Clowning Around, etc.

In my Wilton Cake Decorating Class 1: 3rd week’s class, we learned how to pipe clowns, shell border and make drop flowers.

We didn’t learn how to pipe the shoes for the clown, so please pardon the mess. The lighting in my kitchen isn’t that great either… oh well.

The cake should be good, I’ll be able to try it tomorrow. It’s pumpkin spice cake with buttercream and chopped candied ginger filling since it’s the festive season now. Andy and I had a sneak peak of the cake from shaving off the top of the cake to level prior to frosting. Boy, it was really, really good. The recipe for the cake can be found here.

So, here are the results!

Steamed Broccoli with Egg Flower Sauce

 

This is quite a simple dish again. I simply emptied out my fridge to make this dish.

Cook broccoli in hot water and blanch in cold water to stop the cooking process and preserve the greenness. You can also choose to steam them instead. Set the broccoli aside or arrange them in a plate.

To make the egg flower sauce, here are the ingredients for my version: 

Soft tofu cut in strips or cubes
Mixed peas
Enoki mushrooms
Mixture of wild mushrooms (white or shitake mushrooms can be used also)
Eggs lightly beaten
Cornstarch + cold water to thicken the sauce

Instructions

1. Heat 2 tbsps of oil in the wok. Sautee the mushrooms until they start to soften (EXCEPT for the enoki mushrooms). Enoki mushrooms cook very fast,  so we’ll reserve them for later.
2. Toss in a handful of mixed peas for colour and interest.
3. Pour 1 cup of water or broth and bring to a boil.
4. Turn down the heat and add in the fresh soft tofu and the lightly beaten eggs.
5. Season the sauce with salt, white pepper and vegetable seasoning.
6. Thicken the sauce with cornstarch + cold water mixture.
7. Turn heat off completely and add in enoki mushrooms while the sauce is still hot.
8. Drizzle a few drops of sesame oil into the sauce.

Pour the egg flower sauce over the cooked broccoli.

Eggplant Kungpow Stirfry with Walnuts

This recipe is for 2 medium sized Asian eggplants.  

In a hot wok, heat 2 - 3 tbsps of oil. Fry walnuts (or cashews) and dried chili peppers until they start to turn brown. Add in eggplants (brinjals) that had been cut lengthwise about 2 - 3 inches. You can also cut them in “satay cucumber” style - angled corner pieces. Fry the eggplant until they start to soften and look transclucent. Add more oil if needed, but not too much because the eggplant will release the oil back into the wok when it is cooked.

For the sauce, pour 3 tbsps or more oyster sauce into the wok with the eggplants, nuts and dried chili still in it. Lower the heat to allow for time to adjust the sauce’s taste and consistency. Sprinkle a pinch of salt, about 1 tbsp of sugar and a dash of white pepper. Adjust the sauce by adding in more sugar or soy sauce. Once the sauce is done, remove from heat and plate.

Garnish with chopped cilantro and a sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds.

Spinach Egg Drop Soup with Fresh Tofu

Because outside looked like this today (see below), Andy demanded that we have a big pot of soup on the stove to survive this historic day. The news reported that this storm system is the worse in decades, and being in Windsor, i.e. the southernmost part of Canada, it is not typical for us to get over a foot of snow in a day.

Soup was easy to make. We simply boil a pot of water (or broth) and added fresh spinach into the pot when the water starts to boil. We then turned the heat way down to avoid overcooking the vegetables, and tossed in sliced fresh white mushrooms. After letting the mushroom soften in the pot, we added seasoned the pot of soup with vegetable seasoning, salt, and white pepper. Just before turning off the heat, we added in beaten eggs and cubed fresh tofu. We added a dash of soy sauce and a few cracks of the black pepper grinder and that was it!

Baking Adventure

I had just begun my Wilton Cake Decorating classes and I’m extremely excited to learn about all there is about cake decorating. It’s a huge learning curve for me since I’m not at all a baker. The first cake I’ve ever baked was 12 years ago and it was a complete failure. That really put me off baking for a looonnggg time… Nonetheless, I’m forced to bake and frost a cake every cake now so that I can decorate it in class. Andy and my co-workers are extremely happy since I’ll be feeding them a lot of cakes.

My first cake was simply a yellow cake made from a boxed cake mix, but boy oh boy…. there’s much to be learned about baking, even if one chooses to use a ready-made cake mix. I had a battle with my hand-cracked double sifter the first time and ended up throwing that out after baking my first cake. I’ve learned that if one is not ready for a messy kitchen, then one should not venture into baking, or perhaps garner one’s self with a lot of patience towards having flour, crumbs, icing and plenty of bowls and kitchen utensils lying around during this task. Such a person is me. I cannot stand to have a messy or disorganized kitchen. I found myself constantly rearranging my tools while working on my cupcakes.

Nonetheless, here are a few results from my much immature experience as a cake baker and decorator.

The first cake deco class assignment was stars, and here is a picture of it. The rest of the cake is just mediocre. Nonetheless, my colleagues ate up the whole cake, no complains . Then I made some cupcakes for my hb’s colleague’s Christmas party, along with some Chipotle Cream Cheese wontons, but they were all eaten up before I took a picture. Making cupcakes and frosting them is a lot of work!! I had a major headache and was extremely tired by the time I was done with them. The decorations were inspired by Cuppacakes.blogpsot [dot] com Christmas cupcakes. There is still much for me to improve on, from baking to frosting to handling the piping bag. A strong wrist is required along with unending attention to detail and patience.

My cupcakes were too full, they grew “muffin tops” and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried shaving the top off, but the cake was too crumbly (Devil’s Food cake), hence the frosting was “contaminated”. That’s why I stuck with the dome shaped cupcakes and my Christmas trees were out of shape. I’ll really have to work on the right amount of batter for the cupcakes to avoid this in the future.

Vegetarian Nasi Lemak with Sambal Telur

This is one of Malaysians’ all time favorite. I made the sambal using some pre-made sambal paste that my aunt had prepared for me back at home, and added brown sugar (palm sugar would be better) and salt to season them just right. For some twang, you can also add tamarind juice. The hard boil eggs were deep-fried after the shells are removed. For the sambal, I did not want to use shallots (they are quite pricey in US/Canada as well), so I sliced some celery and caramelized them in the pan until they soften and turn slightly brown. While the taste of onions were absent, the texture were quite similar to the real thing. The deep-fried hard boiled eggs were added to the sambal mixture after the sambal is done.

The sambal paste is quite simple. Pan roast vegetarian belacan powder and curry leaves in a wok until fragrant. Stir in blended chilies. Oil is added to the mixture and then cooked until the oil separates from the mixture. We simply store them in jars after the mixture is cooled. This mixture works really well in Prawn Noodle (Mee Yoke) soup with lots of roasted seaweed or seaweed paste that can be bought from the store.

Since we had leftover curry from a few days ago, I made a simple green bean and tofu stiryfry to compliment the meal.

For the anchovies (ikan bilis) I experimented with shredded mushroom stems that were coated with bean flour seasoned with salt and mushroom flavouring (corn flour can be used) and then deep-fried as well. The peanuts were pan roasted with some oil. The “fake anchovies” and peanuts were then tossed with a sprinkle of salt.

I ran out of pappadums, otherwise, this was pretty close to home!