I Am Short Of Time And Craved For A Cookie.. So I Made..–Microwave Cookies

Posted on September 26, 2013 by Kenneth Goh

INTRODUCTION

Previously, I have a post on Microwave Mug Cake and yesterday when I browsed through the internet, a recipe in this Facebook Page – I love showing my personality in my cooking, caught my attention. I have always loved this Facebook Page because of its simple, unusual and daring recipes. In his/her post FOR THOSE DAYS WHEN YOU JUST WANT TO MAKE ONE COOKIE!, the Page owner was using microwave to prepare some cookies. Analysing at the ingredients, I was amazed how simple were the ingredients. Looking at the number of Likes in the post, at that time, there were 110 Likes and 736 re-shares. I thought I might as well give it a try.

This morning, I am toying with his/her recipes. I started to try the original recipe and followed by additional recipes modified by me including 2 eggless recipes. Prior to this, I do know there are some eggless cookies recipes and I thought I might as well try to make these eggless cookies using microwave. My previous post of Eggless, Butter Less and Milk Less Cup Cakes was quite well received and I believed there will be some readers who are interested in microwave eggless cookies too.

Altogether, I have prepared 5 cookies:

Butter Cookies with Caramel Chocolate Chips – As per the original recipe except substitute chocolate chips with caramel chocolate chips;
Chocolate Cookies with Almond Chunks
Eggless Strawberry Cookies with Strawberry Slices
Eggless Blueberry Cookies with Fresh blueberries
Strawberry Cookies with Strawberry Slices

For eggless cookies, the eggs were substituted with equivalent volumes of strawberry milks or fresh milks. For this post, I will only list out the recipe of the first cookie and highlight the changes in ingredients for the other cookies.

WHAT IS REQUIRED

Recipe adapted from: FOR THOSE DAYS WHEN YOU JUST WANT TO MAKE ONE COOKIE by I love showing my personality in my cooking

1/4 cup of plain flour

1 tablespoon of butter (melted)

1 tablespoon of white sugar

1 tablespoon of brown sugar

2 tablespoons of caramel chocolate chips (optional)

1 egg yolk

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla essence

Pinches of salt

STEPS OF PREPARATION

In a bowl with melted butter, add in white and brown sugars, stir until well mixed. Add in egg yolks and followed by plain flour. Stir until combined and followed by addition of caramel chocolate chips.

Place the cookie batter in the lightly greased microwavable plate or bowl. Microwave 45-60 seconds or until the centre of the batter is set.

NOTE:

Just like ovens, every microwave oven will have some differences in terms of heat released. Like the microwave oven I have in my house, it is a very simple basic microwave oven with no function to adjust the heat. As such, you can start using medium heat (if there is any) and see how is the result. If at the end of 60 seconds, the cookie still does not look set, add additional 10-20 seconds to the cooking time. It is considered as cooked when the centre of the cookie is set or not runny.

CHANGES IN OTHER COOKIES’ RECIPES

For other cookies, the changes are as follows:

Chocolate Cookies with Almond Chunks – Addition of 1 teaspoon of chocolate powder to the batter and replace chocolate chips with almond chunks;

Eggless Strawberry Cookies with Strawberry Slices – Replacement of egg yolk with 20 grams of strawberry milks and substituting chocolate chips with one fresh strawberry (cut in slices)

Eggless Blueberry Cookies with Fresh blueberries – Replacement of egg yolk with 20 grams of fresh milks and replacing chocolate chips with 10 fresh blueberries (mashed)

Strawberry Cookies with Strawberry Slices – Replacement of almond chunks with one fresh strawberries (cut in slices).

OUTCOME OF THE EXPERIMENTS

Butter Cookies with Caramel Chocolate Chips

The texture of the cookie is definitely satisfactory. It is rather light and a chewy type of cookie. It is quite fragile and if you view the original website, you will see that the Page Owner is using a fork to eat the cookie. However, given adequate time to cool, the cookie can be cut into neat pieces and definitely worth a try.

