Homemade Quiche

Firstly, I would like to say a big thank you to Sarah of Backpack Bees for sharing her quiche recipe with me. I was complaining on the lack of variety available in German supermarkets and Sarah volunteered to make a quiche to show me how easy it was. She was so right!

Unlike other quiche that involves making a crust, Sarah knew that I would prefer a all ingredients in one bowl recipe. This made things a lot simpler for me. I threw in all the ingredients in a huge mixing bowl and dished it into a cake tin. It worked perfectly too. I didn’t want to spend money on getting a tin specially for baking a quiche for the first time. However I did buy a new measuring jug that measures in cups! Now I can try out more recipes from American sites without converting numbers online.

I followed Sarah’s recipe very closely and baked the quiche for 45 minutes at 200 degrees Cels in the oven. Greedy me did add some shredded mozzarella cheese though since I had them in the fridge.

The quiche tasted heavenly! So much better than the ones I get from the supermarkets in Germany. I love how versatile the recipe can be too. Instead of courgette (or zucchini), I’ll try making it with leeks and broccoli next time. I’m so looking forward to making a variety of quiche!

As Sarah said in her blog post, you can omit bacon/ham if you prefer a vegetarian option.

For Sarah’s recipe, please do visit her blog at this link (Quiche recipe).

Crispy Baked Chicken

Remember me saying I was going to try Just One Cookbook’s Crispy Baked Chicken recipe? I’ve tried Nami-san’s delicious Tonkatsu recipe and homemade tonkatsu recipe (here’s my post for it) and really loved it. However, I wanted a healthier version. I’m really glad that she has an oven baked version of it!
I served the crispy baked chicken with homemade chips, bacon wrapped asparagus and homemade Tonkatsu sauce. It was definitely healthier, less cleaning up and very crispy. It was also very easy to cook, so do give the recipe a try!

Blueberry Cream Cheese Muffins

Note: Link to recipe can be found at the end of this post.

On Thursday afternoon, I thought it would be a good idea to grab a muffin and cold drink from Starbucks in town for a quick lunch amidst all the errands I had to run. It turned out to be a rather dissatisfying Raspberry Cream Cheese muffin which had NO raspberries in it whatsoever. Not a single one. It tasted just like a badly baked vanilla muffin.

Here’s a photo of the Starbucks muffin. I didn’t even bother taking photos of what it looked inside since there was nothing.

Should I be surprised? Perhaps I’m pampered by the many cafés in Frankfurt that actually sell homebaked delicacies to appreciate Starbucks anymore.

To satisfy my craving, I made my own muffins instead. However, the supermarket I went to didn’t have raspberries so I baked the muffins with blueberries instead. Here’s my rule: if you’re going to name it a raspberry cream cheese muffin, Starbucks should have made sure that there were raspberries in it. Hence, when I baked these muffins, I went nuts with the ingredients. Probably something a huge commercial café like Starbucks couldn’t afford to do.

Here’s how the inside of the muffin I baked looks like. Yes, I love packing it with blueberries and a good amount of cream cheese!

Thankfully these muffins are NOT difficult to bake. I love to have homebaked muffins every so often for breakfast on weekends or when we have an excursion. They are such lovely snacks to have on long train journeys.

If you’re also interested in baking your own raspberry/blueberry cream cheese muffins, here’s the link to the recipe I used. There are plenty of fanciful recipes out there but all I was searching for today was a simple one. This proved to worked well for me and I hope it will for you too.

Vanilla Fairy Cupcakes with a Surprise

Our kitchen is tiny and has limited storage space. With a baby on his way, I had to clear a couple of shelves to store some of his essentials. Therefore, I decided to bake Vanilla Fairy Cupcakes with Chocolate Frosting.

I adapted the recipe by adding half a teaspoon of Nutella in each of the cupcakes. That’s the surprise by the way. Daniel doesn’t eat Nutella but when he bit into it he thought it was regular chocolate! The cupcakes were so easy to make as BBC Good Food intended to target kids with this recipe. They turned out light and fluffy, just the way a good fairy cupcake should be. No fuss whatsoever.

With some leftover chocolates in the cupboard, I made chocolate frosting using the recipe from Dad’s Chocolate Drop Cakes. The frosting complimented the Vanilla Fairy Cupcakes superbly! It’s bound to be a winner with chocolate lovers out there. Oh, a little frosting goes a long way so don’t go crazy with it!

