Happy Lunar New Year!

It's Lunar New Year tomorrow!

This year, I'm at home and was able to make things! Yey~

I started off making kueh bangkit.. which turned out as a bit of a fail because I ran out of tapioca starch. So instead of my usual little men, this was all I made:


Pineapple tarts again:


Agar goldfish, using the fish mould I got 1.5years ago in Singapore :)


And my attempt at Zumbo's macarons. I didn't realise his recipe was in bulk.. so I made a bit too many. I made pandan macarons with white pandan chocolate ganache/pandan custard! :) I used pandan paste, that's why they're that colour. I don't really like it though. I should've made them more green.. :/


Oh. And I also made some ice creams (not really Lunar New Year related). Yam and green tea. :D


Anywho, this will pretty much be the last amount of baking/cooking I'd be doing for a while.. (apart from M's cupcakes which I'll make tomorrow night). Then I'm off to HK and South Korea! Weee~ Hello Winter #1 of 2012! Glad to escape the burning sun for 3 weeks. :) And can't can't wait to get to Korea! :D

Kueh bangkit

I made some pandan kueh bangkit. It's about a month till Chinese New Year. This year though, I'll be overseas during the lunar new year, so I won't have time to make many things. :( Boo..


Oh well. I used the same recipe as I used last year. So they basically look and taste the same :P


Kueh bangkit
Makes about 150 bite sized pieces

500g tapioca starch
250ml coconut cream
200g sugar
3 egg yolks
1 tsp pandan essence

Dry fry tapioca starch in a large clean dry wok for about 30mins, on low heat.
Leave to cool overnight or for a few days.
Melt sugar in coconut cream over low heat. Remove from heat.
Allow to cool slightly before adding egg yolk.
Add in flavouring.
Slowly add liquid into tapioca starch until a dough is formed.
The dough should be matte and not glossy, so add the liquid bit by bit so you don't add too much. (If you do, you'd have to dry fry some more tapioca starch..)
Roll out and cut using cookie cutters.
Bake in a preheated 160C oven for about 15-20mins (depending on the size of your shapes.)
Allow to cool completely on cooling rack before storing in an air tight container.

Pancakes with crushed peanuts and sugar

I tried to make Ban Chien Kueh/Apam Balik, a pancake filled with crushed roasted peanuts and sugar. I adapted the recipe from "Pasar Malam Delights - Bilingual version", that I purchased from Malaysia for RM15 last year. (Yes, I bought about 10kg worth of cookbooks back home.. Haha.)


I first this pancake in Petaling St, Kuala Lumpur last year. There was this old man selling them. He was quite old, and he was doing this by himself..


It was a hawker food stand. Cleanliness wasn't that up to scratch of course, but they sure were yummy! Though, one time the man coughed into the pan (not purposely, just because he was choking or was sick...). Of course we didn't buy any then.


Unfortunately, I don't have equipment and utensils that look like this. So the distribution of my heating pan wasn't that great.

And unfortunately, my pancakes did not look like this...


This was crispy on the outside. But I just couldn't get mine to be crispy! :( Plus, my other issue was that my peanuts weren't so crushed. Haha.. I smashed them in a bag for a bit, but they seemed to have resisted and stayed as chunks or formed a crumb. -__-

Man chien kueh/ban chien kueh/apam balik/pancake filled with crushed peanuts and sugar
Makes about 12-24 servings depending on if you chop them into 2 or 4.

340g plain flour
70g sugar
3 eggs
425ml water
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp instant dried yeast

300g peanuts, crushed
50g sugar

butter for greasing pan

Your peanuts should be crushed more finely. I really hated the chunky texture..

Mix flour, baking soda, yeast, sugar, egg and water. Allow to rest for 1hr.

Heat a medium sized pan, grease with butter.
Pour in pancake batter. Cook until little holes start appearing. Add peanuts/sugar on top.
Cook for a little while longer.


Flip pancake in half. Press down gently.
Remove from pan, and slice into 2 or 4 pieces. Serve immediately.


Next time, I'll crush those peanuts better. Perhaps, I'll just go buy the crushed ones in the baking isle of the supermarket. Haha..

CNY: Kueh bangkit

February 14 is only 4 days away. So I'll be starting my Chinese New Year cooking.


