Black Sesame Bread

I finally have the time to update my blog. I've been busy with a new sweet baby girl. Also, I told myself I had to finish my birth story before updating my food blog.

This is a recipe I came up with when I was pregnant. I was told that I was anemic and so I tried several ways to bring my hemoglobin level up. I knew that the iron pills given to me would not do anything than give me constipation. So I took blackstrap molasses, black beans, red beans and black sesame.

I decided to experiment making bread with some of the black sesame seeds. I added oats as well. The results were satisfying.

The dough was grayish looking with a soft texture.

I like the way it looked after baking. It tasted right too. Perhaps next time I could use  more sesame seeds. I don't know when I'll have time to make bread again though. Soon I hope....

One of the good things about sharing my recipes on my blog is that I know where to find them when I need them later! So here goes... 

Take care, folks! I hope to post again soon. Happy baking!

A Smoothie Morning

Sometimes when I don't know what to make for breakfast, I blend. I usually make green smoothie for the hubby and I to take to work. But for weekends and public holidays like yesterday, I tend to try something different.

I've been trying thinking of an unusual recipe for a smoothie. And then it hit me: black sesame! I then googled it and found that it has been done by others but it's not that popular.

Anyway, here are two types of breakfast smoothies from yesterday. One fruity and bright coloured for Emma, and a black one for the adults.

The ingredients for the Mango, Banana Smoothie are:

1 mango
1 banana
some yogurt
a bit of honey
a splash of soy milk

Then you just whizzz.. everything in the blender.

Teddy likes it. It was Emma's idea to use him as a prop!

For the black sesame smoothie, the ingredients are:

2-3 tbsp of roasted and ground black sesame seeds
1 banana
soy milk

I roasted the seeds the night before and ground them in the morning. I didn't add any honey because the soy milk was the sweetened type.

If you notice the coloured paper in the photo above, it's actually done using ice-painting. Here's the artist for the paper, and the assistant art director for the photo-shots!

Black Sesame Ice Cream

The nice thing about making your own ice cream is that you can have the flavours that you can't find in the supermarkets. Black sesame is one such example. I've had it at gourmet restaurants but never found it anywhere for sale.

Black sesame also has many health benefits. One of them is to restore and maintain black hair. This is a motivation for me of course, since quite a few strands of grey are sprouting from my head!

That aside, this is a lovely recipe. It turns out soft with a nice nutty flavour. It's something different that's really worth trying. So here's the recipe for you (no ice cream maker has been used in creating this dessert):