Gula Melaka Ice Cream

I've made many kinds of ice creams. But I've always wanted to do something of a local flavour. Durian comes to mind easily but I wanted to do something different (and a little less intense). 

After pondering over it, gula melaka comes to mind. It would just replace normal sugar in a basic recipe and yet give that distinctive Malaysian flavour. So I finally gave it a try.

The result was a luscious creamy ice cream. I guess part of the reason is that boiling the milk reduces the water content further so there were no crystals formed during freezing. I added a small amount of water during boiling though, because I think too much water was going off.

The only downside is that it is very sweet. And it seems to melt very quickly. So I'll just have to eat it in small quantities, and quickly!

So here's the simple recipe. Happy trying!

Teddy Bear Cookies

I've been wanting to make these for ages. I saw them on on Pinterest and other sites and I thought my kid would love to have them (and make them with me).

The ones I saw, however, used icing for the eyes and mouth. I wasn't in the mood of making royal icing. So I thought I'd just use the dough for decoration. That way, I wouldn't have to make any icing and there's no time wasted in waiting for the icing to set. What a splendid idea! (So I thought to myself)

You can invert the colours so that you have some teddies with white face and chocolate ears and some with chocolate face and white ears, as show in the picture below.

This is how they look like before baking:

And out from the oven:

As for the recipe, I adapted it from Sweet Explorations. Here's my version of how to make them Teddy cookies.

 

Here's my Emma enjoying the finished product. I'm sorry my face is in it too. There just wasn't a better picture of her and the cookie. Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed this post (the blessed few of you who read my blog).   :)

Orange Poppy Seed Cookies

I wanted to make something for colleagues of mine and my husband's. Aidilfitri celebrations were hardly over so ordinary cookies wouldn't do. I wanted to make something slightly unusual (by local standards at least), yet nice and easy.

So here it is, Orange Poppy Seed Cookies. 

I put them in a cookie tin which came from a particular hotel...

I got the recipe from Simply Recipes and a good one it is! Here it is, in my own format. I hope those who had them enjoyed eating them and those who try to bake them enjoy making them. 

My Ice Cream Project

This is a much delayed post. I've been experimenting making different flavours of ice cream since I made the basic, black sesame and mango peach ice creams. 

The method is use is the "no machine" method. You don't need yogurt machine to make yogurt or a a bread machine to make bread and it's possible to make ice cream without an ice cream machine. You do need a handheld or stand alone mixer, and time at home. And some amount of good memory, since you do need to take out the mixture and whip it every 40 minutes or so.

Here are some of what I've done this year:

Blueberry

I used whipping cream instead of evaporated milk. I expected a creamier texture but it wasn't that much better. And the colour didn't turn out that blue either.

Green Tea

This was definitely a huge success. My daughter loved it and my husband said it was the best ice cream I've ever made. Texture, flavour and colour turned out beautifully.

Chocolate

This was lovely too. Except next time, I would add more cocoa powder. 

Stawberry

For this, I was hoping to get a pink ice cream. Instead it turned out light orangey. I guess it was from the egg yolks. Other than that, the strawberry flavour was noticeable and texture was okay.

Alrighty, here is my err... ice cream project summary poster, if you may call it. If you would like to have the full method, you may refer to the mango peach ice cream post.

Green Pancakes for Breakfast

Pancakes are are one the easiest things to make for breakfast. I have a basic recipe which I can easily modify. I often make pink (beetroot) and also pumpkin pancakes.

This is the first time I made green pancakes, and they turn out quite pleasing to the eye. And they taste nice too.

The green is from fresh spinach. Here's what the batter looks like:

I love the bright colour. We had them with butter and honey. 

Here's the easy peasy recipe. Enjoy!

Meatless Shepherd's Pie

I'm not a vegetarian. But nowadays I try to cut down meat consumption as much as possible. And although there's a Meatless Monday movement going on, "meatless" can be any day, especially when you have a suddenly inspiration to make Shepherd's Pie without beef or any meat product.

This was last night's dinner. I wasn't sure how it would turn out. Well, since I'm posting about it, of course it turned out great! The texture was lovely and the taste was yummylicious. I know I don't have great vocabulary when it comes to describing food. But I do have photos, and a recipe to share. (This time I actually took note of the amount of ingredients I used!)

I'm not happy with the shot below. Indoor, night time photography is such a pain! Ah well! At least the pie was all eaten up by the hubby and myself.

So, here's the recipe for those who would like to try:

Pink Pasta

Sometimes, you just have turn ordinary cooking into something a little extra-ordinary. (This reminds me of a quote I recently came across, which I will share at the end of this post.)

For me, cooking pasta is something I do when I don't know what else to cook, or when I'm pretty lazy but refuse to eat instant noodles. But then cooking pasta can be jazzed up by making it pink, without food colouring of course!



I would recommend this for those with young kids, especially those with daughters. Mine was absolutely impressed! Another good thing about this dish is that it's not only pretty but also nutritious.

I would love to share the recipe but when I cook, I don't normally follow exact measurements. It's more like "dump it in" method. So no conventional recipe, but here's a visual of how to make it. I hope you like it.

And here's the quote I mentioned: