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.

Dragon Fruit Chiffon Cake

Six dragonfruits appeared on Friday evening in the kitchen. It was brought over by my hub's uncle. No one in the house was a fan of dragon fruits, so I thought I would try to make use of it to make a chiffon cake from Kelvin Chai's - Chiffon Cake is Done book. Is uses red dragon fruit for the recipe. I wonder what colour was the dragonfruit that was brought over but I suspected it to be white as that is the most common one available locally.

With white flesh, it would mean that the cake would turn out white with black dots from the seeds of the fruit. I decided to add some red colouring to give the cake a slight pinkish colour. The fruit I had didn't have much flavour and the recipe calls for a tablespoon of lemon which gave the cake a slight freshing sourish taste.

Siew Mai

I finally got myself to make this from a Dim Sum book from Hong Kong. The quantity in the recipe was large. Eg ingredients for making 100 pcs. Why would I want to make 100 siew mai, thus I had to do some division to make it into a smaller portion. A mixture of meat, prawns and mushroom with season. The meat had to be mixed with ice cubes before adding in the other ingredients.

I didn't have a mixer, with a K hook, so I end up beating the meat with my hands. The result was good. The original recipe actually had a Part II filling for the top of the siew mai that was made of shrimps and seasoning. I thought the Part I filling was good enough for siew mai, thus I have omitted making the Part II. (Another partial reason was that I was getting a bit lazy and tired after beating the Part I filling with my hands).

Nonya Dumplings

Got around making this over the weekends after being influenced by one of my colleague who is at the moment obsessed with making 'changs' (dumplings). I assisted my MIL to make the Hokkien Changs before the Dumpling festival a few weeks back. She did all the preparation while I help with the wrappings.

Last weekend, I decided that I should prepare everything on my own and tried out the Nonya chang recipe that was compiled by my colleague. Feedback from various testers was that the chang was good and it is definitely easier to prepare as compared to the Hokkien changs where each item needs to be seperated cooked. Though Nonya changs do not include chestnuts but I added 2 in each as I love chestnuts.