It is Isabel’s birthday today. She asked me to bake this Strawberry Mousse Delight for her. I promised her, without realizing how complicated to make this cake! So this is a challenge to my cake baking. I really enjoyed baking this although it took me so much of time. A success I would say.

INGREDIENTS
For Side Cake
5 egg yolks
50g caster sugar
100g plain flour
25g corn flour
5 egg whites + 50g caster sugar
2 tbsp cocoa powder

For Chiffon Cake
250g chiffon cake mix
4 whole eggs
25ml water
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
50ml corn oil

For Strawberry Mousse
350g strawberry puree
Syrup (100g caster sugar melt in 150ml warm water)
1/2 tsp strawberry essence
30g gelatin powder melt in 100ml water
400ml UHT whipping cream

For Topping
(Original recipe calls for strawberry deco powder, but I substitute with grated strawberry choc.)
A bar of strawberry chocolate (pink)
Some fresh fruits for decoration

METHOD
1. Cake’s side panel:
(a) Preheat oven at 180C.
(b) Line and grease a long rectangle baking tray.
(c) Whisk egg yolk and 50g sugar at high speed until light and fluffy. Set aside.
(d) In a separate bowl, whisk egg white and sugar until stiff.
(e) Fold into egg yolk mixture. Lightly fold in flours.
(f) Divide batter into two. Add cocoa powder into one portion.
(g) Place the batter into 2 piping bags.
(h) Pipe out the 2 batters diagonally in alternate colour onto baking tray (pic). Bake for 10 min.

(i) When cooled, cut into 2″ strips.
(j) Line the ‘zebra’ strips around the inside of a 9″ round loose-base cake-tin.

2. Chiffon Cake:
(a) Whisk at high speed: chiffon cake mix, eggs and water for about 3-5 min.
(b) Add in vanilla essence and oil. Mix well.
(c) Bake in a lined 9″ cake tin (non-loose base) for about 30-35 min.
(d) After cake is cooled, slice into 3 layers, cut away the sides.

3. Mousse: Mix together strawberry puree, sugar syrup, strawberry essence and gelatin. In another bowl, whip up the UHT cream and add in the strawberry mixture. Mix well.

4. To assemble:
(a) Place a slice of chiffon cake on the base of the 9″ loose-base cake tin (lined with the zebra strips around the sides).
(b) Top with 1/3 of the strawberry mousse.
(c) Top with 2nd slice of chiffon cake, and a layer of 1/3 strawberry mousse.
(d) Repeat with the 3rd slice of cake and finally the balance of mousse on top.
(e) Chill for 4 hours or overnight till set.
(f) Remove from cake tin and sprinkle with grated pink chocolate on top. Garnish with some fresh fruits.

Note: For strawberry puree, I just blend 350g of fresh strawberry instead of buying any canned type, therefore the colour is not as red as those in the recipe books.

This is my 2nd attempt trying to bake a marble cake. It turn out very nice, quite similar to what we bought from stores. But I don’t think I will bake again, coz I notice that my children only want the choc part –> THEY DIG the dark ones to eat only!!! I better bake a choc cake instead.

Anyway, here is the recipe for Marble Cake. Very easy to make.

INGREDIENTS
4 eggs
250g butter
250g self raising flour
150g castor sugar (can adjust if you prefer sweeter, I want less sweet, so this is just right for us)
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla essence
3 tbsp cocoa powder

METHOD
1. Line a 9″ cake tin and preheat oven to 180C.
2. Mix cocoa powder with half of the milk and set aside.
3. Cream butter and sugar at high speed until fluffy (like turned whitish).
4. Fold in flour and eggs a bit at a time, alternatively.
5. Separate 1/3 of the mixture in another bowl.
6. Add cocoa milk mixture into the 1/3 portion, mix well.
7. Add the rest of the milk and vanilla essence into the 2/3 portion, mix well.
8. Pout the 2 parts into cake tin alternatively. Swirl with a chopstick to form marble pattern.
9. Bake at 180C for 45min or until cook (skewer goes in and comes out clean).

Do you experience difficulties to let your children eat vegetables? I always have that problem, especially with carrots. So I figured out that if I grate the carrots finely and mix into my dishes, my kids won’t realize they eat so much of it, and the dishes taste sweet as well.

Here is how I integrate grated carrot into this delicious porridge.

