The Sweet Duo: Lemon Caramel vs SemiFudge Brownies

Eggless Lemon Caramel Cake:

1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3 tablespoons lemon zest (from 3-4 lemons)

3/4 cup full cream milk

6 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Almond for finishing.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl while in another bowl, mix together using whisk all wet ingredients until incorporated.

Slowly pour dry ingredients into wet ingredient. Whisk together using fork or balloon whisk.

Fold the batter using a spatula or wooden spoon until well combined.

Transfer the batter into 18x18 cm square pan and sprinkle with almonds.

Bake in 170 degree celcius preheated oven about 40 minutes.

Semi Fudge Brownies:

1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened at room temperature

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

3 tablespoons lukewarm full milk

2 teaspoons cocoa powder

1 teaspoon instant coffee

1/2 cup semisweet cooking chocolate, melted

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

Cream butter and sugar until smooth. You can use low speed mixer or simply using a whisk.

Add eggs, one egg at a time.

In a different bowl, combine melted chocolate, cocoa powder, instant coffee, oil, and milk together until well blended.

Pour chocolate batter into the previous batter. Mix together.

Finally, add flour and salt then mix using a low speed mixer or a balloon whisk.

Scrape the batter into 18x18 cm square pan. Bake in preheated 170 degree celcius oven about 30 minutes.

Cool completely before serving.

Smakelijk!

Black Peach Cake with Pie Crust Bottom

A little bit bored with apples, i turned to peach. This one had 'black peach' label on the box. A bit confusing. Black but peach. Hehehe. Nevermind. Here goes the recipe.

For the crust:
150 gram or 1/2 cup cold unsalted butter
150 gram or 1 cup all purpose flour

Cut cold butter into cubes then toss right away into flour. Using hands, roughly mix together butter and flour to make rough crumbles. Press into the bottom of your baking pan. Press evenly then put in the fridge.

For the cake:
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter
1 egg
1 cup full cream milk at room temperature
1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder. I used double acting baking powder.
1 to 2 tsp vanilla essence

3 blackpeaches, thin sliced

Sliced almond and confectioner sugar for finishing.

Bake pie crust in 170 degree celcius oven for about 15 minute.
Meanwhile, using a low speed mixer, cream butter and sugar until smooth. Add egg, mix evenly. Pour milk into the batter and mix until well combined. Pour in flour, baking soda, baking powder, and vanilla essence and mix for about one minute. Continue with folding technique, about 50 folds.

Take pie crust out from the oven, spread peach on top of it then cover with cake batter. Sprinkle the top with sliced almond.
Bake in 170 degree celcius oven for about 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick can come out clean.
Serve warm with sugar sprinkle over the top.

Smakelijk!

Apple-filled Baked Crepes (Egg batter cake)

Today my daughter did not want to eat anything, so i had to make something to fill her energy up. I needed to make sure that she had enough proteins and carbs whenever she refused to eat proper fibre-carbs-protein balanced diet, that's why homemade dessert containing eggs had always been my favorite.

This recipe was basically a thick crepe-like cake. I wanted to make it really moist and soft so my daughter could hold it as finger food. A normal 1-2-3-4 or pound cake usually ended up crumbling in her hand (she would play with it rather than eat it) and a chiffon type cake would spend too much time.

Here is the recipe.
For a 18x18cm baking pan.

2 eggs, at room temperature
2 tablespoon melted unsalted butter
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar (i reduced it to 1/4 cup to meet my daughter's need)
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-3 sweet apples, thin sliced
A pinch of salt
A dash of cinnamon if you like
Butter to coat the pan

Mix together all of the ingredients until smooth and no lumps. Put apples in and coat evenly. Pour into butter coated pan.
Bake in preheated oven at 160 degree celcius for about 30 minutes or until a toothpick come out clean.

Easy? Of course! You can also enjoy the crepes with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and add your favorite berries on top.
Smakelijk!

Hungarian Goulash

First time i tried this meal was in Prague. It was sold at an underground cellar restaurant, slightly spooky -in Prague, what's not?- but nice and warm. This time i made a different goulash. It was not Czechen, it was Hungarian. I personally like the Czech's goulash better because it's thicker, but this one is also good.

Here it goes.

Yield 4-6 serving bowls

500 gram beef shank, cut into cubes
2 red capsicum (or paprika), chopped
1 onion, sliced
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 sticks of carrot, thick sliced
2 tomatoes, roughly chopped
3 cups water
4 tbsp flour
1/2 tsp chili flakes, if you like it spicy
Salt, pepper, and sugar to taste

In a saucepan on medium heat, saute onion until caramelized then toss in garlic. Stir until fragrant. Stir together chopped capsicum, pour flour, stir again, and simmer until it softened. Turn heat into low.
While waiting capsicum to soften, sprinkle salt and pepper on beef, rub evenly. Then put beef in the pan, stir until coated by onion and capsicum. Wait until the meat turn a little brown then add water. Simmer on low heat with closed lid for 1 hour. Keep an eye on the pan, if the water runs dry, add more.

After an hour, add carrots and tomatoes into beef mixture. Stir.
Sprinkle chili flakes, salt, pepper, and sugar to taste. This goulash should have a stronger 'sweet' taste rather than 'savory'. Simmer for another 40minutes until vegetables soften.

Serve with lean bread or boiled potatoes. Or in more Hungarian way: with noodle.
Smakelijk!

