Shiroi Koibito (White Lovers / Black Lovers)

This is a famous biscuit in Japan & Korea. It is exceptionally sweet so next time, I think I'll cut down on the sugar in this recipe. The problem with making this biscuit is that you've got to get a mould for the biscuit otherwise it will turn out ugly like mine. I tried cutting out a microwave container lid but this is the best I got (see photo)

Shiroi Koibito

Ingredients:
100gm sugar
90gm butter
2 eggs
85gm cake flour
white chocolate / milk chocolate

Method:

1. Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.
2. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
3. Add sifted cake flour into the mixture.
4. Line baking tray and spread mixture to cover the hole in the template on the baking paper.
   
5. Bake at 180 degrees Celcius for about 10-15 mins, or until the sides become slightly brown.
6. Melt chocolate over double boiler.
7. Using a butter knife, spread the chocolate over one piece of biscuit and sandwich with another biscuit on top.
   

Mochi

The process of making mochi is extremely sticky and it is even more so when it comes to washing up - unless you do it properly and use lots of cornflour. My first attempt at doing it sometime last year was disastrous and I thought I'll never ever do it again. But having promised mum that I'll make it for her to try, I gathered up my courage to do it a few weeks ago and as it worked then, I thought I'll do it again.

Mochi

Ingredients:
Pandan Paste (will be covered in another post)
Red Bean Paste (will be covered in another post)

Mochi Skin:
100gm glutinous rice flour
180ml water
50gm sugar
Generous amount of cornflour

Method:

1. Combine the glutinous rice flour sugar together.
2. Pour in water and mix until sugar dissolves.
3. Pour into a microwave container for 30mins, then take it out to mix before returning it into the microwave again.
4. Repeat step 3 again thrice. The total time that the mixture stays in the microwave is about 2 mins, or until it looks almost translucent.
5. Generously dust your hands and workbench with cornflour before pouring out the microwaved contents onto the table.
6. Roll out rounds of red bean or green bean paste.
7. Take about 1/2 tablespoon of mochi skin, using your fingertips, flatten the piece of dough and place a ball of filling into the mochi.
8. Wrap mochi.

Note:

• The mochi skin dough is very very sticky, so generously dust your hands and workbench with cornflour. I cannot stress this enough.

Mooncake Festival

I haven't had as much time as I had originally hoped to update my blog. My original aim was to update it every day, then having failed that, I thought every week will suffice. But now, it seems that I am hardly even managing once a fortnight.


Well the mooncake festival is celebrated on the fifteenth of the eighth month in the chinese lunar calendar. There are several stories underlying the mooncakes but the most famous of all is according to chinese history, at around 1368AD. The Chinese distributed mooncakes with secret messages hidden between them and circulated around to all the Chinese. Inside, the messages revealed the Chinese' plan to overthrow their oppressors, the Mongols on the date that we now know as the mid-autumn festival.


Traditionally, mooncakes were baked. But ever-increasing new varieties have evolved and now, there are baked ones, deep-fried ones, snow-skin, savoury, and jelly ones.

White Sugar Cake

Yippee,
I finally got a camera to snap all my cooking so I can start baking again. A dumbass decided to drop the camera into a pond, so leaving me without a camera and a mobile phone. Hence the delay. I made several things (hum chim paeng, glutinous rice doughnut and several episodes of mochi and bak thong goa) but pity there wasn't a camera so it will have to wait until I make them again.

This cake is called "Pak Thong Goa" or directly translated as White Sugar Cake. There are several methods of doing this, from using wine rice cake to using yeast. The Vietnamese uses coconut as substitute for the 180ml of water in Ingredient B, and I think they call it "cow cake". That is what my friend tells me anyway. After her suggestion of using coconut milk, I would suggest to others who decides to make the Vietnamese version, to limit the sugar down to 140gm sugar as the coconut milk enhances the sweetness of sugar.

Pak Thong Goa

Ingredients:
A:
200gm rice flour
1 tsp dry yeast
230ml warm water
2 tsp sugar

B:
180ml warm water
160gm sugar

Method:

1. Mix all of ingredient A together and stir until sugar has dissolved. Leave overnight in a warm, dark place (an oven / microwave will do).
2. The mixture should have lots of bubbles on the next day.
3. Mix all of ingredients B into A and pour into a paper-lined pan. Leave aside for 2-3 hours.
4. Steam the mixture for 25 - 35 mins on high, opening the lid of the steamer every 10 mins or so to let the steam escape.