INGREDIENTS
1 carrot
1 corn
1 pack of pre-prepared fish paste, or just use fish balls/fillets
5 dried oysters
1 cup of rice
4-6 cups of water

METHOD
1. Grate carrot finely

2. Chop corn into 3 segments.
3. Bring a pot of water with rice to the boil.
4. Add in all other ingredients and cook in low heat for 30-45 min until rice expanded and porridge turn fine. Serve hot.

I baked this cake some time ago, and Ian loved it. This is an 8″ cake, and he alone ate almost one-third of it!! He wanted more, but I have already distributed the rest to SIL and MIL, who love cheesecakes as well. Anyhow, I told him that I would not make this again, coz it is not that easy. Maybe till I got absolutely nothing better to do!

First of all, you need to prepare the sponge cake for the base. Refer to Sponge Cake recipe, if you do not have one.

BASE
1 slice of 8″ sponge cake

CHEESECAKE INGREDIENT
(A)
400g fresh milk
250g cream cheese
60g plain flour, sieved

(B)
5 egg yolks
1 tsp lemon juice

(C)
5 egg white
100g caster sugar

METHOD
1. Line an 8″ cake tin. Put in a slice of 8″ sponge cake.
2. Preheat oven at 180C.
3. Double-boil fresh milk and cream cheese until melted. Add in flour and stir well until mixture thicken. Leave cool.
4. When (3) is cool, add B and mix well.
5. In a clean bowl, whisk C at high speed until soft peak is formed. Add this to (4).
6. Strain the mixture (I hate this process, but if you don’t do, the cake is rough) onto the sponge cake in the cake tin.
7. Steam bake the cake at 180C for 20 min. Reduce to 140C and continue baking for another 1 hour 45 min or until cooked.
8. Turn off the oven, leave the cake to cool inside with door ajar for 1 hour. Chill in the fridge for 4 hours before serving.

Here is an important recipe for light cheesecakes. For most of the light cheesecakes, you need either biscuit crust or sponge cake as the cake base. I normally bake one vanilla sponge cake and one chocolate sponge cake, keep in the freezer. Just remove the cake from freezer an hour before baking, and you are ready to bake any light cheesecakes!

VANILLA SPONGE CAKE RECIPE
Ingredients
4 eggs
80g plain flour, sieved
3/4 tbsp cake emulsifier (SUPER SPONGE, yellow color)
2 tbsp water
60g caster sugar
50ml vegetable oil

Method
1. Preheat oven to 180C. Line an 8″ round cake tin.
2. Whist all ingredients except oil, at high speed until fluffy.
3. Add in oil and stir well at low speed.
4. Pour the batter into cake tin and bake at 180C for 25-30 min or until cooked.
5. Remove cake and leave to cool. When the cake is cool, slice into 3 layers.
__________

CHOCOLATE SPONGE CAKE
Ingredients
All of the above vanilla sponge cake recipe, PLUS:
1 tbsp cocoa powder dissolved in 3 tbsp water

Method
Same as above, except that the cocoa mixture is added together with the vegetable oil.

My children love Marmite cooked dishes very much. Every time when we go out for meals, if we order rice with Marmite Fish Fillet, both Ian and Isabel would fight for the same dish. Ian would finish very fast, and all by himself.

So, I tried to cook the same dish, and found a few variations of the recipe. Here is one of the many variations, which I quite like.

INGREDIENTS
Fish
2 large pcs of Garoupa fish fillets
Some tapioca flour
Some cooking oil

Marmite Sauce
1 pip of garlic, crushed and finely chopped
2 tbsp Marmite yeast extract
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp honey
Dash of pepper
1/2 cup or 100ml of water

METHOD
1. Dry the fish fillets with cloth before cutting the fish fillets into thin slices.
2. Add some tapioca to coat the fish fillets.
3. Heat some oil in wok.
4. Just before frying the fish, coat the fish (already coated with tapioca flour) with some oil, and immediately drop into the wok. This way, the fish will be nicely fried.
5. Fry the fish till it turn golden yellow. Drain and put aside.
6. Remove excessive oil, reserve only about a tbsp for sauce.
7. Heat the oil, add in garlic and fry till fragrant.
8. Add in sugar, Marmite and honey. Stir fry for a while. Add in pepper.
9. Lastly, add in water and simmer a while, before adding the fish fillet earlier. Stir fry to well coat the fish with the sauce. Serve hot.

