Gula Melaka Pak Tong Gou

Have a bag of rice flour lying around and not sure what to do. Google up for idea and got tempted to try this.

Ingredients:
Syrup:

• 100g gula melaka
• 100g white sugar
• 375ml water
• 1 pandan leaf

(A)

• 125ml lukewarm water
• 1tsp instant yeast

(B)

• 300g rice flour
• 250ml water

Steps

1. In a saucepan, heat up the 375ml water with the sugar and panda leaf till the sugar is well dissolved and the mixture is a little boiling. Remove from heat and let it cool.
2. Mix the ingredients in group A in a bowl. Let the yeast bubble up.
3. Mix ingredients B in a mixing bowl till it is well mixed. Then slowly stir in the hot syrup mixture to slightly cook the rice flour.
4. Once the mixture get to luke warm temperature, mix in ingredients A and stir till even. Leave it to proof for about 1.5hrs.
5. Pour the mixture onto a greased pan.
6. Boil a pot of water. Once boiled, lower the temperature to just let the water slightly bubbly. Steam the mixture for 15-20mins till the cake cracks at the top. 
7. Leave it to cool before cutting to avoid it from being sticky.

40mins Bun

Just realised that I forgot to post this easy quick yet yummy bun. But please remember to store in the fridge as I forgot and it spoil after 2 days though the bun is still soft and nice.

Ingredients:
Filling:

• 3 potatoes
• 2 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 tsp of turmeric powder
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin powder
• salt to season
• 1 tablespoon of minced garlic
• a tbsp oil

Dough:

• 270g warm water
• 70g oil (I used peanut oil)
• 10g instant dry yeast
• 48g sugar
• 1/5 teaspoon salt (7g)
• 1 egg
• 300g self raising flour
• 245g plain flour
• lots of oil to work on the dough
• egg wash n sesame seed

Steps:

1. Peeled and cut the potatoes to small cube. Boiled in the boiling water for 5mins.
2. Heat up the oil and saute the garlic. Once it smells nice, add in the curry powder and turmeric powder and fry till it smells nice. Add in the potatoes. Cook for about 2mins and then season with the cumin powder and salt. 
3. Leave it aside to cool.
4. Add in warm water, yeast and sugar in the mixing bowl. Leave it to proof for about 5-10mins.
5. Once the yeast has bubbled, add in the rest of the ingredients and mix it with the mixer using the dough hook. Otherwise use hand to knead the mixture till it forms a nice soft and smooth dough.
6. Divide it to 12 pieces and form a ball. Flatten and filled up with the fillings.
7. Preheat the oven at 220c.
8. Leave the bun to rest for 10mins. Finally, brush the bun with egg wash and sprinkle the top with some sesame seeds.
9. Bake for 12-15mins.

Profiteroles

A friend in FB had just recently posted her profiteroles and always seeing it in the cooking competition tempted me into trying this out. So, I had cooked some cream custard earlier to pipe into the pastry and now the choux pastry itself.

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup (80ml) water
• 40g cubed butter, room temperature
• 50 (1/3 cup) plain flour
• 2 eggs room temperature (I used 600g, L size)
• some oil to grease (I used silicone mat and the oiled paper, no need to grease)
• custard cream to fill the puff

Steps:

1. Put the water and butter in the saucepan and heat it up. Constantly stirring it till the butter melts and the mixture is about to boil.
2. Remove from heat and add in the flour and stir till well combined. Place it back to the heat (low) and continuously stir for another min or two till the mixture forms a ball and does not stick to the side of the saucepan.
3. Set it aside to cool. Meantime, whisk both the eggs separately (two different bowl). Add one of the eggs into the mixture and stir till well combined and gradually add a bit more from the other bowl. The mixture has to be a little liquid like, but still able to hold its shape. So if it is still quite stiff, add a little more of the egg.
4. Preheat the oven at 200C and lined the baking tray.
5. Filled up the pipping bag with the mixture.
6. If you like it bigger (it does not grow a lot bigger) pipe roughly the amount of 1.5 tablespoon amount of the mixture and give a gap of roughly 3cm apart.
7. Brush the top with remaining egg and bake for 15mins or until it is puffed and golden.
8. Once puffed and golden, turn off the oven, remove the tray. Using a skewer, poke a hole at the top (the recipe asked for bottom, but I find that poking it at the top makes it easier to pipe the custard cream in later).
9. Return the profiteroles into the oven (turned off) to dry for roughly 15mins.
10. Take the out and transfer to a wire rack to cool. Once done, you can pipe in the cream.
11. I kept mine in the fridge so that it won't get soggy.