PS: you won't find carrots like shown in my photo because i've cut the cooking time halfway. Yours should be reallysoft, almost pureed. My daughter interrupted me while i was cooking so... yeah, i had a halfcooked carrots here :))))

Pulla, a traditional Finnish braided bread

I always think that Scandinavian countries are awesome, since i first heard Norwegian singer -now one of my all time favorite- Lene Marlin released her first single. Before IKEA got popular in Indonesia, i had a special time at the corner of my college library, reading used magazines covering IKEA's and other warm Scandinavian product and design. 

When recently i moved to Singapore, i had a little time to spend at IKEA store and remembered how i love the smell of cardamom in Skorporkardamomma bread. So i made this bread, though it wasn't Norwegian nor Swedish, but rather Finnish bread. Actually it was not my first Scandinavian bread/cake, because accidentally i had made a cardammom cake when i was a kid. Back then i and my sisters wanted to make a cake out of our mommy's cookbook without knowing that it was a Norwegian cake. It was Julekake. 

This Pulla was made in a really quick way because my daughter kept screaming"i wanna seeeee!" all the way. Here it goes.

Yields 1 pulla bread app.20cm long.

1 teaspoon dry yeast, activated in 1/4 cup lukewarm water and a pinch of sugar

1/2 cup milk

2 tablespoons butter

1 egg, beaten

1/4 cup sugar

A pinch of salt

2-3 cups of all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon powder

1/2 teaspoon ground green cardammom

1 egg for eggwash

3teaspoons of sugar for sprinkle coating

In a bowl or pan on low heat, simmer milk and melt butter. Pour sugar inside the mixture and stir. Take away from heat after all the butter is melt and sugar starts to dilute.

Transfer to a mixing bowl, stir evenly and add salt.

Let it cool a little.

When this milk gets lukewarm temperature, pour in the activated yeast and mix thoroughly.

Add flour, half cup at a time, and cinnamon & ground cardammom. Then knead until it forms a firm dough.

Leave it in the bowl, cover with a damp cloth, let it sit at warm and draft free place to rise to double size, approximately 45 minute to 1 hour.

After an hour, punch the dough to make sure that air bubbles are out from it. Knead for 3-5 minute.

Divide the dough into three equal parts and roll to a long silindrical shape like a big rope. Braid the three parts together.

Put on  baking tray, cover with clean cloth and let it rise againfor about 20 minutes.

After its second rise you can brush it with eggwash and sprinkle the top with pearl sugar. Bake 25-30 minutes at 175°C.

Smakelijk!

pumpkin cheese bar

Summer is going to end soon, and we will have pumpkin season afterwards :D My pumpkin season had already started last week, that a friend of mine sent me half of 50cm round pumpkin from her garden. Yeah rite. I gave my daughter half of it and the rest got mold not long after it arrived at our home.

Soooo, before the pumpkin deteriorated i decided to make something out of it. I thought about pumpkin soup but it wouldn't survive more than two days in fridge. It should be cakes then.

I stumbled on joythebaker.com blog and found her recipe of pumpkin bar. I made modification to the recipe because i used a different kind of cheese which made the batter too watery. This one is my version. Smakelijk!

#eidmubarak koekjes!!

For muslims all over the world, yesterday was a big festival, a holy day. It was the first day of Syawal month and we have Eid festival. In Indonesia, we usually have specialty food and cookies that only available on this very day. The common (and most favourite) cookies are namely kaastengels and nastar.

If you find the name a little bit Dutch, you get it right. Kaastengels cookies derived from Dutch cheese cookies. Kaas means cheese, and tengel means bar. The original Dutch kaastengel is actually different from Indonesian classic kaastengel because it uses different dough, but anyway we will talk about Indonesian classic cookies here. Nastar stands for "nanas taartjes" or taartjes/cookies with pineapple jam filling. This is also a typical classic Indonesian Eid cookies.

In Indonesia, there are soooo maaannny cookies vendor selling these kind of cookies on Eid. Here in Leuven, of course you won't have any. Not a single one. So i decided to make them myself, only to find that cheese that was used in the recipe wouldn't work like in Indonesia i didn't know why.

A classis Indonesian kaastengels recipe used old semi-hard cheese like edam and cheddar to produce crispy and crunchy baked cheese on the outer top of the cookies. I used the same cheese but all gone melted. Then i turned into kaaskoekjes recipe, known as one of Belgian authentic cookies.

Here goes the recipe.
KAASKOEKJES
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup butter, cold and cut in small cubes
1/2 cup old cheese
1 egg yolk

Combine all the ingredients in one bowl and use your hand to knead the dough until well mixed. Roll the dough using rolling pin (i used a mason jar, well..) until 1/2 inch or 2 cm thick then cut into your desired shape. Bake in 190 degree celcius oven for 15 minutes until it turns golden brown.

NASTAR (PINEAPPLE COOKIES)
2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tbsp grated cheese
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla powder
another 1 egg yolk for coating

for pineapple jam:
500 gr pineapple, processed in a food chopper
100 gr (1/2 cup) granulated sugar

Boil pineapple and sugar in 150 ml water, stir until it thickens and a little bit dry. Approximately an hour. You have to make the jam solid enough to shape it like a candy ball. Be careful to not make it burnt. Loose jam would make it difficult to place inside the cookie dough. Place in a jar and let it cool.

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, set aside. In a separate bowl, mix butter and sugar until the butter turned white. I did not use mixer, only a wooden spatula. Please spare your hand force ;) Add egg, mix together using an egg whisk. After it's well mixed, pour dry ingredients into the batter and fold evenly. Roll the dough using rolling pin until 1/2 inch or 2 cm thick then cut into circle. Fill with pineapple jam, fold or roll to cover the jam. Coat with egg yolk. Bake in 160 degree Celcius oven about 35 minutes until it turns golden brown.

Smakelijk!