The birthday celebration was on Tuesday, so I had to prepare everything on Monday after dropping Nathan at school. I was planning to do the Robot cake and the Robot cookies for kids goody bags. I decided to once again use Martha Steward’s recipe. This time I chose Versatile Vanilla Cake. For the Robot cookies, I decided to use Dorie Greenspan’s All Occasion Sugar Cookies recipe. I planned to put the royal icing on top of each cookie. I finished preparing both the cookie dough ready to be rolled in the fridge and two layers of 30 by 30 cakes. I wrapped the cake in the aluminium foil just before I picked Nathan up. There is no way I could frost the cake while Nathan is at home, unless he is asleep.

Finally, I started rolling the cookies around 9.30 PM. OMG, the cookie dough was a bit hard to work with if you want the cookies to be in certain shape. It is constantly needed to be chilled to be able to work with. I abandoned my prepared robot mould that I made few days earlier and decided to use a star shape. I also had prepare the royal icing, but didn’t use it on the cookies because of the time constriction. I finished baking the whole dough of cookie though and to tell you the truth, they taste F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C.

One important lesson that I learned that night was to remember to have your unsalted butter at room temperature before you make the Swiss Meringue Buttercream. I made this buttercream lots of time and that fact has made me over confident with myself. I thought I could waive myself through the chilled butter and got a beautiful buttercream. I was wrong, the buttercream curdled and the liquid from egg whites is separated from the mixture. I made 2 batches of the buttercream and throwed everything in the bin. OMG, it was more than half kg of unsalted butter, what a waste. I had to make another one, and this time I played safe and rest the butter until it was ready. I only made 1 batch as I was worried that I might screw up again. Anyway, I finally finished frosting the cake at 2.30 AM in the morning.

I can’t wait to cut the cake as I was pretty curious on the taste and textures. I was a bit worried actually on the sponginess of this cake because the batter was really thick that I had to level the them with the spoon before they went into the oven. It turned out that the cake was OK, not really spongy as I want them to be but they really were versatile and sturdy. It made them easier to carve and frost.

For the decoration, you can use any chocolate colours or anything you have on hand. I am sure that the kids won’t judge I got my inspiration from this website. The baking tin suggested in the web is 13 by 9 inch, but because I only got 30 by 30 cm square pan, I cut my Robot parts accordingly. You could try to do your Robot cake according to whatever pan available.

Ingredients for Double Chocolate Cakes

Recipe adapted from Martha Steward, for details click here

(I used 2 batches of this recipe for 30×30 cm square pans)

• 1 cup (2 sticks) or 226 gr unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pans
• 2 1/2 cups or 320 gr all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pans
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups  or 192 gr sugar (I used 175 gr)
• 2 large eggs plus 3 large egg yolks
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 1 cup low-fat buttermilk
• strawberry jam plus a little bit of water to smooth the jam, spread in between the layer
• Swiss Meringue Buttercream to frost
• 12 pcs Maltesers to decorate
• 8 pcs orange M&M to decorate
• 3 pcs white M&M to decorate
• 2 pcs green Lollypops to decorate
• 2 cupcakes to decorate
• 10 pcs Nutrigrain to decorate

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Butcher: How many kg for the spareribs?

Me: ehhhmmmmm…. give me 3 kg please

Butcher took 4 big pieces of ribs and weight, and they were about 2.3 kg. Suddenly I thought to myself, OMG it was a bit too much if she added more ribs. I shouted my change of mine.

Me: so sorry.. I changed my mind.. that would be enough thank you (fiuhhhh… what a relieve)

On Sunday morning, I thought this BBQ type of thing would be just perfect for our weekend brunch. So there I was, standing in the kitchen at 9 o’clock, peeling my herbs and pureeing them. By 10.30, my toddler had his ribs with steam rice, and he absolutely loves it. I don’t think the chilli affect him because you can’t really taste the spiciness because of the other herbs. We all had a lovely and full-filling brunch. I suddenly regret myself forbidding the butcher to give me 3 kg instead of 2.3 kg. My husband kept coming back to the kitchen to get some of those sticky juicy spare ribs. When I asked him whether I actually need to cook them twice as much quantity, he agreed. Ehmmm… so I actually should ask for 5 kg of spare ribs to satisfy all the meat eaters at home.