Hot Cross Bun

Easter round the corner and the supermarkets are all selling hot cross bun. But the one we bought last year tasted super terrible and since I have some custard cream in the fridge, (leftover from the profiteroles), so I decided to churned some out today.

And recently a friend just posted her hot cross bun that looks so good, I got even more tempted. She told me she used the 5c method and there after some online "research" (the marvel of computer), it is also known as the cold batter or overnight poolish. Ok, here is the recipe for the hot cross bun using home made custard cream.

Ingredients:
For the cold batter or overnight poolish:

• 150g bread flour
• 150g luke warm water
• 0.5g (1/8 teaspoon) instant yeast

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. According to the recipe, leave it to proof for an hour before sending it to sleep in the fridge. However the itchy me, just prepare that at 10.30pm and got no time to wait, so I  leave the bowl in a big pot of water, heat up the pot for 2 mins (if you are using gas and not electric cook top, should be just 1min or less. Please remember NOT double boil method, put a rack to create steam effect instead. The direct heat may affect the batter.

Next take out the bowl of batter and leave it to cool (should just take less than a min). Cover up the bowl and send it to camp in the fridge over night (or at least 5hr).

Main dough:

• 250g bread flour
• 100g plain flour
• 50g caster sugar
• 1 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 tsp instant yeast
• 1 egg lightly beaten (I used 600g type)
• 30g cold milk
• 50g hot water
• 50g room temperature butter, cut to small pieces/cube
• some milk to brush
• custard cream to pipe on top

Steps:

1. Mix all the dry ingredients in the mixer bowl (or the bowl u going to use to knead with your hand or the bread maker mixing bowl). Give it a stir to mix the ingredients evenly.
2. Next add in all the wet ingredients (excluding butter) including the cold batter. Knead till the mixture forms a nice springy dough. It took me bout 2mins with my machine on high speed.
3. Next knead in the butter (if using machine half by half and if using hand little by little). If you are using hand, it may takes up to 20mins of good hand exercise before the butter is well incorporated into the dough. My machine got it done in bout 40seconds (speed 6).
4. Cover up the dough and let it rest for at least an hour or till when u give it a push with your thumb and the dough does not bounced back.
5. Cut it up to size equal pieces (mine is 99g each, very precise), formed round dough and placed on the baking pan that is greased with a little oil slightly apart.
6. While resting the dough, preheat the oven at 190C. 
7. After resting for 10mins, brush some milk on top of the bread, and use a butter knife to cut the cross on the bread. Pipe the custard cream on top.
8. Finally, bake for 13-15mins at 190C.

Home Made Custard Cream

Seeing a friend posted profiteroles and those contestant in the cooking competition preparing it, felt like trying it out on my own. But, wait, I need some custard cream and I know we can do that at home without using the custard powder.

So, started my googling and did a little adjustment to meet what I have in the kitchen.

Ingredients

• 1.5 cups hilo milk
• 0.5 cups of light thicken cream
• 3 egg yolks
• 3/4 cup sugar (need to reduce this, I find it too sweet)
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tbsp flour

Steps:

1. First, mix the milk and cream together in a saucepan. Put it on high fire and leave it to simmer till it starts to bubble, lower the fire to as low as possible. I'm using the electric cooktop and I remove the entire saucepan from the heat.
2. Mix the egg yolks with sugar, vanilla extract, salt, cornstarch and flour till even.
3. Slowly pour the egg mixture into the milk mixture (at this point, I had return the milk mixture to the cooktop, but did not turn on the power yet.
4. Make sure you continuously stir the mixture so that the egg does not curdle up and ended up with cooked yolk rather than custard.
5. Once both the mixture are evenly mix together, turn on the fire up high for half a min while constantly stirring the mixture. Once thicken, quickly remove from heat and still stirring it to ensure that there is no plastic like layer formed up and this help the mixture to cool down.
6. Pour it into a container, cover it up and let it cool in the fridge.