Busy Bee Cafe

We were out and about yesterday and Little Bee put two broccoli heads in my shopping basket. We passed the cheese aisle and I put a bag of grated cheese in the basket. All we wanted to get really was glue stick but there wasn’t glue stick on the shelf! We did get the glue… but from another shop!

Since we had broccoli and cheese, might as well make something out of them

Ingredients:

170g broccoli florets, steamed for 5 minutes
2 slices of bread (blitzed in the blender to breadcrumbs)
2 eggs, lightly whisked
A handful or more of grated mature cheddar cheese

1. Preheat oven at gas mark 5 or 190C
2. Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
3. Line a baking tray with baking paper and scoop spoonfuls of mixture on to the tray. You can use your hands and make it into a ball but I didn’t feel like getting my hands dirty.
4. Put the tray in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes and voila… you can let it cool or if you’re like me and can’t wait, just pick one up and keep blowing on it until it’s cool enough to be popped into your mouth

This recipe is adapted from here

When it comes to food, I am easily influenced. My friend Jue put up a photo of kuih bakar (burn cake… literal translation) and I went all excited and started to think ‘I HAVE TO MAKE THIS’!

So I did. Big muffin tin for me and little cupcake tin for Little Bee.

And I am lucky that I have Little Bee by my side who is always willing to give a helping hand.

Ingredients:

250ml water
6 pandan (screwpine) leaves
160g caster sugar
250g plain flour
250ml santan (coconut milk)
3 eggs
Oil

1. Heat the oven at 180C or gas mark 4.
2. Put the water and pandan leaves in a blender and whiz. Pour it into a bowl through a fine sieve to get the pandan water. You can also use 1/2 tsp pandan paste if you have it and add about 50ml water.
3. Add sugar, flour, coconut milk and eggs into the bowl and whisk. You can also just whizz them in a blender but my Little Bee insisted on whisking
4. Oil the cake pan, muffin pan or cupcake pan (whatever you choose to use) and put it in the oven until the oil is nice and hot. Take the pan out and pour the mixture in. Sprinkle some sesame seeds and put it in the middle of the oven for about 40 minutes. Let it cool and it’s ready to eat

Little Bee had a playdate yesterday and we decided to make a cake… well, I thought her playdate mommy would appreciate cake and coffee so it was more for us mommmies than the kids… but Little Bee doesn’t mind as she loves being my good little helper.

I did make this cake before but it was a rush and I didn’t let it cool down properly that it was crumbly when I sliced it up. But it was still lovely… at least I thought so and that’s why I decided to make it again.

The recipe is adapted from the BBC Good Food page here. I don’t have an electric mixer and mix by hand and I didn’t make the icing as I do think that I personally do not need extra calories

Ingredients:

25g poppy seed
185ml warm milk
185g unsalted butter, soften
220g caster sugar
3 eggs
300g self raising flour
1 lemon’s rind, grated

1. Put the poppy seed and milk in a bowl and set aside.
2. Mix the soft butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time and continue mixing. Add the flour and poppy seed and milk mix, alternating between the two (I did it three times as in a third of the flour and then a third of the milk and poppy seed, mix and then again until all are mixed together). Add the lemon rind and mix further.
3. Pre heat the oven at 180c or gas mark 4 (I did it now so I won’t waste any gas )
4. Lined the bottom of a 10cm x 20cm loaf pan with baking paper and lightly butter the side. Pour the mixture in and bake on the middle of the oven for 40 minutes. After 40 minutes, cover the cake with tin foil to avoid browning, and bake for another 30 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let it cool in the tin on a wire rack for about half an hour. Tip it out and let it cool further on the wire rack or just slice it up as it’s nice to have cake when it is nice and warm

I baked it much longer as 40 minutes, which was the recommended time on the original recipe, was not enough in my oven. Your oven might be more high tech than mine so 40 minutes might be enough.

Another day, another cake. Again I got the recipe from Joy of Baking here.

So last night I baked these. I decided to try out the two new tins I bought as I need to see how the cake will stack up. And it was fine. But I do think I might need to make two small ones on top to make the ghost taller.

Anyway, this morning I gave Little Bee a piece and she said ‘I don’t like it’.

Brilliant.

Not to panic. I’m going to make the icing later tonight and see what she says about the cake with the icing on!

If she still hates it… I guess I could work with the chocolate banana cake.

This is the first of my Ghost Cake experiment. I need to find a recipe that I think would be ideal for this idea I have in my head.

Unfortunately, yummy as this cake is, it needs big shallow cake tin and this is just not good for what I have in mind.

I got the recipe from Joy of Baking here and as I tried it on a smaller cake tin than recommended, the cooking time took longer and by the time I gave up, the skewer still came out a bit damp.

A disaster, but not a total disaster. Little Bee had a couple of little pieces in the morning and liked it.

Next recipe…

Tomorrow will be Eid Mubarak. I miss the celebration atmosphere of Hari Raya in Malaysia. I miss the days towards Eid where I’d be helping my mom in the kitchen baking and cooking. I miss the anticipation of buying new clothes and waiting for the day to wear it. I miss playing fireworks with my cousins. My fondest memory of Ramadan moving towards the first of Syawal, is helping my late granddad lighting the pelita (lanterns).

