Pan de Sal

Pan de Sal is the most popular bread in the Philippines. Usually eaten for breakfast and snacks with any filling - cheese, leftover adobo, corned beef, coconut jam, condensed milk, whatever you have! I searched the net for some recipes but can’t find a good one. Most of the recipes I found use baking powder, which I think shouldn’t be used for pan de sal. Anyway, my recipe is using a pre-ferment (sponge) made of flour, water, and yeast, which I wait to ferment for at least 4 hours, and I only used these ingredients – flour (bread and wholemeal), salt, sugar, yeast, water, milk or whipping cream (for nicer taste and texture), butter (to help the bread stay moist and also help the dough rise), and cornmeal (for dusting, so there is no need to oil the pan…makes it so slippery).

Pan de sal below is made only with bread flour (the shop I usually go to ran out of wholemeal). I like the wholemeal version more….

Chocolate Crinkles

I was thinking of what would be fun to do with my kids and thought of – chocolate crinkles! I made the dough around 2 pm, and when my son came back from school, it’s ready to shape and roll!

When it’s time to shape and roll, both my kids wore their aprons, and they both started to eat the dough instead of shaping and rolling into the powdered sugar….here’s the proof: 

 

That’s why I love it when my kids help me do these! It may be messy but it’s so much fun! Here’s the end product:

The Dark Dark Cheesecake

My son loves to bring biscuits to school and always forgets to eat. And when he's back, it all mushed up. Who would want to eat that? So I thought, why not make a cheesecake? And to hide these bits and pieces of different coloured biscuits (imagine combination of oreo, cheese and peanut biscuits), I decided to make a dark dark cheesecake. It's dark, moist, not too sweet, and very chocolatey! Next time, I'll add dark chocolate chips or some chopped nuts.

The Dark Dark Cheesecake

The Dark Crust
So I crushed all the biscuits finely (about 200g), they did not stay long enough in my son's bag, and added some cocoa (about 3 T) to darken the mixture, sugar (1 T) to sweeten it a bit, and melter butter (1/3 cup) to bind everything together. Pressed it on to the bottom of a non-stick 9" springform pan, and baked it at 180 C for 10 minutes. Set aside.

The Dark Filling
Make sure all ingredients are in room temp
500g cream cheese
1/3 cup butter
1-1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup good quality cocoa
3 eggs
250g sour cream

Cream the cream cheese and butter until there are no more lumps. Add in the sugar and cocoa and mix till well combined. Beat in the eggs one at a time then add the sour cream. Pour into the springform pan and bake at 150 C for 50 mins to an hour. Run a spatula around the edge and set aside to cool. Once cool, put a cling wrap on top and refrigerate for at least 5 hours before serving

Serve with whipped cream and some chocolate syrup....

Naughty Tiramisu

I've been making tiramisu for quite sometime and my friends love it! They keep on asking for recipes (which I gave them). But, knowing me, I like to create a twist to the classic dessert and came up with Naughty Tiramisu.

Why naughty? It's actually a word play - nutty, naughty, naughty, nutty - with my son :-)

Here's how it goes:

Naughty Tiramisu (for 2 7"x9" dish - I always have to make two or else....)

Naughty bits
7 T sugar
2 T butter
some toasted chopped almonds, or walnuts, or pecans, or pistachios, or.....

Grease a baking pan. Caramelize sugar and butter then mix in the toasted chopped almonds. Pour onto the greased baking pan. Let cool. When cool, remove from the pan and chop coarsely.

The Tiramisu Part

Cheese filling
6 eggs, separated
3T sugar
500g mascaporne cheese
some amaretto liquer

Beat egg whites until foamy. Add in 1.5 T sugar. Beat until soft peaks form.

Beat egg yolks and the remaining sugar. Then beat in the mascaporne cheese and liquer until smooth (no lumps at all).

Gently mix the egg white mixture to the cheese mixture. Set aside.

Coffee-Amaretto soaked sponge fingers
Sponge fingers (about 32 pcs)
1/2 cup espresso
1/2 cup amaretto liquer - I'm alcoholic :-)

Soak or dip the sponge finger for about a second or two so the outside has the coffee-amaretto mixture and the inside is still dry. Sponge fingers absorb liquids really fast so you have to be quick! Do not oversoak or it will be soggy. You wouldn't want that.


To assemble:

1. Put a layer of cheese filling (about 1/6th of the mixture) on the dish.
2. On top of the cheese layer, put a layer of cofee-amaretto soaked sponge fingers, lined nicely.
3. Sprinkle 1/4 of the naughty bits.
4. Spread a layer of cheese filling.
5. Repeat steps 2 to 4.
6. Cover with a cling wrap and put in the fridge (for at least 3 hours). If you can't wait, put in the freezer for about 1/2 hour.
7. Dust with good quality cocoa before serving.

You will definitely enjoy the crunch as it makes you chew more, and the more you chew, the more you taste the cofee-almond-caramel-cream combination. Heavenly!

Cookbooks Galore!

Ok, I was doing lots of "research" recently (comparing recipes from the internet, etc.) and getting tired of it. Not that there are no good recipes on the internet, but I have to read through comments, blah, blah, blah, and most of the time there are polarized comments from people who tried the recipe - either it worked extremely well or a complete flop. So yesterday, I decided to go to the bookstore and get some books.

I went to Popular (the bookstore nearest to my place) and found bilingual books of Alex Goh. I got the Bread, Cheesecakes, Pastry, and Cakes books. I think he's recipes are quite good, just browsing through it. Like he has a real croissant recipe. I found a bread book by another author and she's trying to pass a butter roll as a croissant! Jeez, if I didn't know anything, I might have bought her book and be totally unhappy with the results.

