Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

Simple ingredients :

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large)
1 large egg
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips or more :)

Simple steps :

1. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in large bowl. Mix mashed bananas, egg, melted butter and milk in another bowl.

2. Stir banana mixture into dry ingredients just until blended. Do not mix too hard or overmix.

3. Stir in chocolate chips.

4. Put the batter into the cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Pre heat oven to 350°F and bake the muffins for about 25 minutes. Transfer muffins to rack to cool.

Kuih Bahulu

Simple Ingredients :
1. 3 eggs
2. 3/4 cup sugar
3. 1 1/4 cup flour (sifted)
4. 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
5. 1 teaspoon vanilla essence

Oil to brush the mould

Simple Steps :
1. Preheat kuih bahulu moulds in the oven for about 10 - 15 minutes. I brush the mould with some cooking oil before putting it into the oven.

2. Next, whisk the eggs and sugar with a hand whisk or a stand mixer until light and fluffy.

3. Sieve in the flour, and baking powder and add just 1/3 into the egg mixture first. Fold in slowly and lightly. Repeat until all the flour is blended into the batter.

4. Grease the moulds and fill with batter until near full. Bake for 10 - 15 mins on preheated oven at 350F.

5. Bake until golden brown, remove from mould with a skewer stick. It should be removed easily. Remember to grease the mould again before putting in batter and repeat until done.

6. Leave it to cool completely before storing. Store in air tight container.

Please visit http://www.mysimplefood.com/ for full story and other recipes.

Homemade Curry Puffs

Simple ingredients :

Part 1 Filling:
1/2 cup of finely diced chicken breast meat
2 large potatoes (boiled and diced)
1 medium red onion (finely chopped)

Curry mix - mix together with 1/2 cup of water to make paste
2 tablespoon of meat or chicken curry powder
1/2 teaspoon chili powder (as desired if you want it spicy)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder

Seasoning
1 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup of water

2 Hard Boiled Eggs (quartered)

Oil for deep frying.

Part 2 Dough :

Pastry Dough A (Outer)- knead into a dough
250gm All Purpose Flour
60gm Shortening
20gm Sugar
4gm Salt
140gm Water

Pastry Dough B (Inner) - knead into a dough
100gm high Ratio Flour (Cake Flour)
65gm of Shortening (or you can use Vege/Olive Oil)

Simple steps :

1. Make the filling first. Heat oil in pan and fry onion till fragrant. Add the curry paste mixture and stir fry till fragrant. make sure fire is low to prevent from burning. Add the chicken, potato sugar, salt and a dash of pepper. Add water and cook for 5 mins till mix is dry and cooked. Leave aside to cool.

2. Divide both doughs into 2 (equal sizes).
With a rolling pin, roll dough A into a flat round shape (thicker in the middle).
Take dough B and put in the middle of dough A. Wrap up the sides and close up dough B completely. With the rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangular shape. From the top, roll the dough into a swiss-like roll. This is to make swirls on the skin of the curry puffs.

3. With a bread knife, cut up the dough into 10 - 15 pcs. Roll out each piece and fill the middle with chicken curry filling. Fold into two and pleat the joint edges.

4. Repeat the same process for the second dough.

5. Deep fry at 180'C till light golden brown.

Please visit http://www.mysimplefood.com/ for full story and other recipes.

Recipe - Cinnamon Rolls

I can't believe I made this! Doesn't it look lovely? Please click here to read how I got this inspiration.

Below is the step by set recipe. Trust me, it is easy.

Simple ingredients - ( I have made some changes to original recipe)


Dough :
4-ounce package yeast
1/2 cup warm water
1/2 cup scalded milk
1/4 cup sugar
1/3 cup butter or shortening
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
4 cups of all-purpose flour

Filling:
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
3/4 cup raisins, walnuts, or pecans, optional

Glaze:
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 to 6 tablespoons hot water

Simple steps :-

1. Dissolve yeast in warm water in a bowl and set aside for 2 minutes



2. In a mixer, put milk, sugar, melted butter, salt and egg and mix till blended. Add 2 cups of flour and mix until smooth. Add yeast mixture. Mix in remaining flour until dough is easy to handle.

3. Place the dough in well-greased bowl for proofing, cover and let rise until doubled in size, usually 1 to 1 1/2 hours . When doubled in size, remove the dough.

4. Roll out on a floured surface into about a 15 by 9-inch rectangle.

5. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.

6. Spread melted butter all over dough. Mix sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over buttered dough. Sprinkle with walnuts, pecans, or raisins if desired

7. Beginning at the 15-inch side, role up dough and pinch edge together to seal.

8. Cut into 12 pieces. Coat the bottom of baking pan with butter and sprinkle with sugar. Place cinnamon roll slices close together in the pan and let rise until dough is doubled, about 45 minutes.

9. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Bake for about 30 minutes or until nicely browned.

For the glaze. mix butter, powdered sugar, and vanilla. Add hot water 1 tablespoon at a time until the glaze reaches desired consistency. Spread over slightly cooled rolls.

Hope you like this recipe and do let me know if you try making it. All the best!

Don't forget to click to my other food blog mysimplefood.com and check out how I got this inspiration plus many other food postings. Enjoy!!

Bread & Butter Pudding

Inspiration - I heard that it is very easy to make, especially when you have day old bread. So I have been itching to make it. I have some leftovers of organic whole wheat bread and I really wanted to get rid of it. So I bravely ventured into making bread and butter pudding even though I am not a fan of this dessert.

