butter Cake

Homemade Meat Ball

This is  a dish that  no matter how much I have prepared, it is always not enough. My family love it.  Once, my neighbour's kids came over when I was cooking this. They ate some. After eating, they went home and requested their grandma to make this fried meat balls.  So my neighbour grandma came to me to understand what did I cooked for their grandchildren that they found it so delicious and request for it.

This is a very simple dish. Easy to make. You can always prepare ahead of time. That is , prepare in the morning. Season it then chill it. Take it out from fridge only when you are ready to deep fry.

To prepare this dish, you need a very sharp knife for slicing the meat. One way to cut the meat very thin slices is by freezing the meat for a few hours until it is a little frozen/hard but still able to cut.
The thinner the meat is, the better the result will be and of course taste nicer when meat is thinly sliced.

Ingredients:
800g Fresh Shoulder Meat 五花肉
1 egg
1/2 tsp pepper
3 tbsp light sauce
1/2 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
4 tbsp potatoes flour/cornflour

oil for deep frying

Method:
1. Slice shoulder meat into thin slices  like shabu shabu and put them into a big bowl.
2. Add all the rest of ingredients and mix it well. Cling wrap and set it a side in the fridge for about minimum 30min. Let the meat be seasoned.This can be prepared earlier in the morning too.
3. Heat up a wok. Pour in oil enough for deep frying. With 2 spoons or gloved hand shape the meat into 2cm balls. When the oil is hot enough, put in the meat balls by batch to deep fry until golden brown. Remove from wok and place them into a plate lay with kitchen paper to absorb excess oil. Continue to deep fry the rest of the meat balls until all completed. 
4. Transfer into another place, serve.

Note1 : to achieve thin sliced meat, freeze the fresh meat for about 2hours or until it is a little hard then slice it with a very sharp knife. Make sure knife is sharpened.

Note2 : you may also use those frozen  shabu shabu shoulder meat to replace this cutting process.

You may also be interested in my All Times Favorites Deep Fried Meat Balls

Pineapple Tarts (enclosed version)

Chinese New Year is around the corner...and everywhere in the supermarkets or bakery we are seeing cookies. I have a packet of cake flour, why not? Why not making some pineapple tarts. I usually use plain flour but this round thought trying cake flour and find out the result since this cake flour is sitting in my kitchen for a while. To my surprise the pastry was nice and soft and most important melt in the mouth. Isn't this what everyone is looking for - melt in mouth?   By the way, this is a trial and error session and amazingly the result was good! In the past years, I have been baking opened version using plain flour, that is, the one look like flower. I am happy with the result.


This is my melt in mouth enclosed pineapple :


Ingredients for pastry :
360g cake flour
50g milk powder
2 tbsp. corn flour
1/4 tsp sea salt (or any salt)
3 tbsp icing sugar (can increase to more ..that is to your desire)
2 tsp custard powder ( I add for the color purpose)
250g cold soft butter (I used salted)
4 egg yolks (I will reduce 1 eggyolk the next round)
1 tsp vanilla extract


1 eggyolk for eggwash


Pineapple Jam  :
4 pineapples ( I used Malaysia Honey pineapple - weigh about 750g/pc after skinned. total weight is 3000g pineapples)
3 cloves ( can add more if you like say to 6)
1 cinnamon stick
550g sugar


Making of Jam:
Grate the pineapple. I grate the pineapple by hand.  Put the grated pineapple including the juice(do not drain the juice), cloves and cinnamon stick into a wok and cook until it is almost dry. Stir frequently as you cook to prevent burn at the bottom. When it is almost dry, add sugar. Continue to cook and don't forget to keep stiring because at this stage the jam can be easily burnt because of sugar. Cook until the pineapple is completely dry. Off the fire. When it is cool, roll them into small balls. It is about 1/2 teaspoon per ball. Put the jam balls into a container and keep in fridge for future use. Mission Done.


P.S. : If you like your pineapple jam to be darker gold, then, add sugar earlier. But I prefer the normal golden color so I add sugar only when pineapple is almost dry.


Making of Pineapple tarts :
Put all the ingredients ( except eggyolk and vanilla extract ) into a big bowl. Rub the dry ingredients with butter using your fingertips till it resemble breadcrumb. Add eggyolk and vanilla extract. Continue to work into a soft dough.  Set a side for use.  You may keep in fridge if you are not using it immediately. You can keep up to 4 or 5 days. But I prefer to use it immediately to keep fresh.


