Dan Lepard's Banana Bread

Dan's recipes are very much welcomed into the family lately, here is another good recipe.
I cannot believe my husband had 4 slices in one go!  The rest of us had 2 slices each.   Needless to say, it was all gone in the same day.



Reason, it was actually not too sweet, quite a light cake and just too good to stop eating.
 You should try or you will regret not..:)

Recipe: The Guardian ( Dan Lepard)
Ingredients
300g ripe bananas
15ml lemon juice
125g shelled walnuts, chopped
75g unsalted butter
175g dark soft brown sugar ( I used dark muscovado sugar)
50ml walnut oil
1 tsp mixed spice
3 medium eggs
325g wholemeal bread flour
1 and 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Demerara / natural sugar crystals ( I used sesame seeds)

Method
1.  Line the base and sides of a large , deep, 19cm loaf tin with non-stick paper, non stick paper on a large tin loaf.  Pre-heat oven to 180C (160C fan assisted)/ 350F/gas mark 4.

2.  Mash bananas with lemon juice until smooth.  Stir in walnuts and set aside.

3.  In a saucepan, melt butter gently, transfer to a bowl and mix well with sugar, oil and spice.  Add eggs one at a time, beating it well each until all evenly combined.

4.  Sift wholemeal bread flour and soda into a bowl ( bran is used as well here).  Beat half sifted flour into egg mixture, fold in the bananas and walnut mixture.  Now fold in the remaining flour gently.

5.  Pour into the lined pan.  Smooth the top, sprinkle some demerara sugar over the top.

6.  Bake for 60-70 minutes,  insert a skewer and see that it comes out clean.

Matcha Cranberry Mantou

As far as I know, matcha always go well with red bean.  I was kind of lazy to make sweetened red beans for these mantou , so I decided to try cramberries instead. It worked well too.

Coffee Peanut Sesame Mantou

                                                 Another experiment of mine here..

Never fail Lo Bak Go

Beside this recipe, I have tried and tasted many different Lo Bak Go recipes over the months, I should say this is the best so far and it is just as good as the one in Yum Cha Place.  Good to keep this.

Pandan Steamed Cake ( Fagao)

                 Attractive sharp green fagao.
                 The texture is soft, fluffy and moist....

           Recipe from: Nasilemaklover ( slight alteration)
       Ingredients:
       250g self-raising flour
       1 tsp baking powder
       150g castor sugar
       1 large egg (beaten)
       200ml pandan juice
       45g corn oil

     Method
     1.  Mix flour and baking powder, set aside.

     2.  In a bowl, whisk in sugar and pandan juice until sugar well dissolved.

     3.  Stir in egg well, add in oil.  Gradually add in flour mixture and stir until well combined without lumps.

     4.  Pour batter into cupcake mould, steam at rapidly boiling water for 20 minutes.

Red Rice Yeast Walnut Mantou

I baked red yeast walnut bread and red yeast buns quite a while ago,  adding red yeast is also what I intended to do with the mantou here.  With this experiment, I added extra red yeast powder to bring out deeper red tone.  Love the texture and the look.

Pandan Kuih Bakar (Malay Kuih)

Kuih Bakar is a Malay cake, the texture is quite similar to custard but less sweet.  Pandan (screwpine juice) aroma is really beautiful!



     Recipe from: Kitchen Snippets
    Ingredients
   1 and 1/4 cups of sugar
   2 cups flour
   1 cup Pandan juice ( 6 pandan leaves + 1 cup water- blended)
   2 and 1/4 cup coconut milk
   4 large eggs
   2 tbsp melted butter
   1 tsp Pandan paste
   A few drops of green coloring
   1 tbsp sesame seeds (optional)

I had extra sesame all over..

     Methods: ( I used 9" cake tin)
     1.  Pre-heat 325F, get ready a greased pan.

     2.  Mix all ingredients  until well combined (except sesame seeds).

     3.  Pour batter into pan, sprinkle with sesame seeds, bake until it turns golden brown for an hour. Insert s skewer, if it comes out clean, it's done.

    4.  Let it cool on wire rack and sliced to serve.

Fagao is another kind of green steamed bun I made on the same night here...

Ogura Green Tea Cake

                      Super moist, light, as soft as cotton... plus, it's quite healthy cake too.
                      I find it especially good to eat after chilled.

It's done..,
 ready to be flipped over to cool.

Recipe:  Food@HomeSweetHome
Ingredients (A)
Corn oil  65g
Milk  80ml
1/4 tsp salt
 6 egg yolks
1 egg
65g Superfine flour

2 tsp matcha powder + 1 tbsp hot water




Ingredients (B)
6 egg whites

Inverted back to the right side ,
 ready to be sliced.

