Cigu Chips (Super behind time posting...)

Super behind time posting... busy with baking and spring cleaning before CNY, followed by V-day, CNY, my birthday and pak tor anniversary celebrations, all in the month of Feb! After that, I was busy preparing for our holiday trip in March... now back to catching up with my posting. 

This year CNY, I decided to try making the cigu aka arrowhead chips. It's not difficult to make these chips, just that it takes time and effort to do so. There's posting on other blogs that shared on making these chips, so I'm not going to do that. I just want to share that I tried to slice the chips using an electric food processor and the manual slicer. Both will do the job but you can't control how the food processor sliced it, so I did get some little bits and pieces. Hence, using the manual one may be easier since one can control the speed of slicing.

I spent more time frying these chips as I didn't pour the oil until the wok (mine was those traditional metal wok that you see in a zi char stall) was half filled, slightly lesser than that, as I didn't want to waste too much oil since I didn't intend to reuse the oil. Hence, I could only put about 10 over slices for each round of frying, and oh mine, 1 kg of cigu can produce 1 big milo tin (mine was 1.8kg) of chips, so it took a while to finish frying the chips.

Would I make them again in future? I probably would consider doing so for various reasons as follows:

• It's really cheap to make the chips yourself! It costs $4 - $4.20 per kg and 1kg can fill up a milo tin.
• You can choose to use fresh oil for every batch of frying, so you don't have to worry that the chips are fried with reused oil.
• You can control the amount of salt that you put so that the family can eat healthier, especially during CNY feasting. I mean we all feast during CNY, so why not eat healthier when possible... so that you can continue to feast, haha...

Upcoming next, my journey on learning how to make kueh bangkit! Bye for now...

Pineapple Jam Done!

I mentioned in my previous posting that the pineapple jam I bought from Baking's Corner is a bit too sour... My friends who ordered pineapple tarts from me are mainly guys or lady ordering it for the hubby, and knowing that most guys prefer the jam to be on the sweeter side instead of more sour taste, so I decided to buy some pineapples and cook with some of the jam that I bought. 

I went to the market and bought 3 pineapples, which I had asked the fruit seller to reserve for me the day earlier. The price given to me was $1.50 each and extra 50 cts each if need them to peel the pineapples for me. When I was at the market, I didn't see the guy who I spoke to, so I asked a younger chap. He told me it's $2 each without peeling service and $2.50 each with peeling service, hmm... more expensive! I decided to wait for that particular guy to turn up at the market and went to do some marketing while waiting. After I bought fish and vegetables, and went back to the fruit stall, that guy had turned up, so sealed the deal at $2 each as I opted for peeling service. It's a great decision as it saves me the trouble and time spent for peeling the pineapples. Only downside is that the way they peeled the pineapples is a bit wasteful... hint - just see the above picture of the pineapples after peeling. 

I choose to grate the pineapples instead of blending as I find that the pulp from blending lack of fibre. The only thing that I blended was the core... I used to discard the core, as taught by my mother. After reading some blogs that we could also blend and add the core, I decided to try this time round. 

There's several blogs sharing how to cook pineapple jam, so won't go into the details of cooking it. However, just to note that if you want to recook the jam, after adding the cooked jam to the uncooked jam, remember to stir the cooked jam and ensure that it doesn't stick to the pot/wok until is is blended with the uncooked jam. I'm suggesting this because cooked jam is already drier version, just like the jam towards the end of cooking process when it thickens, so it may burn if you don't blend it with the uncooked jam that's pretty much still rather watery.

The final stage of the jam that was cooked with natural preservatives - lemon juice, cinnamon stick, cloves and star anise. The 3 pineapples were approximately 2.1kg after peeling and before grating. I used 1.2kg of the bought jam to cook. The final weight was close to 2.2kg. Hence, 3 pineapples yield about 1kg of pineapple jam, shall record this down for future reference.

Upcoming after cooking the jam is trying out to make arrowhead (ci gu) chips, hopefully I'll succeed! 

Sidenote: The jam that I bought from Baking's Corner wasn't exactly 1kg as the weight includes the weight of the plastic container (~27g). This translates to making 2 to 3 lesser pineapple tarts, hahahaha...

Baking Pineapple Tarts Starts With Cooking The Pineapple Jam

A few friends were looking to buy some homemade pineapple tarts, so I decided to bake and sell some while keeping some for own consumption. The pineapple jam and dough are critical in making yummy pineapple tarts.

