Easy DIY Homemade Pizza!

Today, Shern and I made pizza.
We had so much fun.

I would like to share with you all how easy it is to make some simple homemade pizza.

Firstly, we used a paratha as the pizza based. You know those store-bought paratha/wrap. You can keep them frozen and just heat it up when you need them. I didn't heat it up because it would go into the oven later.

Next, spread some tomato-based pasta sauce all over the paratha. If you don't have that, just use your normal ketchup. And if you are hardworking, make your own sauce by blending some squashed tomatoes and add in some garlic and basil and some salt. That's for the hardworking ones.

Ok, then this is where Shern came in. Arrange the ingredients of your choice. Shern arranged some sliced sausages and button mushrooms. And I sneaked in some chopped brocolli to sneak in some greens into his diet.

 

And then topped it with lotsa grated cheese. Cheese of any kind will do. We used cheddar and mozzarella. Shern had fun sprinkling the cheese on top.

And then lastly, popped it into the oven at 180 dC for about 10 mins or until the cheese are all melted. And tada....your pizza is ready.

Erm, look at how we were too generous with the cheese and the sauce so it melted all over the sides. lol.

Shern said 'Mum, this is super delicious!'
That made my day. And he didn't even noticed the brocolli in the pizza.

Look at his happy grinny face.

So easy, right?

Time for you to make one with your child! 

Happy pizza-ing!

I Made Chocolate Ice Cream!

7 August 2013 - Homemade Chocolate Ice Cream

I bought an ice-cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer at a really great deal, thanks to Wendy and Jane. It fits my US version Kitchenaid Mixer perfectly. It was then that I learned that Kitchenaid Mixers bought from US and local are slightly different.

Anyway, I couldn't wait to start churning homemade ice-creams with my new toy.
I dug out my David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop book that I'd bought a few years ago, and was crestfallen when I saw that making ice-creams need a long preparation time.

First, I needed to freeze the freeze bowl for 24 hours.
And also after making the ice cream mixture/batter, it needs to be chilled in the refrigerator for 8 hours. Sigh.

So into the freezer goes my ice cream bowl. And yesterday afternoon, I got my butt off the chair and started preparing the batter.
It was my first time every reading a recipe on how to make the ice cream batter, so I read the instructions and recipe a few times, and also very thoroughly, to avoid making a blunder.

I followed the Chocolate Ice Cream recipe I got from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop.


Ingredients
2 cups (500ml) heavy cream (I used whipping cream with 35% fat)
3 tablespoons (21g) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (I used Valrhona)
5 ounces (140g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped (I used Tudor Gold 55% cocoa)
1 cup (250ml) whole milk
3/4 cup (150g) sugar
Pinch of salt
5 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract



I prepared the ingredients as listed.

Then warm 1 cup (250ml) of the cream with the cocoa powder in a medium saucepan,

whisking to thoroughly blend the cocoa.
Bring it to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer at a very low boil for 30 seconds, whisking constantly.

Remove from the heat and add the chopped chocolate,

stirring until smooth.

Then stir in the remaining 1 cup (250ml) cream.

Pour the mixture into a large bowl, scraping the saucepan as thoroughly as possible, and set a mesh strainer on top of the bowl.

 Warm the milk, sugar and salt in the same saucepan.

In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks.
Slowly pour the warm milk into the egg yolks, whisking constantly. (Tip: pour slowly and really whisk it up to avoid pieces of eggs being cooked!)
Then scrape the warm egg yolks back into the saucepan.

Stir the mixture constantly over medium heat with a heatproof spatula, scraping the bottom as you stir, until the mixture thickens and coats the spatula. (Tip: do not let the mixture boil!) 

Pour the custard through the strainer and stir it into the chocolate mixture until smooth, then stir in the vanilla.

Stir until cool over an ice bath.

Chill the mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturing's instructions.

So yesterday midnight, I continued my ice-cream making session.
I assembled and engaged the freeze bowl, dasher, and drive assembly for the first time as directed in the instruction manual.
Then I turned to STIR (Speed 1) and poured in the chilled mixture into freeze bowl.

 Then I continued to STIR (Speed 1) for about 15 minutes to reach my desired consistency.

It can be served immediately as soft-served ice cream, but I preferred to freeze it in an air tight container for it to mature and hardened.

But that didn't stop me from tasting a few mouthfuls of it soft-served.
It was so delicious I couldn't believed it. I know the photo above looked really ugly but it tasted really great.

The next day, the ice cream hardened well.

Once scooped out, the texture was so fine and creamy I thought I was eating Haagen-Dazs's Belgium Chocolate. I secretly thought this tasted even better than that! Seriously!

