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!

apple crumble.

July 31th, 2011.

This is one hell of a messy job. Got the recipe from a dear friend, Kyra. You can also see it here, as she always got gorgeous pics. I almost failed when making the crumble. Note to self 9an to you, of course), when rubbing the dry ingredients with butter to make the crumble, make sure you rub it gently so it doesn't turn out to be a dough.

Ingredients:

For the filling

• 450 g apples (peeled, cored, cut into dices)
• 50 g brown sugar
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 pinch of ground cinnamon

For the crumble

• 300 g flour
• 175 g brown sugar
• 200 g unsalted butter
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 tbsp granulated sugar (additional)

Directions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees C
2. Place the flour and sugar in a large bowl and mix well. Taking a few cubes of butter a time, rub into the dry mixture. Keep rubbing until the mixture resembles some kind of breadcrumbs.
3. Place apples in a large bowl and sprinkle over the sugar, flour, and ground cinnamon. Stir well, being careful not to break the apple.
4. Butter an ovenproof dish. Spoon the apple mixture into the bottom, and then sprinkle the crumble on top.
5. Bake for 40 to 45 minutes or until the crumble is browned and the fruit mixture is bubbling.
6. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

lemon orange cake with cheese cream.

July 31th, 2011.

I've got some cheese cream frosting leftovers, so i decided to get a bit creative by making a lemon orange cake. Too lazy to search for new recipe, i'm using my lemon cupcake recipe and add a little bit this and that :D I promise next time i'll make lemon cake using the proper recipe. But hey, everybody in the house likes the cake. So,.. yeay!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/3 plain flour
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 5 tbsp orange juice
  
• 1/2 cup lemon zest
• 1/3 cup full cream milk

For the filling:

• 2 tbsp orange preserves
• 2 tsp lemon juice

For the frosting:

• 5 tbsp cream cheese
• 1/2 stick butter
• 1/2 cup confectioners sugar
• 1 tbsp Betty Crocker's Rich & Creamy Cream Cheese Frosting (too add more flavour)

After the cake is baked for about 25 minutes in the oven, cool it on the cooling rack for 30 minutes or more. Cut the cake in half with serrated knife and then spread the orange preserve that has been mixed with 2 teaspoons of lemon juice and a pinch of lemon zests. Assemble the cake so the lemon orange preserves is in the middle. Decorate the top side of the cake with cream cheese frosting. Serve it on a Sunday afternoon, accompanied by tea or milk, and of course... a good laugh with friends :) Happy Sunday!

red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing.

July 23rd, 2011.

This batch is the second attempt i decided to try, bcause the last time i made this recipe, it was quite awful (as you can see it here). I'll write the recipe for you again. Oh wait, actually i don't remember where i got this recipe from. But the result is a bunch of delicious, moist, red velvet cupcakes. An of course, one is never enough :)

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 (can be substituted with sour cream or plain yogurt)
  
• 2 tbsp red coloring
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vinegar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Icing:

• 4 oz. cream cheese
• 1/2 stick butter
• 1 cup icing sugar
  

Directions:

1. In a mixer bowl, combine oil, buttermilk, and eggs
2. Mix in vinegar, red coloring, and vanilla extract. Beat at low speed until mixed well.
3. Add salt, flour, baking soda, sugar and cocoa in another bowl.
4. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes in the pre-heated oven (at 170 degrees C)