During my mum's time, she would cook the jam herself to make the tarts to sell to relatives and friends. This is what I really call, HOMEMADE!!! Over the years, more and more people started to sell pineapple tarts and claimed that they were homemade but to unsuspecting people, they might not realise that not all of these tarts were truly 100% homemade! Would you consider pineapple tarts homemade if only the dough part was homemade? Some home bakers probably don't even know how to make pineapple jam or have ever attempted to make it. I have tried making my own jam, starting with peeling the pineapples, removing the eyes, grating it the traditional way (not using a blender) and cooking it. It takes a few hours to complete the whole process.

For me, in order to sell, the quality of ingredients used has to be of certain standard. Butter has to use premium brands like SCS or President; there could be more brands but I have only tried these 2 brands, so citing these 2 brands as examples. SCS has been a well known brand since my mum's time, she only uses SCS for her baking. As for the pineapple jam, I would not use ready made jam selling in Phoon Huat and NTUC. Do you know what goes in to the jam to preserve it so that it can last? I don't know and don't wish to know, but highly unlikely that natural preservatives would be used. Also, sometimes I don't find that the jam has fibres or a natural pineapple aroma in it. Hence, I didn't sell any pineapple tarts for past years as I'm lazy to cook the jam, haha... I did bake some tarts using a more premium pineapple jam but even then, I'm also not so sure about the preservatives, so the tarts were for own consumption and also as treats for friends. This year, I saw Baking's Corner selling the jam. I trust Fiona, founder of Baking's Corner, that the jam would be cooked by herself or her team, and that no artificial preservatives would be used. It would still be homemade per se, just that it's not homemade by me, haha... I texted the person in-charge of selling the jam to confirm that the jam would be cooked by themselves and artificial preservatives were not used. Hence, I gotten hubby to make a trip down to buy 2 tubs of the jam.

I tasted the jam when hubby came back. It's towards a more sour taste. While I'm fine with it and my girl likes it (she ate it as jam with bread, that explained the missing 1/5 from 1kg of the jam), my friends who ordered the tarts from me would prefer a sweeter taste. I'm not at all surprised, guys tend to prefer sweeter taste for the jam whereas ladies generally can take more sour taste. Does that mean this jam would go to waste? Nope! It's sold at $9/kg, definitely not cheap if you compared to those that one could buy from Phoon Huat or NTUC, how can waste it sia... Well, the jam can be salvaged! I'll just need to buy a few pineapples, add to the jam and cook again to make it sweeter and slightly more moist since I plan to do open face type for this sweeter version. Fortunately, I know how to cook the jam myself. I'll just make a tub sweeter to tailor to my customers' taste. As for the other tub, I'll leave it slightly more sour and do the close type; I find the jam on the drier side, which is better for making the close type. Making the tarts open face and close type also help to differentiate the sour and sweeter version, which I could pass some of the sour ones to my friends aka customers to sample to compare the 2 versions.

Now, I need to look for pineapples to buy, haha...

Making Your Own Pineapple Paste

This post is to share my mum's advice when making your own pineapple paste to make pineapple tarts. 

Choosing pineapples 
Choose slightly green (not too ripe) - it's easier to grind (磨) as too ripe pineapple is too soft to grind. 

Cutting pineapples
When cutting the pineapple, cut into slightly bigger pieces so that it's easier to grind and remember to remove the eyes before starting to grind them.

Cooking pineapples
To have pineapple taste, it's important to cook the paste with the pineapple juice. Mum said those pineapple paste sold outside, the pineapple juice was drained off before cooking the paste so that the paste dries up faster, and hence, shorten the cooking time. Put sugar into the pineapple paste before cooking it. When the paste starts to dry up (juice getting lesser & lesser), add rock sugar (冰糖) so that the paste would look shiny.

Kueh Lapis Recipe

Please note that this recipe is from my mum's recipe book, which she learnt at a Community Centre many years ago, and we have fine tuned it along the way to suit our taste. If you find the recipe similar to yours, it is just pure coincidence, afterall everyone of us learnt from somewhere and it could probably be from the same source.

Ingredients:

20 egg yolks

5 egg whites

550g salted butter (I used SCS butter, ~2 ¼ of 250g block)

300g castor sugar

170g flour

8 tbsp condensed milk

3 tbsp brandy or rum

1 tsp vanilla extract (I used Nielsen Massey pure vanilla extract)

1½ tsp ground mixed spices (I used ½ tsp McCormick Ground Cinnamon, ½ tsp McCormick Ground Nutmeg, ½ tsp vanilla extract)

Steps:
1) Beat egg yolks with sugar until thick creamy. Set it aside for use later.