Similar to frying the broccoli, frying asparagus is also very simple. I read that roasting can bring up the aroma even better, and I might try next time.

Anyhow, here is my stir fry asparagus. Children don’t really like this dish because it is harder to chew compared to soft veggie like spinach.

Ingredients
1 bunch of asparagus
4-5 pcs of fuchuk/beancurd
1 tsp of finely chopped garlic

Method
1. Wash asparagus and bend them into approx 2″ sections.
2. If asparagus is big, you might need to peel off the hard outer skins near the root, or would be too rough to chew.
3. Cut fuchuk into halves.
4. Heat oil in wok. Add garlic and stir fry till fragrant.
5. Add in the remaining ingredients. Stir fry for a while.
6. Add in 1 cup of water and simmer with cover for a few minutes.
7. Remove the cover, add in seasoning and fry a few times before serving.

One seasoning that I like for vegetarian dish is the Vegetarian G Powder (素G粉). It is made of soy bean, and tastes better than ajinomoto. Using this makes dishes tastes better than salt!!

Whenever I boil soup using lotus roots, I normally don’t eat it and it is really a waste. I found this cold dish recipe, fully utilizing the ingredients in soup.

When I made this Lotus Root and Mushrooms Soup, when the soup was ready, I removed the cooked lotus root and made it into this delicious cold dish:

My mom came for dinner that night and she was surprised by the aroma and tastiness of the cold dish (she never liked lotus root and turning it into a dish is something that she hates).

Ingredients
About 500g cooked lotus roots from soup
2 slices ginger
1 tbsp fish sauce
3 tbsp vinegar (I prefer apple cider vinegar)
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp sesame oil

Method
1. Slice ginger into shreds, set aside.
2. Cut lotus roots into thin slices. Rinse in cold boiled water and drain.
3. Mix all ingredients together. Serve.

Note: It would be nicer if you can add in 2 red chillies, diced. I don’t do that because my 2 little children can’t take it.

I love drinking soup. But because I don’t eat meat/chicken any more, MIL/Mother stopped making soup. Or, if they make soup using pork/chicken, I can’t drink.

Finally, after moving to my own house, I started cooking and I found this recipe in MPH, that gives many creative ideas to make Vegetarian Chinese Soups. You just won’t believe how yummy they are, even without meat!!

Here is Zhu Sheng, Lotus Roots and Dried Black Mushrooms Soup/ 竹笙莲藕冬菇汤. ZhuSheng is a type of mushroom, I heard it grows around bamboo area. It looks and tastes like fishmaw.

Ingredients
1oz Zhu Sheng (1/3 pack)
8 dried shitake mushrooms
600g lotus roots (roughly 1 large, or 3 small)
100g red kidney beans or peanuts
1/4 dried tangerine peel

Method
1. Soak and wash ZhuSheng until soft and does not smell acidic. Scald, rinse and drain it.
2. Soak dried mushrooms until soft. Rinse and drain.
3. Wash lotus roots, remove skin and cut into large pieces.
4. Wash beans/peanuts and soak for 1-2 hours.
5. Soak dried tangerine peel until soft and remove pith.
6. Boil 1.5L water together with tangerine peel.
7. Add all other ingredients and bring to boil again. Reduce to low heat and cook for 2 hours.
8. If you prefer, season with salt (I prefer without).

Will cover in next post, how to turn the lotus root in this soup into another dish. Yes, turned it into a very yummy appetizer!!

:p I think everyone know how to fry broccoli, so this post is like… err… stating the obvious! But then, I still remember when I first fried broccoli many years ago, I really didn’t know how to handle it! :p

This dish is actually ‘vegetarian’ broccoli. Usually people use prawns or beef/pork fillets to add sweetness, but because I don’t eat these, I added other stuff instead.

Ingredients
1 broccoli
1/2 carrot
1/2 can of button mushrooms
4-5 pcs of fried fuchuk (beancurd)
1 cup of water

Method
1. Wash and cut broccoli into bite sizes.
2. Remove carrot’s skin and slice it.
3. Wash and rinse mushrooms, slice it.
4. Tear fuchuk into halves.
5. Heat oil in wok. Add all ingredients when wok is hot enough.
6. Stir fry for a while. Add in 1 cup of water. Cover wok and simmer for a few minutes.
7. Uncover, stir fry a few times and serve hot.