caesar salad and mushroom soup.

August 21st, 2011

Today, due to health condition, at last i'm going nowhere. And ... the whole member in my family are planning to spend some time at my parent's house for break-fasting. I'm contributing in making soup and salad for dinner. At first, the caesar salad was meant to be as beautiful or as delicious as Donna Hay's. But it turns out that making salad dressing from scratch is a pain in the arse (except for Italian dressing, it's quite easy).

SALAD


Ingredients

• 1 whole Romain lettuce
• soft boiled eggs
• chicken fillets
• garlic and olive oil
• thyme
• slices of bread
  

For the dressing:

• 1 egg
• 2 anchovies (i'm not using one)
• 1/2 tsp Wostershire sauce
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 3/4 cup grape seed oil (i'm using extra virgin olive oil)
• salt and pepper to season

Directions

1. Prepare the Romaine lettuce. Clean with water, drain. Cut in half, and then chop each halves into pieces.
   
2. For the soft boiled egg - to get perfect egg, you want the yolk right in the centre. To achieve this when boiling your egg, make a whirlpool by stirring the water around. Place the egg in the centre and keep the whirlpool going for about 20 seconds.
   
3. For the garlic crouton, brush slices of bread with olive oil and chopped garlic, and pop them in the oven at 160 degrees for about 10 minutes. You want them to be crunchy and golden.
4. For the dressing, mix together ingredients in a blender. Slowly add the olive oil as the dressing is mixing, starting with a few drops at a time. Once blended, transfer to a bowl. Whisk through a small amount of cold water to thin the sauce.

MUSHROOM SOUP

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/3 cup flour
• 300 g fresh mushroom, thinly sliced (portobello or champignon)
• 6 cup chicken broth
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves
• 1/4 chopped green onions
• 2 tbsp minced fresh parsley
• 1 bay leaf
  
• 2 large egg yolks
• 4 cloves garlic
  
• 1/2 cup whipping cream
• 1/4 cup milk
  

Directions

1. In a large soup pot, melt butter over medium heat
2. Saute mushroom for 5 to 6 minutes, until moist
3. Add flour little by little, stir well
4. Gradually stir in broth, stir constantly
5. Add thyme, bayleaf, green onions, and parsley
6. Reduce heat and cover. Simmer 15 to 20 minutes.
7. In a small bowlm whish egg yolks with cream. Stir 1 cup hot broth into cream mixture and then return all to soup pot. Heat over low heat until hot about 5 minutes. You can add more milk if you like.
8. Add salt and pepper to taste.
9. Serve, sprinkle with parsley.

rainbow cake.

August 17th, 2011.

It's Indonesia's Independence Day today. Meaning holiday, no work, nothing to do. I've been thinking of making rainbow cookies, doesn't have to be huge or whatever, but i still want to try. It supposed to be a seven layered cake in the colors of the rainbow (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink), but since i'm only using 1 cake tin (do'oh), i found it very time-consuming. So i guess five layers are just about enough. For the cake recipe, i'm using easy vanilla cake recipe that i found in random recipe websites. For the icing, just mix unsalted butter and icing sugar, or you can add Betty Crocker's vanilla cream frosting.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1-3/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup milk

red and orange batter in which i finally mixed altogether.
yellow and green batter.

blue, green, and purple batter.

chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing.

August 16th, 2011.
There's gonna be a break-fasting event in my office and each one of us has to bring food. So, chocolate cupcakes will be the best thing that i can present ;p Here's the recipe.. i'm glad to share it with you so you can make them too ;)

What you need:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 salt
• 1 1/4 cup oil
• 1 cup buttermilk
  
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

For the icing, mix together 1 stick of butter and 1/2 to 3/4 cup icing sugar to hold it together. Add purple and peach yellow food coloring. Sprinkle with colorful sprinkle.

fasting days.

It's the beginning of August and we are welcoming the holy Ramadhan month, where we should fast from dusk until dawn. So as you can see, there isn't much that we can do while we're fasting. So i... as usual.. am keeping myself busy by learning how to decorate my cupcakes. I made chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, the medium ones and the mini ones. Those are for family break-fasting event this evening. Yesterday i also try to make brownies, but it doesn't taste like the real brownie, hehe.

Couple days ago, i bought the basic fondant for cake decorating. And now that i've found gel food coloring, i decided to learn how to decorate the cupcakes with fondant. It's a messy job, really, because basically fondant is made from sugar and water. So if it's get sticky, you have to add icing sugar to the dough. Trust me, you will smell like sugar while you're doing this. Ekhhh..

This is the chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

Mini ones.

My sister was trying to help to decorate the cupcakes. Not bad, eh?

Aha! Chocolate cupcake with fondant and mint butter cream frosting.
Voila! Maybe next year i'll be opening my cupcake store. LOL!