2) Beat butter for a while, add in the condensed milk and continue to beat till creamy. 

3) Add (2) to (1). Fold in flour and vanilla extract.

4) Add the egg whites in, and mix slowly until all the egg whites are dissolved.

5) Add brandy or rum, and mix well.

6) Divide the mixture into 2 equal portions. Add the mixed spices to one portion and mix well. The other portion is plain.

7) Line a 9" square baking tin with baking paper and grease it. You can use the butter wrapper to grease it. Heat the tin.

8) Scoop ~3-4 tbsp (I used Chinese soup spoon) of the plain or spiced mixture, and use the back of the spoon to smooth out the mixture, reaching all corners of the tin. 

9) Bake the first layer using bottom and top fire. Other layers only top fire or grill.

10) After each layer is baked, remove from oven, 
- use a satay stick or toothpick to remove the air bubbles, 
- use lapis press to press the layer, 
- apply brandy or rum with a cooking brush on the layer (most recipes out there do not have this step, so you may omit this step but it would greatly enhance the fragrance & taste), 
- scoop ~3 tbsp of the mixture (alternating between the plan and spiced mixture) and smooth it out reaching all corners of the tin. 

If you want each layer to look even and nicer, you may wish to weigh each layer, ~125g for first layer and ~100g for subsequent layers, instead of using my estimation method.

Notes:
I'm using a Panasonic Microwave Oven, so these are the baking modes and temperature that I use:
- Preheat oven in conventional bake mode,
- use conventional bake 170 deg cel, ~5 mins for first layer,
- use grill low fire ~3½ mins+- for subsequent layers,
- use grill low fire ~2½ mins for last layer followed by conventional bake 150 deg cel for 1-2mins.
*As the oven gets heated up, the time taken to bake each layer may get shorter. Hence, you may wish to bake with shorter timing and check if the layer is brown enough. If the layer is not brown enough, continue to bake for a while more until you're satisfied with the brownness.

Kueh Lapis on 11 Jan 2014

I had not bake Kueh Lapis for a long long time since my last oven spoilt and I had my first child. Recently, I'm into a baking mood, so I gotten a new toy - a Kitchen Aid! A hot pink one that was selling at a promo price of $648 at Best Denki, so I must do more baking now to make my investment worthwhile!

Overall, it's a success, albeit too oily despite that I already cut down on the butter, and maybe can also cut a bit more sugar or condensed milk. 

I would share the recipe in another post. :)

Egg Tarts (2nd attempt) on 19 Oct 2013

My little chef kept pestering me to bake more egg tarts for him!!! That's why I made a 2nd attempt with a little bit of fine tuning to the recipe by cutting down the sugar content by 20% and turned the oven temperature down a bit but baked the tarts a bit longer, hoping that the tarts won't turn out looking like Portugese ones.

Here's the results with the fine-tuned recipe:

The verdict - the egg tarts tasted better as they aren't as sweet as those I made in my 1st attempt, and well, they definitely look a lot better, not that Portugese, haha!!! However, I think there's still room for improvement as the tarts are kind of wobbly unless they are stored in fridge. Hmm... how to make the pastry a little bit harder or firmer?

Egg Tarts (1st attempt) on 12 Oct 2013

I finally bought another microwave oven after the last one spoilt so that I can resume baking (inspired by Angela Chia!). As I need to test out if the oven works, I went to buy tart tins and the ingredients for making egg tarts. I decided to make egg tarts as these are my son's favourites! 

I'm using the recipe from Angela's friend at https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151599496124858&set=t.573243023&type=3&theater.

This is the new microwave oven with the egg tarts baking inside.

This is the outcome... Don't think it's supposed to look like Portugese egg tarts, so I shall fine-tune the temperature or timing for subsequent attempts to see if I can get better looking egg tarts.

Hubby and I tried them out, but my little chef (son who insists in helping out although it's late) went to lalaland while waiting for it to cool down. Our review is that it's too sweet to our liking, so we shall fine-tune the recipe to suit our taste buds, and of course, don't let the children eat too sweet stuff. Overall, I still pass (I guess!) although there's parts look burnt, they don't taste burnt! The pastry part is crispy. I shall see when I have time to make another attempt since this is my son's favourites and hubby likes them as well.