New Chocolate Cake Recipe

I have never considered myself a foodie, but I have been called a foodie a few times by friends especially when they see me get all wide-eyed and excited when I am talking about food. Hence, when I stumbled on this book at the last Big Bad Wolf Sale, I felt compelled to buy it, the RM8 price of course helped to convice me to get it.

  

The Foodie Handbook : (The (Almost) Definitive Guide to Gastronomy by Pim Techamuanvivit.

When I started reading... I skimmed the book at stopped at page 173: Fifty things every foodie should do, or at least try once in her (his) life.

While some of the things listed had a bit of a ... "yeah right! like that's gonna happen"factor eg: no. 17: Spend a week in New Orleans - I would love to go to New Orleans but seriously?
though...

Anyhow... what I'm trying to get at is no. 20 Learn to make an easy but decadent chocolate cake.
I have tried quite a number of chocolate recipes, basic butter chocolate cake ones, moist chocolate cake, devil's chocolate cake etc... but seeing that the recipe was short and simple I had to just give it a go and thus tick off this number from the 50 too.


The result:

Yummeh!

 

 

The recipe:

 

7 oz / 200g good plain chocolate chopped or broken into small pieces

 (I used: Van Houten's Cooking Chocolate)

1 cup / 225g butter

1/4 cup / 25g cocoa powder

5 large eggs, separated

1 cup / 225g sugar

1/2 cup / 60g flour

1/4 cup / 85g soured cream (or creme fraiche)

and a pinch of salt

 

The method:

 

1. Put the chocolate, butter and cocoa powder in a medium-sized bowl.

2. Microwave for one or two minutes, depending on the power of your machine, just until the butter and about half of the chocolate have melted.

3. Remove the bowl from the microwave and stir until everything is , mixed together. Set aside.

4. Put the yolks, sugar and flour in another medium-sized glass bowl and stir with a spatula or wooden spoon until well mixed.

5. Add the creme fraiche and salt and stir until blended.

6. Pour the mixture into the bowl with the melted chocolate and butter mixture, and stir to blend well. Set aside.

7. Whisk the egg whites using your own amazing elbow grease, or a stand or handheld mixer. Beat until the egg whites form a soft peak, that is to say, it forms a peak that quickly leans over to one side as you pull the whisk up from the whipped cloud.

8. Take about one-third of the whipped whites and whisk it into the batter until well mixed. Fold the rest gently in to the batter until the white streaks entirely dissapear into the chocolate batter.

9. Preheat the oven to 400F /200C/Gas  Mark 6. Butter and flour a 9-by-15 inch/22-by-12cm loaf pan, and line it with parchment paper.

10. Pour in the chocolate batter and use the back of a knife to level the surface a bit.

11. Bake in the oven for 25 to 30 minutes until the surface has a little bounce. Remove the cake from the oven, but leave it in the pan, and let cook in the pan on the countertop form about an hour.

12. Wrap the whole thing in aluminium foil and refrigerate. Remove it from the fridge at least an hour before serving, an run a knife between the cake and the sides of the pan. Remove the cake from the pan onto a plate and slice.

13. You can serve this with fresh berries, preserves, or a dollop of whipped cream.

* For a bit of variety, you can bake this batter in muffin tins - or other fancy single serving shapes - for 12 to 15 minutes.

 

Have fun baking! Trust me it will turn out amazing and like what Pim said... this will be your default chocolate cake from now on.

Laksa Johor - Ala Chef Wan

My latest birthday treat was Chef Wan's - A Taste of Malaysia.

I love the recipes in this book. 

Tried a few already and will continue to do so, one recipe at a time.

I've been trying to learn to cook Laksa Johor. As a second attempt, I tried Chef Wan's recipe.

I got a thumbs up from my family, my friends at work and even my mother! 

My Laksa Johor - Ala Chef Wan.

Here's the recipe:

Gravy

Vegetable oil

Ginger

Shallots

Garlic

Dried prawns

Fish Curry powder

Prawns

Coconut Milk/Cream

Lemon grass

Galangal

Mackerel Fillet 

( I used canned Tuna in water, it was a Monday working day after all - 

who has the time to poach, debone and mince a whole fish!)