Since they are fairy cupcakes, I made them pretty by adding colourful sprinkles. Awww… I love how each of them looked – so dainty and graceful!

The usual protocol when it comes to baking is that I’ll keep a couple of slices for ourselves and the rest will be shared with Daniel’s colleagues. I do hope the men in his team won’t find these little fairies too girlish for their liking!

Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownie

Mr Sunshine is out and that makes me as happy as a lark. I’m beginning to think I’m a green plant whose well-being is dependent on natural sunlight. Charged with full gear motivation, like a car refuelled, I kept myself busy in the kitchen from 8am to make some Peanut Butter Chocolate Brownie. Unsurprisingly, this tested and tried recipe is found on my favourite BBC Good Food website.

It’s rare to see a brownie baked in a round tin but as I rarely make them, I haven’t got a square or rectangular tin in my inventory. Does the shape really matter? Not, in my opinion.

 
The moist and dense brownie struck a balance between the bitterness of the dark chocolate and the sweetness peanut butter. Although the recipe asked for 280g of brown sugar, I only used 200g. The sight of a mountainous amount of sugar in my pan was shocking so I reduced it. When it comes to this brownie, one should savour the peanut butter and dark chocolate; not sugar.

 
I like my brownie to have a slightly fudgy texture and this was how the Peanut Butter and Chocolate brownie turned out.

Decadently rich and satisfying, this brownie is pure heavenly indulgence for peanut butter and chocolate fanatics out there.

How can I possibly not share this tin of joy with my friends? I’ve set aside the humble slice you see in the picture above to share with Daniel and the rest will be generously shared with others. Bet they’ll hate me when their waistlines expand!

Chocolate Marble Cake

I was craving for a small slice of chocolate cake but if I went to a cafe I know jolly well it would be more than just a slice of cake. Instead I walked to the supermarket to get the ingredients I needed to bake a cake and decided to share it with Daniel’s colleagues. Everyone’s happy this way!

By now you’ll know that I’m a big fan of BBC Good Food recipes. That’s where I got the Chocolate Marble Cake recipe from. With 222 reviews and so close to obtaining a perfect 5-stars rating, I’ll only have myself to blame if it didn’t work out.


The cake was moist and fluffy. It also had just the right amount of sweetness so it didn’t hurt the teeth. As suggested by the recipe, I alternated the plain and chocolate batter before giving it a swirl at the end.

Before I cut into the first slice, I was filled with excitement! I wondered if my marble cake would look good. I’m always envious of bakers who are confident of the cakes they bake for others. They’ll never have to steal a slice before serving it.

I always make sure I taste the cakes I baked before sharing with people. I don’t think I can deal with the embarrassment of treating others to an undercooked, terrible tasting cake.

As you can see, I had more chocolate batter than plain one hence the cake looked more chocolatey than having a proper marble effect. However, it was still mouth-watering! It was so delightful to have a slice to indulge in after dinner. Very heavenly!!!

Easy Scones Recipe

An intensive, vigorous 60-minute Body Fit workout left me crawling home on Friday afternoon with zero appetite. Wasn't exercise supposed to make you feel hungry later? Or does that apply only to swimming? I spent 4 precious hours pondering what to have for lunch as I read my crime novel. It wasn't until 4.30pm that I decided to make some scones. We might as well call that tea time.

Ingredients for 6 scones
225g self-raising flour
25g cold/chilled butter
Pinch of salt
15g caster sugar
50g sultanas
150ml cold milk
1 egg beaten with a little milk (for brushing later)

Method
1. Heat oven to 230 degrees Celsius.
2. Sift flour and salt into a dry mixing bowl.
3. Add the butter and use your fingers to quickly rub it into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
4. Add the sugar and sultanas. Mix well.
5. Make a well in the centre and stir in the milk to make the dough. If the dough is too sticky, sprinkle some flour.
6. Transfer the dough onto a floured board and knead it lightly until smooth and then roll it out to about an inch thick.
7. Using a large cookie cutter, cut the dough. Place them on a well floured baking sheet.
8. Brush with the beaten egg and milk mixture. (Lightly will do or it might turn out quite brown like mine)
9. Bake in the oven (middle shelve) for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
10. Cool on a rack before eating.

I didn't have clotted cream at home so I used only strawberry jam. As they're packed with sultanas, these scones are surprisingly good on their own too! Crispy on the outside, light on the inside. Just the way I like my scones.