Chocolate Cookies with Almond Chunks

As expected, since it is a change of dry ingredients (from chocolate chips to almond chunks) and addition of chocolate powder, the texture is the same as the first cookie. Definitely recommendable even though it is not as crispy as the traditional cookie.

Eggless Strawberry Cookies with Strawberry Slices

Well, for this cookie, there was a rather major modification to the ingredients. So, what is the impact of the substitution of egg yolk with strawberry milks and the addition of freshly cut strawberry slices to the cookie? As expected, as there is no egg, it become a very dense “cookie” or “cake” if you want to call it.

As I have explained earlier in my Eggless, Butter Less and Milk Less Cup Cakes post, eggs have the role to support the structure of any baked products. Without eggs, the rise of any baked products (cookies included) will have to be solely depend on the leavening agents (baking soda or baking powders).

Since we are using plain flour (without any baking soda or baking powders), will the cookies rise? The answer is quite certain, NO.

How about if we substitute the plain flour with self raising flours? It may or may not since the milk have much more moisture content than the eggs and it may not be able to support the flours.

Taste wise, it is acceptable. It is moist and full of strawberry flavour. Having one full cookie with some strawberry ice cream will definitely be welcomed by your guest…For Asian taste, this resembles a steamed dense cake..

Eggless Blueberry Cookies with Fresh blueberries

I then continued my adventure with the blueberry cookie by substituting the yolk with fresh milk and addition of blueberries. The outcome is the same as the eggless strawberry cookie, dense but chewy and edible.

Strawberry Cookies with Strawberry Slices

Looking at the dense eggless “cookie” that I have made, I have decided to revert back to the usage of yolk in the cookies. For this cookie, I have only substituted the chocolate chips with one strawberry fresh slices.

The texture is slightly better than the eggless cookies but it is too moist. The reason was simple, the juices from the fresh strawberry slices have negate part of the structure supporting effects of eggs in the cookie. If strawberry is to be added, I personally think that some baking powder and more flour will be needed to make it less dense.

CONCLUSION

Depending on individual tastes, I would strongly recommended making the first two cookies (butter cookie with caramel chocolate chips and chocolate cookie with almond chunks). These two cookies are very delicious and light. However, if you do not mind to have dense “cookies”, you can try eggless strawberries and blueberries cookies. It was moist and very tasty.

Hope you like my adventure today and do take a step out to prepare this one minute cookie for yourself or share with your family members. Is it not baking and cooking is fun with endless possibilities to try?

Have a nice day and cheers.

One, Two, Three…….Let’s Start Making Traditional Short Bread Biscuits (英式传统牛油饼干）

Posted on August 30, 2013 by Kenneth Goh

INTRODUCTION

I have mentioned before that my family members like buttery biscuits or cakes. Butter cake without any flavour will definitely top my list of cakes whereas short bread will be my preferred choice of biscuits. Short bread is crumbly in textures and full of buttery aroma and it is addictive as long as I started the first bite.

When I was searching for short crust pastry for my “short crust pastry moon cake” post, I remember wrongly and instead I searched for short bread. When I read the definition of Wikipedia, it immediately caught my attention.

Per Wikipedia, it was written that

Shortbread is a type of biscuit (“cookie” in American English) which is traditionally made from one part white sugar, two parts butter, and three parts flour (by weight). The use of plain white (wheat) flour is common today, and other ingredients like ground rice or corn flour are sometimes added to alter the texture. Also, modern recipes often deviate from the pure three ingredients by splitting the sugar portion into equal parts granulated sugar and powdered sugar and many further add a portion of salt.(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shortbread)

I was amazed by the simple ratio of one part white sugar, two parts butter and three parts of flour. I did not look around for any further recipe and based on these three figures, I prepared my traditional style short bread.

This is my first attempt and I am generally happy with the results though the shaping still needs improvement. I may try out other recipes in the net and compared the actual differences and what other special ingredients that were added to alter the texture.

WHAT IS REQUIRED

50 g of icing sugar

100 g of butter

150 g of plain flour

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

STEPS OF PREAPRATION

Preparation

Preheat your oven to 180 165 degree Celsius.