So, today, on the eve of Eid, with You Tube playing all the Malay Eid songs from P Ramlee, Sudirman, M Nasir, Jamal Abdillah etc, Little Bee and I baked some tart nenas (pineapple tarts). I used to make this with mom. Unfortunately I don’t have the mould for it so I’m making tart gulung, where the pineapple jam is inside. Next year, I will make sure I have the mould so that Little Bee could do little designs on top of the pineapple jam like I used to. I’ll put the recipe up another time.

This evening I’ll make chicken rendang, nasi himpit, sayur lodeh and maybe if I have time, kuah kacang.

Selamat Hari Raya or Happy Eid Mubarak to all muslims around the world. Maaf zahir dan batin.

After falling off the swing and being stung by nettle in the garden, I decided that Little Bee shall have some indoor activity today. She wanted to bake and these were what she made

I got the recipe off here. I… excuse me… Little Bee followed the recipe to the t so you could just click on the link if you’d like to try it out. Seriously easy! Oh… we used red colouring instead. Little Bee loves sprinkling the decorations… and eating them… and with sugar overload, it took a while to settle her to sleep this evening. *sigh*

Tomorrow, we’ll go back to the garden as I’ve pulled out most of the nettle… plus we have some broadbeans to repot.

Little Bee has been ‘helping’ me lots in the kitchen.

Yesterday, she cut up the green beans for her bubur (Malaysian rice porridge) for lunch and then mix the ingredients for Thai fried corn patties for her dinner.

This morning, she helped me with making cookies. I found this recipe here… and it has no flour for Little Bee to mess. Perfect!

Ingredients:

260g creamy peanut butter
90g brown sugar
1 egg

1. Preheat oven at gas mark 4.
2. Put all ingredients and mix them well.
3. Make about 24 balls from the mix, put them on a baking tray and flatten them with a fork .
4. Place it in the oven for 18 minutes. When that’s done cool it on a wire rack.

Seriously… that’s it.

Some people say that sliced bread is one of the best inventions. But I’m sure they’re talking about the bread slice machine that thinking that sliced bread itself is an invention.

But, who knows… maybe those who think that chickens come as they are in the supermarket and not a living breathing feathery animal, they might think that bread comes out sliced from the oven instead of looking like this.

OK… seriously, I am just joking and not trying to offend anyone.

Anyway, I was doing my daily browsing on pinterest and came across this. Saw the recipe for American sandwich bread and thought it look like any other bread on the shelf at the supermarket… apart from being unsliced… so how hard can it be? So I just have to convert the recipe to metric as I don’t do imperial!

So… if you want to make this:

into this:

Here is how you do it

Ingredients:

500g flour
1 tsp salt
250ml warm milk
80ml warm water
30g unsalted butter, melted in the microwave for 20 seconds
3tbsp honey
1 packet of 7g dried yeast

1. Add the warm milk, warm water, melted butter, honey and yeast in a bowl, mix and set aside.
2. Sift the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl, make a well in the middle and pour in the yeast mix. Stir in the flour and liquid together and start kneading for about 5 minutes until the dough feels smooth and bouncy (that’s how I describe it). Cover the bowl with cling film and leave it for about an hour until the dough has double in size.
3. On a floured surface, press the dough into a rectangular shape about 3cm thick. Roll the dough into a cylinder, pressing it down to make sure the dough sticks. Seal the ends of the dough by folding them in and pinching them closed. Place it in a well greased loaf tin, cover with a cling film and leave it for another 30 minutes, until it almost double in size.
4. In the meantime, preheat the oven, 200C or gas mark 4. Place an oven rack at the lowest position and another one at the middle of the oven. Pour two cups of boiling water in a pan and place it at the bottom rack and the pan with the dough on the middle rack.
5. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove bread from pan onto a wire rack and leave it to cool. Slice to your desired thickness

This so very simple. Minimum ingredients if you cheat and just buy ready made shortcrust pastry like me

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
300g lamb, finely sliced – bite size
1 potato, peeled and diced
300ml lamb stock
1tbsp French mustard
500g ready made shortcrust pastry
1 egg, beaten

1. Preheat oven at 200C/gas mark 6.
2. Heat the olive oil on moderate heat and add the onion and lamb. Cook for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the potato, reduce heat and cook for another 2 minute until beginning to brown, stirring occasionally.
3. Stir in the lamb stock and add mustard. Cover and let it simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally until the potato and lamb are tender. Set aside to cool.
4. Divide the pastry into six and shape them into balls. Roll out each ball into 15cm diameter circle, about 5mm thick. Divide the lamb mixture into six and place in the middle of the rolled out pastry. Fold and pinch the pastry to seal it.
5. Place the pasties on a baking sheet and brush each one with beaten egg. Place the tray into the middle of the oven for about 25 minutes or until the pastry is golden and crisps.

I prepared the lamb mixture the night before and and rolled out the pastry and filled in the mixture first thing in the morning. This is to save time so when I get home in the evening with Little Bee, I just glazed the pasties with egg and bang them in the oven and gave Little Bee her bath, so they were ready by the end of her bath and cooled down when she’s all dressed in her pyjamas.