Flammkuchen

Apart from taking photos, I’ve been trying to take more videos lately too. While photos are able to portray an expression or event captured at a specific moment, videos are able to show the sequence of events which can be quite fun. I found an app known as Magisto on the App Store and it’s quite a cool video editing app.

Here’s a video of how I made Flammkuchen. Unfortunately, I’m not able to view the video on my iphone or ipad directly on YouTube but it works perfectly fine on a PC or laptop. Must be some silly Flash requirement and I’ve emailed Magisto asking if they’re planning to change that. These days people surf the internet ON THE GO. It’s just really silly to produce something that isn’t suitable for certain platforms. That would be a major MINUS point when using Magisto. But overall, I still had fun with the app. Funnily enough, the YouTube video works just fine once “embedded” in a blog post.

Alternatively, try to watch it via this link!

http://www.magisto.com/video/KU4RZ10VRi80WkRgCzE

Ingredients (depending on how generous you want to be)

• flammkuchen base which I got from the supermarket
• Crème fraîche (2-3 tbsp)
• 1 red onion
• cherry tomatoes, halved
• bacon bits

Method

1. Preheat oven at 220 degrees Celsius
2. Spread Crème fraîche on the base followed by onion, cherry tomatoes and bacon bits.
3. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes
4. Serve while it is hot

Yorkshire Pudding

Living abroad in a foreign land can be frustrating when you have no access to your favourite home-cooked delicacies. It’s not too bad in Frankfurt as we’re spoilt with a good variety of restaurants and supermarkets. But occasionally I’ll find myself scratching the walls, dying to have something Singaporean or British.

I’ve learnt to cook a few Chinese dishes and I’m really proud of myself. It really does cure homesickness especially when I’m a foodie person. Thankfully Daniel isn’t a fussy eater and he loves Chinese food too. However a couple of days ago I realised I don’t really know how to cook anything British (and I don’t mean just frying sausages or bacon). Hence I attempted to make a Sunday Roast.

When it comes to cooking something I’m not familiar with I believe in taking baby steps. So I tried to make our own Yorkshire Puddings. Much to my surprise, the recipe calls for only 3 ingredients! And I assure you it’s really simple to make too. The recipe was originally from BBC Good Food but I made a quarter of it.

Ingredients (Makes 3-4 average sized Yorkshire Puddings)
35g plain flour
1 egg
50ml milk
Sunflower oil for cooking

Instructions
1. Heat the fan oven to 230 degrees cels. Drizzle sunflower oil evenly into a Yorkshire Pudding tin or muffin tin. As I haven’t got either of them, I used a mini-cupcake tin which works fine too. This is why I had 8 mini Yorkshire Puddings even though the recipe claims to serve 3-4. Heat the tin in the oven for a good 15 minutes at least.
The trick to having really fluffy, puffed up Yorkshire Puddings is to ensure that the tin is sizzling hot!
2. Mix the flour and egg in a bowl till smooth. Gradually add in the milk and beat till it’s lump-free. Season with salt and pepper.
3. To make it easier for you to pour the batter into the tin, first pour the mixture into a jug. Remove the heated tin from the oven and pour the batter evenly into the holes.
4. Bake them for 25 minutes or until they’re golden brown. Remove from oven and serve while they’re warm.

Do not open the oven door when cooking Yorkshire Puddings if you want them to rise!

I wondered why my Yorkshire Puddings weren’t sunken in the middle. I reckoned the tin was too small and it didn’t allow the batter to spread horizontally. However it didn’t affect the taste at all. This October we’ll be back in England for a holiday so I’m definitely getting my hands on Yorkshire Pudding tins!

The taste was simply marvellous. I love how fluffy it turned out to be although I must admit I was shocked and worried why they didn’t look like the frozen ones.

And so may I now proudly say that I can make one of Britain’s favourite and most popular dishes!

Steamed Double Chocolate Cupcakes

Copyright Yoyo's Kitchen Adventures

I didn't grow up with an oven. It just wasn't popular in Singapore among my parents' generation. They didn't grow up with one either. But that didn't stop us Chinese from having cakes. How did we make cakes then, you might ask. 

We use a steamer. A steamer is an essential kitchen tool in a Chinese family. We use it to steam vegetables, seafood, eggs, buns, dumplings and cakes. I prefer steaming food to frying simply because it usually doesn't involve using oil and it's healthier. 

Here's a photo to show you what a traditional, old-fashion Chinese steamer looks like. This is the upper layer. It's 28cm wide which is a good size since I can fit my largest bowl in it when I need to. 

