After tasting the Cheesecake Factory’s Original Cheesecake, I was really amazed such a simple plain cheesecake could be so yummy. This time I decided to experiment making a cheesecake with one of my favorite liqueur, the Grand Marnier. Something tells me the tinge of orange essense may go very well with the cheese. It wasn’t bad at all!

Ingredients:

• 10″ ready-made Graham Pie Crust
• 8 ounce cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup sour cream
• 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
• 5/8 cup white sugar
• 1 tbl cornstarch
• 2 tbl Grand Marnier liqueur
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 eggs

Making:

1. Bring all the ingredients to room temperature. Pre-heat the oven at 325F.
2. In a large bowl, beat cream cheese and butter until smooth.
3. Mix in the sugar, cornstarch, sour cream and whipping cream. Mix them thoroughly.
4. Add the Grand Marnier and the vanilla extract.
5. Stir in the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly between each addition.
6. Pour the mixture into the Graham Pie Crust.
7. Bake in the oven for 50 minutes at 325F.
8. Turn off the oven and allow to cool with the oven door open for one hour. Then chill the cake for at least 3 hours before serving.

Kudos to Cocoa for this really authentic recipe of the carrot cake! Once in a while, we get cravings for carrot cake when we least expect it. Now we can finally deal with it! Here’s our white version of this famous Singaporean “hawker centre” food.

This recipe makes 4 servings.

Ingredients:

• 300g of rice flour
• 1 litre of water
• 1 radish
• 1/2 lb of pickled radish (”cai poh”)
• Finely chopped garlic (6-8 cloves)
• Sweet soy sauce (black) or Fish sauce (white)
• Oil
• Eggs
• Chilli (optional)
• Spring onions as garnish (optional)

Making:

Preparing the caipoh in advance

1. Soak caipoh in water for 30 min to reduce the saltiness.
2. Rinse it dry and chopped it finely.
3. Heat a wok with oil, abt 2 tbs or more, fry the caipoh and garlics on medium heat for abt 10 min. Add 1 tsp sugar to it and continue frying for another 5 min. Remove and set aside.

Preparing the cake

1. Shred the radish, place it in a pot together with water and rice flour and mix it thoroughly. Add 2 tsp salt to it.
2. Boil the mixture under medium small fire until the mixture becomes sticky.
3. Transfer to a heatproof plate, steam it for 30 min. (I use two 9-inch metal plates and steam in 2 batches)
4. Remove from steamer and let cool for up to a few hours.

Important: Put the cake in the fridge for at least 6 hours.

When Ready to eat

1. Cut the cake into big pieces.
2. Heat 3 to 4 tbs oil, throw in the cake and pan-fry until just brown. Use high heat for frying so the cake doesn’t stick to the wok.
3. Add caipoh (for each serving plate I uses 1 tbs of caipoh)
4. Fry for a few seconds and then using the frying ladle, chop the cake into smaller pieces. Then pour in the beaten egg.
5. For black carrot cake, add sweet soy sauce. For white, add a few dash of fish sauce, and finally the chilli paste.
6. Serve with spring onion on top of fried carrot cake.

My family used to prepare this dish whenever we had huge gatherings, and I simply love this. Thanks to my mum, I got hold of the recipe and prepared this with mm. Heh- the original title of this post is “Prawn Balls”. How boring is that! So mm racked a little of her brain and came up with this… 金裹银球. Pretty cool har?

Ingredients:

• 10 quail eggs
• Bread crumbs
• Minced garlic (1 clove)
• 1/2 lb of shrimp
• 2 pinches of corn starch
• 2 pinches of salt
• 1 pinch of pepper

Making:

1. Mince the shrimp into a paste.
2. Add salt, pepper, corn starch and the minced garlic into the paste. Mix well. Set this aside.
3. Boil the quail eggs for about 10 minutes. Peel off the shells.
4. Wrap each egg with the shrimp paste, and shape it into a ball. There should be at least 1/4-inch-thick paste covering each egg.
5. Roll each ball over the bread crumbs.
6. Once all the balls are done, deep-fry all of them in high heat for 7 minutes (or till they turned golden brown).

After making countless 饺子, mm and I concluded that it was about time we ‘leveled up’. Lets try making 包 for a change.

Our tools and ingredients…

Hah- At least a few of them look decent!

Ready to be steamed…

The finished product fresh from the steamer…

I love making mushrooms, ‘coz you can never go wrong with them. This is one of the few ways I deal with portabellas, though I don’t quite like this baked this way. Room for improvement…

Ingredients:

• 3 whole portabella mushrooms
• Minced garlic (2 cloves)
• 3 tbsp of butter
• 1 tsp of salt
• 2 tsp of olive oil
• 2 pinches of thymes
• 1 pinch of oregano
• 3 slices of lemon

Making:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350F.
2. Clean the mushrooms with a damp cloth.
3. Remove the stems and mince them up.
4. Melt 1 tbsp of butter. Marinate the mushrooms with the melted butter and 1 tsp of salt.
5. Heat up 2 tsp of olive oil in a pan. Melt 2 tbsp of butter in the oil. The olive oil helps prevent the butter from getting too burnt too quickly.
6. Mix in the minced garlic and mushroom stems. Add the thymes and oregano leaves. Fry this mixture till it turns golden brown. Set this mixture aside.
7. After marinating the mushrooms for about 10 minutes, coat the mushrooms with the mixture.
8. Put the mushrooms on a baking tray (face up - to keep the juices in). Place a slice of lemon on each mushroom.
9. Bake the mushrooms for 12 minutes at 350F.

I really dig the common steamed egg custard (canto: swee-dan), so when I first tasted Chawan-mushi in a Japanese “conveyor-belt” restaurant, it tasted like heaven. After a number of trial and error, I managed to recreate this dish in my kitchen. Here’s my version:

Ingredients:

• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp Honshi Dashi stock powder
• 2 cups of warm water
• Fillings - shrimps, ikan bilis and mushrooms

Making:

1. Prepare 2 small serving cups, preferably with lids.
2. Break the eggs in a large bowl. Strain the eggs for a better texture.
3. Prepare the Dashi stock by mixing the warm water with the stock powder. Make sure the water is warm so that the stock powder can dissolve.
4. Mix the Dashi stock with the eggs. Stir well to create the egg mixture. The ratio of Dashi stock to the beaten eggs should be about 2 to 1.
5. Divide the fillings and egg mixture evenly in the cups.
6. Steam for 8 min in high heat. Lift the cover of the steamer every 2 minutes so that the top of the chawan-mushi doesn’t get overcooked.