Seri Muka

Once I start, I can't stop! It all started when my other half suggests to bring a dessert to a host who were planning on making nasi lemak.

 First time doing it and it was a hit. The flavours were there. Only needed to tweak the steaming process as it didn't come out flat after trying for three times. MOH thinks it's to do with the coconut cream brand used. Which can be true.

 I relied on this recipe when making it and substitute the Pandan leaves to a paste which I had cleverly add to reach the right colour.

Flavour tastes amazing regardless!

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Gluten Free flour substitutions

Thought I'd pen this down as a quick reference. My sister introduced her version of Avocado chocolate cake and it was delish! She used brown rice flour instead of coconut flour and it works much better as it's less coconut taste and crumbly.

Anyway, the link to the snippets below are from here.

Feel free to explore the alternatives :)

Mochi Green Tea

First Attempt! And it took less time than I thought...

Bit deflated...quite tricky in this tropical conditions 

And it was through an easy recipe I found (see bottom of post) =) 

This is such an interesting way of making mochi as most of the time the nonya or conventional asian way is to  wrap the fillings before steaming them. This process however steams the dough before using it to wrap whatever we want and the texture was fun to play with (i.e. not sticky, more rubbery and smooth).

I was inspired by my recent trip to Hokkaido as we tasted the best ever Strawberry flavoured mochi in Japan. We tried the traditional method and it was hard! Check out this clip where proper skillful mochi makers work:

Wished the climate here wasn't too warm as I had to work really fast with the ice cream...and I think it's best to keep those mochi moulds once you buy and have eaten the mochi from the supermarket.

(Courtesy of Japanese Ice Cream's post and TofuGuru's video clip and I took the wheat starch idea from 'making mochi in 30 minutes'.)

Makes about 7 mochi base on a rice bowl cut shape

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Sticky Rice ball with Black Sesame

Another post! This is also what I am preparing for the fund raise from my previous post :)

This time, I manage to cut time down by making the balls at room temperature. Glutinous rice works in such an interesting way and I am not surprise that they work well in Asia or any other tropical countries. And apparently, if I mix Tapioca flour to it, it probably can increase the shelf life of these desserts as they don't harden to quick (yes, sticky rice ball can only be left out for 2 days before they turn hard and they can't be refrigerated)

But again, I seemed to still have air in them and they break after I boil them ><. Nyway, I think I would still prefer Lo Mai Chi (aka peanut filling) to this as I do find the sesame seeds a tad abit bitter. It doesn't really look as great (I think I made alien balls this round) but I do hope people will at least buy 1 to try...

(Thanks to Chow Time's and Thai Food About.com's helpful posts)

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Ondeh ondeh

And the dessert making continues in this lovely tropical country :). The weather is just as unpredictable regardless as when we were about to check out the zoo, it poured heavily but when it's time to make these lovely desserts, the sun was out.Oh well~

Anyway, this is another one of my first-time attempt and it turned out absolutely delicious! Not too uberly sweet as the salt really help enhance the flavour. Yummm, as well as I do appreciate my sis helping me because she has so much more patient rolling the dough into a ball. Reason for making so many? I'm actually helping out my company do a fundraising event at work and it's to raise funds for the Pakistan Flood Relief event.

The flood that devasted the country last month. Click on the pic to find out more

Yeah, glutinous rice flour is so adaptable that it dries up so quickly when the air conditioning is on but as soon as I bring the though into the wet kitchen, it becomes moist. As well as I keep having air bubbles in mine, so much so that it starts to float on top as soon as I pop it into the pot! Talk about being more impatient.

(Courtesy of thaifood.about.com's sticky rice ball's post )

Makes approximately 45 pieces

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Purple Ang Ku Kuih

Heh, not orange for a change. The colour is base on the colour of sweet potato and purple ones are abundant. And the inside isn't yellow but maroon on the inside instead as we used red bean paste.

Thanks to my wonderful sis, we manage to get this done quick and so well that we are so happy with the results!! Hehe, one of my flatmates was teasing that we were both doing a 'masak-masak' session which meant 'cook-cook' and it's related to the little girls playing with doll houses.

So helpful to have someone, specially when it comes to taking photos :).

Makes about 16 Kuehs

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Lo Mai Kai (aka glutinous chicken rice)

Must be some temporary phase that I'm going through, either that I am in the midst of using the same ingredients for different dishes heh. The best part of this is that you can actually freeze the dish for about a month! It is also quite simple to make but of course the more pre-preperations you do, the tastier it'll get ;).

This dish is also seen when you go to a yum cha restaurant, where they serve it in lotus leaves. I wanted to get those but they were selling it in bulk :S. Also, my dear d suggested chestnuts, not water chestnuts because he thought that it was part of the ingredients but it wasn't!Haha, but it did taste rather good with it, so no harm trying it ;)

My ever ready steaming devices...

*kvt27 is going through some tim sum / yam cha phase*

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