Longan Tart

I have bought loose bottom tart tray few months back. Since then, I have been thinking of what to make with it. Looking at the Crostata recipe at Dailydelicious website makes my heart flutter. As berries are not very popular in my family, I have decide to use a more tropical fruit - canned longans.

I have used the pastry cream and sweet crust pastry from JoyofBaking for my masterpiece above.

Apple Crumble

This is a 10" square Apple crumble requested by a friend the weekend before Deepavali. Baked this the night before I departed to KL for a 3 day short trip with my family. My friend asked if it needed to be heated up before consumption and I told her that I personally like it cold.

The following week when I met her, she told me that her daughter agreed and said that I was right that the apple crumble tasted better when it is cold. The part that I cannot help laughing was that the daughter only ate the apple crumble cold so how did she know that it was true that it tasted better cold and not at other temperatures. Well as they always say - 'Kids say the darnest things!'

Petit Bakes for a Wedding

A friend had asked if I could make some pastries to compliment her lunch buffet on her wedding day. After thinking hard for the past week, I have decided to make these 3 items as samples for her. The extreme left side-brownie, centre - mini cheesecake and the extreme right - Apple Crumble.

As this was the first time i baked the brownies, I baked it according to the recipe time which was 40 mins, resulting in a drier brownie version. I think i can shorten the baking time to maybe 30mins so that the brownie would be more fudgy.

The mini cheesecake baked quite fast in small cupcakes. Instead of a 1.5hrs of baking time, it was done within 20mins.

The apple crumble consist of 3 layers. The first layer consist of a sweet crust pastry that had to be prebaked first and after that, topped with cooked apple filling and covered with a crumble to be baked again till the crumble turns brown.

I personally liked the apple crumble and the mini cheesecake.

Apple Pie

After spending the whole of Saturday wrapping Chicken Paus, there was not much time to go anywhere. So I convinced Hub to make a trip to Phoon Huat in the West. I used to visit one of the outlet almost every weekend when I visit my mom at the North end of Singapore but unfortunately for some reason, that outlet closed.

I bought some lotus paste with the intent to make some mooncakes and aluminium cups for making the quiche and my Hub suddenly said that it would be nice to make some apple pies. I thought of making the filling but it would mean looking for a nice apple pie recipe and spending time cooking it. In the end, we bought a can of ready made apple pie filling and I decide to just make the shortcrust pastry. I wondered if it would be too sweet, but to my surprise, it was all right. Next time I might want to try making apple filling on puff pastry instead of shortcrust pastry.

Mini Bacon and Mushroom Quiche

Last weekend, my brother was raving about quiches and about how nice it was. I personally have never eaten one. It was said to be some sort of an egg tart but on the savoury side instead of the usual sweet one. I was reading last month issue of Flavours and saw some quiches recipes inside. They had large ones and small onces and the small ones looks rather nice and easy to eat as well. No cutting/slicing required, eat directly from the cup.

Consider it a success on first round for the quiches. I asked my brother if it tasted like those he bought from outside and he said 'YES' and he ate a total of 5 at one go. My sister-in-law brought one for a colleague to test as she mentioned that her colleague loves quiches and another 'Pass' graded for the quiche I made. I ate one out of the twenty I made but personally do not fancy it . It there was a choice, I would eat an egg tart to this.