Note:

• Be cautious when opening the lid of the steamer as the steam can cause burns. It is advisable to be wearing oven mittens when you open it.
  

No Pics

Damn. My camera has gone on holidays for the next two weeks so I can't snap anything that I will be cooking - so I refuse to cook since I can't take the pictures to post onto my blog. Endless circle, isn't it? And since my work has put restrictions on saving files onto a memory stick, I can't update the blog with the BDO Chef night pics either. *Sighs*

Looks like I'll be on holiday from this blog for the next two weeks until I can start taking pics again! Not fair!

Green Lil Balls of Sweet Surrender

Never made ondeh-ondeh before but having some coconut filling leftover from my previous encounter with pulut inti, I decided to use the rest up in these small little green balls. Ran out of freshly white coconut so I didn't roll my ondeh-ondeh in it. I remembered when I was little, the green kuih with the coconut filling didn't have coconut on the outside either but I am not sure if it is still called ondeh ondeh.

Ondeh-Ondeh

Ingredients:
60gm glutinous rice flour
10 teaspoons of pandan juice (blend pandan leaves with a little bit of water and squeeeze out the water)
1 cup of coconut filling (see pulut inti)
2 tbsp finely chopped gula melaka

Method:

1. Mix about half the pandan juice with the glutinous rice flour.
2. Add one teaspoon at a time into the glutinous rice flour mixture and knead until flour becomes a soft, easily-managed dough. You may require more or less pandan juice, as long as your dough is easy enough to wrap a filling and rolled into a ball, it will be ok.
3. Take some dough, and using the fingertips, flatten the dough. Take a teaspoon of the coconut filling and a bit of gula melaka and place it in the middle of the dough. Wrap the dough around the filling and roll into a ball.
4. Instead of putting in the coconut filling, you can also put in gula melaka only - then it will be a true ondeh-ondeh, with sweet gooey syrup squirting out when you bite into the ball.
5. Boil water in a saucepan. Once water is boiling, cook the ondeh-ondeh in the water and let it boil until the balls floats to the surface of the water.
6. Dish out the ondeh-ondeh balls and roll it in a mixture of grated fresh coconut mixed with a bit of salt.

Note:

• Adding a pinch of salt to the fresh coconut will preserve the coconut a bit longer, and the coconut will not sour as quickly.

The Day After and Banana Leaves

As I am not accustomed to the effects of drinking, I usually try not to put myself through the torture for the next morning of the BDO Iron Chef night - can't say that for someone I know who felt sick from overeating and perhaps, overdrinking. *LOL*

Since the Croc Dundee team had decorated their stand with banana leaves, at the end of the night, I managed to convinced that giving me the banana leaves was a better idea than putting it in the bin. Call me 'kiam siap' as you may but it costs about AUD$2 for me to get 3 small pieces of banana leaves at the markets which also depends on the availability. But in payment, I was asked if I know how to make a sticky rice with coconut topping dessert. So this is the result. I hope this met the Joan's expectations.

Pulut Inti

Ingredients:
Banana Leaves
Glutinous rice
300gm glutinous rice
1 blade of pandan leave (aka screwpine leave)
pinch of salt
½ cup of coconut milk
3 tablespoons of water
Coconut topping
120gm gula melaka
50gm sugar
1 tbsp water
1 ½ cups freshly grated coconut

Method:

1. Wash the glutinous rice until water runs clear. Soak overnight. If you are time restricted, you don’t necessarily have to let the rice soak overnight as I have done.
2. Dissolve the salt in water.
3. Place banana leaves at the bottom of a steamer and place glutinous rice, water, knotted pandan leave and two teaspoons of coconut milk on top of banana leave and allow it to steam.
4. Moisturise the rice with the addition of coconut milk every so often until the coconut mulk is used up.
5. Allow rice to be steamed until soft.
6. Leave glutinous rice aside.
   
7. Bring to boil the gula melaka, sugar and water until the sugar partially dissolves.
8. Add grated coconut to the sugar and fry until the coconut has absorbed the dissolved sugar and becomes partially translucent.
9. Leave to cool.
10. Pour hot water over banana leaves to soften the leaves and to prevent it from splitting so easily.
11. Place two tablespoons of rice in the middle of a roughly 20cm x 10cm rectangular banana leaf, waxy & matt side up.
12. Using banana leaf, try to compact the rice together and then top it with the coconut mixture.
13. Wrap the longer dimensions of the leaf over the glutinous rice and tuck sides towards the bottom as pictured in the photograph.