My whole family raved about it, asking me to churn out more!
The best thing about it? I know the exact ingredients in it. I never said this is not fattening, but I know there is no preservatives and such, only pure whole milk, cream, egg yolks and good quality chocolates!

You guys need to churn this out yourself to really know what I am talking about!
OK, time for another scoop! Ta!

Passionfruit Yogurt Cheesecake...Again!

Passionfruit Yogurt Cheesecake - 27 September 2011

My 3 kaufu bought many passion fruits to mum's place. We ate them but there were too many so I decided to bake a cake using the fruit. Since I was craving for cheesecake, I've decided to baked Passionfruit Yogurt Cheesecake. I have baked this before but it was almost a year back.

This time around, I was more hardworking and I strained the juice.
Heck, it was really difficult to strain as much juice as possible from 4 medium-sized passionfruits. In the end, I liked what I did. I has just enough juice and my passionfruit jelly layer was more clear and pretty.

After a night of refrigerating, I took the cake out.

Unmoulded it and this is what I've got - 3 layers of contrast colours; brown, white and bright yellow. Lovely.

I love biscuit layers in cheesecake. Wouldn't trade the base for something else. Not until I find something I love more than biscuit base.

The cheesecake layer was sweet and a 'lil to soft. But I guess I was too impatient to cut into the cake. The remaining cake left in the fridge was given more time to toughen up and it was harder when I cut into it many hours later.

The tangy thin layer of passionfruit jelly top layer complements superbly well with the sweet cheesecake layer and salty biscuit base. Awesome.

I love my serving plate as well. Slightly scalloped edges. Pretty and feminine enough for a beautiful cheesecake.

A nice clean cut into the cake.

My slice. A generous slice. All mine. :D

Recipe: Passionfruit yogurt cheesecake (copied from Bread Et Butter)
Makes one 8 inch cake/10-12 cheesecake pots

For the biscuit base:

• 15 digestive biscuits, crumbed
• 120g unsalted butter, melted
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger (I omitted this)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

For the yogurt cheesecake:

• 400g greek yogurt (I used normal Anlene Natural Flavour yogurt)
• 450g cream cheese, at room temperature (I used Philadelphia cream cheese)
• 3 tablespoons passionfruit juice.
• 1 vanilla bean, split and scraped (I used 1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream (I used whipping cream)
  
• 2 1/2 teaspoons powdered gelatine
• 3/4 cup sugar

For the passionfruit jelly:

• 4 ripe passion fruits, juiced – reserve the seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon powdered gelatine

For the biscuit base:

1. Preheat the oven to 180’C. Butter an 8 inch cake tin/ramekins/tart tins. If using a ring line the bottom with aluminum foil and place on a baking tray. (I used a 8 inch round spring form pan)

2. Put the digestive crumbs in a bowl, and add the sugar, ground ginger and salt to it. Mix well.

3. Add the melted butter to the crumb mixture, and mix until combined. Transfer the mixture to the prepared tin/ramekin and press it down in an even layer. Bake until golden (takes approx 10 minutes – this may differ according to the size of your tin) and let it cool completely.

For the yogurt cheesecake:

4. Put the yogurt and the passion fruit juice in a food processor and mix until smooth. (I used a blender)

5. Put the heavy cream in a small saucepan and heat until warm to the touch. Add the powdered gelatine to the warmed cream, and stir until dissolved. Remove from the heat and set aside.

6. Put the softened cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla extract in the bowl of a stand mixer, and beat until fluffy.

7. Fold cream, followed by passionfruit yogurt mixture into the cream cheese mixture until incorporated.

8. Pour the cheesecake mixture into the crust, and refrigerate until set. This will take at least 6 hours.

For the passionfruit jelly layer:

9. Strain the passionfruit juice and place in a small saucepan over low heat.

10. Add the powdered gelatin and stir until dissolved. Remove from the heat and let it cool.

11. Meanwhile rinse some of the passion-fruit seeds and place on top of the set cheesecake.

12. Pour the passionfruit mixture on top, and refrigerate for at least one hour/until set.

13. Serve!

Fake Chocolate Cake

Pillsbury's Moist Supreme Chocolate Cake - 16 August 2011

My friend passed me a box of cake premix that was going to expire in 5 days. She asked me to bake it and not waste it, so I said OK because I couldn't bear to see it gone to waste.

Photo source: http://anne-tan.blogspot.com/2010/06/baking.html

The box says "Pillsbury Moist Supreme Chocolate Cake". Sounds good.
I have not baked any cake using premix before so I was reading intently behind the box for instructions.

