Apple crisp with ice cream

Experiment:  Apple crisp with ice cream

Introduction:

I’m back!!!  I have been in school for the past few months.  I thought I would have time to update my blog but… I had been caught up with my quizzes and assignments and midterms and on and on and on… Now the term is FINALLY over, and I finally get to sit down and update my blog.

Well, to celebrate the end of the term, I decided to make a dessert to reward myself.  First thing that came to my mind was apple crisp with ice cream.  This is actually the very first dessert I learned to make.  I was living in a dorm and my roommate was hosting a party.  I didn’t know what to make to contribute to the party, so I asked my friend what the easiest thing to make that everybody likes.   Well, there, I got my very first dessert recipe and  I made apple crisp with ice cream.  It turned out quite well and it was gone quite soon.  ^_^

I can’t find the recipe that my friend gave me anymore, so I just googled online and find something similar.  This recipe looks good and easy, the ingredients look similar to what I remember, so I decided to give it a try.  Since I didn’t wanna make too much, I halved all the ingredients and I didn’t add the nutmeg (since I don’t have it at home).

Materials:

2 medium apples, peeled and cut into chunks (or however you like it)
1/4 – 1/2 cup packed brown sugar (depends on how sweet you want it)
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup rolled oats
3 tbsp butter, softened
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Ice cream

Procedure:

1) Preheat oven to 375 degree.

2) Spread the apples in a medium size baking pan.

3) In another bowl, mix the remaining ingredients (except for ice cream) and stir until well mixed.  Sprinkle on top of the apples.

4) Bake for about 3o minutes or so or until the topping is golden brown.

5) Serve with ice cream.

Discussion:

1) It’s a really quick dessert to make.  I think it only took me like 10 minutes to prepare everything and then 30 minutes to bake.  I pretty much just put it in the oven when I have my dinner and it’s ready when I finish dinner! 🙂

2) I actually would like more of the toppings;  it didn’t seem like the amount of toppings from the recipe was enough for the apples.   OR were my apples too big? I tend to buy big apples… anyway, I’ll make more toppings next time! 🙂

Coconut noodles with mango sauce

Experiment: Coconut Noodle with Mango Sauce

Introduction:
Have you ever thought about having noodles for dessert?  I had never thought about it, until my dear friend, Miss S, sent me a recipe for making “coconut noodles.” Well, it’s not as difficult as it sounds.  What you need are jello mix, mango, and a tool to make dessert.  Ok, I lied.  The original recipes asks for more stuff.  But who wanna make things more complicated when it can be done in a few steps, right?

Materials:
a box of coconut gelatin dessert mix, which you can find in Asian supermarket
1 mango, diced into small pieces
sesame seeds
shredded coconut (optional)

Mango sauce:
1 mango, diced into pieces
2 tbsp milk
1 tbsp honey 

This is the coconut gelatin dessert mix that I bought. 

Instructions:
1) Follow the instructions on the coconut gelatin dessert mix box.  Pretty much it means boil water, when water boils, pour in the package.  Mix until dissolve.  Pour the liquid in a mold.  Put in the fridge until it solidifies.

2) While you’re waiting for the jello/pudding to solidify, you can prepare the mango sauce.

3) Put all the mango sauce ingredients in a mixer, and mix until it becomes smooth.

4) When the coconut jello/pudding is ready, cut the jello/pudding into long blocks – the size that would fit in the kokoroten maker*.

5) Put the coconut jello through the kokoroten maker, and push.  Tada!  The coconut noodles come out the other end!  🙂 

6) Put the diced mango on the noodles, then put the sauce on top of the noodles. 

7) Sprinkle the sesame seeds (and/or shredded coconut) on top.

 

Results:

 

Discussions:
1) Kokoroten is a Japanese dish.  Traditionally it’s made with Kanten (or agar agar).  I have never had it myself, but I have seen many pictures of it.  The idea of making jello into “noodles” is very intriguing, so I decided to try it myself.  Instead of using the traditional kanten, I’m using coconut jellow.  If you wanna see how kokoroten is made, you can go to here.

2) The original recipe is actually coconut “flat noodles.”  You’ll have to mix coconut milk, water, sugar and konnyaku powder together to make it into coconut jello.  I couldn’t find konnyaku powder in Vancouver, so… I bought the powder mix that I showed above.  OH and to make the flat noodles, you put a big piece of saran warp onto a baking sheet (with edges of course), then pour the liquid onto the baking sheet.  Remember it has to be THIN!  Then when it solidifies, your take the “noodle” out and then cut them into thick slices. 
Yeah I think it’s hard to imagine how it looks like.  If I ever make it again, I’ll definitely post it up here! 🙂

 

Purin (プリン)

 

Experiment: Purin (プリン)

Introduction:
When I went over to Ms. K’s place a few weeks ago … all of a sudden she said she was craving for purin and wanted to make it.  It just happened that she had all the ingredients at home, so we ended up making it.  After that… I just fell in love with purin!  I loved it so much that… I ended up making it a few times at home too.  hehe!  OH well… if I didn’t need to use so much sugar (i.e. fattening), I don’t mind having one every day! I followed the recipe here, but I use less sugar than the recipe posted.