Ingredients

Recipe adapted from The Around the World Cookbook

• 1 kg American pork spare ribs
• 1 onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 cloves shallot
• 2.5 cm fresh ginger
• 1/3 soy sauce (half sweet soy sauce and half the salty one)
• 2 red chillies
• 1/3 cup of tamarind juice (soaked about a thumb size of tamarind in hot water)
• 2 tbsp palm sugar
• 2 tbsp oil
• salt and pepper

Preparation time (duration): 30

Culinary tradition: Indonesian

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

What could I say about this cake. It is a very chocolaty cake and I am sure for big chocolate lovers out there, they will absolutely love them. It is not my type of cake though as I am not a big fan of chocolate and my tooth isn’t sweet enough. However, for all of the member of my house, this is the type of cake to die for.

At first, I wasn’t really sure that I will succeed making this cake as Dorie’s. Few reasons behind that:

• Mixing boiling water to the cake batter.
• Mixing hot sugar syrup to the egg white mixture.

Hmm, but they all turned out OK. I guess you can really judge the final result until you have a go.

I admit that I am not that generous with the frosting as Dorie’s. She had the frosting in between layers almost as thick as the cake layer. Well I have reasons for that. First, my house members are not a big fan of frosting. And last, because I don’t have a candy thermometer handy at my home, I kinda work my way through cooking the syrup. So, 1/3 of my frosting actually turned into liquid. OMG, I kinda glad that I was not divide the layer into 4, because there will be not enough frosting to go around.

Ingredients for The Cake

Recipe adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

• 1 1/3 cups AP flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 1/4 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar (I used 1/4 cup sugar)
• 3 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled
• 1/2 cup buttermilk or whole milk, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• 4 ounces semisweet or milk chocolate, finely chopped

Ingredients for The Filling and Frosting

• 1/2 cup egg whites (about 4 large eggs)
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 tsp tsp cream of tartar
• 1 cup water
• 1 tbsp pure vanilla extract

Preparation time (duration): 60

Culinary Tradition: American

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!

I have been searching for a genuine choc chip cookies recipe for ages, and finally I found one (Thanks Dorie). We have always been a great fan of Subway choc chip cookies because of their softness and chewiness. I have been wanting to make the same thing at home so I could mass produce them and store it in a cookie jar. Now I can mass produce them. However, the thing is that they won’t last longer in the cookie jar, not because they are easily spoiled but because the member of the house couldn’t resist themselves from hugging the jar.

Probably you are wondering why I am cutting back so much sugar. I always cut 50 percent of the sugar from original recipe most of the time. I love desserts, cakes and sweets, but I couldn’t stand the sweetness, or probably my tooth isn’t that sweet. Even with this cookie recipe, with all the cutting sugar amount, I still found that they are really sweet. I should probably skip the sugar next time I am making these and just stick with brown sugar.

From this one batch recipe, you will got a lot of cookies. This was the reason why I turned some of the dough into a log and store it in the fridge. I couldn’t stand any longer standing in the kitchen hearing my toddler calling me. For those of you who want to try these, here’s the steps:

• Cut some baking paper, about 25-30 cm.
• Fill it with left over cookie dough.
• Try to squeeze them gently so there are no empty space in the middle.
• Tied both ends with rubber bands.
• Wrap them with clings wrap.
• Recommended to be stored for up to 3 days in the fridge or months in the freezer.

If you are storing them in the fridge, cut them with a serrated knife into certain thickness. Don’t worry with the uneven or crack slices, you could fix them later by hand. If you are frosting them, let them sit for 5-10 minutes, and them do the same things as you do with the fridge one.