75g castor sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar ( I used l tsp lemon juice)

     For (A)
     1.  Beat egg yolks, whole egg, corn oil, milk and salt until foamy.

     2.  Mix in flour and matcha mixture slowly until well combined.  Set aside.




      For (B) (slight alteration)
     1.  Beat whites until foamy, add in cream of tartar and sugar, continue beating until it reaches JUST stiff peak.

     2.  Take 1/3 portion of whites into green tea batter and mix to lighten the texture.  Continue and fold in the remaining whites in two more batches until all is done.

     3.  Pour into a 9" cake tin,  bake at pre-heated oven 170C for 45 mins.  Place a tray with hot water at the bottom rack of the oven.  By creating steam in the oven helps preventing cake from cracking or drying up.

    4.   Insert a skewer see that it comes out clean.  It's done.

    5.   Invert cake to cool completely before serving.

1.    

Purple sweet potato wholemeal bread ( black rice and black sesame)

This is my own experiment, tested and tasted.  Soft, fluffy, moist for days, beautiful aroma of black rice.

    Ingredients   
    2 cups plain flour
    1 cup wholemeal flour
    1 cup warm water ( can be reduced a little, due to the sweet potato containing water too  but, I had it all).
    Instant dry yeast  1 tsp
    2 tbsp honey
    1 tsp salt
    150g purple sweet potato ( cooked, peeled and mashed)
    100g black rice (cooked)
    1 tbsp oil
    Black sesame for decoration (toppings)


    Note: dough is quite wet and sticky, it is OK. Just make sure you have oiled hands, working surface and spatula to help you managing dough easily.  You do not need extra flour here.

nutricious black rice...

very soft and moist texture..

      Method
      1.  Prepare sponge.  Yeast,  honey and warm water well mixed and dissolved. Cover and leave for 5 to 10 minutes.  When it turns frothy, it's really to be used.

      2.  Add yeast mixture into the flours with salt and give it a stir.  Next, add in sweet potato, black rice and eventually oil to bring everything come together into a dough.  Cover and leave for 10 minutes.

      3.  Light knead and fold for 10 seconds (8 yo 10 times).  Cover and leave for 10 minutes. Do twice more for the 10 minute intervals.  Cover and leave it to rise for an hour or, until the size is doubled.

      4.  Deflate the air bubbles, roll dough into a ball shape.  Cover and leave gluten to rest for 10 minutes.

      5.  Divide and shape into buns, rolls, loaf..whatever. Lay them onto the pan,  cover and let it rise for about an hour or until the size is doubled.

      6.  Egg wash the top so your black sesame can stick onto to it nicely :

      7. Bake in pre-heated oven of 170C for about 20 minutes or until it turns golden brown ( insert a skewer to the deep centre part of the bun, if it comes out clean, it's done).

I shaped it too long :) 

Simple pumpkin and egg cake

             This is a simple yummy cake, so similar to the ones that I used to buy from the Asian grocery shops.

fluffy..

Recipe: Butter, flour and me

light and moist..

Ingredients: (  6 inch cake tin)-- I used a small loaf tin
Egg yolks  ( you need 3 )
Pumpkin mash  60g
Corn oil  50g
Cake flour  65g (sifted)
Cornmeal / Polenta / Maize flour  5g (sifted)
Egg whites  ( you need 3)
Castor sugar  65g












Method
1.   In a large bowl, mix egg yolks and pumpkin mash well.  Add in oil and mix.  Gradually add in  cake flour and cornmeal and mix well.  Set aside.

2.  In another clean bowl, beat whites ( I added one tsp lemon juice) in  a few batches until it reaches stiff peak.

3.  Take a small portion of beaten whites to add in the yellow batter, to lighten the texture.

4.  Pour all yellow batter into the white batter.  Fold gently.

6.  Bake in pre-heated oven 35 -40 minutes. Invert the cake tin immediately, serve after it is completely cooled.

 

Matcha ice cream

          I love the green.... so green and strong flavour of..... matcha!
          Yes, tasted really really good.

Kuih Talam 1

The next time when I make this again, I would wrap the cake tin with aluminian foil to avoid the water condensation on the white layer which had happened here.  Anyway, it was delicious, definitely a good recipe.

Go for smaller and daimond shape cut, mine is way too big slice!

