Simple Biscuits

Little monster birthday on summer holiday, she order me to make some biscuits to give away to her friend before end of the school term. Then I'm just think to make something simple and cute like this simple biscuits with Winnie The Pooh cookies cutter and stamp with alphabet cookies stamp all of her friends name on every biscuits. So easy and is for the family play time together. All the kids, even the parent love it because is special. The kids love to have a biscuit with they name on it. The parent ask me a question " Where do you get it from"

Adapted From: Stork

200 gm Stork packet or any other brand butter
250 gm plain flour + extra for dusting
1 teaspoon baking powder
100 gm caster sugar
2 large egg yolks


Method:

1. Cut the butter into small pieces.
2. Sieve the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.
3. Add the sugar, egg yolks and butter and mix with a wooden spoon, hand mixer or cold hands quickly into a stiff dough (don’t mix for too long!). Wrap the dough in clingfilm and leave to rest and chill at least 30 minutes in the fridge.
4. Preheat oven to 190°C, 170°C fan oven, Gas mark 5.
5. Dust the work surface with a little flour and roll out the dough until it is about 5 mm thick.(if the dough too sticky add more flour but not too much, little by little)
6. Cut out shapes with a sharp knife or cookie cutters and place on the baking sheet lined with baking paper. Fold the dough scraps together, roll them out and cut out more shapes.(can use any shape of cookie cutters)
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes until cooked and lightly browned. Leave the cookies to cool on the baking sheet.
8. Dust the cookies with icing sugar.(I'm omit this step)

Notes:

Can top up the eye, nose and mouth with melt chocolate with piping bag.

Make it more adorable, use your own imagination.

Kueh Lapis(Steamed Layer Cake)

Kueh Lapis or nine layer dessert, one of the delicious kuih muih in Malaysia. We can choose whatever colour we like to make this dessert look fantastic. The children love it because they can peeling each layer with different coloured. My monster request to have more layer to peel next time like 15 to 18 layer.

Adapted from: Nasi Lemak Lover
(with minor changes of the colour layer)

400 ml water
70 gm coarse sugar
5 pandan leaves, knotted
400 ml coconut milk (I'm not using fresh coconut milk, just from can)
180 gm rice flour
120 gm tapioca flour

Red food colouring
Green food colouring

Method:

1. Boil water, sugar, pandan leaves and coconut milk until sugar dissolved. Discard pandan leaves and set aside to cool completely.
2. Add in rice flour and tapioca flour, stir to mix well. Strain the batter.
3. Grease a 7" steam pan with a little oil. Place the pan in a steamer and steam until hot. 
4. Divide batter into 3 portions, measure by scale to make sure all the portions is even.
5. Add in food colouring to 2 portion. The last is plain batter.
6. Pour 1st layer with green batter into steam pan, and steam for 3 minutes over medium high heat.(around 120++gm for each layer)
7. Pour 2nd layer with white batter into steam pan, and steam for 3 minutes.
8. Pour 3rd layer with red batter into steam pan, and steam for 3 minutes.
9. Repeat until all 8 layers set. Add a drop of red food colouring to let red batter to become dark pink batter and steam for 15 minutes.
10. Leave the kueh to cool completely (take about 6 hours) at room temperature before cutting (use a plastic knife to cut).

Prawn Cheong Fun

Another traditional dim sum, Prawn cheong fun is a must order dim sum when we visit dim sum restaurant. Been making this cheong fun on every Saturday. They can have it how much as they like.

Adapted from : Soul Recipe

Batter

150 gm rice flour
1½ Tablespoon Wheat starch flour or Tapioca flour
2 Tablespoon Corn flour
1 Tablespoon Oil
450 ml Water
1/2 teaspoon salt (I'm used 1/4 teaspoon)

20 pieces peeled, cooked prawn (cut to halve)

Some dry fried onions

(can substitute with any other ingredient like dried shrimp, BBQ pork(char siew) or yau tiew.)

* I'm used half the ingredient to make 10 rolls of cheong fun 

*Can use round or rectangular pan but must be non stick. I'm used 2 prepared pan to quicker the process.

Sauce from monsterandsharkkitchen

2 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

2 tablespoon water

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon sesame oil

Method for batter:

1. Mix the rice flour, wheat starch and corn flour together.
2. Add water slowly and stir continuously.
3. Add the oil and salt and mix thoroughly.
4. Set mixture aside for at least an hour.
5. Prepare your steamer. Place an oiled pan or plate onto the steam tray.
6. When the water is boiling, ladle and spread a thin layer of batter(just to cover the pan) onto the preheated & oiled non stick pan or plate. Steam for about 3 minutes or until set.
7. Remove the pan or plate from the steamer, let cold down for 1 minute and use a flat spatula to loose the rice sheet from pan and place the cooked prawns.
8. Roll up and transfer to a oiled plate.
9. Cut and sprinkle with dried fried onions 
10. Serve with your favorite sauce.

Method for sauce:

1. Just heat the ingredients together on a small pan or wok on low heat.

Sau Bau

Time to celebrate my sister birthday, last year I'm make a bunch of roses for her and this time is her favorite sau bau with lotus filling.
Bun recipe same as my plain mantou  and the filling from my shanghai mooncake lotus filling but need to cut the quantity of the lotus to half.

Method:

1. I'm prepared the filling one day before and keep in the fridge. When ready to use get it to room temperature.
2. I'm used 15 gm for each filling and 30 gm for each dough. Make 20 bun.
3. Take some dough to mix with green food coloring for the leaf.
4. Divide dough into equal portions and flatten with a rolling pin to make a circle. Then place a filling in the middle, wrap the dough to seal. Place it on square parchment paper, seal side up.
5. Use a knife, smoothly make a line on the middle of the bun. Don't press it too hard, the bun will crack when steaming. (like some of my bun is crack because I'm press it to hard)
6. Roll out the green dough and stamp out the leaf. If doesn't have stamp just cut the shape of leaf with knife.
7. Spread some plain water on dough to stick with the green leaf on both side.
8. Make the leaf line with knife.
9. Pour some red food coloring in a bowl and use a toothbrush to sprinkle to the bun.
10. I'm used the cookies alphabet stamp to make the Happy Birthday word on the bun. You can use your own idea to decorate the little sau bau for the special person birthday.
11. Arrange buns into a steamer, leave about 1” gab in between buns. Spray water mist over buns, and steam in a preheated steamer on high heat for 12 minutes. Remove buns from steamer and cool on rack to prevent soggy bottom.

1.