Dried sour fruit (asam gelugor)

Pounded roasted grated or desiccated coconut (kerisik)

Spaghetti

Kalamansi limes

Sambal Belacan

Red Chillies

Dried prawn paste (belacan)

Salt

Lime Juice

Garnish

Cucumber

Laksa leaves

Bean Sprouts

Onions

Long Beans

Method:

• Combine ingredients for Sambal Belacan in a food processor and blend until smooth. Set aside.(But of course pounding them silly with a pestle and mortar gives a thicker and less watery sambal belacan, authentic traditional way.)
• Heat the oil in a heavy pot and fry the ginger, shallots, garlic and dried prawns until fragrant. Add the curry powder and fry for 2 minutes.
• Add the prawns, coconut cream, lemongrass and galangal. Leave to simmer.
• Add the mackerel and dried sour fruit and continue to simmer for 20 minutes.
• Add the pounded grated coconut to the stock. Stir and cook for another 2 minutes. If the sauce is too thick, dilute with hot water. ( I used prawn stock prepared by simmering the prawn shells in water earlier).
• To serve, divide spaghetti into serving bowls. Garnish with the cucumber, laksa leaves, bean sprouts, onions and long beans.
• Pour the sauce over the spaghetti, squeeze some lime on it and serve with sambal belacan on the side.

** I also added Torch Ginger Buds (bunga kantan) as garnish.

Wallaaaa... easy peasy lemon squeezy. If I can do this so can you. 

I don't provide exact measurements (which are provided in the book by the way), because I tend to not follow them strictly. Good luck, happy cooking.

Cookbooks.

Love them.

Love browsing through them.

Love reading them.

Love collecting them.

Love using them.

My cookbook shelf #01 which contains some celebrity cookbooks.

I tend to get them as birthday treats for myself on my birthdays.

Okay, so sometimes I don't necessarily wait for my birthday to treat myself.

Got a couple too from hubby on my birthday a few years back.

Cookbook shelf #02.

This shelf has recipe books from unknown cooks, from a friend's brother's vocational school, mini cook books, online recipes, my mother's recipes from her cooking/baking lessons, old books bought way back when I was studying at uni... 

Notice the yellow folder on the very right? It contains loose sheets of recipes.

The full scape paper book in blue, well that contains my highly used recipes, either hand-written or pasted from online print outs. Precious! Have not gotten to beautifying it yet. Will get to it soon. Shall definitely blog about it, once I've done it.

So, if you have no idea what to get for me for my next birthday... now you do! :-D

Another chocolate chip cookie recipe?

Really? Yeah, by now you would have thought you 

already have THE chocolate chip cookie recipe that you'd use till... forever right? Well, yes that's what I thought when I first got a chocolate chip cookie recipe when I was in my teens. Another when everyone received this chain emails about Famous Amos Cookie Recipe years ago until.... I got Nigella's KITCHEN and tried her cookie recipe! And followed her suggestion to scoop with ice-cream scoops! I ended up with huge chunk of cookies that are just out of this world.  So yes, this is my last chocolate chip cookie recipe ever! :-)

 Ingredients:
150g unsalted butter
125g soft light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg, fridge-cold
1 egg, yolk fridge-cold
300g flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 X 326g packet milk chocolate morsels or chocolate chip

 ** I used Van Houten's chocolate buttons and chocolate chips
Imagine how chocolatey the cookies are!
** If you want the cookies to be less sweet, just reduce the sugar measurements a little.

Method:

• Preheat the oven to 170 degrees celcius. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment.
• Melt the butter and let it cool a bit. Put the brown and white sugars into a bowl, pour the slightly cooled, melted butter over them and beat together. 
• Beat in the vanilla, the cold egg and cold egg yolk until your mixture is light and creamy.
• Slowly mix in the flour and bicarb until just blended, then fold in the chocolate chips.
• Scoop the cookie dough into an American quarter-cup measure or a 60ml ice cream scoop and drop onto the prepared baking sheet, plopping the cookies down about 8cm apart. You will need to make these in 2 batches keeping the bowl of cookie dough in the fridge between batches.
• Bake for 15-17 minutes in the pre-heated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to wire racks.

Here's the cookie jar that will not be full for long... once you fill it with these yummy cookies!

Maybe you can try this recipe for this Eid??? 

Wordless Wednesday

What's next from GP?

We all know about her singing on GLEE, there's no need to even discuss her acting career. I was already mightily impressed with her GOOP newsletter, and to add another feather to her hat, she has now even written a cookbook! Wow! Amazing. I keep forgetting to look for it each time I go to the bookstore, must look for it next time! Must! Must! Must! Have any of you out there gotten the book?

Chick lits for less.

Last Saturday, I actually drove all the way to Amcorp Mall to get my hands on some new chick lits. The reason I would go to all that trouble is because I can really get them at such a reasonable price.

How reasonable?

Well, check this out: RM19.90 and RM17.90, how reasonable is that?

Plus, I can purchase this adorable Book Thong here.

So which book store in Amcorp Mall? None other then at BookXcess. Check it out if you haven't. The only issue now is which book shall I read first? Hmmm...