Monday, January 21, 2008

Things to do with eggs. Part 2

Eggs, I just wish people sell just egg yolks or just egg whites, especially the former, as I know you can get powdered egg whites nowadays. But I am still unable to get my hands on some. The closest thing I have seen to powdered egg whites is ‘Pavlova Magic’ which comes in a cute egg shaped container but I am a sceptic to those prepared stuff as I enjoy making stuff from scratch.

I am digressing. My last post was on macaroons which only used the egg whites, so what was I going to do with the delicious but high-cholesterol egg yolks? It would be too boring if I just fried it so I decided to make egg tarts (adapted from Agnes Chang’s Delightful Snacks and Dim Sum).

I have made the egg tarts using the book recipe several times. However, she has also produced a video cd for egg tarts and that recipe is slightly different from the one in the book. So I decided to give the vcd recipe a try. But having done both, I have to say that the book recipe is much tastier and much easier to make.

Egg Tarts


Ingredients:
Water skin:
150gm plain flour
20gm custard powder
30gm icing sugar
60gm copha / vegetable shortening
2-3 tbsp water

Oil skin:
90gm plain flour
60gm copha / vegetable shortening

Filling:
3 eggs
120gm castor sugar
250ml hot water
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp white vinegar
2 drops yellow colouring

Method:
  1. Skin A: Sift all flour. Mix and knead all skin A ingredients together into a pliable dough. Do not add all the water in at once. Pour enough to make a pliable dough. Divide into 20 parts.
  2. Skin B: Sift the flour. Mix and knead all skin B ingredients together into a pliable dough. Divide into 20 parts.
  3. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes. Meanwhile add the sugar into the hot water for the filling and allow it to cool while preparing steps 4 to 7.
  4. Wrap one portion of dough B inside one portion of dough A, and roll into a fat sausage of approx 8 - 10cm long, ensuring dough B does not spill out.
  5. Lightly roll the sausage-shaped dough with a rolling pin. Then roll it up like a swiss roll.
  6. Roll the mini swiss-roll dough into a ball and press into the egg tart mould.
  7. Repeat steps 3 to 5 with the remaining dough.
  8. Beat the eggs for the filing and combine it with the syrup prepared earlier (step 3).
  9. Combine all filling ingredients and strain filling.
  10. Pour filling into moulds until 3/4 full.
  11. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celcius for 15 - 20 minutes or until the filling is set.

Note:

  • To determine if the filling is set, shake the mould and if the filling doesn't waver like liquid, then it is set.
  • Another way to determine if the filling is set is when you start seeing the filling starting to puff upwards, remove the tart from the oven immedietely otherwise when your filling rises too high, it may pop and when it deflates, the egg tart will not look too pretty.
  • If, in step 1, you have added all the water and the skin is too wet and sticky, add in more flour and continue to knead. The skin dough should not be sticky when touched.

Things to do with eggs. Part 1

Eggs - so versatile and so easy to whip up. I can't imagine baking without eggs in my fridge. But they are becoming so expensive, that I just get them from the markets nowadays. And getting it at the markets are not cheap either - $8.50 for a tray of 30 but they are not exactly the large ones either! That will only last me, uhmmm, 2 weeks if I don't use it for breakfast/lunch/dinner.

I wanted to try making macaroons. There seems to be such a craze for these delectable, cute, little morsels and I can't get them from where I live. So the only way to taste them is to make them myself. After researching many food blogs, I got the gist that it is just meringue, sugar and ground nuts as the basic ingredients. But if I use the egg whites for the meringue, what can I do with the egg yolks!!! That will be another story.

So I went in search for almond meal, but they were roughly $4.00 for a packet of 100gm. So cheapskate me decided to buy peanuts and ground it myself. Although most people will buy unsalted peanuts, I went for the easiest and cheapest types of nuts, which was of course roasted, salted peanuts. It saved me the trouble of having to roast it myself *grins*

Peanut Choc Macaroon

Ingredients:
1 1/3 cups unsalted peanuts (122 grams)
2 cups icing sugar
1/4 cup sugar
4 large egg whites

Method
  1. Ground the peanuts and the icing sugar together until they resemble almond meal. (Most recipes uses ground almond meal).
  2. Pour mixture into a large mixing bowl.
  3. In a greasefree bowl, place the egg whites and whisk until soft peaks form (usually 2 minutes on high speed), then slowly add in the sugar while continuing to beat on a medium speed for another minute until hard peaks form.
  4. Continue beating the eggs on the lowest speed for half a minute so that the air trapped within are finer.
  5. Add 1/4 of the meringue into your peanut meal and fold gently but quickly.
  6. Repeat step 5 until the meringue is fully combined with the peanut meal mixture.
  7. The batter should be like molten lava and does not look too fluffly (unlike a pavlova) so do not fret.
  8. Add in any colouring you desire (but I left mine plain).
  9. Place batter into piping bag with a round, size 12 nozzle.
  10. Squeeze batter onto a baking parchment placed on a baking tray, until the circle is roughly 2 - 2.5 cm in diameter.
  11. CRUCIAL POINT: Leave piped batter to stand for 25 mins, to allow the skin to form.
  12. Place in a preheated oven and bake for 15 mins at 150 degrees Celcius.
  13. Take out of oven. Allow it to cool on baking tray.
  14. Remove from trays and match similar sized macaroons together.
  15. Sandwich with chocolate cream filling.
  16. Enjoy.