They only called for 3 ingredients to be added into the mix: Eggs, Water and Oil.
I was a bit dubious because I have never baked a cake which calls for water. Most calls for milk, buttermilk or yogurt for the liquid content.
And also this calls for oil instead of butter. Hmmm...

After an hour or so, the cake was out from the oven.
So how was it?

It was a midnight bake and you know chocolate cakes do not photograph well, so please bear with me the ugly photos with low lighting and my bad photography skills.

This is what it looked like fresh from the oven after removing it from my bundt pan.

It was my first time using my cheapo bundt pan, and I was disappointed with the 'curves'. The curves were not so significant and thus the cake was not so beautiful. And the colour of the cake was not impressive - too light for my liking because to me, light colour means less chocolate-y taste.

But when I cut into it, I was a little happy because it shows a darker brown in colour, a hope of a more chocolate-y taste.
You could also see that the texture was good. Looks good anyway.

But when I finally took my first bite of that cake, everything went down the drain.
There was no chocolate taste in it at all. It was just a bland cake which was chocolate in colour. No oomph heavenly butter cake taste as well. Nothing.
Bland and dead and fake!

Yes, it tasted so fake because it looks like chocolate cake but tasted nothing like all the other chocolate cakes I've ever baked.
It was not that it was inedible. It was just that it was so..erm...so....fake. Period.

It was such a turn-off after my first bite. I was struggling to finish my slice.
In the end, I opened my bottle of Nutella Spread and slabbed some on my slice so that it finally has some real chocolate-y taste in it!

The only good thing about this cake is the texture. The texture of this cake turned out ok. Rather moist and fine crumbed.

The next morning, I took the cake the cake over to mum's place for everyone to try it out. Everyone ended up eating their slices with Nutella as well.

And needless to say, we did not finish the cake. After everyone had their first slice, nobody went for a second slice. Sigh. So a small part of the cake ended up in the rubbish bin a few days later.
As much as I hate wasting food, I really couldn't finish up the remaining cake.

Then, I told my family this "Now only you all know how nice are my cakes. You wouldn't appreciate my cakes so much if you have not tasted this" =)

After this, I told myself never, ever bake using a premix ever again. Not even a branded one like Pillsbury. Lesson learned.

Maria's Cherry Cake

12 August 2011 - Maria's Cherry Cake

I baked this cake beginning of August and nearly forgotten all about it. The reason is because it is one of those bakes that does not taste as good as it looks.

First of all, maybe because I used only 1 punnet of cherries and it is not enough. Secondly, it may be because I used this tart pan and thus results in the sides being too crisp for my liking. Or it can be due to my oven which gets too hot although it has not browned yet, or simply because it was due to my own noob-ness in baking.

All in all, I find the texture of this cake a little too dry and also lack of the juiciness of the cherries (because I was too cheapo and used only 1 punnet). When I tasted the cake a day later, the texture was even more dry. Sigh. When compared to the Cherry Cake I made more than a year ago, this one is a far cry from it.

I was looking forward to a fluffy kinda texture with juicy cherries in my every bite. :P

But all in all, it is still edible of course, if you don't mind the lack of cherries, and rather dry texture. So let me tell you this, if you want to try out this recipe, please remember to at least double the amount of cherries used, with half of the cherries folded into the batter! :)

This is my batter topped with cherries cut into halves with seed removed, before it went into the oven.

I felt my cherries were kinda wasted because my fresh cherries were still juicy and firm. I should have eaten them fresh. =)

See, the cake was not even that browned yet, and yet the sides were already a 'lil too crisp for my liking. Or are all cakes using tart pan end up like this?

After baking, the cherries were all wrinkly but still juicy.

I sprinkled some icing sugar on top.

See...only the top part had cherries. If there were cherries in the middle part, it would taste so much better!

Recipe: Maria's Cherry Cake (copied from Table for 2)

250gm cherries, cut into half, seeds removed (1 punnet, the recipe called for 1L of cherries, and used whole. That's too expensive and I don't fancy the taste of the baked seed).
100gm butter
125gm icing sugar (reduced from 200gm)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp lemon zest
2 medium eggs (grade c)
150gm all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
icing sugar for dusting

1. Preheat oven to 150(fan)/170C. Prepare a 9 inch pan. Line the base and grease the sides.
2. Cream butter and icing sugar until light and fluffy.
3. Beat in eggs gradually.
4. Add in vanilla and lemon zest.
5. Sift flour with baking powder and fold into the beaten butter.
6. Spread out the mixture onto prepared pan and arrange halved cherries. No need to press in.
7. Bake for 35 minutes or until golden. When cake has cooled, dust with icing sugar before serving.