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As I'm feeling a little guilty for the lack of exercise today, I'm going to share with you a non-traditional, but healthy double chocolate steamed cupcake recipe! The basic recipe is similar to making traditional chinese steamed cakes. Are you ready for it?

Ingredients

• 75g all-purpose flour
• 1tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1 egg
• 3.5 tbsp milk
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp vegetable oil
• 4 tbsp chocolate chips

Instructions (Makes 6 cupcakes)

1. Fill a steamer with water and bring it to boil.
2. Sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking powder in a large bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, sugar, milk and vegetable oil together.
4. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and mix them together well.
5. Add the chocolate chips to the mixture and mix well.
6. Fill each cupcake holder half-way. (I used silicon cupcake holders. Do not use paper ones!)
7. Place the cupcake holders in the steamer. Cover it and steam for 10 minutes.
8. The cupcakes are cooked when a skewer comes out clean.
9. Serve when cupcakes are warm or at room temperature. 

Tips

I find steaming cakes a lot more hassle free and easier than baking. But a huge pull factor is that I don't have to use that much butter and sugar that a traditional chocolate cupcake would usually call for.

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As you can see, the cupcake is really moist, fluffy and light. The cupcakes weren't too sweet so if you have a sweet tooth, you might want to double the sugar needed. I personally like it as it is and would prefer to taste the actual chocolate chips instead. I am really interested to make variations of steamed cupcakes since this was such a success. What other flavours do you reckon you'll experiment with?

Chewy Oats & Raisins Cookies

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To me "tea" was just that black, brown, green or yellow liquid that we drink. So when my mother-in-law, who is British, asked "What would you like for tea?", my response was "Oh, no thank you". I remember thinking to myself "What other tea has she got apart from PG tips AND I'm still drinking from the cup she made me minutes before!". 

 

Probably taken aback slightly by my response she asked again, "Are you sure you wouldn't like tea?" to which I responded while pointing to my half-filled tea cup "I still have some left", a little embarrassed by my lack of tea-drinking speed. 

That was when my husband, Daniel, intervened to explain what "tea" my mother-in-law was offering. She was not referring to drinking tea, of course. Instead, she was referring to "tea as a meal" which is a light meal consisting of cakes, crisps, cookies, finger food and sandwiches. That was one of my first British Culture 101 lesson.

To create the feeling of "Britishness" at home, I do make tea occasionally. Last weekend, I made some lovely Chewy Oats & Raisins cookies which I found on BBC Good Food. These cookies are meant to be slightly chewy and go really well with a hot cup of tea in the afternoon. Here is an adaptation of the recipe and I hope you will like it.

Ingredients list:  

• 100g butter 
• 70g caster sugar 
• 100g all-purpose flour 
• 160g porridge oats 
• 100g raisins 
• 2 tsp cinnamon powder   
• 2 tsp baking powder 
• 2 eggs 

Instructions (Baking time - 16 minutes)

1. Heat the oven to 180 C. Grease a large baking sheet. 
2. In a large bowl, use an electric whisk to mix the butter and caster  sugar together until soft.
3. Add the eggs and cinnamon powder and mix well.
4. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, oats, baking powder and raisins together. Make sure they are well mixed before adding it to the butter mixture with a spatula.
5. Scoop tablespoonfuls of cookie dough onto the baking sheet and bake for 16 minutes (the cookies should be slightly browned, so do keep an eye on them).
6. Remove from oven once they are cooked but DO NOT remove cookies from tray. Give the cookies a couple of minutes to cool slightly and settle before moving them to a cooling tray to cool completely. 

Tips

I reduced the amount of sugar in the original recipe because the raisins I use are already very sweet. Some people who tried this recipe said that its texture was more like a cake rather than a cookie. Well, it is meant to be a little more on the soft side. So if you are looking for a crispy cookie recipe, this would definitely not be your cup of tea. (Note to self: bake more cookies)

It could be my oven, but baking for 10-12 minutes as per the original recipe definitely was not long enough for my cookies. They were slightly undercooked. Also, baking them a few minutes more will give you a more crispy texture.

Little Coffee Cakes

Happy midweek everyone! Hope you have had a smooth first half of the week and are looking forward to a great weekend wherever you are.

To kick start my weekend (I do start early, don't I), I found a really good Little Coffee Cakes recipe. These mini cakes are really moist and rich in flavour. They are incredibly delicious and I can’t promise you that you’ll stop after one little cake!