Materials: (serve 4-6 cups)
Syrup:
6 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp water

Pudding:
2 cups milk
1/2 cup sugar
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
butter

Procedure:
1) Butter the pudding molds.  It helps the purin to slide out easily.

2) Put the sugar and water in a small sauce pan.  Heat it up and simmer until the sauce is browned.  Then add 1 tbsp of warm water to thin the sauce.  Watch out cause it might cause the syrup to splash! 

3) Pour the syrup into the molds.  Do it quick before the syrup hardens!

4) Put milk and sugar in a pot and heat to about 60°C.  Don’t let the milk boil!  Otherwise the milk will loose its taste.  Remove from heat when the sugar is completely dissolved. 

5) Add the vanilla extract and mix well.

6) Beat the eggs in a medium bowl.  Slowly pour the warm milk in the egg mixture.  Stir the egg mixture while you pour the milk in to lower the temperature of the mixture.  You don’t wanna cook the egg!
(Don’t put the egg mixture in the warm milk… coz it might actually cook the egg.)

7) Run the egg mixture through a strainer.  It makes the purin smoother. 

8) Pour the egg mixture in the molds.  Use tin foil to cover the molds, so that the water won’t drip onto the pudding while steaming. 

 

9) Turn it to high heat first.  When the water boils (i.e., steam starts to come out), TURN DOWN the heat to medium low.  If you keep using high heat through out, you’ll have lots of bubbles in/on your purin.  NOT PRETTY!  It takes about 30-45 minutes for low heat steaming.

10) Turn off the heat when it’s done.  Cool it… and serve! 🙂

Results: 

Discussion:
1) I can’t emphasize enough… you will need to use medium to low heat to steam if you don’t want bubbles on your purin! The very first time I used high heat all the way through… it was very “holey.”  Then the next time, I used medium heat, and there were bubbles still.  You can see in the “result” picture..   I learned that you actually have to use medium low heat.  Steam longer over low(er) heat, and you’ll get very pretty purin.

2) If you’re not sure if your purin is done, check the syrup at the bottom of the molds.  If it’s done, the syrup will become very liquidy and you can actually see small bubbles between the syrup and purin.  If it’s not done… the syrup is still hard like candy.

 3) I actually like the syrup a little burnt… so I let the syrup boil a little longer than you usually would.  I don’t actually like sweet stuff… hehe!

Toasted coconut marshmallow

Experiment: Toasted coconut marshmallow

Introduction:
I had never thought that you can make marshmallow from scratch before… until Ms. K actually made it and brought it to work many months ago.  Ms. K kept telling me that… it’s not that hard to make.  I didn’t believe her.  Then today, she decided to make marshmallow with me… so we made it.  Hmm… really, it’s not really hard to make.  It’s just A LOT of work.

Materials and Procedure:
Ms. K follows the recipe here, so please go there for detailed instructions for the marshmallow.

Toasted Coconut marshmallow:
1) Toast shredded coconut in a wok until it turns yellow/brown.  We used about half a pack of shredded coconut.

2) Evenly spread the toasted coconut on the parchment paper.  You don’t wanna see any gap between the toasted coconut. 

3) Pour the marhmallow liquid onto the toasted coconut.

4) Pour the rest of the toasted coconut onto the marshmallow.  Spread even.

5) Let it sit until the marshmallow is done.

6) When the marshmallow is done, use a knife to cut the marshmallow into shapes that you like.  Pizza knife is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  I can’t imagine how you can cut the marshmallow with a regular knife, coz it’s SOOOOOO sticky!

7) Coat the marshmallow with the remaining toasted coconut.

Results:  

Discussions:
1) It was super yummy! hehe!  And yeah… it’s not that “hard” to make… it just takes time. 

2) Marshmallow is super sticky!  So be ready to get messy!

3) Ms. K actually made it with Matcha powder before, and I really liked it.  But then match is quite expensive… and if you wanna coat the marhsmallow with matcha powder… hmm… it’s gonna be super expensive.

Orange Jello

Experiment: Orange Jello

Introduction:
My mom always gives me oranges whenver I go see her on the weekends.  Since there’s an overflow of oranges at home, I decided to try something – Orange jello. 

Materials:
2 oranges
1 pack of orange jello powder
whipping cream
a small piece of chocolate

Procedure:
1) If the oranges you have cannot stand up straight, cut the bottom part of the oranges so that it can stand up straight.