A few days earlier:

I've dry fried 500gm of tapioca starch on low heat for 45mins. I'll let it cool for the next few days and make the kueh bangkit then. I'm going to tweek the recipe so it will be different this year. Hopefully an improved version! :)

Update:

Yes! These are much lighter than the ones I made last year! Much much better~ :D


Kueh bangkit
Makes about 185 bite sized pieces

500g tapioca starch
250ml coconut cream
200g sugar
3 egg yolks
1 tsp pandan essence/1 tsp durian paste

Dry fry tapioca starch in a large clean dry wok for about 45mins.
Leave to cool overnight or for a few days.
Melt sugar in coconut cream over low heat. Remove from heat.
Allow to cool slightly before adding egg yolk.
Add in flavouring.
Slowly add liquid into tapioca starch until a dough is formed.
The dough should be matte and not glossy, so add the liquid bit by bit so you don't add too much. (If you do, you'd have to dry fry some more tapioca starch..)
Roll out and cut using cookie cutters.
Bake in a preheated 160C oven for about 15-20mins (depending on the size of your shapes.)
Allow to cool completely on cooling rack before storing in an air tight container.

Dot with some red food dye, and we're all set!

Weee.. lots and lots of kueh bangkit to go around! The white ones are pandan and the yellow are durian.

Why the fish, you may ask? "Nian nian you yu" 年年有余 meaning 'more abundance every year'. It's a play on words basically, as 'yu' sounds similar to fish 鱼. :P

One heart fills another, together they belong.

Be careful when you handle them though, as they are quite fragile!

A broken man.. with a broken heart. :(

He's happy because he knows that he's delicious enough to be eaten regardless. :P

CNY: Cassava cake

More CNY baking :) - Item number 3~

I decided to make a cassava cake. I bought the frozen cassava yesterday from KFL. I had a choice between 'Made in Vietnam' or 'Made in Thailand'. Haha. But I wasn't sure which to pick. So I bought 1kg of frozen cassava from Vietnam, and 1kg of frozen taro from Thailand. (I'll be using the taro tomorrow :P). I decided against buying the pre-grated frozen cassava (who knows how clean the machinery is, or what other things could have fallen into the gratings!) and used a food processor to shred it myself. Thus, this cassava cake has a rough texture.


Cassava cake
Makes a lot of servings. I'd say about 20 or so.

1kg of cassava, grated
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup sugar
200ml coconut cream (left over from yesterday's kueh bangkit)
200ml coconut milk (not sure why I opened the milk instead of another can of cream. It's practically the same apart from the viscosity anyway!)

1 tbsp melted margarine/butter for greasing

Preheat oven to 175C.
Grease a baking pan. I used an oblong cake pan. (It's quite big 32.3 x 22.8 x 5 cm)
Mix all of the ingredients together.
Bake for 30mins. By this time, the top should be cooked.
Brush leftover margarine/butter on the top.
Put back into over and bake for another 25mins or so, or until browning at the top.
Remove from oven and set aside to cool.


Cut into bitesized pieces and serve.

CNY: Kueh bangkit

My last bake for today, and my second CNY item. It's been a long day... and I have work early tomorrow morning. Boo. :(

I decided to try and make kueh bangkit. It's a Malaysian cookie, traditional for CNY. (Correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm not Malaysian nor know the correct facts other than from reading online. )

Well, this was sort of a disaster. The disaster being the time consumed. It was very hard kneading the dough, and needing to know when the consistency was perfect. I tried using my cookie press once again (attempt #2, cf. last attempt with macaroons). And that was a complete failure as well. The dough was not liquid enough to be used. So I gave up and just rolled the dough out and used a cookie cutter instead. Took me a while to carefully get 80 cookies ready for baking. But the end result is good. :) I now have 80 little people ready for CNY.



Kueh bangkit
Makes about 80 small cookies

3 cups tapioca flour
2 tbsp custard powder
1/2 tsp salt

2 egg yolks
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 tbsp margarine
1 tsp pandan essence
1 cup coconut cream

In a large wok dry fry tapioca flour until over low heat for 15mins.
Leave to cool.

Preheat oven to 170C.

Whisk egg yolks with sugar, then add margarine and whisk again.
Add in coconut cream.

In a large mixing bowl, sift tapioca flour, custard powder and salt.
Gradually add the liquid mixture bit by bit, to get the right consistency.
(Dough should not be shiny nor sticky)
Knead the dough.
Roll out to ~1cm thickness between sheets of baking paper, and cut shapes using cookie cutters (I used a mini man. It was the smallest cookie cutter I own, being about 2.5cm in size)

Kinda resembles cheese, doesn't it?

Bake at 170C for 10-15mins. Cookies should remain white, not golden.

I made a total of 80 little people kueh bangkit :)

Hehe. They left imprints! :D

The kueh melts in your mouth, and has a pandan and coconut fragrance to them. I like it, but.. I don't think I'll make it again until I find the perfect texture for the dough..