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There is no bitterness to these little cakes and they are surprisingly light too. This is the first time I've succeeded in making proper icing however I still need to work on swirling it properly so it does not taste only yummilicious but also looks fabulous!

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It does look devilish, doesn’t it? The recipe was superb. Even Daniel, who isn’t a fan of icing, finished two little coffee cakes at once! Here's the adapted recipe for these wonderful little cakes.

Ingredients

• 50g golden caster sugar
• 70g butter, softened
• 2 large eggs
• 70g self-raising flour
• 1 tbsp instant coffee mixed with half tbsp water

For the icing

• 100g butter, softened
• 80g icing sugar
• 1 tsp instant coffee mixed with half tbsp water
• 25g plain chocolate, melted

Instructions (Baking time 17 minutes) 

1. Heat oven to 170C. Line 18 holes in 2 bun tins with fairy cake cases. 
2. Beat the sugar with the butter until light and creamy. 
3. Beat in the eggs, one by one, adding 1 tbsp flour at the same time. Beat in the rest of the flour along with the coffee. 
4. Spoon into the cake cases and bake for 17 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.  

Instructions for Icing

1. Beat the butter until pale, then gradually beat in the icing sugar, followed by the espresso and the melted chocolate.
2. Decorate the little cakes with icing when they have cooled.

Tips

Unless we're really desperate to wake ourselves up, we don't drink espresso. That hardly happens so I don't have any at home. I didn't see the point of spending a few Euros on a bottle when the recipe calls for less than 2 tablespoons of espresso so I used oridinary coffee powder which works just fine. As with all the recipes you'll find here, I always put less sugar than what's stated in the original recipes. 

If you could resist digging into these little coffee cakes immediately, I recommend chilling them for a couple of hours before serving. The icing would have set a little more by then. Unlike some cakes which get dry after refrigerating them, these stay moist even after keeping them for two nights. 

 

Midsummer Swedish Kladdkaka Cake

Happy Midsummer everyone!

Actually I’m not sure what people say to each other on this day. Midsummer is celebrated in Europe (particularly in the Scandinavian countries) and it takes place around the same time as summer solstice. As Singapore is a tropical island located near the equator, we have pretty much quite the same number of daylight hours throughout the year. In Europe, summer solstice occurs on the day when we have the longest daylight hours.

Source: Robert Nyman’s website

Before living in Europe, it was hard to imagine that it would still be bright at 10pm in England. I thought Daniel was trying to impress me (who knows why this would be impressive?) when he told me this fact years ago. But I don’t remember him telling me about the long, dark winters. CHEATER BUG!!!

Here’s a BBC picture of the Brits mark summer solstice at Stonehenge.

 

Source: BBC News 

And since I love the summers in Germany (on days that actually feel like summer) I looked up online on how to bake Kladdkaka which is a Swedish chocolate cake with a gooey centre. I baked it today and I must say it is officially my favourite chocolate cake. It’s soft in the centre which melts in your mouth when it’s warm.

Copyright Yoyo's Kitchen Adventures

If it’s your first time baking this cake you might wonder if it’s actually cooked through. Unlike most cakes, if you poke a stick through its centre it will NEVER and SHOULD NOT come out clean. It is meant to be gooey, sticky... NOT DRY.

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Here is the brilliant recipe from it from All Recipes. 

Ingredients

• 60g all-purpose flour
• 20 g unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1g sale
• 2 eggs
• 240g white sugar
• 15ml vanilla extract
• 115g butter, melted

Instructions (Baking time - 35 to 40 minutes)

1. Preheat oven to 150C. Lightly grease an 8 inch tin.
2. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. Set it aside. 
3. Stir the eggs into the sugar until smooth. 
4. Add the flour mixture, and stir just until combined. 
5. Pour in the vanilla extract and butter. Stir until it is well combined.
6. Pour mixture into tin.
7. Bake in the lower tray of the oven for 35 to 40 minutes until the center has slight set.
8. Allow cake to cool before serving.  

Tips
This recipe has been tested by many and received a high rating overall. I followed the recipe exactly (word for word) and it worked out really well for me. The only thing I might change on hindsight perhaps is to reduce the amount of sugar used since I sprinkled icing sugar on the cake before serving.

Don't worry if this cake doesn't rise just like other ordinary cakes. It is meant to be a little flat and dense. But I assure you, it is DELICIOUS. 

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So, here we are wishing everyone a good week ahead and Happy Midsummer!