Ok the simple ingredients -

1) Bread - 5 slices

2) Butter

3) Milk

4) 2 eggs

5) Raisins (and I even added some cut peaches)

6) 1 tsp of vanilla essence

I read all I needed to do was this -

1) Cut the bread into triangle slices and put some butter on each slice and arrange on a baking dish.

2) Then mix milk and eggs with vanilla extract.

3) Then add the mixture onto the bread. Put the raisins on top.

4) Place the baking dish onto a larger baking dish filled with water. This is to ensure that the pudding does not burn. Bake in oven for 30 minutes.

5) This is what turned out. Well..... it did not turn out! I am so dissapointed. The bread was just soggy and it did not taste good at all. Well, I don't really know what I did wrong.

Hubby-D was nice and said it is not too bad and even ate it for breakfast the next day. I tried but I knew it was really not good. Anyone out there - Help! What did I do wrong? :)

Marble Cake

My 2nd attempt in baking after my successful Cereal Cookies.


Now for my favourite cake - Marble Cake. I searched and searched the internet for various recipes and found some that suited the ingredients I had in the pantry. Ah yes, I don't go buy whatever ingredients I need for a recipe, usually I try to find a recipe and more often I combine recipes to suit whatever I have in my pantry. Then I crossed my fingers and pray it will turn out. And always, I have beginner's luck cos my first time making a dish always turns out pretty well. Infact, when I make it the second time, it usually turn out worse! I wonder why?



But anyway, here I will list down and show you step by step exactly what I did. So, you first time or wannabe bakers, I hope you find this useful. And all the experienced cooks and bakers out there, I would appreciate any comments or suggestions to be better.


Btw, it is really marble cake recipe I am making, the photo above looks like muffins but it is not muffins. I used the muffin tray to make the marble cake so that I get indivdual portions without needing to cut the cake. This is a tip I learned from my Aunt Judy who makes fabulous marble cakes.


Simple ingredients -



1) Butter - 110gm
2) Sugar - 100gm
3) Eggs - 2 (large)
4) Flour - 110gm
5) Baking powder - 1/2 tsp
6) Vanilla Essence - 1/2 tsp
6) Cocoa powder - 1 TBSP
7) Milk - 3.5 TBSP

This may seem like such a small recipe but since I am making it for the 1st time and only me and my hubby would be eating, this is the right portion for me. I like it as it will last for 2-3 days and it is just nice. It will make about 7-9 muffin cups. If you want a bigger cake, just double up the ingredients.

Simple steps

1) Put butter and sugar in mixer and beat till blended.

2) Then add egg one by one and continue to blend together.

3) Add flour and baking powder and a pinch of salt and continue to mix. Add in the vanilla essence last. The mix should look like below and smell quite good - fragrance of vanilla essence and butter.

4) Get ready your baking dish. Here I am using muffin trays. Grease it lightly.

5) Put aside 1/3 of the mixture. Then scoop the remaining mixture into the muffin tray filling up to half.

6) Remember the 1/3 of mixture kept aside. This is for the chocolate portion. Firstly mix the cocoa powder with the milk. Make sure it is blended well. Then add in the butter/flour mixture and mix.

7) Put the chocolate mixture on to the muffin tray too.

8) Take a chopstick or the handle of a spoon and slowly swirl the mixture in circular motion. Don't over mix.

9) Put into pre-heated oven at 350' for 20- 25 minutes.

10) That's it! Pretty easy! Voila! Ready to eat! And it is YUMMY!

Virgin Baker

Cereal Cookies!! I actually made cereal cookies!!

I have never baked in my life! I looked thru some recipes trying to figure out the ingredients which are all new to me. For eg. What is the difference between baking powder or baking soda? Anyway, I still don't know, so for baking, I will just follow the recipe. No guess work. No agak agak unlike my normal Chinese cooking.
With my new mixer waiting to be used, I was figuring out what would be my first virgin bake. Why cereal cookies? The only reason is that I have a half bag of low fat cereal (which taste yucky btw) and I thot it would be a great idea to use it to bake my virgin cookies so I don't have to eat it plain for breakfast!

Simple ingredients-
1. 110gm butter
2. 110gm sugar
3.1/2 lemon - juiced.
4. 1/2 tsp vanilla
5. 1 egg yolk
6. 100gm corn flakes
7. 125gm self raising flour
8. 1 tsp baking powder
9. 1 cup of vege oil

Simple steps -
1) First, I pound the cereal with my strong fist!!

2. In the mixer, I put the butter, sugar and vanilla. Whisk it away till blended. Then add the egg yolk and lemon juice and mix.

3. Next, put in the flour and cornflakes. Mix it all together. This was when I was wondering, how come the mixture is so dry. How do I combine to make cookies? Ok check check ingredients again!! Ohhh!! I need to put in some cornoil. So 1 cup of corn-oil into this mix!

This is how the mix looks like. Now for cookie time.

4. So, I took a palm-full of dough and roll it on palm to form a ball and then press it down. Put it in baking tray and then into oven at 325'F. Guess what I did wrong???!!!

Ooppps too close together and so as it was baking, it grew and stuck to each other. Panic! Panic!

Ok ...ok...learned my lesson, next, make much smaller cookies and put further apart! :)

Voila, after 15 minutes, the cookies are ready. Wow! I am de-virgined :) The bigger cookies are lighter in color and the smaller ones are a bit darker but both Ready to Eat! Yummy!

I am proud!