     Recipe:  Amy Beh (Star online)
   Ingredients
   (A) Bottom green layer
   70g rice flour
   30g green bean flour
   280ml water


   (B)
    6 pandan leaves cut into 3 cm pieces
    250ml water
    A few drops of green colouring
    250g sugar (reduced to 220g)
    1/2 tsp alkaline water


     For top white layer
     (C)
      50g rice flour
      1 and 1/2 tbs green bean flour
      75ml water
      1/2 tsp salt
      225ml pati santan from 1 coconut

Bottom layer ready to get steamed

    Method
    1.  Mix (A) and let it soak for 10 to 15 minutes.  Blend (B) to strain out the pandan juice.  Mix the pandan juice with (A).  Add sugar and colouring.

    2.  On low heat, cook and stir batter constantly until it become fairly thick and transclucent.

    3.  Pour the hot sticky batter into a greased 20cm cake tin.  Smoothen and level with a plastic spatula.  Steam over rapidly boiling water for 20 to 30 minutes.

    4.  To prepare the white layer, mix ingredients (C) together and soak for 10 minutes.  Pour the topping layer over the cooked green layer.  Steam for about 10 minutes.  Cool the kuih completely and serve.

Improved Kuih Talam click here

Black rice walnut mantou ( steamed bun)

Using my bread experience, I started to try out more varieties of mantou making here. Previously, I have made quite some rice bread with nuts and thought it should be just good for mantou as well.
It did turn out satisfactory here and I enjoyed it.

Purple sweet potato ondeh ondeh ( Malaysian kuih)

These are really good, you just keep eating it non stop..

Texture is perfect, once a bite it burst out the aromatic sweet gula melaka....

  Recipe: Jessie Cooking Moments
 Ingredients
 150g mashed purple sweet potato
 150g glutinous rice flour
 125g icy cold water
 12g castor sugar


  Filling
  100g palm sugar ( Gula Melaka)


  Coating
  100g shredded coconut
  1/4 tsp salt
  1 pandan leaf, tied with a knot

Weigh them 15g each, that's the best purple sweet potato I can get here in Australia, it's kind of pale purple...

Using your thumb and fingers...go around the edges to even out the dough

Now fill in the palm sugar , seal and roll into a ball shape.

It's really good..

    Method

    1.  Fill a bowl with room temperature water. Freeze it for 30 minutes for further use.

    2.  Chop gula melaka and blend into fine crunb.

    3.  Mix coconut with salt and get it steamed with pandan leaf until soft.

    4.  Mix flour and sweet potato together with 50ml water. As you knead,  you gradually add in a little water at a time ( 15ml each time) and this will then help to eventually bind everything together.  The dough should not be too sticky or wet.

    5.  Weigh and divide dough into 15g each. Cover them with a wet cloth to prevent them from getting dried up.

    6.  Once the hot boiling water is ready, place some ondeh ondeh in and let it cook. When it's ready, they should float up to the surface of water.  Transfer them to the prepared cold water.

    7. Coat them onto the coconut and ready to be served then.

    Note: I did not use up all dessicated coconut and I used the fine dessicated coconut instead of grated type.

Enjoy...

Steamed Maize buns ( mantou)

I like to bake with polenta / cornmeal / maize, it  gives a beautiful fragrance and brings a bright yellow colour to the buns.

Pumpkin dumplings (tangyuan) with Purple Yam

        I never knew homemade dumplings ( tangyuan) could taste so good, way better than the ones I always get from the Asian grocery shops here!  It is actually very easy to make, takes a few short minutes and it's done!

        I believe the pumpkin mash does a lot of good, bringing a wonderful chewy texture, I shall try the  sweet potato mash next time.  What a good dessert....

Tapioca Pandan Coconut layered cake ( Malaysian Kuih)

     This is a very good recipe,  easy to follow, tasted really good.  Everyone at home loves it and finished it in no time!

    Recipe from: Star Online
  Ingredients
  (A)
  45g rice flour
  110g tapioca flour
  115g castor sugar
  100ml pandan juice
  200ml coconut milk
  100ml water
  A pinch of salt



  (B)
  45g rice flour
  110g tapioca flour
  115g castor sugar
  200ml coconut milk
  Pandan juice (blend 6-7 pandan leaves with 150ml water, strained)
  1 tsp pandan essence

   Method
  1.  Mix (A) well in a large bowl.  Mix (B) well in another bowl.

  2.  Set up steamer. Grease prepared tin and pre-heat in the steamer.

  3. Pour 140g mixture (A) into the tin. Cover and steam 2-3 minutes until it thickens.

  4. Pour in the same amount for (B) mixture and steam for 2 to 3 minutes.  Repeat procedure.  Pour final layer and cook at least 15 minutes.  Final layer should be green.

  5. Cool for 7-8 hours before slicing.