In a big mixing bowl, place cut butters, vanilla essence, icing sugar, plain flours. Mix and knead until it form a dough.

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a flat sheet of about 1 cm thick.

Shape it into a rectangular shape and use a sharp knife to cut the dough into 1 cm x 4 cm sizes

Transfer to the baking tray with a sheet of baking paper. Place the short breads with adequate space to expand.

Use a fork or something sharp to make some holes on top of the short breads.

Baked in the oven for 15 – 20 minutes until the colour start to turn golden yellow.

Additional notes

You can chill the dough in the fridge for 15 minutes before your baking starts. This will help to fix the shape of short bread! This illustration did not include the chilling. Due to the hot temperature in Singapore, The butter melts rather easily therefore chilling will hep to keep the biscuit in shape when you send for baking.

CONCLUSION

A very short and straight forward post. I like this for its simple easy to remember recipe. This recipe is simply based on the traditional ratio of 1 sugar, 2 butter and 3 flour without additions of texture altering ingredients. The taste and texture is awesome except the shape is not as regular as what we bought from the stores. It will be an ideal gift for your friends during festive occasions such as Christmas.

Overall, I am still very pleased with this adventure. It is so simple yet we pay so much for these biscuits in the supermarkets.

Try and you will know how easy it is. Hope you like the post today and have a nice day ahead. Cheers.

Second batch of short bread made for the celebration of Teacher’s day 2013.

Updated on 8 – January 2014

Baking this special batch of rose decorated shortbread biscuits. Recipe is the same except I cut it in difference shape and dust it with dried rose petals.

This recipe was included in Page 18 and Page 19 of the following E-book.

For more Chinese New Year related cookies, snack and steamed cake recipes, you can have a copy of “Easy Chinese New Year Recipes – A step by step guide” that was packed with 30 recipes, 60 pages at a reasonable convenience fee of USD3.50. The recipes covered various recipes from auspicious radish cake to nian gao to traditional kuih bangkit to trendy London almond cookies. Of course not forgetting both type of pineapple tarts. You can purchase by clicking the link above. You can either pay using Pay Pal or Credit card account. Please ensure that you have an PDF reader like Acrobat or iBooks in your mobile phone or iPad if you intended to read it in your ipad or mobile phone. Should there be any problems of purchasing, feel free to contact me at kengls@singnet.com.sg and separate arrangement can be made.

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Can I Have A Moon Cake That Is Not Round? Hmmm.. Try Short Crust Pastry Moon Cake

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Kenneth Goh

Chinese Mooncake Festival or Mid Autumn Festival is arriving soon on 19-9-2013 (or Chinese Lunar Calendar August 15) and I think most bloggers will blog about moon cakes. There are many many moon cake recipes in the internet and there is no way for me to blog something that I am rather unfamiliar due to my poor shaping skills of moon cakes .

This year I have a few attempts to shape the moon cake but not really successful. It cracked terribly and I have told members in my Facebook Group – “Food Bloggers and Foodies United” that I am not going to issue a post on moon cake I totally do not have any confidence to share with readers about the making of moon cakes.

The next day after I issued the post, one of my relatives gave us a pack of moon cake from Kluang, Johor Malaysia. In the box, it was written clearly Shanghai Moon Cake, and what shocked me is that the shape is elongated and some called it a mouse shape.

Sorry for my limited knowledge, I never seen Shanghai moon cake in this shape. I posted in my timeline and asked my friends what is that. Surprisingly a number of friends from Southern Peninsular Malaysia knew about this shop and ever tasted this special moon cake before.

The next day, I cut it and ate a slice, I felt that the taste was very familiar. It resembles the short crust biscuits with the normal moon cake fillings. Therefore, I told my friends that I wanted to pursue another baking adventure based on what I tasted and I wanted to try to “reproduce” the moon cake that I received.

That morning, there is no body in my house except myself. I just simply pick a short crust pastry recipe and start my adventures. Actually, the short crust pastry resembles the pineapples tart pastry. However, in this illustration, I made a mistake by including sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) in the dough. I shouldn’t need to include this as the fillings will expand when heated and the baking soda make the crack bigger that I do not want to see.