So I read through the books the whole afternoon and I want to make everything all at once! Of course that is not possible and decided to make the butter rolls and the honey walnut bread.

This morning, I made the breads (I started at 11 am and finished around 3 pm). And wow! The recipe is good! I didn't have to make any adjustments at all!

Reading through the instructions, I did the honey bread first (using the straight dough method), then the butter roll (using the no time dough method). I ended up baking the butter rolls first then the honey bread.

I didn't have any walnuts in my kitchen, so I used chopped almonds instead. I also found some dried apricots in the fridge, chopped it, and put it in the dough. The honey almond apricot bread went very well! Not too sweet, not as airy as the bread the we usually get in the bakeries.

The butter roll is soft, just the right sweetness and saltiness, and the right density. My only complaint is the shaping as it took me a lot of time...I need to practice.

I was very very happy with the results of these recipes that I went to my favorite baking supplies shop and will make some cheesecake by end of this week. Here's the website: www.twinsco.com It's in chinese and I used Google Translate for translation.

For Alex Goh's book, you can get it at any Popular Bookstore in HK. It should also be available in Singapore and Malaysia. It's really worth it!

Comfort Food: Chocolate Cake with Berries & Cream Filling

I made a sponge cake yesterday, following a recipe from my mixer's cookbook...and it was not light and airy, I found it too dense. I filled it with strawberries & cream and dusted the top with some icing sugar and that's it.

Since I wasn't so happy with it, I searched for some recipes, compared them, and came up with below:


Chocolate Cake with Berries & Cream Filling


Chocolate Sponge Cake
6 eggs at room temp
1 cup granulated or caster sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 cup of cocoa (I like it dark and bitter, you can use less)
1/3 cup (block) butter (or 2/3 stick)
2 T vanilla


Preheat oven at 180C. Grease a 9" springform pan and line the bottom with waxed paper.

Put the eggs and sugar in the mixer. Using the balloon whisk, beat the eggs and sugar until pale and the whisk leaves a trail when removed.

Sift the flour and cocoa. Gently fold in to the egg mixture.

Mix the butter and vanilla. Gently fold in.

Pour into a springform pan. Bake for 30 to 35 mins, or until the edges started to separate from the pan.

Cool on top of a wire rack. While cooling, prepare the berries & cream filling.




Berries & Cream Filling (approx quantities)
400 mL whipping cream + 2 T sugar
1/2 cup of raspberry and/or cranberry puree
200g strawberries, cut into small chunks (about 1/4 inch or smaller), mixed with 2 T sugar

Whip the cream until soft peaks form. Add the berry puree, and whip till the mixture holds its shape. With a wooden spoon, mix in the strawberries.

Chocolate-Coffee Frosting (approx quantities)
1/2 block butter, room temp
3/4 to 1 cup cocoa
2 to 3 cups of icing sugar
2 shots espresso
6 T whipping cream

Mix the butter until creamy. Beat in the 3/4 cup cocoa until well-mixed.

Beat in 2 cups of icing sugar.

Beat in the espresso.

Now, according to your taste, add more cocoa or icing sugar.

Beat in whipping cream, 1 tablespoon at a time, until spreading consistency.

Arranging the cake

Well, I wasn't really much of a cake decorator, so I did it in a very simple way.

First, cut the sponge cake into three horizontally using a serrated knife. I heard that there is a cake leveler/cutter that I can use for this and I'll try to get one next week as it's a nightmare for me to cut the cake evenly!

Slather the berries and cream filling in between the sponge cakes. Since I wasn't able to cut the cake evenly, I have to make adjustments on the filling height to make it even-ish in the end.

Frost the cake with the chocolate-coffee frosting. The best way to do this is to first spread a thin layer all over, then spread a thick layer. Then you can use an icing comb or spatula to make some patterns.

After arranging the cake, put in the fridge for at least 2 hours so it has time to set. Serve and enjoy!

Patrick's Favorite Puff Pastry

We went to our neighbors for the CNY party last Saturday, and I asked my husband what should I make - an apple pie or puff pastry - he said apple pie, but I like puff pastry, so I made both! I made the apple pie first, then my son brought it to the neighbors, while I was making puff pastry. Then I'm done with the first batch and just finshed shaping everything when my neighbor rang the doorbell and said, it's time for hotpot. I quickly changed (my black shirt is kinda floury as I forgot to put on my apron), then went to the neighbors place. We had hotpot (with lots and lots and lots of things in it)...really yummy! It also provided us very comforting warmth on a windy HK winter night. We were having hotpot on the balcony. After the hotpot, we watched some DVDs while eating the pastry and puff! It's gone!

Patrick, as usual, is not hungry and very busy playing with everyone, and later on, with NDS. When we got home (around 11 pm), he's looking for puff pastry as he is now hungry. Well, it's gone and Patrick is so sad.

So I promised Patrick to make puff pastry again, with different jams!

I used this recipe for puff pastry, very easy to follow!http://msglaze.typepad.com/paris/2007/06/how-to-make-puf.html

My ever reliable assistant - Patrick - and me shaped the pastries. We made some pinwheels and envelopes, and used the trimmings to make hearts and sticks. There are so many shapes possible (really up to your imagination). Here is a very helpful blog on how to shape pastries to give you more idea http://joepastry.web.aplus.net/index.php?cat=89

BTW, I made some danish pastry before, but my family prefers the no yeast version - hence puff pastry!

Then we baked the puff pastry at 200 C for 20 mins. Then we put some strawberry, blueberry, apricot, and orange jam.......delicious!