2) Cut the top 1/5 part of the oranges.  Cut it so that you can scoope the orange out.

3) Scoope the orange out.  Reserve the orange juice.

4) Follow the instruction of your orange jello powder.  Substitute the water with the orange juice.

5) Pour the jello liquid back into the “orange bowls”.  Use saran wrap to wrap the oranges.  Put them in the fridge for a few hours (or until the jello forms).

6) Use a electric mixer (or milk frother) to whip the whipping cream. 

7) Take the oranges out from the fridge.  Put as much whipping cream as you like on top of the orange bowls.

8) Use a knife to shave the chocolate on top of the whipping cream.  DONE! 🙂

Results: 

Discussions:
1) This is a pretty simple dessert.  The part that takes up the most part is actually the taking the orange out part.  Oh well, it’s actually not that hard… it just takes time.

2) It’s my first time using a milk frother to froth cream!  I didn’t know if it would work.. but it did! ^_^  I love my milk frother!

Glutinous rice balls with sesame filling 芝麻湯圓

 

 

Experiment: Glutinous rice ball with sesame filling 芝麻湯圓

Introduction:
It’s the Chinese New Year’s Eve today.  Usually families gather together and eat glutinous rice balls.  I usually buy rice balls in the supermarket, but since I have time this year (this year’s new year’s eve falls on Saturday!), I decided to make it myself.

Materials: (make about 20 glutinous rice balls)
150g glutinous rice flour
100ml warm water
1/4 cup grounded black sesame
1/4 cup sugar
1/8 cup unsalted butter (or pork lard)

Soup:
1.5 litre water
4-5 slices ginger
3-4 tbs black sugar

Procedure:
Sesame filling:
1) Mix the grounded black sesame and sugar together.  Melt the butter, and add in the grounded black sesame and sugar mix.  Stir well until it becomes a paste.  Add more butter in if the mixture is not sticky, or add more gounded sesame and sugar if the mixture is too wet.

2) Use a small spoon to scoop the sesame filling into small balls, and put them on a plate.  Make sure that you leave space between each filling.

3) Put the filling into the fridge for a few hours, so that it becomes harder, and easier to be put into the glutinous rice balls.

Glutinous Rice Ball:
4) When the filling is hard(er), you can start preparing the glutinous rice balls.  Slowly pour warm water into the glutinous rice flour, and mix it WITH A SPATULA.  Mix it into a dough ball.  Pour more water in if the dough ball is too try, or add more flour in if it’s too wet.

5) Separate the dough ball into smaller pieces.

6) Roll the dough intoa small ball, the press ih the centre so that the centre is flat.  Then put the sesame filling into the cente, and close the glutinous rice ball.  Roll it into a ball again.

 

7) Boil water, and put the glutinous rice balls in.  When the glutinous rice balls are floating, then they’re ready!

Soup:
8 ) Boil the 1.5 litre water.  When water boils, put the ginger and black sugar in.  Feel free to add more sugar if you like really sweet stuff.

Result:

Discussions:
1) Make sure that you use unsalted butter, otherwise… it’ll be salty and sweet.
2) You can use raw sugar, cane sugar or brown sugar to substitute the black sugar.
3) Apparently using pork lard will make the filling smoothier… but… I think I’ll stick with butter.
4) If you can’t make the 20 glutinous rice balls at once, you can put them into the freezer.  Just boil them (without difrosting) when you wanna eat again.

Red date, Goji, Black Sweet Rice Sweet Soup (紅棗杞子紫米露)

 

Experiment: Red date, Goji, Black Sweet Rice Sweet Soup

 

Introduction: I found this recipe online… and I wanna give it a try as I have all the ingredients at home.  The red dates, goji and black sweet rice are good for your boday, especially for female.  It’s a pretty good soup for after menstruration.

 

Materials:

1/2 cup black sweet rice

2 tbs goji

12 red dates

5 cups water

1 cup milk/coconut milk

rock sugar

 

Procedure:

1) Wash all the ingredients.

2) Boil the water.  When water boils, put the black sweet rice and red dates in. Let it boil, then reduce to medium-low heat.  Let it boil for 30 minutes, or until the black sweet rice is soft. 

3) Put the goji in and let it boil for another 15 minutes.

4) Put the milk or coconut milk and rock sugar in.  When the rock sugar is dissolved, it’s ready.

 

Results:

Discussion:

1)  I didn’t put lots of rock sugar in, as I wanna save it for breakfast too.  Yes!  It can be eaten as dessert or breakfast!  Of course, you’ll need more sugar for dessert and less sugar for breakfast. 

2)  Today I put milk in instead of coconut mlik.  I think I’ll try coconut milk later. 

 

Conclusion:

It’s a very quick dessert or breakfast, and it’s pretty good for your body! Give it a try! 🙂