Putting that aside, I would say that this pastry, or pardon me formally called it “SHORT CRUST PASTRY MOONCAKE” , is definitely worth trying. The soft filling blends extremely well with the melt in the mouth pastry wrapping it. Unlike other moon cake, it is buttery in flavour and that make me wanted to share with readers this “funny” pastry aims at those who are adventurous to try out new ideas.

But I have to highlight that, it is just like any pastry, it can’t keep for long. It is best to consume it within two to three days of making it. The wet fillings will make the short crust slightly soggy if you do not consume on time. Well, that is my frankest opinion and I do hope that readers have some confidences on me by baking this short crust pastry moon cake and share with me if it is up to your expectations.

WHAT IS REQUIRED

80 grams of salted butter, cut into cubes and keep in fridge waiting for later use.

2 eggs lightly beaten

400 grams of self raising flour (sifted)

80 grams of sugar powder

600 grams of moon cake fillings of your choice (in this illustration, I have used both the green tea paste and red bean paste).

STEPS OF PREPARATION

Pre Preparation

Pre-heat the oven to 180 degree.

Get ready a baking tray with a piece of baking sheet.

Divide the moon cake fillings into 3 portions and roll it into an cylindrical shape of about 6 inches long.

In a big mixing bowl, put in your sifted self raising flour, sugar powder. Add the butter cubes from the fridge. Use finger tips to lightly rub the butter until butter and flour are well mixed resembling crumbs. Rubbing should be light and fast. This resembles the preparation of scones and your can refer HERE.

Make a whole in the centre put in the beaten eggs.

Use a fork or a knife to slightly mix the batter. Once the eggs and the flour have form a dough, transfer the dough to a table and knead for 1-2 minutes to ensure it is well mixed.

Divide the dough into 3 portions. In my illustration, my dough weighed about 220 grams per portion.

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough in a floured surface into rectangular shape of about 10 inches x 5 inches.

Place your moon cake filling on top of the pastry, close the longer ends and roll follow the shape of the fillings.

Close the other two ends and ensure the edges are closed.

You can reshape to any shape that you want. However, I have opted to use the shape as shown above. Alternative shape is round shape. However, round shape is difficult for serving. So I opted for the oblong shape.

Place the dough in the baking tray. Use a sharp knife to lightly cut lines on top of the dough.

Have the first egg wash and send to the oven and bake for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, take out and have a second egg wash. Baked for another minutes 10 and the moon cake is done.

For egg wash, hand beaten 1 egg yolks and add 2 big table spoons of water and 2 drops of oil. Sift and put in a container. Use a brush to lightly brush the dough.

CONCLUSION

This is another way of serving the moon cake though traditionally, moon cake must be round resemble the moon. Whether this can be called moon cake or other name is up the discretion of the readers.

This moon cake was prepared using short crust pastries and the buttery taste of the pastry is totally different from traditional moon cake but it blends well with the traditional moon cake fillings. It is good to be served as a tea time snack item.

I hope you enjoy my baking adventures for making this special shape moon cake inspired from the famous Kluang moon cake shop in Malaysia.

This recipe was included in Page 15-17 of the “Easy Mooncake Recipes E-book”. For more mooncake recipes, you can have a copy of “Easy mooncake recipes – A step by step guide” that was packed with 20 recipes, 45 pages at a reasonable convenience fee of USD4.00. The recipes covered various recipes from durian mooncake, traditional baked mooncake and also the less common Teochew mooncake . You can purchase by clicking the link above.You can either pay using Pay Pal or Credit card account. Please ensure that you have an PDF reader like Acrobat or iBooks in your mobile phone or iPad if you intended to read it in your ipad or mobile phone. Should there be any problems of purchasing, feel free to contact me at kengls@singnet.com.sg and separate arrangement can be made.

Hope you like the post today and do join me in the baking adventures. Bake one for yourself and tell me if it suits your taste buds. Have a nice day and cheers