Ingredients

Recipe adapted from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

• 2 cups plain flour
• 1 tsp salt (I didn’t use this)
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 226 gr unsalted butter, at room temperature (I used reduced salt butter)
• 1 cup of sugar (I used 1/3 cup of sugar)
• 2/3 cup light brown sugar (I used dark brown sugar)
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 340 gr bittersweet chocolate, chop into chips or 2 cups store bought chocolate chips or chunks
• 1 cup finely chopped walnut or pecan

Instructions

1. Center the rack in the oven and preheat the  oven to 190 C.
2. Whisk together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
3. Working with a mixer in the large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed for about 1 minute until smooth.
4. Add the sugars and beat for another 2 minutes or so, until well blended.
5. Beat in vanilla.
6. Add the eggs one at a time, beating 1 minute after each egg goes in.
7. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add dry ingredients into 3 portions, mixing only until each addition is incorporated.
8. On low speed, or by hand with a rubber spatula, mix in the chocolate and nuts.
9. Spoon the dough by slightly rounded tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheets, leaving 2 inches between spoonfuls.
10. Bake the cookies one sheet at the time and rotating the sheet at the midway point for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they are brown at the edges and golden int the center; they may still be a little soft in the middle, and that’s just fine.
11. Pull the sheets from the oven and allow the cookies to rest for 1 minute, and then carefully, using a wide metal spatula, transfer them to racks to cool to room temperature.
12. Repeat with the remainder of the dough, cooling the baking sheets between batches.

Preparation time (duration): 20

Culinary tradition: American

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

Anyway before you start, I have few tips of my own:

• I almost ruined the dinner by not reading the recipe properly. I doubted my self for a while looking at 1 cup of salt as House Seasoning to mix to the chicken pieces. Instead I put 3 tsp of salt and it was so salty (I test fried them) that I had to cut another whole chicken in the fridge (Thank God I had another whole chicken stored, but it was for Hainanese Chicken). So my point is to read to your recipe properly (*-*)
• Try to trim the fat as much as you could, so you will feel less guilty. I think it tastes much better.
• Mix 2 eggs first with the hot sauce, ans add another one if you really need it. As I only needs 4 eggs for 2 whole chickens.
• Same as the eggs, just use your flour half the recommended portion and add more if you need more.
• If you have the leftover chickens and they went cold, heat them again in the oven. All of the oil came from chicken fats and oils will be released and your chicken will taste crunchy and crispy again, with less fat of course.

Ingredients

• a whole free range chicken (about 1.5 – 2 kg), cut into pieces
• 3 eggs (I used 2 eggs)
• 1/3 cup water (I use 1/4 cup water)
• 1 cup hot red pepper sauce, recommended Texas Pete (I used 2 tbsp Tobasco)
• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 tsp pepper
• House seasoning (1 cup of salt, 1/4 cup of garlic powder, 1/4 of black pepper) (instead of this I use 1 tbsp of pureed garlic, 2 tsp of salt, 1 tsp of fresh crack black pepper)
  
• oil for deep frying, preferably peanut oil (I used Canola Oil)
  

My husband ordered me this great book from Amazon called “Baking: From My Home to Yours” by Dorie Greenspan that I have been longing to have. When a delivery guy ringed me through my unit phone telling that he was downstairs, I just rushed through the lift carrying my 2 years old toddler. I was so excited receiving this book that I can’t wait to try her recipe. This banana cake is one of her great collection that she got from her friend Ellen Einstein who owns Sweet Sixteenth Bakery in Nashville.

Anyway, my tips before you bake this banana cake are:

• Wait until the bananas are very ripe. When they are ripe, store them in the refrigerator until their skins are blackened. I know it is disgusting to see the blackened banana’s skins, but to tell you the truth, the banana cake taste even better and sweeter. Because they are sweeter, I don’t need to use so much sugar. If you are following my sugar quantity, just keep in mind though that I don’t have a sweet tooth, so you might add more from my recommendation (the one highlighted in red).
• If the top of the cake browns too quickly, place an aluminium foil on top of the cake.

This is how my banana cake looks like straight from the oven. Why the top cracks? I have no idea. But it tastes so goooooood and fluffy and yummy. I never taste the banana cake this good. This is definitely a winner recipe of banana cake for me.