Scoop 1 tsp of the pastry and wrap with the jam ball. Roll into a ball and place into small cupcake cup and place into a baking tray.


Eggwash the tarts with eggyolk (1 eggyolk plus 1 tbsp water)
Bake the  tarts in a pre-heat 180 degree celius oven for 15mins. After 15 min, bring out the tray of tarts and apply 2nd eggwash and continue to bake for another 5min.  Total baking time is 20min.

Hope you will find this recipe useful to you. Happy baking. :)

You may also like to view my other post:
1.pineapple-tarts (opened)

Buns for Breakfast

Few months ago, I bought a new mixer MUM48CR1. Yesterday I decided to use it for my bread kneading. In the past I have been kneading bread dough with my hands. It is really tiring. With this mixer , it save up my time and strength kneading the dough by hands. Making bread become so much easier. I like this mixer. It is really good. The results of the bread is very good. Bread is fluffy and light Whereas hand kneaded bread is heavier but it is still nice. :)

Basic recipe of ingredients adapted from everybodyeatswell

Ingredients for Tangzhong
50g bread flour (1/3 cup)
250ml water (1 cup)

Method for Tang Zhong :

Mix the bread flour and water. Boil it over medium low fire and keep stiring until you see the texture as above picture where the mixture become a little translucent. It is supposed to be boil up to 65 deg C. I do not own a thermometer so I use my own estimation. Transfer TZ into a bowl immediately, cling wrap and leave it to cool down. You can make this one day ahead. And keep in fridge. But once the TZ turn brown/dark you will have to discard.

Ingredients :(about 1080g in total)
540g bread flour
86g caster sugar
8g salt or 1.5 tsp (1 tsp is about 5.5g)
9g milk powder or 1 tbsp (1 tbsp is about 10g)
11g instant yeast or 3.75 tsp (1 tsp is about 3 g)
86g whisked egg or 1.5 egg (1 average egg is about 60g)
59g whipping cream
54g milk
184g tangzhong dough
49g unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven 180°C.

Method for Bread:

1. Put all the ingredients into the mixer with the dough hook and set it on to level 1 (low speed). Initially it will look like breadcrumbs, after a while, it will combine together. Let it continue to knead until you see a soft smooth dough. Cut a small piece of dough and do a windowpane test. Hold the dough between your thumbs and fingers and gentle spread your fingers and thumbs apart, stretching the dough into a thin translucent membrance. If you can spread the dough without breaking , that mean the gluten is well developed and the kneading is sufficient. And you can put it to rise/proof.

2. Remove dough from the mixer and shape it into a round dough. Place the dough into a very big floured/oiled bowl. Make sure the bowl is big enough to contain the dough when it proof to double size. Cover it with cling wrap and leave it to proof until double size. It is about 40min  to an hour depend on the weather. Hot weather is faster.

3. Once the dough rise to double size, you can start to cut and  shape into your ideal bun or bread. While working on the dough to shape, you may need extra flour. Once it is shape to your idea bun, place them onto a tray lay with parchment paper.

4. Brush buns with egg and put into the preheat oven to bake for 15-20min or until  the top of bun is golden brown. Remove from oven. Then remove bun from tray and let it cool down on a rack.

Refer to my another blog  homemade-chicken-patties on how to make meat patties.

Note : If you do not have a mixer, just put all the ingredients together and knead by hand into a soft smooth dough. Do a windowpane test to see whether sufficient kneading. Leave it to proof to double size.

Rice Omelette Pancake

Was running out of idea what to make for breakfast for princess. I have some leftover rice from last night in the fridge. My princess like to eat rice and egg.  So I decided to make this Rice Omelette Pancake which is easy to make and nice to eat. I have used ingredients that are easily available in our fridge. You may replace ham with your desire ingredient like minced meat or shredded chicken.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup cooked rice
1/2 slice of picnic ham, cut into small pieces
1 small stalk of spring onion, cut into 1cm length
1 egg
1 tsp fish sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce

Method:
1. Place all ingredients into a bowl and mix them well. You can adjust the seasoning to your taste.

2. Heat up a frying pan. I am using non-stick frying pan. Pour 1 tsp of oil and use a paper towel to coat the frying pan with the oil. Pour in the mixture. Use a spatula to spread the mixture to about 1cm thickness.  Pan fry one side for 2-3min or until golden brown. Turn the other side to fry for another 2-3min or until golden brown.  Remove from fire. Serve.

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