Note:

  • Take note of the crucial point, otherwise you'll end up with macaroons that are pretty sad looking like some of mine (see picture on baking tray, and spot the mishaps) as I didn't read other people's blogs properly and did what I felt like doing. Then I remembered that I read somewhere that the skin must form before placing it in the oven.
  • Chocolate cream filling is just chocolate buttercream leftover from my jaffa cupcakes.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Another Mix and Match

Wanting to make something different with the current ingredients in my pantry, I found myself this - white choc cappucino muffin with cream cheese topping - from the lazy chef's website. After a bit of tweaking, I've renamed my cupcake. However, I did not quite like the overpowering Bailey flavour and it is definitely not a flavour that I am used to - I don't like coffee unless I am really tired and need a 'ping' to wake me up. The cream cheese was barely tastable but my partner says it is ok, and his paramedic friends lapped it up - but I don't know if it is the "it's free and it's sweet" policy that sees my cupcakes all gone or were they genuinely nice.

Choc Chip Cappucino Muffin with Cream Cheese Topping

Ingredients for muffins:
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1/2 cup white sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cups chocolate chips
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
2 tbsp Baileys
2 tspn instant coffee melted with 1 tbsp hot water.
1/3 cup milk

Ingredients for cream cheese topping:
125 gm cream cheese
1 tsp vanilla essence
60gm icing sugar

Method:
  1. Sift the flour and baking powder into a mixing bowl.
  2. Add the remaining dry ingredients with the flour - sugar and chocolate chips.
  3. In a large cup, combine the remaining ingredients together - vegetable oil, egg, Baileys, coffee, and milk - until well combined.
  4. Pour into the dry ingredients and gently mix until combined. Do not overmix.
  5. Pour into pre-lined muffin trays and bake in a preheated oven for 5 mins in a 190 degrees Celcius oven.
  6. While the muffins are baking, combine the cream cheese mixture ingredients together and beat for 3 mins or until slightly creamy. The topping is a bit runny.
  7. Remove muffins from oven and spread some cream cheese mixture on top of the muffins.
  8. Replace into oven for a further 20 mins before removing from the oven and allow to cool.
  9. Sprinkle some icing sugar and cocoa for decorations.

Mix and Match

I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and a Happy New Year. My New Year's resolution to maintain my blog periodically (weekly) went out the window by the first week into January - too much things to do around the house, oh and the cyclone, and the volunteering side of things, partner getting a new job as a parmedic trainee... well it's just been busy, ok?

I am still after a soft, moist cake/muffin recipe that I can rely on but I still haven't found one. This next recipe is ok, but still not soft enough to my liking. But the cream is sensationally devine as it mixes my favourite flavours of chocolate and orange (jaffa).

Jaffa Cupcakes

Ingredients for muffins
2 1/2 cups plain flour
1 1/4 cups cocoa
2 1/4 cups sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 tsp bicarbonate soda
1 1/4 tsp salt
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/4 cup orange juice

Ingredients for cream
190gm butter
360gm icing sugar
3 drops of orange essence
zest of half an orange
1 tsp chocolate emulco
2 drops of red colouring
4 drops of yellow colouring

Method
  1. Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder and bicarbonate soda and salt into a mixing bowl.
  2. Add sugar into the dry ingredients.
  3. Combine the rest of the ingredients (the wet ingredients) together.
  4. Pour the wet mixture into the dry ingredients and stir until well combined.
  5. Bake in a preheated oven for 25 mins at 170 degree Celcius.
  6. Remove from oven and let stand until the cupcake cools.
  7. Cream the soft butter until slightly pale and creamy.
  8. Sift the icing sugar into the butter and continue creaming until texture is soft, pale and creamy.
  9. Divide the cream in half.
  10. Add the chocolate emulco to one half of the cream mixture.
  11. Add the colouring and orange essence to the remaining half of the cream mixture.
  12. Place a portion of each mixture onto one side of the piping bag, so that the orange flavoured cream is on one half of the piping bag and the chocolate flavoured cream is on the other half of the piping bag.
  13. Fit the piping bag with a star nozzle and swirl it on top of the cooled cupcake.