I had some left over batter that I turned into muffins. I added some dark choc chips to the batter before baking them. For me, they are too sweet. Next time, I will decrease the amount of sugar if I want to turn them into choc chip muffins.

Ingredients

Recipe adapted from “Baking: From My Homes to Yours by Dorie Greenspan”

• 3 cups plain flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt (I didn’t use this)
• 226 gr unsalted butter, at room temperature (I use reduced salt butter)
• 2 cups sugar (I use 1 1/3 cup sugar)
• 2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs, preferably at room temperature (I use 3 eggs of 700 gr pack)
• about 4 very ripe bananas or 1 1/2 – 1 3/4 cups, mashed (my 4 ripe bananas was 2 1/3 cups)
• 1 cup sour cream or plain yogurt (I use Jalna berry yogurt)

Preparation time (duration): 45

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

You could add grated vegetable like carrot or zucchini in the mince mixture or some chopped mushrooms is great as well for those extra flavor.  I don’t have all those ingredients handy in my fridge, so I mix everything I had.

My little tips to retain your burger patties shape are:

• Try to squeeze the mince mixture gently while shaping them. Patting both sides with palm of your hands could help as well.
• Refrigerate the burger patties in the fridge for at least half an hour before cooking them, so that they could sit for a while.
• When cooking the patties, do not do so many toss and turn. Let them cook at least 5 minutes on each sides. When they are more sturdy, you could then turning them on the other side.
• When making a thicker burger patties like mine, just keep in mind that the inside of the patties might still be medium rare. You could bake them in the oven for a while to make sure it is well done.

Ingredients

• 250 gr lean beef mince
• 1 small onion, mince
• 1 garlic clove, mince
• 1 shallot, mince
• 1/4 cup of egg whites or egg
• bread crumbs from 1 piece of bread
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil for stir frying
• 2 pieces of toasted wholemeal bread
• salads (cucumber, lettuce, tomato)
• sauces (mustard, tomato sauce and chili sauce)

I do have an important lesson to learn while making both the patties and meatballs though. Always give either your burger patties or meatballs a good squeeze while shaping them or otherwise they will break. If you are not sure, just place them in the fridge for at least half an hour, so they can retain their shape.

So, here is the picture of my burger patties. If you want to serve them with burger buns, you could make them larger to suit your buns.

I served my Skewer Meatballs with my homemade pasta sauce. If you do want to serve them with pasta sauce, you could heat the pasta sauce together with the meatballs, so that the sauce could be absorbed by the meatballs. They will taste so much better.

Preparation time (duration): 30

Culinary tradition: American, Italian

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!

I don’t understand why, but the beef meat in Australia tastes very different to the one that I used to eat back in Indonesia. Probably it is because of the way of how Australian cooks them. They love their beef to be cooked as simple as possible, rare to medium rare, so they still can taste the actual beef. In comparison, Indonesian loves their beef to be transformed into a cuisine like Curry or Rendang. Curry or what we called Gulai is cooked for around 1 hour. Rendang is worst, it can be cooked for up to 2 hours, because the meat need to be so tender and soak all those herbs, juices, and coconut milk. You can’t really taste the beef that much, but you could enjoy the soaking herbs that immerse into the beef which are bathed in the thickened coconut milk. I guess,  Australian or westerners really appreciates the taste of originality, and Indonesian prefers their meal to be a delicacy.

Originally I made beef mince pies because my toddler is a fussy eater. I want to make his meal interesting and different from the usual stuff that he had, but the most important is that I could put lots of vegetable goodness in it without him even noticed and I succeed. He loves the pies so much. Although making the pies could be time consuming especially if you don’t have ready rolled shortcrust pastry available and have to make everything from scratch, but it really worth trying. To eliminate the smell, I included the Rendang herb ( I did not write it down on the ingredient list) or what we called ‘bumbu rempah daging’ that I brought from Indonesia. The gravy powder also help to disguise the smell apart from smoothing up the mixture.

Preparation time (duration): 60

Culinary tradition: American

Please leave your comment/suggestion if you find this recipe useful. Can’t wait to hear from you and Thank You!!!